Best Cult Books

I was recently asked what my favorite book was. The question was actually addressed to another fellow sitting on the table, but all of us eventually chimed in. What does it mean, "favorite book"? There are books that one read as a 17 year old and it forever stays with you. Someone owned up to liking Ayn Rand. Another adored Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.

The key here, as The Guardian says, is that the sort of book you read early on defines you and takes you for a life turn. It's not just a "favorite" book--it's a "cult" book--the sort "often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously when you are 17; books whose readers can be identified to all with the formula ' whacko.'" Further down, the article lists down the common themes running through or found in these books: drugs, sex, travel--all the things our parents probably didn't want us to get our hands on at that particular moment.

Browsing the list of books, I saw two which I really did read at seventeen: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. Albert Camus' The Stranger. Then there is J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, of course. But that didn't quite hit me as all the teenage girls going crazy or slashing wrists kind of books. Or the "this is the secret to the meaning of life" book. Not in the list is Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, beloved of all freshmen who had to take a philosophy class. In the list is The Prophet, which to this day I still can't stand or finish, even after one of the professors in university assigned it as required reading in class.

Abandon the Old in Tokyo

Abandon the Old in Tokyo has eight stories: most of them about working class guys in postwar Japan. There's a factory worker, garbage collector, window washer. In the title story, a young man cooks and washes for his mother, who reminds him without fail that in her youth, she worked really hard to provide for him. There's a flashback that shows the boy accidentally stumbling into his mother and her "clients." And now, in her old age, she thinks she's worked too hard. But a young man can only take the stench of pee-soaked blankets for so long. The young woman she's dating is excited to visit and spend time with him in his apartment. Japan is known for having long life spans and for families taking care of their own elderly, but two decades after World War II, a young man decides to rent an apartment in the outskirts of the city and move his invalid mother there. He must choose: mother or his own woman? Is he doing the right thing? Will it be too late?

In the introduction, Adrian Tomine claims that Yoshihiro Tatsumi predated the naturalist style of recent (say since the '80s) North American comic book artists. I'm not really a big manga fan, but in reading this book, I'm more likely to agree with Tomine. Yoshihiro Tatsumi has more in common with Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb than most of the manga I've read. It has simple enough narratives which capture a day (or days) in the life of someone, and then fades away after an emotional moment. The moments are not big either. When the lonely manga artist was caught drawing graffitti in a public restroom, the look on his face reminded me of Julio Madiaga in the final scene in Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag. It's desperation pushed against the walls. More Raymond Carver than Ranma or Fruits Basket.

I enjoyed reading the stories. Found this in the big Borders store. I finished it in one sitting, even with a headache. Also, I found out that this was the second in a series--the first being Push Man and Other Stories, which I'll be delighted to read someday. I wish we'd get these titles here in Manila.

Books and Dating

Rachel Donadio writes about love and dating among bibliophiles, or how the books you read may make or break a relationship:

Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”

We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.

Donadio later makes the case that literary tastes may be a gender thing: "Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction." I definitely could not stand if all someone read was maybe Zig Zeglar or Who Moved My Cheese?--no offense meant, but that's just not my thing. It won't be the total deal breaker. There will be other things. But I also like Ariel Levy's idea of "compartmentalization": that compatibility in reading taste is a luxury; and that the goal of a relationship, according to her, is “to find somebody where your perversions match and who you can stand.”

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NOTE: This post was written like three weeks ago or so. Just posting it now.

Professors Strike Back

Stephanie Rosenbloom writes in The New York Times that professors are now using the web, either via social networking sites, blogs or personal webpages, to reveal information about themselves in the hopes of "becoming more human" in the eyes of students. And there's even a show on mtvu called "Professors Strike Back," which gives the maligned professors to refute the comments in RateMyProfessors.com.

The show has become more popular than the music premieres on that channel. Which only goes to show that for a lot of students, the thought that professors have lives beyond the classroom is almost unthinkable. Sam Gosling, psychologist and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, narrated an anecdote where a female student saw him in the street near the campus and looked absolutely horrified. "Like, ‘Wait a minute, you have a life?’ The idea that I would continue to exist — it was sort of a violation of her expectations.” Gosling goes further to say that students today think professors are not doing their jobs unless they convey information in zany, interactive ways.

Teaching has lost some of its god-on-the-podium status. To teach these days means also means to entertain. It's such a taxing demand, to relay information and to make like a talk show host at the same time. What matters is the ability to teach. But students seem to be under the impression that learning is like being part of a talk show audience. "Here we are now, entertain us," and if you fail to do so, you get comments on evaluations like, "Bring a pillow."I tend to agree with the article that this is an unfortunate trend, this need to know that your professor likes Project Runway or has climbed the rockface in Galera. Some are of the opinion that knowing these little things make for a more comfortable learning experience. Whether the "humanization" of professors come in the form of dishing out jokes or crazy anecdotes along the lines of "I have a life, too, you know" or posting more of the same in blogs or social networking sites, this need for transparency seems doubly unneccessary for me.

And yet, I'm posting this on my blog. So take everything with a grain of salt.

