NEW TERM, NEW TOPIC: WOMEN OF POWER

A LIST COMPILING SOME OF THE GREATEST WOMEN IN LITERATURE (AS WELL AS SOME OF THE GREATEST WRITERS, WHO HAPPEN TO BE WOMEN!)

MEDEA (43 BC), by Euripides

KING LEAR (1606), by Shakespeare

VANITY FAIR (1848), by William Thackery (*)

THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1859), by Wilkie Collins

MIDDLEMARCH (1874), by George Eliot (*)

ANNA KARENINA (1877), by Leo Tolstoy (*)

THE AWAKENING (1899), by Kate Chopin

JENNIE GERHARDT (1911), by Theodore Dreiser

MADAME BOVARY (1856), by Gustave Flaubert

ETHAN FROME (1911), by Edith Wharton

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1915), by Somerset Maugham

AGE OF INNOCENCE (1920), by Edith Wharton

ORLANDO (1928), by Virginia Woolf

THE GOOD EARTH (1931), by Pearl S. Buck

FARMER BOY (1933), by Laura Ingalls Wilder

MARY POPPINS (1934), by PL Travers

REBECCA (1938), by Daphne Du Maurier

THE FOUNTAINHEAD (1943), by Ayn Rand

MEMBER OF THE WEDDING (1946), by Carson Mc Cullers

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1925), by Anita Loos

BELL JAR (1963), by Sylvia Plath

NEMESIS (1971), by Agatha Christie

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT (1982), by Anne Tyler

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (1985), by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

THE AGE OF GRIEF (1987), by Jane Smiley

A VIRTUOUS WOMAN (1989), by Kaye Gibbons

THE TREE BRIDE (2005), by Bharati Mukherjee

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (2005), by Joan Didion

ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE (2012). by Diane Ackerman

THE GOLDFINCH (2013), by Donna Tartt

THE COLLECTED STORIES (1890-1980) by Katherine Anne Porter

THE COMPLETE STORIES (1925-1964) by Flannery O’Connor

(*) represents books that are 500 pages or more

1) Please consult the internet for some of these books. If you write the name of the book and follow it with PDF (like this: O PIONEERS PDF) you will usually find an available online site that will allow you to read the book. Here’s what happened when I did that:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22o+pioneers%22+pdf&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

www.gutenberg.org and www.archive.org are two good sites for that.

2) It’s best if you read a few pages or a chapter and then see if it holds your interest - if so, most of them should be available in the Chapel Hill Library (try “Title Search” here: http://catalog.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org/) or at Amazon (example for O Pioneers: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=o+pioneers - search then under “used” on this page - they often make copies available for 1¢ plus $3.99 postage.)

3) This list is a compilation of many other lists, compiling both great literary characters and authors, throughout the ages (although I am staying primarily with 18th century to the modern age, although I do go back to 43 BC!) Many themes, many countries - including China, France, England, Russia, India and of course America - represented. 

Almost all are fiction, with a few non-fiction and excellent short story collections thrown in for good measure (ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE / THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING.)

It is a wide range of subjects and styles: romance novels, tragedies, westerns, murder mysteries, Shakespearean dramas, English pastorals, Greek tragedies, coming of age tales, roaring twenties, New York society, descents into madness, lusty affairs, Southern Gothic. Some of these books are very challenging, some are a walk on the beach. 

Most critics and readers feel that these are some of the best works out there - please feel free to read one (or more) and share with the class your impressions - either in writing or in informal discussion.

1. Again, if you would like, I would be happy to post your review on both Amazon as well as our class blog: http://covplace.blogspot.com/

5) TRY TO MAKE YOUR SELECTION WITHOUT TELLING ANY OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CLASS (it would be interesting to see if there are any overlaps, or how opinions might vary about the different books. We can discuss this during class in June.)

