Curious Notions

“The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life – is that I don’t think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very little people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.”

“Do you realize that all great literature – Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, The Bible, and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” – are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? (Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?”

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

“But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.”

“… his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grand kids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

If reading this book wasn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

A couple of days ago I finished Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up. This is the third book of his I read and I believe that’s all of them, which makes me feel very sad because I wish I had more of his words to devour. He has a very soft, gentle, tone and voice. Surprising originally because my preconceived notion of Steve Martin is that he is master of slapstick humor. Who knew he is also master of eloquent, unpretentious prose.

The memoir is not a juicy celebrity, name-dropping, tell-all. It is not a sensational read; there is no mention of drug rehab in this book. Steve Martin was pretty much completely sober and did not partake in the illicit drugs culture of the 60s and 70s. He dipped his toes once and had such an adverse reaction that he just steered clear, which really is kind of amazing. Drug free in show business, and during the 60s and 70s? I’m digressing. My point is this is unlike the stereotypical celebrity autobiography.

Martin chronicles his life from his start as a teen magician at Disneyland to the stand up comic who sold out shows. He walks us through the slow process of his evolution. How he took countless notes. How he studied that comedy is the build up of audience tension and then releasing the tension with the punchline. How he innovated a new comedy where he never releases the tension by never delivering a punchline. It’s quite remarkable, his work ethic, his determination, his creativity, his foresight. He is open with his failures, his nights where he did not elicit any laugh, his roller coaster ride between clubs, one night having a sold out show, the next having a mere trickling of a crowd. He lets us in on his first few romantic heartbreaks, his strained relationship with his family, and finally in the end, he tells us why he walked away from stand up comedy permanently in 1981.

I actually had a lump in my throat near the close of the book. His relationship with his dad was estranged through most of his life. We’re kind of lead to believe his dad was abusive and not supportive. Steve’s way of handling it was letting their relationship die. It seemed a justifiable decision. However, despite the heartbreak from his father and spending most of his teen years and adult years avoiding contact, he successfully resuscitates the relationship with his father and it was such a sad and beautiful story of forgiveness and redemption, I literally felt a lump in my throat.

This is not a laugh out loud book. You’ll smile a few times but the story of his life, oddly enough, is not really a comedy. If you’re a fan of his work, I recommend picking up this book and getting to know the man.

A couple of excerpts from the beginning of his book:

“One day I was particularly gloomy, and Jim asked me what the matter was. I told him my high school girlfriend (for all of two weeks) had broken up with me. He said, ‘Oh, that’ll happen a lot.’ The knowledge that this horrid grief was simply a part of life’s routine cheered me up almost instantly.”

“Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.”

I was going to do a small review of Erica Jong’s How to Save Your Own Life, a book I finished a couple of weekends ago but thought it weird to discuss a sequel without mention of the previous book, Fear of Flying. I read Fear of Flying (published in 1973) in 2006 and never typed up a book review for it. I’m a little fuzzy on the details but I do remember really loving it. So much so that I wrote 14 pages of quotes in my reading journal from the book. Since I am home without any pressing task or appointment (the laundry can wait!) I recorded a short video of the Fear of Flying pages in my journal.

I know I’m a little fanatical about themed journals but if you’re a reader, I think keeping a reading journal has some perks. If you’re anything like me, my memory fails me when it comes to movies and books if I don’t rewatch or reread two or three times, and even then, if a significant amount of years have passed, I’m completely useless in a conversation about the book or movie.

• You’ll have your own version of cliff notes for the book or a collection of great quotations you enjoyed at your finger tips for perusal years later!
• Keeping notes or jotting down quotations from your books also serves as a window to who you are. The quotations you pull at a certain time of your life correlate to whatever your circumstances and point of view may be at that time. For instance, the quotations I’m about to share that were jotted down in 2006 are a little more cynical than I am now. It’s indicative to who I was 4 years ago. At least 1/3 of these quotations I wouldn’t have jotted down if I were to read FoF for the first time now. A reading journal provides subtle clues to who you were when you read each book.
• If you date all your entries, it gives you a tidy timeline and log of all the books you’ve read.

