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The infernal book meme

Chris Clarke sent me this damn thing ten days ago, allegedly because, as he put, “he’s too busy to do it, thus limiting the damage I cause by passing this infernal memoid on.” Well, Chris is right as usual, I am too damn busy – why, I’ve already spent most of the morning dealing with David Horowitz’s latest piece of nonsense involving me, which I’ll tell you all about tomorrow.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t answer the bell when it rings.  So here goes.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Uh, actually the conclusion of Fahrenheit 451 isn’t entirely clear about the parameters of this question.  Montag offers the Book of Ecclesiastes, and his interlocutor says that he’s Plato’s Republic, but there are also suggestions that the survivors are supposed to memorize entire oeuvres rather than just one book.  But you asked just one book, so I say– Fahrenheit 451.  Only kidding! The Sound and the Fury.  Honorable mention, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  If I could combine the two into Dilsey’s defense of the priority of paradigms, that would be ideal.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Aside from wishing that I could have met Daria when I was 17?  But that doesn’t even count– she’s a fictional cartoon character.  No, this question is just too weird.  Unhealthy, even.  Maybe it’s just my preference for Borges and Pynchon talking, but I really wish that readers would remember that fictional characters are fictional characters.

I did, however, meet a person in graduate school who had ranked all of Jane Austen’s heroines in the order of their attractiveness.  I am not making this up.

The last book you bought is?

This is actually a much more difficult question than it seems.  In the past week alone, I have received about a dozen books in the mail, ranging from Jennifer Washburn’s University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education to Ian Fleming and James Bond:  The Cultural Politics of 007, edited by Edward Comentale, Stephen Watt, and Skip Willman, to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.  Why do people mail me so many books?  Do they think that I am an omnipotent reviewer like Scott McLemee?  Perish the thought!  I am not an omnipotent reviewer.  And then there are all the handfuls of books I get for doing reader’s reports and manuscript refereeing—why, it’s almost as if publishers simply will not accept my money anymore.

I did, however, hear a wonderful talk by Will Nash at Penn State’s recent conference on the African-American novel, and ran out and Amazon-ordered Clarence Major’s Dirty Bird Blues.  So there’s my answer.

What are you currently reading?

Just finished Sam Harris’s The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, a delightful and infuriating book; about to reread Stuart Hall’s The Hard Road to Renewal, the better to discuss it with a very impressive book-discussion group in Washington, D.C. later this month; peeking intermittently at Chris Rojek’s overview of Stuart Hall, titled simply Stuart Hall; and having a very fine (though slow-going) time with Richard E. Lee’s Life and Times of Cultural Studies: The Politics and Transformation of the Structures of Knowledge.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Steven Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.  It’s been on my get-to shelf for a year, and will probably have to stay there for another year.  Unless I wind up on a deserted island before then.
The Riverside Shakespeare.  Yeah, I know this is cheating.  But it is one book.  Besides, that Shakespeare guy is pretty good.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.  As the best representative of that sturdy animal, the realist novel.
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman.  As one of the best (and funniest) representatives of that chameleon-like creature, the antirealist novel.
Homer, The Odyssey.  Because I haven’t read it in 25 years and it’s sitting right next to Gould.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Alex Pareene of Buck Hill, because, as a college student and an intern for the media elite, he’s got nothing better to do; Rivka at Respectful of Otters, because her recent posts on Terri Schiavo have been remarkable; and Echidne of the Snakes, because I would like an actual goddess to handle this one.

UPDATE:  It appears that the goddess is spoken for.  Damn!  And after I offered all those holy hecatombs, too.  OK, then, Randy Paul, how about you?

Posted by on 04/10 at 11:01 AM

  1. Is it about a bicycle?

    Posted by David Ross McIrvine  on  04/10  at  01:43 PM

  2. . . . so basically this is one of those early-teenage livejournal quizzes, a la,

    “OMG! HaV U 3v3r . . . .
    1.)34t3n 4 Fr0g?!?!?!?
    2.)f0rg0tt3n Ur p4nt$?!?!?!?
    3.)Br0k3n 4 n4iL?!?!?!?

    Wh4t$ Ur Dr34m . . . .
    1.) c4r?!?!?!?!?
    2.) b0y/gUrL?!?!?!?
    3.) h0u$e?!?!?!? “

    This is really quite amusing for me, seeing as I actually know 15 year olds who write like this, and who make quizzes like the above. You just have the Intellectual Version (4.0). Just the thought of academics circulating modified livejournal quizzes is quite hilarious.

    much love

    Nick

    Posted by  on  04/10  at  02:49 PM

  3. Feynman’s ‘Lectures in Physics’--enough to reconstitute reality, iconoclasm, bongos.
    If you can read ‘Finnegans Wake,’ you can read this.

