Fragile Industries

Good Charlotte

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.  These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

"The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Preface, 2nd edition (21 December 1847).

Recently finished my second reading of Jane Eyre.  It is not the book I read as a teenager, looking for a slurpy Gothic.  I didn't realize its seminal place in fiction, seeing only the hackneyed trope of governess-falls-in-love-with-master-with-dark-secrets.  I didn't appreciate the rich splendor of the language, seeing only a lot of very small print taking a lot of space to do what could have been done with fewer and shorter words.  I didn't, most importantly, admire or even perceive the bravery of the author and her heroine and the choices they both made, as I was seeing with a 1970's teenager's eyes with no idea of the suffocatingly stilted life of a middle-class, isolated Englishwoman in the mid-19th Century.  I thought Jane "sappy" and wished Rochester were better looking.  I wanted them to stop the endless verbal fencing and tear off a piece.  I had probably just finished reading Valley of the Dolls.

This time, of course it was completely different.  The most heart-stopping passage for me is not in the text, but the Preface, quoted above.  Bronte was responding to her contemporary critics who found the work "coarse," especially if, as was rumored, the pseudononymous author "Currer Bell" was a woman.  If I thought that Bush, the folks at Fixed Noise, and all the fundamentalist Right could understand the big words, I'd send it out as a big spam mailing, because it says so perfectly what needs to be said, and said often.

Right on, sistah.

Ramblin', Ramblin', Ramblin'

Here's Another Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself Into . . .

My last seven days have been a blur as I assembled my application for UC Santa Barbara, Fall '07.  Just what I need.  Another BA degree.

Bear with me, though.  UCSB has the only state-school issued degree for Book Arts in California (and one of the few in any school in the US).   Assuming my lower division core requirements are transferrable, I only need to take the arts classes. The campus is relatively close, a pleasant commute if not during rush hours, the department looks excellent, and, well, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel of my reasoning process, here's my application essay on the topic, with editorial comments:

    This application’s dry recital of my past leads to a reasonable question: why would a middle-aged ex-lawyer (no doubt painfully analytical) [see: dweeb]seek immersion in the subjective field of art? Why book arts?

    The first book I remember holding was the classic "Pat the Bunny" – a wonderfully interactive text urging me to feel softness and smile at the mirror’s reflection. Not surprisingly, this iconic experience [hey, like the "iconic"? sounds academic, huh?] brought me full circle to participation with the physicality of books.

    Naturally, I moved on to word content. Reading as my childhood drug of choice. I escaped eagerly into the magic of Narnia and the Manhattan of Harriet the Spy. Still, there was comfort in the book itself, the paper's smell, its weight propped against my knees. I collected (and still do) old books for their beautiful bindings and endpapers. Books were ubiquitous in my home, school, and eventually, my career where words are quite literally law.

    Art, on the other hand, was where I escaped from my primary escape. My iconic [maybe I'm overdoing the icon thing . . .] “art moment” was staring, entranced, at a life-sized reproduction of “Starry Night” as my mother explained that this mad Dutchman painted what he felt, not what others saw. To him, stars whirled, cold glitters against midnight. I got it. I got it. If I had known the word “Eureka” I'd have shouted it!

   Yet grade-school art curriculum convinced me that I definitely wasn't an artist. I couldn’t for the life of me draw a recognizable portrayal of anything. Swirling stars?  Not allowed. Fortunately, I thrived in free-form extra-curricular classes. In one summer program, I steered away from the crayons and paper, knowing I was a failure in that department. I picked up a scrap of board with a curved border like an ocean wave, a big lump of cool, smooth clay, and a fistful of pebbles, toothpicks, straw. I unplugged my brain and played. Within a few days, the board was deep blue, and the clay had morphed into a detailed, miniature tropical island. The piece was selected for a children’s art exhibit touring the country. [This is a true story and why I can honestly, if pathetically, claim to be a "nationally exhibited artist" on my website.] The attention was pleasant, but puzzling. This wasn’t Real Art. I couldn’t draw.

