The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, by Don Robertson

Just as Morris Bird III wouldn't take too long to voice his thoughts, neither (for once) will I.

Sometimes it takes a kid to tell us what we already know, but are all too often sure to forget or to ignore. Be brave. Be courageous. Make mistakes. Make big old, crazy, why-the-hell-not mistakes, because they might not be mistakes after all.

And life sure wouldn't be much of a Big Adventure if we didn't take that rebellious step once in a while.

Irish Renaissance, by Richard Fallis

Once again (how does this seem to happen?), I have fallen behind on my book-blogging duties. So for this book, at least, my comments will be cut short. It only becomes a duty when I fall behind and the unwritten posts hanging over my head become a stress. So out with the old, in with the new!

Irish Renaissance marks the end of the Ireland-themed run of books. I'll be reading more, without doubt, but without the feeling of necessity that came with the Mitchell application.
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When all the history of Ireland and Irish literature is put aside, when the politics of the authors and the publishers and the theaters is sifted through, what comes through is that the Irish have a simply incredible collective literary consciousness.

And I love its style.

If you talked to me at all during that application process -- perhaps it came through in some of my posts, too -- you heard about how much I was impressed with and moved by Irish lit. Its simplistic-seeming yet incredibly elaborate technique. The concentration of politicization and opinion on the island, and the way it burst forth in words. The way movements created new styles of writing, of expression, of creativity.

So the title of Irish Renaissance is far from presumptuous. The book explores in very great but still comprehensible detail this unique conjunction of time, place, and spirit that has given the world an Irish voice.

Irish Stories & Tales, edited by Devin A. Garrity

The short story really is a beautiful art form. But I've already said so enough on this blog.

Almost each of these stories amazed me for being at the same time remarkably simple and notably complex. You get out of these stories what you bring to them -- and the more you understand the social situations in Ireland at the time of writing, the more import these stories carry.

I wonder, though. What would Mark Twain have written had he been Irish?

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

I wrote before that there was going to be a theme to the books I was reading. That theme should be pretty clear. (Ignore the Palahniuk book.) Well, the great big reason was that I had applied for the Mitchell scholarship to Ireland, and I decided I better be damn well prepared if I should get an interview.

I didn't.

And that's ok. It's always somewhat crushing to put so much effort into a single channel, only to have it come to naught. But the Mitchell people sent out the nicest form rejection letter I've ever read, and were very prompt about the whole process -- all of which, as an applicant, is incredibly well appreciated.

The thing is, I don't feel as though the whole application and preparation process came to nothing. I'm still considering one of the graduate programs I discovered. I've read more Irish literature, and more about Irish literature, in the last couple months than I ever had before, and there's some fascinating stuff. So at the very least I've discovered a love of a national literature that I had not yet explored.

Or, it might yet be that this process will change my life in more concrete ways.

It could be that I end up applying for, and being accepted to, this graduate program, and I up and move to Ireland. Or it could be that this literature affects my writing, and even that it affects my life.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first James Joyce work of any length I've read. It certainly warrants future readings, as I'm certain there are layers only discoverable after the initial once-through. I can understand why Joyce is so often labeled the best or most significant writer in the English language in the twentieth century; but, what makes a writer so good in my book is that he speaks to me.

And Joyce does. I don't dog-ear pages. But I did one in this book. The page with the line: "The end he had been born to serve yet did not see [...] beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him."

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Where I'm going. What my purpose is. Nor do I think there is, or should be, only one answer. But maybe some new adventure is about to be opened to me. Or maybe I'm about to open it.

Maybe it will have something to do with Ireland, or with Irish literature. Maybe not. But either way, Portrait is the kind of book I will carry in my soul wherever or however I end up.

Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk

Welcome to Palahniuk as the first duplicated author on the blog! The first post, about Choke, dealt largely with sex. And, well... there's really no way around having the same focus again this time.

In short, Snuff is the tale of three dudes and a talent wrangler backstage at the set of the biggest gang-bang porn shoot of all time. And a lot of what you get is just about what you might expect from such a plot. Actually, the single most scathing book review I have ever read was about this novel. I'm going to try not to repeat what Ellman says, and only partly because of her extreme distaste of the book.

