Doing the Underground Timewarp ... Again

There are some masterworks of literature I find myself moving through at such a slow pace that time seems to melt away for me in a way I can only ever experience otherwise when I am ~creating~ -- whether the medium be poetry or paint or fiction. Dostoyevsky's NftU is that rare sort of fiction that, were it a dessert -- say a rich chocolate/pudding/moist,warm cake sort of thing -- I could spend days, weeks, MONTHS on! It's like that perfect, peatty, warming, haunting single-malt scotch at the perfect moment ... on that perfect evening.

How many times have I read and re-read the transition between chapters five and six of the second part? I don't know -- and I really don't care; I flip back and forth like a kid watching a DVRd magic show. And this writing, I'm convinced, ~is~ magical. Well, at least it will be until I pull out the dissection tools of the ruthless critic and take this butterfly apart ... joint by joint.

Reading Notes: Notes from the Underground

While reading through this phenomenal work by Dostoyevsky for the very first time, I'm amazed by the similarity to other (later, contemporary, and much later) works I've read. First and foremost is the similarity to the narrator's voice in Henry Miller's Tropics books -- and even Black Spring. Where once I thought Miller fresh, bold, hysterical and profound -- many things, but mostly original -- I now see that while he was one hell of a writer, he was not as original as I first thought. It's sort of like when I first noticed the similarity between Cubism and the art of the Ancient Egyptians -- where objects seen from different perspectives are depicted on the same plane. Where, before having learned of this similarity, I thought Picasso brilliant -- impossibly original -- I now think of him as a gifted genius but not as original as I first thought.


There is in Dostoyevsky's NftU a quality that seems so far ahead of its time that it gives me the chills at times. For instance, the section in Part 2 -- A Propos of the Wet Snow, Chapter 1, where he describes that long, ridiculous one-sided feud with the unnamed officer he works so hard to challenge at the Nevsky -- the same officer he feels he could have educated, improved, had the officer but given him the respect he deserved! This is Humbert Humbert speaking here! Who could fail to recognize Humbert in those lines -- also the echo of Charles Kinbote from Pale Fire!

Maybe the impression that his work is so far ahead of its time is created by the sheer fact that Dostoyevsky influenced so many of the great writers who came after him. And Dostoyevsky is not immune to such influence either. I can clearly discern the voice of some of Edgar Alan Poe's narrators in later parts of NftU. Sure enough, looking at publication and birth/death dates reveals an obvious overlap where it is possible -- though how probable I don't know -- that Dostoyevsky could have read Poe's work. This is something I suspect but not something I've had the pleasure of researching yet. I wonder if there is any literature out there on the influence Poe had on Dostoyevsky?

At any rate -- this I would include right up there with Don Quixote, War and Peace, Moby Dick, and The Old Man and the Sea, Lolita, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and those few others as one of the greatest of all novels ever written.

Funny thing about this Part 2 of the story though. If you read (as so many tend to do these days) about this book rather than read it, you'll wonder even several chapters into the second part what ever happened to the prostitute everyone comments so much about. Interesting how everyone who has a lecture on youtube or a paper published online seems to neglect the wonderful anecdotes shared in the first two or three chapters of the second part of NftU....

2004-2011: Rivals

Amazing. Has it really been seven years since I started cooking Rivals? I can't believe I will have been walking around literarily pregnant for seven years this coming October.

No matter. Regardless of the manuscript word count or the working title (now changed), the stew is still in the pot ... and it smells delicious.

In other news -- gazoonga.com lives as well.

I just sort of forgot to turn it on..... heh

Oh well. On to other things:

I've been reading and re-reading a lot of things lately. Everything from Tarzan of the Apes to Moby Dick, from King's On Writing to Gardner's The Art of Fiction has bubbled up from the bottom of the deep pond that is made up of ideas and works I love to stir and sniff and taste (and have wanted to experience for a long time but never really got around to experiencing until now -- like Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu).

I've been stacking up books on my nightstand (some borrowed from co-workers like Dawkin's Greatest Show on Earth, others pulled from the library right outside my bedroom (Kiss the Girls, Blowfly, The Bad Place). Besides going through actual paperbacks and hardcover books from various sources, I've also been reading e-books pretty extensively. In fact, I bought the books by King and Gardner mentioned above in e-book format and don't even own a hardcopy of either.

I do a lot of my e-book reading using my cell phone (Samsung Fascinate). It's convenient and I currently use only two proggies for this activity, though I could install more. The two I use are Aldiko and, of course, Amazon Kindle (mobile). I write 'of course' of the latter since, apparently, it's impossible to delete this little proggie unless you're a 12-year-old computer major in your junior year at MIT.

When I'm not using my cell phone to read my e-books, I'm using my Sony Reader. It's got a larger screen and I like the way the print looks on it. Still, after having used all three proggies extensively, I can say each has its merits and drawbacks.

With Aldiko and Kindle on my cell phone, reading is great. I can turn on the night-vision mode and read the print just the way I like it: white font on black background. I don't know, I guess it stuck with me from the eighties. For me, it just seems so much easier on the eyes when you're reading from a screen such as the one installed on my cell phone.

Another great thing I love about reading e-books on my cell phone is the fact I can hilight text, copy it to the clipboard, open up Wikipedia or Dictionary.com and paste whatever I want to look up directly into the search box. Wow! No need to sit by the encyclopedias in the library anymore, eh? Of course, the Kindle app has a larger store with more books available, but I keep wanting to use Aldiko for some reason. I'm not sure why, I just like the way it looks. Maybe I just resent the fact the Kindle app is basically being shoved down my throat?

At any rate, the big drawback about both these readers is that they don't give me the ability to hilight text and enter notes on the hilighted passages so that I can review the notes later and comment on my remarks. This is something easily accomplished with the Sony Reader, although, with this nice little reader, I don't have the ability to access the sites I mentioned above.

I think this might be available in newer readers -- maybe even a newer version of the Sony Reader. I haven't looked into it yet. I have the Daily Edition version and I know for a fact there's a newer model than mine out in the market already. I just don't remember much about it off the top of my head.

So, what I'm thinking of doing now -- at least at home -- is reading the book, say "Tarzan of the Apes" -- on the Sony Reader and just researching things (like, say, what sort of 'apes' was Burroughs thinking of when he described the apes that raised Tarzan?) by not being lazy and just Swyping whatever I want to research into the search box on the app installed on my phone.

It's still easier and more efficient than jotting something down and walking over to the OED or the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Do they actually still print those things?

Gazoonga!

Site is progressing nicely. I was checking out some places where I could advertise online. Found some good spots. Also, I created the "official" facebook page for gazoonga but don't plan to push anything until I can get that new ip addie this Friday. It doesn't help to spread the word if nobody can access the site from work or school afterall....

Mobile Post Number 1

Okay, so it's a little past five in the morning and I've been up since three thirty. I'm obviously not getting any sleep, so here I go testing mobile blogger....