Excerpts from Fear of Flying I originally chose and transcribed in 2006

“How hypocritical to go upstairs with a man you don’t want to fuck, leave the one you do sitting there alone, and then, in a state of great excitement, fuck the one you don’t want to fuck while pretending he’s the one you do. That’s called fidelity. That’s called civilization and its discontents.”

“All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.”

“Because if you reduce everything to that level of indifference, everything becomes meaningless. It’s not existentialism, it’s numbness. It just ends by making everything meaningless.”

“All the problems of love are problems of maldistribution, goddamn it. There’s plenty to go around, but it always goes to the wrong people, the wrong times, in the wrong places.”

“But it would pass in time. It always did, unfortunately. The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns in all the shades of the rainbow and stop aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then, when it happens again we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think: ‘this one is stronger, this one is better…’ because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.”

“It’s easy to be an intellectual with a mute wife.”

“And it all comes out so lame. I love your mouth. I love your hair. I love your ears. I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying, I love you. Because this is almost too good to be love. Too yummy and delicious to be anything as serious and sober as love.”

“Maybe marriages are best in middle age – when all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you’re going to die anyway.”

“There’s no such thing as security. Even if you go home to your safe little husband – there’s no telling that he won’t drop dead of a heart attach tomorrow or piss off with another bird or just plain stop loving you. can you read the future? Can you predict fate? What makes you think your security is so secure? All that’s sure is that if you pass up this experience, you’ll never get another chance at it.”

“It was as if my stomach thought of itself as a heart. And no matter how I filled it with men, with books, with food, with gingerbread cookies shaped like men, and poems shaped like men, and men shaped like poems – it refused to be still. Unfillable- that’s what it was. Nymphomania of the brain. Starvation of the heart.”

Related reading: Peek through all my journals

Anita Diamant took a couple of lines from the Book of Genesis mentioning Dinah and expounded upon it, giving us a very intricate tale of Dinah’s four mothers (Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah – all wives to Jacob) and her own story. Selina who nominated the book for book club promised us it was not a ‘religious’ book. Upon finishing the book, I do have to agree with her that it is not a ‘religious’ book. Rather, a piece of fiction, inspired by a few lines in the bible and set during biblical times. However, I can imagine some religious people taking it too seriously and maybe opining that Diamant blasphemously manipulated sacred text that should be left untouched. I’m not one of those people and thus continue on a rather favorable review.

The entire novel is written in Dinah’s perspective. The first part of the book focuses on the stories of all of Jacob’s wives and Dinah’s mother. Most of her observations of her mothers occurred under the Red Tent which is the tent that all the women stay in when they are menstruating, giving birth, or are suffering from ailments. The next 2/3′s focused on her. It’s a tale of unbelievable, inhumane family betrayals. In the bible, it’s suggested that Dinah was raped and avenged by her brothers. Red Tent depicted a different story. I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say, I’m usually not one for happy endings as I find it too easy but in Dinah’s story, her life was so atrocious that aside from dying, there was no other way to go but a little up.

Plot aside, Diamant breathed copious doses of conviction, strength, sensuality, and even guile into her women. I love that. It does get a little weird and awkward under the Red Tent so that’s my little warning for you. I wonder what inspired Diamant to write this story. She’s a Jewish author whose other books include Living a Jewish Life, How to Raise a Jewish Child, The New Jewish Wedding, The New Jewish Baby Book. Did she have some kind of agenda or was she just following her Muse? I’m not sure, but I’m glad I didn’t judge this book by the underwhelming book cover.