    So on to my left-brain world and career for the next 30-plus years. I did “crafts” in my spare time, relishing the sensuality of the materials. My mind slipped sideways and time disappeared as I turned out odd, paper-collaged furniture and suspended peculiar assortments of objects from the ceiling. In 1989, while working on a routine scrapbook of my travels to Israel, a light bulb appeared over my head. Why not use a real book – better yet, change it into a mock publication to suit my theme? Thus emerged a very funny pseudo-Biblical text: “And lo, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and not a taxi was seen.” [God hasn't hit me with lightning yet for this heresy.] Taking off from there, I focused on altered books and assemblage, ignorant that these were recognized themes.

    When I retired in 2002, I devoted more time and attention to doing what I loved, read extensively, and took local classes. I realized that not only did others share my delight, but that they had dignity and respect – my work might even, someday, be Real Art. I launched my online studio earlier this year (http://www.fragileindustries.com) and found joy in creating altered and/or handmade books and assemblage shrines on commission. Selling things I make with my own hands has given me the confidence to honor my right brain and my enthusiasm for what I call “participatory art” – grown-up "Pat the Bunny."  My stars can swirl.

    I could continue as a self-taught pseudo-folk-artist, but that can be another way of saying "dilletante."  I learned from experts in my other pursuits, and sincerely hope to do the same with this passion. [Pretension concludes here.]

I also sincerely hope that essay convinces them that, to paraphrase the Elephant Man, "I am not a dweeb!  I am a human being!"  One with a right brain as well as a left.  I've been asking for a lot of spiritual help lately, but at the risk of turning my Devoted Readers into my own Private Prayer Circle, please point your mojo towards Santa Barbara.  I really want this.

So now I'm scrambling to come up with a respectable, or at least not embarassing, portfolio.  My relatively new, idiot-proof point-and-shoot digital is not up to the task of macro shots, needed for some of my mini altered books.   I can't get closer than about 30 inches from an object or it turns fuzzy.  I've researched and think I want the Canon SD700 IS.  It is not insanely expensive or complex, does macro but still has an "auto" setting, gets good reviews, and most importantly, has an image stablizer to counteract my shaky paws.  (Thanks to my meds of yore, I have a slight residual tremor.  Just enough for old-timers at AA meetings to ask me if I've just come off a bender. Fun.)

If anyone out there has a better suggestion, let me know ASAP.  I'm going to Costco to get it in a couple of days.

Year-End Roundup: Books

Here's Steven King's List of Top 10 Best Fiction of 2005.  No, that's not a typo, I meant 2005, not 2006.  I'm too cheap to buy fiction in hardcover unless it's Harry Potter (he shows up in the list, BTW).  So most of these are in paper by now, and I've read three on the list.  I agree with SK about those three, so I'm running out to get the rest.

Laugh if you will about SK, the guy knows his stuff.  He (and the books he recommends) are only occasionally literature, but they are always good reads. 

I've read a lot of good non-fiction this year, and mentioned most of it, but I must note one more: What Jesus Meant by Gary Wills.  Wills is no ideologue [I'm using that word a lot lately, like "icon" -- looks like I've been going through my thesaurus alphabetically] ranting about the end times.  He's a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and Greek scholar.  His translation of the Gospels are based on innovative but sound interpretation.  The introduction convincingly explains better than I can that the Greek of the source manuscripts needs to be read as it was used in Judea of the 1st Century.  The result blows away the candy-ass capitalist Jesus the Christian Right is feeding us.  This Jesus rocks. There's no need to be a Christian to enjoy Wills' book.

However, off topic, I must admit: between this book, Anne Rice's Christ The Lord, and this year's C.S. Lewis reading, I am reluctantly, hesitantly, and quite intellectually reapproaching Christianity.  Never to the point of exclusivity, never to deny the viability of other paths, but perhaps to the point of saying that Jesus's message really works best for me.  Stop me before I start wearing tinfoil hats.

