forty-two: march 2005

3.31.2005 thursday
 The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis In all my searching for twentieth-century perspectives on death, from Heidegger to Derrida, I somehow forgot about this, the most intense vision of death I know. Whatever you make of Lewis's views on race/gender/religion, this remains as joyous and overpowering as ever.
-Tim
 3.30.2005 wednesday
 Johnny Too Bad by John Dufresne Maybe darker than his previous writings, maybe closer to the bone. Meta without trying, natural as a hurricane, urgent as a dog in a thunderstorm. I have always imagined a deep southern accent on Dufresne, but he is from Massachusetts. Go figure.
-Jen
 3.29.2005 tuesday
 Sorry I Worried You by Gary Fincke I never fully placed the particular syntax of these stories—informal dialect tries to make room for a “poetic logic” that seems jarring – but by story two I trusted it. Stories about men who live alone, learning to recognize their own temptations.
-Jen
 3.28.2005 monday
 Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx These stories not only straddle but reconvene the same lines as their characters: standing on ground whose past is both romantic and infamous, how do we and our contemporary concerns center ourselves? Part fable part shaggy cowboy story. The punchlines usually burn.
-Jen
 3.24.2005 thursday
 Giscome Road by C.S. Giscombe Eponymity means not only cartography, but the talk of river or road in that it symbolizes bloodline. Giscombe investigates and beautifully limns an area of British Columbia that bears his name, rhythmically powered by recurring images of (social, geographical) center and edge.
-Erika
 3.23.2005 wednesday
 The Coming Community by Georgio Agamben, Trans. by Michael Hardt A small, dense, deliriously trippy response to Wittgenstein and Heidegger, printed on high-quality paper with four-inch margins. Agamben focuses on interpretations of 'whatever' (quodlibet) and what it is for something to be 'thus.' An unusual devotion to Duns Scotus makes it sing.
-Timothy
 3.21.2005 monday
 Samuel Johnson Is Indignant by Lydia Davis ...he has never liked to talk on the phone, he has always liked to write letters. He usually prefers to write a letter that includes some kind of instruction, or at least a transmission of what he thinks will be new information.
-Jen
 3.20.2005 sunday
 The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties by J. Hoberman Retraces mom and pop’s glory days, as seen on the screen. From Bonnie and Clyde to Woodward and Bernstein, history unfolds as a Twilight Western. Youth revolt rises, falls and re-appears at the video store. Hoberman rummages; finds strange and interesting relics.
-Dan
 3.17.2005 thursday
 The Next American Essay, ed. John D'Agata An essay is a fable. An essay is a voice. An essay is a sonnet. An essay is a memory. An essay is a history (of Monopoly). An essay is a recipe. An essay is a collage. An essay is a book.
-Erika
 3.16.2005 wednesday
 These Demented Lands by Alan Warner Realist fiction written as if it were sci-fi; everything is estranged, variously named, non-linear. Mystifying, self-indulgent, and occasionally quite beautiful, a sort of hetero/Scottish version of William Burroughs. Contains a drag rave with nothing but Dylan and chili, if that appeals.
-Timothy
 3.14.2005 monday
 Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo by Carole Maso Inspired by the notebooks of Frida Kahlo and an exchange. The repetitions gain grace or heartbreak. Say it until it ascends, or else falls over you like a cloud of gold dust. A sensitive and sensual understanding of a woman’s own understanding.
-Jen
 3.13.2005 sunday
 Invisible Bride by Tony Tost Prose poems in a voice that starts with projection and ends inside. Begins with a premise, like a bride, that is both knowable and difficult to visualize. This book gently and humanely tries to pin down. And, or –get closer to it.
-Jen
 3.9.2005 wednesday
 Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature by John Elder Highly problematic. Elder is quite fond of Gary Snyder and similar ecopoets, but remarkably unconcerned with style and quality of writing. The book is most interesting when it becomes explicitly autobiographical - you can taste its yearning to be a memoir.
-Timothy
 3.8.2005 tuesday
 My Life by Lyn Hejinian Everyone's life, in that it encourages inhabitation (not only imagining) of its network of memories. Everyone's, too, in its foundational influence: Hejinian demonstrated (1987) how a fragment may function differently in each iteration--something we are all now free to merely imply.
-Erika
 3.7.2005 monday
 Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons A smiley face floating in a river of blood. Gods sport with the world while men struggle to understand. The smartest thing ever done with superheroes (killing them). A cathedral of meaning elaborated out of ink blots: The only modernist comic book.
-Brian
 3.5.2005 saturday
 Imago by Octavia Butler Butler concludes her Xenogenesis Trilogy through the eyes of a sexless, shape-shifting creature called Jodahs. But Butler is no mere nerd. The physical gap between alien and human lets loose a complex investigation of otherness, assimilation and strange beauty. Eerie and relevant.
-Dan
 3.4.2005 friday
 The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram A cool drink of water, not only intellectually (aha! a phenomenology of reading!) but spiritually, guiding the reader to a welcome awareness of wind and light and that self-same reader's important, always-present body. Synthesizes comparative religion, ecology, deep cultural dissection.
-Erika
 3.2.2005 wednesday
 Trumpet by Jackie Kay Loosely based on Billy Tipton, Kay tells the story, easily sensationalized, of a black female Scottish trumpeter who lived as a man. Less politically overstuffed than you'd imagine, the novel works through multiple perspectives, allowing it to remain always human, always gripping.
-Timothy




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