I love Steve Martin as a writer. Back in 2005, I read Shopgirl in one sitting and was taken by his gentle, quiet and comforting handle on prose. This past New Year’s Eve, I was eating dinner with Alan and his friend Andrew before a night out. Over dinner, Andrew and I traded notes on favorite books and he mentioned how he really loved Steve Martin’s books and cited The Pleasure of My Company as his absolute favorite book. Using, Shopgirl as my measuring stick, I didn’t doubt that I was going to be pleased.

That said, Steve Martin totally exceeded my expectations! He composes a story about a man named Daniel, a neurotic genius with amusing, outlandish, and endearing compulsions. For instance, he needs to have a certain amount of wattage lit in his house (1250 watts if memory serves?) and has a fear of crossing curbs. A pretty isolated person who is literally held prisoner in his home by his neuroses, he manages to have tiny windows open that made it possible to meet no more than a handful of people. These select people eventually draw him of his world and expand it.

Martin gives us more access to the characters in this novella than he did in Shopgirl (In hindsight, he kept the characters in Shopgirl a little at arm’s length) which made me grow to care for each of them (most especially, Daniel). I found myself rooting for him, hoping for him, and finally applauding for him.

My Two Favorite Excerpts

“What if during the entire trip I would not allow myself to speak any word that contained the letter e? This is the kind of enormous duty that could supersede and dominate my other self-imposed tasks. I quickly scanned my vocabulary for useful words- a, an, am, was, is, for, against, through- and found enough there to make myself understood. Thus “let’s eat” would become, “I’m hungry, baby! Chow down!” I couldn’t say “I love you,” but I could say, “I’m crazy about you,” which was probably a better choice anyway.

“I thought of the names in and around the magic square. I thought of their astounding number, both in the present and past, of ***** and *****, of *****, of *****, even of my father, whose disavowal of me led to this place, and I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart. ”

(names blacked out to not spoil anything :))

Recommended to me by A.J.

I can pretty much summed up the book in a such a way where you do not have to trouble yourself with reading it.

50 Cent’s Bio as provided by 50th Law

His mom died at age 23 when he was a baby. Raised by his grandparents. He sold crack. Signed with Columbia. Right before the release of his first album, he was shot 9 times and was dropped from record label. He went back to the streets as drug bagger and hustled again. Sold his music himself. Discovered by Eminem. Learned the ropes of the business from inside record label and then broke free, creating his own label. When he wasn’t charming his way around the business world, he was intimidating his way around.

If you didn’t get this short outline of his life the first time 50th Law mentioned it, you’ll sure to piece it together the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th time the book walks you through it.

Also mentioned obnoxiously over and over and over again is that his name used to be Curtis but is now 50 Cent. You can really turn a reading of this book into a collegiate drinking game. Every time Greene informs you that Curtis is now named 50 Cent, take a shot!

The Little bit of Good

In a nutshell, this book suggests being fearless in all business encounters and in pursuing your dreams.
It encourages acceptance of your mortality, being proactive, and has inspirational historical anecdotes and quotations sprinkled through the book.

The Bad

As mentioned, very repetitious. The writing level felt very underdeveloped. Laced in the random inspirational quotes by influential figures is also quotations from 50 Cent. His “gems” stood out like poop on a windshield in comparison to the Nietzsche quotes and the Dostoevsky quotes.

The Ugly

The short of his advice when watered down can be considered good advice: Use fear as a motivating force; Accept mortality which will then allow you to move more fluidly towards your dreams. However, when fleshed out using 50 cent’s own life, it’s not exactly kosher. The book celebrates his aggressive and sometimes violent means to his ends. He hired thugs to mug people. He stole. He calculated and planned a studio tantrum and upheaval to raise publicity after one of his songs got leaked. He targeted and bullied Ja Rule to destroy Ja Rule’s credibility. I’m not yet jaded enough to believe this is the only way you can be successful in business. Moreover, I’m not yet jaded enough to celebrate these methods. Shame.

I don’t recomend this book but if you do decide to give it a chance anyway, please consider using the following link.

P.S. I still like his music. :)