Here It Is, Your Moment Of Zen

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Current Reading, C.S. Lewis-Flavored

My earlier reading was all about Mormon History, and my post drew some interesting comments.  I'm done with that list.  I've bogged down in the middle of the last in the collection, the second exhaustively-researched tome about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a frontier tragedy associated with LDS 19th century history, and have given up finishing it.  I feel like I may not know as much as can be learned from the wildly inconsistent original sources, yet I  know as much as I want to.  If I read more on the general topic, I'd look for a non-hagiographic biography of Brigham Young (the Joseph Smith book, No Man Knows My Name by Fawn Brodie was a brilliant exploration of a complex man, with much psychological insight).  I'd also like to read some first person diaries, or collections of same, from women on the trek to Utah and early settlement.  But for the moment, I'm Mormon'ed out.

I didn't intend to get into a religious reading marathon, but I'm now reading C.S. Lewis.  For relief from tales of Golden Plates and magic spectacles, I grabbed one of several of Lewis's books I picked up several months ago at Barnes and Noble.  In the wake of the success of the Narnia film, much of his non-fiction writing has been republished, and at B&N there was a huge table of inexpensive paperbacks.  I started with Mere Christianity.  I also have The Weight of Glory (previously read, see blog motto in upper right hand sidebar) Miracles, Surprised by Joy (previously read), among others, and, of course, My Favorite Books In The World, The Narnia Chronicles.  I'm not new to Lewis, I read a biography some years ago, and saw both the play and film Shadowlands, about his late-life marriage to an American woman. 

Lewis is the most brilliant, or at least the most enjoyable, writer I've ever read.  As noted, I had read some of his non-fiction, adult books years ago, and  came away with a great respect for the author, but little spiritual insight.  I have been for years so conflicted about Christianity that I was afraid reading more about his beliefs would make me think him a fool, and I liked him too much for that disillusionment.

It's a very different experience now. These are the most accessible and evocative works about spirituality, not witten with a scholar's distance, but written from within a faith, in print, to my mind.  While I don't know that I'll ever be able to make the leap of faith to a belief that Christ was The Only Son of God and the only road to salvation, I agree with everything else he has to say about a spiritual life.  It's about Love.  It's about decency and self-accountability, yet it is very much about Joy.  It is about that universal longing for Connection -- a yearning not satisfied by worldly pursuits.  The closest I came to satisfying that unspoken desire (Lewis calls it the "inconsolable secret") was when I was in Alabama with the Red Cross last fall.  It was that combination of a positive loss of ego (Bill Wilson calls it "freedom from the bondage of self"), and service to others.  Not in that deadly way of superiority that standard charity doles out.   This was daily, nearly constantly, treating every person I came in contact with, as special and deserving and my equal.  Lewis says that the central message of his religion (and mine too) is that every person you meet is immortal, every person you love, work with, delight in, snub, abuse, ignore -- they are all immortal beings and as much a part of (ok, I'm going to say the Word) God as you are.  There are wonderful immortals and asshole immortals, but that's not my job to know why. 

Reading his work is  a revelation, but not with new ideas, more like the expression of every inchoate belief I harbored in a straightforward, rational framework.  It puts things in context for me.  I'd now call myself a "small-c" christian.  My Higher Power was not so stingy with his physical incarnations -- the Buddha, Mohammad, perhaps even The Giant Rat of Sumatra, may she enfold me in her holy whiskers, I cannot and will not judge.  Jesus is the physical part of the trinity easiest for me to digest and understand given my upbringing, so I'm jake with believing him to be divine.  I cannot forbid entrance to a blessed life (and perhaps afterlife, I'm still shaky on that too) to sincere seekers along other paths, the paths accessible to their era and culture.

I'm more comfortable saying "I don't know" in response to the Big Questions than any organized religion I know of.  So I'm keeping to my own path.  Now, it is not such a dark and overgrown trail, thanks to Lewis.  I'm still open to a church of Aslan.  Lacking that, I'll stumble along, but I feel a very real Presence alongside me.

Highly recommended:  Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, and the lecture "The Weight of Glory" from the book of the same title.  Also, for background, the play or film Shadowlands.

