Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in it won't kill you's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, June 27th, 2009
10:04 pm	The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, whose insufferability seeps up through the stage directions unto the narrative frame, but, you know, classic, etc. Getting Out, a play by Marsha Norman, bit of a reading-strategies challenge but kids will love it if they manage. I'm bothered by Norman's sense of badness as a coherent and nearly metaphysical force in us, as therefore killable, but I suppose I'm taking it rather more personally than intended. Doubt, a play by John Shanley, and says A Parable right on the cover, so I suppose we can't complain when the characters tack sharply. Except they're so much more interesting when they don't. Which is enough of the time to fascinate. Haven't decided, quite, whether watching counts, but thus far this year Tom Stoppard's Arcadia; Shakespeare's King Lear, the Paris Hilton version; Bo Wilson's Mona's Arrangements, both with and without seventh graders; and Sam Shepard's True West. Typing on phone from airport in future. Can you tell? Posted via LiveJournal.app. (time suck)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
12:08 am	Shining City, a play for adults by Conor McPherson, more Theatre 101. Brutal and either scary or redemptive or both. Recommended, particularly September 2009 Richmond-area productions. In composing blog appositives, as well as in attempting to assemble a drama section for my independent-reading library, I've become uncomfortably aware that there is no such genre as Young Adult Drama. If you think of plays seventh graders can read and love by themselves, please advise. The Devil in the White City, adult nonfiction by Erik Larson, recommended by preraphaelite, who's usually Right About Everything, but not about this being novelly enough even for the likes of me. I learned a lot about the World's Fair and Industrial-Revolution Hot Or Not, if you're into that sort of thing. (4 hours |time suck)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
10:36 pm	A Mercy, adult fiction by Toni Morrison, in audiobook, read by the author, who swings through her language with such transparent naturalness that only when I went back to look at it via amazon did I realize it could arguably scan as difficult. Audio might really be her right medium. I'm not so sure about the storytelling in this one, I'm not so sure she takes me anywhere important or new, but I'll go pretty much wherever with her and she knows it. On deck: Devil in the White City, Shadowland. (time suck)
6:36 pm	Notes for a War Story, adult graphic novel by Gipi. Picked up for the same reason my kids choose it -- after long slog, was in the mood for something I could finish quickly. Still forced to assume much of what's happening is over my head because the bits I get are like not-quite-as-good-as little novels. Safe House, adult fiction by Andrew Vachss. Tight and tasty, except for a couple of uneasy moments in which one suspects Vachss might actually not be kidding. (time suck)
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
4:29 pm	Declare, adult fiction by Tim Powers, recommended by a friend, curiosity regarding whose motives powered me through the last let's say eight ninths when very little else could have, though even that intention proved optimistic in the end. Neal Stephenson squared minus the, you know, characters and stories and information; 500+ pages of ship positionings. Whatever I did, I apologize, truly. (time suck)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
10:07 am	Theater Games for the Lone Actor, nonfiction by Viola Spolin, because my library didn't have the other one. The kids more or less demanded a theatre workshop and I couldn't bring myself to refuse them but I am learning my own valuable lessons about exactly what happens when you're skimming furiously to stay a chapter ahead of the class. It's a quite worse problem than teaching, say, the writing of poetry, at which I'm not particularly gifted but at least have worked and received training; if I do this again, I'm afraid I'm going to have to sign up for some sort of theatre experience myself, after all these years of not checking that box. Anyway, the book: Much the mystical edge of the, you know, useful classroom advice, for the layperson not particularly readable, but if I don't get all the way through Improvisation for the Theatre and so don't post about it, this might be my only opportunity to heartily recommend the thing itself. I'm beginning to guess that Theatre as much as Literature is a right place for teaching seventh graders to read and think. On deck: Declare, Shadowland, Impro, Improvisation for the Theatre, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, A Mercy (audio). (time suck)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
6:58 am	Tender Morsels, fiction by Margo Lanagan. Marketed as young adult but presumably only because it's at the rarely-labeled intersection of fairy tale and adult and ADULT. Delicate and gorgeous, for me, so much so that I haven't wanted to think too hard about it yet. A stronger, surer Weetzie Bat, maybe. Till We Have Faces, reread, adult fiction by C.S. Lewis. Theory delivered with the force of prophecy. Absorbing, difficult to resist, or read resistively. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reread if skimming for high school counts, which it probably doesn't, adult fiction by Mark Twain, mostly in audiobook, but I returned it and can't ascertain the reader. I can't quite tell what he's doing most of the time, whether he's trying to be funny or so angry he can hardly breathe, and I'm not sure whether that's his thing or my lack of context. And (so?) anything that strikes me as subtle and fine is subsequently pounded flat into four patterned chapters; nothing nice is ever not tedious. If anybody reading along teaches this, I'd love to know how. (time suck)