But I can't avoid it completely, because I had settled on my topic before rereading the review. Ellman makes a point, which she words more eloquently than I would, that the issue with Snuff is not the subject matter -- I actually think that for those not morally against pornography the premise of this book has a good deal of promise, and is certainly uncharted literary territory -- but the way in which Palahniuk handles the topic. The premise could have opened the book to all kinds of questions or examinations of modern sexuality, the role of porn in society, positions (no pun intended*) of men and women, gender studies, interactions between 600 horny men in a single room, humans as animals. It could have... but it didn't.

At least, if it did, Palahniuk buries these examinations beneath crassness and trivia to where no one would want to dig them out. My opinion: his big mistake was writing from the perspective of the three male characters during the film shoot. Mark Twain's flourish of dialect this was not -- and, although I haven't ready Ulysses, from what I gather about it the writing style of Snuff wasn't exactly on a par with James Joyce's stream of consciousness. In-time thoughts from characters can read like a character's mind, and that's ok. But they shouldn't read like they came from the author's mind, and he wrote them down and never edited them again. The almost amateur feel to the prose, and the mental capacities of his three "actors," prohibit any of the good stuff (literarily, not pornographically) from coming forth -- if, in fact, any of the good stuff was conceived** of in the first place.

All that said, apparently I still enjoyed the book enough to finish reading it. And it's certainly an interesting read -- although believe me, it wouldn't be in the top 10,000 books on Amazon had it been a debut novel.

Or by any other author.
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*Ok, I lied. It was intended.
**Totally intended.

Ireland: A Short History, by Joseph Coohill

I consider myself a fairly well-educated person. And I recognize that in the island of Ireland, there is the Republic of Ireland and there is Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. So when I met a group of Irish people -- that is, from the Republic -- about this time last year, and I wanted to find out where exactly they were from, I thought it reasonable to ask whether their hometown was in north Ireland or south Ireland.

Apparently that's the wrong question to ask a group of Irish people.

I caught the blunt end of a diatribe about the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and how the Republic is certainly NOT to be distinguished as "south Ireland," and so on. In vain I attempted to explain that I simply wondered where, geographically, on the island they were from, and that my cardinal directions were in no way political differentiations.

Eventually I patched things over, but I learned how -- or at least how not -- to ask that one question of a person from the island of Ireland.

I have my reasons for choosing this book to read right now; same goes for many of the likely upcoming books. If those reasons develop into anything, I'll certainly mention something here. But even without said reasons, this book was a good introduction to the major themes of Irish history -- which, as with most good history, granted insight into the psyche of the Irish and Northern Ireland people as a whole. More than many western countries in the last two centuries, Ireland has had to deal not only with war, colonization, religious conflict, and terrorism, but with its very identity. Being Irish does not simply mean being born in Ireland -- true, granted, of any nationality. But the question of Irish identity carries with it heavy questions of religion, of opinions about the English crown, of how one reads the history of this small island.

Many Americans, in my experience, relate to the Irish; whether because of immigrant backgrounds or whether because of Saint Patrick's Day, I can't say. But in general, our level of ignorance about our closest European neighbors (does Iceland really count?) and their incredibly relevant social and political history is fairly shocking, considering how much their history since the founding of the United States has actually affected America. Even just getting an idea of the themes of Irish history would help prevent people like me from loading an innocent-enough question and shooting it off to the wrong Irishman.

Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer

With certain books, isn't it a shame that you can only once read it for the first time?

For me, that once with Everything Is Illuminated was more than three years ago. I remember thinking then that I had experienced one of those moments that can never be duplicated. This would be, I thought then, a book that sticks with me.

And I was right. It stuck. And the moment could not be duplicated -- but really, this re-reading was just as wonderful, if not in the same ways, as the first time I read the book.

Foer's story (or really, three stories) isn't about what happens to the story, although there are some parts where you can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness or the awkwardness. No, the stories are about what happens to the characters, and what happens is just as often internal as otherwise. Maybe none of the characters get where they wanted to go... and maybe none of them really get anywhere. But that's what makes this book so wrenching, and not in a they-shot-Old-Yeller kind of way, and so beautiful.

I'm glad I ordered a hardcover copy. This is one of those books I will read again -- more than I already have -- especially when I need inspiration as a writer.