James Garside
For a book that's about introverts, by an introvert and for introverts, it sure does go on about extroverts.
As an introvert, I wanted to read a book about how introverts can survive in an extrovert world. But more than half the book is given over to explaining why extroverts are favoured in school, business, sport, mating, society and the world at large.
The scientific research is interesting but intermixed with the most baffling claptrap that seems to be symptomatic of ‘turns out' journalism. The book opens with Rosa Parks and closes with Charlie Brown.
Much of it read like it had come from the same cookie-cutter mould as any number of American self-help books. I even started to check off the usual suspects in my head.
For example let's:
- Address the audience as America, talk about America as if it's the world and America is the sole subject of the book. Because we Americans as Americans must America, America, America.
- Cite Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus as the bravery of one person acting alone (Rosa Parks was a remarkable woman but this version of events is wildly historically inaccurate)
- Quip that the apple wouldn't have fallen on Isaac Newton's head, if he wasn't an introvert, as he wouldn't have been sitting under the tree (this story is apocryphal and the apple incident never happened)
- Talk about characters from the bible as though they're actual historical figures
- Use unscientific case studies and composite examples of ‘real people' as universal proof
- Throw in anecdotes about American presidents, business men and celebrities
- Use the phrase ‘It turns out' repeatedly to introduce whatever whacky notions we've decided to assert
Maybe I'm just sick to the back-teeth of reading American self-help books. But the further into the book I got the more my heart sank as I realised it contained little of practical use to introverts.
There's a chapter on how to raise introverted kids, and a lot of lip-service paid to the unique qualities of introverts, but very few survival strategies and almost no advice on how to make the best use of your introverted nature.
There's nothing wrong with being an introvert and introverts shouldn't have to pretend to be more like extroverts to get on in the world.
This book is important insofar as it gets people talking about introversion at all. But if you're an introvert it's probably of more use to the extrovert in your life than to you — unless you beat them over the head with it to get them to be quiet whilst you read.
You can buy the book here.
I LOVE WOZ. In interviews and public appearances he always comes across as affable and down-to-earth — a loveable nerd with a big brain and big heart. So it's disappointing that whilst the book gives some insight into his pranksterish personality and interesting tidbits about his time with Apple, it is excruciating to wade through. Imagine being told a story by an excitable nine-year-old, who keeps saying ‘and then I did this', ‘and I was great at it', ‘and then I did this', ‘and mine was the best', ‘and then I did this', ‘but that didn't work', ‘and then I did this...' And to the nine-year-old their story is the BEST THING EVER so they go to great lengths to explain every detail to the point where the story is lost. Over and over again. FOR NINE HOURS!!! (I listened to the unabridged audiobook). I STILL LOVE WOZ, but I won't be reading another book by him any time soon.
YES! YES! YES! Poetry is magick, not the other way round. Kathleen Raine's wonderful overview of the occult influences of Yeats and his involvement with the Golden Dawn is easily the most obscure thing on my bucket list of things to read before I die and has sat on my reading list for many years. To my complete amazement, it's now free to read online at JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27541704
Reading Thomas Bulfinch's ‘The Age of Fable' is about as much fun as trying to read an encyclopedia, by shoving pages up your bottom, whilst eating a bowl of sprouts. You know that this summary of mythology is meant to be good for you, much like sprouts and encyclopedias, but there has to be a better way. It covers mostly Greek and Roman myths, with a little Norse mythology thrown in for good measure, and would make a reasonable reference for Classics students. Just don't attempt to digest the whole thing in one sitting.
On the typewriter, you tell the truth.
Read Tobias Wolff's Old School, finally, after years of it being a gift from a friend, and then eventually selling the book and getting it out of the library because it had sold before I'd got round to reading it.
All sorts of thoughts about the book, but first this. If anything, on one level, it says that writers should tell the truth, but none of us do and we all need each other more than we realise. ‘For a writer there is no such thing as an exemplary life.'
But plot events and the moment of having just finished it brought back a memory of my own. When I was a kid, junior school I think, possibly middle, I submitted a poem to the school's poetry contest. It was verbatim a poem I'd read in a book in the local library. It turned out it was an incredibly famous poem by an incredibly famous poet, but as a kid, I'd never heard of him, I just liked it. And so, of course, I got caught was was due to be bollocked by the headmaster. Despite no doubt being an insufferable swot, though I never really saw myself as that except at the end of another kid's fist again for no good reason.
