We all know the legends of Ernest Hemingway–the drinking, the fishing, the safaris, the suicide. But, before Hemingway was known as “Papa”, he was “Hem”, and he was not that different from you and me.
Here are ten ways that Ernest Hemingway and other authors are remarkably similar to us!
Part One of this post can be found here.
1. They misplace their old journals!
2. They find writing to be “hard” and struggle with writer’s block.
3. They enjoy engaging in book talk with fellow readers!
4. They read fluff for enjoyment…but are wary of gambling with bad books.
5. They support indie authors!
6. They can’t afford books and hang out at the library.
7. They wish they could read their favorite books again for the first time.
8. They lose their luggage!
9. They put up with annoying people.
10. Their happiest times were when they were penniless.
*All information, quotes, and paraphrases derived from Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast, unless otherwise noted.
6. The best library EVER
“In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach,” (35)
Hemingway was a young, struggling author in Paris, but he loved to read and Beach’s bookstore served his reading needs more than
adequately.
“I was very shy when I first went into the bookshop and I did not have enough money on me to join the rental library. She told me I could pay the deposit any time I had the money and made me out a card and said I could take as many books as I wished.”
Hemingway immediately takes her up on the offer, grabbing six books, including Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler and Other Stories.
He frequented Shakespeare and Company often, where he had a friend in Beach, and could engage in conversation with other writers such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound. In addition, he received all of his mail at the library.
Sounds like the perfect library, right? Hang out in the back room and read any and all books you like, take as many as you want home with you, the proprietor is a sweetheart, literary discussion is encouraged, and you could pick up your mail! Where’s my local Shakespeare and Company?!
7. If I could turn back time…
Remember what it was like to read your favorite book for the first time? The wonder and excitement you felt? Don’t you wish you could do it all over again? 
Hemingway and his pals did, and they mourned the loss of that reading experience.
Here is Hemingway discussing with his poet friend Evan Shipman the re-readability factor of certain novels:
“[War and Peace] comes out as a hell of a novel, the greatest I suppose, and you can read it over and over.”
“I know,” I said. “But you can’t read Dostoyevsky over and over. I had Crime and Punishment on a trip when we ran out of books down at Schruns, and I couldn’t read it again when we had nothing to read[….]”
“Dostoyevsky was a shit, Hem,” Evan went on. “He was best on shits and saints. He makes wonderful saints. It’s a shame we can’t reread him.”
“I’m going to try The Brothers again. It was probably my fault.”
“You can read some of it again. Most of it. But then it will start to make you angry, no matter how great it is.”
“Well, we’re lucky to have had it read the first time and maybe there will be a better translation.”
“But don’t let it tempt you, Hem.”
“I won’t. I’m trying to do it so it will make it without you knowing it, and so the more you read it, the more there will be.” (137-138)
I wonder if these guys had ever tried my re-reading method: wait ten years until you’ve forgotten the details, then try it again. This usually works for me!
8. “It’s okay honey, don’t cry. At least I still have the carbons….YOU WHAT?!?”
En route to Geneva, traveling to reunite with her husband for the holidays, Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife, lost her suitcase.
No big deal. Just some clothes and toiletries, right? Wrong! Hadley traveled to Geneva with everything Hemingway had written in Paris so that he could work on them during their holidays in the mountains.
Again, no big deal, there were copies, right? Wrong! Hadley brought the originals AND the copies. “She had put in the originals, the typescripts and the carbons, all in manila folders,” (73).
Hemingway only had two stories left–one that had been rejected from a publisher and one that he had buried in a desk drawer because Gertrude Stein hadn’t liked it.
Hemingway was crushed, but brushed it off to his friends saying, “It was probably good for me to lose early work,” (74).
Literary scholars don’t think so. They are still hopeful that one day the suitcase will turn up.
9. The Kenny Bania generation
Have you ever dealt with a hanger-on who won’t leave you alone and just won’t get the hint no matter how rude you are? Hemingway did, and he was so annoyed that he included an entire chapter covering this very hilarious incident. I related to it so much (although, I could never be as rude as Hemmingway was!) that I have read the chapter “Birth of a New School” a few times.
I’ve discussed this scene in a previous post, and I still think this guy reminds me of Kenny Bania, Jerry Seinfeld’s annoying fellow comic, on Seinfeld. So, since Hemingway doesn’t give his annoying guy a name, I will simply call him Kenny.
Here’s the play-by-play of how Hemingway fights against annoying people:
Hemingway is writing at his favorite cafe, getting a lot of good work done, he’s feeling good, and then he’s interrupted with a dumb question:
“Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a cafe?”
Duh, Master of the Obvious!
Hemingway’s first tactic is to lose his temper:
“You rotten son of a bitch what are you doing in here off your filthy beat?”
and
“Listen. A bitch like you has plenty of places to go. Why do you have to come here and louse a decent cafe?”
Kenny, the interrupter, doesn’t give two figs for the insults, he continues to engage with:
“It’s a public cafe. I’ve just as much right here as you have.”
and
“I just came in to have a drink. What’s wrong with that?
Kenny has a reply for every insult that Hemingway throws at him! He won’t leave this way. All Hemingway wants is some peace as he works. Next tactic: ignore the guy.
[Kenny continues:] “All I did was speak to you.”
I went on and wrote another sentence. It dies hard when it is really going and you are into it.
“I suppose you’ve gotten so great nobody can speak to you.”
I wrote another sentence that ended the paragraph and read it over. It was still all right and I wrote the first sentence of the next paragraph.
“You never think about anyone else or that they may have problems too.”
