I'm going to rapid-fire this one, the Heat and the Celtics are playing...
Still looking for a reason to vote? Well, how about drug of choice? Kesey had his LSD, Faulkner his whiskey, Balzac drank too much coffee, and I'd bet francs to farthings that Miss Jane Austen was a fan of laudanum....
Under the Influence - Drugs Used During Composition
Speaking of which... Austen continues her domination as she goes up against Willa Cather in round three, while Nathaniel Hawthorne takes on Charlotte Bronte in the undercard. I want to title this quartet as something like, "What is a woman's role in society?" but that sounds kinda lame and meaningless to me, because any novel that has women and society in it could conceivably fall into that category. But this bracket is filled by marked women, whether by sin (Hester Prynne), age and class (Elinor Dashwood), or family (Jane Eyre). *
We've got some exciting results to report as we move on into the Sweet Sixteen! A couple of upsets: James Joyce is the first 1 seed to fall to #8 Art Spiegelman 7-3. (Y'know, I can't recall anyone actually proclaiming that they enjoy reading Joyce...) Spiegelman will advance to meet another Cinderella, #12 Neil Gaiman, who upset #4 Lewis Carroll 7-3. Good news: The graphic novel is now an acceptable literary form as of right... now.
The other match-up in that region will be #2 Virginia Woolf versus #3 Charles Dickens. Both of these authors won their second round matches quite handily, and the winner will probably be favored to get all the way to the Final Four.
Finally, the second region has become over-run by the Russians. To my surprise, #1 Leo Tolstoy defeated #9 Harper Lee 7-4, and will advance to meet #4 Gustave Flaubert in the next round, who defeated #5 Thomas Mann 5-3. Below them, #7 Vladimir Nabokov ended #15 Flannery O'Connor's run 6-3, and will have an excellent and intriguing match next round against #3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who beat #6 Jorge Luis Borges by a convincing 7-2.
Keep voting!
* I'm hoping that this statement will motivate Robyn to correct me. She says that Jane Eyre is marked more by obscurity and will, or maybe poverty and will. She also says that, "But she is still marked differently than the Dashwood sisters in the way that Charlotte Bronte is different from Jane Austen. In the end, Jane Eyre is able to get angry and get a job, which may be why Jane Eyre as so popular amongst 19th-century working class women. Though that can play into the Twilight trope of having the little, plain, virtuous women taming the tall, brooding Byronic type. And then, of course, there is the whole race/colonial issues of having the Creole wife locked in the attic. Everyone should read Jane Eyre."
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
LMM: Famous First Lines
They may say that you can't judge a book by its cover - which is totally BS, as everybody who has ever worked in the publishing industry knows that that's really the only way people do judge books - but what about judging a book by its first line? As we move on in to the Sweet Sixteen of our Literary March Madness - which, if I'm lucky, will be finished by May - here's a sampling of some of our competitors best opening lines to help you in your voting wisdom and judgment:
"Call me Ishmael." - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." George Orwell, 1984
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Can't have a famous and successful novel without that first line! More available for your perusing here. What other ones am I leaving out?
"Call me Ishmael." - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." George Orwell, 1984
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Can't have a famous and successful novel without that first line! More available for your perusing here. What other ones am I leaving out?
LMM: Round 2, Part 4: Melville! Kafka! Orwell! Faulkner!
This is the last part of Round 2 before we move on to the Sweet Sixteen. We have two matches featuring All-American competitors: Herma Melville coming in from Nantucket, MA, Zora Neale Hurston representing Jacksonville, FL, Sherman Alexie of Spokane, WA, and William Faulkner "from" Yoknapatawpha County, MS. Perhaps more apt than describing America as a melting pot would be a mosaic - which part of the puzzle is your favorite? (As a sidenote, I think it could be an awesome syllabus for some kind of Lit Class to have, say, Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury, Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and to call the class, like, "Conflicting Images of America," or something.)
Across the pond, we have Stendahl (The Charterhouse of Parma) versus George Orwell (Animal Farm) and the Faustian Goethe versus the, um, Kafkaesque Kafka. (Which is a paper I wrote for German Lit once.)
