Hot Dog! I Love Good Books

I grew up in Texas, which meant I hated hot dogs.  I loved roasting them on a fire at the beach, don't get me wrong.  I loved the fixings.  In fact, my favorite way to eat a hot dog (if I had to eat one), was covered in chili with onions and cheese and mustard.  I confessed, I didn't really need the dog to enjoy all the fixings.

But I married a man from the Northeast.  He introduced me to "real" hot dogs.  I became an instant fan.  We discovered Chicago hot dogs, fried hot dogs, but my favorite remained the split grilled version, simple with mustard and onions.   But I didn't know I liked "real" hot dogs until I had one. Until that moment, I thought I'd eaten hot dogs and understood enough to dismiss them as a food altogether.    I did not know I was ignorant.

I also received my education at Catholic schools, from first grade through graduate work.   As an Double English major, (Literature and Writing) I studied Chaucer, Shakespeare, Renaissance writers, 18th Century fiction, 19th Century Fiction, Mythology, American Literature, British Literature and those were just the prerequisites of the major.   

So I felt surprised when I discovered Walker Percy after college, and G.K. Chesterton and Sigrid Undset in my late thirties, and now Rumer Godden as I approach 49.  How did these writers not get presented forcefully during the course of my high school and college education?  Even Flannery O'Connor got a cursory look in one class, one book.   I know my parents tried to wave authors in front of me, (it's how I discovered Percy, Chesterton and Undset), but shouldn't a Catholic education present some of its Catholic artists as part of the normal formation of an educated mind?   

I thought further, about the Catholic authors I did meet in the course of classes.  Their works, whether Dante or Chaucer, were treated as texts, as works completed, which were somehow to sing to us, the college students, without the context of faith, but with the detailed context of the politics and historical times in which they were cast.   We deconstructed the works, stripping away some of the meaning, both for the creator and the recipient, like removing the refrain from a song, or rendering a color film, black and white.   We did not know we were changing what we were receiving, we thought we were getting to the essence of things, the form not obscured by faith.   But faith does not obscure, it reveals.    

There were a few exceptions, and their classes caught fire.  One wouldn't think there could be a three day long discussion amongst addle brained college students in a class held after lunch about what made for a true relationship.  A woman wanting all of us to get something of what literature can bring, pushed the conversation to be led through the lens of seeking truth in all things first.  So we talked about what Emma, Wuthering Heights and Madame Bovary revealed about the nature of romance and love. The eccentric philosopher who openly grieved when only three in the class openly rejected a purely scientific/materialistic reality, pushed people to recognize that faith wasn't just a bit of local color about the authors we were reading, but intricately connected to why they wrote.

I remember him ranting....You couldn't dismiss Black Elk's spiritual and interior life and read Black Elk Speaks with any comprehension.   You couldn't read the Ramayana and not get some of the great beauty of the poetry, if you were going to just view it as a whimsical Indian version of the Odyssey.   You couldn't read the Iliad as merely a long long long long long long poem in which Hector dies.  The end.

People did.

But these professors pushed against the dismissive casual handling of any text, as merely words thrown upon a page that could have been typed by a monkey given enough time.  Moving to graduate school, and beyond, they were the exception, not the rule. 

Reading and discovering these authors, I had to wonder, how is it we haven't been served this feast?  

I know there are many who love Catholic fiction, and perhaps it is time to craft a course for students, particularly of the college age, as part of their faith formation if a school is Catholic.  For these stories, all of them, are attempts to harness the Catholic imagination, and use it like a sail, to propel forth lives lived on the page.  They allow the reader to ruminate more deeply than a Facebook conversation on Catholic ethics or the role of law or faith in society, or what it means to be in love, and not merely the thralls of desire.  

Part of the New Evangelization is the rediscovery of where we've come from, recovering from the stupor of perpetual Internet amnesia with respect to what people can write, think, and create, when they aren't seeking to be trending or create the next overnight success.  We need the satire of Evelyn Waugh, the acid texts of O'Connor, the delicate and in depth romance of Undset, the puns and poetry of Joyce, the wit and whimsy of Percy, and the whispered understanding of an interior life, portrayed in Godden, as much as we need Tolkien's middle earth.   