I had heard complaining all my life. I found I could go on writing and that it was no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.
“Suppose you wanted to be a writer and felt it in every part of your body and it just wouldn’t come.”
And Kenny goes on, ‘waa waa waa I can’t write!’…but Hemingway has successfully tuned him out and it was a while before he actually hears Kenny again.
“‘We went to Greece,’ I heard him say later. I had not heard him for some time except as noise. I was ahead now and I could leave it and go on tomorrow.”
Hemingway is done writing now, so he turns back to his initial tactic insults.
[Kenny:] “Don’t you care about life and the suffering of a fellow human being?”
“Not you.”
“You’re beastly.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you could help me, Hem.”
“I’d be glad to shoot you.”
“Would you?”
“No. There’s a law against it.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
Noooo! This guy has no self esteem! This is why he won’t leave. The only true tactic in dealing with someone like this is to give them what they want–a little bit of confidence.
Hemingway does this by suggesting a new line of work for Kenny: being a literary critic.
“Do you think I could be a good critic?”
“I don’t know how good. But you could be a critic. There will always be people who will help you and you can help your own people .”
Hemingway goes on, describing all of the things the annoying guy could do as a critic, and Kenny now has a purpose and hope for some success.
“You make it sound fascinating, Hem. Thank you so much. It’s so exciting. It’s creative too.”
He is now a critic in his own eye, and Hemingway can get rid of him:
“You’ll remember about not coming here when I’m working?”
“Naturally, Hem. Of course. I’ll have my own cafe now.”
“You’re very kind.”
“I try to be,” he said.
Success! Kenny can now be avoided–at least at the cafe! That’s a start.
So, did the he become a great critic?
“It would be interesting and instructive if the young man had turned out to be a famous critic but it did not turn out that way although I had high hopes for a while.”
Ahh, poor Kenny. (91-96)
10. “I drank that bottle of wine in the dark…you were crying, I was crying. We just cried and cried…Those were the happiest days of my life, though.”
“[T]his is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy,” (211).
Hemingway’s last sentence in A Moveable Feast sounds much like what my parents have always said. You can hear the nostalgia in his voice, the warmth. My parents sound that way too when they look back on times when they were very poor. Once, when I was a baby, my mom and dad couldn’t afford to pay the electricity bill. That night, my mom spent all of the pennies they had stored away in a coffee can, on a bottle of wine. They always say those were the happiest times. Hemingway seemed to feel that way too.
But then we did not think ever of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich. It had never seemed strange to me to wear sweatshirts for underwear to keep warm. It only seemed odd to the rich. We ate well and cheaply and drank well and slept well and warm together and loved each other. (53)
Hemingway’s look-back on Paris, his poorest times spent with his wife Hadley and his new baby boy, are just filled with love. I can imagine Hemingway– successful, aged Hemingway–transcribing and editing these journals in the late ’50s and thinking ‘We really had it figured out back then.’
It makes me think that no matter what, enjoy what you have, the important things. And keep it simple. When you’re poor, that’s all you have–the simple things. What kept Hemingway going at this time was love–love of Hadley, Bumby, and his reading and writing. He had close friends and he was satisfied with a coffee or a glass of wine. He was able to enjoy what he had, not getting lost in all of the details that are so entangling when you get a bit of money.
So, if Hemingway is like all of us, let us learn from his look-back: enjoy what you have, enjoy the little things. Don’t get caught up in the race.
Sources:
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. Scribner’s. New York: 1964.
I don’t usually enjoy reading biographies and memoirs of my favorite authors– it’s all written as a look-back; there’s a lack of tension. Plus, a lot of authors were really rotten, and I don’t want to know! However, I do really enjoy learning about some parts of the everyday lives of these god-like literary heroes. It turns out that they weren’t so different from you and me in their day-to-day habits.
Here are ten ways that Ernest Hemingway and other authors are remarkably similar to us!
1. They misplace their old journals!
2. They find writing to be “hard” and struggle with writer’s block.
3. They enjoy engaging in book talk with fellow readers!
4. They read fluff for enjoyment…but are wary of gambling with bad books.
5. They support indie authors!
6. They can’t afford books and hang out at the library.
7. They wish they could read their favorite books again for the first time.
8. They lose their luggage!
9. They put up with annoying people.
10. Their happiest times were when they were penniless.
*All information, quotes, and paraphrases derived from Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast, unless otherwise noted.
1. “Honey! Do you know where I put my draft for the Great American Memoir? I seem to have misplaced it.”
As a young writer in Paris, Hemingway regularly recorded his observations and thoughts in journals. A Moveable Feast is a compilation of these journal entries. However, the classic memoir almost never was, as Hemingway stored these journals away and later forgot about them. Luckily, his old haunt The Ritz Hotel came to his (and his readers’ rescue)!
Hemingway’s friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner recalls their recovery in his New York Times editorial “Don’t Touch ‘A Moveable Feast'”:
In 1956, Ernest and I were having lunch at the Ritz in Paris with Charles Ritz, the hotel’s chairman, when Charley asked if Ernest was aware that a trunk of his was in the basement storage room, left there in 1930. Ernest did not remember storing the trunk but he did recall that in the 1920s Louis Vuitton had made a special trunk for him. Ernest had wondered what had become of it.
Charley had the trunk brought up to his office, and after lunch Ernest opened it. It was filled with a ragtag collection of clothes, menus, receipts, memos, hunting and fishing paraphernalia, skiing equipment, racing forms, correspondence and, on the bottom, something that elicited a joyful reaction from Ernest: “The notebooks! So that’s where they were! Enfin!”
