Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

Comment: I had no idea this was a poem. I had heard of the movie about Nelson Mandela but did not realize that the title is based on this poem and that "Invictus" in Latin (at least according to Wikipedia means "unconquered". I've never heard of William Ernest Henley (is he a famous poet?), but this poem has a good story. Apparently he wrote it after his legs were amputated due to tuberculosis of the bone. When he originally published it, there was no title. An editor later added it. The last two lines are the soul of the poem. I wonder about the truth behind them. Are we really the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul? Are these things that can be captained or mastered? Are we more the stewards of our souls? The keepers, the protectors?

Thought for the day

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable; and
wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think
quietly, talk gently, act frankly..to
listen to stars and buds, to babes and
sages, with open heart; await occasions,
hurry never...this is my symphony.
--William Henry Channing

Comment: I found this quote in the "Live Your Best Life" section of O Magazine. Even if it's not always attainable advice, you've got to love those transcendentalists for trying. It really would be a beautiful path to follow. But it's difficult to stay on that path. One minute you're extolling the virtues of less and the next minute you want a new language program so you can learn another language, but you're lap top is old so you need a new lap top and so on and so forth. Here's a quote from Esther De Waal (I have no idea who this is) I have pinned to my board that I try to remind myself of in times of rampant frenzied consumerism, "Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants." It's such a powerful idea, it's just hard to live.

What I am Reading

Right now I am licking the fresh wounds from a breakup (too mundane to even detail), so reading is saving my life even more than usual. Reading is a big part of the plan of getting back on my feet. I've actually named my plan and it's called, The Continuation of My Awesome Excellent Self. Too much? Never!

Back on topic - What I am Reading: My neighbor had a copy of McSweeney's The Panorama Book Review, in which an interview with Junot Diaz caught my eye. I've read many interviews of Junot Diaz and each interview always convinces me that Diaz is an all-around awesome guy that I should read. So what I'm reading now is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

I am not far enough along in the book to pass on any great quotes about it, but here is something else I have been thinking about in terms of writing:

What's the importance of audience when you are writing fiction?

In the McSweeney's interview I mentioned above, Diaz said:

When I was writing this book [The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao], I was very aware in my head that I was writing about Dominicans in New Jersey - and that while I considered this experience universal that's not the way it's usually viewed by the larger world. But it's not like I could dumb it down because if I tried to write for some sort of vague mainstream audience, I would just lose everything that mattered in the book, I would lose all the awesome specificity and have nothing in the end to show for it.

...

If you're a writer like me, writing about people of color who are not always viewed as the center of the universe, you have to rely on your core readers, and on people who are nuanced readers, to keep your book alive...I think you should always write to the most specific audience imaginable, and from there springs the universal. It's not the opposite way - you don't write to a very big audience, and assume that's going to make your work universal. Every book that we continue to read a hundred years later, the thing that really joins it to other books that we're stlil reading a hundred years later is the extraordinary specificity.

In the few chapters of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao that I read, I can really see what Diaz meant. There were such specific details about Dominican life that he wove into the story in such a natural way - not in a way to explain it to the uninitiated, but in a way that tells you this is just what life was about for him.

Separately, in a New York Times profile of James Patterson (which I really enjoyed), I ran into the question of audience again. Patterson wrote "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls" - he is such a prolific author that he has 51 novels on the New York Times Best Sellers list, 35 of which went to No. 1. Some derogatively call Patterson an "airport author"but his popularity is undeniable.

From the profile:

Patterson considers himself as an entertainer, not a man of letters. Still, he bristles when he hears one of his books described as a guilty pleasure: “Why should anyone feel guilty about reading a book?” Patterson said that what he does — coming up with stories that will resonate with a lot of people and rendering them in a readable style — is no different from what King, Grisham and other popular authors do. “I have a saying,” Patterson told me. “If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of people, think about them a little bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of people in this country go through their days numb. They need to be entertained. They need to feel something.”

I have a short story and an essay that I am trying to finish, and I think audience is always the biggest question for me. Who am I writing this for? Why should my audience want to read it? Would I want to read it? I haven't found any easy answers for this yet.

What I'm reading

Sudeep writes:

I'm reading Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam. Yes, it's about basketball. Halberstam
follows the 1979 Portland Trailblazers. There lots of fascinating stories and people from a time when the NBA was getting more and more exposure and money from television and was changing into what it is today. It's so good I'm actually hesitant to keep reading it, I don't want it to be over!

Also, did you know Lucille Clifton died? I really like this
poem of hers:

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

What I'm reading

Roman says:

The Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

What I'm reading

Steph writes:

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. I'm really into detective novels after reading Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. I like how lean mean spare reporter-like the prose is. And I like the old fashion words (like "I'm tight" or "I'm drunk" or "dame" or "she's one hot dish") hard drinking hard living stuff. It's fun even when it's completely ridiculous. I also just read The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith - A M A Z I N G!!! It's a brilliant lesbian novel that actually inspired Nabokov's Lolita. I recommend it to gays and straights alike. She also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley and a new biography on her just came out and man was she WAY ahead of her time, so cool, so crazy, so gay gay gay!

What's everyone reading?

Anyone reading anything interesting lately?

Every night I look at Will in the World and curse for myself for not finishing it. I've finally realized that the only way I'm going to finish the thing is by making it required reading. When it's late and you're tired and it's been a long day, somehow a learned biography of William Shakespeare just does not hit the spot.

But I have stumbled upon a really interesting book about post-war American photography called The Ongoing Moment that is unlike anything I've ever read before. The author, Geoffrey Dyer, doesn't even own a camera, but he was interested in the subject and wanted to know how one photographer's images inform other photographers. How they play off each other so to speak.

He also talks about the process too of being a street photographer. That's something I've always wondered about but never knew. Some photographers like Stieglitz hid the camera because they thought if people knew they were being photographed the moment was somehow perverted. Stieglitz would actually hide his camera in his coat on the subway to photograph people. Then there are other photographers like Garry Winograd who were very blatant photographing on the street. You can actually see people staring at him in the photographs. Diane Arbus was also of this same school of thought. She actually thought it was a more honest photograph if the subject was aware she was being photographed. An interest debate, no? I'm not sure where I fall. I guess both have their place.

So what are we all reading/watching/listening to? I'm curious!