Ur-Texts: Goodbye?

While I realize that I only have a few more ur-texts left on my list (see below), I am postponing the project. I have too many good books building up on my shelf that I need to read. Working at a bookstore, this happens. The book that tipped the scales though, was not from the bookstore. It was a hardcover copy of Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, that I bought for a dollar at a local church yard sale. Joel has been recommending this book to me for over a year, and I decided it was time.

A few loose ends to wrap up (for now) on the ur-texts project:
1) The boundaries of the project (ONLY reading ur-texts) slipped, and I recently read Coffee: A Dark History. I hope to post on it soon. I also began reading in Ched Myers' commentary of the Gospel of Mark, Binding the Strong Man.
2) I realize that, at the inception of this project, I had a list of ur-texts to read. I will now post the (slightly amended) list, featuring links to my posts on the various texts. Starred texts have been added since the project began.

- The Dharma Bums (Kerouac) posts I and II

- One Man's Meat (White) posts I, II, and III

- Moby-Dick (Melville) posts I, II, and III

- Cannery Row (Steinbeck) posts I, II, and III

- The Prophet (Gibran) struck from the list; see the post

The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence) the post

still unread are

- various poems (Berry)

- The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) which I strike from the list for timeliness's sake.

- For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway) which I strike from the list since it is merely a favorite, and not an ur-text.

- *The Art of War (Sun Tzu) a surprise for many who know me; I hope to write on this book soon.

- East of Eden (Steinbeck) the book I name when asked for my favorite book of all time.

- *Freight Train (Crews) the ur-ur-text; the first book I ever read.

*     *     *

So there it is. It feels freeing to put the ur-texts to rest for now. Having gone just over halfway down the list, I hope to finish at some later date. For now, I can say that a common theme to many of my re-readings is the importance of context. The books that most shaped me shaped me to some degree because of the books themselves, but also because of where and when I read them. Or, as Melville says in Moby-Dick:

"Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts."

Ur-Texts: The Practice of the Presence of God (and The Prophet)

This book has a lot in common with "The Prophet." Rather than being written by an early-20th-century Lebanese-American poet, this one was written by a late-seventeenth-century French monk.

They are definitely not the same book, don't get me wrong, but reading them back to back has illuminated the connections between them. I still hold to my statement that "Practice... etc." is one of my Ur-Texts, while "The Prophet" is not.
 

I) Formal Similarities: Retelling

"The Prophet" works as a series of poetic/philosophical monologues, each prompted by a question from a citizen of Orphalese, whence the titular prophet is preparing to depart.

"The Practice of the Presence of God" engages in a similar sort of framing: rather than the townspeople inquiring of the soon-to-depart prophet, Father Joseph de Beaufort informs us of his conversations with the already-departed Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.

This distancing paradoxically gives weight to the accounts; while historians value the primary source, literary myths gain value from repetition. Thus, the fact that the sayings of the prophet and Brother Lawrence are coming to us "second hand" (metaphorically, in Gibran's case, and more literally in Joseph de Beaufort's) makes them more credible.


II) Content Similarities: The Smallness of Large Things

"Practice... etc." is about the smallness of large things; or rather, of the largest of things, God. Though he lives in a convent, Brother Lawrence does not report of finding God at prayer times; indeed: "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament."

So, too "The Prohpet" sacralizes the mundane. Each citizen asks a question relating to his or her daily pursuits, and the prophet shares the spiritual resonances of that thing, just as Brother Lawrence creates/participates in the sacrament of the washing of the pans.

I had trouble, while typing this, deciding whether to call this idea "the smallness of large things" or "the largeness of small things." On the surface, they sound synonymous, but they accent different parts. I chose the one I chose because these books are not, for example, about making the washing of dishes great, but rather finding the greatness in the washing of dishes. Thus, the smallness of the large things (general spirituality in "The Prohpet," and a Catholic/Christian conception of God in "Practice... etc.) is revealed. It is not only in the large place ("upon my knees at the blessed sacrament") where the largest thing can be found, but also in the smallest place ("in the noise and clatter of my kitchen").

Ur-Texts: The Prophet

While reading Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet," I realized that this book really hasn't been that formative to me. I love reading it, and it has moments where its language really shines, but it has not had any kind of serious or notable influence, at least not as notable as the influences of the other books I've been re-reading.

It expresses very eloquently ideas that I have about the world, and though I am striking it from my list of ur-texts, I would not miss the opportunity to share some quotes:

"Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him, saying, 'This for God and this for myself; This for my soul and this other for my body?'"

"If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein. Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern, and the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also."