    Posted by  on  04/10  at  02:53 PM

  4. Just the thought of academics circulating modified livejournal quizzes is quite hilarious.

    He’s right. Michael, I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I should have kept this petty thing where it belongs, among trivial-minded non-academics like this guy and this lady and oh, I dunno, her.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  04/10  at  03:31 PM

  5. Nick indeed must know kids hanging out at quizilla.com.  I have found their quizzes to be a pretty revealing resource; one i recommend to k-12 teachers who are interested in knowing what their students are thinking.  I would love to find someone who has penetrated their database, as the results of many of the quizzes would provide valuable material for cultural research.  The questions Chris asked were, in fact, part of a quizilla quiz that one of my former students sent me a couple of years ago.  At least that one, as i recall, was not written in IM iconic text, although Nick’s examples are all too common.

    Posted by  on  04/10  at  03:48 PM

  6. Damn and blast!

    What a way to start my National Library Week.

    Posted by Alex  on  04/10  at  03:56 PM

  7. Sure sure, fictional characters are fictional characters.  But so too are the people on whom we tend to have crushes, which is why I think most crushes never really can develop into real relationships.  I mean, I’ve had a crush on Bjork since, like, 9th grade, when I was hanging at the Jersey shore with an ex-girlfriend and happened to buy a Sugarcubes cassette for $1.  But everytime I phone her or hang out by her front door or follow her into Ibiza and Spitalfields clubs she just gets the police after me. 

    But Michael, how about DL from *Vineland*?  Bad-ass ninjette from Kansas: does it get any better? 

    I also wouldn’t mind taking a tour of France with Maria Gostrey of James’s *The Ambassadors*.

    Anna Sergeyevna of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” might be a fun date to the opera. 

    And then there’s always Molly Bloom of the “plump mellow yellow smellow melons . . .

    Better go take a cold, fabulist shower.

    Posted by  on  04/10  at  04:37 PM

  8. I’m not an omnipotent reviewer. I just don’t get out very much.

    Posted by Scott McLemee  on  04/10  at  04:42 PM

  9. Chris, spyder—Nick is allowed to make fun of me for as long as I continue to claim him as a tax deduction.

    But after that, my son, you mock me in comments and you’re in deep trouble.  Don’t make me come down off this blog!

    Dr. Larry, I forgot about DL Chastain, who does indeed anticipate Uma Thurman in Kill Bill by more than a decade.  But no, no crushes here.  And yes, David, it is about a bicycle.  Now back to my work on de Selby.

    Posted by Michael  on  04/10  at  05:03 PM

  10. "Nick is allowed to make fun of me for as long as I continue to claim him as a tax deduction.”

    Tit for tat: I remember just after Nick was born, Michael and Janet had a cartoon up: “He-Baby: Master of your Universe!”

    Posted by David Ross McIrvine  on  04/10  at  06:51 PM

  11. Funny you should mention Pynchon in this regard as the name that kept running through my head when I answered this question, was “Jessica Swanlake”. But I don’t remember having actually had a crush on her any of the times I was reading GR—I would probably be more likely to have the hots for Katje if anyone. Maybe I was thinking of Jess as a paradigmatic fictional object of crush-having.

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  04/10  at  08:29 PM

  12. The riverside shakespeare would be one of mine too.
    And I’d love to memorize F. 451 if I was stuck there… but I think that would create some creepy time warp/schism that would just collaspe.

    Posted by Kelly  on  04/10  at  09:53 PM

  13. Chris, spyder—Nick is allowed to make fun of me for as long as I continue to claim him as a tax deduction.

    Oh, that Nick. Sorry, didn’t recognize his voice there.

    Carry on, Nick.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  04/10  at  09:54 PM

  14. Jeremy, Jessica Swanlake should not be a paradigmatic fictional object of crush-having.  As you’ll recall, she eventually ditches good guy Roger Mexico for some soulless twit named . . . uh . . . well, never mind what his name is.  The important thing is that he’s a twit.  (Earday eadersray:  itway ymesrhay ithway “eremyday.")

    Posted by Michael  on  04/10  at  10:56 PM

  15. Hey now, I wasn’t really mocking YOU so much as the whole idea of your quiz. I have a feeling I sound more harsh than I mean to be-- it’s not a bad quiz. But then again, it is a quiz, and in an Intellectualized version of a teenybopper quiz format. No offense, Chris-- I know these quizzes are fun and stupid and excellent sometimes-- but seeing this 3000-word-mini-essay-posting blog rattle off 5 items he’d like to have on a desert island (even if they are books) was quite funny.

    Oh, and my limited and primal knowledge of internet slang is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Alls I know is 3=e, 4=a, and of course, the fine art of alternating uppercase and lowercase letters. There are much more ridiculous and indecipherable substitutions for letters out there in 13-year-old internet world. Just so you know.

