Sleep

That was really a good night’s sleep. In the junky bed, too. The past three nights were fairly good. The cats were outside. I guess it really does make a difference. It’s a good thing they are so cute.

Sweatpants

These new sweatpants. When I go outside, I roll the waistband up and give myself a wedgie, so that I won’t walk on the legs so much. But at least I have sweatpants that aren’t shredding up on me, right? Besides, as we start to leave winter behind us, I won’t be wearing sweatpants for a long time.

Or is that overstated? As I recall, I still put them on sometimes to keep the mosquitoes from eating me alive. But you get the idea.

e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

-- “maggie and milly and molly and may” by e.e. cummings

Drizzly

A drizzly Saturday. If this were a little over a week ago, it would be a perfect example of February drizzle. But this drizzly day still has a wintry flavor to it. I treasure it, thinking of the burning summer to come. I got the cats inside this morning. They will likely stay inside tonight; so, just when I finally clear up my sleep-deficit, it looks like I will be opening up another account.

Modernism and Its Discontents

Leading an empty enough existence, I like to look upon my reading life as the greater part of my life. Yet, I have never really made it to the summit of literature - those works that strike fear and dread in the hearts of even semi-earnest book lovers, such as Joyce's "Ulysses" or the major novels of William Faulkner. I am talking about books that feel like you need to break a code in order just to make sense of the sentences, think "Finnegan's Wake"! I was happy enough to break through to the classics of olden times, your Shakespeare, Homer, Milton. But the big works of "modernism" always seemed like they would require much more effort than what benefit I would be able to get out of them. Nevertheless, there is a new work of literary criticism that takes on these books, and I am considering at least giving it a try, Laura Frost's "The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and its Discontents". Here is a compelling quote from the book:

Modernist texts do not appear on summer reading lists: for all its attractions, modernism is no picnic. Its pathways to readerly bliss often require secondary sources and footnotes as dense as the original text. Yet the modernist doxa of difficulty gives rise to new kinds of pleasure. Along with offering thrilling and powerful innovation, modernist writers ask the readers not just to tolerate but also to embrace discomfort, confusion, and hard cognitive labor. Modernism, in short, instructs the reader in the art of unpleasure.

Daniel Green, in his review of the book, elaborates:

Modernist fiction expects us to acknowledge its inherent difficulty, a difficulty that comes from its rejection of the usual kind of story and, more importantly, the usual kind of storytelling. But it also helps us discover “new kinds of pleasure” by successfully assimilating a particular work’s particular kind of “difficulty” through “hard cognitive labor” that converts initial discomfort into something closer to comfort, confusion to greater clarity. Thus the discontents of modernism are not the signs of its own problem with providing pleasure but the deliberate strategies that work to redefine pleasure and strengthen the reader’s resistance to insipid modes of mere “entertainment.” “Unpleasure” is therefore not the negation of pleasure but its transformation. This requires a deferral of gratification, a willingness to actually court confusion and endure a sort of pain that results from delaying immediate satisfaction. In return, “against the saccharine, predictable, easy amusement of popular novels, newspapers, and cinema, modern fiction offered cognitive tension, irony, and analytical rigor, which can and should be enjoyable in themselves.”

I don't know about "Finnegan's Wake", but Ms. Frost's book looks like an engaging enough foray into this opaque, obscurantist territory, and maybe it can give me a taste of what people enjoy in these heavy tomes.


[Source: Daniel Green, "No Picnic" at Open Letters Monthly.com]