Why We Write

Damon Lindelof, co-creator and executive producer of the TV series "Lost", tells us why he writes:

I write because I can’t help but make things up.

I write because I love to tell stories.

I write because my imagination compels me to do so.

I write because if I didn’t, I’d be branded a pathological liar.

Oh, and also because I’m still trying to make my dead father proud of me.

But that’s none of your goddamn business.

It's a freaking good story. Of course. We all write for the drama. This convinces me to finally break out that DVD of Lost I've had on my shelf for like 2 years already. But there's still a lot of things to do. So maybe I'll sneak in the viewing in between checking and writing my own papers.

There's also Bill Lawrence, creator of "Scrubs" and co-creator of "Spin City," who tells us he writes because he is "full of shit," and that writing is primarily a game of "truth/lie/exaggeration" and then you get paid for it. Not a bad way of earning a living. But, of course, this only works if you do film & tv work, and only if you don't get screwed up badly. Otherwise, all other kinds of writing pay minimal to nil amounts of money. Doesn't sound too encouraging noh?

Why We Write features essays on the topic by writers who work in the television and movie industries. Also found other "why we write" essays on the net. Here's the one by George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm.

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EDIT: One of the comments in the Why We Write blog pointed to this news article which seems to have inspired Lindelof's story.

Hello Kitty is a drug dealer

Sort of. A Colombian drug lord e-mailed his minions with his directions coded in Hello Kitty images. But the police wised up and were able to decode them. Authorities say that this kind of message transmission (not necessarily Hello Kitty though) were used by the Al-Qaeda to prepare for the 9-11 attacks.

According to the report, suspected drug lord Juan Carlos Abadia "apparently picked Hello Kitty as his courier because his wife was a big fan of the Japanese icon -- she had even decorated one of her rooms in a Brazilian house with Hello Kitty-themed chairs, watches and wallpaper."

Maybe Abadia was living in Hello Kitty hell and this is way to get back at his wife. Hehehe.

Sedaris and Kureishi

The transport strike is ostensibly over--at least for today. There are people stranded in the streets.

But what I'm more concerned of is that classes have been suspended--and we lose one very crucial day in the tailend of the academic year. The last day of classes is Tuesday next week, after that is the mandatory break that comes with the remembrance of the Holy Week. Then students have to come back for exams and the submission of papers. Before we can do that, there's still a few things to discuss.

Today we were supposed to take up an essay by David Sedaris, "Remembering My Childhood in the Continent of Africa." Instead of doing it in class, we'll do an online discussion. To be supplemented by a live, in class one when we see each other later this week. I left my books in my office in the university, but that doesn't stop me from reading up on the author and the text. Time Magazine has ten questions for Sedaris. Sedaris writes a lot about his childhood and his family, and Time asks him whether his family opposes being written about. He says quite the contrary--they like appearing in his stories.

Tell that to Hanif Kureishi's sister, who told his brother through an interview with The Independent to "keep [her] out of his fiction."

Outlaws

Outlaws 2
Originally uploaded by xkg

Received e-mail from editor Sarge Lacuesta that my short story "Outlaws" came out in the Philippines Free Press this week. Grab a copy of the 23 February 2008 issue, the one with Jun Lozada on the cover.

Overrated?

Bookride.com notes that a copy of the first US edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude goes for a minimum of $500. Solitude also consistently appears in every must-read list of books. When I get visitors in my office, they instantly check my shelves and get disappointed not to find a copy there. Solitude is also almost single-handedly credited for turning on the spotlight on Latin American literature, or particularly creating the brand of Latin Am. lit known as "Magic Realism."

However, Jonathan Bate of the Sunday Telegraph notes that Solitude may as well be one of the most overrated books ever:

The book is so in love with its own cleverness that it is profoundly unreadable. It is generally credited with inaugurating the genre of "magic realism" novels which combine the matter-of-fact narrative style of conventional realistic fiction with fantastic nonsense such as levitation and alchemy. García Márquez is at his most characteristic when a woman ascends to heaven whilst hanging her washing out on the line. Other ingredients of magic realism include gypsies, tarts with hearts, dwarves, tricksters and a cast so large and confusing that you need a family tree to keep track of the plot. Márquez and his followers are sophisticated urban intellectuals who feign reverence for the simple wisdom of peasants. Myth, fairytale and folklore are wonderful things in themselves, but it is preposterous to imagine that mingling them with domestic mundanity will somehow puncture the bourgeois complacency of our time.

He goes on to tell the readers that Solitude opened the territory for Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter and the intentionally epic-scale storytelling that they are noted for.

So is Solitude really overrated?

Herbal Hodgepodge

Apartment Therapy's Re-Nest section shows us how to set up an indoor herb garden.

I've been hunting for a good pot of sweet basil, but all I've found are wilted ones in the corners of supermarkets. Once found a healthy pot in Market Market's garden section, but the stall owner wasn't there so had to let it go. Basil with tomatoes and some olive oil and pasta is sweet sweet heaven. And I'd put in a bunch of rosemary too. Rosemary is good with chicken. Still hoping to find some one of these days.

Found via Lifehacker. Their version seems more affordable and simpler.