Henry Miller, etc

Henry Miller's The Tropic of Cancer was awesome. Recommend it to anyone who won't hate a book if it's racist/ sexist/ intolerant, etc. The guy's got a heart, guys (sort of). Anyway, the writing was spectacular, so, that was awesome. I'm finishing up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (read it on the busride back from NYC, no air conditioning for four hours, yikes!), and will be reading Bertrand Russell in a few days! Oh, joy!

My writing...let's not talk about that. I'm totally, entirely behind. But I started writing a story sort of based off one of my mom's Uruguayan friends who I found hot this one time in LA and all they talked about at dinner was school shootings from their childhood, laughing about it the entire time.

Harris, just by talking and being himself, has been somehow helping me lots with writing lately. It's awesome.

Books I'm A' Takin' To New York

La Tregua- Mario Benedetti
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao- Junot Diaz
Assymetries in Time- Paul Horwich
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov- Vladimir Nabokov
The Tropic of Cancer- Henry Miller

and, a random copy of Avery, a literary magazine, that I impulsively bought for $1 yesterday at a used bookstore, because Prof. Chaon's story was in it--I figured I'd do him the honor of reading him, since he's done the favor of reading me. (Alyssa said, "Oh, I hear he's actually good," so, I hope I'll enjoy it. It's also a good sign that his story is the last. They must have put it there for a reason.)



"NYC, just got here this morning, three bucks, two bags, one me!"

Ah! Hahh..

So, turns out that the new substory didn't work at all with the botany story, so that's completely out of the picture. It made Daisy into a complete bitch, muddled up the story, made the botanist's wife act far more intelligent than she wants to (even though she's actually smart), all this stuff that just made the characters do things that I would never, ever want to happen. However, it makes for a good beginning for something, so I'll see if I can play around with it a little bit.

So, I am getting quite serious about writing every day while I am in Europe with the fam, so I was thinking I'd do it in France, too, although in the form of letters. I will be missing many people when I'm abroad, and I'm thinking that it will be a sort of part fiction/ part nonfiction thing. Because it will be in letter form, there won't necessarily be a straight narrative, but instead, little snatches and bits: I have promised myself that in each letter, there will be some sort of call back both to Paris and to whatever I'm missing from back home. Kind of like a metaphor of places, I will relate both of them to one another. Something like that.

I'm also considering, for my honors project (if it gets accepted...), to write a story about a gay couple in Uruguay, or something like that. It wouldn't be terribly political--gay marriage is legal in Uruguay, and people aren't very religious--so if anything, it would be just a cultural thing. It would also be modern-day, so there would be interesting to see what influence (and what not-influence) there is by the US within Uruguay. So, because of this, I really need to "get on it" with my writing. I'd really like to say that I've finished stuff, but for now all I've got to show is some short stories. I need to have a book written to show that I can do anything within a time constraint. So, I need to finish the botany story, or at least get 3/4 of the way through, this summer, and I seriously need to get to the Mario Benedetti translations.

So, here's what I have to do (writing-wise):

Summer:
- write 5 pages a day of the botany story (this will kill me, and will be flexible while traveling)
- every 2 days, a Benedetti translation
- 1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
- write-something-every-day while in Europe with the fam
- write a 'little something' everyday, more like a writing brainstorm than anything else
[I'll continue this for a while, and if I get into a good rhythm, I'll approach SOAP. All I have to do is convert into a screenplay, and it's so much like one already, that that shouldn't be so bad.]

Fall:
-every day, write a letter, while abroad (try to play around with language, bring in some French)
-edit 8 pages a day of the botany story
-make SOAP into a screenplay, 5 pages a day
-do/try out a long Benedetti translation (La Tregua, anyone?)
-1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
-convert stuff into manuscript format

Depending how all of this works out, we will see what happens in the upcoming future.

As for reading plans:
this week: finish Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, start and finish The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Horwich isn't as necessary as before (because the substory didn't work for the botany), but if I want to make the substory a short story, I still may need to use it--so I will read it between breaks in reading Junot Diaz. I will be taking the bus to and from NYC this weekend, so I will have time to be reading.

next week: Must read Bertrand Russell. It's been too long and I love him. Also interested in looking at some Quine, because of stuff I like to do with language. So, we'll see about all that. Interesed in, fiction-wise, some Edith Wharton, Henry James... Because philosophy is heavy, I will allow myself to read something shorter by the fiction authors. Will be continuing the Horwich, most likely.

week after next: Should go back to reading a book from the botany list, most likely The Botanist and the Vintner (Christy Campbell). Will read whichever philosopher's left over from the last week, and will e-mail a few professors about stuff in the aesthetics-realm (since this will be a botany-focused week).

Ah!

Ah! I've an idea and I am quite happy about it. This is for the botany story--I was trying to figure out different ways I could tell the sub-story, which is supposed to tell the past of the husband and wife, but everything kept sounding too much like the present story. But, I made myself read Woolf's Orlando because I knew it would make a difference, and then I watched The Fall, which was recommended by Russ. Result? I have a beginning for the substory. Yay! This also means that it is likely that the story will go back to its old title. Instead of The Botanist's Daughter, it will be called something along the lines of, Stealing Daisies: One Of The Many Adventures Of Dr. Henry Pollan and His Wife/ Little Lady/ etc., which makes it much more appealing, I think, but also, much more appropriate for the ridiculous content of this book. So, here is the beginning of the sub-story:

He was a man made of stones and ash, but was given a heart of petals. She, on the other hand, no one knows how she came about, but many have said that one day she decided to exist, and then did so. This makes his question to her in 1986, 'Where did you come from?' much more relevant than he would have guessed at the time the question was asked. But I'm getting ahead of myself. On with the beginning.

Also, I e-mailed Prof M. Thomson-Jones to ask him for more readings on time, now that it seems that I'll be playing around with it for this part of the book. I'm a little behind on writing, but ahead on reading (I randomly read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpeter of Maladies last weekend), so I'll only be bringing two books and a magazine to the beach this weekend: Readers & Writers mag, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and Horwich's Assymetries in Time. I need to find a new fiction to read next week, but I'm thinking I'll read some Bertrand Russell because I want to bone him, and I also just finished reading one of his friends (Woolf), and because the way he thinks/writes will be very good for the botany story. Damned story. It's like singing opera: when it finally comes out it seems so effortless, but it's the hardest thing in the world.

Books I've Decided To Read, in the next couple months or so

Experiments in Ethics by Appiah--I'll be finishing that one up this week.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

And, before I go to France, at least, The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

There are of course the other books I spoke of, but those are the kind you can flip through randomly; what I mean to say is, the books just mentioned are ones that'll go stale if you don't read them with enough time on your hands.