Current Reading, Mormon-Flavored

After I finished Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer, discussed here, I decided Mormon history would be my next reading project.  I do this from time to time when a subject grabs my attention. I try to find the top books on the topic and read them all (obsessive? moi?)  Past projects which still pique my interest when I see something new are infectious diseases and U.S. frontier history.  Mormon history is tied with the latter, and some may argue that it is indeed infectious.  Also, I was 3 units shy of a minor in comparative religious studies when I graduated college with a history degree.  I didn't complete the minor as I was already accepted in law school and could not delay graduation, but the area still fascinates me.

Despite the vast array of books on Mormons, the faith, and its history, once you eliminate the potentially biased sources (official Mormon publications, anything issuing from Brigham Young University, non-Mormon Christian polemics against the faith or seeking to convert Mormons to the True Church) the pickings are indeed slim. And I usually only buy used books online, so my selection was further limited.   I went with books referenced by Krakauer, and one more recent best seller, and I'll see where I go from here.

While on these projects, I frequently run into the problem best expressed in the book report by a little girl on a book titled "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Penguins."  It read, "This was more than I wanted to know about penguins."  I try to get just past the dilettante level of knowledge (as someone said to me recently) and then decide if it will be an ongoing study.  We'll see what happens with this one.

Here's my list, with comments on what I've read so far:

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha Beck

- This is the recent bestseller.  Even more controversial than Krakauer's book, and a wonderful read.  I believe everything this woman says -- what she went through is horrible, but she writes beautifully about both her emotional journey and Mormon history, with a healthy dash of humor.  Her father is Hugh Nibley, a scholar and Mormon apologist. She had a unique inside view of the politics behind the legendary Mormon politeness.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks

- Not yet read

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (Vintage) by Fawn M. Brodie

- Just started -- so far, it is excellently researched and unbiased.  The author is/was Mormon, but above that, an excellent scholar.  Her devotion to accuracy caused her great discord with the church.  Originally published in the '40's, it was recently revised and annotated with subsequent historical discoveries.

Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Howard A. Davis, and Arthur Vanick

- Halfway read, then gave it up, due to the Penguin Problem.  The authors (non-Mormon) explore a dispute as old as the book of Mormon itself -- that Joseph Smith had access to an unpublished manuscript of a novel written 20 years before and presented it, with his own religious lectures inserted, as translated text from fictitious golden plates.  There's a good argument for it, and it's fascinating stuff.   Unfortunately, this book is exhaustively researched and written with every possible reference included and spends most of its time defending the theory against all the Mormon detractors, leaving it unreadable by any but the most devoted scholar.  I'd love to read a 150-page version of this 400+ page book, with all argument deleted and the facts presented simply. 

The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

- I read this true crime book years ago about a contemporary forger of historical Mormon letters, manuscripts etc. who eventually turned to murder to cover his forgery.  Oddly, the murderer became the cell mate of one of the murderers in Krakauer's book.  I remember it as very interesting and unbiased, written by two New York Times journalists.  To explain the nature of the forgery and why the Mormon Church itself was the criminal's biggest client required a clearly presented summary of Mormon history and doctrines, which this book does very well.  I intend to read it again after I complete the rest of this list.

                 Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
                 by Will Bagley

- Not yet read.  Krakauer refers to both this and the Brooks work above in "Under the Banner of Heaven."  I couldn't decide, so I got both.  Like the "Spaulding Enigma" and the Penguin Problem, I may have bitten off more than I can chew about this single historical incident.

So far, there's little danger of my running off to Utah.  My personal beliefs remain intact.

No new info on Hermes.  I'm not holding my breath.  It probably would be better for all concerned for him to find a loving home in NYC.  But if no one else turns up soon, I feel that happiness delayed is happiness denied.  Whether that's Hermes's happiness or my own is open to question.

