Inspirometer

So, I was looking for inspiration for a blog today. I thought if I looked up some quotes about inspiration I might get inspired. The first one that struck me was:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”
-Aristotle-

Wow! Thanks for smacking me cold upside the face Ari my man. What do I repeatedly do? I come to work, eat, surf the World Wide Web. Are these the things I’m excellent at? There not necessarily the things I want to be excellent at. I want to be excellent at writing, acting, and creating wonderful things. So according to Aristotle if I want to be excellent at them I have to do them more. Oh man, where am I going to find that kind of time? I guess if these are my passions I need to make the time for them.

Let me see what the next quote that struck me can teach me:

“Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.”
-Norman R. Augustine-

This rings so true to me. Have you ever known someone who just wouldn’t stop talking to you about something, no matter how many I don’t care vibes you sent out? That’s passion; it could be for a book, television show, or just a great idea they have. I imagine someone with a movie pitch that they think is great trying to sell it to the studios. First time out they get the door slammed in their face. Second time the result is the same. Eventually they pack it in and give up. What about the guy who doesn’t give up? Who treats every slamming door as incentive to move on? I just feel like his passion will eventually find an equally passionate ear to listen and act on.

Maybe my lesson here is not to quit. Not take the first distraction or put down and use it as an excuse to stop doing what I’m passionate about. After all, if it’s truly a passion shouldn’t I really not be worried about trivial things?

Excellent, time to move on to my next quote:

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.”
-Elbert Hubbard-

We’re all going to drop the ball every now and then. Sometime were going to be short of the mark but we can’t live our lives fearing those times. If we do we might very well miss the joy of hitting the mark. Some of the best feelings I have had were when I knew I had done or said the best thing possible.

For example, right before Christmas a woman came into the Gothic. She said she needed some suggestions for books for her granddaughter. She had no idea what was popular these days but knew she wanted to encourage her with some good books. She was directed to me by some of the other staff here. I went over and picked out 7-8 strong titles. I figured she would pick 2 and I’d never see her again. Boy was I wrong. She bought all 8 titles and I saw her again after we reopened in January. She actually came seeking me out, stopped me and thanked me for the help. She said her granddaughter loved all the books and they were perfect. Well that’s a feeling I’d like to have a few more time I tell you.

Had I never taken the chance of recommending those titles I would not have experienced that wonderful joy. Obviously, it could have gone the other way. Her granddaughter might have hated those boos, or read them already and disliked them greatly, or even not been her style. Honestly, I never thought about that scenario though. I just recommended books I was passionate about, like City of Ember, Inkheart, and Kingdom Keepers. I knew they were great books so the thought that someone might not enjoy them didn't cross my mind.

On to my last quote, the last lesson of inspiration:

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
-Yoda, character in the movie The Empire Strikes Back-

Trying things indicates the possibility of failure. I should not try to find more time to write, I should just write. I shouldn’t try to finish reading this book; I should just plow through it. I’m an excuse maker: “ I didn’t have the time.”“I forgot.” or my favorite “I haven’t got around to it yet.” My excuses are standing in the way of my progress at things I enjoy.

That’s not a bad truth from a little green Muppet.

The Raw Stuff

I tried sushi this weekend.

Well, I tried to try it. Seriously, I did. My reluctance to eat raw fish has grown somewhat tiresome even to myself, and I thought it was about time that I turn into a grownup about the whole thing. So I went with a friend to a very fine local spot and accepted suggestions on what I should order. I’m pleased to say that I ate the cooked semi-sushi and liked it quite a bit, but that raw stuff stared me right down, Gothic Shoppers. It’s embarrassing. I just didn’t have the guts to do it. But I’ll tackle it next time, for sure

Why, some might ask, would I pledge to go out and try again to make myself eat something that I’ve always avoided? I’ve got one answer for you there: Hemingway.

Some of you (well, either of you who read this blog) might remember that my list of Books for Lt. Awesome included a Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. I have to confess that at the time I’d only read a small chunk of the book. This is something that we booksellers have to do from time to time: put a customer together with a book without knowing either very well. Across years of experience, good booksellers come to feel that there is a particular kind of intuition that can be developed, almost as if we could lay hands on a title and somehow know when its customer has walked in the door. We don’t consider ourselves to be disingenuous –certainly few of us would ever claim to have read a book we hadn’t—we just come to have faith in our instincts. I’ve never read Le Carre, for instance, but I know his potential readers when I meet them.

