you're fired! from the western canon.

By way of Andrew Sullivan, a list of ten books that should be stricken from the Western canon. Not being an English major and having only read, uh, one and a half books on this list -- A Tale of Two Cities (yes, in an eleventh grade English class) and Absalom, Absalom! (currently reading and over which I have fallen head over heels, mind, thus leading me to vehemently disagree with its inclusion) -- I am honestly in no position to comment on these selections. But the snark within is really quite funny.

To any readers out there (if you indeed exist), what works would you strike from the canon, and are there any canonical works you would especially recommend to this perpetually literature-starved reader?

faulkner is a titan among authors.

I am currently reading Absalom, Absalom!, and, though I still have half of it left to go, I can say that, once again, William Faulkner has proved himself to be of almost unparalleled brilliance. I am sure that I will have more to say later, but here is my favourite passage just far from the book:

We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktow; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and explicable -- Yes, Judith, Bon, Henry, Stupen: all of them. There they are, yet something is missing; they are like a chemical formula exhumed along with the letters from that forgotten chest, carefully, the paper old and faded and falling to pieces, the writing faded, almost indecipherable, yet meaningful, familiar in shape and sense, the name and presence of volatile and sentient forces; you bring them together in the proportions called for, but nothing happens; you re-read, tedious and intent, poring, making sure that you have forgotten nothing, made no miscalculation; you bring them together again and again nothing happens: just the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves, shadowy inscrutable and serene, against that turgid background of a horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs.

Because his characters are tragic and messy, aspiring to glory but ever absorbed in said mischancing. Just brilliant.

"you moderns have a tendency to worship at the altar of the fathers."

And now for something completely unrelated to my previous posts --

I have the Sotomayor confirmation hearings playing on C-SPAN.org right now, and why am I totally not surprised that they are essentially a platform for all twenty members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to quote things out of context (e.g., Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI] and Tom Coburn [R-OK] both cited Alexander Hamilton's writings in The Federalist Papers to prove two wholly opposite points in their opening statements) and attempt to outdo their colleagues in slavish devotion to the Founding Fathers? It makes me very much want to smack them over the head with "Thomas Jefferson's" foreward to Jon Stewart's America (The Audiobook), whose pithy captures my frustration with the rituals that accompany this entire nomination process.

Speaking of Tom Coburn, may I also make the point that I find it difficult to believe that, trained as he is in medicine (an admirable field, to be sure), he can honestly go toe-to-toe on issues of constitutional law with any nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers notwithstanding? It would be like me attempting to argue string theory with a quantum physicist, which -- no, just no.

mix: for your summertime driving pleasure.

In a complete 180-degree reversal from the mood that characteriesd my previous entry, I would like to offer a favourite mix of mine that was first compiled during the crushing pressure that accompanied spring semester final exams & papers as I dreamed of better, more liberated days. In despite of my general dislike of driving -- or, more accurately, my general dislike of the necessity of driving when living out here in the suburbs -- I find the concept of tires against asphalt and wind in hair as the speedometer registers ever higher numbers to be quite alluring. This is particularly the case during balmy summer nights, when the breeze is just cool enough to offset the lingering heat of day. It was with this in mind that this mix was conceived.

for your summertime driving pleasure
♪ download ♪

--

1. Metric -- Stadium Love
   
2. The New Pornographers -- Sing Me Spanish Techno
   
3. Something Corporate -- I Woke Up In A Car
   
4. LCD Soundsystem -- Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
   
5. Larrikin Love -- Well, Love Does Furnish A Life
   
6. The Strokes -- What Ever Happened
   
7. Death Cab for Cutie -- The Sound Of Settling
   
8. The Libertines -- Don't Look Back Into The Sun
   
9. Train -- Drops Of Jupiter
   
10. Tegan and Sara -- Back In Your Head
    
11. Jump, Little Children -- Come Out Clean
    
12. We Are Scientists -- After Hours

I think that I shall be offering more mixes here in the future, as, in a narcissistic sort of way, I enjoy showing off the scope and depth of my iTunes library of more than 7,500 songs, although you shall soon discover that I tend to sample from some artists more than others. I find that mixes also function as aural memoirs in a way -- the musical backdrops to a constantly unfolding life.

with all of the luck you've had, why are your songs so sad?

