A Book By Any Other Cover

Once I've started reading a certain copy of a book, I can't switch to a different copy in the middle of the process. It doesn't matter if the two editions share the same exact content and same exact page numbers, once I've switched, the reading experience is ruined for me. If I manage to finish the book at all (sorry, One Hundred Years of Solitude, you didn't make it through the transition!), I do so crankily, feeling out-of-sorts and cheated for having to hold some stranger of a book in my hands.

I can even feel copy mourning long after I've finished reading a book. When I thought I had lost my first copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (the copy I had read at least three times) . . .

 . . . I went out and bought a new copy, but I didn't even like to touch the thing, with its matte cover and Photoshopped Prague:

I sold it to a used book store just as soon as I got my old copy back.

And then there's Middlemarch: I was only halfway through it when I had to return my copy to the public library. I considered buying a copy of my own that I would never have to return to anyone, but I couldn't find the same Modern Library edition. I almost panicked.

It's not that I'm so very much in love with Modern Library editions. It's true that this copy had a nice hard cover, a decent dust jacket, and Biblically thin pages (which I love). But more importantly, I worried that I'd run out of steam on the fat novel once I was holding some cheap paperback in my hands (I almost lost The Brother's Karamazov that way).

The body of a book means something to the human brain, or at least it means something to my brain. If a book does not provide some sort of sensually pleasing experience (soft, floppy pages; a pleasantly inky smell; alluring cover art; etc.), I have a poorer relationship with it. No matter how intellectual of a process reading seems to be, the way a book is constructed will always color how it is read. It's kind of like poetry: no matter how good the ideas inside a poem are, it's hard to love them without a startlingly beautiful image to plug those ideas into reality.

I know that I would never have finished Middlemarch if I had switched over to the Penguin Popular Classics edition:

I'm pretty sure that its pages would have been rough and pulpy, but the cover is obviously the worst part: the Penguin copy looks old and dull and, let's admit it, drenched in the sort of thing that collects in the main characters' chamber pots. No one wants to read a book with that lurking in their subconscious.

This is why I've spent so much money on slightly nicer copies of books that I could find cheaper elsewhere, and this is why I've hesitated to buy a Kindle or a Nook or a Sony Reader: if all e-books have essentially the same feel to them, some part of me wonders whether the content will all start to feel the same, too.

This is also why I drove to the public library one town over just to check out the exact same Modern Library edition of Middlemarch. And it was totally worth it: my brain was never distracted by pulpy pages or a flimsy cover. It was just me and my idea of Middlemarch, getting down to business.

Life at KU: New & Old

I've been working at KU for two weeks now. It's constantly strange to me how much I still remember about my old surroundings, even though it's been four years since I was a student here. But I've spent so much time here that life at KU is still second-nature to me.

But there are plenty of differences, too. Here's what I've noticed over the last few weeks:

Old:Walking everywhere.
New: I still walk all over campus and downtown Lawrence, but I don't blend in anymore. I'm obviously different from the students swarming the sidewalks. My clothes are more professional, my "luggage" is different (now I have a red leather purse instead of a tattered khaki messenger bag), and my face is obviously that of a twenty-something. I'm not going to get mistaken for a freshman anytime soon!

Old: Camping out on campus.
New: I still spend my free lunch hours on campus. Fortunately, my memory for KU's public spaces (lunch tables, study areas, etc.) has proven surprisingly strong. I still know where I can go for a quiet hour on my own. But I'm no longer squatting in hallways to study or nap or scarf down a To Go lunch from the dining hall. Now, I'm eating home-made veggie sandwiches and writing during my lunch hours.

Old: Those damn hills!
New: They're still everywhere, but now my old lady hip hurts when I trudge up them.  :(

Old: KU email and Blackboard.
New: I'm still checking the same sites, but now I'm using Outlook to check my email and using the faculty section of Blackboard. I'm also trying to figure out Microsoft Access to manage my databases, considering Google Wave to collaborate with my boss, and learning how to update the department's website with Adobe software. I'm way, way more tech savvy than I used to be!

Old: Feeling baffled by the University's vast, complex, and highly specialized bureaucracy.
New: The bureaucracy's the same, but now I'm supposed to understand it all! In the past, I showed up at my advisor's office and asked for help when I was lost. Now, I'm expected to help lost graduate students figure out how to navigate the University. Ack!

Old: Constant school-related anxiety.
New: I'm pretty nervous about learning how to do my job well, but I'm not worried about classes or finals or studying any more. That is one major perk of being a staff member instead of a student: no finals week ever, ever again!

"Gaity, or Truth in Sheep's Clothing"

I got home from a reading a few hours ago. There were five readers: three fiction writers, one non-fiction writer, and one poet turned non-fiction-ist. The reading was fine--it was a little long, a little dry, and in a restaurant filled with smoke from an over-heated pizza oven--and only one writer really stuck out to me. She was one of the non-fiction writers, and she was writing about growing up as an evangelical Christian in a public high school.