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
2:20 pm	Also the opening chapter of Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, and thence to the opening chapter of C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, both pleasing in just that quantity. (time suck)
2:16 pm	The Diamond Age, adult fiction by Neal Stephenson. Some very cool bits, and some tedious bits about things not quite so cool, which distinction I'm sure is more mine than textual, and some lovely and eloquent claims for story, undermined by careless contradiction of same whenever overexcited about shiny bits. As usual, I lost or never quite acquired track of characters, factions, and ship positionings, so I can't justly evaluate how much fun it all amounts to (to which it all amounts.) Looking forward to the eventual sleek and streamlined 110-page young-adult novella I can really get behind (behind which I can really get), which probably means I don't deserve to even place a library hold with his name in it. (time suck)
Saturday, April 11th, 2009
4:42 pm	The Clean House, a play by Sarah Ruhl, for ongoing Theatre-With-An-RE (Because-I-Didn't-Have-Enough-Knifetwist-Usage-Affectations, Gee-Thanks-SO-Much) Appreciation I. If Lucky is the text for Why Story, this is it for Why The Stage, I think; gets purest pain so exactly right, distilled way beyond realism, that it becomes very funny. I can imagine, at the end of this, feeling like we'd traveled long and intimately together, all of us watching, long enough to argue and tell stories and finally agree together yes, that's what it's like, isn't it? If I'm picturing this right, then I'm maybe starting to understand better. (time suck)
Monday, April 6th, 2009
2:42 am	Lucky, adult nonfiction by Alice Sebold. If I ever taught a class whose sole objective was making children understand, why words, why story, this would be the key text. She takes a deep breath and aims herself straight down the edge of her precipice, she's got steering but no brakes, she tells the hardest part in the first thirty pages, no flinching, no pausing, it's intense and you know she owns it. It's impossible to look away and -- well -- I learned a lot. Recommended, but brace yourself. Beasts of No Nation, adult fiction by Uzodinma Iweala, in audiobook. I picked this up off my Critically Acclaimed Possibly Relevant list and thought, I know every single thing that this is going to be like, and then rejoined, how unfair, like every Holocaust or slavery novel's just the same, and everybody loved it, come on, everybody's not stupid, and you know what, I was right the first time. Interestingly bold postcolonialist gamesmanship, though, using invented broken-English dialect to represent rhythms of African language. Un Lun Dun, young-adult fiction by China Mieville. Witty and inventive magic of Harry Potter, minus the compelling characters and relationships such as they are and story suspense such as it is, but the prose is easier on the eyes. If the previews for the first HP movie comprised more than half of what you love about the heptology -- or if you remembered The Phantom Tollbooth as better than it turned out to be when you went back to it -- this is for you. Thirteen Reasons Why, young-adult fiction by Jay Asher, in audiobook. This might be... thinking... yeah, this might be the book that's pissed me off the most, ever. Certainly in recent memory. The writing's lazy as hell and the plot relies on readers' having no experience with the mechanics of actual high school life and the one jot of narrative tension is resolved at about the 3/4 mark with "actually, no, that wasn't a thing at all" and none of that's even what bugs me. And when I say bugs I mean infuriates and offends. The premise -- and I'm about to try my damndest to spoil this book for you -- is that a high school girl has killed herself and left behind thirteen audiotapes, one about each of the thirteen people whose betrayals forced her to it, plus complicated instructions for the delivery of the full series to each of those thirteen. There is no catch. There is no twist. There is no redemption. From the text as written, it is difficult to avoid concluding ALL of the following: (1) The petty cruelty of high school students has the power to rob its victims of their bodies and selves. (2) There is no fighting back. There is no assertion of self. If they decide to hurt you, you bleed, and you become weak. (3) Suicide is a not unreasonable response to an accumulation of such cruelties. (4) The suicide of a victim can serve as punishment for the perpetrators of such cruelties. (5) Along with petty cruelty, rape, failure to stop a rape, drunk driving, sexual harassment, lack of respect for the privacy of others, gossip, objectification, and phoniness can be more or less equated as crimes of betrayal. There is some meaning to be derived from distributing responsibility and penance more or less equally among their perpetrators. (6) The worst, cruelest thing you can do to a girl is believe her to be sexually active when she is in fact wholesome and pure. (7) It is appropriate for a girl who is believed to be sexually active to consider herself ruined, not just socially but personally. (8) Suicide gives you a voice. Finally you will be able to tell your story. Finally people will listen. Finally they will understand how they have hurt you and they will be sorry. (9) High school students and teachers who failed to pick up on warning signs are to blame for your suicide. If you have ever failed in this way, however, you deserve them. (10) Fortunately your peers can redeem themselves by paying closer attention to the next girl they catch in dark lipstick. I mean... I don't know. I don't even feel snarky. I'm just horrified. How are people digging this? (11 hours |time suck)
