You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Literature' category.
It appears as if I’ve given up on writing: I haven’t. It’s been quite hectic here, especially in the last two months, but I’d rather say no more. I wish I could master describing the trivia, but I don’t and, likely, I won’t.
Though not an event, or series of events, doing some reading was quite enjoyable, particularly when I got somewhat tired of job hunting—which, usually, happens in the evening. A few days ago—or what is yesterday?— I realized that I have not done any search with Dialog for quite a while, and that worries me because when I don’t practice a skill, I tend to believe that almost forget it. It might have been this concern that almost pushed me to buy a book about online searching for librarians—not bad at all, the book, I mean, considering that I still need to hone my searching skills.
For some reason, I have the feeling that I may end up working in US, although I prefer to stay here, where I am. Will try to rationalize– or attempt a sensible explanation of — this thought, but I believe that’s too early now (for reasons that I prefer to keep to myself).
Will finish this book, “How to talk about book you haven’t read,” by Pierre Bayard, in a couple of days. It appears that, when talking about books without reading them, we can get away with some astucity. The author thinks that the so-called non-reading is even better, because we all have our “inner” books, whether they are individual or collective. My understanding is that, if this is the case, our cultural being can be so rigid that we impose our own cultural grids on any book. Well, what if we just glorify the power of incommunicability? Meaning that a clash of cultures is almost inevitable, or, to put it nicely, a dialogue of the deaf. In this case, it is a dialogue of non-readers– will they be ever understanding what is the Other’s marked identity? That is the Other’s writing, speech, and rhetoric…
Librarians would be saviours since they don’t need to know the content of books, but only their relationships, or how books are positioned within a cultural chain–according to Bayard. Yet, a book may have its own personality, so distinct in fact, that putting it in a relation with other books, or in a subject category, would make us play, unknowingly, Procustes’ role.
Simply put, it’s madness: packing, preparing for interviews (and they just keep coming), then having to answer questions either face to face or by phone, and dealing with other, more personal affairs—unquestionably, the latter one is not a subject to depict in this blog.
In the rest of the time, in addition to reading articles of philosophy, psychology, education, and—of course—writing, I continue to look at lib lit. As for the last one, there is a plethora of research that– as my chance to discuss with several kinds of librarians that I would like to meet on a regular basis is currently slim– substitutes for an understandably, more desirable professional contact. And all of a sudden I realize that the time seems to have compressed to the point that I live now with the perception that there is no time for anything else: one task continues with another, without my having any restful intermezzo.
It’s funny how some people undermine themselves by displaying behaviours of greed when they see that you could give them some business somewhat regularly. Specifically, I used the services of a print shop for some personal business (I will leave other details aside), the last time charging me $0.06 per copy, although it was clearly specified in their ad that for more than a thousand copies one is charged $0.04 per copy. When I made this observation in my second to the last use of their services, they have changed the figures, and I gladly gave them the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, I didn’t– justifiably so, and, since I do not believe that being too assertive is always the best approach to solve problems, I paid the full amount, promising myself that I really do not have a reason to go to that printshop anymore (as I’m leaving the city sooner rather than later).
I found Charles Taylor’s article, “The dynamics of democratic exclusion,” interesting in the sense that he sees that people (whether majorities or minorities) in simultaneously democratic and multicultural societies operate politically on two not-so-mutually-exclusive models: the procedural one (we look at each other from the most basic perspective, as humans, but we ignore what really makes us individuals) and the Herderian model (we are complementary to each other precisely because our differences). First, he describes patterns of exclusion of minorities in different Western societies (Germany, Canada), before he proposes his two-prong model. He goes on to say that the two models share linguistically some elements with the “postmodernist” discourse (namely, some of its terms seem to be semantically close to those used by procedural liberals—seemingly ideological enemies of the “postmodernists,” but it would have been interesting if Taylor had come up with some examples to better support his assertion. What Charles Taylor actually does is to clearly define terms, propose an ideological model of how a Western democracy should work, admit that the matters can get worse before they might get better, but he ends up with some gracious generalities (e.g. “we must fight free of some of the powerful philosophical illusions of our age,” pag. 156).