NICE LITTLE ANALYSIS OF "DEATH OF A PIG" by EB WHITE

http://www.niemanstoryboard.org/2013/02/26/whys-this-so-good-no-72-e-b-white-and-the-sick-pig/

Another note on the story, and its tie-in to CHARLOTTE'S WEB (or not):

Since E. B. White published Death of a Pig in 1948,^[5] an account of how he failed to save a sick pig (which had been bought in order to be fattened up and butchered), Charlotte’s Web can be seen as White attempting "to save his pig in retrospect."^[6] However, White's overall motivation for the book has not been revealed and he has written, "I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze."^[7]

I SEE NOTHING IN SPACE AS PROMISING AS THE VIEW FROM A FERRIS WHEEL...

Very excited to announce our Spring reading selection: THE ESSAYS OF E.B.WHITE.

I will also have his letters and biography in tow, to enhance things a bit. And may I recommend that you purchase STUART LITTLE for dessert?

http://www.amazon.com/Stuart-Little-E-B-White/dp/0064400565/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393707119&sr=8-1&keywords=stuart+little

Much more on all of this later. 

FROM JOHN STEINBECK'S NOBEL PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

"First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone"

A nifty and meaningful selection from Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. I strongly urge you to read the really good and great (GRAPES OF WRATH, OF MICE AND MEN, CANNERY ROW, etc.) but this won't hurt (your life) either!

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/

On my way to TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, I have been reading the John Steinbeck library. Right now I am diving into (and loving into) OF MICE AND MEN. It is partially enhanced–or troubled–by the fact that I have seen the 1939 Lewis Milestone film version with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr. Can't decide which. This much I know: it's nearly impossible to read the book without hearing the distinctive voices of Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney in your brain-noggin. And this, too: Lon Chaney is one underrated actor. Forget the Wolf Man: this is where this man shines.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/248944/Of-Mice-and-Men-Movie-Clip-A-Place-Like-That-.html

OUR FINAL BOOK IN MEMOIRS

Will be, yes, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. It's wonderful and available in the wonderful 50th Anniversary Edition from Amazon for about $8.99 (including shipping.) Here, under new/used:

http://www.amazon.com/Travels-Charley-Search-America-Classics/dp/0143107003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389806865&sr=8-1&keywords=travels+with+charley

At age 58 John Steinbeck and his venerable standard poodle, Charley, set out on a journey across America in a camper. For three months these companions traveled the nation, meeting friends, strangers, relatives and immersing themselves in the fabric of the country as it was at that time.

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) was born in Salinas, California. He worked as a laborer and a journalist, and in 1935, when he published Tortilla Flat, he achieved popular success and financial security. Steinbeck wrote more than twenty-five novels and won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW: 

"Pure delight, a pungent potpourri of places and people interspersed with bittersweet essays on everything from the emotional difficulties of growing old to the reasons why giant sequoias arouse such awe."

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”

--Travels with Charley, 1960

A Detail from THE RED LEATHER DIARY

During Florence's studies at Columbia, She mentions that her friend Gertrude would someday marry poet/writer Delmore Schwartz. It is spoken of off-handedly enough to be easily forgotten, but the description of his most famous story, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities", is harder to forget or ignore. Here's the essential outline of this short masterpiece:

The story tells of an unnamed young man who has a dream that he is in an old-fashioned movie theater in 1909. As he sits down to watch the film, he starts to realize that it is a motion picture documenting his parents' courtship...

Care to continue? Here is a PDF link to this wonderful story, written by Delmore when he was only twenty-one years old ...

http://myteacherpages.com/webpages/klopez/files/In%20Dreams%20Begin%20Responsibilities.pdf

Interesting fun fact: Delmore Schwartz was the man who inspired Lou Reed as a writer, before he founded the proto-punk band, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND. One of his most famous songs, EUROPEAN SON, was dedicated to Delmore. Many critics posited reasons why, until Lou Reed finally admitted that Delmore Schwartz once told him that the worst thing about rock 'n roll was the lyrics: EUROPEAN SON, a seven minutes song had, in deference to Schwartz's, only one short verse:

http://grooveshark.com/s/European+Son/2fXLdn?src=5

"ACE DADDY, GYM RAT, BALZOLAN REPORTER, PH.D"

As we consider the memoir, why don't we consider the brevity?