There were two stacks of lined notebooks like the ones used by schoolchildren in Paris when he lived there in the ’20s. Ernest had filled them with his careful handwriting while sitting in his favorite café, nursing a café crème. The notebooks described the places, the people, the events of his penurious life.”
Almost immediately after their retrieval, Hemingway set about transcribing the journals into a memoir he called “my Paris book”. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see its publication, and his fourth wife Mary Hemingway had it published in 1964. The title derived from a remembered statement that Hemingway made to Hotchner: “If you are lucky to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast,” (Hotchner).
2. Man, this writing stuff is hard!
“[Writing] was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph,” (156).
Hemingway was still very much a novice at writing fiction when he came to Paris. He had journalistic experience, but what he really wanted was to write a novel. This was a struggle, but he continued to hone his craft with short stories. He sought advice from others and set rules for himself and his writing.
When dealing with a block, he would think “Do not worry. You always have written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know,” (12).
3. Book Club Meeting Tonight! Bring a bottle of wine and one of your Canonical friends!
Hemingway hung out with lots of bookish types- Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to name a few(yeah, yeah, I know “bookish” is an understatement), and oftentimes they would discuss what they were reading and would recommend books to one another. Here is some book talk between Stein and Hemingway:
“Huxley is a dead man,” Miss Stein said. “Why do you want to read a dead man? Can’t you see he is dead?”
I could not see, then, that he was a dead man and I said that his books amused me and kept me from thinking.
[…]
“Why do you read this trash? It is inflated trash, Hemingway. By a dead man.”
“I like to see what they are writing,” I said. “And it keeps my mind off doing it.”
“Who else do you read now?”
“D.H. Lawrence,” I said. “He wrote some very good short stories, one called ‘The Prussian Officer.'”
“I tried to read his novels. He’s impossible. He’s pathetic and preposterous. He writes like a sick man.”
“I liked Sons and Lovers and The White Peacock,” I said. “Maybe not that so well. I couldn’t read Women in Love.”
“If you don’t want to read what is bad, and want to read something that will hold your interest and is marvelous in its own way, you should read Marie Belloc Lowndes.”
I had never heard of her, and Miss Stein loaned me The Lodger, that marvelous story of Jack the Ripper and another about murder at a place outside Paris[…]. (26-27)
Hmmm…book recommendations from Hemingway and Gertrude Stein…I’ll take it!
4. Ugh. I don’t want to think right now. I’ll just read the latest Nicholas Sparks novel and space out, I guess.
As seen from the conversation above, Hemingway did read books simply to keep him from thinking and his mind off of writing, many of which were not considered t
o be the best. Miss Stein scoffed at these reading choices, as they were simply mediocre…and they weren’t bad enough to be worth Hemingway’s time, for she espoused this notion:
“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad,” (26).
Hemingway disagreed, responding with, “I’ve been reading truly good books all winter and all last winter and I’ll read them next winter, and I don’t like frankly bad books.”
I knew I was doing something right by spending Friday nights watching movies like Plan 9 from Outerspace, The Room, and Troll 2!
5. Poor T.S. Eliot. He’ll never get the recognition he deserves…
Hemingway's pals in Paris: James Joyce and Ezra Pound in center, with two other bookish types: Ford Madox Ford and John Quinn
In Paris, Hemingway met Ezra Pound, whom he continuously described as kind and generous. Pound’s generosity was put to use in helping “poets, painters, sculptors, and prose writers that he believed in and he would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble,” (110). One such poet he believed in and wanted to help was T.S. Eliot, and he enlisted all of his friends to join in, including Hemingway.
“[H]e was most worried about T.S. Eliot who, Ezra told me, had to work in a bank in London and so had insufficient time and bad hours to function as a poet.”
So, Pound founded Bel Esprit with a rich American patroness of the arts, and the idea of Bel Esprit was that all of the members would contribute a portion of whatever they earned to provide a fund to get Eliot out of his day job so that he could write poetry, (111). Hemingway and other members would solicit money from friends, using the “coolness” factor to add pressure to potential donors. “Either you had Bel Esprit or you did not have it. […]If you didn’t it was too bad. […]Too bad, Mac. Keep your money. We wouldn’t touch it.”
Hemingway got into the spirit full-force: “As a member of Bel Esprit I campaigned energetically and my happiest dreams in those days were of seeing [Eliot] stride out of the bank a free man.” Fortunately for Eliot, he did get out of the bank soon after, as The Waste Land was published and won the Dial award “and not long after a lady of title backed a review for Eliot called The Criterion and Ezra and I did not have to worry about him any more,” (112). Unfortunately for Hemingway, he wasn’t the one who got to break Eliot out of the bank, and he was sorely disappointed.
The rest, as they say, is history…
Read Part Two of This Post Tomorrow!
Sources:
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. Scribner’s. New York: 1964.
Hotchner, A.E.. “Don’t Touch ‘A Moveable Feast’.” New York Times: 19 July, 2009.
Setting is a huge part in any narrative work, be it fictional or memoir. Paris, in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, is hugely significant– it could easily be considered the main character in this nonfiction work.
A Moveable Feast was published posthumously in 1964 and covers Hemingway’s time as a young expatriate in Paris from 1921 to 1926. As a young man in Paris, Hemingway spent his time writing, fretting over writing, and talking about books, writing, and art with his wife and circle of friends, which included Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also spent quite a bit of time relishing in the cafes, bookstores, and streets of Paris. For a man famed for his to-the-point style of writing, Hemingway paints a vivid picture of what it was like to be in Paris in the ’20s.