Ur-Texts: Cannery Row II or III

I just finished reading Cannery Row, and feel that, rather than summing up the book as a whole, it may be better to discuss my favorite of its chapters, chapter 17.

I) Truth

This chapter more than anything else Steinbeck has written (except maybe "Log From The Sea of Cortez") demonstrates his ideas about non-teleological truth. The narrator recounts Doc's previous search for truth, then Doc, on a collecting expedition, picks up a hitchhiker, who reprimands him for drinking and driving. Doc promptly casts the hitchhiker out of his car, threatening violence. Immediately thereafter, Doc orders the beer milkshake, which he has been contemplating since early in the chapter. "Well here is was and what the hell," thinks Doc, and then, as the chapter reaches its climax. Doc drinks the beer milkshake, and realizes that it tastes "just like stale beer and milk."

The milkshake has, at this point, become a sort of Holy Grail stand-in, yet Doc's triumph in finding it is preceded by a moment of bad faith with the hitchhiker, and followed by a lie ("I've been drinking it for seventeen years"). This Grail is clearly not some powerful image of purity as much as it is a thing for the sake of the thing.

It is this kind of truth that Steinbeck is after: things are what they are. It is a philosophy that has a lot of resonance with both Zen Buddhism and biology, and though I am neither a Buddhist nor a biologist, I like this kind of truth, partially as a result of this book's warmhearted, funny, deeply sad and touching portrait non-teleology.

II) My Beer Milkshakes

In my first post on "Cannery Row", I linked to a piece I wrote for the Williams-Mystic student literary magazine about my experience making a beer milkshake there, but that is not the only beer milkshake I have made.

My good friend Jesse Albanese, maybe after having read "Cannery Row," or maybe just having heard about it from me, was curious about the beer milkshake. Ben and Nathan were also there, and so we made a second beer milkshake. There are a few ways to explain why that beer milkshake was not nearly as satisfying as the first beer milkshake. It could have been that the higher quality of the ingredients paradoxically lessened the quality of the milkshake. It could have been that, having just had dinner, we were not hungry for it. I suspect, though, that it was because a second beer milkshake is an impossibility; that the value of the beer milkshake is in the experience of fearing it and accepting it. Once that experience has been had, it cannot be re-had.

III) Conclusion

Having had tangible impact on my real-life actions is something that few books can claim on me, and so, between the beer milkshake(s) and the reading at Cannery Row, this book's position on my list of ur-texts is indisputable.

Ur-Text-ish: A "Cannery Row" Story and Miscellany

I just wrote a more focused post on my favorite chapter of "Cannery Row," (to be posted soon, after a bit of polishing) but I wanted to relate another story that just couldn't fit into that post. First, though, a few notes:

I) David Wax Museum featured in this interesting article. It makes me wish I had the kind of house I could host concerts in.

II) As you may have read before, I'm also blogging for my place of gainful employment, and I wrote the two most recent posts (two links!). I've added that blog to my blogroll (at right) so when it updates, you can read it there. I'll stop posting about it now. Thanks to all y'all abroad who read it; my managers, upon viewing the google analytics report, were impressed by the international audience. I was able to account for all the countries except for a small northeastern European country (Estonia? Latvia). If any of y'all are there and reading, please let me know. I am curious.

My photo of "Doc's Lab." (Western Biological, in real life)

 III) All right, the story about "Cannery Row":

Like "Moby-Dick," I read this book while studying in the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program. Unlike "Moby-Dick," this reading was not the first time I had read this book. I knew I loved this book coming into the program, so during our field trip to the west coast, my literature professor, Rich King, invited me, as we sat on the docks next to the (defunct, now tourisit-ified and gentrified) canneries, to read aloud the introduction to the class. It was a surprisingly moving moment, in which the power of place was incredibly evident. I read the "disclaimer," the dedication, and the introductory passage, and by the end, was almost choking up. I am not typically moved to tears by books, yet sitting there, mere yards from Doc's lab, the Palace Flophouse and Grill, Lee Chong's, etc. I could barely help myself.

I am also not usually connected to particular books as physical objects, but my Penguin paperback of Cannery Row now contains a map of the row, sketched while I was there, and it accrues new underlinings and dog ears at every read. Both in terms of place and the book itself, "Cannery Row" is, for me, a book of physicality.

Ur-Texts: Cannery Row

I chose "Cannery Row" to follow "Moby-Dick" mostly because I knew after the long hunt for the white whale, I'd be hankering for some lighter fare. But re-reading Susan Shillinglaw's introduction,  I found this gem: "[Cannery Row's] multiplicity of perspective is roughly equivalent to 'The Doubloon' chapter in 'Moby Dick,' and both books are, in fact, about how one sees and precisely how deeply one understands."