Recently, a group of well-known authors, artists, musicians and others were asked to write their own 7 word memoir and here is the result.

Naturally, when you ask rebels of art to do something, they often find a twist or break a rule. See here how many refused to adhere to the '7 word limit' (many over, at least one under, and one–John Irving–who dared to try on memoirs of others, such as Dickens and Melville.)

Enjoy!

LINK: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/11/nypl-live-holdengraber-7-word-bios/

OLD DIARIES, THE INTERNET, CHILLED WATERMELON CUPS AND LUXURO CHOCOLATE

Old diaries and the internet - it's like peanut butter and jelly!

Reading through THE RED LEATHER DIARIES, I yearned for even more visual input than the numerous (but limited) photographs in the edition that hearkened back to the Manhattan of yore.

Oddly enough, I found solace in an ETSY commerce account - an individual seller who was offering wonderful old SCHRAFFT'S menus from the 1940's (some years after those described in the book, but still, evoking much of the same era.) Here are a few:

Ah ... when was the last time you ordered a Frankfurter Roll? Tomato Aspic, or Deviled Ham? The words and foods themselves seemed to have silently slipped away. And a celery and egg sandwich? My expert friends tell me that is simply egg salad today (I had to find out.)

Others noted the disarming lack of salesmanship in these menus - 'Cold Roast Veal Sandwich' - appealing? It just doesn't grab you by the taste buds, now does it?

I can't help but notice how much more FRUIT was involved in desserts back then - Rhubarb (with a typo), Cherry Pie, Chilled Half Grapefruit - even Calimyrna Figs! Of course, I would have opted for the Napoleon or Ice Cream Eclair, because, after all, those are REAL desserts (and close to extinct on lists today.) Still, I can't help but be tempted by a pineapple that is both fresh and supreme.

This is a list that makes me burst out in poetry. Or should. I am thinking it's the Fresh Blueberry Queen Cakes. How about you?  It's the middle of winter, but I would still adore a Chilled Watermelon Cup. Those words belong together.

I have a friend who related a story of having lunch at Schrafft's as a kid, and she gave me yet another reason to love it. She was with her mother and her friends, and they asked for water refills on two occasions during the meal. After the second, the waitress said, "If I knew you ladies were going to be so thirsty, I would have brought over the hose!"

Ah, to return to the days of Cherry Marshmallow Sundaes, Luxuro Chocolate and sassy waitresses!

endnote: I tried to order these menus from the proprietor, but they were sold old. They did offer a 19598 dinner menu, and so I snatched that up. I will share it with you when it arrives...

THE RED LEATHER DIARY, a review by THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE (2008)

By Lori Rotskoff

May 17, 2008

Do teenagers keep diaries anymore? Clothbound journals secured with metal latches and miniature locks? Adolescents are always typing furiously on keyboards, but do they have blank slates on which to record their inner lives? As private repositories of grand hopes and crushing disappointments, of routine affairs and once-in-a-lifetime moments, diaries are windows into the soul. That's why discovering a long-abandoned diary can be an earth-moving experience: Who was this person, really?

Florence Wolfson was among the most diligent diarykeepers ever to hold a pen. On Aug. 11, 1929, she received a gift for her 14th birthday: a small journal, bound in scarlet leather, complete with a tiny gold key. That afternoon—and incredibly, every day thereafter for the next five years—Florence chronicled her activities, aspirations and deepest emotions. Born to assimilated Jewish immigrant parents, she grew up on the edge of New York's City's upper-class society. Her father, a physician, and her mother, the proprietor of an upscale couture dress shop, provided comforts and access to Manhattan's thriving cultural scene. Yet as parents they offered scant affection. So Florence made her diary her closest confidante.

After filling every gold-rimmed page, Florence forgot about the diary, tossing it into a storage trunk with some flapper dresses and other outmoded items. It rested there for nearly 70 years, until a young journalist named Lily Koppel rescued it from a city dumpster.

