Thoughts while watching the trailer for The Great Gatsby:
I would like to enjoy this movie. I like this book. I have read it many times since that first time in 10th grade English. I am completely okay with something stylish and distinct from the book though.
Whoa, okay, Kanye and Jay-Z. Interesting. Some Louis Armstrong or Blind Lemon Jefferson would might have worked…
Interesting isn’t necessarily good, but I’ll roll with it. Gotta keep an open mind. It’s Baz, after all.
Hmm, a Tobey Maguire voiceover. He’s so bland. Then again, he’s playing Nick Carraway. Maybe that’s the point. Imagine this though: Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
I wrote an article in 2007 about “Five Novels I Want to See Adapted” and then I wanted Leonardo DiCaprio as Carraway in my grand vision of The Great Gatsby (and, for the record, Robert Downey Jr. as Gatsby).
The Jack White U2 cover is another interesting touch. Is it too much to expect at least a little jazz in an adaptation of the definitive Jazz Age novel?
The interaction between DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan is going to carry this film, as it should - and wow, their first moment in the trailer was nauseatingly tense.
I received my July reading for my Modern Germany summer course today. I think I’m going to really, really enjoy this class (and will, I hope, have plenty of new won’t-find-that-in-your-textbook material to integrate into my class next school year).
Best of luck to the graduating class of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech on the brave path of the artist.
This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.
“
—
Stephen King, Bag of Bones
I made a Twitter that goes right along with my writing blog. I am awful at the Twitter, but it will coincide as a self-marketing tool, when the time comes that I am ready to self-market.
I have too many things on the internet. I can’t keep up with myself. I need a secretary.
You know why the birdies wake up singing, don’t you? … They’re happy to be alive one more day. You can’t count on that, Hewes. Them little birdies know it too. That’s why they’re out there singing all the time. They’re trying to tell us something. ‘Tweet, tweet, you’re alive, you ignorant asshole.’
Sometimes I reread this and I’m reminded that all is well. Tweet, tweet.
The long awaited 4.5th book in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. It will be nice to hang out with Roland again.
This should make for some good airplane reading to Miami tomorrow.
Reading Checklist Spring 2012
Here is my reading checklist for the rest of the spring (inspired by Caitlin) which gives me until June 20:
Independence Day by Richard Ford
The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
The Man Within by Graham Greene
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. DuBois
History of the Battle of Lake Erie by W.W. Dobbins
The Samurai by Shusaku Endo
My leisure reading has slowed to a crawl these past two months, as most of my time reading has been spent perusing educational journals and books (or grading research papers and essays). Lately, by the time my brain has winded down for the night after a hot shower, I will get into bed, where I generally read for an hour or two a night before sleep, and I’m only able to make it 10 or 15 minutes before I can no longer resist the weight of my eyelids.
Fortunately, I will have more time once my grad courses end in two weeks… and then I will be free to read whatever I please until early-July. As much as I enjoy grad school, I need a break from educational theories, curriculum mapping, and critiques of No Child Left Behind. I am thankful that my summer course is a seminar on modern Germany (WWI to present).
For my leisure reading, I alternate between fiction and nonfiction and my interests, as anyone who has followed me for a while knows, are all over the place. I invite any recommendations to add to these.
I received my very first rejection letter today for a short story. I suppose I ought to frame it.
My dream is to go Walden for a summer, disappear deep into the woods, live in a cabin, with only my books and pads of paper and food and a fishing pole. I’d only come into contact with people when essentials were needed, but refusing the temptation to read the news while doing so. Months later, I would emerge into society again and run into a friend who would say “Can you believe we are in another war?” and “What did you think of that movie?” and “Who would’ve predicted they’d win the NBA finals?” and I’d be able to look at him with complete unknowing and smile about it and maybe I would be cured of whatever it is that ails us all.
He felt a keen pang of nostalgia, but he didn’t know for what. Maybe for the time before he had realized that good intentions don’t make you innocent, for the time when he had less regret. Ransom wasn’t sure if he was waiting for something to happen, or hoping nothing would. Sometimes he felt he was preparing for some sort of confrontation, and at other times he believed he had seen enough trouble already.
“
—
Jay McInerney, Ransom
The worst part about finishing a book is returning it to its bookshelf and facing the relentlessly impossible decision of choosing the next book to read.
One resolves to do these things, one wants to do them; but when the time comes, in the cold morning light, they somehow don’t get done.
“
—
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying - Ideas always do sounds so much better during the night than they do the next morning, don’t they?
Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
“
—
The Elements of Style by William Strunk & E.B. White challenged so much of what I knew about writing when I first read it at eighteen years old. I had arrogantly assumed that the praise from teachers throughout high school for my ability to properly use and identify a gerund equated brilliance. I realized after reading this during freshman year of college how little I understood the craft of writing - and I have worked hard in the seven years since to improve my writing through simplification. The most important lesson that I learned was that one must fully understand the rules of writing and only then should one attempt to break or improve upon them.
The few times each year that I reference The Elements of Style, I am still impressed by its simplicity and its power. I am reminded that despite my improvement and how comfortable I am writing as I’ve found my voice, there is still so much room for improvement - although I would hope that if I am still writing into my 80s that there still will be.
If you write and do not own The Elements of Style, it’s $0.36 for a used copy on Amazon. Read it. Understand it. Play with it. Disagree with it. Make it your Bible. Then give the damn thing away and get writing. You can buy another copy later.
What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is often overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.
I'm a writer, teacher, and student in rural Pennsylvania. Sometimes I blog. This is my stream of consciousness - a self-serving archive of musings, music, food, snippets of what I've been reading, and whatever else captures my interest.
