Summer Reading

My summer runs from June 8 - September 10, roughly. That's when I take a well-deserved break from grad school. And that's also when I can fill a number of evenings and some weekends with non-required reading. "Non-required reading," though, is a bit of a misnomer (and pejorative) for me. Why? Well ...

1. I've always enjoyed "the books we have to read" for class. It's not a requirement; it's an opportunity. (Granted, some of them have felt akin to requirement, not opportunity.)
   
2. For future writing and literary studies, some of these selections may be required.

But I digress. So, here's the list of the books I plan to read over the summer. Who knows how many I'll get through.

1. The Middle of the Night - Dan Stolar. I've taken two classes with Dan Stolar at DePaul and really appreciate his thoughts on fiction--the new stuff, the classic stuff, the peer stuff, and my stuff. So, why not see what he has to offer?
2. The Torrents of Spring - Ernest Hemingway. After finishing this "first" novel, I'll only have one unread novel left in his corpus: Across the River and Into the Trees.
   
3. Stories from The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories and Uncollected Published Stories - Ernest Hemingway. And then I'll have read every Hemingway short story published in Papa's lifetime.
   
4. The Gunslinger - Stephen King. A recommendation from former professor and good friend Michael Kapper.
5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. Many call it the first modern novel. It was, at the very least, an integral part of a hilarious Woody Allen short story.
6. Oblivion - David Foster Wallace. After reading "Consider the Lobster" and a short story of his in class, I'm interested to read a full collection of Wallace's short stories. I don't think I'm quite ready for Infinite Jest yet.
   
7. Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson. Johnson's another contemporary fiction writer I hear so much about and have zilch exposure to.
   
8. Moby Dick - Herman Mellville. Yup, I've never read Moby Dick.
9. Jane Eyre - Charolette Bronte. And I've never read any Bronte.
10. The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration - John Locke. I try to fit in some non-fiction and philosophy every year aside from what I read--or haven't been reading as of late--in The Atlantic. I'll let Locke count as both, well aware I'll take some flak for it.
    
11. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman. I've read "Song of Myself," but it's been too long.
    
12. O Pioneers! - Willa Cather. You really didn't think I'd limit myself to one Modernist, did you?
13. The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People" just aren't enough.

Maybe you can read about my progress on jessebutts.com, a secondary summer project.

Run Like the Wind...y City

Not bad for my first race, eh? (Working for 10 -minute miles next year.)

Goodbye, "Job Search" Label

Happy to report that I've found contract writing work for a small communications company on the North Side of the city. If they like me and my work (and have enough work to go around), there's the possibility of more work--and, dare I write, full-time employment--beyond the end of March.

Goodbye, Illinois Department of Employment Security dole. Hello, earned income.

Novel Concept

My final project for Narrative Strategies is submitting a polished draft of the first chapter/part/installment of a novel. Probably 10 or 20 pages. Now, you're probably thinking Jesse, you don't dress nearly artsy enough to write a novel. That's true, but the professor wouldn't accept it as an excuse.

So, I've pondered what the hell to write about. And thus far I can only think of the setting: employees at an amusement park. No idea about character, plot, etc. I tried to watch a story set in an amusement park, but it fell flat and I thought, at the time, it wasn't worth resurrecting.

Now, what could happen at an amusement park ...

25 Things

From Facebook to Blogger, here are 25 random "facts" about me:

1. As a child, I hated having an androgynous name. When I complained about it, my mother informed me there are a lot of men named Jesse. (There really aren't.) The clincher: I was named after my Aunt Jesse.

2. A lot of people are anxious about growing older. I look forward to it--with, of course, minimal reservations--because I feel younger and more energetic than I ever did when I was young. And hell, I started losing my hair at sixteen anyway.

3. I actually don't know that many words, and that becomes more apparent every time I pick up a new novel for class or the latest edition of The Atlantic. If I encounter a word I don't know, I look it up. That's how you build a vocabulary; it's not innate knowledge.

4. Yes, I have some loose skin, and I'll probably get more. I would only consider surgery if it were fully covered by my insurance. It doesn't bother me that much.

5. I'm honestly surprised when people can't tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. They're so distinctive.

6. While J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, I've delineated mine in Excel spreadsheets.

7. I think I would have been more at home in a school more like Kenyon or Dennison. Who knows if I would have gotten in, though.

8. I can't imagine living in the suburbs again (barring Evanston or Oak Park).

9. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "The Strength to Love" is one of the most convincing Christian texts I've ever read.

10. I imagine my difficulties with growing up in a fundamentalist church and home will resurface in much of my fiction and other writing.

11. I love that Caroline is very critical and can explain her standards. And can explain why a movie, book, or piece of art in question doesn't live up to them. There's more than that I love about her, of course, but it's definitely up there.

12. I'm ready for the inauguration to be over so the honeymoon will end and the presidency will get into full swing.

13. In the year-plus I've lived in my apartment, I've never had food delivered.

14. I didn't enjoy my childhood. Too fat and too many rules.

15. If I had to do it again, I would publish a picture of two men kissing on the front page of The Chimes. Call me hubristic, but what people labeled as controversial or sensational in 2005, they'll call bold and visionary in 2055.

16. I'm annoyed when people give smart-ass answers to idiomatic questions. (Like "Do you have the time?" "Yes.") Come on, exercise some cultural literacy.

17. I'll probably always be remembered as the guy who lost 200+ lbs. I'd much rather be remembered as a great novelist, short story writer, or something along those lines, but we can't pick what people will choose to remember. And I'm beginning to think it's not that bad of a thing to be remembered for.

