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January 16, 2005
Reading: Jacques Poulin, Volkswagen Blues (1984)
Texte à l'endo
"-Quand partons-nous sur la Piste de l'Orégon? demanda-t-elle brusquement.
-Vous n'avez pas envie qu'on se sépare? dit l'homme au lieu de répondre.
-Non, dit-elle.
-Pourquoi?
Elle alla chercher le petit tabouret en simili cuir, elle tendit sa brosse à l'homme et s'assit en lui tournant le dos.
-Parce que je suis attachée au vieux Volkswagen, dis-t-elle.
L'homme se mit à lui brosser les cheveux délicatement, à petits coups, comme il l'avait vu faire plusieurs fois.
-Le vieux Volks peut tomber en ruine à n'importe quel moment, dit-il.
-On verra, dit la fille.
-Vos cheveux sont doux. Ils sont noirs comme le poêle, mais je n'en ai jamais vu d'aussi doux.
-Merci. Quand est-ce qu'on part?
-Vous pensez vraiment que Théo est allé sur la piste de l'Orégon? demanda l'homme.
-Oui, c'est ce que je pense, dit-elle.
"
Suggested by (Not That Paul Martin) Paul W. Martin who's using it in his English 086 course.
[1] Jacques Poulin, Volkswagen Blues, Roman. http://www.100meilleurs.com/books/book.asp?BookID=1035
Roch Carrier has nominated Volkswagen Blues for the Ottawa Publich Library's Canada Reads "Battle of the Books" 2005 contest. The nomination reads
Volkswagen Blues is a road story about a writer named Jack, in search of his brother, Théo. Jack picks up a hitchhiker, a young aboriginal woman, La Grande Sauterelle (named for her long, grasshopper-like legs) and her cat, Chop Suey. Together, they cut a circuitous trail from Montreal to San Francisco, and explore the history of European contact with the native people of the Americas. Their journey, written in a prose that has the half-sung and half-said quality of myth, also becomes a metaphor for the history of the French in North America. En route, the reader is introduced to a number of interesting and entertaining characters, including Sam Peckinpah, Saul Bellow, Al Capone and Auguste Renoir. Like many great novels, Volkswagen Blues is the journey of a man struggling to learn more about himself.
A fun, playful book. Even with brief visits to the web to check for sites, references ("Which Renoir painting is that?"), and distractions (I can't think of Ferlengetti without thinking of "Coney Island of the Mind"), it was just an afternoon's read, an interruption from Musashi.
A good choice for a literature course at an environmental university; not sure if it should be on a "Canada Reads Next" list, but it would be a good nomination for Oprah!
Posted by sjc at 9:43 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2005
Susan Sontag, 1933 - 2004
Xinhuanet writes [1]:
"Susan Sontag, who died Tuesday [Deceember 30' at age 71 of complications of acute myelogenous leukemia, was both the most rarefied and the least predictable of thinkers, drawn to the demands of high art but open to the kick of popular culture. ...Her fame began with her 1964 essay, "Notes on Camp," which popularized the "so bad it's good" attitude toward everything from Flash Gordon to feather boas. Over the next 40 years, she was immersed in foreign films, the pornographic imagination, silence, science fiction, avant-garde theater and the compatible pleasures of a Rauschenberg painting and the music of Diana Ross and the Supremes.
She drew criticism in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks when she said that the attacks were not cowardly but "an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions."
"In America" is the paradigm of Sontag's novel.
Sontag had an insatiable passion for literature, with thousands of books — arranged by chronology and language — occupying, and defining, her New York apartment. She read writers from all over the world and is credited with introducing such European intellectuals as Roland Barthes and Elias Canetti to American readers. Like she told Rolling Stone magazine. "The main reason I read is that I enjoy it."
[1] Agencies, "71-year-old US author Susan Sontag dies of leukemia," December 30, 2004.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-12/30/content_2393375.htm
Her passing send me to the library to dig out Against Interpretation, the only book of her's I'd read.
The opening sentence in Against Interpretation is "The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. (Cf. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality." Bingo!
Posted by sjc at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2005
Musashi
Reading: Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi, translated by Charles S. Terry, Kodansha, 1971. Recommended by JGM.
Musashi is the 970 page fine print blockbuster story of Miyamoto Musashi (nee Shinmen Takezou), samurai, and author of Gorin no sho (Book of the Five Rings), original serialized in Asahi Shimbun, 1935 - 1939. It is also the source of the blockbuster film trilogy Samuraim staring Toshiro Mifune, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki.
Even at the start, the language is easy. It's hard to imagine the original Japanese, which I guess I'll have to get by interlibrary loan.
Quotes:
p. 22. Takezou kills Temma: "He lept at Temma's back. Blood spurted out at the end of the wooden sword, and a bloodcurdling scream pierced the silent night. The freebooter's hulking frame fell to the ground with a leaden thud and rolled over. The skull was smashed to bits, the eyes popped out of their sockets. After two or three more heavy blows to the body, broken ribs protruded from the skin."
Posted by sjc at 7:43 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2005
Eating Bugs Powers Robot
Scientists at the University of the West of England (UWE) have designed a robot that generates it's own power by eating bugs.
The EcoBot II robot uses human sewage to attract flies, and then capture them. Once captured, bacteria in the sewage digest the fly, convert it to sugar, and then microbial fuel cells convert the sugar into electricity. The robot can digest about 3 or 4 flies in a week. A single microbial cell can generate 0.75 volts.
Future robots are expected to be powered by cellulose (cow sewage?).
[1] Fly-eating robot powers itself, December 29, 2004 Posted: 12:50 PM EST (1750 GMT). http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/12/27/explorers.ecobot/index.html
[2] Lakshmi Sandhana, Ecobot Eats Dead Flies for Fuel, December. 15, 2004, PT, http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66036-2,00.html
Posted by sjc at 9:00 PM | Comments (0)
I blog, you blog, they blog, we blog ...
A new study [1] by the Pew Internet and Family Life Project show that 27% of America's Internet users say they read blogs while 12 percent have posted a comment to a blog. This corresponds to a hearty 58% increase from February to November last year, although 62% of the Internet users questioned said they did not know what a ‘blog' is.
[1] Lee Rainie, The state of blogging, Pew Internet & American Life Project, January 2, 2005. "By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture: 7% of U.S. internet users say they have created blogs and 27% say they are blog readers." URL: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp
[2] Blog creation, readership booming in 2004, China View, January 4, 2005. URL: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-01/04/content_2414537.htm
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Posted by sjc at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)