Tag: Books

THE CONUNDRUM OF DATING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 18 Comments

With the publication of my latest novel, Promise, I’ve been chancing on a number of blogs addressing the issues of dating and romance, and, to be candid, I feel so blessed to be in the relationship where I am.

From what I’m reading, the first date – usually fraught with terror – is a dinner followed by some kind of anxiety leading to either silence (usually one-sided) or a less-likely follow-up.

From my own distant past, I realize how little some things change, even when they should. There have to be better ways to interacting with potential partners in more natural, less stressful settings. Simply having fun, for starters, rather than having to put everything on the table in something that resembles big-stakes gambling. Well, if you enjoy gambling, maybe that’s fine, but it’s not something I ever would have wanted in a mate.

For contrast, Amish youths have want seems to be a far saner way of finding a suitable companion. From age 16, the kids are active in social groups that include both boys and girls, and out of their playful outings and interaction with other similar groups, they get ample time to evaluate the others before centering on the one. And then it’s pretty much a lifetime agreement.

Similarly, in my novel, Jaya and Erik build the foundation of their relationship before they go out on anything resembling a date.

Anyone else have that experience? Or, for that matter, any suggestions for those looking for ways to meet the right one?

Promise

THE YEAR 1980

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The earth itself is set to erupt.

~*~

Thunder pealed again, and everybody packed up. Outside, Roddy and Erik danced in the eerie dusk. A soft drumming in trees sounded like drizzle, but instead of water, powder fell. Everyone appeared amazed, even elated. Weren’t we fortunate to have a volcano blow up in our face! Then Jaya recalled history: “Oh, Pompeii! Will guides conduct tours here, showing the world exactly how we victims perished? Is this the way our world will end?” Something gripped her, insisting they get home or die in the effort. She dragged Erik, protesting, to the car and raced through the grit. Autos in front of them were invisible, even their taillights, until Jaya was almost atop them. The ink blot overhead closed in on the far horizon, sealing off the last natural light. Plunging through this tar-paper snowfall on a route they knew so well, Jaya recalled the many times she had joked about being able to drive it blindfolded.

Promise~*~

To learn more about my novel, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

LITERATURE ACCOMPANYING THE HIPPIE EXPERIENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 25 Comments

A shelf of books was often part of the hippie scene, and I suppose many of the novelists and poets were technically beatniks, but they shaped our journey as well. I think, especially, of Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard Farina, and Gurney Norman, as well as the German Herman Hesse of an earlier era, and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Test Acid Test. There were also many non-fiction works of influence, including the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Lama Foundation’s Be Here Now.

Which authors and volumes would you add to the shelf if you were trying to give a fuller picture of the experience?

I suspect there are some fine reads that need to be recovered, and blatant self-promotion is also welcome.

This book swap’s open!

MOVING TOWARD A NEW PERIOD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

This miracle of being allowed to release so much pent-up work is impossible to describe, but it is fostering an incredible change within me. The publication of my novels as ebooks through Smashwords.com and the postings on this blog of so many bits from my archives are allowing me to enter a period of reduction – something I’m calling “decollecting,” when it comes to my books, recordings, manuscripts, extra clothing, and other assemblies. What I’m also finding is an opening to rethink almost everything and, like the layers of an onion being stripped away, of finding myself willing to rely on fewer and fewer answers … and more and more questions. Add to that a growing sense of wonder, in many cases, or of futility and cynicism, when looking at so many of the political and economic policies being followed blindly.

What I am accepting is that I require less and less material support. Maybe it’s the renunciation in my yogic past finally kicking in, or maybe it’s the tightened focus on what remains before me.

One thing I know as I view the trail markers before me: I’m not ready to kick back, for certain. Let’s see where this goes.

HOW DID THEY AFFORD IT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Viewing several documentaries on the writing life in Manhattan in the 1950s leaves me wondering just how anyone could afford it. Yes, the world was quite different then and, if we can believe their arguments, the written word was king the way it would no longer be by the late ’60s.

Still, it’s hard for me to believe that writing would have paid that much more in the era than it did when I entered the profession. How many plum magazine assignments were there, anyway? Or how many lucrative book advances?

The argument that rents were low, especially in Greenwich Village, is hard to believe for anyone who tried to find a decent place upstate in the early ’70s, as I did. Even for a full-time journalist working for Gannett, the best the pay would cover was a slum where a heavy rain would leak on my typewriter.

