May 2009

A Funny Book

Chuck Klosterman is proud of having three friends who have known serial killers, has a list of questions ready to ask potential partners in love, and is very, very funny. In his book, "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs", he manages to dissect American culture that is no way nearly as high-brow as David Foster Wallace, but maybe two and half times as entertaining, and with almost as many footnotes.

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Last week I wrote about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the most famous and widely-respected female poet of her time. Just two months prior to Barrett Browning's death in Italy, an 18-year-old poet named Christina Georgina Rossetti became the subject of high acclaim for a poem published in Athenaeum magazine. That poem, followed by her most well-known collection The Goblin Market and Other Poems, led to Rossetti being dubbed the literary successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's fame.

This is really more a result of the marginalization of female thinkers in 19th century England than an indication of any meaningful connection between the work of Barrett Browning and the work of Rossetti. Artistically, the two couldn't be more different. Rossetti's style has more in common with the fevered Romanticism of Samuel Taylor Coleridge than the classical restraint of Barrett Browning. The only meaningful link between these two women is an early political bent. Read more

I'm currently reading Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, which I'm really enjoying.  I'm about half-way through it and, even though most people finish a book before writing about it, I want to do the half-way finished review.  This is because I'm 100% certain it will continue to be great all the way to the end.  It takes quite a bit of time and energy to finish a book so, before I start something, I always read reviews to make certain I will enjoy it.  Recently I read a book purely based on a friend's recommendation and that felt like a big waste of time.  Why I didn't quit the book early, I'm not sure.  I suppose it just wasn't bad enough to justify quitting in the middle.  There was always the hope that it would get better.  Read more

Few poets ever get to cross over into the popular cultural consciousness. Of those who do, only a fraction are ever actually known for their work. More often it is because they were larger-than-life figures or because they were tied to other media. William Shakespeare made his name with crowd-pleasing plays, then composed sonnets in his free time. It took platinum rap albums and a high-profile death to get people engaged with Tupak Shakur's poetry. Ask anyone about Emily Dickinson and they will tell you the story of a depressed recluse, but be hard-pressed to identify even one line of her written work. The immediate recognizability of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work is thus one of the many reasons why she was and is remarkable. Read more