Category Archives: Literature

The universe has a way of making little winks, signifying whether we are on the right path and if things are properly aligned. Most of us chalk it up to coincidence and chance, but I’ve always felt there was something deeper at work, some grander scheme of a destined plan where everything happens for a reason. Case in point was the sudden proliferation of the octopus as I began one of my favorite reads this summer: ‘The Soul of an Octopus’ by Sy Montgomery. Once I started this, fittingly on the beach, I could not put it down. The ocean and its inhabitants have perennially intrigued me, and the octopus especially has been an animal of fascination and wonder, given its intelligence and shapeshifting prowess. In fact, the eight-armed creature is one of the premiere tricksters of the animal kingdom, and Montgomery manages to demystify and investigate this ‘Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.’

It’s a marvelous book for anyone looking to delve further into the curious relations between humans and animals, and especially for those of us beholden to the magic and mystery of the octopus. As I turned the pages during our seaside stay, suddenly I found octopuses everywhere: in a print on the hotel wall, in a restaurant poster, on a bathroom rug, and even on a lobby throw pillow.

Reassuring proof that we are all connected somehow, and that there are no accidents. The trick is in deciphering why… Why ‘The Soul of an Octopus’? Why the octopus itself?

More importantly, why does the summer have to end?

On my summer bedside table reading list:

‘The Whale: A Love Story‘ by Mark Beauregard

‘Porn Again‘ by Josh Sabarra

‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ by J.K. Rowling

‘The Soul of an Octopus‘ by Sy Montgomery

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” – Alan Bennett, The History Boys

It was, rather expectedly, in a poetry class where I first read this epic work of Keats. Now, when all things are going Greek this summer, it fits in well with some statuesque posing.

Ode On A Grecian Urn

By John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Recently added to my summer reading queue is this sizzling memoir by Josh Sabarra. He’s been featured here as the Hunk of the Day, but this is one Renaissance man who will likely be seen a lot more. (As David Beckham and Ben Cohen have been quiet of late, we are on the lookout for the next hunky conglomerate.) As mentioned, I’ll be reading his ‘Porn Again: A Memoir’ on the beach this summer (and writing a review when the vacation is over), thanks in part to this powerful teaser in his own words:

“I struggled for decades to find myself and to be comfortable in my own skin.  As I approached the beginning of the second half of my life, I thought that my stories might inspire people to step into themselves and entertain at the same time.

During the writing process, I learned that I had been borrowing my sense of self for so long.  I looked to food, plastic surgery, my career, my lovers and my celebrity friendships to try to make myself appealing to other people.  I finally realized that I am enough, on my own terms.” – Josh Sabarra

In addition to his novel (and another one on the way) he’s the sex columnist for ‘Gay Times’ magazine (and I’m secretly hoping he’ll write a Special Guest Blog for this little website – pretty please with a cherry on top?)

One of the more disturbing aspects of growing older (and into the dreaded middle-age) is a rapidly-encroaching inability to focus as well as I once did. To that end, I’ve been getting into anthologies and collections of short stories, where I can keep track of a plot or cast of characters without having to make a key with a list of names and descriptions so I won’t forget. (Yes, I have begun to do that.)

It’s strange how my memory works. I can recall events quite vividly from 1994, but ask me what I did two days ago and it’s gone with the wind. Luckily, there are plenty of collections that contain shorter tales and stories for the weaker of mind, including the one pictured here.

My friend Chris just sent me this great little book: ‘The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships’ as edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein. It’s a fascinating, and often quite moving, series of memories of friendships between writers. Some focus more on the writing aspect, others more on the friendship, and together they comprise a rich and enthralling experience. That it was given to me by one of my dearest friends makes it all the more resonant, and perhaps one day I’ll tell that story of friendship (with disguised names to protect the guilt of the other party). And though my modern day memory may be fading, I remember every moment of those first few days of friendship, first planted on a trip to Puerto Rico, and cultivated with travels and talks from San Francisco to New York to Miami to Washington.

It may be time to make new memories.

There’s a literary wonderland that is conjured whenever Gregory Maguire releases a new book, and that wonderland is a literal thing in his latest work ‘After Alice’ – his enchantingly twisted take on Alice’s own Wonderland. Rather than give away any juicy plot-points or spoil any secrets with a shaky synopsis, I’ll simply highlight my favorite passage, the one that spoke most deeply to me, and the one that echoes the sentiments of certain folks who love books and try valiantly to share that love with others.

Only, sometimes, in the text of a book here and there, we tap the page with a finger and say, “This is what my lost days were like. Something like this.” But even as we turn to the fellow in the bed beside us to say, “Yes, this passage here,” whatever it is we recognized has already disguised itself, changed in that split instant. There is no hope that our companion can see what we, just for a moment, saw anew and hailed with a startled, glad heart. Literary pleasure, and a sense of recognition and identification, real though they are, burn off like alcohol in the flame of the next heated moment.” ~ Gregory Maguire, ‘After Alice’

Many are the books I’ve read and tried to press into the minds of others, and many are the unread books that friends have routinely and quietly ignored when I’ve brought them to their attention. Far from making me feel less alone, most great books leave me feeling an acute sense of loneliness – in the unshared resonance or recognition of some carefully-crafted passage of remarkable beauty, or some thread of a theme that they have no interest in pursuing. In reading a book that speaks to me, I mostly find friends and family falling by the wayside, and my only companion along the way being the author, ever unknown to me. I remain even more unknown to her or him.

