readin’

I am reading the essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” in the book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which is just bogglingly fantastic and many, many, many parts of which are quotable and poke-able and think-about-able (And which, goddamnit, I’ve just noticed is, as per usual, making me write like DFW. Every fucking time I read DFW I start writing like this. Sorry. I’m not going to be able to stop, but I promise, it’s not on purpose.), but the part I would like to poke at the moment is this:

“This is the reason why even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as a gift, i.e. it’s never really for the person it’s directed at.”

While this is GREAT, I’m not entirely sure it’s true?

Ian will roll his eyes and back this up completely: I think I have a pretty broad definition of what “art” is. But even given that, I think a good ad can be art just as much as, say, a chair or a dress or a building can be art, and I think even Ian would agree that at least two of those three things are art-able.* But so anyway what I mean is that I think I am predispositioned to grant the status of “art” to basically any “design” that wants the title. Ads are creative, they’re human-made, they impart a message that is meant to affect other humans. That’s all pretty art-ish. Also, many of them are straight-up pretty. And a lot of what lots of people consider “art” is just straight-up pretty, with no further goals. So. There’s that.

Also, is that really actually a good or accurate definition of art? That art has some status of a gift, that it is for the person it’s directed at? What about protest art, which is frankly basically an ad? What about Vito Acconci, staring at museum visitors and masturbating under the floor of the gallery? What about Francis Bacon and all those really violent, mean paintings of slaughtered pigs and headless popes, or whatever? And speaking of popes – what about art that was commissioned? Not to use an annoyingly cliched example, but the Sistine Chapel was bought and paid for – who is that painting “for?” Julius II? The Chapel’s visitors? Eh…somehow this isn’t as strong an argument, now that I’ve typed it out, as I imagined it in my head. So okay nevermind. How about Emily Dickinson’s poetry? Since she didn’t expect it to be published, it wasn’t “for” anyone other than the artist. So it wasn’t a gift. So it wasn’t art, according to this definition?

Um. That’s all I’ve got.

God this is a really fucking amazingly good essay. GUESS WHAT IT IS NOT REALLY ABOUT BOATS.

* See also: the Philip Treacy episode of Project Runway, wherein Ian claimed that none of those things on the models’ heads were hats, and neither were they art. Also, [Ian puts cat on head] “Look at my new hat!” and [Ian points to his pants] “Look at my awesome hat!” and [Ian points to a hat] “This is a lobster!”

One of the shows we’re going to be putting on next year is All’s Well That Ends Well. I’m starting to go through and read the plays so that I can announce them and publicize them and all, so I pulled out my old Complete Works Of to re-read it. This is the book that I used when I took a class on Shakespeare in college. (…which I did not do well in, and did not enjoy. I do not like reading Shakespeare. There. I said it! It’s true!) Reading Shakespeare is boring, so I took cute notes to entertain myself. Now they will entertain you, too! BE ENTERTAINED!!!

I drew lots of animals in All’s Well That Ends Well.

I’m not really sure whether they actually had anything to do with the plot that was happening next to where I drew them or not (Because, as in college, I got about two pages into the play and then got distracted and stopped reading. Unlike in college, I did not have to force myself to start again. Screw you, education!).

I don’t remember any lions being in this play, so my assumption is no.

This is King Lear. He’s crazy.

Hey, look, my college haircut!

I actually didn’t hate King Lear that much. The tragedies are my favorites. Hamlet, then Othello, then Macbeth, then King Lear, probably, in fact. Maybe that’s not a very smart-sounding list: those are just all of his most-read tragedies, I guess, aside from Romeo and Juliet. But the comedies are boring because they’re all the same (cross-dressing, trees, a crazy man, an obscure reference to vagina that you feel very clever for recognizing when you’re 16, marriage) and the histories are boring because they’re SO FUCKING BORING.

I could kind of tell what I had written a paper about by my recurring notations. Midsummer Night’s Dream was all marked up with these demon heads:

Though I think maybe they were actually supposed to be dogs or something? I think I put them next to all of the references to animals. So I guess I wrote a paper about that? I drew little daisies next to all the references to flowers in Hamlet, and little 70s-dude signs next to all the references to masculinity in Macbeth:

So I guess I wrote about gender in that one?

Anyway. I shouldn’t say I don’t like Shakespeare – I like plenty of it. And you can’t not like Shakespeare; it’s not allowed. And he did say some cool stuff, and teach me some cool new lines which I should totally use all the time from now on:

Okay, you know what?  I super-duper LUV this blog: fishslapsababy. It is, frankly, pretty much my single favorite active blog right now. This shit is absolutely on the surreal-ass-tip. Do you want to know, sort of, in a weird way, how many adults associated with McSweeneys and/or (you won’t know which; trust me!) children tutored at 826 support the drinking of carrot juice? Oh, this blog’s got you covered. Do you want to hear a commentary on the presidency of a literacy-promotion-charitable organization by an indie-darling essayist, as related by a child who has NO IDEA that she’s actually famous? Oh, this blog’s got you covered. Or perhaps you’re just interested in some generally SURREAL FUCKING ASS SHIT? Omg, dood, tuh-rust me: this muthuhfuckah’s got. You. Covered.

Maybe 826 has something more intelligent and, like, you know, intellectual to say about all this. All I know is that I FUCKING LUV IT. Check this shit out, yo, if you’re human at all.

YOU. ARE. WELCOME.

(I know! I know! It seems like it’s so fucking great and cute and literary and surreal that it CAN’T POSSIBLY BE REAL, right? But I am assured by intimate members of the McSweeney’s 826 team that it is. Blame him.)