Finally, I've wondered why we've grown so casual and carnal (if the New York Times Best Sellers list is an indicator) in our appetites for literature.   Perhaps we have been living too long on lesser hot dogs, and forgotten how much better it could be.   If so, here's my attempt at serving you, a grilled Chicago dog with all the trimmings.  I know you're thinking, what's so great about a hot dog but trust me, you'll love it.

So if you've stuck with me this long, I've begun a list --which I hope people will add to, of Catholic writers who strike the heart, and get to the marrow of the faith with their fiction.   The list is in order as I thought of them, not in preference.  I've read or am reading all that I'm listing, though I know there are many many more.  But I don't want to list a book I haven't read or am reading.

1. This House of Brede by Rumer Gooden

2. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self Help Book by Walker Percy

3. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor  (Cover is beautiful). 

4. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset  

5. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien  (Yes, I love the movies of the LOTR and will watch it any time it's on). 

7.  Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

8. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh  (Yes I know of Brideshead Revisited, I haven't read it so I can't list it in my part of the list but if anyone is needing an idea for my birthday....I don't own it).
9. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

If that doesn't get your book juices pumping, there's an obnoxiously long list (I want to read them all) over at Catholic Fiction.net.   In the meantime, many thanks to Elizabeth Scalia for the suggestion of the book, and the idea to write about this topic.  I stopped at ten because....I need to feed these people lunch.  Guess what we're having.

As a final P.S. for those poor souls who still don't know what a Chicago dog is, here's the link for the recipe (Just in time for the 4th of July) and a picture: 

Enjoy!

Escaping the Literary Amazon Island

A Rant but then, it's my blog.

There is a trend in women’s fiction in particular that troubles me. Insert the most recent best seller title into the following formula: A woman discontent with her lot in life, whether self-determined or the result of outside oppressive forces and historical or cultural societal demands beyond her capacity to at the moment defy, recognizes her fundamental disconnect.  She's unhappy. Suddenly a crisis is either foist upon her or of her own making which seems to lead out of the mendacity of her daily existence. This journey exposes her to knowledge, skills, people, ideas and surprises. Our plucky heroine even marvels to herself at how easily her prior barriers which were so fixed, now seem so tantalizingly thin, and so she passes through, leaving all old thoughts and rules and obligations behind and begins her new adventure; joyous at her new freedom. She discovers the old mold of her prior to the experience no longer fits, and thus she abandons all that came with that self in favor of newly invented creature she could be somewhere else.

But what none of these stories can tell, is why the cycle will not continue. The tedium of domestic life, even emancipated domestic life can eventually become stale if dazzle, newness, fulfillment and ease are the criteria. I can cite The Piano, Bridget Jones, How Stella Got her Groove back, Eat Pray Love, and any number of other tomes that explore the same conceptual theme, but none supply an answer for preventing a perpetual cycle. The stories end because the searcher stops searching, thinking she has found contentment in her new life with her new lover, her new job, her new locale.

But there is no reason to think that these female Odesseuses have found their male version of Penelope, since arguably, in most of these books, they left a hearth and home behind at the beginning on the presumption that the discontent stemmed from the job, the man, the role, the expectations or lack thereof, and the children. The discontent in these women’s hearts stemmed from their own hearts being unwilling participants in the lives they lived. The story then goes on to allow these lost selves to sate their imaginations and ambitions and longings at all costs; and the sated selves then find that elusive happiness they were missing before. Color appears in their cheeks, sparkle in their eyes, youth in their hearts because they were just in the wrong place before and now they are in a place of their own making.

For the modern writer of women’s fiction, fulfillment is found in carving one’s own destiny, painting the room, setting the hours, limiting the world and its access to what one wishes; it’s all about choice and the opportunity to choose itself.  Bridges of Madison County tries to have it both ways where she finds fulfillment in having had that one night of passion, and the memory of that one night sustains her throughout the years of dull pseudo fidelity to her husband and care for her children.

In a Godless world fulfillment cannot reside in the hearth or husband and children or job, for those require long term sacrifice and limiting one's own capacity to choose one's own fate; obligations are chains and restrictions, liberty is all. Happiness in this type of mindset comes not from community or commitment or selflessness, but from the endless exploring, being out on the sea searching without a compass or fixed star for guidance. It doesn’t matter what you choose as long as you do the choosing. So while they may close the story with pulling into a port and settling down again, the same staleness will return; their new lovers will have faults and problems, the new children will impinge upon these females’ newly invented selves.

