i just want to read my book

Look, I don't think you're a psychopath; I just want to read my book.
-Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors

(Quick sidebar before I start the actual post: Sliding Doors is the movie that 6'1" and I adore above all others. Every so often we get together on a Sunday afternoon, eat Starbucks Java Chip ice cream, drink "disgustingly large Grolsches" and "Jack Daniels with ice," and recite--well, repeat ad nauseum--all of our favorite lines together. Needless to say, we are quite obnoxious by movie's end. We can't quite figure out why no one wishes to join us in this ritual. But, in recent times, the name of the adorable Scottish actor who plays Gwyn's love interest in the film--John Hannah--has taken on new meaning.)

Writing about The Chosen yesterday got me thinking about the time I spent in New York this summer. I stayed in East Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, for a month, and while the rest of the world arose early and slogged off to work or school, I was at leisure to take in museums, parks, shops, architecture, and people. I also got to sleep late, albeit in an un-airconditioned loft in July next to a construction site (the Hasids in the neighborhood were building a new yeshiva). But the place had its perks, including great location and two very fluffy and friendly cats, Lilly and Cooter. (I could have linked to a picture, but the soul-less being who stole my car also made off with my digital camera before I could download the photos therein.) Each morning (or early afternoon [grin]), I waited for the JMZ line that runs between Brooklyn and Manhattan via the Williamsburg bridge. And there, at the Hewes Street stop, I met some very interesting people.

The first was a Jewish man in his mid-thirties, I estimated, glancing up briefly from my book as he walked in front of me on the platform. He wore a blinding orange shirt with, on the back, Hebrew writing and big English block letters, JEWS DON'T EXPEL JEWS. (In retrospect, the color should have been my first clue.) A cross-dresser was our only fellow Metro-rider, and when s/he walked past, the man moved back and audibly muttered in disgust. He sat down next to me: "You're not from around here, are you?" (Now, several native New Yorkers have expressed surprise at his ferreting this out simply by looking at me. I attribute his insight to my choice of reading material, Dan Shaughnessy's The Curse of the Bambino, which, despite the allusion in its title, no New Yorker has ever read.) I affirmed my otherness and braced myself for the inevitable, and it came. "So, where are you from?" I gave my answer. "Hmm," he said. "They know how to do things right in Texas."

The hell?

I love Texas (at the risk of being sacrilegious) "with all of my heart and with all of my soul," but I'm no fool. We actually don't do a lot of things right there, and that's not why I love it. I know from standard New York reaction to the Lone Star State, and I enjoin you to be wary of all else. "How do you mean?" I queried. "Well, here in New York, there is no rule of law. Everything's moving toward anarchy. We've got laws we don't enforce, and now there's this issue of gay marriage. If it passes or not, either way it's going to be chaos. I've got to get out of here." He continued, "But in Texas, capital punishment, for instance, is on the books. And they enforce it."

Ah, yes. Texas's record on state-sponsored killing. There's something we can all hang our hats on. He must have noticed the consternation on my face, because he next asked, "You don't support the death penalty, do you?" "No, I don't," I replied, and he, saddened that he hadn't found an ally in his rant against lawlessness, shook his head and moved into one of the cars of the just-arrived train. The cross-dresser and I, we moved into the other. And never the twain shall meet.

Next time: black clothes, Borsalino hat, paot--they look like Hasids, but are they???? And, we show you the risks you take when you give away money on the subway in lower Manhattan. Stay tuned!

the chosen

One learns of the pain of others by suffering one's own pain, . . . by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain . . . . It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe. . . .

Chaim Potok's novel The Chosen was pushed on me this summer by my mom, who first heard about the book from one of her colleagues at River Oaks Baptist School. (I find it highly amusing to think of these two born-again Christian teachers at a Baptist school enthusing over this most Jewish of books. But then again, my mother has always been quite an original--one of her heroes is Malcolm X, he of the occasional radical Muslim, blue-eyed-devil-white-man philosophy.) My mom was reading the book at the beginning of July, and on the afternoon of Sunday, July 10, she was 40 pages from the end. This was also the day of the last Astros' game before the All-Star break.

The Dodgers were in town, and the 'Stros won the first two games of the series pretty handily, 3-2 and 4-2, respectively. A sweep would put us over .500 for the first time all season, a not-inconsiderable feat given that we started the season 15 games under that. (In fact, the hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle, buried them on Memorial Day. A half-page cartoon depicted a huge tombstone on which was inscribed, "2005 Houston Astros, RIP.") My mom, dad, brother and I attended, and my mom read at least through the first six innings. Of course, the action that afternoon at Minute Maid Park was really exciting, as Houston rallied from four runs down to tie the game at 5. In the bottom of the eighth, Brad Ausmus (the Dartmouth-history-major Jew) smacked a two-out, R.B.I. single to right for the winning run, and Brad Lidge retired the side in the top of the ninth to close the win. (I must also note that this game was my first clue to the cosmic Jewish significance to the 2005 Astros. More on that subject another time.)

