Wednesday's book report

Presently, I'm reading:

Thrive by Bradnon Brasier
The Secrets of Simplicity by Mary Carlomagno
The Middle Way by the Dali Lama
Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elise Juska

Last week, I finished Lit by Mary Karr. I had read a couple of her other memoirs, The Liar's Club and Cherry and quite enjoyed them. They were about her tumultuous childhood with her bipolar mother and her alcoholic father and all the repercussions in her life. There is something invigorating about reading of the scrappy underdog who does not let the difficult conditions she finds herself in put her down.

Lit is about her adult life. The repercussions of her childhood are still there. But she is no longer the scrappy underdog, but the (sometimes not so) mature adult who had more significant consequences to her poor choices or bad behavior. Including the upbringing of her own child.

Perhaps its because she is so acutely aware of these repercussions that this memoir is much more muted than her other two. Karr, so ready to throw her tormentors to the wolves in her other books (in a funny way, of course) now appears to be walking on eggshells. She is fearful to write ANYTHING the least bit negative about anyone in her life, instead taking all the blame herself. And yet, she seems completely detached from events in her life, reporting on them as if she were an observer.

She was, by her own account, depressed at the time. And any recollection of events during a time of depression, any journal entries written at the time, will, of course, be muted in nature. So maybe this memoir is a brilliant depiction of depression. I'm not sure. It just seemed like I was watching a movie through a gauze handkerchief.

Then, she entered AA. And the book came to life. Suddenly, the passion from her earlier works was there. I started to like this book more.

The most interesting part for me was her resistance to the spiritual aspect of her recovery process. She kept struggling with her belief that she had a choice between being intellectual and being spiritual. Like...she was too smart to believe in a "greater power".

And I have to admit -- I've had the same struggles myself. I've seen some of the dumbest statements ever uttered in the history of mankind made in the name of religion. Which kind of makes me want to rise above the idiocy of it all.

But one thing struck me in this memoir...a scene where her sponsor told her "Don't you see that you can't THINK your problems and your fears away? The more you try to work through them in your head, the more you try to rationalize your way through them, the more power your give to them? Just let them go. Even if you don't believe in a higher power, pretend you do and give your problems over."

Which struck me as very much like something I had read in a yoga journal the week before. And struck me as something to ponder in the week to come.

So even though I hadn't picked up this book for spiritual questions, it lead me there nonetheless.

So I liked it. And I'd recommend it. And I passed it on to a friend (there were some very tender moments in the book between Mary and her father as he declined to a progressive illness. my friend recently lost her father and those moments reminded me of her so much.)

Though if you haven't read any Mary Karr, I'd recommend her other memoirs first, and this one later.

Wednesday's Book Report:

Right now, I'm in the middle of 4 books. Just because I'm always a bit scattered like that. It keeps me on my toes. (and just disorganized enough to be interesting) I'm reading Lit by Mary Karr (I read her other two memoirs, Cherry and The Liar's Club and really liked them), The Permanent Pain Cure by Ming Chew (work related reading), The Secrets of Simplicity by Mary Carlomagno (because I still have that "simplify, simplify, simplify" mantra in my head) and Thrive by Brandan Brazier (for overall health and lifestyle)

But I'm not going to talk about any of those today. I can't. I'm still digesting them.

Today, I'm going to talk about one I finished a couple weeks ago: Palo Alto Stories by James Franco:

I got interested in this book when I read an interview with James Franco at the gym. He sort of became my new idol, simply because he appeared to have his hands in even more projects than I do. He's an actor (the Spiderman movies and 127 hours which I totally want to see) and apparently has a recurring role on General Hospital, as well. He also in a ridiculously short time got a BA from UCLA in creative writing, then an MFA in writing from Brooklyn University and attending NYU's film making school. He's presently pursuing a PhD in English at Yale University and is enrolled for next year at RISD for painting. At the same time he's written and produced a couple off Broadway plays and is directing a film version of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying this year.

See? Crazy busy with projects. Makes me look like a couch potato. So, of course, I needed to get his book.

That being said, I liked Palo Alto Stories, but I didn't love it. It tells a number of loosely related stories centered around a bunch of high school aged kids growing up in Palo Alto. The one thing that these kids have in common is that their collective moral compasses don't quite point north. They may actually point south.

There's a dark, sad tone to all the stories; very Holden Caulfield-ish. However, in The Catcher in the Rye, it's really just Holden who is off. You get the sense that other characters may not be up for person of the year, but then again, maybe that's just Holden's perception of them. There's melancholy and existential angst, but not everyone in the entire world shares in this bleak world view.

(I can't write "bleak world view" without hearing Homer Simpson saying it like in the "Homer-palooza" episode)

In Palo Alto Stories, everyone is off. And while I appreciated it for a few stories, after a while, I was feeling saturated. I reached a point where enough was enough. I felt much the same way I did when watching Pulp Fiction. OK, I appreciated Quintin Tarantino's unique film making quality, but the gratuitous violence just became too much. I mean, really, did ANYONE need to see a gag-balled gimp in leather chaps stuffed into a box after being sodomized?) I sure didn't.

Likewise, do I really wish to believe that an entire generation is simply nonchalant about date rape, overdosing, lying, stealing, cheating, and the occasional vehicular manslaughter while drunk? Especially set in Palo Alto, just minutes from where I used to live in Mountain View, but light years away from where I ever could live on my salary as a health care worker. And, yes, I get the whole juxtaposition of the immoral behavior in a well-to-do suburb. And that maybe there's a message to it. And all the stories combined create a sense of helplessness.

But all I kept thinking was: dude! Couldn't you have written something more like your movie Pineapple Express? 'Cause that was funny!

Then again, maybe I'm just shallow. Or something.

Today's new thing:

THIS! The Wednesday's book reports. More to come!