In most ways, her writing was no different from her peers': her language flowed smoothly, her scenes were rife with clear imagery and distinct characters, and her prose felt polished and lively. But she differed from everyone else because she made the audience laugh, and not in a cruel way. Even though she was writing about the misadventures of an overeager young girl fumbling her way toward an identity outside of her religion, she was tender about her past self and her former friends. She acknowledged that her audience might not identify with her upbringing or her past beliefs, but she never sacrificed her past self cruelly, selling herself out for cheap satire. Her essay worked because she was unashamed of her past and because she treated her past self gently, with great kindness and great levity.

Her writing made me think of Dostoevsky, a little bit, and of Michel de Montaigne and Jane Austen in that she was capable of telling her story with both levity and compassion, something which is exceedingly rare. The other readers read very nicely crafted pieces, but they took themselves awful seriously. There was a lot of imagery and profound symbolism in their pieces, but not a lot of joy.

I've been thinking about the importance of gentle humor because of E.B. White's excellent One Man's Meat. Early in the book, White describes "a certain writer, appalled by the cruel events of the world" who has "pledged himself never to write anything that wasn't constructive and significant and liberty-loving."

"I have an idea that this, in its own way, is bad news. [. . .] Even in evil times, a writer should cultivate only what naturally absorbs his fancy, whether it be freedom or chinch bugs, and should write in the way that comes easy. [. . .] In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone. A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom--he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold. His gravest concern is lest gaiety, or truth in sheep's clothing, somewhere gain a foothold, lest joy in some unguarded moment be unconfined. I honestly don't believe that a humorist should take the veil today; he should wear his bells night and day, and squeeze the uttermost jape, even though he may feel that he should be writing a strong letter to the Herald Times."

 After a long stint in graduate school, where satire and self-deprecation often took the place of true gaiety and good-humoredness, I'm a little more appreciative of writers who, like E. B. White and tonight's reader, can combine humor and kindness to get to the heart of whatever they're after.

Sunday Randos: A List!

1. I've finished my first week at the new job! Each day, my thoughts swung from "I can totally do this! Yay me!" to "Oh, God, I'm lost and confused and destined to be a failure at life. I'm going back to the cafe!" So far, it seems like the biggest part of my job is learning the ropes. I'm going to have to learn how to navigate KU's staggeringly complicated bureaucracy, learn all the quirky little software programs I'm working with, and learn the myriad tasks and procedures associated with running an academic department at KU. It's intimidating, but I know that (I hope that?) I'll eventually figure everything out!
2. I finally finished Middlemarch. The end was a little disappointing--the happy ending felt out of sync with Eliot's world--but I'm glad I stuck with it. The plot really picked up around page 500 so that the last 300 pages went quickly. For all the time Eliot spent on small-town dynamics and politics, the novel was ultimately about marriage and the way people perceive themselves and people's expectations about their lives. It wasn't the best novel I've ever read, but it was definitely thought-provoking, and I think it will stay with me a long time. Here's Virginia Woolf's brilliant quote from the back cover of my edition: George Eliot "was one of the first English novelists to discover that men and women think as well as feel, and the discovery was of great artistic moment. Briefly, it meant that the novel ceased to be solely a love story, an autobiography, or a story of adventure. It became, as it had already become with the Russians, of much wider scope."
3. I haven't done a thing about the fact that I'm moving to an apartment in Lawrence in a couple of weeks. I should start packing, but it doesn't seem real yet! I walk past my apartment building every day on my walk to work, and I gaze at it longingly. I can't wait to move in and decorate it and start living my life there. But it won't seem real until I'm holding the keys and my cat's litter box is moved in!
4. Speaking of kitties, I've been cat-sitting this weekend. The parents are in Virginia for my cousin's graduation, so I'm feeding the cats, picking up the newspapers, and taking out the garbage. It's strange to be in Olathe, but it's made for some good shopping. I love New York & Co. way more than I should!
5. I've been writing over my lunch hour at work. I like it a lot: it's nice to be creative for a half hour every day, especially in the midst of all my phone calling and spreadsheet wrangling. But it's also making me want to buy a netbook, so I could type on a tiny little laptop instead of scribbling in a notebook!
6. One of my inspirations these days in One Man's Meat, a memoir-y essay collection by E.B. White. Each brief chapter covers a month in his life and contains a handful of tiny essays about anything and everything, from chickens that lay too many eggs to the approach of World War II. There's a sense of happiness and relaxation to White's writing that's very appealing. The book is not entirely memoir, and it's nothing like the research-based nonfiction so common today. It's full of good-natured, free-form ramblings in the style of Michel de Montaigne. Reading White's book feels like chatting with an old friend who is candid and funny and smart and true, and it's a wonderful thing to read at lunch before I start my own writing: it makes me feel as if writing naturally is the best and easiest path to writing well.

 E. B. White with his evil and affectionate dachshund Fred.

Morning Walks & Mary Oliver

If you're in Kansas right now, you know what sort of day today is: it feels more like early March than mid-May. It's all bluster and chill and gray, spitting rain. I could have picked better weather for my first day of work, but this bleariness had to do! (My first day went swimmingly, by the way!)