EDIT: Okay, so I was half-tipsy when I wrote all that and super-excited, so – sorry if it doesn’t make any sense. By “can’t possibly be real,” I meant, “actually written by small children, as opposed to a dadaist literary experiment performed by famous-author members of McSweeney’s.” Also, since it is indeed written by small children, keep that in mind before commenting or anything.

I’ve only read Infinite Jest once, and it took me three or four tries and like five years to do it. I dog-eared lots of pages of it while I was reading it. I was thinking of going through and quoting the things I had marked, but it’s a lot, frankly, and also I don’t even know why I marked a lot of it. Lots because it was a good line (I like to mark lines in books that I like), but, honestly, lots because I didn’t know what that word meant, or I wanted to remember to look that song up later, or whatever. But, anyway, here are some things I put between the pages of my copy of Infinite Jest (which is – like 2 or 3 % of all of the copies of Infinite Jest in North America – technically Chris’s copy of Infinite Jest):

This is the inside of the front cover of the book. This is a testament to how long it took me to finish this fucking thing. I write notes to myself to remember stuff and most of the time I stick them here, just inside the front cover of whatever book I’m reading at the time (and then, obviously, I leave them in the book and put it back on the shelf and never look at them again, so, you know – a good system). I usually only accumulate a couple of these in the time it takes me to read a book. Some of these are books that I wanted to read. I don’t know what some of them mean (one says “little square hat!”). The one on the left-hand side was set aside because it was so good and important. It says, “This is surely a curious fact,” and is a line from a math paper that Ian read to me.

Hubba Bubba wrapper. This must have been a bookmark? It might mark the end of one of my failed attempts to get through the book.

“Swiffer would like to make it known that we don’t believe our fine family of products has any connection or history with this house. Our deepest sympathies go out to the Jones family.” (Press release – one famous incident in a haunted family mansion is that brooms & mops – & swiffers – danced/floated/cleaned a la Mickey & the broomsticks.)”

This was a really-scary-at-the-time dream I had that I thought I should write into a short story. I don’t know why I stuck this note into this book, at this particular passage (which lists things you might find out if you ever spend time in a substance-abuse-recovery house. The page is dog-eared to mark: “That God might regard the issue of whether you believe there’s a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it’s interested in re you.” I still might make this into a short story, so no fair plagiarizing it yet.

A scrap of a crossword puzzle from an in-flight magazine. This book went to Kansas with me more than once, I think. This was to mark the book’s list of years.

Just a blank scrap of paper. Another bookmark, I guess. This paper is from the kind of notebook I used at my most recent job, though, which indicates that this failed attempt was fairly recent. Probably the one just before I actually finished the whole thing.

Apparently an aborted attempt to keep track of the years. On one side it says:

“Tucks – Hal 12
D.A.U. – Himself dead
Glad – Hal 18, crazy”

And on the other side, a phone number: “224-8097”

A list:

“Pep Patties
Envelopes
Felt”

I guess this is a shopping list. These are the kinds of things I have to write down to remember to buy. Peppermint patties and felt.

Giant pile of napkins from – something?

A copy of a comic I wrote called “Common Illnesses Afflicting the North American Robot.”

I don’t think this photo marked anything in particular. Probably just another bookmark. I like this photo of Ian, though. (And! More bookshelves! I think that makes this meta.)

Another mysterious list:
“Funnel
Collandar [sic]
[unreadable]
[unreadable]
bubbles
poppers
booze
underwear
ears
eyepatch
teeth
[unreadable]
mustard
Pants
Dress
Tshirts
Skirt
Short-seasony
Movie”

I swear to god – all of that is true. It looks made up, it’s such a ridiculous fucking list, but it’s not. It’s stuck in the pages next to a dog-eared page marking: “The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that’s really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed.” I don’t know whether I was marking that because of “over the age of about Kent Blott” or because of “stuff that’s really real uncomfortable.” Both are neat phrases.

“(Just something small & strange but so awful & horrific & portentious in the dream) (ditto pg. 830)”

I don’t know what I was marking with this note, but pg. 830 is dog-eared to mark: “…only now it was standing on top of the railing at the side of Gately’s bed, looking down at him now from a towering railing-plus-original-tallness height…” I remember liking that line because it was both very accurate and very creepy.

This is obviously all a little stupid, and it’s dumb to care when famous people die. But fuck you guys.

Quick – before I leave work for the day! I need your opinions.

So, a while ago, I had sort of decided to go on a “good book” binge. This was purposely ill-defined from the start. I read, like, The Awakening, and, I dunno, something else vaguely “classic”-ish, and then went to the library one day without a plan and panicked and got something by Jorge Luis Borges, which I suppose only fits into some “classic” lists, but which definitely fit into my “good” list, so that wasn’t too bad, but then I finally received a whole slew of Chuck Palahddnichseicstoolazytolookupthespellingnik books that I had ordered from the library, so I read those, and I suppose that counts as “good,” though maybe stretching it a bit. Then I bought a bunch of non-”good” stuff in the dollar bin and so have been reading that. So anyway, now I’m about to go to the library again, and I need some suggestions.

My requirements are thus: Classic is a plus, but not necessary. Literary and smarty is a necessity. Nothing boring – this is for fun, so fuck you, Joseph Conrad. Physically small enough to read on the subway is a plus. I’ll accept pulp or trash or crap or whatever as long as it has an excuse – that is, like, Richard Matheson might count, since he’s sort of a classic in his genre, but Stephen King probably wouldn’t…or actually, he probably would, because, screw you guys. Though actually, I probably shouldn’t really accept pulp or trash, since that’s not really the point of this exercise, so…you know. Don’t tempt me with it unless you must. A list I could work my way through would be nice: the 100 Greatest Books of All Time That Aren’t Boring According to a Group I Respect, or something along those lines.

So! Recommend, please!!