Photo of the day

Nikki S. Lee is an intriguing Korean-American photographer who has this series of photographs where she inserts herself into different subcultures and poses as one-of-the-gang. The photo above is called the Hispanic Project. Others include the Yuppie Project, the Lesbian project, the Hip-Hop project. They're really vibrant, dynamic photographs.

Geoff Dyer--Who is this guy???

Is anyone a fan of author Geoff Dyer. This guy absolutely intrigues me. I started reading him because of his book on photography called The Ongoing Moment. It's hilarious because he's not an expert on photography, he even admits in the book that he doesn't own a camera, but the book is insightful, expansive...I really learned a lot.

But then the guy is also a novelist. I recently saw a book he had written called Paris Trance. There was a naked lady on the cover so I was a little too embarrassed to buy it. I'm a prude, what can I say?

I just don't know how to peg this guy. He's an essayist, novelist, and goodness knows what else. Does he have a cookbook out as well? He's also written a sort meditative post-modern self-help book called Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It (isn't that the greatest title?). What an enigma!

Anyway, is this guy well-known? Is he really as brilliant as he seems or is he just all over the place? Paris Trance intrigued me but I was afraid it was going to be too similar to Henry Miller. It's a "Lost Generation" novel about ex-pats in Paris. It could be good or it could be really really bad. I don't know. Every time I read jacket copy that talks about a book being erotic or sensual, I just think it's going to degrade the female characters. My most recent attempts at both Philip Roth and John Updike left me feeling grossed out and alienated from their characters. Because it's always from the male character's perspective, the women just come across as objects the male characters vent all of their frustrations and anxieties on. What's usually described as "erotic" comes across as crude and in humane.

What I'm reading

Just finished a fine coming-of-age novel called Jim the Boy by Tony Earley. I have never heard of this writer but I was browsing in the bookstore, the cover caught my eye and I felt in the mood for a well-written but not too serious novel. And that's exactly what I got. I really respect writers who write what they know. And I think Earley is that kind of writer. His characters and setting ring true and I trust that he can recreate this world that is so foreign to me.

Although, in some ways the idyll of a small farming town in the south isn't that foreign. It's reminiscent of other great American writers like Faulkner or Harper Lee or Willa Cather. Although it's foreign to me personally, I'm familiar with the place in my imagination. Just as I feel familiar with the mid-century world of prep schools from books like Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace and Lord of the Flies.

Earley has written a sequel to Jim the Boy called The Blue Star. I hope to start reading it today. It's been a long time since I read a novel I really enjoyed and didn't feel like work but also felt satisfying.

What are y'all reading?

Thug: ok or not?

A friend runs the SF Examiner crime blog but I had to call out the use of "thug" in this story about an arrest on the Muni platform:

If it “walks like a duck with a gun, talks like a duck with a gun, it’s a duck with a gun,” police said.

Bayview cops couldn’t avoid getting into a shootout Saturday. Two officers exchanged gunfire with thugs by a public housing development, though no one was hit, police said.

He said that the use of thug is to meant to denote "would-be criminals" but I think it's too presumptuous. On language: what do we really mean by "thugs"?

Apologies that this is not poetry-related.

Zone

Thougths on "Zone" ? I found some quotes from this poem in a book I'm reading and thought them quite striking. Although it's fascinating that the language is different in Poetry Foundation's version because of variations in translation. I liked the lines in the book I'm reading better.


Comment: More to come. The end of August was funky for me. I had a surprise appendectomy which set me back a few weeks. We were also visiting my family in CO for a few weeks. Hope you all are well!

Photo of the day

January 8

by David Lehman

The wind does whistle but it also hums
if you say it does, because you have
that power: language makes it possible,
and you have the choice: you can revile
the slogans and shibboleths of groupthink
or you can watch TV commercials as if
they were aesthetic products to be
appreciated and analyzed: not much
of a choice, is it: let's go beyond
"either/or" and see if we can't just ignore
what offends our nostrils, and makes
something out of our minds, out of our
minds in both senses: let's see
what happens when the imagination as
conceived by Wallace Stevens marries
the language as conceived by millions daily

From The Evening Sun, 2002.