18. A few books really have changed my life, or at least the way I think about my life. They include A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The Four Quartets, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

19. Dr. Griffith once awarded me the smartass-English-major-of-

the-year award. God, I wish I could put that on a resume. (I wrote the best quip to his error on a grammar test. That quip: "It's OK. You went to state school.")

20. I don't know what I'll do with my master's in writing and publishing. Write? Publish? I just know I wanted to learn more and am enjoying it immensely.

21. I didn't like shopping for clothes much when all I could wear was the hodgepodge shit at Casual Male B&T. Now that I can shop at major chains, I do and somewhat enjoy it. But I'm still very distressed when people are judged by their clothing. I also don't care for the assertion that someone who's artsy or intellectual can't shop at Old Navy.

22. I have a helluva lot of respect and admiration for my brother. He's intelligent, charismatic, and hilarious. And he can do something useful with his hands.

23. I really hate all the food associated with Christmas. People just don't need to buy, prepare, and eat that much food. I understand it's a celebration, but isn't there a line between celebration and gluttony?

24. I love this Christopher Hitchens quote in a review about Edmund Wilson: "Anyone who has ever tried to digest The Da Vinci Code, for example, or the Left Behind series, will know that bad writing, aimed at a subliterate audience, is actually much more difficult to read than anything by Borges or Kundera."

25. I tell people I like to write, but I rarely do. I need to change that.

The Last Christmas Letter

While perusing the arcana in the Miscellaneous child folder of My Documents, I stumbled upon a few Christmas letters dated from 1999-2001. My mom usually wrote the drafts, with the exception of 2001, and I typed them, formatted them with appropriate Word Christmas borders (poinsettia, in this case), printed them, and helped her stuff them into Christmas cards.

There's a reason we stopped sending Christmas letters after 2001. A 2002 Christmas letter would be too painful--my mom would have had to write that she and my dad were in the midst of their divorce.

As I reread the 2001 Christmas letter, which my dad volunteered to write due to beaucoup free time a hernia operation afforded him, I noticed a number of small predictions and familiarities weren't fulfilled or had changed. My mom no longer works for the same employer (she started with that company in 1974), teaches Sunday school, sings in the worship team, or helps assemble layettes for the Waukegan chapter of Catholic Charities (she doesn't go to that--or any--church anymore). I did end up going to one of the colleges I was considering, but ended up with a double major in English literature and professional writing, not a BM in music technology. My brother has remained more steadfast in interests and careers, but he wound up with an associate's in automotive sciences rather than attending trade school and is starting college again in hopes of transferring to a four-year school and earning a BS in mechanical engineering. And my dad is no longer a deacon at the church (he, too, wavers between doubt and apostasy like my mom but would never vocalize it), a per diem respiratory therapist to pay the property taxes, or trying to "drop some weight and get in shape."

These little things are just that: the little things. Not everything will turn out how we thought it would seven years ago, thank God. It's to be expected. But I can barely relate to that 17-year-old morbidly obese boy who typed up the last Christmas letter while chastising his father's poor writing and lamenting his mother's flair for banal jokes and appending exclamation points and interrobangs to statements that didn't even deserve print. [Case in point: "She continues to teach Sunday school, ages 2-6 (is she crazy, or what!?) and still sings periodically with the worship team."]

But everything big is different now. Sometimes it's unreal, unfathomable that I was raised in--spent 70% of my life in--a conservative Christian home with all immediate family members living under one roof, denizens of the very house my mother was raised in. That I came from a family where pre-marital sex and cohabitation were clearly in violation of God's word and ended up in one where both parents lived (or are living) with a boyfriend or girlfriend. And now there isn't Christmas--there are two Christmases. Two birthday dinners. Two Thanksgivings. Just no anniversary.

I don't yearn for the past. My parents are in better relationships now. I like to tell people that "Stay together for the kids" has its flip side: two unhappy parents and however-many children feeling remorse that their parents remained unhappy and amorously unfulfilled because of them. (OK, you got me--I'd never say this to a seven year old, but I maintain that seven year old may start to think like me by 27.)

The 2001 Christmas letter was the final goodbye you didn't realize you had until hindsight kicks in--akin, but not remotely as painful, to saying something curt to a loved one before a tragic death. Extended family and friends, I'm sure, heard a biased version of our family disillusionment second-hand. Granted, none of us was in a state to come together and write a 2002 Christmas letter that summed up the fall and offered a few words of wisdom about the complexity of marriage and family. That type of closure is only something you can get away with in fiction. (And yes, maybe it'll be something I can get away with in my own fiction.)

The experience forced me to recognize that you can't control nonfiction. The characters do whatever they want, and the plot marches on. It's just your narrative that's yours--how you describe what you see, what you feel, what it makes you think, and what, if anything, you're going to do about it. I, after years of anger, sadness, and genuine existential crises, made my peace with life after the 2001 Christmas letter.

I'll never come downstairs and see both of my parents in the living room again, my dad snoring on the recliner with his dress shirt unbuttoned and my mom playing Freecell on the Packard Bell. But I do get to see my parents in relationships in which they're both happier, even if it meant more unhappiness for one than the other, and a lot for the kids.

My dad closed the letter with a short paragraphs about 9/11 and the following salutation, "Well, I’m getting writer’s cramp and I can’t think of much more to say so… God bless all of you and your families and remember to pray."

Remember to pray. I wonder if any of us do now.

Run, Fat Boy, Run

I've registered for my first 8k (or any type of race for that matter), scheduled for late March.

Good thing I bought some running shoes with some of my Christmas money.

T.S. Eliot Predicts Global Housing Crisis

And he did it in 1940:

In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
...
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

-"East Coker" - The Four Quartets