on reading, writing, books & authors
i went to portland, or in november 2002 to meet my favorite author jonathan carroll. this is a picture of josh, my new friend from the hostel, jonathan carroll and myself. the trip was the best three days of last year. i love you, jonathan carroll. Jonathan Carroll: Nov 5, 2002, Portland Oregon I�ve come a long ways to be here. Jonathan Carroll is one of my favorite writers because of his ability to stick ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I guess I fit now into his cult of followers-I traveled 1000 miles just to see an author (and to be in my favorite city, Portland). It was all so worth it. He read a new short story that I hadn�t heard before. I loved the sound of his voice and the calm way that the dazzling surprises hit me one after another. His writing never ceases to surprise me; it is chaotic, but in the end it always seems to come together full of love and god-intoxicated. In the answer and question section he spoke about writing and his own writing style. He said those writers, and other artisans for that matter, who pain over their works should find a new career. Art is not a painful thing but fun and intoxicating. He said that writing for him is like knitting; you just keep pulling the yarn out of the bag. Each day it is a surprise what is going to come out of the bag or what he is going to write. Just let it come out of your fingers, lose control of the story, or let the story write itself. His new book �White Apples� that he was on tour promoting tells a story about his view on the World and God and Death. The reason I like Carroll so much is that he very post-post-modernist. He rejoices in the chaos, and in the end finds some meaning of the chaos. Carroll hates being on book tour. But he believes in this book so much that he decided he needed to promote it. I like that he believes in his own work. Subject : thank you for everything. Date : Fri, 2 May 2003 11:41:06 -0700 (PDT) dear jonathan carroll, i just finished reading 'a child across the sky;' my first thought was, "i need to read that again." when i read your books, i feel like i'm reading a letter from a long lost friend. i met gary snyder a few months ago. i tried to tell him this story about when i first started reading the beatniks, and how much it changed my life. but all i could get out were a few shaky sentences. i feel that way now too; even though all i'm seeing is a computer screen. i came to your reading in portland oregon. i traveled quite a ways from my home in utah, but i couldn't hardly say anything to you then either. i'm completely floored by your writing. it's changing me: giving more belief in mankind and our special magic, and inspiring me to be better, and to write better. thank you for everything. ~esther janie Subject: a smile from Vienna Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 18:57:22 And thank YOU for this kind letter. That whole book tour seems like a long way and a long time away, but letters like yours remind me why I did it and why it matters to show your face now and then to people who read what you've been writing. I'm glad that my stories have made their way into your being. In the end, that's really all that it's about, you know? Keep moving, keep dreaming, JC
a dream of books... "It is far more seemly to have thy Studie full of Bookes, than thy Purse full of money." -- John Lyly, Euphues, 1578 A quote from Jenjen: "And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story." --Tim O'Brien
louis pound and willa cather in the mid 1890s. we are reading cather for my literature by women class, so we were talking about her in class. This picture was passed around, and i've fallen in love with her. we also listened to a natalie merchant song. i haven't before this liked her, but her sultry voice caught me and her words were perfect for my antonia. i alsmost cried right there in class for stephanie. go listen to motherland.
in june 2002 i visited san fransico with the express purpose of going to city lights bookstore. i rode the greyhoud bus from provo to oakland in a long hot day, just in the spirit of the beats. unfortunately my traveling companion didn't feel so romatically towards the bus and nevada heat. as i mentioned up the page, february 15, 2003 i had a chance to meet gary snyder. i tried to tell him this story. the summer after my freshman year of college (may 2000) i returned home to my parents' house. during the first month i became pretty depressed and sleepless. i'd stay up late and watch documentaries on pbs, and one night a documentary played on the beatnics. i will never forget hearing borroughs for the first time, and then seeing him on the screen saying, 'drugs are the books of the future. when people want to see another perspective they will search out a psychedelic.' the next day at school i went to the library and found on the road--i stayed in the library all day reading it. and i could still find the booth i sat in. i was studying japanese history and culture in class and in my free time i was reading kerouac, D.T. Suzuki, The Art of Tea, listening to bob dylan. and by the time the end of summer storms arrived i was a full fledged beatnic. kerouac's darmha bum's changed my life more than any other singal book i've read. i tried to tell gary snyder this. about how restless i'd been and then how much i fell in love with japhy rider.