"Faith Is The Evidence of Things Not Seen" Hebrews 11:1:1

   I've just read one of The Best Books Ever: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air.  It's probably commonly regarded as a sensationalist expose of the Mormon religion, but as he takes pains to explain, and as is clear from a close reading, it is an exploration of the nature of faith itself.  Mormonism is the easiest and clearest example because (as he says) it is so new and recent (less than 200 years) in its genesis that its history has a clear written record.  Despite the efforts of the LDS church to suppress all evidence of anything that is not, in their words, "faith promoting."  In other words, the good old historical whitewash.  The book is also an examination of the nature of fundamentalism, whether Islamic, Gentile, Jew, Mormon, whatever.  Very very thought provoking.  There is a universal need that prompts fundamentalism -- for a simpler, purer time.  There isn't one.  Never was.

I come away with the same conclusion as one of the writers he quotes, as far as Mormons are concerned:  "If opponents of Mormonism have often asked, 'Can't we stop the Mormons from being Mormon?', ostensible admirers of Mormons as people [italics mine] have often asked, at least by implication, 'Can't we have Mormons -- but without Mormonism?'" (LA Times article, 1999)

I've known more than a few Mormons, but this is the first detailed description of the faith and its history Ive read.  Love the people, by and large, but the institutionalized religion itself is, well, loony.  Bigoted.  Conservative in the extreme.  Which can be said about the vast majority (I want to say all, but I'll keep an open mind) of institutionalized religions.

Which is why I worship The Giant Rat of Sumatra, may she enfold me in her holy whiskers.

No, seriously, I'm deeply spiritual, faith has become the cornerstone of my reality.  Faith to me is a journey, not the pre-set destination fossilized by institutional religion.  As this book makes clear, there are advantages and disadvantages to such a singular quest.  One advantage is being in the middle of something alive, growing, intensely direct and personal.  One disadvantage is that it leaves you with endless questions, whereas a prescribed set of beliefs is comforting and safe.  Another disadvantage, to which adherents of the tenets of LDS are particularly prone, because of the belief in a direct line of revelation from God, is the development of schismatic sects (mostly fundamentalist in nature) that spring up around self-described prophets.  Warren Jeffs, recently placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, is just the tip of the iceberg.  The book explores many of the splinter Mormon groups, and I am staggered by the array and incestuousness (both literally and figuratively -- the plural wives thing is frequently a cover for pederasty, and also the various groups tend to have multiple connections with one another in terms of family members and theory).

Again, I'm not singling out Mormons.  I don't believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and I don't believe that sort of paranoid conspiracy theory about any faith, creed, or group (with the exception of the current Administration).  It is just an example of fundamentalism gone berserk.  We live in a country with a born-again President with a staff chock-full of fundamentalists, many at the extreme fringes.  Just this side of snake handlers.  Reading this book made me even more frightened by that reality.

Krakauer quotes the following:

THE SECOND COMING

William Butler Yeats

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Living in Narnia

The following is a recycling of a comment I made on the blog of my pal Riannan over at In The Headlights.  She had just seen the Narnia movie and I got so carried away in my response that I figured my comment was really a blog post in its own right.

The Chronicles of Narnia are my absolute favorite books, hands down. (Which reminds me, I need to add them to the sidebar of Recommended Reading on the left.) C.S. Lewis was a brilliant, personally eccentric man who is the only "Christian" writer I can stomach. He came to religion after devout atheism through a rigorous intellectual process that concluded with the realization that the intellect cannot meet all human needs.

The Narnia stories were first read to me by my grandmother, who adored Lewis. She softpedaled any religious allegory, but mentioned casually that Aslan the lion could be seen as a kind of god. The books then were the first non-picture books I read on my own, the pump having been primed, so to speak.

I know the debate continues about their relationship to Christianity, even though Lewis denied it. (Except see the article here where he recants that denial in a letter to a 10-year-old fan.)  The fact remains that Aslan, and his role in the stories, is the most accessible vision I have of a Higher Power. There is a childlike immediacy to the spirituality in the stories that completely avoids moralizing or the orthodox claptrap of religion.

Regardless, they are peerless adventure stories enjoyable at any age, with a sly wit.