And when I went into the headmaster's office, although he did bollock me, it was with a certain amusement and detached amazement or incredulity. He was a big man, who regaled us with tales of growing up walking barefoot so his feet would toughen and that his one treat in life was that he allowed himself one liquorice stick a month, and so he didn't need to do anything other than speak to make you feel like you'd been bollocked. He could see that I was nervous, that I was sorry, and the rest of it. And so it went to the business of giving me lines to do. He set me in front of his typewriter and gave me lines and left the room. Probably to have a quick fag and a cup of tea. Or more likely to smoke a pipe. Anyway, I don't remember having seen a manual typewriter before, not in real life, though I knew what one was. And this is my first memory of being in front of one. And here I was, as punishment, being asked to write on a typewriter.
I assume the line was I will not lie or I must tell the truth, but truth is I don't remember. And I only wrote a few copies of the line as the keys kept getting stuck. Again, with amusement when he came back, benign bemusement if you will, he noticed that I'd in fact written bugger all and hardly learnt my lesson at all. But it didn't matter, and I had in fact learnt my lesson. (And no doubt, he could see that, as he stood outside with me and sent me on my way). And I walked across the polished wooden floor and that is my main memory of him after all these years. The sort of Old School headmaster who made a massive impression on everyone there. But whether I could write on the typewriter or not - the keys were heavy and their giant thud astonished me. But I was afraid of breaking the damned thing. And when the keys got stuck, I wasn't sure what to do, gently coaxing them apart. But yes, that was my first memory of the typewriter and I guess you could say that the lesson is that at the typewriter you tell the truth. Which is why Old School made me think of it.
And my thought on the novel? Aside from it being a gift, and so for all these years my friend has secretly been admonishing me to tell the truth. I enjoyed most of it, and the deliberate derailment of the boy plagiarising and therefore ending up out on his arse and not meeting Hemingway, who killed himself and never visited the school in any case, was masterful. But that leaves it floundering, almost by its own admission and deliberate choice of direction.
Yes, it shows that in many ways this turn of luck actually makes the man of the boy and the truth-telling writer of the liar-pretender but it then goes on to be more about the telling of the tale of the Dean, who also fell from grace, and that the whole association with Hemingway was a sham as he had never been friends with the man as people always suspected or assumed. And although this is told as a ‘this is what led me to be a writer' and is poignant in its way, it doesn't satisfy as an ending because - although all those facts and information should be included - it changes from narrative to exposition.
And the main character takes a step back at the end. To make a point. But just before that, and this is what I mean by ‘admission', it says that life isn't like a well-rounded story but it would have been satisfying had he gone back when invited back as a visiting writer. And I couldn't help but think for fucks sake that's the version that I wanted to read.
Because the derailment would make more sense and all the points could still be made, but without breaking the story and getting away from the narrative. Because we'd gotten used to the pattern of boys setting at each other and vying for the attentions of a visiting writer, the whole story was about that, and the point well made that the boys fall from grace is what made him a man and led him through the shit of it (of life) to becoming a writer. Instead of meeting Hemingway, he became that of a fashion himself. And the excellent meeting with the woman who actually wrote the story he plagiarised, when she was a girl at the academy, and she the better writer who dismisses writing as being too selfish and not doing any good. Brilliant.
So then, after that, go back to the school and round it off. With him as a visiting writer, and doe-eyed schoolboys looking up to him. Choosing a story, from the endless pretentious and painful reminders because they're all so earnest and imitative and bad because dishonest stories, and then the dinner at the school or his reading in the chapel. And somewhere among that plant the seeds of the revelations about the Dean and all the other stuff. And in his own meeting with the boy. Because after all this we didn't really get one damned meeting with a writer. Not really. So it makes narrative sense for us to see through the mirror and get this ‘prize' as viewed from the boy-now-man's own view as the writer, looking at the awestruck boy who is a reflection of his former self.
You can still crack the mirror, you can still bring the house of cards down, you can still show the Dean's fall from grace and even his return. But all of this without breaking from the pace, structure, point of view, and narrative dream. Without jumping too far out and ahead. Yes, it's ok to skip the man's entire life after school in a few brief paragraphs as it did, but go back.
But maybe that's the point, as made, life isn't like that. But we know life isn't like that, that's why we're reading books.
A slim but attractive collection of nearly 200 ‘mate in 2' chess puzzles, which compliments the online compendium of 10,000 chess puzzles at www.wtharvey.com. The book is nicely laid out and has chess puzzles to match the skills of novice and experienced players, with solutions at the back. I personally found the comprehensive online resource more useful, and would suggest starting there. But if you're already a fan of chess puzzles, and want something to do on a rainy sunday afternoon, then this is a treat.
Many years ago I read Generation Hex, published by Disinformation and edited by Jason Louv. I also listened to a recording of their Gen Hex book event at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. It's also most notably where I first discovered the work of James Curcio and Rachel Haywire. Here are my unedited notes and quotes. I have no idea what's what now. So please consider it all one big-ass quote / summary from the book with all due credit to the original authors. Then go out and buy a fucking copy. Come back 2005, all is forgiven.