In "The Red Leather Diary," Koppel recounts the amazing story of Florence's discarded volume. One morning in October 2003, just outside her Riverside Drive apartment building, Koppel glimpsed an unusual sight: a red dumpster piled high with old steamer trunks. Already late for work as a news assistant at The New York Times, she took a closer look at the vintage chests headed for oblivion. Was this news? Undeterred by the garbage and grime, she climbed onto the dumpster and pried open one of the trunk's rusty latches. Inside was a treasure chest of vintage clothing and other items, "clues to how life was lived in Manhattan during the 1920s and '30s." But the 22-year-old reporter struck it rich when she discovered a small leather diary.

" 'This book belongs to . . . Florence Wolfson,' " proclaimed an inscription inside the front cover. Koppel was immediately captivated by the narrator's worldly persona. The diary was "a real-life time machine" from a lost metropolis teeming with "writers, painters, playwrights, and jazz." Here was a girl who played piano, painted landscapes, wrote poetry and read philosophy—sometimes in a single day. In one entry, she swooned, "Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven—I feel like a ripe apricot—I'm dizzy with the exotic." Another day she wondered, "There's so much to do—music, art, books, people—can one absorb it all?"

Florence was crazy about art, but she was also mad for love. She worshipped Eva Le Gallienne, the lesbian actress and founder of the avant-garde Civic Repertory Theatre. After enrolling at Hunter College at 16, Florence embarked on a string of intimate, often-sexual relationships with women as well as men, reeling from heart-struck infatuation to heartbreak to ardor once again. "What she craved most," Koppel realized, "was to be enveloped in a grand passion that would transform her life."

But Koppel didn't just find the diary. Three years later, she found Florence. With the help of a private investigator, Koppel tracked down the 90-year-old woman, now known by her married name of Florence Howitt. Flabbergasted to hear her diary had been found, she invited Koppel to her Connecticut home. Aided by her sharp memory and a trove of old photographs, she filled in the gaps of the diary's fragmentary record.

"The Red Leather Diary" emerged from their collaboration as well as interviews Koppel conducted with Florence's relatives and friends. Structured as a biography, it reads like a highbrow fairy tale that braids together three overlapping narratives: Florence Wolfson's youth; the elderly Florence Howitt's reflections on her past; and Koppel's own identity as a budding writer. Koppel's lively prose annotates scores of original journal entries, which resonate with "the literary equivalent of perfect pitch."

Much of the book's emotional power derives from the drama of an old woman reclaiming a past that was almost lost to her. As Florence writes in the book's foreword:

"How do you feel when a forgotten chunk of your life, full of adolescent angst and passion, is handed to you? How do you feel when you see your striving, feeling, immature self through your now elderly eyes? It stopped my heart for a moment. That was me?"

Once a maverick burning with artistic ambition and bisexual passion, Florence spent most of her life in the conventional roles of wife, mother and grandmother. At 24 she married Nat Howitt, an attractive suitor who became a successful oral surgeon. During the early years of her marriage in the 1940s, Florence wrote edgy articles for women's magazines, organized a local theater troupe and even sneaked in a few female flirtations. But by the 1950s, the heyday of the so-called feminine mystique, Florence's creative fervor gave way to perpetual rounds of tennis, bridge and cocktail parties. She and Nat were married 67 years, until he died, and she adored her extended family. But at 90, Florence writes, she was living "what can only be called a bland life."

Koppel writes with flair, but her narrative style is better suited to description than to probing analysis. Unfortunately, it's Florence who asks the searching questions about paths not taken:

" 'Where did all of that creativity go? . . . If I was true to myself, would I have ended up living this ordinary life?' "

Did Florence suppress authentic homosexual longings in the face of social pressure? Or were her romantic attachments just a passing phase during the last hurrah of the Jazz Age? We don't know—and probably, neither does Florence. In any case, her story suggests that for some people, the laws of sexual chemistry are fluid rather than fixed, subject to cultural forces beyond the self.