Lewis's adult works include an adult sci-fi novel, Perelandra, which isn't as good as the Narnia tales, but shows a keen mind at work. His straightforward religious writing is equally intelligent and without any agenda besides introducing the reader to a spiritual life (of nearly any sort) that can fill a very human need.  His religion was mainstream Anglicanism, and he writes about Christ and God, but the basis of his spirituality is universal, and can be applied wisely in any spiritual context.

My favorite quote from C.S. -- "Jack" to his friends -- condenses his mission. I also apply it to my approach to creativity, which is a spiritual journey as well:

"I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you -- the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence." (from "The Weight of Glory")

We all have an inconsolable secret. Lewis believed that taking a good hard look at that void, that lack, that need, led one inescapably to a lifelong and rewarding process of discovery.

Shadowlands is a wonderful, little-known movie about Lewis. Anthony Hopkins does a tour de force job as Lewis.

As for the Narnia movie, I loved it. But nothing can equal the thrill of reading the stories for the first time. I envy anyone starting out.

Greenleaf

Flannery O'Connor as a child

Quotes:
... the basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

... good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

... the Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

... I think they are the slobber-heartedest lily-mindedest piously conniving crowd in the modern world. (From a letter, dated September 1, 1963, to her anonymous correspondent “A.” She was speaking of an interview conducted with her by a writer for an Atlanta magazine; before publication, their discussion of the “race question” was amended by an editor to the “social” crisis, “so that none of it makes much sense.”)

In response to a cryptic message from the Ex, I was Googling "Greenleaf" and came across this short story by Flannery O'Connor, one of my favorite authors.  Take ten minutes and read this gem.  We've all known a Mrs. May, a Greenleaf family.

Fat Old Books -- Meme

If you haven't done so before, check out my pal  Changes In The Glass.  He's featuring old books near and dear to his heart, comments and images.  I always wanted to be a muse. And amused. So I'm passing it forward: My love for Fat Old Books, especially Sets of same. I have a lifetime ambition of finding The Perfect Set of Dickens. Complete works, old enough to be charming, but not so old that the volumes are decomposing. (Like Bach.) None of that microscopic type favored by Some Really Old Books Trying Not To Be Fat. The Perfect Set would be attractively bound. Oh, and affordable, the definition of which varies with my bank balance. Needless to say, in over 30 years of haunting used book stores, I still haven't found it. Photo #1: To date, I have not found the Perfect Set of Dickens, but I did find the Perfect Set of Galsworthy about six years ago at Pig On Ice Books in San Francisco. I've only read the Forsythe Saga (all 9 books, 3 of these volumes). Loved the original b/w BBC series with Eric Somebody as Soames, and Susan Hampshire as Fleur. Could not get into the newer color series. Soames with russet hair? Never. Pistachio leatherette with gold(ish) print. Good-sized print. No frontispieces or maps (I love a book with maps), alas, but it does have a family tree for the Forsythes. Love family trees, too. Photo #2: I'd also love a Perfect Set of Dumas, but these two volumes to the left of the Galsworthy are lovely old editions of The Three Guardsmen and (one of my favorites) Twenty Years After. Due to the number of Dumas works (pere et fils) I'll probably pick them up piecemeal; some are definitely better than others. Photo #3: These battered black books, a collection of works by American 19th Century popular novelist E.P. Roe, got me started on Old Fat Book Sets. I was twelve or thirteen, and wandered into the Junque Shop (that's what it was called) in My Little Town. These were selling for a quarter apiece, 14 of them. I bought one, amazed that a book from the 1880's had not moldered into dust, and read it. It was absolutely dreadful -- a melodramatic romance with a moralistic Christian ending, "darkies" speaking in dialect, and the worst dialogue I had ever read. I was enchanted -- it was a perfect Victorian snapshot, a message in a bottle from a time so far removed from 1970 it might as well have come from the moon. I spent the rest of my allowance on the rest of them, much to the Junque Shop owner's amusement. "What are you going to DO with them?" he asked. I looked at him in puzzlement. "Read them." What else do you do with books? Each was worse than the last. You couldn't pay me to read them now, but I am uncommonly fond of them. A little musty, plain black cloth binding, but you never forget your first. Photo #4: Frontispiece and title page of one of the E.P. Roe books: A Young Girl's Wooing. Caption: "Are you so set upon winning her, Graydon?" Graydon???? Gotta love it. Photo #5: Bought strictly for the gorgeous binding. A collection of Sir Walter Scott. Unfortunately, it has the teeeeny tiny type and onionskin paper favored by Old Books Trying Not To Be Fat, so it's not a reading copy. But dig that groovy green and gold and black filigree cover!