i don't remember how i first encountered jetcityorange, but i've been reading this photoblog for going on four years. i earned an obsession for orchids and street graffetti. i even passionately ride my bike around town. jerry is always up to some new project or sharing the latest funny internet site. i wish i wrote this... Why Modern Fiction Is So Much More Punk Rock Than Music Ever Will Be Again by Sarahbeth Purcell I am a music nerd. It shows in everything I do. It shows even in my name. I was named after Bob Dylan's ex-wife, Sarah. My dad was also obsessed with music. So much so that he followed every single path he came across and ended up making a name for himself in music. He made music sound better for a living. Very noble cause, no? He and I shared the passion for music in the dark, listening to LPs when everyone else in the house was sleeping. So I come by my passionate stereophile position quite naturally. It's in my blood. It's in my hometown of Nashville. It's in my personality. I was always the one kid in my family my dad could relate to on that level. It made me feel special, and it validated me in a way, from a very young age. Artistry was highly valued. So when I got my two-book deal from Simon and Schuster as an adult, my father was equally as proud as if I had gotten some huge record deal, if not more so. We both saw the similarities of the two forms of art. Everyone these days talks about the state of music. The state of the music business. The state of pop culture in general. Very few people talk about books, unless it's a tell-all or it's based on a true story or it's made into a movie, or it sells a million zillion copies. You don't see a lot of book burnings these days. You hear a lot about how Eminem is either a genius or a homophobic jerk or a street-wise reincarnation of Vanilla Ice, and you see a lot of people protesting his music because of that. But authors, no matter how controversial, get ignored for the most part. And besides wishing everyone valued this art a bit more, I think it's fantastic. I've been a huge music fan since I was very young. I spent a lot of money, and even more time, going to gigs and wishing I could be in the musician's place. Even though I saw the unromantic side of the music business firsthand, I thought rock stars had the coolest job ever, that they were the rebels of society, that they were the ones I wanted to be like. Until I read a novel by Bret Easton Ellis. I was a voracious reader from an early age. I read everything. The backs of cereal boxes, lyrics, CD liner notes, and books by the thousands. I skipped school so I could go to the library and read. I read American Psycho when I was seventeen years old. There were portions of the book I had to take sips of water in between finishing. There were portions of the book that completely freaked me out. There were chapters I have memorized word for word. I absorbed this book, this creation that fifty years ago would have been burned and outlawed. It made me want to be a writer, this book. It made me realize how revolutionary fiction is, how much more vital and edgy it is than music has been for the last thirty years... How much cooler the process of creating a book is than recording some songs in a studio and going out and playing them on the road. Fiction, modern fiction, today, is punk rock. Maybe even cooler than punk rock ever was, because it's not about fashion. It's about expression. True expression. Without fear, without censorship. A lot of contemporary novels, including my own, Love Is the Drug, describe things that would get an X rating, or a big old "18 and over" PMRC sticker put on them if they were an album. I honestly think the powers that be ignore books because it's assumed that kids don't read. And hell, the adults who decide these things don't seem to read, either. So certain sects of modern fiction and its process are underground. And in the underground, revolutions begin. The world begins to change when no one is paying attention to the ideas being generated under their noses. So we authors are free to express those ideas. And while we're being ignored, the art is improving and morphing. While the chick-lit crap is being bought up by the mainstream, the real art is either being sold under one of those categories it doesn't belong in, or it's sitting on the bookshelves being recommended in small numbers, slowly being picked up and passed on, and, hopefully, slowly changing the way people think and live. So I'm not complaining at the potential of being ignored as an author. I feel like a rebel, actually. I feel like I'm making a dent in society in secret. I feel like finally, after chasing the idea of "cool" through music and the false glamour of the fairy tale of rock 'n' roll, I'm the one who has the potential to be a part of the real idea of what is rock 'n' roll. Without pomp and circumstance. Without the trappings of fame. Without the insincere titles and attentions. Authors are the new rock stars. Rock stars are the new Miss Americas. This is not to pat myself on the back. We have a long way to go in fiction. I have a long way to go as an author. And although much of it is stale, formulaic, and contrived, there is still a treasure trove of good music, and true artistry in music. But I am shocked and encouraged by how many more new and beautiful ideas are created by written word, and even more excited that you can really get away with so much more, both content wise and also in creating a new format if you do it just right. You can change the rules. Write more, write less, say things no one is brave enough to say, and comment on life in a million and one different ways and still have your privacy and not be publicly condemned. I feel like I was steered into the world of fiction for this very reason. I feel like a rock star. Only cooler. from the author at powells.com
ah, today...! a bit of my favorite jewish philosopher. This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul�s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being: if he commits it and speaks with his being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released and the work comes into being. The deed involves a sacrifice and a risk. The sacrifice: infinite possibility is surrendered on the alter of the form; all that but a moment ago floated playfully through one�s perspective has to be exterminated; none of it may penetrate into the work; the exclusiveness of such a confrontation demands this. The risk: The basic word can only be spoken with one�s whole being; whoever commits himself may not hold back part of himself; and the work does not permit me, as a tree or man might, to seek relaxation in the It-world; it is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks or it breaks me. The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor describe; I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all clarity of the experienced world. Not as a thing among the �internal� things, not as a figment of the �imagination,� but as what is present. Tested for its objectivity, the form is not �there� at all; but what can equal its presence? And it is an actual relation: it acts on me as I act on it. Such work is creation, inventing is finding. Forming is discovery. As I actualize, I uncover. I lead the form across�into the world of It. The created work is a thing among things and can be experienced and described as an aggregate of qualities. But the receptive behold may be bodily confronted now and again. --Martin Buber home - 2004-5-30 |