Monday, March 16th, 2009
9:48 am	Sleeping in Flame, adult fiction by Jonathan Carroll. One of those times when a book finds you at just the right moment; deals with love and magic and being a writer and works densely and joyfully in language so that every line brings surprises but never to show off, always to guide and gladden. It'd be interesting to ask a roomful of readers on which page each thinks the realism leaches away. (At one time in my life I'd've said 8 or 10, but now I think I hold out til 60 or 70, and I know people who'll give him well into the three digits.) The Hunger Games, young-adult fiction by Suzanne Collins. Absolutely she'd have to work a hell of a lot harder to qualify the premise for adult literature, but on balance there's a lot here for which I'm willing to suspend unimpressedness. For one thing it's FUCKED WAY UP which always cheers me in literature for adolescents and for another though it doesn't quite work as a novel there are flashes of freaky-fearless prose that I think will reward careful readers with some seriously weird dreams. (time suck)
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
6:36 pm	Ways to Live Forever, middle-grades fiction by Sally Nichols. Kid dies of cancer on the last page and tells you so on the first, and everything in between is careful and graceful, and I know a lot of kids who will want to see it unfold before their eyes in just this way. There's a certain ballsy purity to it, like, all right, let's do this thing, every inevitable step. But it was impossible not to read this via Other Women's Children -- which is in part a foundational text for what I guess you'd have to call infanticidal critical theory -- and on that rubric Nichols cheats three times, in big ways, and I wish she hadn't, because it invalidates the entire exercise, doesn't it? I Capture the Castle, fiction of some kind by Dodie Smith, in audiobook. One part awkward reimagining of Little Women in 1930s Britain, aptly naming itself "consciously naive"; one part agonizingly beautiful meditation on impossible love not at all suitable for young people; one part unapologetically didactic children's book for fifth-grade curriculum on postmodernist literary theory. I know, right? Worth it. For me. (time suck)
Monday, February 16th, 2009
3:30 pm	True West and Buried Child, plays by Sam Shepard, for essentially a do-over of a class I took twelve years ago. True West is very funny now and wasn't then, plus it includes my second-favorite-ever stage direction, "The set should be constructed realistically [...] If a stylistic 'concept' is grafted onto the set design it will only serve to confuse the evolution of the characters' situation, which is the most important focus of the play. Likewise the costumes should be exactly representative of who the characters are and not added onto for the sake of making a point to the audience." Take that, graduate students! Buried Child is still completely perplexing but at least I get now that you can't look away, and it features my very favorite stage direction, "Sound of bottles smashing against wall. This should be actual smashing of bottles and not tape sound." Take that, stage managers! Lost Boy Lost Girl, adult fiction by Peter Straub, who fascinates me now for exactly the reason I once dismissed him, namely his cowriting projects with Stephen King. The crafting is very fine -- better than King, maybe even, for tightly controlled structure and natural dramatics -- and yet at the end I felt a little like I'd been walked in an extraordinarily precise and tidy circle and ended back where I'd begun. Interestingly-to-me, now that I'm writing a little again myself, I feel suddenly deauthorized in these dismissive microevaluations, though I press on. Know that I know that I can no more make 1% of any of this myself than I can grow the trees and pulp them and brew the ink and build the presses and generate the electricity and bind the books themselves. I've drafted an essay about teaching; if you want it, email my real-life address. (6 hours |time suck)
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
2:05 pm	Fences, play by August Wilson. Very "bunch of stuff happens" for me, but I'm told I'd feel differently if I saw it live, which is sort of the problem with reading plays at all, especially if you don't actually see that much theater. The Uses of Enchantment, adult fiction by Heidi Julavitz, a reread and complex and strange enough that if I didn't have a long library-hold backlog I'd probably dive right back in. Recommended, with patience for The Author's Messing With Me. (time suck)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