Finally, the first results from Round 2 are in, with Jane Austen walloping Emily Bronte 8-2, Willa Cather defeating Mikhail Bulgakov 6-3, Nathaniel Hawthorne beating Katherine Mansfield 7-2, and Charlotte Bronte outlasting Terry Pratchett 5-3. This means that our Round 3 matches will be #1 Austen vs. #5 Cather and #2 Hawthorne vs. #3 Bronte. Now's your chance to read up!
Keep voting!
Across the pond, we have Stendahl (The Charterhouse of Parma) versus George Orwell (Animal Farm) and the Faustian Goethe versus the, um, Kafkaesque Kafka. (Which is a paper I wrote for German Lit once.)
Finally, the first results from Round 2 are in, with Jane Austen walloping Emily Bronte 8-2, Willa Cather defeating Mikhail Bulgakov 6-3, Nathaniel Hawthorne beating Katherine Mansfield 7-2, and Charlotte Bronte outlasting Terry Pratchett 5-3. This means that our Round 3 matches will be #1 Austen vs. #5 Cather and #2 Hawthorne vs. #3 Bronte. Now's your chance to read up!
Keep voting!
Melville v. Hurston
Goethe v. Kafka
Alexie v. Faulkner
Stendahl v. Orwell
Thursday, April 15, 2010
5 Thoughts on a Thursday Returns!
1) You know what's crazy? 47 percent of American households paid no federal income taxes in 2010 AND 47 people were arrested in Arizona in a massive raid against human smugglers near the Mexican border. Coincidence? I think not. More on this as it develops.
2) I had a friend in college who once told me that he believed that you couldn't be both a Leonard Cohen AND a Bob Dylan fan, and that he kind of resented everyone who liked Dylan's music because he was a hard-core Leonard Cohen fan. Later, he said, he realized the absurdity of this position and started buying Bob Dylan albums like a sane person. I just thought of that because I'm listening to Fresh Air right now and kinda wishing that Terri Gross were interviewing Bob Dylan...
3) While on the backporch enjoying the dying sunlight of a warm April afternoon, sipping beers from the excellent Two Brothers Brewery, watching the flowers bloom and the cats chase imaginary objects:
Me: You know that saying, "April showers bring May flowers?"
Robyn: Yeah.
Me: I always liked that saying - for the moral message, that you have to endure bad things in life in order to reap the benefits and all - but I never thought that it made sense, weather wise.
Robyn: It makes sense in New England. New England has very cold and rainy Aprils, and then some time in May, maybe the last week of May, it gets nice and Springlike. Then it goes straight into a hot and sweltering Summer.
Me: But not in the West. Not in Portland or Eugene. There it'd be more like, "April showers bring May showers."
Robyn: No, I guess not. Or it would be just "Rain begets rain." Or, in Bend, it would be like, "Sunny and mild weather brings sunny and slightly warmer weather."
Me: Or "Hot and dry July brings crazy thunderstorms and disastrous forest fires in August."
Robyn: I guess you can't take moral extracts from Western weather.
Me: No, I guess not.
SCENE.
4) Man, the Twins are sure looking good right now.
5) I think I had a seminal moment at my work this week: I had a student write, "Fuck Mr. Wright" on a page of notes. There was a problem, though, because he had to turn these notes in to me. And I think he realized this, and so he had erased his offence, but not nearly well enough to actually hide what he had written. (An interesting case of defacement, I think - especially in regards to a student owing something to a teacher qua authority figure...) The funny thing is that I didn't read what he had written until the end of the day, and I had been wondering why he suddenly became so helpful and polite for the last two periods of the day. So if he erased it out of fear of being caught or out guilt for having done something vulgar and wrong, either way, I'm glad that he did it.
5^) Our biology PhD room-mate has been studying like crazy for his qualifying exams, and has been leaving notes on stem cells and toxicology all over the house. Right now I'm looking at his white board, where he has written, "No Transcription. REPRESSIBLE." and I'm kind of wishing that he were a critical theory or lit major, instead.
