top five novels i should read, but never will.

I know someone who just got a job at The Strand, and according to him you have to pass a literature test before they’ll hire you. After hearing a few of the questions, I quickly realized that I probably would have failed.

The one question I can remember is, “Who wrote the The Master and the Margarita?” For some reason, I thought the answer was Herman Wouk, the author of my all time favorite historical novel, The Winds of War. Turns out, this is totally, painfully, horrendously incorrect. I was drunk at the time, and this is the only excuse I can offer.

Am I really unqualified to work at The Strand? (When drunk, I’m probably unqualified to work anywhere except a strip club, but that’s beside the point.) Whatever. I'm not ashamed of my obviously less than perfect literary knowledge. And neither are lots of other people, apparently. To prove it I have compiled here, for your reading pleasure, a list of the top five novels I should read, but never, ever will:

1. Ulysses. I know I should want to read it, especially since the Modern Library ranks it as the #1 best book ever in the history of books, or something like that. But I read an excerpt of Ulysses for a class, and all that happened was that the main character trimmed his fingernails. Apparently, this is an incredibly meaningful passage. Suffice it to say, I found it dull. Being rather fond of books with plots, I can't imagine I'll ever get around to starting, much less finishing, Ulysses.

2. David Copperfield. Don't get me started on Dickens. Authors who serialized their work make me miserable. And when the second sentence of your book is: "To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night," how do you expect anyone to get even remotely excited? I just know I won't make it past page 15.

3. Moby Dick. While Melville seems like he was a pretty badass kind of guy, we don’t have a good literary relationship. The monstrous length of Moby Dick frightens me; I barely made it through Bartelby the Scrivener, and that was a short story. A really smart friend of my Mom's told her he re-read Moby Dick every single year, but I’ve discovered that he’s sort of a blowhard, so I'm pretty sure his opinion doesn't count.

4. Gravity's Rainbow. After reading about 20 pages of The Crying of Lot 49 for a class in college, I decided Pynchon is not my cup of tea. I mean, what’s it really all about, Thomas? Are all those suggestive clues really meaningless? I, for one, don’t enjoy being stuck inside the mind of a paranoid recluse.

5. The Scarlet Letter. I know scads of people who read this in high school and no one has ever said they enjoyed it. I consider myself fortunate to never have been assigned it, so why would I waste my valuable time reading it now? (I wasted enough time, thank you very much, watching the movie, which was horrendous.) And Puritans? They kind of freak me out, unless they’re associated with either of these two things: Thanksgiving or the Mayflower Compact. The Scarlet Letter, as far as I know, mentions neither.

Edit: Since a couple smart people apparently do like The Scarlet Letter, it's coming off the list. I'll have to think of something else I really, really don't want to read.

in which i whine, and then gush.

I’m so busy at work, I actually brought some home with me this weekend. And it turns out I’m so busy with other things I didn’t have time to do any of it. I didn’t even procrastinate (much).

Ostensibly, a social life is a good thing. Being me, though, sometimes I really just want to read my book. I’ve been reading Lolita for a month now, and while I’m really enjoying it and I really want to finish it, there’s no time. Even in college I had time to read; I used to read for pleasure during finals. What’s happened to my life? I’m completely out of clean clothes, and our cupboards at home are totally bare. It’s getting kind of pathetic, really. I plan to do all of these necessary things (food shopping, laundry) tonight, after I go to the gym. This means that the work I was planning to bring home tonight won’t get done, again.

Despite my whirlwind weekend, there’s nothing interesting to write about. My brain has sort of been turned to mush by my continuing obsession with Jens Lekman, who I fortuitously discovered was playing in Williamsburg last night. And I know I’ve said this about concerts before, but it was amazing.

I’ve seen a lot of mediocre concerts in my day, but in the past couple months I’ve seen a string of fantastic performances. (Another thing to add to my “Why New York Is Better Than Where You Live” list.) Like the last concert I gushed over, this one was pretty spare; it was just Jens with a guitar, accompanied by a woman playing the bongos. He also had this awesome playback thing, so he could record himself beatboxing and then sing over it. Sounds cool, right? It was. Even my roommates, who were not so familiar with his songs to begin with, were fans by the end.