But despite how damn cold my arms were as I walked to work this morning, I was gloriously happy to be outside walking in Lawrence. I love this town with its old, bright houses, its soft grasses crowding up between brick-paved sidewalks, its many trees thick and green and writhing in the wind.

I've missed walking, too. I've always been a bit of a peripatetic, maybe not in the philosophical sense but in the sense that I love walking and thinking and, when I can convince someone to come with me, walking while I talk. It made me brilliantly happy this morning to hoof my way up "Mount" Oread. I saw pale lilacs and wet stones and robins dark-feathered with rain. Walking makes me mindful of the world, and I miss that when I spend too much time in a car.

This morning got me thinking about Mary Oliver, who I got to see read last week on KU's campus. I've always liked her poetry (especially American Primitive, which is one of my favorite books), but the clarity and peacefulness and passion of her poems is even more apparent when she's reading them aloud. Her poems feel like blessings, somehow, in the same way that What Whitman's "Song of Myself" and Marilyn Robinson's Gilead do: they're not religious works, per se, but they are works of careful attention and love and praise.

I've posted Oliver's "Peonies" below. It's one of her most famous poems, and it's one that she almost always performs at readings. It's a beautiful poem, full of death as well as life, as so many of her poems are. And I absolutely love that, in the midst of all her rich, sensuous specificity, she's ballsy enough to ask "Do you love this world? / Do you cherish your humble and silky life? / Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?" She's not afraid to ask the big questions or to say just what she means, and that's what makes her so damn good.

---------------

Peonies

By Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises, 
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace, 
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them, 

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls, 
craving the sweet sap, 
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind, 
as in a dance to the great wedding, 

the flowers bend their bright bodies, 
and tip their fragrance to the air, 
and rise, 
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness 
gladly and lightly, 
and there it is again --- 
beauty the brave, the exemplary, 

blazing open. 
Do you love this world? 
Do you cherish your humble and silky life? 
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? 

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, 
and softly, 
and exclaiming of their dearness, 
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, 

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, 
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

Christopher Pike & The Last Vampire

Have I mentioned that I'm still neck-deep in George Eliot's Middlemarch and only getting deeper? I like the novel a lot, but Eliot's world of small-town politics and foiled idealism isn't always a pleasant one. So I've been reading a few crappy novels on the side to keep my brain fresh and happy.

 You stay classy, The Last Vampire.

One of my side reads has been Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire. I've talked about Christopher Pike on this blog before as one of my favorite trashy reads, but I decided to reread The Last Vampire precisely because I don't remember it being trashy (except for its fantastic neon-toned, mid-1990s cover!).

Sure, Pike's favorite subjects are vampires and murder and time travel, but I remembered his writing as being creative, surprising, and relentlessly dark. Between the ages of ten and sixteen, I read almost all of his forty-plus novels. But he wasn't my favorite author because he wrote about common horror themes (plenty of writers do that); he was my favorite author because he wrote about these themes with the kind of daring imagination, ruthlessness, and existential angst that I couldn't find anywhere else in the Young Adult section.

Turns out, I still agree with my thirteen-year-old self: The Last Vampire is still a compelling read. Stylistically, it's a strange little book. Pike writes in the voice of Sita, a 5,000-year-old vampire with an insatiable lust for life (and blood--har har!). Her voice in the novel is consistent, unerring, and a little unnerving; its not often that such a violent protagonist is allowed to tell her own tale. The novel also moves extremely quickly: there isn't a spare detail anywhere, and the book reads more like a short story than a full-blown novel.

Yet, in a very small amount of space (less than 200 pages) Pike tells Sita's contemporary story (blackmail, abduction, dynamite, yada yada yada) alongside a vampire creation story. According to Pike's version of vampirism, vampires were created by demonic possession in India 5,000 years ago. They were largely wiped out, however, by the first vampire, who decided to kill them all after he lost a flute-playing competition with Krishna. Yes, that Krishna.

Frieze of Krishna playing his flute.

The Hindu deity is arguably the most important character in this book. Sita spends the novel fighting for her life, but she's also trying to come to terms with her past, her relationship with God, and Krishna's ancient blessing.

Anyway, while the form of the Pike's novels is pretty conventional, his imagination is exceptional. Pike is no Stephanie Meyer, and he doesn't have a damn thing in common with R.L. Stine or J.K. Rowling. He's a different kind of Young Adult novelist: his novels follow groups of dying teenagers in hospice beds and serial killers who converse with giant cockroaches in desert caves. They're more blood-soaked than sugar-coated, and he doesn't shy away from confronting his teenage readers with mortality and insanity and loneliness. And I think that, more than anything else, it's his dark vision of life that makes his novels unique and worth reading.

If you're interested in learning more about Pike, check out Emily Hainsworth's great post on his best novels. I completely agree with her selections, and I love her picture, which I've reposted below: it looks just like my bookshelf circa 1997!

Emily Hainsworth's fantastic Christopher Pike collection.