Notes:
— Change your diet, change your reality.
— Initiation never ends.
— Being a writer seemed to me the way to stay a whole person, until I found a better way — being a magician.
— ? ‘The place of dead roads.' Book by Burroughs.
— Draw a circle. “It is our will to become initiate.” “We sanctify this circle, we make it pure.”
— It felt like falling out of the world. Initiation. That's the best I can describe it. You fall out of the world and then something begins to whisper to you in the language of intuition.
— You've got to have a clear idea of what you want and let other people get caught up in your story, not the other way around.
— Don't talk about it. Don't say anything. Don't try to explain it. Don't try to figure it out. Just do it.
— Write down your experiments and results.
— Write down your dreams upon waking every morning.
— The magic happens when we begin to apply dream-logic to our waking time.
— You have to make magic real by living it.
— On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for only taking magic seriously in the moment, for keeping the magician self as the self that does magic...
— A true rebel has to be an artist, somebody who can not only point out the weak points and contradictions in the system, but can also propose something better, and then guard its passage into manifestation.
— For some magick is most appropriately viewed as a tool, rather than a lifestyle or a career. It's something you use to create and when you create.
– P64 initiation ritual. Write down all the shit in your life that you don't like about yourself etc. You're offering up all this negative shit as fuel, as a ritual sacrifice.
Whatever is holding you back in life, your biggest neuroses, repressons and obstacles. All the outmoded and useless and limiting aspects of yourself that you are willing to give up. An emotional animal sacrifice. Cut it up and rearrange the random pieces. Look for the names of these things. Stop being afraid of it. Post it to the world. Give it a name. Bind it to your will. To help you. Then place yourself outside of your comfort zone. Tune TV to white noise. Conjure your named spirits. Bind them with string. Seal their sigils in a bag you later throw out into the sea. Stand naked in an anonymous room in front of a stranger, she will initiate you. Make love, painted in sigils representing your new life as a magician. Celebrate the end of one thing and the start of another.
ERIS IS MY BIATCH.
Reality is a toy!
One thing I knew about the universe was that it needed to be fucked with more than it needed to be helped.
Our choices in how we see the universe cause the universe to exist for us.
I write my own book.
You can change anything whenever you want to. Nothing in your past effects anything in your now.
Keep an online journal of your travels.
Magickal journal: Headings like: intent, method, results, conclusion.
Like in science class. Also write down everything that magick means to you, its trappings and associations. And do something connected to each aspect.
Crowley's Liber Aleph is really helping me out. Been reading it aloud in my motel room.
Mutants cycle of evolution:
1. Alienation.
2. Relation.
3. Conversation.
4. Inspiration. (seeing outside both the societal and countercultural boxes)
5. Creation.
Express yourself. You fucking rule.
“If I hear one more person who brags about their trips with Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary I might become what people refer to as evil.” — Rachel Haywire
Magick is spontaneity
Oath of the Abyss: where you vow to interpret EVERYTHING as a direct message to you from the universe.
This country has a massive social disease called “I'm tired and need to go to work tomorrow.”
It's all just clothing. All of it. Face the curse and find a way to destroy it. It's all about having a strong mind, see. Sink and let yourself drown for a while. Now? Replenish. Start from scratch again. Those who suffer the most are either the strongest or the most masochistic.
Either way, you leave with the knowledge of having been there.
Magick: a practical joke. Illusion. Shadowplay. How much are you willing to believe?
How far are you willing to take it. Real.
This is the Nepali peoples method of prayer. If you need something you make an offering for Kali.
Some power, maybe to overcome disease, maybe to help with life. You hold the wish inside.
RANDOM HAND
The answer is always yes.
“Somewhere deep in the ‘isness' of the European man is a magician in a circle and with his Art doth he torment and wrench his desires from that which screams in agony within the triangle. With symbols doth he control all that he sees and the world-so-limited screams out in agony. Or longs to break forth into the circle. Or was that just part of me? (when do we become the process?) I AM NOT (THAT I AM) A magician is only different from an artist in terms of method. The ultimate intent is identical.
Life is a dream you won't remember upon awakening.
The easiest way to break out is to psychologically remove yourself temporarily from the culture you were born into.
Magic is a way of life — don't quit your day job.
Create positive change on this planet or shut your mouth.
THOTH IS THE GOD OF WRITING AND MAGICK.
Use the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram
Madness comes rapidly to people who know that they are elves!
Replace the word god / Tao etc in every religious text with the word DNA and it suddenly makes a lot more sense and is a lot more useful. (Me: Except for Scientology, that's still fucked up.)
