THe move has happened! This blog is now at:

http://latestambitions.wordpress.com/

I will only be updating that blog. Thanks for reading!

Shipping up to Boston

So today is my first full day in Boston for FWT. My goals are the usual: Live. Laugh. Learn. Read. Write. Move forward.

Restaurant Log: Boston
January 3rd, 2010
The Burren
247 Elm Street, Davis Square
Somerville MA

Irish pub -- not a sports bar. No huge TVs. Not smoky. Celtic music over the speakers. Dim lighting, wooden everything. There's a cello mounted over the window leading to the kitchen from the bar. The waitstaff hangs out underneath it, as though it were some oversized and mutated sprig of mistletoe. Wonderful, rich, Irish food best shared over good conversation -- and I imagine, a Guiness or other draft. $9.00 for a half-pound, delicious burger.

Currently Reading: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
This is the second time I've read Jane Eyre. The first was in high school, summer reading for sophomore English. At the time, I was tracking four different themes and thoroughly into the story -- into the mystery. I won't spoil it for anyone hasn't read it, because the story itself is amazing. Right now I've been in this middle section where Mr. Rochester is being completely GAH! I mean, it works out for Jane. But there's this line on 158:

I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester I could not unlove him now merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me -- because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would notice me -- because I saw all his attention appropriated by a great lady, who scorned touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed, who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady ...

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. ...

This was the point -- this was where the nerve was touched and teased -- this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him

Ok. So it's more than a line. It's a few pages really. It just made my heart die a little. Oh my Jane, I know. I know those feelings. This is the first time I've reread a book and understood what people meant by a book taking on different meanings when you read it at different points in your life. This love story... the love story is what I'm going to remember from this read. You know, I'm just waiting for the axe to fall. Well, I know it will because I know the story. I just want to stop reading here and not have to go on.

The writing is more beautiful than I remembered. This woman can master words and communicate feelings so clearly.

Lolita in Retrospect

I finished Lolita a few days ago and never wrote anything about it. This is a bit of the e-mail I wrote to my friend who lent it:

So, finishing Lolita was an up-until-three-in-the-morning type deal, and totally worth it. The prose is absolutely phenomenal, as you said. Thank you for lending it to me. The ending blew my mind -- man, once he started to mentally break... the only other book I've read that conveys madness so perfectly just through prose structure is The Yellow Wallpaper, but Nabokov does Charlotte Perkins Gilman one better.

I feel a little disgusted with myself for feeling sorry for Humbert throughout most of the book. However, I credit that to Nabokov's skill as a writer and a storyteller...

My interest has definitely been piqued. Nabokov is on the list of writers to explore and style to learn from. I'm still reeling from the book. In Masters of Style, we would talk about balance -- if the style balanced the story, and served it, or if the style drew attention to itself at the expense of the story. The first job of prose is to tell a story. If it does not do that, it fails as prose. Nabokov's prose here bordered on imbalance, but it was brilliantly played. The elegance and beauty of the prose in juxtaposition with the depravity of the story just worked. At times the story left me breathless. And at times, the writing did. The times when I was floored were when they worked together.

I could go on about this, but I think I'll save my dignity.

I've begun Jane Eyre, but have to admit that I have been spending more time playing Assasin's Creed on the Xbox360 than reading. I miss fantasy and writing those stories. I used to be obsessed with thieves and assassins and try to create dens and rings of the depraved who worked against a heavy handed and evil politician... or someone. I was a horribly cliche teenage fantasy writer. I hope I've grown past that. I would love to be one of those people who wrote good fantasy. Emphasis on good.

I'm really interested in stories that take place in a world almost identical to our own, with one glitch -- one thing fantastic or extraordinary. I just haven't figured out the fantastic yet. Or the story. Starting tomorrow, I would like to start writing everyday again. I'm never very good at keeping this practice up, but tomorrow, I'm going to try again. Just think -- if I actually do it, then I'll have about seven - eight weeks worth of writing when I go back to school. That would be amazing.

Body of Lies

I know now why the movie Body of Lies didn’t receive much public or critical chatter. It’s movie about the war in the Middle East, and it does not paint either side in a very positive light. I heard mixed things about the acting and the story line — that it was bad and there wasn’t one.

I read an article in Entertainment that criticized DiCaprio’s accent and Crowe’s accent as well. As odd as this sounds, they sounded American. Stereotypically American. I think that might have been the point. Ridley Scott directed this movie, and I really like the other TV Shows and movies he’s done. I respect his direction. AND DiCaprio and Crowe are experienced, talented actors. I think their choices were correct.

