The theme for book club this month was stuff read in high school, or school in general, so we chose from The Scarlet Letter and Chaim Potok's The Chosen and two more I can't remember easily enough. We, uh, chose The Chosen. After reading The Chosen I didn't understand what the point of it was, and I couldn't really imagine what a teenager was meant to take away from it.
My recollection of shit we read in school was that very little of it was enjoyable. Most were taut symbol-laden "thoughtful" books. With a lot of value-added stuff like history, diversity or whatever else. Freshman year I think I "read" Nectar in a Sieve. Sophomore year I think I "read" Things Fall Apart. Junior year's Crime and Punishment seemed less bad. But for the most part it was all so, so deadly. I think there's an article about this that Jen showed me. I resisted it at the time but I'm sure I was wrong.
I had the opportunity to ask a friend who teaches English in a middle/high school why they teach The Chosen in her school's eighth grade and she at first said it was a good way to introduce the idea of symbolism — the main character is injured in the eye by his antagonist-then-friend. He "sees" differently afterward; get it? "What about To Kill a Mockingbird," I asked, "I read that in eighth grade." That was taught in her school's seventh grade, she explained. (I guess they're too good for Where the Red Fern Grows?)
Admittedly, her other point–that kids were able to identify with the tension in the book's child-parent relationships–made a lot of sense. Still doesn't make the book any less boring.
Ultimately, I think most of us just viewed the book as being really weird, and esoteric even if you're familiar with Judaism. It's interesting in that it's set against the backdrop of WWII through the birth of the state of Israel. An interesting era, for sure, but novels are not eras.
All of which is not to say that Chosen is not entirely interesting — not true. There's an imperfect sort of anachronistic/fascinating example of respectability politics at the outset with the interest in playing baseball to show that Jews were good Americans. That deep dive into different Jewish groups in Jewish neighborhoods in war- and post-war New York City was interesting. Don't know that I needed to learn about those things during a Book Club, but they were interesting, in a sort of "interesting" way. And then there's the arcana of Judaism — a lot of it is hard to follow. And oh by the way — Gematria? I don't even know where to start.
Otherwise, I'm kind of scratching my head. It's clearly geared toward young adults yet it's stubbornly heady. And then there's the ending: the one character has a lousy relationship with his dad in part because his dad refuses to talk to him in order to teach him something about suffering. Fine, whatever, but when he's asked at the end of the book whether he'll do the same for his theoretical child he's like, "probably." Point being? And how would you teach that ending to a teenager? Don't get it.
Yeah, after seeing that, that was silly. One thing about that documentary though — the way they played up the mystery of why she stopped performing seemed incommensurate with the reason, which was Lyme disease — not to underplay Lyme disease, but it just doesn't read well as a cliffhanger.
I do wonder about Kate Upton's husky timbre, having seen those video game ads so many times. And I'm serious about clove; it's a very interesting spice.
February 15, 2015
Son, the truth is you can't fail if you don't try.
You're in the hospital. With a bunch of health professionals. And you're going to admit you smoked and drank during your pregnancy? Is it any wonder statistics relating to this stuff are probably bullshit?
"Losing" is not really in my vocabulary, to be honest with you.
The Sixers are so bad that their sponsors give away stuff when they score 90 lousy points, which is basically like the entire rest of the league, every night.
We had people over and I saw a friend absent-mindedly lean on the top of the fridge, only to wipe his hand off on the napkin he was holding. Shit, I can't remember the last time I cleaned the top of the fridge. It took me two more weeks to finally get up there.
January 14, 2015
On the other hand, a mostly unsuccessful attempt to determine the etymology of the phrase "last-minute Larry."
It took many years and many, many poorly executed freelance assignments to come to this conclusion, but eventually I realized that as a poorly trained, completely unseasoned writer I totally overused hyphens, especially when it came to compound modifiers. In this case, "middle class" is a noun, and a very common one, almost as common as the subject itself. YOU DON'T NEED A FUCKING HYPHEN. The weaker argument for hyphenation — "clarification" — doesn't apply here either: there's no such thing as "class economics," so notating that it's not the middle form of "class economics" is no reason to hyphenate. That the president puts this out there makes me distrust his interest in actual "middle class economics." Besides which, the middle class doesn't have endless hyphens to spare — quit trying to hog them all.
I was just looking up an address — came across this steady stream of one star Yelp reviews. There's something brilliant and inspired about all one-star reviews (there's that hyphen again).
