Dream of Stephen King

[I am updating this from 7 years ago, because I just found it and I like it.]

I do not especially care about King. I am not a fan (particularly) or a detractor. I have seen movies and television series, but I haven't read his books. One day I heard an NPR interview with him and, without knowing his identity at first, I assumed he was a highbrow writer of a different type. In this night of particularly fertile dreams, though, Stephen King and I were having a conversation. I was with a friend who knew King, in a workshop where my friend was doing an arts and crafts project. King was not there, but was being Skyped in. I had to lie on my back to see him, projected on a screen above my face.

He challenged me to tell a story about my life in two sessions, like we had done before. I said I wasn't a good storyteller, that I didn't have the kind of experiences that leant themselves to being tied up in narrative bundles like that. He scoffed at me a bit, though not in an unfriendly way. Throughout the whole conversation he was a skeptical but benevolent figure. I also told him I was a schmuck, that I didn't do things well, and so that the story would end up being about my various failures. He said something to the effect that we are all schmucks. I didn't want to ask him how he came up with the ideas for his stories, but I said that I mostly wrote poetry, and that occasionally a plot for an entire novel would pop into my head, fully formed.

He said something that implied that that was the easy part. You had to have the self-discipline to write the book. The first example I gave him was of a man who gradually wasted away. He said that had been done already too many times. The second one was of a science fiction novel in which the aliens were taking over the world, but that the reader didn't know it. In other words, the transformation of reality was so subtle that it could be attributed to other causes. This is an idea I have actually had in waking life. Stephen King didn't quite get understand my plot, though it seemed as though gradually we were getting to some meeting of the minds.  

Without a car...

 My car is in the shop for 2 weeks.  

I can walk or take the bus to work. I also need to feed the cat every two days. Can walk from work to where the cat is, and back to work. My friend (owner of cat) is out of the country, and cannot drive me anywhere. [I could use her car, but I don't feel like it.]

I went out with friends on Friday. I got a ride home after that from a friend who lives on the same street. 

Took a bus to get some dinner this evening, then the same bus back to choir practice. There was thunder storm and I walked back anyway. The rain was not too heavy and I barely got wet. I could have asked someone for a ride, but didn't. 

(On Sunday, I was going to be in a 5k run in the morning. I was going to walk there, but the run was cancelled because of the rain.) 

I have books to donate to the library, which I cannot do without a car. 

So the lesson is... The car is good to have, but not necessary every day. If I had my car, I would have used it, but I don't need to use it that much. Not having a car is inconvenient, but having a car means using it too much.  

Poison pen

 I got this poison pen email a few weeks ago. 30 years ago, I apparently accused a graduate student of plagiarism... and she dropped out of our program as a result.  She wanted to tell me now much of a jerk I was. 

I have no memory of this event, so I have no defense, and cannot reproduce the events in my memory.

  I do remember a particularly weak student in this class, with whom I argued about the interpretation of a Cernuda poem. In this poem, the speaker or the poem is attacking Cernuda himself, in a typical ironic reversal.  It's not even a controversy, because it is so obvious and unsubtle.  Cernuda will write things like "society is just, it treats everyone, the way they deserve." This is exactly the opposite of what Cernuda believes, of course. I had a student evaluation that I didn't accept other interpretations... probably from the student I disagreed with.  Possibly it is the one who is now accusing me. 

I didn't answer the student, because I didn't want to fuel the flames.  I don't think I would have accused a student of plagiarism without evidence. No other student has accused me of misconduct, and after so long a time I feel quite defenseless. 

Mark Halperin was in this class, and said that is was the most intellectually challenging class he ever took before then. He had been Linda Willem's student at Butler. Also, Paqui Paredes, a student from Galicia, who has also had a good career.  I had assumed that, since KU was a top rated program, the students would be great.  Some were, but others I was probably impatient with, because if you are graduate student, you shouldn't be an idiot.  

Dream of injured foot, affable man, and small polar bear

 I was walking from the airport terminal to my car over snow or ice, barefoot. My feet quickly became numb, so I somehow thought this made it ok: numbness = no pain. Then there were two pieces of metal in my foot, and I had to take them out. One was a screw. There was blood. People pointed out to me that I was bleeding. A piece of my foot appeared to be missing, where I had torn out the screw or other piece of metal. 

An affable man was in this dream. Every conversation in which he was involved was very pleasant: he naturally made others friendly by his own friendliness. The conversations were about scarves, or something trivial like that. 

Later, at the house, we were living with a smallish polar bear. He didn't know his own strength and pushed my niece or sister off the bed with just one swipe of his paw. I was thinking of ways to get rid of it. It wasn't exactly threatening, and more the size of a very large dog, but I still thought it was dangerous.  

The 9th kind of poet

 Ranking 9 out of ten are the poets who are fearless and cut through one's perceptions, like Frank O'Hara or Yeats.  In some ways they are preferable to the poets ranked at 10.  

The 10th category: poets who are canonical and deservedly so. The ones recognized by everyone as the best of their particularly tradition. The only problem here is that one never knows whether people like the poetry because of its status, or because they truly like it.  

These categories ultimately dissolve into the air, because what truly matters is the quality of the poetic itself, which can be found anywhere and nowhere. The respected poet who never approaches the poetic itself is the worst thing possible, even worse than the rank amateur.  

Puzzle routine...

 I will do crosswords around 9 p.m., the regular mini, midi, and full size NYT for Monday-Fri.  

I will do wordle and connections first thing. I will do pips, easy and medium, too. The difficult level is tedious and I will sometimes get to it later in the day, sometimes not. There is a very easy word search called strands that I will do quickly at some point in the day.  I will do the spelling bee, but I only look for words that use all seven letters (the pangram). I will stop after I find it, but will sometimes go back if there is more than one such word. Often, the word will jump out at me in a few seconds. I don't wanting to be finding 40 words and taking all day to do it. Finding many words makes it harder to find the one word that rules them all. If the word doesn't jump out at me, then I will try later in the day, but never stare at it for more than a minute. 

I won't do Sunday NYT puzzle, because it is tedious and fills too much of the screen. 

What I've read

 I used to read every novel by Philip Roth, John Updike, and Saul Bellow as they appeared. I would read entire books of poetry, not just poetry anthologies, in English when that was the only language I knew. I would read the collected poems, not the selected poems. When I was interested in a poet, or a particular author, I would read everything. 

I have read most of Galdós, something nobody does unless they are an expert on this author. I never finished the last series of the Episodios nacionales.  The summer before grad school, I read all the boom authors, GGM, Cortázar, Donoso... 

I would never just read what was assigned in classes. I would read all the novels of Henry Green, for example, though Henry Green was never assigned in any course where I went to school.  

At some point I lost my love of novels. I read them now to practice reading in foreign languages. I have read Elena Ferrante in Italian... I like to read Murakami in Catalan, etc... I can read in most romance languages.  

A lot of my "reading" is a practice of memorization. So it is a little different from reading prose fiction where you make linear progress but don't remember the words in your brain. I have read Basho in multiple translations and compared them. 

The sheer quantity and intensity of my reading practice explains a lot about me.  Of course, this is to be expected in a literature prof, but I still think I am not wholly typical. For example, I don't know anyone personally who has as much memorized as I do, or who reads as much in multiple languages.