And that was without the heavy drinking that we’re told was required of the New York literary set, as well as the psychotherapy, sometimes daily. Plus the heavy smoking. Did I add, all the men wore suits and ties. (And all of the writers and editors, it was emphasized, were males. Women were employed as “fact checkers.”)

Still, when I run the numbers, they don’t add up. Can anyone tell me what I’m missing?

 

PAPER-FREE DIGITAL ANXIETIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Do we read less closely online than we do on paper?

Do pieces get lost in the email and social media deluge of new material? (With paper, are we more likely to revisit a piece and ponder it? More likely to use it a springboard for response or action?)

Do we keep things in our inbox or mailbox folders? Or do we delete most of them once they’re read? (Or do we scan them, rather than reading?) Or just save them, “for later”?

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling flooded. There seems to be way too little time to keep up, and my mind is feeling like a sieve. Now, we’re all on to the next …

GOING PAPERLESS, TO SOME DEGREE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

It’s been a little over a year since I went largely paperless, as the high-tech crowd would put it. Not entirely by choice, but rather because my printer died and the one we have for the household no longer interacts with any of our three laptops. So much for technology. Alas.

Yes, it can be an annoyance, especially when I have a choral score to print out or my wife’s found some great coupons. But we’ve found ways to cope.

When my printer went kaput, I was already finding that most poetry journals were accepting submissions only online, and that included the printed quarterlies. Keeping duplicate files of online and printout versions was troublesome and led to several embarrassing duplicate acceptances. So I decided to go to online-submissions only, and had only a few instances where I had to decline an opportunity.

Blogging, of course, has allowed me to move many pieces straight to the Internet without using paper, so that’s cleaned up a corner of my studio.

The big breakthrough was the ebook publishing with Smashwords. There’s no more need for multiple printed manuscript copies or files of postal correspondence to cope with. It’s so clean!

Not that the piles of paper don’t continue. Rather, they’re smaller these days. I’ll still pay my bills with a check, thank you, and there are always paper notes for consideration. Admittedly, I used to jest that sorting papers was one of my hobbies. In a way, it still is.

The fact is I love the feel and look of paper when it’s used well – fine stock and good typography, especially, along with masterful photography or illustration. And I still have a lot of that to sort through, to say nothing of all my years of journaling, which I’ve done with fountain pens for nearly two decades now. The old-fashioned fountain pens I ordered the same time I bought a PC that’s long been out of commission. The pens that dance in my hands, unlike this keyboard.

FROM ONCE UPON A TIME TO HAPPILY EVER AFTER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Maria Tatar, ed.: The Annotated Brothers Grimm. As one who’s come to treasure the grittier sides of both Native American mythology and Biblical texts, I’ve long wondered about the earlier versions of the stories collected by the Grimm brothers and, as the notes to this volume also discuss, their French parallel Charles Perrault, especially with his Mother Goose. At last we’re getting glimpses into those unsanitized roots, in large part thanks to the work of Tatar and others. The introductory pages by her and A.S. Byatt make the volume worthwhile on their own, as they examine the fine line between folktales and mythology and recognize that these are really wonder tales, full of magic and harsh reality, a kaleidoscope of rapid presentation where fairies rarely have a role. The mentions of versions having Gretel as a trickster, Rampunzel as not realizing her weight gain is pregnancy, Little Red Riding Hood performing a seductive striptease, Snow White’s pricked finger blood as her menstruating or deflowering all add powerfully, as does the sense of polyphony in the overlapping voices. Although reading all of these close together can be a bit much, it does allow the patterns to emerge: sibling rivalries where the youngest and seemingly dumbest child is in reality blessed, and so on. As for the surrounding forest, where is it in the urban reality? The ghetto? The cellar under the apartment house? The subway?  Another volume I’ll be returning to frequently.
  • Philip Pullman: Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm. Reading Pullman second gives the astute reader a sense of what a translator can add or omit. As a famed writer himself, he admits to taking liberties at times, drawing on similar tales and the like. You can see the differences from the very outset, with “The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich,” which Tatar begins, “Once upon a time, when wishes still came true,” versus Pullman’s “In olden times, when wishing still worked …” His translation is often more direct and less tradition-bound, and often has a deft detail or insight that is simply brilliant.
  • Nicholson Baker: The Size of Thoughts, U and I, and A Box of Matches. Back in high school, hearing a teacher proclaim that all fiction is based on conflict, set a challenge for me: can a novel work without any essential conflict? Baker comes close here with his Box of Matches, set as daily reflections before sunrise one January, as he lights a fire in his fireplace (hence the matches) and drinks coffee — the closest he comes to conflict, in fact, may be the struggle of making coffee in the dark, a consequence of his decision to keep the lights off. Lovely meanderings through the minutia of daily living. U and I is his notorious paean to John Updike, full of deliberate misquotes that reflect the ways of time on the memory and wonderful confessions on the joys of reading and the trials of writing. (I’m happy to see I’m not the only writer who has a lifelong admiration for a great model, or at least an adult lifelong admiration.) The Size of Thoughts, meanwhile, is the perfect volume to end this month’s collection of readings. Each of its quite varied essays follows a topic through a wandering net based on thinking itself. Of special importance are his pieces on the loss of learning that occurred when university libraries junked their card catalogs and his 148-page investigation of the other meanings of “lumber” as they evolved in the antiquity of English poetry. As the second essay begins, “Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product.” If you’ve sensed something similar emerging through this month’s discussion, just remember, The Size of Thoughts mentions many, many fine books in passing. Just in case you’re ready to read more.