Helen tires of Paris. If the pages extended beyond "The End" for five or ten years, we'd find the heroine considering this new Eden she crafted to replace the old Eden she forsook, just as dull. This Sisyphean dilemma eventually leads the lost self back to the ocean to try again or finally in fatigue and despair, to reside on the island with Circe, gloatingly self-reliant, indulged in all things but also beholden to no one and convinced of her own superiority.   The heroine chooses "None of the Above," and thus proclaims her permanent immortality as an independent goddess crafted in her own image, allowing her to warp men into lesser beings as fits her world view.

Maybe I'll dust off my Percy, Lewis, O'Connor and Joyce.   Ahhhhhh. Now....I feel much better.

Self Reflection Corrections upon Being Reviewed

The humor blog people have spoken. I have been reviewed.

My stories are too long.

“Too many notes.” Said the Emperor.
“Just cut a few and it will be perfect.” –lines from Amadeus the Movie in case any of Hillary’s people are reading this and want to accuse me of plagiarism.

So I’m off to read Emily Dickenson and Ernest Hemingway.

She wrote short poems.
The guy wrote short sentences.

They liked periods.
They were famous.

You have to read these folks in High School.
They were and are respected authors of note.

The trouble is, neither of them ever was very funny.

Emily Dickenson made Adrian Monk look like a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader for Extroverts. I remember one episode of “Saved by the Bell” where some female –(does it really matter which?) explained that every Dickenson poem could be set to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” It kind of ruined my chances of taking Emily Dickenson seriously, though that may have been a side effect of having watched an episode of “Saved by the Bell.”

“Because I would not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me…”
I could just hear the banjo in the background.

Reading poetry like Ginsburg’s “Howl” and Robert Lowell’s stream of consciousness stuff, I always felt reminded of my own shallowness. Being reminded that one is an inch deep is not fun. So I complained, “How come there aren’t any happy poets?” I mean, Sylvia Plath committed suicide and so did her husband. The plurality of poets we studied were sensitive cool people that drank wine and coffee and water from the tap. They thought serious thoughts and never laughed, though they might snicker at something mundane or pedestrian.

Like banjo players and bright colors and Texans.

So when I got to college, I was an English major without the “cool factor.” Like being a member of the literature “Pep squad,” instead of the cheerleaders…or band….or drill team. At least I was a major in the subject, so it wasn’t like I was in the flag corps, or a twirler.

I had to read "To Have and Have Not." It made as much sense as the movie.

I remember reading “Bartlby the Scrivener” in junior year.

Maybe it was immaturity on my part, but I never saw Bartlby’s “I would prefer not to.” As a cry for help or an indication of the deep depressed feelings he harbored. In humor, you can say, “I didn’t get the joke.” and everyone understands that humor is subjective and thus open to interpretation. In serious literature, there isn’t any equivalent, “I didn’t get the gravity.” It’s just presumed that any failure in comprehension rest with the limitations of the reader and not the writer.

In this case, that was probably true, but even 22 years later, I feel no compelling need to revisit the work to figure out what I missed.

I also remember that every junior that tried using that line "I would prefer no to." to get out of writing a theme on the story was told “No.”

The highlight of that English class section was watching Greg Brady star in the film version as Gingersnap. It was his one attempt at “serious acting” and that was comedic in its own weird way. One could wonder…what would come next…Greg Brady as Johnny Bravo as…anyone in a Faulkner novel. Such a feat would render Faulkner even more incomprehensible than it already is, at least for me.

Maybe I’d get the great ones better if I took up banjo and worked Hemingway's story to the tune of Gilligan’s Island…mememememememe…ahem.

“You can Call Me Ishmael….

For I hunt a big white whale…

He took my leg

Now it’s a peg!

And here’s my tragic tale…”

Alas, I remain a happy poet. My angst is insufficient to my muse, oh, the woe...

Editor Husband: "Hey Sherry, Melville wrote Moby Dick and Bartlby the Scrivner, not Hemingway."

"Holy Cats! You're right. I'm so embarrassed....
Okay, maybe more of my problem with literature rest in my own wee brain than I thought."

for serioiusly good humor, try http://www.humor-blogs.com/ or http://www.claypigeonmag.com/! Short. Pithy. Clever. Fun. Probably more Accurate.