Becoming the People We Read About & Why History's Still Relevant

Suffering from a bout of insomnia this morning, I polished off Julia Child's My Life in France, a great little book (not nearly as lengthy as her cookbooks) that I'd been stuck on for about a week; it's amazing how I read half in the book in a fit of rest and then, sleepless, finished off 150 pages+ this morning. It seems so odd when I think about some of the other books I have going that I'm muddling through: The Emperor of All Maladies and The Worst Hard Time, the former because of its sometimes-lengthy tangents into the science and concomitant scientific-jargon of cancer and the latter for unknown reasons. Nonetheless, it's always satisfying to complete a book, especially one whose author I've been imitating for a week or so in the kitchen. The result has been some delicious concoctions and the conclusion that I'm imitating Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, not actually Julia Child. (I just can't master the finer, airy tones of her voice; I can only make myself more high-pitched.)

Oh how adorable Paul and Julia Child were, always choosing to send out Valentine's Day cards because Christmas was simply too hectic for them.

At the moment, I've got some delicious honey-cinnamon-butter-glazed squash in the oven and it looks promising! But, I couldn't help but be conscious of the fact that in my journal today I recorded all the wonderful food I've been eating for the past few days while Nathan was visiting. There's a sense that as I read more, I try to write more. This conclusion doesn't seem extraordinary, but it does have vast implications. It means that as I write more, I trove my mind for increasing details to be recalled to the page. It's giving my writing (journal-writing, at least) a broader consciousness that means I am recording experiences I wouldn't otherwise note. Having watched (okay, I muddled through) the Republican debate this weekend, I also scribbled-off a few political observations. The result: a journal that is decreasingly selfish. Writing seems to be becoming a less selfish pursuit than before as my broader, worldly observations turn into essays, commentaries on news websites, etc. Maybe I'm just being optimistic.

As a historian, I found it difficult to take Julia Child at face value. Forgive me, I'm a natural skeptic (which, according to some people make me a negativist). It was quite the conflict, to love her and interrogate her every word simultaneously. What I loved most was her self-consciousness, her belief in her own ignorance, her feelings that she was never quite good enough that co-existed with her natural optimism...how refreshing to discover someone quite like me! It was also another check mark on the list of strong women, women I love. The history of women, especially those who forge their own paths resembles and do it outside the mainstream movements. (She talks so little about the way in which she was an icon for women.) I guess, maybe that is how I imagine myself someday, that is, existing outside the mainstream of queer people and yet blazing a path for others. Oh the dreams Julia Child gives me!

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Here's a link to a great article about jobs and historians (notice: not jobs for historians) from The Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/article/Historians-Reflect-on-Forces/130262/

Given my personal squabbles with UMF's History Department and my own feelings about history, I found the article timely and poignant. It touched on feelings I hadn't really been able to verbalize: this idea that I am going into the field of Social Work, but I am a trained Humanities and Social Sciences scholar and that I will find a place for those skills within Social Work and, more importantly, within the job market.

A Fine Ending to a Crazy Week

Sleep deprived and under the burden of allergies (or is it a sinus infection? we'll see...), I'm struggling to keep it all together and keep up with these posts. But it's nothing some Carole King and red wine can't cure, or home-made squash soup (oh the wonders of being home for the weekend!). In class on Thursday Gustavo told us he is editing a book, teaching two classes, directing six independent studies, practicing his own music, and then I lost track. How do these professors manage it all? I know sleep deprivation must be involved, but have they also find a hole in the space-time continuum that allows them to get all their work done. I don't feel lazy per se, but I wonder whether they ever feel like their drowning in work the way I do, as if they're never caught up.

The last work I read this week came by chance; returning Gary Snyder's Turtle Island to the library this morning, I decided to open it up (after a week of staring at it on my desk) while waiting for a paper to print. "What Happened Here Before" is magnificent and epic (not in scale, but in subject). Snyder tackles the long history of earth and condenses without missing or omitting. It left me renewed after Oroonoko, a tedious novella by Aphra Behn.

We're reading Yekl for Multicultural Literature and Film. It comes at an interesting time as Palestine seeks recognition from the UN. How ironic that they must have peace to be a full member, though the UN was created to help create peace, now they say Palestinians must do it themselves.

Last night I dined with some friends at a local restaurant, The Homestead, and we ended up sitting next to visiting writer Nikky Finney's table as she ate with some faculty and students. If you're a literature geek, you can appreciate sitting near a literary celebrity. I've yet to read too much of her work (if there is such a thing as too much), but the experience of being near greatness is always invigorating.

Howl & Some Thoughts on the Writing Process

I just finished two films about writers: Howl (2010) and Sylvia (2003). The first features James Franco, Jon Hamm (of Mad Men fame), and David Strathairn (of Good Night and Good Luck). James Franco plays the famous Allen Ginsburg and the movie cuts between an interview, an obscenity trial (Ginsburg was not on trial, but his publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, another poet as well, was), Ginsburg reading his epic in a smoky bar, and animations drawn from the poem. The second features Gwyneth Paltrow as the tragic Sylvia Plath and Daniel Craig (of James Bond fame) as her unfaithful husband, Ted Hughes.

I enjoyed both films in their own way. Howl, I think, was a selfish film in that it seemed to be more about the artfulness of it all, and thus about James Franco's ability to make film. If I didn't know anything about Franco and his pursuit of MFAs and PhDs as well as his Museum of Non-Visible Art (don't ask), I probably wouldn't have been as irritated. But all I could think about through the entire film was how much was trying to be done: a portrayal of Ginsburg as the writer, a historic account of puritanical 50s America, and a feat of animation in which poetry literally becomes imagery. There was so much going on; the movie became a portfolio to Franco saying 'look at all the different things I can do, I'm an artist not just some one-dimensional man, some actor.' Perhaps most frustrating was Franco as Ginsburg hammering out line after line of "Howl" with ease at the typewriter, vomiting up lines thick with metaphor with ease. It simply is not how writers, even great ones like Ginsburg, write or wrote.

Sylvia, by contrast, nailed the writing process. We see both Plath and Hughes hunched over at their dimly lit desks at night, grabbing their hair in frustration, thesauruses thrown open, searching for the right word. Hughes might find some inspiration from his bike rides, but he doesn't compose great work unlike Franco's Ginsburg who, with what seems like a few short wandering around Brooklyn (though admittedly there is greater depth to the plot), wrote "Howl." Plath as well slaves away, slogging through the crap to get to the good stuff all while raising children. We can't help but be impressed by the accuracy of the writing process, appreciate how much Plath's and Hughes's struggle for great writing (and greatness) mirrors our own.