I am halfway through A Moveable Feast, and would like to share some images and a short film that illustrates the setting of Hemingway’s life in Paris. All images have been taken from the wonderful blog Hemingway’s Paris and cover the pages which I have read thus far.
Closerie des Lilas
Hemingway loved to write for hours in the cafes of Paris, and the Closerie des Lilas was a particular favorite of his. So much so, that he became very territorial if an annoying peer happened to encounter him and disrupt his writing. Here is an amusing scene when such an interruption occured at the Lilas cafe:
“Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a cafe?”
Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook. This was the worst thing that could happen. If you could keep your temper it would be better but I was not good at keeping mine then and said, “You rotten son of a bitch what are you doing in here off your filthy beat?”
“Don’t be insulting just because you want to act like an eccentric.”
“Take your dirty camping mouth out of here.”
“It’s a public cafe. I’ve just as much right here as you have.”
“Why don’t you go up to the Petite Chaumiere where you belong?”
“Oh dear. Don’t be so tiresome.”
Now you could get out and hope it was an accidental visit and the visitor had only come in by chance and there was not going to be an infestation. There were other good cafes to work in but they were a long walk away and this was my home cafe. It was bad to be driven out of the Closerie des Lilas. I had to make a stand or move.
Hemingway continues to insult the man, who is also a writer, and finally gets him to promise to never frequent the Closerie des Lilas again! Incidentally, this guy seems to be riding Hemingway’s coattails and reminds me of everyone’s favorite hack, Kenny Bania of Seinfeld…
Shakespeare and Company
In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was a library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l’Odeon. On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.
Hemingway, along with many other expatriate writing greats, spent a good deal of time at this bookstore. He chatted with Ms. Beach, met with other writers, borrowed books, and even received his mail there.
Along the Seine
Across the branch of the Seine was the Ile St.-Louis with the narrow streets and the old, tall, beautiful houses, and you could go over there or you could turn left and walk along the quais with the length of the Ile St.-Louis and then Notre-Dame and Ile de la Cite opposite as you walked.
In the bookstalls along the quais you could sometimes find American books that had just been published for sale very cheap.
“Seeing Paris” in the 1920’s
This film clip was also featured on Hemingway’s Paris and offers viewers the chance to see live action of Hemingway’s Paris in the ’20s. Check it out!
This post is in response to the March prompt for A Classics Challenge, hosted by November’s Autumn
Free air conditioning--all year long!
It’s another cold, wet, blustery day here in San Diego! One of the perks of being in San Diego is that there really isn’t any reason to have a high energy bill. The weather typically is moderate, so no need for AC in the summer and no need for heat in the winter. However, on days and nights like this, with a house full of wide door jambs and such, it’s not too different from camping. You can feel the wind blowing in right through the cracks of the walls! That makes for a chilly house (but great on a hot, windy summer day)! So, I’m all bundled up in the house in my robe, scarf, long johns, wool socks and sweater. We San Diegans can be wusses about temperature changes, I know! But, it would be ridiculous to try to heat up this old, drafty house with no insulation whatsoever. So, we bundle up!
So, the fanfare may commence…I finished The Wise Man’s Fear relatively early (9:00 p.m.) last night! It was so good! If you missed them, I wrote readathon posts on Friday and Saturday, each with reading updates and reflection (and silly videos). Today, I will write my review (to post tomorrow) and begin reading The Waste Lands in continuance of The Dark Tower Reading Challenge (and The Stephen King project). I also need to read a classic for March still, and while I was planning on reading The Forsyte Saga for this month, it’s a hefty book and March is almost over! So, I’m going to push that off until I have a lot of free reading time (Spring Break in April or summer vacation in August). Instead, I think my classic will be A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. My sister has urged me to read it, and the little bits I’ve skimmed while flipping through have shown it to be a very interesting book. So, I’m excited to start that up this week! I hope it counts for some of my challenges…
What else has been going on? Well, I’ve been having an internal debate on whether or not I should accept books for review. I’ve been getting approaches by authors about reading and reviewing their books, and I am skeptical to say the least. I don’t like being given something to read. It’s like someone throwing themself at you. I’m all about the chase. I want to find the perfect book for right now, and read it on my own time. Plus, I’m a horrible snob when it comes to what I read. It sounds pretentious, but I don’t read bad books. I just don’t. Or, if I do, I’m doing it on purpose. I can be in the mood for fluffy crap, but, even then, I seek it out. I seek my crap carefully. Plus, there’s the whole problem with my dislike of contemporary fiction. It’s a struggle for me to even read the Pulitzer winners for the Insatiable Booksluts’ Award-Winning Challenge, and those are award-winners!
So, after careful consideration, and the seeking out of advice from two book bloggers I greatly admire, and finally, after reading this article from the Los Angeles Review of Books, I have decided that I am not accepting books for review at this time. I will place this in my Contact page to avoid further consideration. I’ve just got too many good books of my own choosing to read, and I read enough sucky writing from my students–I don’t need to read potentially sucky books in my free time! So, if you’re looking for reviews of the newest upcoming novels, Adventures in Borkdom isn’t the place! Sorry!
Some really good news…Dewey’s Readathon is returning in April! I participated in my first Dewey back in October, and I had a blast! I read for the full 24 hours, ripped through 4.5 books, and participated in the challenges! If you’re looking for a good time, I urge you to sign up when the official linky becomes available (I’ll let you know when it does)! It could be a like a big fun sleepover, where we are all reading together and blogging and tweeting and rooting each other on! It could be so fun!!! It’ll take place April 21st, the third Saturday in April. Please, friends, set aside the date and sign up! IT COULD BE SO MUCH FUN!!!
