Category: .Books & Art.

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The Book Review: Allen Ginsberg and I

 

“That tree said I don’t like that white car under me, it smells gasoline. That other tree next to it said O you’re always complaining you’re a neurotic you can see by the way you’re bent over.” – Allen Ginsberg 

I woke up this morning and I felt sick. Just this little cold one gets sitting in the car for too long with the air-condition blasting in the face. Not really sick as in stay-in-bed-and take-tons-of Nyquil-sick. Just blah-get-out-of-my-way-sick. (sorry Jean). So I made myself some breakfast that I did not really enjoy because my taste buds are sick as well I believe and I thought about what I can possible make out of a day like this. Sitting miserably in the kitchen my husband walks in and showed me “Allen Ginsberg’s ‘White Shroud” originally signed by Allen Ginsberg with one of these little cartoons he usually put on the cover page. Well I do LOVE Allen Ginsberg. With his poem “Howl” and of course the movie based on said poem I was hooked. I read basically everything by him. Front to back. I watched everything on Allen Ginsberg on Youtube. There is a great documentary on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoevVtG-Gh8

My husband knows all this and bought this book for me. Classic. So, Jean walks in with this book and all I did was – I cried. Maybe due to me not feeling well or or or… who cares. But it was just so awesome. I asked him: “Is it mine?” And he said: “Of course my love!” How awesome is this?! I read the book almost instantly. Believe it or not, I have not heard about it nor have I even read any of these poems. Overall I can say that it is a pretty interesting collection of his poems. One particular poem “Love comes” I read out loud to my husband and he said: “Well, it is Ginsberg, he has his own style!” which is true indeed. His politically inflamed passion and his dramatic flair is just well… Ginsberg.

I think that his biggest achievement was “Howl” but “White Shroud” hits a few high marks that come pretty close to this poem. Was it Faulkner who wrote once that the best writers are those who try and dare and take risks and even if they fail they are still better than those who play it safe. In none of his books/poems was he afraid to take risks. He just wrote what he thought. Simple as that. Did this make him look silly? Maybe for some but who cares. Some poems in this book I must say I was scratching my head thinking c’mon Allen, you are not really trying to write something here. He was the first to admit that he got caught up very often in these demands of just being Allen Ginsberg (His poem “I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg”). I believe this is the reason why he put more talent and effort in some of his poems and just bothered less with others. In his poem “Going to the World of the Dead” for example I thought that he just did not care about what he had written:

Excerpt: …”Your Nuclear Bomb

Ho Ho Ho

Let go your Disaster your Death

Let go Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho

Ho Ho Ho Ho

Ho Ho Millionaires of Mexico

Ho Ho Ho Millionaires of Nicaragua Let go Let go.”

I think this collection offers a good cross-section of his range. My favorites include “White Shroud”, “Industrial Waves”, “I am a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg”, “Those two”, “In my kitchen in New York”. So overall I believe it is worth reading if one is a fan of Ginsberg’s work. My mom would hate it hahahaha! It is a good look into the mind of a radical who is trying to come to terms with getting older and leftover success and baggage.

And thank you again my love. For making this day special even though I do not feel well. <3

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The Book Review: “Platform” by Michel Houellebecq

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These days I spent my nights with another man. Michel Houellebecq. I love his writing. I finished this book a couple of weeks ago.I believe that the book is a brilliant commentary on the intersection of globalization and sexuality, or whatever is left of it in western culture.

Well, sometimes it is hard to follow an narrator who has got such a pessimistic worldview and who loves a good disaffected misanthrope but this book really opens up after a while. I really like to read Houellebecq because he seems to dislike many things I am not fond of either. Materialism, politics, world view, religion and there is plenty of bitter social critique as well. His realization that we in the West are like the declining Roman Empire is what I like. He is able to articulate this thesis through his characters but also through interjections on social theory. The central themes are uniquely provocative, and not in a leftist or right-wing way. Reading this book was fun, in a kind of infuriating way. I read on the passenger seat on my way to Canada with my husband. My baby in the back seat making some noise did not really bother me while devouring this book.

