by sarah marine
I'm sitting in my library contemplating silence whilst diggers and dumptrucks do their thing in the parking lot next door. Ah, construction. It makes for a very unfriendly reading environment. Therefore, you get a blogpost about what I'm thinking, which is quite lucky- because I know it's what you live for.
The past couple days have been those lovely Wisconsin ones involving the harshest transition from 80 degree days to 50 degree days. Thankfully, I LOVE WINTER...and, thankfully, nothing says winter like Ander Monson. However with the season still much too far away from warranting Other Electricities, I picked up assorted fire events by David Means. It is the perfect foreword to its Monson Michigan companion (who I guess is teaching in Arizona now, which boggles the mind).
Means' description: "the wet mulch stench of the forest floor and the vast emptiness that the Upper Peninsula offers, that stony wilderness scratching the back of the of the greatest freshwater body in the world, a lake deep enough to swallow whole freighters..." geez. Why anyone would want to live anywhere but the glorious midwest is beyond me. It's beyond.
If I could have dinner with any five writers, living or dead, writers whose conversations could veer from the personality of freight trains, to various sounds of walking on snow, to the year-round cold of the Great Lakes it would be these:
1. Richard Hugo
2. David Means
3. Ander Monson
4. John Ashbery
5. Mike Balisle
*6. Bayard Godsave, of course.
Together with Ashbery's April Galleons and Frank Miller's Daredevil series, I have been very very pleased with current literary companions. Thinking about the future, cant wait for new Sarah Vowell and Chris Ware! Have also been obsessively checking iPage and IBID and everywhere for The Art of Recklessness, which is supposedly a prose collection by Dean Young that was scheduled to come out this year- I mean, literally mentioned in the same breath as Primitive Mentor(January 2008).
PS. IF YOU HAVENT REGISTERED TO VOTE OR NEED TO CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS OR DESIRE ANY KINDS OF INFORMATION REGARDING THE ACT AND ART OF VOTING, THE OBAMA-LAMAS HAVE MOVED IN NEXT DOOR THE DOWNER SCHWARTZ LOCATION!
Monday, October 6, 2008
diggers digging, fingers typing, pages turning, noun verb, etc.
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7 comments:
Great, interesting topic, as usual. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
when i was i kid (should i be using the past tense?) i used to call any large construction vehicle a 'digger' - god i sure was cute.
i think i need to read "other electricities"
Dear Jordan,
maybe you should stop thinking about yourself and how "apolitical" you are and start:
1. actually reading the books we tell you, I tell you, you must read.
2. deciding what type of beverage certain "apolitical" jerks/disgraces to their generation would prefer for debate viewing extravaganza.
3. finding a special friend so I can get some of these so-called double dates in this lifetime.
GOD.
and, yes, you should read Other Electricities. everyone should. but do they? no. I havent sold a copy in AGES. Im going to work now.
someone's feeling a little self-important, isn't she?
don't wake me up anymore.
If I could have dinner with any five writers, living or dead, it would be:
1. William Faulkner
2. Bottle of bourbon
3. Bottle of bourbon
4. Bottle of bourbon
5. Bottle of bourbon
That's how I'm feeling it today, anyway.
you know where you can find some bourbon...stowell ave. around 8pm. we've also got an impressive faulkner collection and we can talk in drawls.
A long walk with Margaret Atwood to pick fresh fruits & vegetables for a salad and discuss the nature of time & memory
Bourbon with William Styron while relishing the emotional blackness of the self
Pints with Tom Stoppard to play with language
Fish dinner with Per Pettersen followed by a wander along the fjords of Norway speaking about anything, but in our respective languages so that we don't really know what the other is saying but with an understanding of the emotional truths beneath our words
Dutch oven cooking over a campfire with Thoreau, not talking at all
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