2) I had a friend in college who once told me that he believed that you couldn't be both a Leonard Cohen AND a Bob Dylan fan, and that he kind of resented everyone who liked Dylan's music because he was a hard-core Leonard Cohen fan. Later, he said, he realized the absurdity of this position and started buying Bob Dylan albums like a sane person. I just thought of that because I'm listening to Fresh Air right now and kinda wishing that Terri Gross were interviewing Bob Dylan...
3) While on the backporch enjoying the dying sunlight of a warm April afternoon, sipping beers from the excellent Two Brothers Brewery, watching the flowers bloom and the cats chase imaginary objects:
Me: You know that saying, "April showers bring May flowers?"
Robyn: Yeah.
Me: I always liked that saying - for the moral message, that you have to endure bad things in life in order to reap the benefits and all - but I never thought that it made sense, weather wise.
Robyn: It makes sense in New England. New England has very cold and rainy Aprils, and then some time in May, maybe the last week of May, it gets nice and Springlike. Then it goes straight into a hot and sweltering Summer.
Me: But not in the West. Not in Portland or Eugene. There it'd be more like, "April showers bring May showers."
Robyn: No, I guess not. Or it would be just "Rain begets rain." Or, in Bend, it would be like, "Sunny and mild weather brings sunny and slightly warmer weather."
Me: Or "Hot and dry July brings crazy thunderstorms and disastrous forest fires in August."
Robyn: I guess you can't take moral extracts from Western weather.
Me: No, I guess not.
SCENE.
4) Man, the Twins are sure looking good right now.
5) I think I had a seminal moment at my work this week: I had a student write, "Fuck Mr. Wright" on a page of notes. There was a problem, though, because he had to turn these notes in to me. And I think he realized this, and so he had erased his offence, but not nearly well enough to actually hide what he had written. (An interesting case of defacement, I think - especially in regards to a student owing something to a teacher qua authority figure...) The funny thing is that I didn't read what he had written until the end of the day, and I had been wondering why he suddenly became so helpful and polite for the last two periods of the day. So if he erased it out of fear of being caught or out guilt for having done something vulgar and wrong, either way, I'm glad that he did it.
5^) Our biology PhD room-mate has been studying like crazy for his qualifying exams, and has been leaving notes on stem cells and toxicology all over the house. Right now I'm looking at his white board, where he has written, "No Transcription. REPRESSIBLE." and I'm kind of wishing that he were a critical theory or lit major, instead.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
LMM: Round 2, Part 3! Joyce! Gaiman! Woolf! Dickens!
OK - So I've made some important decisions. The three final first round ties are gonna be broke thusly: Waugh beats Baum because I really want to see how a second round match between him and Virginia Woolf will shake out. Rowling beats Pullman because, as much as I loved His Dark Materials, I just don't think you can ignore the massive cultural and literary influence that Harry Potter has had on this generation of readers and writers. And, finally, I'm giving Sherman Alexie the upset win over Henry James. Even though, in my heart of hearts, I believe that James is the superior novelist, Alexie is beloved. More people ought to read him, and if I can do my own, small part to make that happen, well, than that will be a good thing.
Upwards and onwards! Today we have James Joyce and Art Spiegelman engaged in a match that's not quite as apples and oranges as it first appears. I think that Spiegelman and Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are both concerned with how a man becomes bitter and angry with the world, and under what circumstances that might be an acceptable response. After that we have Tim Burton's favorite match in Lewis Carroll versus Neil Gaiman. Acid trips in the English countryside for all! Then Evelyn Waugh takes on Virginia Woolf, and I realize: I think that Emma Thompson wins for most appearances in film adaptations of novelists in our tournament (Sense and Sensibility, Brideshead Revisited, Harry Potter, Angels in America, Howard's End... anything else?). And the night-cap: Dickens versus Rowling in a battle of cute little orphans Oliver Twist and Harry Potter. Why is Roald Dahl, the master of placing adorable English children in horrific situations not in this tournament? Because I suck.