So........... do you have any Fat Old Books, cheesy, campy, falling apart paperbacks, favorites . . . Not so much for the story or contents, but the res of the book itself.  The cover, the binding, the smell, the memories?  Blog it!

A Million Little Pieces of Irrelevance

James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, a bestselling memoir of his stay in a rehab facility, has come under fire from thesmokinggun.com for inconsistencies between his version of his criminal past and actual court and police records.  All but 12 pages of his 400-plus page book take place in rehab and chronicle his thoughts, feelings and recovery.  He has admitted embellishment of other events for dramatic purposes.  He appeared tonight on TV for an interrogation by that oracle of journalistic integrity, Larry King, in the wake of the controversy.  Frey stood by what he called the "essential truth" of his memoir, which, he said, was intended to portray the emotional journey he took.  The jist of The Smoking Gun's expose is that his crimes before his recovery were not as egregious as told, and he did not serve time once discharged from rehab.

Tonight, after viewing the Larry King piece (or as much as I could stand, King creeps me out under the best of circumstances) I wrote the following and sent it to the editor of thesmokinggun.com, William Bastone:

Dear Mr. Bastone:

As a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, the message of the memoir A Million Little Pieces was electrifying to me, as it has been to many, many others.  The point of the book is true: if you really want sobriety, and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, miracles do happen.  It tells, brilliantly, the internal truth of any addict or alcoholic in the early days of recovery.  I've read a lot of literature on addiction, and never has that devastated internal landscape been rendered more honestly, movingly, searingly.  This is the important part of the book, the part you ignore.

I don't care whether or not James Frey did or did not serve time.  I don't think anyone who has been in the land of active addiction and come out the other side honestly cares.  If you've ever been to a 12-step meeting, you know not to take as gospel all of the "drunkalogue," that part of an addict/alcoholic/whatever's testimony about what it was like "before."  Although the 12 steps demand rigorous honesty, that requirement primarily serves to motivate us to be unsparing about our faults so that we do not evade responsibility for the harm we've done.  I see no harm here.  Do we embellish?  Cast ourselves as villians in our own drama?  Of course we do.  Is the truth of our recovery accurate?  Yes.  That's all that matters. 

You pick on the most insigificant part of a great work.  In James Frey's subjective experience, he was a Criminal, as he says.  The rest doesn't matter.  You chase down your little details and feel important if you like.  The rest of us focus on the brilliance of his writing and the central fact for all of us in recovery: having the courage to walk away from the drug and drink and choose a new life.

By the way, in a country where the president has admitted authorizing torture, doesn't this seem like very small potatoes?  Why don't you try real journalism for a change from tabloid character assassination?

[Fragile Industries]

[My Little Town], California

Narnia Fans -- I Know You're Out There, I Can Hear You Doing Your Reepicheep Imitation

I raised an early flag for this conference, in Nashville, of all places.  Past Watchful Dragons, Fantasy and Faith in the work of C.S. Lewis, November 3-5 at Belmont College.  There will be tons of theological types bumping into fantasy dweebs and I fall into either type or none.  It will either be awful or hella fun, with a great band and a symphony scheduled to boot.  Performances.  And probably a lot of virgins in heated discussions of whether Disney will change one iota of the Chronicles of Narnia in the forthcoming movie.  (It's Disney.  C'mon, whaddaya wanna bet?)  Hell, if it sucks, there are all the big hair palaces of Nashville, and a side trip to Graceland in Memphis couldn't be that hard and would wrap up the weekend in proper surreality.  Talk to me, all 3.13 of you, or I'll be alone eating humble pi.