townesvanfaulkner

The 2005 National Book Award winners were announced last night. Here's a listing of winners and finalists:

FICTION
Winner: William T. Vollmann, Europe Central (Viking)
Finalists: E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)Christopher Sorrentino, Trance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Renè Steinke, Holy Skirts (William Morrow)

NONFICTION
Winner: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists:Alan Burdick, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (Houghton Mifflin) Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (Times Books) Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin)

POETRY
WINNER:W.S. Merwin, Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press)
Finalists: John Ashbery, Where Shall I Wander (Ecco)Frank Bidart, Star Dust: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Brendan Galvin, Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005 (Louisiana State University Press)Vern Rutsala, The Moment’s Equation (Ashland Poetry Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
WINNER: Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists: Adele Griffin, Where I Want to Be (Putnam)Chris Lynch, Inexcusable (Atheneum)Walter Dean Myers, Autobiography of My Dead Brother (HarperTempest)Deborah Wiles, Each Little Bird That Sings (Harcourt)

For more info and past winners, visit:
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba.html

http://www3.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4232923,00.html

Writing Style-7.1
Originality-7.6
Plot-6.8
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.3
Overall-7.3

I was really surprised at how much I identified with this book. I thought that it would be more obscure, so to speak, but it’s actually pretty easy reading and a pretty simple, enjoyable story. I’m also always amazed at books that are over a century old (Jude was first published in 1895) that feel so relevant today.

I identified with this novel for two main reasons: 1) the main character, Jude Fawley, sets seemingly rather simple goals for himself and is repeatedly thwarted by unforeseen circumstances beyond his control; 2) this novel is a scathing diatribe against social conventions at the time, mainly marriage, which to my mind haven’t really changed all that much (particularly in the South).

Jude is a bright young man of simple means. Orphaned I believe, at any rate, he is being raised by an aunt who cares very little for him. He has a teacher who encourages him to make use of his above average intellect. He becomes inspired to self-teach himself “grammars”, Latin and Greek and so forth. And reads the classics voraciously to educate himself. He has the goal of going to the larger neighboring city of Christminster and going to college and perhaps becoming a minister.

But, alas, one thing after another happens to set him back in these dreams. He meets a girl and is seduced into marriage. Once he gets to Christminster he can’t get into the college. So he is left to work as a stone mason and puts his dreams aside.

He splits with his wife and then meets up with his cousin, Sue Whitehead. He falls in love with her. Gross, I know, but the reader feels pretty empathetic to their plight.

This book is kind of rough in its portrayal of the two women in Jude’s life. His first wife, Arabella, is the stereotypical gold digger who essentially tricks him into marrying her for her own financial comfort in life. And Sue, though at times a feminist, Hardy writes her to be far too whiny and moody, almost crazy, so that it detracts slightly from any feminist arguments he may be making. One feminist, anti-wedding, passage comes to mind where Sue is writing to Jude about her pending marriage to another man.

[“I have been looking at the marriage service in the prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don't choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal. Bless your exalted views of woman, O churchman!”]

I particularly liked some of these other passages, along the same lines:

[“I think I should begin to be afraid of you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a Government stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the premises by you—Ugh, how horrible and sordid! Although, as you are, free, I trust you more than any other man in the world."]

[“Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a much likelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If the marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society as much as possible in public, there would be more loving couples than there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring husband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the clambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There'd be little cooling then."]

[“And I am not so exceptional a woman as you think. Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it for the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages it gains them sometimes—a dignity and an advantage that I am quite willing to do without."]

[“What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is—a sort of trap to catch a man—I can't bear to think of it.”]

[As she read the four-square undertaking, never before seen by her, into which her own and Jude's names were inserted, and by which that very volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive. "Names and Surnames of the Parties"—(they were to be parties now, not lovers, she thought). "Condition"—(a horrid idea)—"Rank or Occupation"—"Age"—"Dwelling at"—"Length of Residence"—"Church or Building in which the Marriage is to be solemnized"—"District and County in which the Parties respectively dwell."

"It spoils the sentiment, doesn't it!" she said on their way home.]

These are all good, strong feminist sentiments expressed by Sue. But she does tend to grate on your nerves as the book progresses. Really it’s because she’s going a little crazy because of society’s constraints upon her.

