Category Archives: literary musings

On bookstores

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I’m always up for going into the next bookstore. I’ve been addicted to books my whole life, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I don’t necessarily need to be looking for any particular book. I am always content with just browsing through the novels, perusing the non-fiction, rejecting any and all self-help books (none of them work anyway). Hard cover, soft cover, trade paperbacks, I don’t particularly care as long as the whole book is there. Old, new, books are always a new adventure, even when they are old. I can read titles, leaf through random volumes, dawdle over a well-written preface, linger over an undiscovered novel that I had no idea existed at all. I am capricious, following no line of logic or organized pattern of searching. Real discovery occurs when you break-out of pre-established lines of thought or prejudice, adopting a chaotic, non-linear anti-process for discovering new titles. Bookstores, especially independent bookstores, or even better, used bookstores, are a savage jungle of titles, authors, and narratives, meta and other. Upon entering a bookstore I don’t always have an objective in mind, and I have no problem with walking out empty-handed. At this point in my life, I have enough books to serve me for a good long time, and some books need to be left behind for future reading endeavors. Yet, you never know when you might come across something new (or old) that really speaks to you. You have to be open to everything when you walk into a bookstore.

On bookstores

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I’m always up for going into the next bookstore. I’ve been addicted to books my whole life, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I don’t necessarily need to be looking for any particular book. I am always content with just browsing through the novels, perusing the non-fiction, rejecting any and all self-help books (none of them work anyway). Hard cover, soft cover, trade paperbacks, I don’t particularly care as long as the whole book is there. Old, new, books are always a new adventure, even when they are old. I can read titles, leaf through random volumes, dawdle over a well-written preface, linger over an undiscovered novel that I had no idea existed at all. I am capricious, following no line of logic or organized pattern of searching. Real discovery occurs when you break-out of pre-established lines of thought or prejudice, adopting a chaotic, non-linear anti-process for discovering new titles. Bookstores, especially independent bookstores, or even better, used bookstores, are a savage jungle of titles, authors, and narratives, meta and other. Upon entering a bookstore I don’t always have an objective in mind, and I have no problem with walking out empty-handed. At this point in my life, I have enough books to serve me for a good long time, and some books need to be left behind for future reading endeavors. Yet, you never know when you might come across something new (or old) that really speaks to you. You have to be open to everything when you walk into a bookstore.

On false starts

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Ever start a project only to find out you were doing everything wrong and you need to start over from scratch. Some times writing projects are like that–you write a page before you realize that you were on the wrong track, that you were in left-field, that you were lost. There are nights when no matter what you write, you aren’t going to like it, and it turns into a false start that you mercifully throw away the next day. False starts are strange mirages that seem real enough, but then they quickly turn to sand and flow away through your fingers. I can’t even count the times I’ve written four or five sentences, realized it wasn’t working, and thrown it away. The development of a real idea, something concrete that catches the imagination, is often a very fleeting moment, a bit of creative lightening that never strikes twice in the same spot. That lucid moment when you decide to write about love or death, war or peace, is not always or ever obvious. Often, the creative juices flow, but slowly, sometimes painfully, in the middle of the chaos of a regular day, hidden within the mundane noise of everyday routine. That one great idea–a mere fragment of an idea that pops up in a lecture, a reading, a song, a newspaper headline–does not announce itself as a great idea. I use my false starts to weed out the vegetable patch and find that one clear idea that is yearning to be developed into something elegant, more elaborate, more complex. But the false starts fall into the gutter like autumn leaves, brown and gray, having served a purpose, now discarded, turning slowly to dust.

On a postmodern Sherlock

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What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On a postmodern Sherlock

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What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On the bildungsroman

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A German term for the “coming of age” novel, the bildungsroman as a genre is as old as time, as timeless as humanity itself. Customs, traditions, a rite of passage, almost all cultures celebrate the liminal state of the “tweener” in their journey to adulthood. Novelists have pursued the topic of with a certain energy, if not enthusiasm. I would venture to say that most novelists are trying to understand their own coming of age by writing that experience into a work of art that may or may not mirror their own. Perhaps they a looking for redemption, perhaps they are looking for sacrifice, but regardless of their intent, they have left a broad trail of broken dreams, failed intentions, and busted lives. Coming of age is that moment experience supplants innocence, and the grown child looks out at the world with new eyes. The transition may be rocky, painful, full of disillusion, regret, a place where dreams go to die. We find out that we are mortal, imperfect, and finite, but what is worse, we find out who we really might be. The problem is that all young children will eventually turn into adults whether they want to or not. During that transition, youngsters are asked to make a series of decisions about their future, for good or bad. In theory, the bildungsroman is about those experiences and those changes that shape a young person, resulting in a new being. Do you have a favorite “coming-of-age” novel? I’d like to hear about it.