Finally, I’ll be tuning in to tonight’s season finale of The Walking Dead! I was very happy when Shane died in the last episode (though, I wish it had been Carl who shot him. He could’ve done that when he was creeping around and saw Shane pointing a gun at his Dad. That would’ve been a huge turning point for Carl’s character! Of course, I’m assuming Carl was there to see the scene between Shane and Rick.), and I’m hoping to see some of Hershel’s red-shirt kids bite the big one tonight. And, if they’re not going to give T-Dog any sort of purpose, he could die too. If we played a drinking game where we drank everytime T-Dog appeared in an episode, we would be negative-drunk. He needs a purpose if he’s going to take up a valuable space on our survivor squad–there are too many stronger characters who could take his place! I’m crossing my fingers that one of those awesome characters will appear in tonight’s finale and set up an awesome new season in the Fall!
A rare sighting of T-Dog...
So, that’s what I’m up to. How ’bout you?
• The History of English Literature by Perry Keenlyside; narrated by Derek Jacobi and Cast
• Audiobook: 0 pages
• Publisher: NAXOS Audiobooks, 2001
• ISBN: 9626342218
• Genre: Nonfiction–Literary History and Analysis
• Recommended For: Anyone looking for a quick overview of the entire history of English Literature, from Chaucer to Ishiguro, in an easy listening audiobook format.
Quick Review: Quick and easy listening to a very, very brief synopsis of the history of English literature. Highly recommended for its quick access to authors and tidbits of English history that one might have forgotten or overlooked. Is also brilliantly read by Jacobi and the rest of the cast, who read snippets from the classics expertly.
How I Got Here: I was returning a book to the library, and decided that I wanted an audiobook for the car. There wasn’t much of a selection, but then I spotted this title and decided it would be perfect for my driver’s short attention span.
The Book: Goodreads’ Synopsis
The remarkable story of the world’s richest literary resource, the story telling, poetry, the growth of the novel and the greatest histories and essays, which have informed the language and the imagination wherever English is spoken.
My Analysis and Critique:
This audiobook was perfect for my quick drives to and from work each day! Each track focuses upon one writer from a certain time period, providing a bit of history of the author and the world around them, and then usually providing a reading of a snippet of one of their most notable works. So, usually, I could learn about three to five different authors and works on a one-way trip to my work, and not have to think/listen too hard.
Each disc is also separated into two to three different literary movements/time periods. Being a history, the text obviously moves chronologically. Thus, it is set up as thus:
1. The Age of Chaucer (Middle Ages: Chaucer, Gower’s Sir Gawain, The Bible, and Langland’s Piers Plowman)
2. The End of Chivalry (Mid 15th Century: John Lydgate, Mallory, and Skelton to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Le Morte D’Arthur to Wyatt’s love lyrics and Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer)
3. Triumphs of Oriana (Elizabethan Age: Spenser, Raleigh, and Sydney to the trio of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, and the poetry and essays by Donne and Bacon)
4. Puritan’s Progress (Restoration: religious metaphysical poetry by Herbert and Vaughan; Cavalier poetry by Lovelace and Herrick; the epic works by Milton; Marvell; Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; the first English novel in Defoe’s Moll Flanders; Dryden’s poetry; and finally, Congreve’s The Way of the World)
5. The Augustan Age (Age of Enlightenment: Pope’s poetry and essays; Swift’s satirical Gulliver’s Travels; Samuel Johnson’s criticism and Dictionary; the novels of Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, and Smallett; and Gray’s “Elegy on a Country Churchyard”)
6. Romantic Revolution (poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge; Shelley’s Gothic Frankenstein; Austen’s novels; and the poetry of Shelley, Byron, and Keats)
7. Faith and Doubt (The Victorian Age: Dickens; the rise of children’s literature and the detective novel; the Brontes; Arnold’s “Dover Beach”; the novels of George Eliot; poetry by Tennyson, Rosetti, and Browning; the works of Kipling)
8. The Age of Anxiety (Turn of the century/wartime: Hardy’s novels; Houseman’s poetry; the works of Henry James (?!); Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; Wells’ science fiction; controversial D.H. Lawrence; the war poetry of Wilfred Owen; the Irish writers Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce; Woolf’s To The Lighthouse; the satire of Evelyn Waugh; Orwell and Huxley; and the poetry of Eliot and Auden)
9. Post-War, Post-Modern(Multitude of voices and styles, as genres mesh: Cecil Day Lewis; Keith Douglas; Dylan Thomas; Ivy Compton Burnett; Jean Rhys; Doris Lessing; Muriel Spark; Iris Murdoch; William Golding; Angus Wilson; Anthony Powell; Kingsley Amis; Philip Larkin; Ted Hughes; J.G. Ballard; Salman Rushdie; Kazuo Ishiguro; Carol Ann Duffy)
While obviously this text is just a brief skim, a tiny overview of the great expanse of British Literature, I appreciated it for its providing me with some authors and works that I need to check out in the future. I also appreciated that it flowed so nicely together that it sounded like a story–the story that is English literature.
I also relished the lessons learned on the evolution of the novel, as well as the information provided in the Post-War, Post-Modern section (I am shockingly poorly read in modern literature! This needs to be remedied!)
Overall, I highly recommend this to anyone interested in gaining some insight on the history of English literature and listening to some classics read expertly by various voices. I’m not sure how easy this audiobook is to come by, as I just happened upon it at my library, but if you can find it, I recommend it!