When queried about my mother's condition by concerned friends and acquaintances, it is both easy and rational to describe it as it is. The surgery on Friday went very smoothly and only required an hour and nine minutes. She is now recuperating on a bed in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and will remain there for another three or four days. Yesterday, she was able to drink some water, sit upright, even walk a short distance with my father's assistance. My mother of restless temperament, of indomitable positivity -- my mother will be okay, I know that she will be.

Yet no prognosis, however cheery and encouraging, quite prepared me as I approached the metal frame that bored my mother pale and still, bound to life by beeping machines and plastic tubes. A forty-eight year-old woman of accomplishment and perpetual motion reduced to a beating heart encased in a ragged limp doll that asked for her daughters' embrace, and I gave mine to her, of course, though she could not reciprocate. I had brought Oscar, a little pink hamster beanie baby that Carson gifted to me two Christmases ago, and thought to leave it snuggled beside her -- a personal effect to disrupt the monotony of a medical ward, a childish gesture from someone she has raised to adulthood. So I stood at her side, constantly fiddling with Oscar's placement -- against her shoulder or perhaps resting upon her wrist instead -- because I could not look at my mother for too long: who can bear to gaze into such fragility?

The pain will disappear and sundered tissue will heal. Treacherous cells that festered within will become just another item in her history to be duly reported in the course of all subsequent encounters with the medical field (may they be few), but this entire ordeal has fundamentally unsettled me, left me with a sadness that may fade but will never wholly depart. That my mother could be felled by so small an abnormality -- it is so frail, perhaps artificial, this concept of health, that we must struggle such to preserve it against these inscrutable elements. An academic abstraction, this, until it humbles a member of one's own blood. And, God, I have been so privileged -- more so than I could have ever deserved in the great cosmic game of chance -- to have been brought up in such a household that the notion of anything disrupting it seemed alien, inconceivable. Nothing external has disrupted it -- we are betrayed only by ourselves in the end, crumbling into non-being, a careless disintegration until we are worn smooth.

But do we not fight against this inevitable, accepting its weight even as we shift beneath it? I cannot erase the image of my father laying the back of his hand against her forehead as he checks for the usual post-surgery fever, and I think: how privileged they are, to have each other after all of these years. I do not know what they were like as twentysomethings, whether they were enveloped in the same passions that now tempt their progeny. All I see is the understated permanence of the bond that has led them through decades manifested in a love whose perceptible silence is impressed upon every moment of their lives.

It made me think of something else. Foreshadowing the value that I place on the autonomy of self (or perhaps I was merely a bitter adolescent, as we are, I think, always less than we perceive ourselves to be), I wrote in previous existence -- that is, I wrote when I was thirteen or thereabouts -- that I would never be kissed, never have a boyfriend, never attend senior prom, never get married, etc. I have clearly violated half of this vow many times now (indeed, I am currently violating it), but I should like to think that I have remained true to its essence. See: Wollstonecraft, Mary; "Independence I have long considered the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue." This was how I perceived my future self too -- at least, my future self over the next decade as I attempt to attach to my name every academic degree known to man (jesting, mostly) -- but, now, I can think of no worse fate than to be lying in a hospital bed somewhere with nobody to clean the sweat from my brow.

In the meanwhile, I have been trying to keep my mind occupied with William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and my much missed baby grand piano. I have been listening to more music than usual, not all of it necessarily good for my state of mind (on the other hand, new Imogen heap -- First Train Home, first track off her forthcoming album Ellipse!). Really, it is mostly during the very late evening hours, when my iPod insists on melancholy strains of piano and I am trying to transpose my thoughts from neuron to page, that things can get a bit overwhelming.