The Reading

Drew has a nice post about what and why he reads.

I read very little fiction. In fact, the fiction I read is limited to a six book rotation before bed. Five of the novels are from my childhood. Four of these five are written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Complaints from students sound much less serious when I'm reading about a seven-month stretch of blizzards punctuated by the occasional threat of starvation.

For awhile, this was bothering me because I have long associated being intelligent and intellectually engaged with reading fiction. This connection was initially cemented in the early moments of AV and my relationship - he actually got me to read Infinite Jest (three bookmarks, people - one for the text, one for that long section on Madame Psychosis I skipped, one for the footnotes). From there I was digesting the enfants terrible of the postmodern fiction world (DFW, Eggers, DeLillo). My engagement with fiction ceased soon after that, a halt I attribute to entering graduate school. I recently talked with some of my colleagues about this fiction-less or fiction-limited life that I live, and was shocked to find that my friends - brilliant, funny, thoughtful fellows - only read mass market-type mystery novels. One said that a professor of his at U of Iowa stopped reading fiction because he was reading philosophy for a living. Tricky how that works.

This explains why Cormac McCarthy - another of AV's categorical favorites - proved so tricky for me. It's just so hard that I can't drum up the intellectual attention and respect it deserves. If anything, the fiction available that seems worth the effort is too sophisticated (here I'm not discriminating. I can get at The Road about the same as I can get at Middlemarch). Fiction paralysis probably results from my ability to digest it the way it ought to be digested.

If I'm reading anything for fun lately, it seems to be nonfiction. Favorites include Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club (which I read and marked like crazy), Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour. I have read a few essays from DFW's Consider the Lobster, which have been satisfying. More satisfying was his piece in the New York Times last year about Roger Federer. The man can write about tennis and the mind-body problem in the New York Times ("Federer as Religious Experience," August 20, 2006). I never questioned his genius again after that. I'm planning to start Lakoff & Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh, but that probably qualifies better as work-related reading than reading for fun. It's my equivalent of AV's hauling Pynchon to the beach (have you seen the size of Against the Day? sheesh!).

Thinking

Susan has been kind enough to tag this blog with the "Thinking Blogger Award." Recent visitors may think such an award is misplaced. However, I am charged to tag other blogs that I read with such an award. Here goes:

• Although he's probably already received this award once or twice, Johnny-Dee and Company at FQI are a pretty thoughtful bunch.
• AH is on hiatus, but he's writing extensively in the areas he's interested in.
  
• I've read Nathan Acks' blog for many years (I've known him since high school) - I appreciate the recent iteration of his blog at EcoPunk.Info.
• Drew Moser - a friend from Seminary - writes thoughtfully about a whole host of topics.
  

On Like Donkey Kong

This week proves to be a busy one - teaching starts up again (and it couldn't come sooner ... I've turned into a heap of something over the last two weeks), my independent study starts, and we're moving at the end of the week. Not to mention that there are three deadlines - including the final, final draft of the LOST chapter - and a Jeopardy! audition on Wednesday. Yeegh.

Speaking of LOST, I'm still processing the season finale. Regular reader Wanda (!) thinks it was Ben in the coffin, and after a second viewing I think she is right. I was mostly cheered by the reappearance of Walt, although sans Michael, it didn't quite have the KAPOW! I was hoping for. In retrospect, though, it works out for me because I don't have to make any major revisions to my chapter. At any rate, I still don't get quite what was happening, but since I have until January to stew on it I'm not too concerned. Something will come to me, I'm sure.

Heroes ended predictably, and badly, although one of my ethics students predicted precisely how it would end about four weeks ago. After a season of half-hearted devotion, my favorite (and, IMHO, the best written) character is HRG aka Noah Bennett. I think it is because they took some time to devote to his backstory a la LOST, and so we have a better sense of him than any of the other idiots on that show. A constant MST 3K dialogue is running every time we watch Heroes, especially when Jughead appears (and in this case, disappears into the sky with his nuclear weapon of a brother).

We're into concert season. Friday night we saw The Bad Plus at the Boulder Theater. They were awesome, but someone heckled their opening band (who were not so hot, but that's just me), and that was strange and disorienting. But the Bad Plus delivered, and it was fun to see some of my new acquaintances and friends from my occasional radio gig there at the concert. On Saturday (6/2), we'll see Cyro Baptista and Billy Martin at the Boulder Theater - crazy anniversary drumming - and on the following Saturday, we'll hopefully see Wayne Horvitz and crew at Dazzle. June 10 we have nosebleed seats to the POLICE and I am really excited. I just hope they play my favorite songs.

Once we're in our new house I hope to start blogging again at a regular clip - much like I did last summer - although I'm not sure what form my philosophy posts will take anymore. I've rediscovered the joy and wonder that is continental philosophy (and for all accounts, I'm a sight better in the continental area than in the analytic one) so I'm anxious to spend the next eight or so weeks reading more deeply in the discipline. I'm also looking forward to the eight pounds I plan to shed in advance of my 10-year High School Reunion at the end of July (which I will attend sans AV, who will be hand-making film and shooting pictures on said handmade film while I am reuning). Should be fun.