Links:
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
– from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Wow! Thanks a lot Ernest Hemingway! I wish you would’ve brought this to my attention BEFORE I emptied my well! Now, I’ve gotta refill it, and I forgot to bring a bucket. All I have is this coffee cup, and the going is sloooow.
So, what’s one to do when there’s no inspiration? What do you do when you want to write but have no ideas? I realize that I’m not writing the next A Farewell to Arms, just this little old blog, but, still, I want to write and I’m a-strugglin’!
If you’ve ever been in this situation, as a blogger, writer, or any type of creator, I have some ideas on gaining inspiration. Here are some various strategies I have used or have considered using to spur on the creative juices.
• Do some reading! This was actually Papa Hemingway’s preferred method for filling the well (next to the making of the love): “When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day,” (25). Read a book, read a blog, read a newspaper, whatever, just read!
• Look through photo albums. Bonus points: look through other people’s photo albums (buy old photos at swap meets and yard sales).
• Take a long, leisurely walk. Exercise can stimulate brain activity (or so they say).
• Listen to music (see yesterday’s post on how an old playlist gave me inspiration).
• See a performance– be it music, a movie, a play, LARPers practicing, whatever.
• Make an Artist Date with a bookstore, museum, coffee shop, library, any place where you could lose yourself.
• Watch a sunrise or sunset (these actually aren’t overrated).
• Visit an old cemetery.
• Ride the full circuit on the public transit (bus, trolley, train, subway, etc.).
• People watch–airports used to be perfect for this, but a bench in a crowded area would work too. Actually, jury duty is an awesome way to get some good people-watching done. Take notes!
• Take a hike in the woods (if you have woods).
• Go to an author reading or Open-Mic night at a coffeeshop.
• Attend a convention.
• Take a long, hot bath.
• Visit a place that is out of your comfort zone. For example, my husband would go to InCahoots ( a country bar); I might go to HomeTown Buffet. This scene from Vegas Vacation might explain my aversion to buffets:
• Play tourist in your own neighborhood…bring a camera!
• Go to the Swap Meet.
To fill up my well yesterday, I went to a local coffeeshop and wrote like crazy! I sipped on an Arnold Palmer and listened to three guys who were playing an impromptu bluegrass set on the patio. They would take breaks to eat their brunch. I ended up planning out the entire week’s posts! They’re not intricate, painstaking reviews or reflections, but still, I got some work done! Today, I might play tourist in my own neighborhood with a camera. It’s the Weekend of Inspiration, baby!
Reading Update!
What I Am Currently Reading:
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The Collected Stories and Poems of Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
The History of English Literature by Perry Keenlyside
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
What I Recently Read:
Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw (read review here)
and
I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum (read review here)
What I Am Reading Next:
The Waste Lands by Stephen King
and
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
• I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum
• Hardcover: 572 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult, 2011
• ISBN: 0525952306
• Genre: Nonfiction- Music/Pop Culture
• Recommended For: Fans of early MTV; any pop culture/nostalgia junkie; anyone with a fond memory of or interest in the ’80s and its pop music.
Quick Review: This is a fun book for any fan of MTV and 80’s pop culture. It helps to have a computer handy when reading it so that you can watch the videos as you read about them. It tends to get repetitive at points, but it is fun for nostalgia enthusiasts.
How I Got Here: I’m a trivia and a pop culture buff (although, I think I’ve gotten rusty…I’m just not so interested anymore. I must be getting old.), and very nostalgic for all things related to my childhood. Therefore, my father-in-law made a good choice when he got this for me as a Christmas present. I read this as my “light read” in February.
The Book: Goodreads’ Synopsis
Remember the first time you saw Michael Jackson dance with zombies in “Thriller”? Diamond Dave karate kick with Van Halen in “Jump”? Tawny Kitaen turning cartwheels on a Jaguar to Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”? The Beastie Boys spray beer in “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)”? Axl Rose step off the bus in “Welcome to the Jungle”?
Remember When All You Wanted Was Your MTV?
It was a pretty radical idea-a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.
I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV’s programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business.
Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.
My Analysis and Critique:
This book was fun, mainly because of what I brought to the table as I read it. I have a very good memory, and a very long memory. Actually, my long memory tends to be better than my short memory. I can’t remember right away what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I can remember December, 1985, looking out the car window, driving away from Tucson to Virginia, listening to Toto’s “Africa”. It was sunset, and I was going to miss my friends from my first grade class.
As I can remember details like these, I can easily follow the interviews relayed throughout this book. It features musicians, MTV VJs, music execs, TV execs, actors, managers, etc. discussing their reactions to MTV and all things MTV.
It also helped that almost all videos are available for viewing on YouTube or other video sites. While reading about a certain video or performance, I would switch to my IPad and watch the video on the internet, observing the same details discussed in the book. This interactive experience made the book much more enjoyable.
In some parts, the book was very repetitive, and a lot of the information was old news for me. I was an MTV junkie for nearly 20 years (pretty much stopped watching around 2000), so I know a lot of the vignettes in this book. Other chapters I simply scanned. I really wasn’t interested in how much partying the MTV execs were doing.
But, overall, this book was a lot of fun.
Some interesting and fun tidbits I got out of this book were:
– I never realized just how much of a monopoly MTV had with music of the ’80s. If a band wasn’t on MTV, they weren’t popular. Period. Kind of makes me think that music has it pretty good these days. With the internet, everyone has almost the same odds at making it in the business. No one goes to MTV anymore, and I’m not sure how influential radio is anymore. If you’re good at manipulating the internet, it seems that you should find success.
– “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was a WEIRD video. I really liked it!