As I was to find out later, reading this book at a baseball game in which a Jew participted is not actually all that strange. Chapter One opens with an inter-yeshiva softball game in the 1940's neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. The protagonists, the secular modern Orthodox Reuven Malter and the Hasidic Orthodox Danny Saunders, meet each other for the first time, in an explosive encounter on the field that serves as the basis for their intense friendship. And in another odd coincidence, I left Houston three days after the Astros game to spend the next month in East Williamsburg. When I arrived, my mom, besides insisting that I require "all my Jewish boyfriends" to read the book as well, was fascinated by my actually living among the Hasids--she wanted to know all about what they wore and how they acted. (More on that subject later, too.)

Reuven and Danny are both studying to be rabbis, and the intensity and breadth of course of study enthralled me (and, truth be told, made me want to be a rabbi). As a near-universally-acknowledged dork, I longed to read and to study and to be tested on the Talmud as they are. In one college course, the boys are expected to come to class prepared to be Socratically interrogated for several hours, word for word, about a few lines of Talmud and all its commentaries. Danny's father employs the same method with his son at home. Reuven is especially interested in mathematics and logic, so the reader is treated to a good amount of gematriya. The system assigns a number to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet; all Hebrew words and phrases, then, have numerical value. The first time Reuven hears Danny's father speak in shul, Reb Saunders expounds:

"Rabbi Joshua son of Levi teaches us, 'Whoever does not labor in the Torah is said to be under the divine censure.' He is a nozuf, a person whom the Master of the Universe hates! A righteous man, a tzaddik, studies the Torah, for it is written, 'For his delight is in the Torah of G-d, and over His Torah doth he meditate day and night.' In gematriya, 'nozuf' comes out one hundred forty-three, and 'tzaddik' comes out two hundred four. What is the difference between 'nozuf' and 'tzaddik'? Sixty-one. To whom does a tzaddik dedicate his life? To the Master of the Universe! La-el, to G-d! The word, La-el, in gematriya is sixty-one! It is a life dedicated to G-d that makes the difference between the nozuf and the tzaddik!"

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I attended services at the historic Sixth and I Synagogue run by mesorahDC. Rabbi Teitelbaum, in his excellent commentary throughout the morning, mentioned that in Hebrew the phrase "Rosh Hashanah" has the same value as "our holy temple." His point was that by attending services that day, we were in essence doing our ancient duty of sacrificing at the temple. These are fairly typical examples of the use of gematriya; in addition, certain forms of rabbinical homiletic interpretation are based on inferences made from these values, and occasionally, a decision in Jewish law will be based on (or at least corroborated by) such an inference.

The birth of the state of Israel forms the background of the book. Reuven's father, David Malter, works tirelessly to promote support for the UN partition and subsequent Israeli declaration of independence, while Danny's father opposes the formation. I was especially interested to learn about how the event fractured an already fractitious Jewish community in mid-twentieth century Brooklyn. Potok says, "Long ago, in The Chosen, I set out to draw a map of the New York world through which I once journeyed. It was to be a map not only of broken streets, menacing alleys, concrete-surfaced backyards, neighborhood schools and stores . . . a map not only of the physical elements of my early life, but of the spiritual ones as well."

truth & beauty

I couldn't ever remember being lonely before, certainly not in this way, until I had seen the edge of all the ways you could be with another person, which brought up all the myriad ways that person could never be there for you.

I recently devoured Ann Patchett's (of Bel Canto fame) first non-fiction work, Truth & Beauty, the story of her 20+ year friendship with fellow author Lucy Grealy (The Autobiography of a Face). I have read neither Bel Canto nor The Autobiography of a Face, although both come highly recommended by various people who also read Truth & Beauty.

The book was first brought to my attention this summer by scoutfinch, who also found a great article that Ann Patchett wrote for The New York Times Magazine about women's friendships in Sex and the City. Scoutfinch contends, "Of course, any writer who loves SATC has to be good!" While I certainly agree, I was even more impressed by the fact that Patchett does not own a television. But that's just my own personal crusade.