Anyway, having recommended For Whom The Bell Tolls to Lt. A., I remembered that I needed to check in with that book again. It’s a title that I attempted to read as a much younger person –a kid, really—and I’d never fully gotten into it. My dad was a big fan of the book; he even put that and another Hemingway title in my Christmas stocking one year when I was about 13. I always felt kind of bad for not having finished it. But there were comic books and Louis L’amour westerns to be read at the time, and the book just didn’t grab the 13-year-old me.

Flash-forward 25 years or so: I’m sitting in a chair, killing time before going out to see some rock & roll. I’m about halfway through the Hemingway book, in the middle of a chapter that’s serving up hard, cynical truth hand over fist using deceptively simple language that is pure delight to read. In the background is Duke Ellington –the 1946 band, one of his best. (And the best of Ellington is the best of anything anywhere, ever.) I’m struck by that rare certainty that there won’t be too many reading experiences that will match the one I’m having right that second.

That’s one of the true benefits of working at (or spending lots and lots of time in) a bookstore. The books that you once put aside or wrote off – they continue to hang around, staying in sight, making themselves available to you so that they’re there when the time comes to take a second crack at them.

And you do have to take a second crack at some things. Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom and Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral were almost maddeningly impenetrable on first try, but my second attempts at both yielded life-altering readings. The same goes for music. Charles Mingus’ Black Saint and the Sinner Lady sounded like base cacophony when I first put it on the record player. So did The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. Both are among my favorite records now.

I guess what I’m getting around to with all this is that I’m pretty sure the same is true with food. I’ve never been an adventurous eater. I was one of those picky, peanut-butter-only kids. As an adult, I’ve broadened my tastes, but I’m still not as fearless as I’d like to be. But hey, I thought I knew what was what with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and it knocked me on my bookseller’s bottom. Maybe I’m fixing to have one of those quasi-Satori-inducing eating experiences that will reward me for years to come.

So anyway, I’m trying the raw stuff next time.

Four Letter Words

Hmmmm what can I blog about today? There really isn’t anything going on that I can think of, except snow and hope.


Yeah I know it’s inauguration day and we have a brand spanking new shiny president to drive off the lot. We also got a nice little bit of snow last night that we woke up to. These two things got me thinking about the similarities of the two and eventually about books, or at least a book.

I have always been fascinated with snow. There is no time where I am more at peace than during or right after a snow has fallen. You step out into your yard and it is like a new world. Everything is shiny and clean and beautiful. The mundane has become the magnificent. There are no mud puddles, or dirt mounds. There seem to be no ants or flies. There is no trash or waste. There is only the beauty of the white stuff.

Snow makes the tree limbs take on an appeal they don’t normally have. Makes a chimney with smoke coming out of stir a warm memory. The air seems to be more wholesome, your breath more alive. Buildings seem more mysterious and roads like gateways to other worlds filled with unknown joys.

The world during a snowstorm seems to slow down. Traffic is non-existent; animals lay sheltered in their habitats. Little moves except the snow itself. People seem more content to stay at home with their families, to take time out from their normal routines and swim upstream, do something different. Games are played, hugs are shared, and smiles are plentiful.

Eventually coats are donned, gloves are secured, and sleds are drug out. There are plans of snowball fights, snow angels and sledding at full speeds. Children, teens and adults all take to the ground and participate in these winter activities. Snow reduces us all to childhood in a way. Little bothers seem less important and having a bad attitude more difficult to do.

I simply love snow.

Our country has had a snowstorm, we have a new president and as I write this right now I have no idea what his policies are going to be. What he will end or begin is unknown to me. There is only snow. Many people believe Obama’s presidency holds hope and change some are not as enamored but either way we are on the precipice of something new. Much like the snow makes our normal lives more exciting a new president make our daily politics a bit more exciting.

Eventually, the snow turns to slush and it gets dirty and browned but to me there is always a chance of another layer coming and starting the whole process again. As for Obama, he will soon excite, disappoint, enamor, overjoy, and challenge some of us. Each of us will determine if he remains the pure untouched morning snow or he becomes the dirty slushier snow.