In a lifetime that spanned the lion's share of the 20th Century, Florence struck her own bargains between autonomy and security, between sexual freedom and familial obligations, between a literary career and a traditional lifestyle. In her conflicts and compromises, her successes and sacrifices, she is part of history.

Who is Florence Wolfson Howitt? She is, and has been, many selves. So have we all. I hope that in 70 years we'll still have plucky journalists who yearn to gaze behind the surface of our "ordinary" lives to find extraordinary stories within. And with any luck, tossed into storage with all the laptops, there will linger some old-fashioned diaries—inscribed with ballpoint ink—that disclose the private truths of who we were.

RED LEATHER DIARY is chock full of Manhattan culture, composers, books, music, street signs, lamp posts, Park Avenue & Harlem, the Stock Market Crash and Schrafft's.

How to even begin?

Well, for those of you who care to explore a few of the thousands of wonderful references, I am including below some links to e-books, wiki-pages and Grooveshark tabs so that you might be able to explore at least a small number of this amazing bounty.

Let's start off with Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (which I love.) It is referenced in the middle section of the book when Florence develops a passion for theatre and an obsession with actress and activist, Eva Le Gaillienne.

Here it is, e-book ready:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/i/ibsen/henrik/hedda/act1.html#act1

and the Chopin that Florence played? The Waltz in A Minor:

http://grooveshark.com/s/Waltz+For+Piano+In+A+Minor+Op+34+2+CT+208/2HrvmO?src=5 

and the kiss, in THE KISS, with Greta Garbo (1929, silent):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk6qkcZzyWo

It's kind of fun to play the Chopin and then let it lead into THE KISS. The soundtrack almost sounds like a burlesque of the Chopin. Weirdly related somehow, although it really isn't at all...

RED LEATHER DIARY IS IN!

RED LEATHER DIARY copies are in! 3 hardback, 1 paperback, all very pretty. Now: let's go!

(Doesn't it make you just want to rush out and buy a diary, red or otherwise, for yourself? Well, why don't you?

Class: please read through chapter 10 for class: 12/19/13.)

FOUR COPIES ON ORDER! THE RED LEATHER DIARY WILL SOON BE HERE

from the reviews ...


The first of many astonishing revelations in "The Red Leather Diary" is that as recently as 2003, when one would think that the real estate boom would have scavenged, inventoried, emptied and renovated every inch in every building in Manhattan, the basement of a large pre-war apartment building divulged heaps of steamer trunks and their contents abandoned by long departed generations. Lily Koppel, a young New York Times reporter subletting a room in one of those cherished roomy apartments out of the past came home one day to find the management hauling the trunks to the dumpster to make room for an exercise facility. Just before the flea market vendors descended on the trove, Lily escaped with a few keepsakes, including a flapper dress and a red leather diary that had been kept daily by a precocious teen named Florence Wolfson from her 14th birthday in 1929 until her 19th in 1934.

The most wonderful revelation--and this is not a spoiler--is that in 2005, with the help of a private investigator, Lily found the nonagenarian Florence quite alive and living independently in Connecticut and Florida. Florence contributes the introduction to this book. The diary entries and her sharp memories offer up an immediate record of the cultural and social whirlwind life in New York as lived by a young, privileged woman, the daughter of immigrants. The Florence of 1929 - 1934 loved life and grabbed it. She was passionate about the arts, literature and love of all kinds. She emerges as a female Zelig, turning up at significant events in the company of some memorable names, like actress Eva LeGallienne, poet Delmore Schwartz, future author Bel Kauffman ("Up the Down Staircase") and Joy Davidman, whose marriage to C.S. Lewis would be portrayed in the film "Shadowlands." Some episodes of her post-diary life include the intellectual salon she hosted in her parents' apartment and a trip to Europe in the tense years leading up to World War II.

Koppel tells the story like memories rushing out and piling up, sometimes a little chaotically or disjointedly, but that's okay because that's what memories do. She builds a complete and true world that is difficult to give up when the book ends.

What does Haven Kimmel recommend?

