Real Junk

Decades before James Frey made it big with his controversial and highly popular fictionalized-claimed-as-true book A Million Little Pieces, William S. Burroughs documented HIS own unexaggerated account of his hopeless addiction to just about every narcotic available on the market in Junky.

And I thought that Jack Kerouac's last book Big Sur was dark. Junky comes pretty close to superseding it. Most people I know are fortunate enough to not go to such extreme lengths to forget themselves and their fear of the damning world they're in. Most people I know are fortunate enough to have no idea what it is like to wake up in the morning and think only of when the next big high is going to come. Getting high for Burroughs comes hand in hand with pushing drugs and constantly running from the police of the 1950s that were thoroughly against men like him and Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder -- all those wild literary beatnik types that seem to do nothing but drink and get high and really sexed up as though life is just one big roaring party.

Burroughs is remarkably frank for someone so hated and rejected for being an addict, homosexual, and beat writer . His documentation of his being a complete outsider is fairly linear, a return to some normalcy for me the reader after all Kerouac's liberal misspellings and lack of a familiar and linear story-telling path. But while Kerouac bounced around everywhere searching for shining stars of adventure and LIFE, Burroughs makes no effort to conceal the fact that he is diving headfirst into a pool of drugs to make his fear go away.

The refreshing thing about this book is that Burroughs doesn't hide the ugly that everyone tries to deny. He gives us the life of a complete social reject. Ever think about how much our media our books our IMAGES delude us into avoiding certain kinds of ugliness? What is so wrong with ugly and what is so wrong about degenerate? Burroughs gives the reader NEW images to consider without the censor, and thank god for that. I've been tired of the happily-ever-afters for a long while now, because life isn't about simply achieving the happily-ever-afters.

I can't wait to read Naked Lunch, also by W.S. Burroughs. It should be amazing.

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain is quite good, actually. I love me some bad characters. Breaking the rules always makes things so much more interesting.
Open your mind and burn some paper spines.

Thirsty Still

I spent about 9 hours yesterday (Wednesday) combined reading the Twilight trilogy (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) by Stephenie Meyers. No worries, I spent time socializing and running and chores and running the errands my family sent me on. I do have a life outside of books, too.

BUT I must say, while I enjoyed the books immensely (because they simply cannot be taken as serious literature), they left me dissatisfied by the appallingly bad writing. These are very drama-filled books, and sometimes the repetitiveness of certain phrases and words bothers me more than a little. I'm also bothered by the fact that the romance in these novels is too close to perfect that it catches my heart in an unsettling way. Too fantastical and Hallmark, I think. It reminds me that I haven't found anyone remotely so fascinatingly perfect in all the ways that I want yet or ever will. Some characters and people are just lucky, I suppose. It's all too fairytale happy ending for me. Well, a strange and twisted fairytale, but the happy ending is definitely there. I really like the idea of the story, but the execution is underwhelming.

I'm not quite sure how and why (yet), but I feel strangely restless since I finished the trilogy. I want to do something, interact with people. I dunno. Something. Reading's another option since the first two are simply not. Roaming the streets of Cupertino at 2am, now THERE'S a sure way to get my parents angry and get a ticket (because Cupertino cops have nothing better to do).

Since the books featured vampires - humans and werewolves too - I can't help but use the word "insatiable" to describe my current feeling of emptiness and desire to drink in the beauty in everything. I'm very energetic and twitchy right now, so sleep is out of the question.

Jack Kerouac's soul is waiting on my bed for me. and after that, some W.S. Burroughs. Perhaps their hot-cold-cool black and blue-white jazz will drug me. Then I'll sleep. Maybe.

feeling ravenous

One and a half weeks of summer and I have read the following:

-Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac
-some poetry by Ezra Pound
-Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
-reread Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
-reread Incubation: A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil (I swear that it doesn't get old)
-some poems by Gregory Corso
-The Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac
-Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen by Lesley Hazleton

I am currently working on:
-Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
-The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac


I can't get enough Jack Kerouac. That should be quite evident in my recent devouring of his books. It took me a while to digest On the Road.

Those that know me know that I down books like Pooh bear does with honey. Not this one. It is so saturated with Jack Kerouac. Granted, its his story of his bumming and zipping back and forth from coast to coast with his friend, so it should be very real Jack Kerouac. I don't know if I've ever read such a naked piece of work. I feel as though I come too close to his wild and untamed brilliance and his larger-than-life divinity of spirit.

I see a man who's struggled with his immense capacity for passion for anything and everything and plays like a mad sax player all over his spectrum of emotions. He dug books and learning and writing traveling seeing the sights hearing the sounds feeling his relation to the people and world around him. He called himself "mad" for everything, and I can see that. Your average-day normal person can't register so much feeling of everything. He and his friend Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty in the book) were driven by some raging hunger for the present and the unknowable future.

My HUM 5 TA recommended Kerouac to me for some summer reading. I'm glad I listened to him. I wish more people knew his name and were exposed to his schizophrenic and naked prose. It's so damn raw and real that it seems to slam up against you, bruising on impact and obliterating all that you thought was good literature. His writing isn't orthodox, classically learned and Shakespearean in its execution, but it makes you dance and drown in sorrow and feel.

summer 08 reading list

1. reread The Histories by Herodotus. I started this like 4 times last year, and never managed to really absorb the book and remember anything past the first 1/4.
2. Story of the Eye by G. Bataille
3. Waiting for Godot by S. Beckett
4. Junky by W.s. Burroughs (he was a heroine addict and wrote alot while high)
5. Naked Lunch by W.s. Burroughs
6. On the Road by J. Kerouac
7. Big Sur by J. Kerouac
8. anything by Ezra Pound
9. My Mother: Demonology by K. Acker
10. Twilight of the Gods by F. Nietzsche (i have it because of Hum 5, it comes right before the Anti-Christ so i might as well)
11. the other short stories in the Kafka book from hum
12. The Shock Doctrine by N. Klein
13. No Logo by N. Klein
14. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Re-invention of Nature by D. Haraway
15. Our Lady of the Flowers by J. Genet
16. Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius
17. The Mysterious Stranger by M. Twain
18. finish The Second Sex (all the stuff that wasn't covered in Hum) by S. de Beauvoir
19. Water for Elephants by S. Gruen
20. Three Cups of Tea by G. Mortenson and D.O. Relin
21. The Last Lecture by R. Pausch
22. Parable of the Talents by O. Butler
23. Middlesex by J. Eugenides (always curious, never actually read it!)
24. The Heroin Diaries by N. Sixx
25. The Arabian Nights
26. re-read Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir T. Mallory because it's beautiful
27. The Myth of Sisyphus by A. Camus
28. Existentialism is a Humanism by J. Sartre
29. The Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch
30. The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria by B. Hamann

enough for now. I'm sure to re-read a ton of stuff i have at home

Oh my darlin' Clementine

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours. "

WORD.