Grealy is a survivor of childhood cancer, which left part of her jaw missing, and she spends the majority of her adult life in reconstructive surgeries. She and Patchett begin their friendship in grad school at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. They become confidantes and collaborators for each other as both try to achieve their dreams of becoming writers, although as Grealy, demoralized by surgical failures, becomes increasingly needy and demanding, the relationship is less and less reciprocal.

I loved the details of Lucy's adventurous personality. She buys bags of old Harlequin romance novels in order to paper the house's bathroom with their covers. She designs her introductory literature course with books she has always wanted to read and only just keeps up with her own assignments. Before a party she vetoes Ann's skirt as too short only to show up at the party wearing it herself. She memorizes the first few pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. She writes to Ann,

Dearest anvil, dearest deposed president of some now defunct but lovingly remembered country, dearest to me, I can find no suitable words of affection for you, words that will contain the whole of your wonderfulness to me. You will have to make due with being my favorite bagel, my favorite blue awning above some great little cafe where the coffee is strong but milky and had real texture to it.

Of course, those are the endearing quirks, but Patchett recalls all of her friend's peccadillos with equal affection. When Lucy's overdue bills accumulate past her stomach for them, Ann insists on sorting them all and paying as many as possible. (Where is my Ann Patchett?) Ultimately Patchett is unable to stem Grealy's self-destruction, and, as its cover states, "This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save."

Joyce Carol Oates's review in the The New York Times

blogcritics.org review

exquisite torture

A [wo]man travels the world over in search of what [s]he needs and returns home to find it.
-George Moore, additions mine

When I left Texas in 2002 to take a job in North Carolina, I was more than ready to leave the state. Excepting my year between high school and college in Monteverde, Costa Rica, I had until then lived all of my 23 years in Texas. Of course, it wasn't until I had spent some time not in Texas that I realized how much I loved and missed it. It started with the surrender of my Texas driver's license and license plates and their replacement with ones from the Tar Heel state. Absenceofwill called it first. "You're not a North Carolinian," he said, horrified. Now that's an entirely different issue, but I did find myself oddly compelled to hang the Texas flag on a wall in my apartment. (My aunt theorizes that all "Texans in exile" do so, as part of an unspoken condition of their exile, and challenges me to find an exception.) In the end, it is the reaction of others to my being a Texan that invigorates my pride. Certain bigots nonwithstanding (see my previous post), most respond with a mixture of curiosity ("Do you live on a farm?") and disbelief ("Where's your accent?") when told where I grew up. I think John Steinbeck said it best: "A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner." And now, as I sit in front of the TV, watching the first World Series game ever in Texas, my yearning for home is that much more acute.

My friend mrsjackbristow (and also the occasional self-declared Mrs. Scott Podsednik, who is, by the way, a Texan!) writes of a similar longing for the Windy City since her White Sox clinched their World Series berth. Writhing with jealousy, she sends me a picture of her sisters and cousin at Game 1. (Now, this shot kind of freaks me out because mrsjackbristow looks just like her sisters, so I thought at first that she herself was there.) I've liked knowing a White Sox fan in this series, as it helps to personalize the conflict, although she and I are way too nice. I had envisioned our talking all kinds of trash at each other during the games, but instead we end up apologizing over IM for our respective teams' scoring. She even told me after the Astros' heartbreaking loss in Game 2 that she hoped the Astros would win two in Houston. I suspect that her desire for the series to go to Game 6 may, just may, be the result of her actually having a ticket to said game. But then again, I'm a suspicious person.

And now on to someone completely different: my friend meggiefreshh (the self-declared Mrs. Jason Varitek--Karen who?), in proper Mass-hole fashion, wouldn't be caught dead apologizing for the Red Sox's successes. Last October I had the privilege of watching with her as her beloved team won its first World Series in 86 years.

We were in Raleigh at the time, and even though the Sox won the championship in St. Louis, she was devastated not to have been in Boston when it happened. (Be assured, however, that she is now, in her words, "firmly planted in the New England soil in which she belongs.") I don't think that I really understood her regret until today.

lucky stars

"You might give some serious thought to thanking your lucky stars you're from Texas."

So states the Goode Company Barbeque motto. However, this is only true, I find, if you are actually in Texas. And sometimes not even then. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This afternoon, I went to a housewarming party at the "new" condo of my dear friend 6'1" and his partner. As I kiss both hello, 6'1" hands me a Warsteiner Dunkel--in honor of the event's Oktoberfest theme--and expresses condolences for the Astros' frustrating loss last night. A woman standing nearby in the kitchen pipes up, "Are you talking about the World Series?" I answer in the affirmative, explaining that Game 2 starts in a few hours. "Are you a baseball fan?" I innocently wonder. "Not really," she replies. "But these teams have caught my attention and made me pay more attention than I might." I ask whom she likes to win the series. The reply: "I'll just be happy if the Astros don't win."

