a little more

Warning! The following post is of an unusually maudlin & navel-gazing sort, rather outside my normal MO. I'm not apologizing for it, I'm just giving fair warning. My life has taken some twists and turns lately that have left me speculating on the human condition, the vagaries of fate, and other such nebulous topics.

"So may we leave in the world a little more truth, a little more justice, a little more beauty than would have been there had we not loved the world enough to quarrel with it for what it is not, but still could be." - Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., from P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening, by Studs Terkel

I fall into the trap, sometimes, of thinking the question of the human condition is the province of writers, musicians, artists alone. Leave it to Studs to awaken me to the infinite possibility of the question, and its relevance to every human in humanity's history. What is it in us that makes us yearn for beauty, for justice, for immortal truth? And do we really care as much about immortal truth as we do about its immediate experience in our lives, right now?

I have to wonder at the struggles we go through every day. We deplore injustice, we sorrow at ugliness, we outrage over a lie. But as long as they stay out of our immediate lives, we don't often do much about them. Maybe we find ourselves ignoring them so often because they're just too big to cope with while driving on the morning commute or lunching on a PB&J; maybe we ignore them because they'd keep us up at night. And yet when they touch our lives, when someone is unjust or ugly to us, how massive the question then, how we lose our appetite, how restless we lie in our beds.

But surely it's not only writers - or artists of any type - who hear this question whispered day in & day out by our stirring souls. My life has taken place entirely in the nuclear age; there's always been an underlying sense that the world's going to end somehow, someday, maybe in ten years, maybe in a thousand or ten thousand years. It's either going to end entirely, or humans will, and all our art, all our beauty and truth and justice will be - not meaningless, because they have intrinsic meaning - but without an audience.

And really, what use are truth and justice and beauty without someone to appreciate them? Is it enough for them to exist for their own sake? I'm not sure it is. And I confuse myself, honestly, somewhere between the intrinsic meaning of these crucial elements of life, and the fullness of existence that an audience gives them.

For example: let's say there's a ridiculously scrumptious organic strawberry dipped in dark chocolate. (Just for example. Not that I could totally scarf about a dozen of those right now.) This is going to have an inherent element of deliciousness to it (just pretend no one's allergic to strawberries, for the sake of argument). But if nobody eats it, does it matter? What value would it have? The truth and beauty of its deliciousness is wasted, unappreciable, without consumption.

But I don't think this is what Studs and Rev. Coffin, Jr were discussing on this occasion. (I get sidetracked easily by chocolate-covered strawberries.) I think their point bears more on the perhaps ultimately futile and yet necessary struggle to heighten the human condition, despite the fact that the world will end someday.

The question is not so much about art but about justice. Whether the world will end one day or not is almost irrelevant to the human condition (almost, but not quite). What matters is here and now, how we treat each other this moment, how we treat the world today, how much beauty we see, how much truth we speak, how just we are to one another. The fate of the future matters, but we're living right now, and all we can do is make now worth living.

Can't talk. Reading.

I got 18 books for my birthday. Talk about happy happy, joy joy! It's hog heaven for a bibliophile like me. I got several Studs Terkel books, several P.G. Wodehouse collections, Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' (I know, I can't believe I didn't have it yet either), Ben Franklin's autobiography, three awesome vegetarian cookbooks, some Martha Grimes mysteries, and a really interesting-sounding book called 'The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary' by Simon Winchester... as well as a few other titles I'm sure I'm forgetting.

So it's really been quite a delightful few weeks. I started off with the P.G. Wodehouse, because I was stressed out with work and volunteer duties, and if there's any better literary stress relief than Wodehouse, I'd love to know what it is. If you've never heard of him, he's an absolutely hilarious writer of short stories and novels generally set among the English upper class during the early 1900s or so. His work is laugh-out-loud funny, like to the point that my husband would get annoyed with me for laughing so much while he was trying to watch TV or do work. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse) was truly a brilliant comedic writer, and if you haven't yet fallen in love with him, you're in luck because the man was also quite prolific.

