make it new

Stella explores Formalism.

S: Minimalism. It's too hot to be formal.
M: Sorry. I always confuse them.
S: Go back to chapter four. And while you're up, could you make some more ice . . .? I feel like I'm on fire here.

speaking of books

Over at More Idle Thoughts, Dinah has accepted a tag from m.heart to select the book nearest at hand, open to page 56, and find the fifth sentence, transcribe the next 2 to 5 sentences. She (Dinah) declines the "now tag five people to do that same" bit, but invites players to self-select. So, picking up the book nearest to hand, Moby Dick (what else would it be?), on page 56, five sentences in (plus a couple) we have:

"Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are very strange beings; at times, you do not know exactly how to take them. "

How cool is that?
And now: Tag, you are, if you choose to be so, it.

By the way, whilst out acquiring provisions for the resident felions, I picked up The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth. His book Sacred Hunger is breathtaking, if this is even half as good, I'm set for the weekend. Still open to recommendations.

too short

As in "life is too short to spend time reading bad books." Recently, and twice, I've been suckered into reading things that "everybody's reading." Both books had a spiritual bent - the first is Eat Love Pray, which I found so completely tiresome that I gave up not even halfway through the first part. The second is not The Alchemist, but The Witch of Portobello by the same author -- Paulo Coehlo. I tried The Alchemist and couldn't get past the first chapter. I thought I'd try Witch because it purports to be about "the feminine side of divinity." If so, the feminine face is tedious when not irritating. Maybe a good deal is lost in translation, but the book is larded with the worst kind of pretentious claptrap that I've encountered in along time.

Which led me to wonder: Why is it so difficult to write persuasively about spirituality and the inner life of spiritual people? The best book I know about a spiritual conversion is The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. I think I like it because Maugham doesn't tell the story from the point of view of the converted, a man named Larry, but rather tells a story about how Larry's faith affects the people around him for good and for ill. It's not a treacly, hectoring lecture from A Teacher or The Sage or My Protector filled with hoary exhortations about "unconditional love" and "being true to yourSelf" disguised as a novel. It's a real novel about believable people dealing as best they can with an untenable situation -- and the reader gets it. Why is that so hard?

perturbation

I find myself troubled by the recent phenomena of the "altered book." Part of it -- maybe all of it -- is because I still feel that the book is something close to a sacred object. When I was a kid, a book was something to cherish. I washed my hands before reading, had certain times and places for reading (NOT at the table, please!), kept it in stored in a safe place, used a special light for reading. It was a ritual of respect, respect for the physical object of the book as much as for the content.

Now desecrating the book is de rigueur. I can't wrap my mind around it. I have tried it -- I tore a page from an out-of-date atlas and did some cut stencils, like so:

but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around this particular kind of repurposing. Every time I see it in a magazine or suchlike, I recoil in distaste and a kind of horror. And having tried it hasn't ameliorated the feeling. (I won't be doing it again.) It feels a little too Fahrenheit 451 -- the willful destruction of the work and thoughts of others, the eradication of history, the painting over and massive whiting-out of ideas. It feels too arrogant -- your work is as nothing except a spur to my work. Bratty kids trampling the garden for the joy of destruction, with no thought to the loss of the necessary harvest. It just feels wrong.

Maybe I protest too much. I am all in favor of reusing and repurposing trash into treasure . . . but-but-but . . . 'Green' be damned. In this time when the book is an empire in decline, it troubles me that its glories are so far denigrated that the book is truly becoming only worth the paper it's printed on.