Also, these passages point to the main point of the novel I think. It’s really a story about Jude and Sue’s relationship. Both are fragile, intellectual, free thinkers and are therefore dogged by society and their prior marriages damning their current lives.

So, this book really spoke to me, for obvious reasons for anyone that knows me well. I highly recommend it to those that don’t mind the 19th century voice. This is what Classics, with a capital C, are supposed to be; timeless and relevant well over a century later.

Imagine if this dude was your boss. Crazy stuff. Sounds like a candidate for Lithium, if only he had someone in his life who wasn't too ignorant to recognize it.

http://www3.knoxnews.com/kns/lifestyles_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_337_4219747,00.html

His letters to the editor:

http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/1108gilmore1.pdf

http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/1108gilmore2.pdf

We just got word from the oncologist:

From: Carlos Souza/SACS/VET/UTIA
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 2:12 PM
To: L., Amy
Subject: RE: Suttree

Hi Amy:

Good news!
Just came out of surgery and received the results.
There is no tumor.
I will call you sometime this afternoon.
Carlos H. de M. Souza
DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM (Oncology)
Clinical Instructor
The University Of Tennessee
College of Veterinary Medicine
Dept. Small Animal Clinical Sciences
2407 River Dr.
Knoxville TN 37996-4545


Ok, here's the story. Sut has been limping for about 4-6 weeks now. We took her in, the vet thought it was a sprain, gave us an anti-inflammatory and told us to try that. The limp persisted. We went back to the vet for an xray thinking that it was maybe more serious-- as in a torn ligament.

The xray revealed a lesion in her knee. The vet called us and said that in all likelihood it was cancer, but he wanted a second opinion from the radiologist at UT vet school.

We waited the rest of that friday for the radiologist's opinion. Meanwhile, Amy searches the internet for info. (damn you Amy!, kidding I love you) The internet says that this form of bone cancer is very agressive such that by the time it is diagnosed it has almost certainly spread to the lungs and the prognosis is about 4 months to a year of life. That the dog would need to have the leg amputated to relieve the pain and chemotherapy could be performed to lenghten the life by a number of months but that it was incurable.

We cried ourselves to sleep that night.

The next morning the vet calls and says that the "nationally-renowned" radiologist has diagnosed it as an extremely rare, almost always benign cyst. But, we should definitely get a biopsy to make sure. Needless, to say we were ecstatic and thought that we were in the clear for a few days.

We schedule the biopsy and go in for the surgery. First of all, the info sheet on Sut that we receive at the front desk says that she has osteosarcoma (the REALLY bad bone cancer). And Amy notices it and we wonder why they have that down since the radiologist said it wasn't cancer. Then when we speak to the oncologist, he is nothing but bad news. He tells us that everyone else, other than that one dude, who has looked at the xray's thinks that it is osteosarcoma. It's just too common in that area of the leg.

So we leave thinking that she has cancer again.

The doctor performs the surgery and calls to tell us that it went well and that the bone was really hard, not the way it normally is when it's a tumor. So it was some promising news, but next we wait for what is called the cytology and then the real determining stage--the histopathology.

The cytology comes back inconclusive. The doctor says that it doesn't look like classic osteosarcoma but that there ARE some abnormal cells. He says it's still a toss-up, it could go either way, we'll have to wait for the histo-pathology results.

Eighteen excruciating days since the xray, we have just now received those results. NOOOO FUCKING CANCERRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why does fucking cancer even exist????? How can anyone seriously talk about intelligent design when our bodies all too often spontaneously mutate and starts eating itself?????!!!!!!!!! FUCKKKKK!!!!!!!!

Both our vet and the oncologist have never seen one of these come back benign.

This is my baby. She's gonna live to be a hundred! And that's human years bitches!

George RR Martin's book A Feast for Crows comes out tomorrow. It's the forth in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

This is not your typical epic fantasy series... This one is REALLY, REALLY good and geared towards adults instead of children or adults with the minds of children. I'm telling you, if you have even the slightest inkling of possible interest in the fantasy genre then you should try this series. The first book is A Game of Thrones. The author expects to wrap it up in six or seven books. And the story doesn't get weaker as it goes along like many fantasy series with several books, this one only gets better.