This month's author, Haven Kimmel, when asked to recommend a book, suggested the Adrian Mole Series–in her words "I laughed so hard I went into labor"–attesting to the value of the book as well as the commentator.

There are many, commencing with Adrian at the tender age of 13 3/4, and I have read only one, but I can't imagine any of the others being less delightful than this detailing the life of Adrian in the golden years:

 http://www.amazon.com/Adrian-Mole-Prostrate-Sue-Townsend/dp/0241959497/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384721943&sr=1-4&keywords=adrian+mole

Haven Kimmel's (a/k/a "Zippy's") dearly departed blog, chock full of delightful advice:

Ask a Question of An Author of Grossly Limited Knowledge and Expertise!

http://havenkimmel.wordpress.com/

THE RED LEATHER DIARY: coming in December

A book quite like any other, and the next book in our series ...

Have a look at the New York Times and their affectionate take on this extraordinary book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Newhouse-t.html?_r=0

A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN ON FIRE ISLAND (by Frank O'Hara)

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) brought a refreshing new casualness and spontaneity to poetry, making deliriously funny and surprisingly moving verse out of everyday activities recounted in conversational tones. (What he called his “I do this I do that” poems often featured glimpses of his adored New York City or anecdotes about friends—most of whom were themselves poets or painters.) His brilliant career as a writer and art curator was cut tragically short by a freak dune buggy accident on Fire Island in New York.

(from www.poetryfoundation.org)


The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally

so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."

"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."

I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.

"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.

And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"

Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

JOE

Joe Brainard seems to have been drawn to forms of containment, in which the unruly or rupturing experiences of life are brought into the kind of reductive clarity that we often associate with classical modalities . . . . Not surprisingly, along with this gift for distillation, Brainard had an uncanny eye for essential, revelatorydetail; these contribute to the vivid immediacy and spontaneity of his work. In essence, such specific distillations can be understood as a form of abstraction, not the abstraction we affiliate with nonrepresentational art, but something perhaps closer to the poetics we have come to associate with the New York School of poetry: an"aesthetics of attention" as critic Marjorie Perloff has said about its most important avatar, Frank O'Hara . . . . Distillation, specificity, and a keen sense of intimate scale allowed Brainard to locate the extraordinary in the ordinary and, curiously, something like the reverse; he could make the extraordinary seem ordinary.

-- Ann Lauterbach, The Nancy Book


A JOE BRAINARD SAMPLING:


WHAT'S COOKING?

I went to a bake sale in a neighboring town one evening and I
bought some exceptionally delicious bars. I happened to know one
of the ladies that was selling things at the sale so the next day I
called her up and asked her if she could find out for me who made
those bars so I could ask for the recipe. She laughed and laughed.
They were so moist and delicious.

POEM

Sometimes
everything
seems
so
oh, I don't know.

NIGHT

Day, you have gone
and done it again.

TREES

Have you ever stopped to wonder what the world would be life
without any trees? Just a big brown ball.

Do you know how many trees there are in the world? Nobody
does.

There is nothing I love more than trees. Except people and
flowers. (Some people, and some flowers.) Of course, not all trees
are perfect either.


VAN GOGH

Who is Van Gogh?

Van Gogh is a famous painter whose paintings are full of inner
turmoil and bright colors.

Perhaps Van Gosh's most famous painting is "Starry Night": a
landscape painting full of inner turmoil and bright colors.

There are many different sides to Van Gogh, the man.

When Van Gogh fell in love with a girl who didn't return his
love he cut off his ear and gave it to her as a present. It isn't hard
to imagine her reaction.

Van Gogh's portrait of a mailman with a red beard is probably
one of the most sensitive paintings of a mailman ever painted.

It is interesting to note that Van Gogh himself had a red beard.

When Van Gogh was alive nobody liked his paintings except
his brother Theo. Today people flock to see his exhibitions.

Van Gogh once said of himself: "There is something inside of
me -- what is it?"

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Writings-Brainard-Library-America/dp/1598531492/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328625640&sr=8-2

GREGORY CORSO'S MARRIAGE

presented in class

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.