Daily Thoughts 10/5/2009

La Grammaire (1892) by Paul Serusier, 71.5 x 92 cm, Musée d'Orsay

Daily Thoughts 10/5/2009

I went and straightened up some displays this morning. I also did a bit more weeding in the 800s. I have a copy of the magazine Booklist on my desk to read.

I have started working on a bookmark which lists several different books on writing including Writing Begins With The Breath, The Elements of Style, Spunk and Bite, The Reader Over Your Shoulder, and other titles. I am about half way finished putting it together. Microsoft Publisher is becoming more familiar for me to use.

On the way home, I read some of Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. You can read the influence of Charles Bukowski in this work. The main character, Alice bets the horses which reminds me a bit of Charles Bukowski. Also, the author, Maggie Estep is both a slam poet and a novelist. The poet and novelist combination has that Bukowski edge to it. The characters are also bohemian in their lifestyle. There is a lot of sex. This also reminds of the poetic character of Charles Bukowski.

Running out of tags is rather interesting on Blogger. I can't use the term Maggie Estep in the tags because it goes over my tag limit.

The Writer and Comic Book Writer In Film, Link Exchange

Marjane Satrapi -- Iranian Comic Book Artist, Author of Embroideries and Persepolis.

Last night I was watching the biographical film, American Splendor about the writer Harvey Pekar who writes comic books and jazz reviews. It is an utterly fascinating film. I haven't finished watching the video yet, I'll probably do that today.

Harvey Pekar is famous for saying "Ordinary Life is Very Complex." He writes about the every day experiences of ordinary life. American Splendor is the underground comic book he started writing with R. Crumb illustrating the first editions. Harvey Pekar met R. Crumb while he was searching for jazz records at garage sales. They have a friendship based on comic books and old records.

I am up to the point in watching the film where Harvey Pekar gets cancer. He has a graphic novel called Our Cancer Year which is really excellent to read. It is about his recovery from cancer. His wife, Joyce helped him write it. One of the things about husband and wife writing together, is that it is often hard to tell who is writing what.

All of the people in the film are fascinating because they are all a little odd. His wife Joyce married him after visiting him for a week in Cleveland. There is quite a bit on what it is like to appear in your own comic book. American Splendor was also made into a play before it was made into a film.

The interviews on David Letterman and Harvey Pekar are peppered throughout the film.

Harvey Pekar has his own blog http://www.harveypekar.com/ . It includes him, his wife Joyce, and his adopted daughter, Danielle. Harvey Pekar chose to get a vasectomy because he didn't want to have a family originally.

While I am talking about this, I will give a brief aside. If you want to watch something deeply disturbing with lots of very black humor, Robert Crumb has a biographical film, Crumb. Watching Robert Crumb's brother Max is a truly disturbing experience. Max is seen laying on a bed of nails. Just about everything about Robert Crumb in the movie is likely to cause some revulsion or amazement. This film is not for children under any circumstances, and many adults will have a hard time stomaching it.

Writers on film are usually far different than you imagined them when you are reading their books. Getting to see a biographical picture of a writer often reveals how far off most literary criticism is on writers. You get to hear why they are writing in the film.

Most of the films about writers I have seen are very dark. Another film, The Whole Wide World about Robert E. Howard's relationship with Novalyne Price Ellis is really beautiful to watch. It is an art film set in the 1930's. The sunsets, and the scenery are really beautifully done. Robert E. Howard is very much a tragic figure in real life, his mother died of terminal illness and he committed suicide before he could see the popularity of his works.

Renee Zellwegger stars as Novalyne Price Ellis, a school teacher who Robert E. Howard has a brief romance with. Vincent D'Onofrio stars as Robert E. Howard. The actors make a handsome couple on screen. Robert E. Howard's immature predilection with fantasy, boxing, and swordfighting, as well as writing pulp stories dooms the relationship.

Another film about writers which is also very dark is "Born Into This", a biographical picture of Charles Bukowski which is basically one long documentary interview with him. He talks about the different places he lived in Los Angeles, his excessive drinking, his working at the post office to make ends meet, and the various women in his life.

There is always a little respite in films like these. Bukowski also loved to listen to classical music. The classic image of him which comes to mind is him banging away on the typewriter with a bottle of wine listening to Brahms while his cat is sitting in the background. He is in a little room with a bare light bulb and a few oil paintings which he has painted on the walls.

Bukowski is also a writer who succeeded. He talks about what it means to have ones own house and have to stop worrying about the world crushing him. He seems almost contented in the film. When you look at him during the interviews he is smoking a brown cigarillo and has a clear glass with some red wine in it while he is talking.

I finished watching American Splendor about half an hour ago. The ending is kind of uplifting. Harvey and Joyce adopt another comic book artists little girl Danielle and he retires from his job as a filing clerk in a medical office.