(This all reminded me of C.S. Lewis Narnia books. Snow is a negative metaphor in the books. The land has lain under winter for so long that they have become hopeless but as the kids arrive and bring hope, the thawing begins. My allusion plays out the opposite way but hopefully still makes sense)

The Wall of Promise

After last’s week’s surprise mention of The Gargoyle in the email newsletter, The Week At Duke (many thanks to Gargoyle contributor Stuart Wells and everyone else over there in the Office of News and Communications), we’ve had a steady stream of Gothic customers coming by to check out our new look. Response has been good, I’m glad to say, and it’s been gratifying to watch people cross the threshold and head straight for the New Arrivals section.

(WARNING: Timely Book/Democracy Analogy Ahead!)

Even for those of us who have worked in books for, well, decades, a wall full of new books holds an amazing allure. You learn after a while that a good percentage of all books published each month are going to be junk. There’s no way around that. Corporate booksellers and publishing conglomerates have partnered up in such a way that pushing a lot of garbage out the door and onto the shelves in the hope of big profits is simply too attractive. And while we here at the Gothic try to be discriminating in our ordering, we’re probably going to get a few dogs on the shelf once in a while, too. (We’ll do our best to sell you exclusively Really Good Stuff, though. Honest.) But when any of us opens a box of brand-spanking-new books, we get a little light-headed. Because before any of the books are cracked, before one delves into a book and assesses its quality for himself, the promise of a fantastic read is intact, seductive, and undeniably enjoyable.

I can’t deny having the same feeling today, the day before the inauguration of our 44th president. There’s a tangible promise in the air, a promise of –as we’ve heard almost ad nauseum—change. Now, I hope I’m not stepping out of bounds here on The Gargoyle by saying that I count myself among those who look forward eagerly to experiencing life under the new administration. I’ve believed in Obama starting with his very first appearance on the national stage. I’m not, however, naïve. I know that reality tends to wreak havoc on aspirations. I know that the nation will experience some disappointments and setbacks as those who have as their goal the betterment of the nation make difficult and pragmatic decisions. Tomorrow, we move from the Realm of Hope into the Realm of How-It-Is.

But from this vantage point, all is promise. All is good. All that follows will be that for which millions have yearned over these months, years, decades.

In a (much) smaller way, that’s what we hope our customers feel when upon entering The Gothic the first thing they see is a big wall of brand-new and as yet unread books: a promise of discovery, of adventure, of many great reads to come.

Versus: Heroes and Villains

Here’s the thing about the Best Fictional Hero and Best Fictional Villain categories: you’ve got to choose from a range of figures that are larger than life. These aren’t normal characters. Harry Potter isn’t just some dude at a boarding school; Dracula is more than an aging aristocrat with yen for bloody marys. These are Heroes, man. Villains. There has to be some quality that sets them apart.

It’s tempting to identify a certain set of abilities (e.g. super-strength, magic, the ability to consume an impossibly large plate of nachos at one sitting) as the defining element of the hero. I think, though, that it’s a willingness to do what other men or women won’t that makes for a hero. I mean, if Wonder Woman didn’t use her butt-kicking skills & magic lariat to fight crime, she’d just be some lady in a bathing suit, am I right?

Villains are tricky. An awful lot of them, including some of the best, follow the formula H + F = BBV. (That’s Hero + Flaw = Bad, Bad Villain.) Voldemort, one of the most memorable villains of the last ten years or so, is a powerful wizard much like Albus Dumbledore. Unlike ol’ AD, however, Voldemort has a singular obsession that edges him out of the “good guys” column and into the “attack on sight” column: he’s terrified of death, and he’ll do anything to anyone in order to avoid it. Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty, is very much Holmes’ mental twin, save for what A. C. Doyle describes as “a criminal strain [that] ran in his blood.” But there are those villains who need no inverse twin. Hannibal Lecter, one of the classic villains, is moved by his own internal sense of right and wrong and needs no white knight to motivate him.

Aaaaanyway. I’m starting to ramble (again). Today’s “Versus” installment is about heroes and villains, obviously. As I look over Arthur’s and my picks, I see that we’ve once again done practically the opposite of each other. Arthur’s pick for Best Villain is thoroughly larger than life; His Best Hero pick is a character who lives in the shadow of the story's canonized hero. I’ve gone the other way, as you’ll see. It makes one wonder if Arthur and I might be nemeses. But who is the hero, and who is the villain? Only time will tell…

(Arthur, you go first.)