And after he sang a perfect cover of “You Can Call Me Al,” it was all over for me. Combine that with that fact that he has an anti-war song about his hairdresser, a love song about cutting off the tip of his index finger, and a song that mentions Nietzsche, and I'm ready to tattoo his name on my ass. So when Jens asked us, during the second encore, “Does anyone have to go to work in the morning, or can I just keep playing songs forever?” I do believe I shouted out, “Forever!”

Who cares about work, anyway?

life is hard.

This morning, when exiting the bathroom, I walked straight into the closed door of my room. A closed door is a very difficult thing to run into, unless you're blind.

Ugh.

sex, and the end of civilization, part II

This morning my roommate, JV, pointed out this article to me. Apparently, the New York Times decided to jump on the subject convergence bandwagon, and publish an article about a middle school in Portland, Maine that's going to offer birth control pills.

"The clinics at Portland high schools have offered oral contraceptives for years, said Douglas S. Gardner, the city’s director of health and human services. Health officials decided to extend the policy to middle school after learning that 17 middle school students had become pregnant in the last four years, seven of them in the 2006-7 school year.

'It brings home the fact that my 13-year-old daughter has friends and people around her who are sexually active,' Ms. Purington said. 'But at least it’s a good alternative in a not-so-good situation. No one is going to stand up and cheer that 12- and 13-year-olds are having sex, but it’s not anything new.'"


Ms. Purington doesn't think it's anything new that 12 and 13-year-olds are having sex. Maybe she's right. But if 7 middle schoolers got pregnant in the past year, shouldn't the school be teaching the kids about sexual health, and how to use a condom, instead of giving girls who probably just started their periods prescription contraceptives?

And when do these kids even have sex? Between home room and first period? My life in 6th grade consisted of school, soccer practice, and home. If I had wanted to have sex, which I really, really didn't, there wouldn't have been a place or time for it. My parents weren't cool with boys being in my room, much less my bed. Or maybe there are oodles of Humbert's out there, preying on little girls and impregnating them? 6th grade orgies posted on craigslist? What??

sex, and the end of civilization.

In college, I found that classes would sometimes coincide in wonderful ways. For instance, a professor might discuss bildungsroman and Jacques Lacan in one class, and then in a different class later on the same day, those two strange subjects would come up again, totally independently. This happened in subtler and thematic ways as well, and while it is not at all surprising - the same topics are bound to be repeated if you study a subject for long enough - it was always gratifying. The world made better sense: my classes had clearly been picked wisely, and not merely because they fit my work schedule.

This coincidental subject convergence happened to me again yesterday. I was in a bookstore in Park Slope, killing time before I had to be somewhere, and I happened to pick up The Best American Essays of 2007, and found myself reading about Lolita. More specifically, I read Afternoon of the Sex Children by Mark Greif. The essay addresses Lolita as a cultural critique on the growing fascination with the sexuality of children. A relatively new phenomenon when Nabokov was writing, Greif argues that the nearly complete sexual freedom of children, and their status as the most highly desired sexual objects, is a sign of serious cultural decay. ("Child" is used broadly; everyone from 12 to 22ish years old can be one.) Instead of venerating experience or wisdom, the trend is to desire only what is new, fresh, and ultimately, bland. Basically, for Greif, Gossip Girls represents the end of civilization. Furthermore, he argues that sexual liberation has not equaled sexual freedom; the subject has merely gone from absolutely taboo to completely pervasive. Sex has been liberated, but no one has been liberated from sex.

I was at a party on Friday and someone there had made a documentary film in college about the loss of virginity - he basically interviewed a bunch of his friends about their first time. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in seeing the video; from what I heard, it sounds hilarious. Would Greif say that by enjoying and displaying these stories we were all participating in a culture of sexual obsession? Probably. But how can you possibly free culture from sex? Whether it is totally unmentionable or constantly talked about, it will still be on everyone's mind. Sex is a natural imperative, we can't be free of it. In the same way, it's inevitable that young people will be more sexual, and more desired, than older people; biologically our prime reproductive years are between the ages of 12 and 22. Even if people wanted to be liberated from sex, or the desire for youth, it's impossible; both are irresistible, for the obvious reasons. If Greif is right, and the public obsession with youth and sex is culturally destructive, what's the alternative, other than reverting back to 19th century sexual norms? Isn't it better, if we are going to be obsessed with sex anyway, not to deny it?