That same article said that DiCaprio and Crowe had no chemistry and failed to develop a relationship: I would say that the two characters barely have a relationship in the story itself. They are constantly talking past and over each other, neither listening — especially Crowe. Most of their conversations happen by telephone, and the in-person meetings are tense and awkward. As they should be. Crowe’s character has interfered with and compromised many of the mission his agent (DiCaprio) was heading up. The intel gathered in these missions would have supposedly saved many lives. I don’t know. I’m going on about nothing.

I’m not trying to claim this was the best movie ever. DiCaprio wasn’t at his best. I really have no opinion on Crowe. It just seems to be a very apt movie for our time — one that people may not want to watch, because it forces them to look at something they don’t want to see. The CIA agent (Crowe), who thinks of himself as and possibly comes to represent America, is the least likeable character in the whole movie. That being said, every character has some despicable point (rare, in a movie these days where there needs to be a hero in whom even the flaw is heroic and forgivable.) Sex and drugs are, if anything, on the peripheral. The “action” is gruesome. War is not glorified.

Perhaps not a movie for the masses.

Bookshelves

I'm a bibliophile, can you tell? I love everything about books -- the way they smell, the way they feel, the way the bindings look all lines up together, what happens to the pages if it gets wet. I love what they contain, what you can press between the pages, and what you return to time and again.

On the way home from school, my dad and I stopped at a used/antique book store. I was in heaven, I kid you not. Upstairs there were shelves of fiction and plays -- beautiful and inlaid with gold, the covers thick and hard, the pages weathered or white. I picked up the copy of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that I found. It smelled like old paper and cigarettes. I was in love. Upstairs among the books, I had visceral reaction after visceral reaction. (I think it might have been close to what we typify as an orgasm.) I could hardly catch my breath, and I just wanted to touch everything.

I brought home four books from that store -- three for me and one for a friend. I would have brought the entire place home if I could.

I spent the afternoon cleaning my room, which obviously meant rearranging my bookshelves. Most of my fiction is now in one place, and my non-fiction and poetry in another. My old books are interspersed with new ones. The novels are arranged alphabetically by author, and the rest in whatever way struck my fancy. It's arbitrary, I know, but somehow I can still find everything.

When I own my own home, there will be a library -- one room full of books. I've already started quite a collection, so I don't think it will be hard to fulfill this particular dream. Of course, I need to have a place big enough for this room -- as in, there is enough space to dedicate this one room rather than having it infringe on the living room or someone's bedroom. I want floor to ceiling bookshelves and a rolling ladder. Maybe the ladder is too much to ask for.

A Hypothetical

I'm thinking of moving this blog over to wordpress. I have an account there for a school project, so I'm on it often. I also just like the formatting better. One glitch -- since I do post to the blog, which will be attached to the school, I don't necessarily want it to be public because well, I don't want everyone who visits that site to click on my profile, find this blog (right now), and be able to read it.

So if I do, in fact, move over to wordpress, then anyone who wants to continue reading this blog would need a wordpress account, so i could add you to the list of readers.

Like I said, this is hypothetical. I might decide that it would be great publicity if I do keep it public. Or, my bosses might say that they don't want any other blog attached to that specific user profile, in which case, I would keep it private.

Anyways... don't be surprised if it never happens. Don't be surprised if it does. I'll keep you posted.

Lo and Behold

There is this section at the beginning of Part 2 of Lolita that is absolutely breathtaking. Nabokov describes the roadtrip shared by him and Lolita — and the way he describes the landscape, the tourist attractions, the road itself is just wonderful. It’s wonderful technically too. Variations in sentence make-up, simple descriptions but vivid as hell. Fragments. Run ons, and then the reminders that Humbert Humbert is writing all this as a statement for the legal trail.

Here’s why it’s brilliant: by the end of Part One, Humbert has had his nymphet and so the tension of “Will Humbert ever get Lolita, or just fantasize about her?” is relieved. As a reader, one knows that eventually Lolita will lose interest, or something, and Humbert’s resilient jealousy and gross descriptions of the teenage boys who flock to Lolita sometimes feel tiresome and heavy handed. However… here is when readers are reminded of the trial, of the statement Humbert is making. He’s been accused of something, but what has yet to be revealed. It can be assumed that it has something to do with Lolita, since she is the focus of the memoir. But now, I want to know what happened – why and how he was imprisoned. This new curiosity is what keeps me reading, as well as the sordid curiosity about when and how Lolita and Humbert’s relationship falls apart.

I don’t know… I guess I’m just sitting here admiring Nabokov’s ability to craft a story. An uncomfortable story. And tell the story from the pedophile’s point of view, and make Humbert a likable character. His torment is so palpable. Sometimes, I find myself hating Lolita for torturing him so. And then my morals get all confused, and I have to slow down because I’m reading the words so fast that I’m know I’m missing the elegance and beauty of his writing…

I’m still reading, but I am going crazy about Nabokov as a stylist. Damn… the boy has good taste in books and authors.