On the bildungsroman

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A German term for the “coming of age” novel, the bildungsroman as a genre is as old as time, as timeless as humanity itself. Customs, traditions, a rite of passage, almost all cultures celebrate the liminal state of the “tweener” in their journey to adulthood. Novelists have pursued the topic of with a certain energy, if not enthusiasm. I would venture to say that most novelists are trying to understand their own coming of age by writing that experience into a work of art that may or may not mirror their own. Perhaps they a looking for redemption, perhaps they are looking for sacrifice, but regardless of their intent, they have left a broad trail of broken dreams, failed intentions, and busted lives. Coming of age is that moment experience supplants innocence, and the grown child looks out at the world with new eyes. The transition may be rocky, painful, full of disillusion, regret, a place where dreams go to die. We find out that we are mortal, imperfect, and finite, but what is worse, we find out who we really might be. The problem is that all young children will eventually turn into adults whether they want to or not. During that transition, youngsters are asked to make a series of decisions about their future, for good or bad. In theory, the bildungsroman is about those experiences and those changes that shape a young person, resulting in a new being. Do you have a favorite “coming-of-age” novel? I’d like to hear about it.

On "La muerte y la brújula" (by Borges)

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“Death and the Compass” is a strange tale of problem-solving gone crazy and revenge. A weird riff on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, this is the detective story turned on its head. Both the detectives and the reader fall into the same preconceived concept that if a crime has been committed that the clues will point to a solution. What would happen if the the clues are false and create the illusion of a crime, but not the crime which is really being committed? What if the real crime behind the clues is invisible to everyone except the criminal? Except for the final paragraphs where the story goes off the rails, Borges’s strange detective tale starts out being a pretty standard whodunit taking place in urban Buenos Aires. Clues are strewn about the story as if they were going out of style. An old rabbi, who was working on some arcane Jewish mysticism, is murdered. It looks as though diamonds and sapphires might be involved, but everything is murky. The detective, Eric Lonnröt, is on the case, reading the rabbi’s research and tracking down clues. There are two more murders, and Lonnröt thinks he has the case solved, working his way through a labyrinth of strange clues, arcane literature, and geographic locations, using his compass to come up with the location of the fourth, and final, crime. He is hard on the heals of Red Sharlock, a criminal mastermind of organized crime in the city. Borges really knows how to suck in his readers, counting on reader expectations regarding the genre to put down a path of clues that can only lead to disaster. I could write out the solution, but then again, why let the cat out of the bag? The very story, the details, the clues, the characters all form a perfectly designed and orchestrated trap into which both the detective and the reader falls. The best part of all is that Borges gives the reader the solution from the very beginning. What neither detective nor reader understand is the difference between the real world and a simulacra of the world–Borges’s words, not mine. The solutions to most problems are usually the most simple ones which are linked in a direct line from problem to solution, and there is nothing either arcane or obscure about a true solution.

On "La muerte y la brújula" (by Borges)

Posted on by

“Death and the Compass” is a strange tale of problem-solving gone crazy and revenge. A weird riff on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, this is the detective story turned on its head. Both the detectives and the reader fall into the same preconceived concept that if a crime has been committed that the clues will point to a solution. What would happen if the the clues are false and create the illusion of a crime, but not the crime which is really being committed? What if the real crime behind the clues is invisible to everyone except the criminal? Except for the final paragraphs where the story goes off the rails, Borges’s strange detective tale starts out being a pretty standard whodunit taking place in urban Buenos Aires. Clues are strewn about the story as if they were going out of style. An old rabbi, who was working on some arcane Jewish mysticism, is murdered. It looks as though diamonds and sapphires might be involved, but everything is murky. The detective, Eric Lonnröt, is on the case, reading the rabbi’s research and tracking down clues. There are two more murders, and Lonnröt thinks he has the case solved, working his way through a labyrinth of strange clues, arcane literature, and geographic locations, using his compass to come up with the location of the fourth, and final, crime. He is hard on the heals of Red Sharlock, a criminal mastermind of organized crime in the city. Borges really knows how to suck in his readers, counting on reader expectations regarding the genre to put down a path of clues that can only lead to disaster. I could write out the solution, but then again, why let the cat out of the bag? The very story, the details, the clues, the characters all form a perfectly designed and orchestrated trap into which both the detective and the reader falls. The best part of all is that Borges gives the reader the solution from the very beginning. What neither detective nor reader understand is the difference between the real world and a simulacra of the world–Borges’s words, not mine. The solutions to most problems are usually the most simple ones which are linked in a direct line from problem to solution, and there is nothing either arcane or obscure about a true solution.