– Billy Squier’s video for his song “Rock Me Tonite” is considered to be the worst video of all time and essentially ruined his career. It is pretty bad–check it out!
– David Fincher (director of The Social Network and Fight Club) and Michael Bay (director of overblown action movies) were MTV Video Director Gods at one time.
– Michael Jackson created the nickname “King of Pop” and insisted that MTV refer to him as such at least twice per week in 1991. Michael Jackson (and Madonna and Guns N’ Roses) OWNED MTV.
– Speaking of Guns N’ Roses, I finally get the dolphins in the video “Estranged”. The last new video by GNR that I ever watched was “November Rain” (which MTV, as always, seriously overplayed) and that was because I saw a promotion for their “World Premiere of ‘Estranged'”, saw Axl swimming with a bunch of dolphins, and decided that was seriously uncool. According to the director of the video, Axl had just split with Stephanie Seymour, and never wanted to put a girl in a video again. “I’d rather go out with a dolphin,” he said. So, the director just put dolphins all over the place. Pretty stupid!
Links:
Things are still a little off with me. I’m no longer in a funk, I’ve returned to the gym, and my house is finally clean, but I’m still not all there. Now, it seems, I have a bit of blogger’s block. I sit down at my computer to write a post, and nothing comes to me. What I do write feels like crap. Yesterday morning, I struggled with writing my review for Locke and Key. It’s still unfinished, and I’m not quite sure how I want to write it, as the review covers three books. I think I need to outline.
So, to deal with my writing constipation, I’ve returned to my most comfortable and favorite writing medium–good ol’ pen and paper. It does seem to help, as I’m not struggling with writing right now. I guess that I’ll keep at it until I feel like my old self again.
At least, through all of this offness, I have been reading. Maybe too many books. Perhaps my divided attention is affecting my blogging focus. But, I am reading. Here’s what I’ve finished reading, am still reading, and just started reading.
• Mrs. Warren’s Profession– I finished this play by George Bernard Shaw last night, finally! I really enjoyed it, but, for some reason, was struggling with the drama format. Maybe, I’m out of practice. The themes were very interesting as the story dealt with prostitution in the Victorian era and gender inequalities. The play also featured one of my new favorite female characters–a young intellectual woman with a penchant for mathematics, working hard, and being independent. My kind of gal!
• I Want My MTV– This one is taking a while because I’m always stopping my reading to watch the videos on YouTube. It’s a lot of fun, and while the commentary on various videos, musicians, VJs, and events from the ’80s is interesting, a lot of the context of this book is old news for me. I was a huge MTV fan growing up, so this is more like a walk down memory lane. I tend to skim the chapters on the MTV corporate execs though. I’m not interested in how much coke those guys snorted.
• The Portable Dorothy Parker- This one I will be working through slowly. It is a collection of Parker’s short stories, poetry, and essays. Mainly, I read this one before bed, averaging a short story per day. I am loving her short stories! Actually, I am just loving Parker period–she just seems to be my literary soul mate. I really connect with her writing. She even provided the perfect quote for my title today, which sums up my issue with writing right now, as well as my issues with just about anything that I want to do, but can’t seem to do (I hate the gym, but I love having gone to the gym. I hate work, but I love having worked. I hate cleaning, but I love having cleaned the house. You get my drift…).
So far, I’ve read the following stories:
“The Lovely Leave”- Gah! I so related to this sad story of a woman who eagerly prepares for her husband, an officer away at war, to return home on leave. She has such high hopes for the 24 hours they get together, you just know that it won’t turn out well. Parker’s depiction of the woman’s insecurities and reactions to her husband’s life away from her are so relatable, I could easily put myself in her shoes, and I cringed often. This one really resonated with me.
Illustration by Seth
“Arrangement in Black and White”- Ugh. A very short piece following a ditzy moron of a woman at a party who is eager to meet an African American musician who is the guest of honor. She falls all over herself for being so forward-thinking by calling him “Mister” and enjoys the novelty of the moment. This story reminded me of people I knew in college- rich kids who would “slum it” in San Diego for the novelty.
Illustration by Seth
“The Sexes”- A cute, short dialogue between a young woman punishing a young man suitor for paying attention to another woman at a party. Their conversation felt so true, and I know I’ve had this conversation before. Oh ladies–why are we so neurotic at times?
• The History of English Literature by Perry Keenlyside and read by Derek Jacobi: I needed something to listen to in the car, so I went to the library and found this. It’s not too bad, kind of like having Derek Jacobi as your lecturer during a six-hour English Lit class. Snippets of literature are read, juxtaposed with the history behind it. I really liked listening to Chaucer read aloud- perhaps that’s how I’ll do The Canterbury Tales this year.
Also, today is Sunday, so tonight is television night! Why are all of my favorite shows on Sunday? I don’t know, but it’s good stuff.
• Season Finale of Downton Abbey: What’s going to happen to Bates? Will Mary and Mathew get together? Wasn’t I asking these same questions before the finale of season 1?
Yes, and I’m so glad that the same high drama is still happening. I can’t wait to tune in, and this is why.
• The Walking Dead: Finally, it seems that the living will be the bad guys on the show. Let’s face it- humans and human nature are way scarier than zombies.
I wonder when and if Shane is going to bite the bullet. As long as he’s alive, it seems that Rick won’t get his somewhat anti-heroic status that he maintains in the graphic novels. I love the actor who plays Shane, but I want to see Rick screw up more and be more tormented by his conscience. One of the major and most important themes of the story is what this apocalyptic world forces good people to do, and Rick is at the center of this theme, and I just don’t see it happening so fully with Shane being alive. It seems that the show has split the graphic novel character of Rick in half, with his good side going to TV show Rick and his tough decision-making side going to Shane. I want Rick to shoot some humans, so that he can start really dealing with morality issues. I also want the survivor crew to move on and away from the farm. There’s a lot more going on in the outside world than simply zombies…they need to start interacting with it!