ARTHUR:

My VILLAIN is a character from the Song of Ice and Fire series named Tywin Lannister. Tywin is the patriarch of the Lannister family. The Lannisters are one of the wealthiest families in the world at the time of the novels. Tywin is rarely seen in A Game of Thrones or A Clash of Kings but we learn about him heavily through the actions of his progeny, Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion. Jaime is the golden boy of the family, the pride of his daddy’s eyes. He has been groomed from a young age to take the family over and I believe he secretly wants Tywin to die so that he can do so. When the books begin he is embroiled in a secret incestuous affair with his sister Cersei. Cersei is the female equivalent of Jaime. She is totally ruthless and uses her sex and attractiveness to manipulate men, including Jaime. Their incestuous affair eventually leads to Cersei telling Jaime to through a young man off the side of a tower because he saw them together. Where Jaime is brawn and Cersei manipulative, neither is as clever or quick witted as Tywin's bastard dwarf son, Tyrion. Tyrion is nowhere near as evil as his siblings. He has led a life of being a bastard and it has caused him to become hardened. His aloneness has however led him to becoming sly. He understands things at a deeper level than his siblings. In many ways he is more like Tywin than the others. Tywin rarely acts on his own preferring to manipulate his children or underlings to do his dirty work. Nonetheless the dirty work is real dirty. He orders Cersei to seduce the king thereby becoming the queen so as to further his own goals. Jaime was ordered to kill the former king because he disliked Tywin. Tywin reign of terror ends in the books, killed by his own son, Tyrion. In the end, Tywin wrought what he sowed.


Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings is my HERO of choice. The very first time we meet Samwise, we only know him as a friend of Frodo. That is really all we need to know about him, it is what lies at the very heart of Sam, friendship. It is the reason he travels to the very pit of Mount Doom with Frodo. Sam never sees himself as a hero. He is one of the few people the ring has no effect on. I believe it’s because at his very heart there was no desire for the ring to manipulate. He never sought out attention or fame. Throughout the travel Sam never loses track of who he is. He is one of the only hobbits who express a desire to go home. Sam sees protecting Frodo as his duty, not to the world or a higher power, but as Frodo’s friend. Sam is first foremost and forever a friend. Samwise stares into the heart of evil repeatedly and does it all for no gain of his own. Even after the ring is gone he tries desperately to help Frodo hold on to reality. He is a consummate friend and that makes him heroic to me.

BILL:

My VILLAIN of choice is Montresor, from Poe’s story The Cask of Amontillado. Montresor is a small man, driven to murder by nothing more than a profound dislike of a man and an desire to avenge what he perceives to be an insult to his (Montresor’s) character. Poe excelled at creating such characters—driven by greed, pride, and above all madness to commit acts of revenge and torture. Montresor describes his seduction of his victim and his method of murder (no spoilers here) in a detached but harrowing style that has haunted me since I read the book as a kid. He’s cold, he’s ruthless, and he’s got nothing more than mere pettiness driving him to murder. In creating such a small villain, Poe managed to convince a very young reader that evil doesn’t always announce itself with a dark cape and a corny one-liner.

I guess I was very taken with good guys and bad guys as a kid, because I went back to my childhood for my HERO pick as well. I’m going with Robin Hood. Specifically, I’m going with Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood. He’s an outlaw, but only because some really bad dudes are running things. He’s a thief, but he gives all (well, most) of his loot to the poor. After barely escaping from the law, he and his men like to kick back and sing songs and eat and drink. The notion of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor really resonated with me as a kid. (It’s probably why I’m a Democrat today, but let’s not get into that right now…) More than anything, Robin Hood represented a life that was so far away from mine, so remote from my own experience, that I could believe everything I read about him. When I read Pyle’s Robin Hood as an adult (and I do, often), it of course seems in some ways exaggerated and silly. But to the ten-year-old me, Robin Hood was grand, and tough, and true, and believeable.

Imagine Nation

I have been reading for some time a book about Dungeons and Dragons called the Elfish Gene. I was drawn to the book as it is one mans struggle with his obsession with the aforementioned game. I too had an obsession with the game so as kindred spirits I sought out his knowledge of the addiction and how he felt it impacted his life. Reading the book has brought to light several things that have made me stop and think. Why did I like D&D so much? What drew me to it? So, now it has given birth to this blog in which I will share my revelations about the game.