Greif makes a persuasive case, though, and highly public nature of intensely private subjects, including sex, is a feature of life in the 21st century I find numbing, if also sometimes entertaining. What's private, if everything is reported publicly? (I do realize, btw, the hypocrisy of writing that on my blog.) Even the shock of Lolita and the strangely sympathetic Humbert has sort of worn off. Enjoying a 12 year-old as a sexual object is disturbing, but not unheard of. And if, like me, you read Dan Savage, nothing sexual is shocking. Even when it probably should be.

top five.

If I were to make a list, á la Rob Gordon, of my all-time top five possible careers (if history, money and qualification were no object) this would be it:

1. Any kind of political person in the Florentine Republic, at some point between 1494 and 1512. I just want to work with Machiavelli. I don’t want to be powerful, or anything. Actually I’d prefer not to be important, that way when the Medici seize power, I won’t be tortured.
2. Co-owner of Shakespeare & Company, 1919-1941. I don’t want to steal Sylvia Beach’s thunder, but Paris between the wars, who wouldn’t want to be there? I’d get to meet Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, etc, etc.
3. Book reviewer/staff writer for the New Yorker at any point between 1930 and 1965. Exciting times, exciting people. But really, I would condescend to write for the New Yorker at any point. (I love you, Nick Paumgarten!)
4. Book cover designer. I don’t just mean making dust covers, people; I’m talking about Art with a capital “A.” And I’d want to be somebody really good, like Chip Kidd or Jon Gray or Helen Yentus. I’d get to read books and play around with fonts. It would be marvelous.
5. Movie credit designer. Again, Art. Think of the credits for Monsoon Wedding or Volver or Fight Club. You know, badass shit.

If you were to point out to me that the most realistic of these professions would require many years of art school and innate ability I don’t happen to possess, I would have to agree with you. And if you were to point out that I’m really better suited, given that history and money and qualifications are objects, for the job I have now, I’d have to say you were right again.

Oh, well.

An Open Letter to Vladimir Nabokov

Dear Mr. Nabokov,

I really admire that, even though English was your third language, you still use words like "dirndled" and "fructuate." I'm only up to page 63 of Lolita, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

Love,
Julia

don't talk about my boyfriend.

In the past 36 hours, three people have mentioned my boyfriend. First, it was the guy walking past me on Hanson Place, who suggested I ditch my boyfriend and take up with him instead. Then, the vendor guy in Union Square would only tell me the price for a pair of sunglasses if I told him whether or not I was single. Next, the shoe store guy told me that my new black flats came with an extra set of heels, so if the original ones wore down, my boyfriend could just hammer the new ones on for me.

Just FYI, New York: I know how to use a hammer. And I'm single. There's no need to rub it in.

meet me in gowanus.

A fight broke out on my subway platform today. The cops were called, and for some reason the train wasn't allowed to leave. So we all filed grumblingly out of the station, and I walked with a charmingly indignant Caribbean woman to catch a different train. She bemoaned the burgeoning hooligan movement, and derided passing teenagers for "smoking blunts this early in the morning." I heartily agreed with her; getting high before 10 am is just bad manners.

More interestingly, we talked about the new stadium that is supposed to go up in my neighborhood. When I commented that building a stadium would probably change things, the woman just laughed. "Yes, it will" was all she said, but she looked at me like I might be a bit slow. While my new friend was a little off on the exact location of the new Atlantic Yards development, it's true that they're planning on tearing down a huge swath of housing to build a basketball stadium for the Nets just a few blocks from where I live. This does not excite me. If it was a soccer pitch I might be persuaded, but probably not even then. All those people from New Jersey coming to see the Nets? There goes the neighborhood.

I feel like this sort of thing is happening everywhere in Brooklyn. Even Gowanus is slated to get a face lift soon. I remember driving past the Gowanus canal on the bus on my way to elementary school, and it was a distinctly unpleasant experience, olfactorily and aesthetically. (Is olfactorily even a word? Whatever.) The canal itself is disgusting, or it used to be, and the neighborhood is all industrial. It's sort of amazing to think that one day people might be strolling along the Gowanus canal, enjoying the gentle breezes and feeding ducks. My strongest memory of driving through the neighborhood was a huge radiator factory that was next to a bridge, and every time I read about developments in Gowanus, I wonder where they are going to make radiators now. China?

hypocrite

Definition: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.

I feel like it's typical for people to start blogs by protesting that they never thought they ever would. But really, I'm not just saying it. All those years I said I would never start a blog, I really did mean it. Really.

And yet, here I am. The end of college is directly related to dwindling levels of self-control, I suppose.