Harvey Pekar has written numerous graphic novels. I rather liked The Quitter about Harvey Pekar's tendency to quit things like school and college, and his redemption as a writer. Another graphic novel is American Splendor: Unsung Hero about the story of Robert McNeill, one of Harvey Pekar's coworkers at the hospital. It tells the story of Robert McNeill joining the marines during the Vietnam war. A very revealing story about what it was like to be a teenage black soldier during that time period.

Another comic book artists film I want to see is Persepolis. The graphic novel, Persepolis is really excellent and well worth reading. It is a story of growing up in Iran. This is a link to the films website http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/persepolis/ . There is also a Persepolis II and another graphic novel Embroideries by her.

Another film which I am looking forward to is Miss Potter starring Rene Zellwegger. This is the story of the sale of Beatrix Potter's first book. I've always loved The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle Duck. There is something wonderfully eccentric about these books.

__________________________________________________________________

Literary Jewels asked me to do a link exchange. I put up a link to her site under the heading Literary And Reading Link Exchange. She is the first person to ask me about doing this.

I replaced my adsense button with this.

In the long run, I think, this will be better for the site than Adsense. I noticed that when I looked at Blogger's sites of note, none of them had advertisements on them which is kind of interesting.

I have started inviting people to join in sharing links.

The Aliens by Charles Bukowski

A very cool animated piece with Charles Bukowskis poem.

Nursery Rhymes, Poetry, and Fairytales

I really enjoy reading nursery rhymes. I have memorized quite a few of them from Mother Goose. Mother Goose is the source for many of todays childrens picture books. I have fond memories of it from when I was a child. I also love Beatrix Potter, especially the Tales of Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddleduck.

I took some time to write some poems that are variations of nursery rhymes and odes to fairytales.

Hey fiddle, fiddle, the cat's in the middle,
The dog jumped over the moon,
The little cow laughed to see such sport,
As the dish rapped a tune with the spoon.

Jill be thimbled
Jill be quickened
Jill jumped onto the candlestick

Puss
Hat and feather
Collars and lace
Boots of velvet
What a fine cat you are

Reinard
Quick Smiling
Quick Thinking
Sleight of Hand
Fleet of Foot
A master trickster

These, I wrote on the train coming to work this morning.

Earlier, I had written another poem at the Poetry In The Branches Workshop

Puss's Boots

If I had boots like these,
I'd dance across the oceans,
And climb the highest mountains,

I'd jump and hang from the moon,
Then walk across the starry sky,

The sun would be a single step,
The moon a soft shuffle,
And the farthest stars a mile.

I think nursery rhymes for todays children are too sanitized. Removing the scary or naughty parts makes them less real. It also changes the effect on children. Disney often to me is more scary with its sanitized fairytales than the original versions.

There are two major collectors of fairytales which we think of the west, Charles Perrault who was French, and The Brothers Grimm who was German. Luckily, these are no longer under copywrite and can be used for almost any purpose. I think of them as a repository and excellent source for fantasy writing.

The other place we often draw our stories from is Aesop who is attributed with Aesop's fables. The original unexpurgated version is far better than the clean children's version. Aesop himself is very interesting. He was a slave who was supposed to be very ugly.

I am not sure what else to say at this point. Oh yes, I also wrote two approximation of koans in the Poetry At The Branches workshop. Here they are:

Is the glove on the hand, or the hand in the glove?

Does the scarf blow in the wind, or the wind blow the scarf?

I am often ambivalent about poetry. I know I can write it, but I am not sure that I want to be known in any way as being a poet. There are interesting connotations that go with being a poet.

I have a few favorite poets. I have always liked Shel Silverstein's childrens poetry-- Where the Sidewalk Ends is a truly excellent book.

I also like Charles Bukowski who is a story unto himself with his raunchy, drunken, often whimsical self reflecting poetry. It is not for children.

When I was younger, I used to collect poetry books when I was in college renting a room. Then I had something traumatic happen. The old lady who was the landlady downstairs passed out on her bed with a bottle of gin and some cigarettes. The apartment burned down. With it went the poetry collection. I still read poetry books sometimes.

The net is a truly excellent medium for poetry. There are a lot of blogs with poetry in them. Because it is easy to screen blogs, you can quickly find blogs with quite a few good poems in them.

My favorite blog with poems so far is this one:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-musings-of-madness.html

__________________________________________________________________

I decided to change my heading picture for Book Calendar. I found a picture from a public domain photo archive. I think it is a little better looking than the original lectern image.

Also, I updated my fuelmyblog.com image, so it would include my "friends" log.

Every day, I try to improve my blog a bit. It is slow improvement that makes things better.