Musings of an Existentiell Nature

[gaijinxy]

I have a bit of extra time tonight and feel I ought to write something, but I just don't feel like existing in a biographical sense. Like Heidegger, I can't get Holderlin out of my head.

You may build your house of straw

Comments

Re: I liked your poem!

[gaijinxy]

There are a lot of books in the world...I read a lot as well, but I haven't read any of those except Haruki Murakami. I'm working on Kafka on the Shore right now and have read Norwegian Wood, which I think I like better, though Kafka is quite imaginative. I'm wondering if he'll take a more Kafka-esque direction with it and simply not explain anything, though probably not.

To be honest, I rarely read outside of the western literary tradition and I rarely read anything post-Romantic besides sci-fi and horror, though I've been trying to do more over the last couple years. I have a strong foundation in British literature from around 15-1800, and I've read a lot of John Milton, Shakespeare, John Keats, Edgar A. Poe, and all sorts of plays and poems and obscure things. On my Graduate Record Exam for English literature I knew all the questions most people couldn't answer, but new nothing about the mainstream American literature questions.

In modern literature, my tastes tend toward the extreme. I grew up on Clive Barker and love J.G. Ballard, Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and so on. Ryu Murakami and possibly Haruki Murakami have some literary heritage with these guys from a Japanese standpoint. Burroughs and Ginsberg also made a strong impression. Right now I'm working my way through Dostoevsky. I also find myself often inspired by T.S. Eliot, though I'm not big on the rest of the moderns in general.

I understand the immigrant genre and find the way it makes a space for the coexistence of dual identities interesting, but I generally find them philosophically insipid and shallow. I prefer reading within a tradition with its own heritage, however difficult it is to establish an understanding of that tradition--immigrant writers tend to be strangely submissive to popular culture and "held beliefs" in one or both cultures they are writing out of. Since I find the recycled Romanticism of the modern western canon distasteful, I usually find them frivolous.

That said, there are people doing great things in "contemporary" literature. Angela Carter is amazing, and Jorge Luis Borges, and a Portuguese writer I can't remember just now. Also Joseph Conrad, who most people don't think of as an immigrant, though he learned English in his twenties. Anwyay, that's kind of a long, rambling list, but my taste parallels my philosophical interests, which make things a bit complicated. Maybe after I think about it I can come up with some particular books that I think are important reading. Seeing as I haven't actually read most of your authors, however, I can't quite tell what your taste is.

Where are you from?

[pnolan]

I can tell from your reply that you are classically trained in literature and I admire that. Where did you go to school and were the classics stressed? I could have spent a lot more time reading the masters than I did, but I guess I was just lazy and preoccupied (with the music and politics of the 60s). My biggest influences in college were probably Hendrix and the Beatles!

You remind me of some of the really brainy guys I went to Harvard with. Mostly prep-schoolers. Being from Indianapolis (a really backwoods kind of city in the 60s) and from a public school background, I was in awe of the guys who read Marx and Trotsky and could recite ancient Greek and discuss economic theory!

Anyway, I will check out some of the authors you mentioned, and maybe even go back to Milton! I did read a lot of Shakespeare and Dickens back then and enjoyed it. I am sorry you didn't get your assistant professorship, by the way, although I know a little about academia and I'm not sure that world's for you. Very petty and territorial it seems.

Re: Where are you from?

[gaijinxy]

You do me too much honor. If anywhere in my journal I've implied an assistant professorship, I apologize! No, I graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a simple bachelor's, with plans to go on to graduate school with my girlfriend of four years, who was applying to medical school. When things fell apart in my relationship, so did all my other plans, and I wasted time trying to get shot as an Armored Truck courier. I was working fifty plus hours a week and needed time to get things together...I was already working on the novel that came out of all that havoc and still considering graduate school. On the other hand, I just wanted to get away from everything, get myself together as well. So I decided on a coin toss...if I got the glorified secretary position in the English Dept. of my school, I'd stay with the plans for graduate school, and otherwise I'd go to Japan. The toss should have been rigged, though, considering how much influence I had on campus and how well my interview went, but according to my friend and mentor Dr. Silver, the decision was basically determined on sex. So instead I'm in Japan.

I'm still drawn to graduate school, and one of my closest friends is still urging me to get my doctorate (he's working on his law degree), but I have little interest in being a professor, though by all accounts I'd be a good one. I'm hoping I have just as good a shot at being a writer, so I'm focusing on that right now. We'll see what comes of it.

As for classical training, the curriculum at UCI is about like everywhere else, but very flexible and there are some amazing teachers. I took "classics" (though to me that means Homer, Sophocles, Horace and Virgil, who also fascinate me) because that was where I found my interests to lie, and because of the influence of a couple amazing professors. In both literature and philosophy, I tended to stalk those professors that I liked most, taking as many classes as I could with them. I also took as many of the highest level courses as I could, because I found that those classes were the ones that really went into detail and the only ones worth the time. I also figured that, wanting to write in the western tradition, I ought to start from the beginning and work my way up. Recently I've actually gotten enough of a footing to feel tackling the more modern works is worth my time. I don't like to read anything superficially or in isolation. As a result, much of my writing reads like a web, allusions shooting off in all directions, to one with a fine enough eye to catch them. These serve as my anchors in the thinking of the West.

Anyway, I suppose it's strange that I have had so little interest in novels when I've aspired to be a novelist for as long as I can remember, but to me the modern concept of building from the roof down seems completely bizarre. I often wish I really did have the "classical training" you refer to, to be conversant in Greek and Latin, to read Plato in the original, that would be something to boast of. Still, thank you for your misplaced compliment. I doubt I could compare with any of your Harvard friends. Also, Hendrix and the Beatles were a formative part of my upbringing as well...As well as Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Jethro Tull and all that crowd. Nothing wrong with that.