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FROM A WEED LECTURE AND WINE TO SOME WILD COOKING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Martha Paxson Grundy: Quaker Treasure. Having known Martha since we were both active in Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), and watched her subsequent service in the broader Quaker organizations, I find my admiration upheld in this 2002 Weed Lecture given at Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston. As she observes, unlike evangelical Protestantism, where the emphasis is on personal salvation, the Quaker treasure is its emphasis on the shared experience of the Prophetic Presence. In that, we nurture and guide one another in a living faith.
  • Jancis Robinson: How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine. Designed as alternating pages of Theory and Practice, this volume was a 2000 update of a 1983 book by a British wine authority. She does a clear job of introducing the differences in the ways we taste, and of linking that to the language of wine, complete with a decent glossary. Also helpful is her survey of grape varieties and the wines they produce, both in France (where they assume geographic names) and around the world. As she speaks of international wines, however, the book dates quickly – Washington State and Argentina, especially, have come a long way since. Even so, an excellent reference book.
  • Kim Stafford, ed: William Stafford on Peace and War. A profound and moving selection of poems, journal entries, interviews, and published excerpts focusing on Stafford’s pacifist faith and witness. Well worth returning to repeatedly.
  • Sheldon Morgenstern: No Vivaldi in the Garage: A Requiem for Classical Music in North America. In this rather strange memoir by an orchestral conductor best known for his role in establishing the Eastern Music Festival on the campus of Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, some of the best pages examine the strengths and weaknesses of boards of trustees in the non-profit world and, at times, the ill-informed consultants they sometimes hire. Yet he doesn’t shy away from gossip, skewering some of the big names and their inflated fees while lavishing praise on his buddies and students. While he repeatedly dismisses his teacher, Thor Johnson, I suspect he overlooks positive aspects; in contrast, one friend of mine, who had been a regular substitute in a major symphony orchestra, said Johnson was the best prepared conductor he had played under. And while Morgenstern has little fondness for contemporary music, which is the core of American classical composition, he appears ignorant of our rich Romantic-era legacy, which I think is essential for American repertoire in the future. I’m left wondering just how much of this is sour grapes from an almost-ran.
  • Tamar Adler: An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace. After living more than a decade with a wife who’s a cooking genius and two daughters who follow in their mother’s wisdom there, my own kitchen skills had largely atrophied. To be honest, I’ve never had her knowledge and seemingly intuitive sense of using herbs and spices, and preparing anything I think they’ll be eating becomes inhibiting. Still, now that I’m freed from the office and commuting routine, the time has come for me to pick up some of the meals preparation each week. Nevertheless, it feels like learning from scratch, especially after the Pellegrini readings. So when Adler begins with a chapter “How to Boil Water,” I thought I’d be on the right track – like Yehudi Menuhin learning to play violin all over again as a young adult. Wrong! She quickly veers off into a much different realm of cooking, one loaded with onions, anchovies, and beets (three of my least favorite ingredients ever), and soon seemingly slapdash in all directions. This, from a woman who admits ineptitude when it comes to making bread. In the end, though, this will likely be the volume I keep returning to as we make the best of our garden produce through the season. She has me largely rethinking meals and routines – this, coming from a Midwestern kid whose idea of dinner revolves around a slab of meat, or some substitute in the vegetarian variations. Rice, anyone?

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