The most prevalent reason I can think of for why I played D&D was it gave me an outlet for my imagination. At its very heart D&D is a game of imagination. There are really no pieces or game boards. Everything in D&D is wrought out of the pure specter of imagination. As a young man I had an overactive imagination, like so many. D&D offered me a chance to use that imagination to create something for the enjoyment of others. I had no real artistic talent. I was unable to draw, I had put my brief acting career on hold, and I was no lead singer for a rock band let me tell you. So in lieu of honing any of those talents that I did not have, I chose to create dungeons, adventures, characters, new spells and items for my players. As a dungeon master I was able to hone that imagination into an actual craft and make things that I was proud of.

Secondly, D&D gave me something that I think every youth longs for: a peer group. Through D&D I was able to meet people who shared my taste for the fantastical, praised me for my imagination, and always challenged me to go further with it than I ever would have on my own. I also made a ton of friends, first within my own high school and hometown and later throughout the state and even the world. The friends I made playing D&D were every bit as imaginative and creative as I was, some more so. I admired many of them greatly and still hold them in high regard. They are some of the brightest people I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. To this day, D&D is still a bonding point for me. If I meet someone and find out later that they played D&D my opinion of them usually goes up significantly.

Finally, D&D gave me confidence. I admit to being a tad timid when I was a teenager. I lacked self confidence and certainly faded into the wallpaper whenever possible. D&D was no place for the meek and timid. The characters you were forced to play were either strong in word and deed or they would soon meet their end. If a D&D character was quiet then he was being introspective and that was totally cool. I credit the game itself with making me confident. It forced me to carry a bit of it over into the real world. Gradually as I put more and more of myself into the scenarios and dungeons I created the positive feedback I would receive from them would go directly into making me more confident. I am not sure where I would be confidence wise today if it were not for those games with my friends.

In closing, I encourage any would be gamers out there to give D&D a try. It’s morphed and changed over the years but at its heart beats the same fundamental thing, imagination. We here at the Gothic are going to make a point of stocking some of the rulebooks and I would direct any fellow Dukies to their gaming club, Dagger. In a world filled with MMORPGS and IPods, where everything is accessible via YouTube or Wikipedia, don’t we really need a little more imagination afoot?

Wooooooo!

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

First post of the year! Check it out, fellow bloggers. It’s my big toe testing out the waters of ’09. MY TOE!

Um, sorry. I got kind of carried away there. It’s a very exciting time here at the Gothic, and we’re all a little prone to flights of silliness. For instance, earlier today Arthur and our co-worker Watson and I came up with a premise for a sci-fi novel (and, later, a rock-opera) in which people have brightly colored saliva and are classified according to their colors.

Why all this tomfoolery? Well, we’ve just renovated the Gothic Bookshop, and we’re a little giddy from the results. The front area of the store is now a pleasant, open space, with big shelves of New Arrival Hardcovers facing you when you walk in the door. It’s taken the emphasis off us Gothickers somewhat and restored books to their place as the most important element of the store. (Shoppers may remember that it was formerly our staff, sitting on a raised platform, that customers were forced to gaze upon when they entered the store. I shudder at the memory of that.) There are plenty of other changes, too. We’ve once again allotted some space for a nice sitting area in the back of the store, and we’ve rearranged the store (we couldn’t resist) in a way that hopefully makes more sense.

All of these changes make us feel like we’re working in a new store. It’s funny; pretty much the same books that were here before the Winter Break are here now, but the simple fact of having moved them is making books that I’ve seen a hundred times suddenly look more interesting. It's a New Year's Miracle!

Seriously, though.

It’s got me thinking about how the best writers can do that—take a common, even pedestrian topic and rearrange it in such a way that it draws our attention anew. Selah Saterstrom is a writer who seems able to pull that off anytime she takes pen to paper. I first encountered her writing in her amazing debut, The Pink Institution, and more recently in her equally killer title, The Meat and Spirit Plan. Both take relatively simple subjects (the hilarity and horror of a decaying southern family in one; a southern burnout girl’s year in Scotland in the other) and, by altering the structure of the narrative through which we approach them, make them something entirely new.

I hope we’ve accomplished the same thing here at the store. Come in and tell us what you think.