Never have I had a segue so simply handed to me, and I'm going to run with it, because it is this book's quality of vision that makes it one of my Ur-Texts. At its most fundamental level, "Cannery Row" is an encouragement to see things as they are, not as we want to see them. This is a lesson that I also learned reading "East of Eden," but that will come later.

I love just about everything about this book, from its dedication ("To Ed Ricketts, who knows why or should") to its disclaimer ("The people, places, and events in this book are, of course, fictions and fabrications" emphasis mine) to the final, climactic party scene. Other noteworthy portions of the book include the first, enigmatically unnumbered chapter (the beautiful opening lines of which are quoted here), and the beer milkshake sequence. More on the beer milkshake here.

And of course, more to come as I finish reading this lovely little book.

Ur-Texts: Moby-Dick III

 I finished "Moby-Dick" a few days ago, and my reflections will be brief, as I am already deep into the next of my Ur-Texts.

My first reaction upon finishing is that "Moby-Dick" is infinitely more fun the second time around. The expectation of a rip-roaring whaling yarn safely removed by my first reading, I found myself enjoying the frequent philosophical digressions, unprompted shifts in point-of-view, and the strange Shakespearean monologues that make "Moby-Dick" such an unconventional and difficult read.

Much of this book's effect on me comes from my powerful, hands-on experience first reading it at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Some of it also comes from the aforementioned philosophical digressions. "Moby-Dick" is, among many other things, a meditation on the ineffable. My favorite of the book's metaphors is the flat front of the head of the sperm whale: "gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature" (Ch. 79).

This contemplation of the mysterious things in the world is something that I, as a person of faith, value greatly, and feel is often overlooked today. I close with a few quotes from the great book, and an exhortation to read it yourself.

*     *     *

"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." - Ch. 82

"You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all." - Ch. 85

"An allegorical meaning may lurk here." - Ch. 90

"Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts." - Ch. 99

Ur-Texts: Moby-Dick II

"All these things are not without their meanings."
-- Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Chapter 7, The Chapel

*     *     *

"Moby-Dick" is the most recently re-read of the books on my ur-texts list. I finished it for the first time in the fall of 2008; being no wine connoisseur, I will not fine the book for its recent vintage. Taken in another light, though, this a book of oldest vintage; published in 1851, it has only "The Practice of the Presence of God" (set down in the 17th century) to compete with on the aforementioned list.

A large part of this book's impact on me is contextual, in particular, due to the location in which I read; namely, at the Mystic Seaport Museum and at sea. I studied in an undergraduate program at the museum that involved reading "Moby-Dick." Figuring that I would never be motivated to read such a tome without the prodding of the academy, I signed up. 

Reading "Moby-Dick" at the museum almost guarantees a love for the book. I read chapters in all parts of the Charles W. Morgan, a ship built in the same year as and across the river from the Acushnet, the ship Melville sailed in during the trip that inspired "Moby-Dick." I read out on the head rig of the SSV Corwith Cramer as dolphins swam by underneath. I read in my bunk when the raising of the anchor chain kept me from sleeping.

Additionally, the museum is where Barry Moser came to do research for the illustrations in the University of California edition. The whaleboat, the try-works and, most often encountered in my twice-weekly visits to the blacksmith's shop, the harpoons are all familiar friends. As a museum collections intern, I was able to cross the ropes and touch (for inventory purposes, of course) pretty much anything on the museum's grounds.

So how could I not be affected by "Moby-Dick"?

p.s. The first three sentences contain semicolons not only for their punctuational value, but as an homage to Melville.

p.p.s. My classmates and I participated in a dramatic re-enactment of excerpts from "Moby-Dick." Watch highlights here, featuring me as Ishmael, in bed with Queequeg and as Tashtego, going overboard.

Ur-Texts: Moby-Dick

"I have swum through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try."
-- Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Chapter 32, "Cetology"

*   *   *

A few notes on "Moby-Dick": I was hoping to title my blog posts on this book using chapter headings from the novel itself, but my desire for consistency in blogging (in all things, really) has led me to title this post not "Loomings," but "Ur-Texts: Moby-Dick."

Yes, the book's title includes the hyphen, and the full official title is "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale." Melville demonstrates his love for semicolons from the get go.

And though it has one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature (see the page above, excerpted from the beautifully illustrated University of California edition), "Moby-Dick" does not actually begin with "Call me Ishmael." Instead, it begins with a less-than-accurate etymology of the word "whale," followed by an introduction "supplied by a sub-sub-librarian" entitled "Extracts," consisting of quotes regarding whales from sources as multifarious as the Bible, "'Something' unpublished," Darwin's "Voyage of a Naturalist," and a few whaling songs. In my edition (the aforementioned University of California printing) the extracts take up six pages. Only then are we invited to call him Ishmael.