Upwards and onwards! Today we have James Joyce and Art Spiegelman engaged in a match that's not quite as apples and oranges as it first appears. I think that Spiegelman and Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are both concerned with how a man becomes bitter and angry with the world, and under what circumstances that might be an acceptable response. After that we have Tim Burton's favorite match in Lewis Carroll versus Neil Gaiman. Acid trips in the English countryside for all! Then Evelyn Waugh takes on Virginia Woolf, and I realize: I think that Emma Thompson wins for most appearances in film adaptations of novelists in our tournament (Sense and Sensibility, Brideshead Revisited, Harry Potter, Angels in America, Howard's End... anything else?). And the night-cap: Dickens versus Rowling in a battle of cute little orphans Oliver Twist and Harry Potter. Why is Roald Dahl, the master of placing adorable English children in horrific situations not in this tournament? Because I suck.
Joyce v. Spiegelman
Carroll v. Gaiman
Woolf v. Waugh
Dickens v. Rowling
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Literary March Madness - Round 2, Part 2
Sorry about the delay between posts - my evenings have been occupied lately by watching the White Sox continue to lose game after game. So on to a more happy sport! The next set of matches contains a couple of fierce underdogs: #9 Harper Lee and #15 Flannery O'Connor (A Good Man Is Hard To Find). Southern authors have been doing very well so far in this tournament. O'Connor, in my opinion, scored a huge upset against Balzac in the first round. But maybe I should stop being surprised. On the other side of the bracket, fellow Southerner William Faulkner seems to be coasting to a win over Hermann Hesse. O'Connor once said that "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." Maybe my northern sensibilities just aren't tuned in to the proper Southern palate - but who knows, the Kentucky Derby is coming up.
A slew of new Round One winners to announce: Virginia Woolf barely squeaks by #15 E.M. Forster 4-3, while Charles Dickens more easily handled Stella Gibbons. And please stop letting matches end in ties! Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) tied L. Frank Baum, and J.K. Rowling tied Philip Pullman. D'oh! I'll be making an executive decision later today (call it a "Biden") - but if you feel strongly one way or another, now is your chance to let me know! Also, #15 Sherman Alexie is on the verge of upsetting #2 Henry James with one more day left of voting. As Jesse pointed out, this may be because Alexie was and always has been a loyal Seattle SuperSonics fan. Who did James root for? The Boston Americans?
Update: I have been in heaven this afternoon. After a trip downtown for breakfast and returning library books, I have been able to watch both the White Sox (finally! a win!) and the Trail Blazers (down 69-71) at the same time! In other news, four more polls have closed, with all four matches being won by the higher seeded writer. #1 Melville defeated Raymond Carver, #8 Zora Neale Hurston edged #9 Kurt Vonnegut 3-2, Goethe defeated Lampedusa 3-1, and will advance to face Kafka in the next round, who beat Tony Kushner 4-2.
Keep voting!
A slew of new Round One winners to announce: Virginia Woolf barely squeaks by #15 E.M. Forster 4-3, while Charles Dickens more easily handled Stella Gibbons. And please stop letting matches end in ties! Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) tied L. Frank Baum, and J.K. Rowling tied Philip Pullman. D'oh! I'll be making an executive decision later today (call it a "Biden") - but if you feel strongly one way or another, now is your chance to let me know! Also, #15 Sherman Alexie is on the verge of upsetting #2 Henry James with one more day left of voting. As Jesse pointed out, this may be because Alexie was and always has been a loyal Seattle SuperSonics fan. Who did James root for? The Boston Americans?
Update: I have been in heaven this afternoon. After a trip downtown for breakfast and returning library books, I have been able to watch both the White Sox (finally! a win!) and the Trail Blazers (down 69-71) at the same time! In other news, four more polls have closed, with all four matches being won by the higher seeded writer. #1 Melville defeated Raymond Carver, #8 Zora Neale Hurston edged #9 Kurt Vonnegut 3-2, Goethe defeated Lampedusa 3-1, and will advance to face Kafka in the next round, who beat Tony Kushner 4-2.
Keep voting!
Tolstoy v. Lee
Flaubert v. Mann
O'Connor v. Nabokov
Dostoyevsky v. Borges
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