I believe that the author is the protagonist in some kind of way – who enjoys just about nothing other than sex, and he feels numb still in the end. The main plot involves him being in love, but he and his love interests (a women who always has a cup of coffee for him after his morning blowjob) never seem to do much talking, or sharing their lives. The love here seems more like a sort of warm fellow-feeling. Well, I would say that Platform is a warm up for “The Possibility of an Island” and “The Map and the Territory”. It provides a nice overview or “platform” for his philosophy. In my opinion he is not the transgressive and sexist novelist whom many critics make him out to be.

“She was one of those creatures who are capable of devoting their lives to someone else’s happiness, of making that alone their goal. This phenomenon is a mystery. Happiness, simplicity, and joy lie within them, but I still do not know how or why it occurs. And if I haven’t understood love, what use is it to me to have understood the rest? To the end, I will remain a child of Europe, of worry and of shame. I have no message of hope to deliver. For the west, I do not feel hatred. At most I feel a great contempt. I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism, and death. We have created a system in which it has simply become impossible to live, and what’s more, we continue to export it.”

I believe that this is a pretty harsh condemnation of the capital system. Michel Houellebecq, like Blake, wants us to dream up new systems to the beyond those that we as westerners have created. As Houellebecq reiterates, it is unfortunate but possibly true  that these new systems may be nightmares, and we should do our best be people who are “capable of devoting [our or] there lives to someone else’s happiness.” In a way he is annoying, lovable, funny, disgusting and sexy. There is a resemblance to Camus and Celine and I did shed one or two tears in the end.

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Dreaming

I have been dreaming and getting all starry-eyed talking about this little dream I have with my husband. (Especially after we had a couple glasses of wine, then anything sounds like the world’s best idea.) We talk about me opening an independent bookstore somewhere. We do not know where or when (maybe when Barnes and Noble are bankrupt and borders and amazon and all the other ones) but it sounds so awesome and makes me very happy.

My dreams goes like this:

We rent a space preferably in a little old house like pictured above. (Source MorBCN). This would be perfect as a vintage bookstore. Then we would fill this store with many used books and plenty of new books as well so that everyone who comes in can find what they are looking for.

I am into vintage clothing so I would put in a rack of clothes for sale as well. I would also put some sort of children’s section with toys where my son can play independently most of the day. Many parents would come to our store and bring their kids and they would all play and buy plenty of books. My son will read fluently by the time he is three years old. To take my dream even further, I would get some studying done, maybe add some raw food food sampling section with tea, smoothies and raw cakes, coffee you name it. My son would cheerfully greet our many paying customers and I would have all the time left to read mostly all of the books in my store.

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My son would grow up in our awesome little vintage bookstore and he will be happy, content and totally into books and become a writer and will tell everyone that his parents are the absolute best.

The end. <3

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On reading

So, this is my son’s favorite book.

I love reading, always loved books, smelling books, buying books and most of all being in bookstores or libraries. I remember when my mom took me to the library multiple times a week allowing to check out stacks and stacks of books at a time.

I devoured books, and they were my favorite thing growing up besides sports and later professional dancing. My love for reading has only grown over the years and I still walk into a bookstore and feel like I am home -smelling the books, reading, losing track of time. For as early as I can remember the library was a huge part of my life and I was involved in the summer book club, weekly readings and all kind of contests they had.

So now I go to my “old” library with my son. Because reading was such a huge part of my life, when I happen to stumble upon an old book in my library that I once love, I am flooded with memories upon memories. I am taken back to when I was a kid, sitting in that exact spot that my son is sitting and looking at books; I can see every detail, the smell of the old books, the sometimes yellowed pages, the hushed quietness that pervaded every nook and cranny of that magical place.

When I was a kid I would sit on the short stools used for shelving books, leaning up against the stacks, and read and read. Now with my son I do the same. Then he walks through the aisles, looks at books, takes them out, opens them, looks at them. My mom let us stay for as long as we wanted, and she put no limit on the amount of books we were allowed to take home.

I let my son experience the same thing. He grows up surrounded by books and reading. And he likes it.