There is much more to say about this book, and about my re-reading of it as a part of my ur-texts project, but this is a blog, not an American antebellum metaphysical sea novel, so I will curtail my musings here for now.

Ur-Texts: One Man's Meat III

"We never used to identify songbirds, we used to lump them and listen to them sing. But my wife, through a stroke of ill fortune, somehow got hold of a book called A Field Guide to the Birds -- Including All Species Found in Eastern North America, by Roger Tory Peterson, and now we can't settle down to any piece of work without being interrupted by a warbler trying to look like another warbler and succeeding admirably."

*   *   *

I'm almost done with "One Man's Meat," and will immediately thereafter move on to "Moby-Dick, or, The Whale," hopefully finishing before February is out. Spring is coming, and Heather will be back on this continent, and while the reading of so momentous and slow-moving a text could survive either of those impending changes, the simultaneous arrival of both will be so exhilarating as to force to me to read lighter, springier stuff.

Ur-Texts: One Man's Meat II

I: Quotes

I may run afoul of copyright lawyers for posting this many excerpts from this book, but it seems the only way to communicate the charm of these essays is by quoting them.

From "Compost," the most disjointed of the essays:

On joining a "Friends of the Land" club:

"I suspect I joined my club only because I was rattled. When I am composed I feel no need of affiliating myself with anybody. There is a lot of the cat in me, and cats are not joiners."

On learning that old clothes are in fashion among the elite:

"It must raise the spirits of the millions to whom old clothes come naturally and inevitably to learn how blue their blood has been these many years."

On the ideal army:
"They will be imaginative, bold, and alive, but their minds will not be on conquest nor will they confuse raw materials with the good life. They will be trained to attack today's injustice rather than to repel tomorrow's invasion."

Following immediately after "Compost" is "Freedom," another of my favorites:

"If it is boyish to believe that a human being should live free, then I'll gladly arrest my development and let the rest of the world grow up."


"For as long as I can remember I have had a sense of living somewhat freely in a natural world. I don't mean I enjoyed freedom of action, but my existence seemed to have the quality of freeness. I traveled with secret papers pertaining to a divine conspiracy."


II: Formative Words

Coming from a program in media studies, it is hard for me to remember that, in this Ur-Texts project, I am writing about formative texts and not favorite texts. My experiences in media studies classes remind me that, as a member of the audience, my preferences (that is, favorites) matter; what they do not remind me is that I have been formed by these texts.

The above quotes, while certainly among my favorites in this book, were selected because they are ideas that rang entirely true with me when I first read this book. In contrast with my re-reading of The Dharma Bums, I find myself not re-evaluating this book as much as remembering it. These phrases are phrases I had, at various points, memorized, and used to direct my actions. Some of them, in particular the last quote from "Freedom," still strike me as beautiful and noble ideas that should be better integrated into my life.

Ur-Texts: One Man's Meat

I cannot say enough good things about this collection of E.B. White's essays. I've been writing down favorite snippets from the ur-texts as I read them, and this one stumps me by revealing a gem every page or so. Consider: 

"Clearly the race today is between loud speaking and soft, between the things that are and the things that seem to be, between the chemist of RCA and the angel of God."

or

"I don't take a night journey on a railroad for the sake of duplicating the experiences and conveniences of my own home. When I travel I like to get into some new kind of difficulty, not just the same old trouble I put up with around the house."

or


"I recall a twinge of satisfaction in having a book banned: it suggested that my stuff might be more substantial than it appeared at first glace."

But I don't only love this book -- then it would be merely a favorite book, not an ur-text. These essays opened me up to the possibility that non-fiction could carry the power of fiction, and endeared the short form (approx. 1,000 words) to me as a writer. The straightforward, self-deprecating style of E.B. White is something I strive to emulate whenever I write.

Ur-Texts: The Dharma Bums II

At long last, I've finished my re-read of "The Dharma Bums." It was interesting to read with Joel's critical comments punctuating the reading (I also got to talk more about Kerouac with Joel at the New Years Party).
 
Whether because of those comments or because it would've happened anyway, I got really frustrated with Kerouac around the middle of the book. He goes home for Christmas, stays with his parents, and gets into stupid arguments with his older siblings. That's fine, if not in keeping with my vision of Kerouac the wanderer. It gets annoying when he tries to re-cast these struggles, including his own immaturity, as a deep spiritual quest. I realize that all young folks (myself included) tend to see all their problems as being writ large; my suffering as the suffering of the world (shout out to Ben Mazer, who made this plain to me when he described Tchaikovsky as "angsty teenager music"). That being true doesn't make it any more enjoyable to read.

