Posted on July 26, 2011 by kara

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

-Socrates

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The Brat Pack Can’t Possibly be This Boring.

Posted on July 24, 2011 by kara

A mullet-topped Lowe and idiot Tom Cruise, on top of the world.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I read a piece in VANTY FAIR about Rob Lowe that included the first chapter of his newly published memoir. Immediately upon finishing said chapter, I shamefacedly downloaded the rest of the tome to my ipad and finished it in one sitting.

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Bad Dreams.

Posted on July 10, 2011 by kara

I read The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 2 weeks ago and it has infected 70% my dreams since. The odious anti hero is a young man living in scary, pre-Enlightenment Scotland, in the early 18th century. Robert Wringhim is a dour, creepy religious zealot who has been raised to believe by his preacher/guardian that he is one of “God’s elect”, thus can do as he pleases. Roberthas a chance meeting in the woods with a charming and charismatic stranger – Gil-Martin – who convinces Robert that they ought to dispatch anyone who has strayed from the path of righteousness. For murky reasons, Robert really creepily stalks his brother through the dusky streets of Edinburgh. Filled with hatred and self-righteousness, bombastically spouting off randomly, Robert Wringhim feels that his Calvinism justifies any number of crimes, and he embarks upon a series of increasingly horrifying murders without fear of damnation. Is Gil-Martin the Devil, or a figment of Robert Wringhim’s fevered imagination? The powerful and mysterious, potentially demonic companion seems to change his appearance at will, and evil triumphs over good, but then nothing is what it seems in this book, and ultimately everything unravels from the inside, lost in labyrinths of its own madness. A mystery, a horror story, a supernatural parable, a psychological study of a religious fanatic, a thriller, a folk tale of diabolic intervention, a satire on extreme psychological horror story, a novel of stalking, grooming, and serial killing. Whatever it is, it is one of the most upsetting and unsettling books I’ve ever read.

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Posted on July 7, 2011 by kara

A pulp novel I love.

Tomboy “The Famous Novel of Juvenile Delinquency”, by Hal Ellison, 1950. buy at alibris

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Great Snacks in Literature

Posted on June 23, 2011 by kara

Christmas Pudding, A Christmas Carol


Hallo. A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the
copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth.
A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door
to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That
was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered —
flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a
speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
Christmas holly stuck into the top.”

– A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
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Posted on June 18, 2011 by kara

“The pies and cakes had been ordered from a caterer in Yvetot. Since he was starting up in the district, he had gone to considerable pains: and when dessert time came he himself brought to the table a wedding cake that drew exclamations from all. Its base was a square of blue cardboard representing a temple with porticos and colonnades and adorned on all sides with stucco statuettes standing in niches spangled with gold paper stars. The second tier was a medieval castlegateau de Savoie, surrounded by miniature fortifications of angelica, almonds, raisins, and orange sections. And finally, on the topmost layer – which was a green meadow, with rocks, jelly lakes, and boats of hazelnut shells – a little Cupid was swinging in a chocolate swing. The tips of two uprights, the highest points of the whole, were two real rose buds.”

From ‘Madame Bovary’ – The first published novel by Gustave Flaubert. Serialized in 1856. Published in book form – 1857.

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Fifty at Eleven.

Posted on June 12, 2011 by kara

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Who’s the Psychopath? Running Down a Sanity Checklist.

Posted on June 9, 2011 by kara

I heard this in the car the other day. Jon Ronson’s hilarious investigation as to whether corporate leaders can, in fact, be psychopaths by visiting Al Dunlap, the turnaround artist known as “Chainsaw Al” for his cost-cutting at Scott Paper, Crown Zellerbach and Sunbeam. He was ousted as CEO of Sunbeam in 1998 amid an accounting brouhaha.  Continue reading →

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Posted on June 8, 2011 by kara

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Live Through WHAT?

Posted on June 8, 2011 by kara

I never write about a book I dislike, eh, what’s the point. But, I’m going to complain about a desperation airport purchase. “Live Through This” (you know), is a mother’s agonizing account of dealing with two terrible teenaged daughters. Debra Gwartney’s daughters in question are her two oldest (she has FOUR), Amanda 15, and Stephanie 13. Pre-meltdown, they are both regulation-style, not particularly precocious nor daft. The Gwartney Family is a typical, middle-class, loving-chaotic-sheltered-dysfuntional-broken home. You know the type, most of us are products of some semblance of the same. One shitty divorce and one unsettling cross country uprooting (Arizona to Eugene) later, the previously good daughters become bad. VERY bad. They stay out all night, skip school, dye their hair PURPLE and pierce things. They disappear for days at a time, only dropping in to steal, stock up on supplies and leave their fetid clothes and puddles of violet hair dye around the house. Finally they just leave. And there is NOTHING Mom can do about it! As a cruel and intimidating united front, the bad sisters are able to bully their mother to the point where she loses control entirely, the force of the evil twin providing them the stamina and bravado to go on like this for a long time. What the sisters are running away from is clear enough, in this wholly unsatisfying and completely unmoving book (I cried, CRIED when I read Nancy’s Spungeon’s mother’s story), but the extent of the girls apathy and cruelty towards the family is never even close to being explained.

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