Read this story about the series and author from the Detroit Free Press.

http://www.freep.com/features/books/martin6e_20051106.htm

Writing Style-7.2
Originality-8.1
Plot-7.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-7.4

This book is fabulous. Really, really top notch. As evidenced by its inclusion in the recently published top 100 novels from Time magazine.

This is the author’s debut novel, published at the ripe old age of 23 and was very well received by critics.

It’s about multiculturalism in a very ethnically mixed neighborhood in London. It’s centered around two families. One family consists of Archie Jones, a depressed, overweight, old white guy who marries Clara, a much younger Jamaican girl running away from her mom who is a crazy Jehovah ’s Witness. They have a daughter named Irie. The other family is Muslim and of Bengali descent. This family consists of the father Samad Iqbal and his wife Alsana. Samad and Alsana have twin sons, Millat and Magid, who are friends with Irie.

Okay, there’s your cast of characters. Samad and Archie become reluctant and unlikely best friends after serving in WWII together. Then they are neighbors in London.

My favorite part of the novel is about Samad’s twin sons. Samad wants them to be good Muslims and respect their Bengali heritage. He wants to send them to school in India where he came from, but he only has money to send one. He picks his favorite, the more promising Magid. Millat has to stay home in London. The interesting thing that happens is that this backfires completely on him. Magid ends up being a pro-British, agnostic engineer and Millat, in London, turns into a Muslim extremist.

It’s a great story and I think the point is to highlight what life is like for immigrants and people with different cultural backgrounds in England, and similarly I’m sure in America. The characters struggle with their identities. There is the desire to fit in vs. the desire to be true to your heritage. This is well developed in Millat and Magid’s story. They can’t simply be themselves, one has to overcompensate fitting in and the other has to overcompensate by rebelling against his surroundings. Also, there is the violent mixing of very different ideas in one place. The strange bond between Samad and Archie is very touching.

And then, there’s the very interesting story of Clara’s mom, the Jehovah’s Witness, who is always working to convert people and predict and announce to whoever will listen when the world is coming to an end. She drives Clara away but catches another unlikely convert in the neighborhood.

As you can see, there is a lot of plot here to be juggled and many characters with very different viewpoints to be fleshed out. And Zadie Smith does this brilliantly, especially for a debut novel by a 23 year old. The story never loses focus. You come to care about all of the characters. And they all have a unique voice, it’s not like many amateurish, debut novels where every character sounds the same and just isn’t convincing in their uniqueness.

This book gets a resounding recommendation. It’s easy, compelling reading with a lot of heart and soul.

This is how cool the author looks:

Writing Style-7.3
Originality-7.5
Plot-4.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.0
Overall-6.8

As I was reading this book, my second by Kundera (the other being The Unbearable Lightness of Being), I kept asking myself the question: Is Milan Kundera the smartest living writer that I’ve come across? That is not to say that he is the greatest novelist or that he even writes the smartest novels, but is he perhaps the most intellectually gifted writer? In other words, would he score higher on IQ tests or win in a chess tournament with other writers? Because every page that I’ve read by him, almost every sentence, I am astounded at the complex connections that he makes and the subtle observations on human character.

I was very much befuddled by Unbearable Lightness in its entirety. Though I adored it and found individual stories within it to be enlightening, as a whole it felt like I didn’t have what it took to fully grasp it. Immortality seemed a little easier to get my head around.

Though it’s a complex novel that is very experimental and weaves between two alternate, loosely tied narratives and philosophizing asides that read more like essays than novel chapters, I think the book really boils down to the title… Immortality. Though the book has very little plot and jumps all over the place, it never loses its focus on this central theme. Every single word seems to grasp at man’s struggle with mortality.

What plot there is follows a sort of love triangle between two sisters and one of the sister’s husband. Woven in with this story is the strange love story of Goethe (yes, THE Goethe) and Bettina.

On a blog filled with superlatives you can take the smartest writer thing with a grain of salt, but for my money Kundera is a cerebral god among many giants.

Any serious to semi-serious reader should do themselves a favor and give Kundera a shot. I think that something should ring true with his books. If not the keen observations on human nature then his philosophies, if not the plot then his experimentalism, if not the many great characters then his amazing ability to connect the dots from point A to point Being. Hah! Clever, I am.

http://www.martindentistry.net/pages/meet.html

Why does kingsport produce so many dentists and engineers?