Studs Terkel, who I've raved about before (a couple of times, actually), is another of my favorite writers, although decidedly of a different tone than dear old Wodehouse. Where Wodehouse lets you take refuge in a totally foreign world of butlers and valets and earls and such, Studs brings you to the city and opens your eyes to the perspective of people from all walks of life. If you've never heard of him, he's an oral historian (he died last year, and I still can't think of him in past tense, it just hurts too much) who interviewed thousands of people on every subject imaginable over his lengthy career - but mostly just had them talk about themselves. To me, Studs brings to light the commonalities of humanity, breaking down social, racial and cultural divides. While he frequently interviews the common man (and woman), he's also done a lot of amazing interviews with writers, musicians, etc; in fact, one of my favorites of his books is called 'And They All Sang'. It's a compilation of his interviews with musicians from opera singers to Bob Dylan to Earl 'Fatha' Hines over 40 or so years, and it is incredible. You might also call Studs a folk historian, as he's collected the memories of so many people on topics such as the Great Depression (see his book "Hard Times") and WWII ("'The Good War'").

Then, of course, if you're like me and need to change up your intense sociological reading with some brain candy, we turn to Martha Grimes. The one thing that bugs me about Martha Grimes is her apparently lackadaisical copy editor, or whoever's responsible for the relatively frequent typos in her books. I mean, really. Come on. The publishing house has to be making a pretty penny off sales of her Richard Jury series, and they can't catch these? Spell check is not an acceptable substitute. In fact, why not hire ME to read all the books and fix the typos for you? I'd be just fine with that. Anyway, I think Grimes does a great job developing her characters and plots, and her mysteries are always an enjoyable read, typos aside.

I actually haven't started in on the rest of the books yet, but I'm getting there. Wading through a huge stack of books is definitely one of my favorite "chores". Cheers!

Thoughts on Division Street: America

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Studs Terkel's "Division Street: America", and it's so good. Very thought-provoking; it features interviews on civil rights, American race and class struggles like gentrification, and the changing world at a time when people's views on the world, civil rights and class were evolving rapidly, and more pressure was being brought to bear on these issues socially.

One thing I've noticed more about this book than Studs' others is the juxtaposition of interviews. At times, he'll put highly contrasting viewpoints one after another, each as certain as they can be that everyone sees things the way they do. It may be these shifting contexts that make this feel more like a vast ethnography of all of Chicago's microcosms, rather than straight oral history. It's more about how people's perceptions of the rest of the world, rather than what people do, which seems to be more the focus of much of his other work.

Regardless, as usual, it's going way too fast. One of the things I love about Studs' books is that they're easy for busy people to read, but they're so good that I find myself unable to stop reading. Another nice problem to have.

Much Of A Good Thing

I'm taking a break from the Vonnegut binge. As my friend so aptly pointed out, he's a lot like a truffle, and I've gorged as much as I can appreciate for now. It's interesting how differently he reads now than my last marathon Vonnegut binge, which was about 9 years ago. He's still phenomenal, I'm just realizing how my own perspective on life has changed. I suppose that's not a bad thing.

It's tough trying to decide what to read next. Like the bumper sticker so wisely says - "So many books, so little time." (And really, what wisdoms are there outside the bevy of bumper stickers used to express our innermost thoughts and beliefs?)

The Finnish mythology is definitely calling me. I also have a lot of good books I need to read for research for my own book. But I'm sort of hankering for Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon", one of my all-time favorites. Still, it's another saga, and I'm sort of liking the idea of something more brief.

There is a Studs Terkel book I bought a while back and still haven't read. I love Studs - if you've never read "Working", may I strongly suggest you navigate over to your favorite bookseller's site and purchase it right away. The one I'm going to read is "Division Street: America", his first book. Aside from "Working", my favorite Studs book is his most recent, "And They All Sang". It's a remarkable work, whether you're into oral history, music or American history. Studs Terkel is a national treasure!