    So, carry on with the quizzes! Just go check quizzilla.com afterwards, as spyder will second, I’m sure.

    peaces,

    Nick

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  12:02 AM

  16. I have just started reading the Sam Harris book.  I am curious about your description of it as “delightful and infuriating"---do you mean that something about the author infuriates you? Or that the subject matter infuriates…

    So far I am only experiencing the delightful part.

    Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know of any kind of national action being taken to protest or prevent the passage of the Big Fraud’s Orwellian-named “Academic Freedom” thing in Florida?  I’m really concerned about this.

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  05:13 AM

  17. jp, it’s the discussion of Richard Rorty and “antifoundationalism” that’s infuriating.  It’s as if Harris wants to secularize our society (which would be fine by me, and more than fine) but still wants to insist that philosophy depends on the discovery of moral truths the existence of which we do not yet know.  And that amounts to saying something like, “people should let go of the God-impulse that’s gotten us into so much trouble—except in my own field, where we will continue to discover objective truths about human affairs and pass them along to you.”

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  07:42 AM

  18. Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that—maybe that’s what made me think of her.

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  04/11  at  09:58 AM

  19. And Michael, I think having the object of your affection desert you for a soulless twit is almost a mandatory component of a crush, at least if it’s a crush-on-a-fictional-character. I mean I sympathized at times with Roger and he certainly had a crush on Jess, Jeremy or no.

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  04/11  at  10:01 AM

  20. And I’ve gotta say, “ymesrhay” is one of the cooler bits of Pig-Latin around.

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  04/11  at  10:02 AM

  21. And number one in the “Top Ten Rejected michaelberube.com Headshots"…

    Posted by: Chris Clarke | March 30, 2005 12:33 PM

    you’re famous, you’re famous!

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  11:05 AM

  22. I have a feeling I sound more harsh than I mean to be

    Actually, Nick, for filial derision it was remarkably unsnide.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  04/11  at  11:12 AM

  23. I’m a little late, I know--you’re on to your next post now, Michael.  But just have to ask you, and every other hetero male who read the book meme post:  Do you mean to tell me you did not and do not have the hots for Babette from *White Noise*?  Fictional or not, who wouldn’t fantasize about her?  She’s “tall, fairly ample” and has “important hair.” Yowza.

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  12:33 PM

  24. I’m disappointed that Harris didn’t devote a chapter to Nazism and Communism as these have immediatly appeared as the “atheist critique” of the book.

    I’m thinking he would defend himself from your critique by claiming the existence of empirical evidence supporting his preferred spiritual disciplines...thekeez

    Posted by Jeff Keezel  on  04/11  at  01:23 PM

  25. At least no one fell for Mafia Winsome.
    I am impressed, however, that you’ve actually *read* F451 - and therefore can talk about the niceties of becoming a book.  I’m still happy to haven chosen to be “Pale Fire,” though how to read me will remain a problem.
    I also hope that these desert islands form some sort of archipelago - we Riverside Shakespeare types could then semaphore parts from one to the other (my dad was a navy signalman, so I know this kind of thing is possible).  And the Pythons did a semaphore version of “Wuthering Heights,” did they not?

    Posted by grishaxxx  on  04/11  at  01:31 PM

  26. I’ve got no illusions about my capacity for heroism: If I were stuck in Fahrenheit 451, I’d probably settle quite comfortably into watching interactive TV all day and talking about how psyched I am about my nuevo-retro straight razor.

    As far as fictional-character crushes: I’m not sure if I’m conflating Myrna Loy’s cinematic characterization with Dashiell Hammett’s literary one (each informs the other, for me), but can any red-blooded heterosexual male or suitably butch lesbian not claim to have a raging crush on Nora Charles? I mean, a brilliant, adorable, phenomenally wealthy socialite who would love me for my drinking? When I start my own religion, I’m going to promise my acolytes that Nora Charles waits for them in heaven.

    Posted by HP  on  04/11  at  02:33 PM

  27. Thanks for the honor, Michael!  I already got the stick from someone else, so you have to find another divine to satisfy your curiosity. smile

    Posted by Echidne of the snakes  on  04/11  at  03:57 PM

  28. I was not mocking in my suggestion that quizilla is an invaluable untapped resource of data waiting to be disaggregated and properly evaluated.  While many of the quizzes are intolerably adolescent and many uncomfortably pubescent, there are structural elements within them that offer respondents opportunities to reveal something about themselves, their experiences, their relations with the world around them.  Their responses to the quiz that was similar to this, for example, were quite disarming in showing that in this post-literate digital future they are infact reading a great many good books.

    Posted by  on  04/11  at  05:38 PM

  29. For those looking for a counterpoint to Rojek’s work on Hall that Michael cites in his post, have a gander at Grant Farred’s recent (2003) book “What’s My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals" (U. Minn. Press)—he reads Hall, CLR James, and Ali together.  Insightful text.

    Posted by  on  04/15  at  04:29 AM

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