The ending of the book, however, returns to all the things I loved about "The Dharma Bums" when I first read it. It may have been those last chapters alone that sold me on this book to begin with. Kerouac finds himself encamped alone as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, and he communes with nature, which makes for lovely prose:


"In the middle of the night while half asleep I had apparently opened my eyes a bit, and then suddenly I woke up with my hair standing on end, and I had just seen a huge black monster standing in my window, and I looked, and it had a star over it, and it was Mount Hozomeen miles away by Canada leaning over my backyard and staring in my window."

It's that, coupled with Kerouac's pure religious sincerity, that I found enjoyable and meaningful in "The Dharma Bums" this time around. A lot of today's hipster/ironic culture takes its cues from the Beats, who, it must be admitted, could be incredibly ironic. What I love and, on my initial reading, embraced about this book was its sincerity. Nowhere does Kerouac seem to think that he is not on the true path to the Dharma, always becoming a Buddha. Everything in the book, even the annoying Christmas interlude that makes plain his privilege, is mapped onto this spiritual quest, which is never doubted or satirized. I find that admirable, and worth imitating.

I close with one of the book's last paragraphs, one of my favorites:

"Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said 'God, I love you' and looked up to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.'"

Ur-Texts: The Dharma Bums

A great cover: funny & poignant, like the book.

We are about to embark on a party of epic proportions, a multi-day gathering that actively resists the usual party descriptors of "extravaganza," "orgy," and "debauch." It promises to be a low-key affair, populated with friends past and present arriving from near and (not too) far in time to celebrate the New Year, but arriving early enough (tomorrow afternoon) and leaving late enough (Saturday afternoon? or later?) and in great enough numbers (edging towards 30) that it invites comparison to the Kerouacian debauches of "The Dharma Bums."

I make this comparison, perhaps, because I am re-reading "The Dharma Bums." It is the first in my re-readings of my ur-texts. I plan on reading all the books on this list (as well as a few more, depending), and commenting on their place in my personal mythology. Thus far (I haven't finished my re-read), I love "The Dharma Bums" all over again. It reminds me of all the flaws and beauties inherent in the Beat/Zen/Hippie/Stoner outlook on life, and it reminds me of those things in ways that no self-consciously Beat/Zen/Hippie/Stoner writings can. Kerouac was writing early enough in his era that he was not yet a cliche, and the earnestness that comes from that position shines through in his writing. Consider:

"See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures."

...which has great rhythm and pacing as well as great content; alongside a brief, hilarious gem like this:


"let's see, 'Lake below . . . the black holes the wells make,' no that's not a haiku goddammit, you can never be too careful about haiku."

It's that assured spirituality of the counterculture combined with that flippant and reverent need for beauty that really speak to me in this book.

Perhaps more to come as I finish this book, as well as a meditation on Wendell Berry's "Jayber Crow," the book with which I finished out my new reading before embarking on this ur-text project.

Ur-Text

As is the privilege  of the under-employed in winter, I've been reading a lot lately. Nathan and Frank and myself have had a conversation or two about reading -- how we do it, what we get out of it, etc.

I myself am more of a drive-by reader. I read fast, noting important passages for later review, but ultimately feeling the need to move on to other books. This strategy has its ups and downs, but one of the ups is that I always feel welcome to return to a book, feeling that I may have missed something in an earlier read-through.

So, while reading the Wendell Berry chapter in Bill Inchausti's Subversive Orthodoxy, I realized a desire to revisit The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, The Wild Geese, etc. This quickly blossomed into a desire to re-read all of my favorite, formative books; my Ur-texts, to use the German (and if you want to know more about the prefix "ur," just let me know -- it's one of my favorite German prefixes). A quick perusal of my bookshelf, my earlier post on my favorite books, and my memory yielded these results:

The Dharma Bums (Kerouac)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Cannery Row (Steinbeck)
For Whom The Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
Moby Dick (Melville)
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
One Man's Meat (White)
The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence)
The Prophet (Gibran)

and of course, the poems of Wendell Berry.

Bear in mind, the notion of the ur-text is not just "books I like a lot," but rather "books that are the basis of my founding mythology as a person." If it was the former and not the latter, the list would be much longer.

So, dear readers, I leave you with the question, to be answered in the comments or in your own blogs, facebooks, etc. :

"What are your ur-texts?"