Daily Thoughts 10/6/2009

Anton Ebert (1845–1896): Lesende junge Dame, Öl auf Holz, 35 x 25,5 cm; fotografiert im Dorotheum Wien

Daily Thoughts 10/6/2009

This morning, I am working on creating a poetry bookmark. Some of the authors which I am thinking of listing are Maya Angelou, Taylor Mali, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, W.S. Merwin, and William Carlos Williams. I have the titles chosen which I am going to use. It will be a matter of finding appropriate public domain images.

I put The Quiet War by Paul Mcauley on hold. I actually saw Mr. Mcauley a couple times when Dixon Place hosted a science fiction reading series. I have not been there in a very long time. http://www.dixonplace.org/html/literary_series.php

Life is funny sometimes. I am still looking for ways to update the displays. I may actually buy some signage. The director wants me to buy a sign for the current events display which is interesting.

Alice Fantastic was a very interesting book to read. In some ways it stretched my limits. The story had a tremendous amount of sex, lots of dogs, and very odd characters. The lifestyle described was even more bohemian than most anything which I have read about. Somehow, I found the writing a bit transgressive; purposely staying at the exact edge of what most people would take in a novel.

For example one of the characters lives off the paycheck she receives from the city of New York because she fell in an open manhole; another has a rather indiscreet lesbian romance; another is dying of cancer; and another watches her boyfriend push someone under a subway train.

There are a lot of very eccentric place descriptions as well. Alice, the main character makes her money by betting on horseracing which means she spends time at the horsetrack which is a place full of colorful characters.

There is a sense that all the characters live at the edge of madness, being just charmed enough to avoid falling completely off the edge. Alice's family seems to get by by rescuing stray dogs and stray people. This gives the novel a genuine charm which makes the novel bearable among the madness of the story.

Some people will love the writing. This is the kind of novel for someone who likes Jack Kerouac at his most extreme or Charles Bukowski or Diane Wakoski. It has the feeling of being all the way on the edge. I liked it, but had a hard time reading it. It made me uncomfortable in a good way.