Reflections Archives - Page 12 of 17

Binge Reading: On trying to engage while consuming (too?) many stories

I love going to the library and checking out books. My local library is great; it was renovated a few years back so it’s fun to hang out in. When I used to visit it, I would browse the shelves, looking for new books to try. But lately I’ve been requesting books from all over the metro area that I’ve read about online. Many of these books are popular and I end up on long waiting lists.

I used to be intimidated my these long lists. 250 people ahead of me? Sorry, but I don’t want to read the book that much. Now I don’t care. If I like a book, I request it, figuring that I will get it within 4 or 5 months. Sometimes it takes several months and sometimes (I can’t quite figure out the math?) it arrives within a week or two. It’s fun to get books sooner, but sometimes, more often recently, all of the books that I request come in at the same time.

Like right now.

Currently, I’m (somewhat) frantically reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which is a hefty 750+ pages and is due in 6 days. I need to finish it soon so that I can start Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People, which I requested about 6 months ago after hearing about it on MPR. It’s due in 10 days. ~~Both of these books still have long waiting lists and cannot be renewed.~~ Actually, after writing that last sentence and first posting this entry, I realized that I could renew Tartt’s book. However, I’m immersed in it and don’t want to put it down, so I need to finish it before starting my next book.

In addition to those two books, I’m still trying to finish up Rez Life, which is awesome and illuminating, and start about 4 other books. And, if that weren’t enough, I just picked up 5 more books today, including Bad Feminist (Roxanne Gay), March (Geraldine Brooks), Ongoingness (Sarah Manguso), and Running with the Pack (Mark Rowlands).

Yikes. Maybe I should stop requesting so many books?! Or, maybe I should stop writing and get back to reading.

Here are the books that I have checked out:

And, here’s what I’ve requested:

And…even more running stories

I’m struggling to find running stories that counter the dominant narrative of the “My Running Story.” I’ve been talking about this “master narrative” for the past few posts.

Here’s a brief description of the “my running story” narrative:

It has a beginning (I was never a runner), middle (I found a love for running and got fast) and end (I struggled with injury or motivation but have triumphed).

It often includes a list of races/personal best times.

It is usually centered on signing up for and running/competing in races–often marathons.

It is frequently found on blogs with running/training tips + corporate sponsorships + product reviews.

In many ways, this narrative resonates for me. I think a lot about my times. I like running in races. I frequently understand my own story as about “someone who never thought that they could run” and then learned to love it. But, this narrative is not the only way that I experience/understand myself as a runner. I’m interested in reading other stories about running, stories that offer different perspectives on why and how we run.

I’m having some trouble finding these counter narratives. I’m sure that they exist, they just don’t come up as easily in my google searches. I’ll keep looking. For now, here are two counter stories:

Running with the Pack

by Mark Rowlands, a philosopher. I just recalled this from the library. In an interview with Runner’s World, Rowlands encourages us to think about the intrinsic (running for running’s sake) value of running instead of just the instrumental (running for achieving goals, races, losing weight) value.

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running

by Haruki Murakami, a fiction writer. Shortly after starting to run in 2011, I bought this audiobook. I frequently listened to it as I struggled to work up to a 5k distance. Now, after combining iTunes accounts with my husband, I can’t seem to find it. I’d like to listen to it again and see how my perspective has changed. I wonder, should I buy the book again?

Two Kinds of Decay

Wow. On Sunday I finished Sarah Manguso’s The Two Kinds of Decay: a Memoir. It’s her account of dealing with “a wildly unpredictable autoimmune disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time.” Such a powerful book. Her writing style (first person, story told through brief paragraphs which function as fragments of ideas) is so compelling that I read the entire thing even though it was all about illness and her body falling apart. This is saying a lot because I don’t like thinking/reading about prolonged illness and the body falling apart; it reminds me too much of my mom’s 4 years of slowly dying from pancreatic cancer.

I could spend all day (and then some) writing about the different ways that I was moved/provoked/inspired by Manguso’s book, but I don’t have time. So here are a few passages that I want to ruminate on:

Nothing happens in an instant. Nothing starts happening and nothing finishes happening. History doesn’t begin anywhere and it doesn’t end.

Sarah Manguso, 182

Nothing happens in a moment. Nothing happens quickly. If you think something happened quickly, you’re looking at only part of it.

Sarah Manguso, 182

But to pay attention is to love everything.

To see the future as brightness.

Everything that happens is the last time it happens. We see things only as their own fatal brightness, and there is nothing after that brightness.

You can’t learn from remembering. You can’t learn from guessing.

You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness, into brightness.

Sarah Manguso, 184

Telling the Truth

Just found this great cartoon by Dave Gessner via @CherylStrayed: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Truth in Nonfiction But Were Afraid to Ask: A Bad Advice Cartoon Essay (it’s from March, 2012)

The cartoon, which is thought-provoking and informative, is a response to a recent book (recent as of 2012) by John D’Agata and John Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact. In his cartoon essay, Gessner reflects on the question,

Is it ever okay to not be entirely accurate/factual/truthful in creative non-fiction?

I don’t have time to write about or reflect on Gessner’s responses to this question right now, but I wanted to archive the source. Here’s his conclusion:

note: Before reading Gessner’s cartoon essay, I was not familiar with D’Agato’s/Fingal’s book. I’ve just requested it from my library and look forward to checking it out.

Remembering and Forgetting

In my current story project (the Farm), I’m focusing a lot of attention on remembering and not forgetting. I think about these concepts often. So, when I was listening to the radio this morning and heard the lyrics “I drink to remember, I smoke to forget,” it made me curious.

In my project, I’m particularly interested in working through the differences between the acts of remembering and not forgetting. While they seem the same, I see subtle differences that influence how we use storytelling to perform each of them. In contrast, the lyrics I heard, which are the opening lines to “Two Fingers” by Jake Buggs, are about remembering and forgetting. But, as I listened to the song and then read through the lyrics, I realized that both my project and Buggs’ song struggle with, in sharply different ways, questions about our past/heritage. What should we remember? What do we need to forget? Can we forget our past when it shaped who we are now?

Two Fingers

I drink to remember, I smoke to forget
Some things to be proud of some stuff to regret
Run down some dark alleys in my own head
Something is changing, changing, changing

I go back to Clifton to see my old friends
The best people I could ever have met
Skin up a fat one, hide from the Feds
Something is changing, changing, changing

So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain
Light a cigarette and wish the world away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay
So I hold two fingers up to yesterday
Light a cigarette and smoke it all away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay

He’s down in the kitchen drinking White Lightning
He’s with my momma, they’re yelling and fighting
It’s not the first time praying for silence
Something is changing, changing, changing

There’s a story for every corner of this place
Running so hard you got out but your knees got grazed
I’m an old dog but I learned some new tricks yeah

So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain
Light a cigarette and wish the world away
I got out I got out I’m alive but I’m here to stay
So I hold two fingers up to yesterday
Light a cigarette and smoke it all away
I got out I got out I’m alive but I’m here to stay

Hey, hey it’s fine
Hey, hey it’s fine
Hey, hey it’s fine
I left it behind

In Buggs’ lyrics I see some ambivalence about remembering and forgetting. Mostly he’s resolved to forget and to honor his own survival (he got out), but a few lines (like, “but I’m here to stay”) suggest that he doesn’t want to entirely reject his roots/past. His conflict between remembering and forgetting reminds me of Dorothy Allison’s work, especially in “A Question of Class” and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.