Great reads!

I read a couple of interesting things last night. In fact, all of my time yesterday that should have been spent on my Spanish homework, or in the ceramic studio where I am unwelcomed as an English major, I spent reading things for pure enjoyment. I was able to proof a couple of stories up for publication in Story Quarterly, and it is always great reading an author without acclaim, I am halfway through this wonderful book called The Stones of Summer, by Dow Mossman. It was a "forgotten" novel of the beat generation, a coming of age story, that Holden Caulfield couldn't hold a candle to and it even rivals Ball Turret Garp. When I finally got to two pieces, one by Don DeLillo whose post-modernist tendencies really hit the nail on the head of many current nationalistic sentiments (White Noise is an intriguing and perfectly written book, in my opinion, and one of the most popular, if not the only popular book, of the 1980's), and another excerpt by Jean Jacques Rosseau from Emile. You will recall Rosseau as one of the most underrated philosophers of his time, composing the great Pygmalion, which was a copy of the same story of Ovid, which was subsequently copied most notably by George Bernard Shaw. See...nothing is new, and I feel we musn't flatter ourselves.

A conversation from DeLillo's Underworld fits nicely with Dr. Sexson's piece in the Mississippi Review, and aids in his overreaching theme that nothing is new, there is something in everything, you just need to know how to look. The conversation takes place between a Father and a young teenage boy, Shay, in Catholic school and it is about a boot. The conversation is lengthy, but I feel I would be doing you all, you all who are reading this, an egregious disservice. So, in true alturistic fashion, holding tight to the Bohemian ideals of truth, beauty, love and freedom to which I cling so tightly (as well as the Boy Scout Law), I will type the conversation out for you.

"Sometimes I think the education we dispense is better suited to a fifty year old who feels he missed the point the first time around. Too many abstract ideas. Eternal verities left and right. You'd be better served looking at your shoe and naming the parts. You in particular, Shay, coming from the place you come from"

This seemed to animat him. He leaned across the desk and gazed, is the word, at my wet boots.

"Those are ugly things, aren't they?"

"Yes they are."

"Name the parts. Go ahead. We're not so chichi here, we're not so intellectually chic that we can't test a student face to face."

"Name the part," I said. "All right. Laces."

"Laces. One to teach shoe. Proceed."

I lifted one foot and turned it awkwardly.

"Sole and heel."

"Yes, go on."

I set my foot back down and stared at the boot, which seemed about as blank as a closed brown box.

"Proceed, boy."

"Theres not much to name, is there? A front and a top."

"A front and a top. You make me want to weep." [I think this is very funny!]

"The rounded part at the front."

"You're so eloquent I may have to pause to regain my composure. You've named the lace. What's the flap under the lace?"

"The tongue."

"Well?"

"I knew the name. I just didn't see the thing."

He made a show of draping himself across the desk, writhing slightly as if in the midst of some dire distress.

"You didn't see the thing because you don't know how to look. And you don't know how to look because you don't know the names."

He tilted his chin in high rebuke, mostly theatrical, and withdrew his body from the surface of the desk, dropping his bottom into the swivel chair and looking at me again and then doing a decisive quarter turn and raising his right leg sufficiently so that the foot, the shoe, was posted upright at the edge of the desk.

A plain black everyday clerical shoe.

"Okay," he said. "We know about the sole and heel."

"Yes."

"And we've identified the tongue and lace."

"Yes," I said.

With his finger he traced a strip of leather that went across the top edge of the shoe and dipped down under the lace.

"What is it?" I said.

"You tell me. What is it?"

"I don't know. "

"Its the cuff."

"The cuff. And this stiff section over the heel. That's the counter."

"That's the counter."

"And this piece amidships between the cuff and the strip above the sole. That's the quarter."

"The quarter," I said.

"And the stip above the sole. That's the welt. Say it, boy."

"The welt."

"How everyday things lie hidden. Because we don't know what they're called. What's the frontal area that covers the instep?"....The Father continues naming parts of the shoe from the vamp, eyelet, aglet, grommet and last, and ends by saying to Shay,

"Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge. These names are vital to your progress. Quotidian things. If they weren't important, we wouldn't use such a gorgeous Latinate word. Say it," he said.

"Quotidian."....This excerpt from Underworld ends with Father saying to Shay, "So you signed. The others where shitting, Father, So I shat." in response to Shay signing a political petition in favor of Senator McCarthy during the Red Scare.

I think this conversation is very interesting. The final political statement reminds me of a saying my Godfather, a very smart man, told me: "If they're doing it, that is a good reason not to," which is how I respond to the "vote or die" pressures of the immediate. Why should I vote for someone, either way, if I don't completely agree with them, like them, or am informed of them? It goes against certain principles, I feel. Second, but primarily, is the connection with finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, the hidden pieces of knowledge, displaced fairy tales that are in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. We just need to know what to look for, like the grommet or the Cinderella Story--Its all right there!

The second piece from Rosseau is a response to what is a book and what is a child. From Emile, it begins, "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about," and it continues, "Is there no way of correlating so many lessons scattered through so many books, no way of focusing them on some common object; easy to see, interesting to follow, and stimulating even to a child? [which will remind us of Phillip Sidney saying the intent of poetry is to entertain and delight] Could we but discover a state in which all man's needs appear in such a way as to appeal to a child's mind, a state in which the ways of providing for these needs are easily developed, the simple and stirring portrayal of this state hsould form the earliest training of the child's imagination." It is like Dr. Sexson says, we must achieve the condition of a child, and look at ourselves through those eyes. Continuing, Rosseau mentions Robinson Crusoe, which, at the time of publication in 1719 was widely regarded as a children's novel. Rosseau says, "Since we must have books, there is one book which, to my thinking, supplies the best treatise on an education according to nature...What is this woderful book? Is it Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe on his island, deprived of the help of his fellow men, without the means of carrying on the various arts, yet finding food, preserving his life, and procuring a certain amount of comfort--this is the thing to tinterest people of all ages, and it can be made attractive to children in all sorts of ways. We shall thus make a reality of that desert island which formerly served as an illustration....Let [the child] learn in detail, not from books but from things, all that is necessary in such a case. Let him think he is Robinson himself; let him see himself clad in skins, wearing a tall cap, a great cutlass...This is the genuine castle in the air of this happy age, when the child knows no other happiness but food and freedom." My interpretation is that, according to Mr. Jean-Jacques, is that the primal comforts of food and shelter, those forced upon Robinson and his man Friday, are the primal joys of a child. For a child to imitate Robinson, his self reliance and relationship with nature, is a great way to manifest his imagination. Moreover, and more importantly, I think Rosseau credits Robinson Crusoe for the novel's displacement value for the child. To act as if that world was his own world, to imitate Robinson's actions. So these are not answers to our questions, but their interactions with each other. Maybe we can't describe one exclusively as it is to itself, but the novel, child, and nature only exist in their interactions with each other. How the child reads the book about nature reflects these reading into their own relationships with nature and the book's character's to manifest their own imagination.

Jason Walker, a ceramic artist, explains how our interaction with nature is his muse, his inspiration of his work. Above is a sample of some of his work, I absolutely love it and you can click Jason Walker to view his artist statement and more of his pieces. I think his work exudes a particular DeLillian post-modernism, contrasting our technological existence and dependency (contrary to those of Robinson Crusoe) to the natural world. Again, it is the connectivity that gives meaning,