The hell?

I pull my beer, and my smile, a little tighter. "Why don't you like the Astros?"

"'Cause they're from Texas."

It's hard to argue with that. No, wait a minute. It's not. At all. But I simply glower. "I'm from Texas." She at least has the decency to blush. Looking down at her little plastic cup of red wine, she mumbles, "This is why people hate New Yorkers." Actually, I can think of lots of reasons to hate New Yorkers, but the resolute conviction of their state's preeminence to the exclusion of all others? Not so much. I can identify with that. (N.B. I don't actually hate New Yorkers: I've been too in love with too many.)

It turns out, though, that I've played this scene before. I met dogooderlawyer in Austin in March, when our mutual friend llschoolj--my good friend from high school, his good friend from college--invited me to dinner. The two walk into the County Line, and llschoolj leaves us to ourselves while he asks after our table. I introduce myself. "And how are you?" I inquire. Dogooderlawyer looks sideways, shrugging his shoulders as if in physical discomfort. "I fucking hate Texas."

The hell?

Once again, I wade in. Dubiously, I ask, "So, where are you from?" The reply: "I'm from New York. Where the fuck do you think I'm from?" Sigh. Where the fuck, indeed.

While I certainly understand the disenchantment of the blue state masses, I still say, now and forever,

"The stars at night/are big and bright/deep in the heart of Texas!"

houston, we have a pennant!

One beauty of the internet in this age of global communication is that I can choose my news in accordance with my prejudices. And because of this blog, I can pass those prejudices on to you. So my readers might be convinced that the whole world has picked the Astros to win the World Series. (This is decidedly not the case.) But here is a smattering of my favorite articles about the upcoming match-up, Game 1 of which starts tonight at 8:03 pm EST.

The New York Post's matchups.
Dogooderlawyer boasts that this publication contains the best sports coverage around. But then again, he's a Mets, Giants, and Rangers fan.

The Washington Post on why the Astros are better.
The Federal Diarist tells me that Boswell, an Amherst grad, is "the most literary of today's baseball writers."

Sports Illustrated's most colorful players in Astros' history.
Of course, bizarre figures are nothing new to the Lone Star State, as followers of the Texas Lege are well aware.

ESPN's Diamond Mind simulated World Series.
A sabernomics dork's dream.

The Boston Globe's list of reasons for Red Sox fans to root for the Astros.
As an avid Red Sox fan as well, I found this extremely gratifying.

the more difficult reading

Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself.
-John Milton, Paradise Regained

The full expression is lectio difficilior preferenda est, "the more difficult reading is to be preferred." The bane of my existence as a Classics major, this principle of codicology--the study of manuscripts (MSS) and the transmission of texts--states that if you have two MSS offering different but plausible readings at a certain passage, you should prefer the one which is (or seems to be) harder to understand, as long as it does not involve bad grammar. The idea is that a scribe may copy a text from a dirty, damaged, or sloppy exemplar and fill in a gap in sense with something plausible. The likelihood is that the copyist would fill in meaning with less understanding than the original author, and he is unlikely to invent highly difficult or ornate syntax just to fill in a blank (copyists tended to be modestly-educated drudges).

In other words (dogooderlawyer has insisted that I explain this concept "in stupid layman's terms"), if you have two manuscripts of a text (ancient texts, like the folios of Shakespeare's plays, for instance, come from manuscripts transcibed by hand) that differ in a particular sentence by one word, then you have a dilemma about the authenticity of both. Let's say one reads, "the tree was in the forest," and the second reads, "the three was in the forest." It is illogical to assume that an uneducated scribe would invent the more puzzling phrase. So the first is the scribe's invention, and the second, the authentic reading. Thus, the more difficult reading is to be preferred.

I created this blog principally to write about the books I read. Ever the literature dork, I find that I miss the careful critical analysis and writing exercise that came with class papers. And I like the relationship between author and scribe contained in the above principle; casting myself in the role of the humble amanuensis, I certainly claim "less understanding [of a text] than the original author." But I also like the challenge presented by said principle; as much as I grumped upon discovering MSS lacunae in Herodotus, I have to respect the imperative to dig deeper, to try harder.

Thus is born lectio difficilior. I already anticipate journaling about more than just literature, especially as the Astros have just earned their first World Series berth. So stay tuned for exuberant updates on the 'Stros and silly stories of the security guard at the F.B.I. building who encourages me with a different platitude as I run by each evening. I invite your readership and comment.