Somewhere along our literary history, people started to think of Emily Dickinson’s poetry as cute and harmless fluff. In truth, it was far darker and more sinister than surface readings or historical reputation would allow. As is often the case with poets and poetry, things were never as simple as they seemed. Ms. Dickinson was a complex character, and her work often delved into the introspective reaches of the soul. What she brought up was not always pretty or nice, and she didn’t disguise it as such. It just took the rest of us a little longer to catch on.

One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted
One need not be a House
The Brain has Corridors surpassing 
Material Place

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting
That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a’chase
Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter
In lonesome Place

Ourself behind ourself, concealed
Should startle most
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror’s least.

The Body borrows a Revolver 
He bolts the Door 
O’erlooking a superior spectre
Or More

~ Emily Dickinson

Only vaguely do I remember reading ‘The Turn of the Screw’ in one of my college courses. Henry James did very little for  me. Sometimes emotional constipation can’t help but seep into a writer’s work (surely this blog has been in need of an enema more often than not) and while it makes for an interesting tension, it’s a tension that I’d rather do without. Still, he knows how to build suspense, and on this eve of Halloween, that is wonderfully apt.

“It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a beast.” ― Henry James

“I could only get on at all by taking “nature” into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.” 
― Henry James

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.” 
― Henry James

“I take up my own pen again – the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself – today – I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.” 
― Henry James

Labor Day may have come and gone, but technically it’s still summer, and at 93 degrees it certainly feels like. While I’ve put away my white pants for the season, summer lingers on in poetry and pool romps. Here’s a poem by one of my favorite writers, Mary Oliver, extolling the continuation of the sunny days:

LITTLE SUMMER POEM TOUCHING THE SUBJECT OF FAITH

 

Every summer

I listen and look

under the sun’s brass and even

into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

anything, I can’t see anything —

not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,

nor the leaves

deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,

nor the shucks, nor the cobs.

And still,

every day,

the leafy fields

grow taller and thicker —

green gowns lofting up in the night,

showered with silk.

And so, every summer,

I fail as a witness, seeing nothing —

I am deaf too

to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet —

all of it

happening

beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees,

and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.

How could I look at anything in this world

and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

What should I fear?

One morning

in the leafy green ocean

the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body

is sure to be there.

~ Mary Oliver

Every once in a great while, a book comes along that makes you slow down and savor each page, forcing you to devour it as quickly as you don’t want it to end. The great literary conundrum – when you enjoy something so much you rush through it because you can’t stop, but at the same time you do everything in your power to prolong the pleasure, earmarking pages and underlining passages and revisiting favorite parts before it’s even over. Such was the power of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee – a classic that had somehow escaped my vision in the course of four decades. I just finished it, and what a wonderful read it was. In many ways, I’m glad I waited. This sort of jewel might have been wasted in my youth. Instead, I am still moved by its last few chapters, and it’s been haunting me since I finished it. The best books do that. They stay with you long after you’ve read them, inhabiting a place inside the soul that enriches and emboldens – a place that you don’t let everyone see, because it means too much, and too many people might sully it. Instead, you hold it close and secret and safe, and you hope the world doesn’t rock you too much to dislodge it.

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

“A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning.”

John Irving is one of my favorite authors. He consistently delivers spellbinding prose, and every novel he crafts manages to conjure the aching resilience and hope of the human spirit with wildly varying settings and characters. The one constant is a gentle examination of the brutalities we inflict on one another, and the notion that no matter how impossible it may seem, we always have the capacity to change, to become someone new, someone better.

While I’ll probably always favor ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ over everything else (you never forget your first time), I was also quite enamored of ‘In One Person’. Perhaps upon perusing the following quotes, you may be tempted to give it a try. I’d certainly encourage it.

“You shouldn’t guess about someone’s past; if you don’t see any evidence of it, a person’s past remains unknown to you.” ~ John Irving

“That moment when you are tired of being treated like a child – tired of adolescence, too – that suddenly opening but quickly closing passage, when you irreversibly want to grow up, is a dangerous time. In a future novel (an early one), I would write: “Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult – in any way – something in your childhood dies.” ~ John Irving

“You can’t force children to become something they’re not. You can’t simply tell a boy not to play with dolls.” ~ John Irving

“What’s the point of having a love of your life, if he’s not always with you?” ~ John Irving

I have told you that I was reluctant to describe him as an artist pure and simple, and indeed that he declined this title with a modesty touched with aristocratic reserve. I might perhaps call him a dandy, and I should have several good reasons for that; for the word ‘dandy’ implies a quintessence of character and a subtle understanding of the entire moral mechanism of this world; with another part of his nature, however, the dandy aspires to insensitivity…

The dandy is blasé, or pretends to be so, for reasons of policy and caste. He is a master of that only too difficult art – sensitive spirits will understand – of being sincere without being absurd.

To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world – such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are – or are not – to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life…

And the external world is reborn upon his paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, strange and endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of its creator. The phantasmagoria has been distilled from nature. All the raw materials with which the memory has loaded itself are put in order, ranged and harmonized, and undergo that forced idealization which is the result of a childlike perceptiveness – that is to say, a perceptiveness acute and magical by reason of its innocence!

~ Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life