6:43 pm	This morning we woke before dawn and walked into the city on a tide of people like us in myriad possible ways flowing in from every direction. We watched the sun rise over the monuments with what felt like the entire rest of our generation. We waited, and were nice to each other, and sang. We watched the first among us assume our leadership. We felt viscerally our role as townspeople, as witnesses. We were there to see it done. We have cried watching Obama victories, losses, speeches, endorsements, commercials, on TV, I have personally cried listening to the man on the radio, but on this one occasion, in this place, there were no tears, only trumpets and cheering. We listened to some bad poetry. We realized just how very cold we were. Then we walked home on the highway, in a slow river that divided into streams and then rivulets but remained lively all the way to our front door. We don't know what's next, but we know it's starting, and I'm glad we were there. (2 hours |time suck)
Monday, January 19th, 2009
9:50 am	Beyond the Labyrinth, middle-grades fiction by Gillian Rubinstein. A couple important ideas in search of an actual novel. (Sentences like this one give it away: "It is typical of Brenton that he should switch from open hostility to vulnerability in a few seconds.") Not worth reading, but worth rewriting, Gillian, if you're out there. (time suck)
Friday, January 9th, 2009
6:33 am	Guyaholic, young-adult fiction by Carolyn Mackler. I'll give her "edgy," and that seems to be all she wants. She seems to me to be fatally confused about seventeen as opposed to twenty-five and personal growth as opposed to ever-lengthier pseudopsychiatric personal exegesis; and she gets all the way behind the tag line ("the guy who changes everything") in that his goodness, hotness, and sexual prowess are so devastatingly intense that his attentions even distantly remembered [SPOILER ALERT] cure the narrator of both her sluttiness and the low self-esteem we're told causes it; and the top-this voice gets tedious after a few chapters; but-- You know what, I thought I was coming around to the still-very-readable bit, but I'm not. This is bad, though in a different way than usual, and for its good bits you might as well see Kendra. (time suck)
Sunday, January 4th, 2009
12:51 am	The Graveyard Book, non-age-banded fiction by Neil Gaiman. Sweet but frequently feels self-conscious to me; too many made-up rules, lacking the urgency that he achieves for me only in Coraline. Little Children, adult fiction by Tom Perrotta. He's a little glib, a little too quick to tell you when he's Nailed It, but he's not wrong, and it's good reading. Except he gets ambitious, tosses one truly bad dude into his mix, casually, like, I've dealt with badder dudes than this, folks, and then he turns out not to have much to say about evil, which I wouldn't have asked of him if he hadn't brought it up. Quibbling, though. Recommended. Magic for Beginners, adult short stories by Kelly Link. Like a faster-moving and more-fucked-up Millhauser; instead of weird little stories, leaves behind deeply disturbing dream flickers. Not exactly my cup of tea, but worth it for, "There was a difference between art, which you just looked at, and things like soap, which you used. [...] This was why people got so pissed off about art. Because you didn't eat it, and you didn't sleep on it, and you couldn't put it up your nose. A lot of people said things like 'That's not art' when whatever they were talking about could clearly not have been anything else, except art." This is, for reference, from a story accurately titled Some Zombie Contingency Plans. What I Saw and How I Lied, young-adult fiction by Judy Blundell, though adult concerns plus inflated estimation of own originality suggests "wish I could sit at the grownups' table" to me. Interesting for rare portrayal of the lower classes of the American dream and for painfully astute assessment of the onset of sexual attractiveness, which for many girls works out a little like being dropped off alone in the city at two in the morning with an extravagantly expensive and powerful car you have no idea how to drive. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, adult fiction repackaged as young-adult fiction, by Peter Cameron. You know snarky little riffs on city living, like in The Princess Diaries or The Nanny Diaries? And, you know the stark postrational hopelessness of suicidal depression? They're shuffled together here, for some reason, so there's a lot of very fine writing in both categories but nothing resembling a working novel. (time suck)
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
1:41 am	Picturing Will, adult fiction by Anne Beattie. I get the feeling there's a tightly planned structure at work here that I completely missed because the actual characters and events, which in this case were clearly just the cloth draped over the essence of the thing, kept losing me. I tried to read this at home but couldn't stay awake and then tried to read this at breakfast which is always worse and I'm just not interested enough to try again in the car. The Inheritance of Loss, adult fiction, a Booker Prize winner, by Kiran Desai. Started in audiobook but was immeasurably sweeter and quieter when I switched to reading it myself, without the overdone accents. I'm starting to think Apple Talk is my ideal interpreter. Still, just okay, with shades of trying too hard. The Road, adult fiction by Cormac McCarthy, in audiobook. The grimmest and most unpleasant novel of all time and yet impossible to stop reading. The ending didn't do the trick for me, I wanted more help deciding what it all meant, and I was also persistently nagged by missing information that was certainly beneath the text's concerns, but I knew he'd already given me more than a novel's worth and couldn't really complain. This time the reader gave it his best Willie Nelson, perhaps because of Pretty Horses. Recommended, with warnings. (time suck)