So, that’s what’s going on with me right now. This is a pretty long post, and it wasn’t too hard to write on paper. I think this long-hand drafting might work out. Now, back to the Locke and Key review…
I haven’t checked in with the Sunday Salon in a while, so today is a good time to do so!
Well, as mentioned on Friday, I was in an apathetic funk all week. I didn’t do much of anything, including blogging. I did write a Happy Birthday post for Charles Dickens, as it would’ve been wrong not to as I spent so much time getting to know him in January. Which, by the way, I did complete all of my posts for Charles Dickens month and finished Bleak House in January. Win for me!
I have been reading in my funk, and am still reading Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw and I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum. I should have both books finished this week. Yesterday, I picked up volumes 2 and 3 of Locke and Key by Joe Hill at Mysterious Galaxy 
bookstore, so I’ll be reading those this week as well.
Speaking of Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, after much debate about affiliation, I have decided to hitch my wagon to Mysterious Galaxy and IndieBound books as an affiliate. For the last month or so, I have been considering what it means to be an affiliate, and would it be like selling out or going commercial if I did so? Am I plugging in like Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival? I don’t want my blog to be a crummy commercial. After being approached by Audible and I considered Amazon, I decided that I would affiliate my blog with something that can use some attention. I realized that I could use affiliation to show my love for my favorite bookstore and help support other struggling independent bookstores. So, I applied for and was accepted as an affiliate for Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore and IndieBound. Now, if, by some off-chance, a reader clicks on one of the links that is connected to MG books or IndieBound AND decides to BUY the book via the link, I will get a small commission. However, that is unlikely, although it would be very cool. But, at least I am spreading the word about independent bookstores and Mysterious Galaxy, the coolest bookstores in Southern California (there are two- one in San Diego and one in Redondo Beach).
Another blogging thing I was considering was copyright. I see all of my friends’ blogs have little copyright symbols or some sort of copyright statement at the bottom of their page. What’s the deal with this? Do I need to do this? What do I need to do to get started on this? If anyone can give me some advice on this topic, I’d appreciate it!
Meanwhile, in my outside-of-blogging life, my husband and I have a dilemma on our hands. It looks like this:
This is a young gentleman who we like to call Mr. Fluffers or Morgan Freeman (he’s so cool and calm around our own hissing cats that he seems to be ready to handle any job in a crisis, much like Freeman in his presidential roles). He’s been hanging out on our porch the last few days, and the collar that he wore on Wednesday is no longer there. So, there is no contact info. One of his eyes is sorta cataract-y, and he’s awfully thin and needy, so we decided to let him into the house last night. Our little lady cats are not too happy with this decision, but what are we to do? He might get eaten by a coyote or beaten up by one of those ginormous raccoons I see fishing in the sewers. Today, I will make some posters to post around the neighborhood and put a “found cat” listing on Craig’s List. Then, today or tomorrow, I will take him into a vet or the humane society to see if he has a microchip that we can scan. Poor Morgan Freeman. Is he somebody’s lost baby? Is he abandoned? Who are you Morgan Freeman?
Other mentionables before I sign off on Sunday–
• I am offering four giveaways this week! I am giving away Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and And Then There Were None. These are all in very good condition (Kavalier and Clay and And Then There Were None are brand new!) and are all very popular and/or acclaimed books. I will mail them out next week, to anywhere! So, sign up people! I don’t have that many followers on my site, and not many people have signed up, so you have a very good chance of winning! Just do it! Click on the links attached to each of the titles above to be directed to the announcement post and sign-up form. All I need is your name and contact info. That’s it! You don’t have to follow my blog and you don’t need to leave a comment. I’m just trying to share the love with other book lovers!
• I should be posting my reviews of The Drawing of the Three and Locke and Key, vol. 1 this week. Be on the lookout for those!
• Obviously, January is over, and I have not yet shared my challenges progress. I will do that now!
– Charles Dickens Month in January–COMPLETE, with Bleak House read and 5 Dickens- related posts written.
– End of the World Challenge: have read 2952 pages toward my goal of 3500 pages (really? only 3500 pages? that’s the end of the world? someone has to have won by now. I’ll be done with this challenge by the end of the week! oh, I just read the rules. it’s the person who reads the most pages by the end of the year that gets paid out a penny per page via giftcard, up to a limit of 3500 pages. I see…).
– The Stephen King Project: have read two books towards my goal of 12 books. This will be a piece of cake!
– The Dark Tower Challenge: have read the first two books of the series. I am actually holding myself back from reading The Wastelands right now. I want to have just finished Wizard and Glass when The Wind Through the Keyhole comes out in late April. I guess I’ll read a book per month!
– The Award-Winning Challenge: have read two books towards this challenge, and am currently working on the third.
– Back to the Classics Challenge and A Classics Challenge: have read one book towards both of these challenges, and am working on the second. I have written one post for A Classics Challenge, and will probably put my February post out later this week.
– What’s in a Name Challenge: Have read one book (Bleak House) towards the challenge. 5 more to go!
Well, I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday! If you have any advice regarding copyrighting blogs, please leave a comment! Well, of course, please leave a comment about whatever you want. Also, don’t forget to sign up for one of my giveaways! I want to give you a book!
Adventures in Borkdom 