On the road tomorrow, I will be attempting to find an idea, or a tentative research question, for a paper that I should finish writing in about ten days. How will I find a few valuable ideas for the mini-essay and, even more importantly, creatively add meat to it (that is, editing), since writing is like giving birth to a skeleton, is another kettle of fish. (Hmm, fish, skeleton, and meat—again, my undergrad English teacher would say that I lapsed into literary sin with this mixed metaphor.)
Longing for some peace for writing these days, whirls of social merry-go-around, I tend to regard some acquaintances as time reavers— so numerous and imaginative, so it seems, in taking away bits of time. Your time is a minuscule gear in a ruthless mechanism in which you are forced to fit, a small toothed wheel precisely cut by a grinning, godly Swiss clockmaker. How often, and to what extent, can you negotiate that time for yourself, to own it, without appearing selfish? This is especially awkward when people love to tell you their stories, going into details that are only relevant to them, with their assumptions that you know what they are talking about, but you hardly do.
You feel that every word you utter in a sentence, presuming you have the chance to arrive at its end, triggers a memory in your interlocutor’s mind, who is rushing to narrate it, and you suddenly realize that your sentence, though the initial netting on which they weave their little stories, becomes meaningless to you–its meaning has been appropriated. Do we read texts by appropriation? Not quite, but I will write about that some other time.
This is the second summer in a row when we had to dump books, cloths and clothes, boxes, bed sheets, blankets, coats, sweaters and cardigans, shoes and boots, and old pictures. Tearing off the latter and throwing them away felt like killing the second time memories of people who, in most part, are already dead. Particularly, I will never forget the portrait of a young lady—she must have been in her early thirties, of Scandinavian origin —that was framed in a sort of blue-grayish carton, with a heart-shaped opening, her face almost breaking into a timid smile. As most of the pictures were mercilessly thrown into green plastic bags, it was that young woman’s picture’s turn; still, I could not bear the thought of dumping it into the bag, although I could not have possibly met her, still not being able to escape the remorse that I would have felt, had I carelessly thrown her photo into an abyss of filth and, ultimately, humiliation. The picture still carried the meaning of a human being that, for one reason or another, seemed so alive.
Then, just like some people considering euthanasia for their beloved ones (with their agreement, most of the time), I thought that she would be relieved if I tore her picture into small, unidentifiable pieces, and she’d die, once again, with the dignity she well deserves.
For some reason, I avoid reading fiction, and that has nothing to do with using a dictionary, which I use anyway. It is as if either my reading tastes have changed or I fear something. But, if the latter is true, since the former seems a reckless momentary thought, then what do I fear? One example would be that I lack some cultural keys of the host culture, which do not allow me to use my present knowledge to open some doors. Oh yes, but that would be such a simple reason to get away with. Also, there is a hiatus of about nine years, just before I got back to university, during which I hardly read, and I know why. It was as if I was trying to become someone else in those years, but that did not work either.
Imagine struggling to clutch a timber float, as your sail is sinking—there is no way that you can think of art, or even ponder on philosophy of life. Even this picture is not totally true because it shows one bit of a long trail. After my ship sank, my timber float was sailing on a tranquil ocean, or, at least, it seemed that way, but my mind was playing, again and again, that image of my ship sinking. Yet, the float was drifting away without my knowing it… It was at that time when I uselessly attempted to take on a different persona: working and living like an automaton, wanting to forget about myself, mercilessly erasing my inner self. It just did not work—it never does, once you are aware of this, once you see that your boat is drifting away.
I will most likely go back to fiction, but need to discover an English-speaking writer, or perhaps just a few, whose writing style, choice of words, and theme, or themes, will get my attention on a track where it used to be in my native Romanian. My guess is that an anthology would be my first step.