I wanted to like this book. I was going to read it from cover to cover in one sitting, and be amazed, and change my life, and then write the most wondrous review. But, it didn't work out that way. It took three months of hard slog to get two thirds of the way into this book, and it's less than 150 pages. I just can't bring myself to read this bilge for any longer. It's like being counseled by a Care Bear!
The concept is simple enough. Use loosely adapted Tibetan Buddhist visualisation techniques to receive symbols from your higher consciousness that represent your problems. Then, work with these symbols as a way to work on and overcome your problems. Ok, I get it. Lots of meditative practices use similar visualisation techniques, and there's even some crossover here with the use of Sigils in magick. But, is it any great secret that changing the way you think or feel about your problems can help you to overcome them?
Her description of the process is muddy at best. Practically every page is punctuated with the repeated phrase “Higher Consciousness Healing,” which is her patented miraculous unique formulation of a well known visualistation technique. And The ‘Five-Minute Miracle' is actually four to six weeks of using this visualisation at least twice a day. None of this drives me quite so crazy as the fuzzy, cloying, saccharine, woo-woo that it's all wrapped up in:
“Susan was married to a man who was verbally abusive to her on a regular basis. I helped her receive a healing symbol from her higher consciousness and showed her how to send love to herself and to her husband by enveloping them both in bubbles of loving joyful light.”
If phrases like that don't set alarm bells ringing or have you reaching for the sick bucket, then enjoy. This is your book of the year. For anyone else, save yourself the money, and consider learning any sort of meditative practice from the original source material instead.
Steven Poole is a cunning linguist.
He disses George Orwell, just to make himself look better, then admits with fake modesty that he's no expert and just a close reader.
He quotes Noam Chomsky, disingenously and out of context, just to make Chomsky look like a dick.
He then sets up straw-man arguments so that he can, oh so cleverly, knock them down.
He sets himself the incredibly hard task of taking apart the words of such noted thinkers, intellectuals and luminaries as George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.
Our governments are lying to us and use language to hide it. Who knew? Who knew.
Some earlier chapters are excellent and persuasive. But often, despite agreeing with the premise of the book, I found myself irritated by Poole's grating tone of smugness.
He goes off-the-rails at the end, focusing in later chapters almost exclusively on the war on terror.
Even though this is where we should care most, and his arguments should be strongest, he goes to town with smugness and pushes his own arguments to silly, contorted, linguistic extremes.
I agree wholeheartedly with the original premise of the book. But he's guilty of using the very tricks and devices he decries “them” for using.
A book that seeks to expose Unspeak ends up full of it.
It's at the service or humour and political analysis rather than mass murder, of course, but still bullshit and still annoying.
Literary journalism is an oxymoron.
Steven Poole is well-and-truly full of it — and full of himself.
He reviewed reviews of his book on the Unspeak website and his tone is the same there.
Admittedly, I laughed that he quoted Alistair Campbell's dismissive review of his book, as ““Crap from start to finish”, on the front cover of his book.
I've delibereately just blurted out my thoughts rather than write up a proper review — the last thing I want is this guy reading what I've said about his book and sending me footnotes.
I'm glad that I read it but I was also glad when I'd finished.
Please let me never be sat next to this man at a dinner party.
Ok, I admit, I'm just annoyed that he slagged off Orwell and Chomsky.
You can buy the book here.
That they got a man to narrate the audiobook version of Dorothea Brande's ‘Wake Up And Live!' is an absolute fucking travesty. That said this remains one of my favourite non-fiction books – second only to her ‘Becoming A Writer.' Both definitive (and actually helpful) self-help classics that should be required reading for writers and other creative types.
Let me put it this way - this is the third book in a trilogy published by Shady Tree Press; who, to date, have published nothing else. The book has been reviewed on Amazon.com by two people; who, to date, have reviewed nothing else. And the only reviews I can find anywhere else are from people who won this book in a giveaway. All three books were published in 2010, and Shady Tree Press is now closed for submissions. If this isn't self-published, I will eat my own head. That said, I genuinely wish the author well and hope that their work finds an appreciative audience. I won't bad-mouth a book that I couldn't finish reading, but it just wasn't my cup of tea: Historical fiction; at heart a love story. I couldn't put it down fast enough.
This attractive book is a modest collection of poetry by Larry Kuechlin which draws from his personal experiences in rock climbing and other outdoor pursuits, interspersed with beautiful photographs and illustrations throughout. I think it's great that interesting books like this still make it into print, and although some of the poems were a little hit and miss, I'd gladly pass it on to fellow climbers who'd best appreciate what Kuechlin has to say.
Once upon a time, holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat wrote a love story. Boy meets girl. Boy is dying in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Girl throws Boy apples over the concentration camp fence. Boy and Girl fall in love. You know, the usual. It was a beautiful story, and one that needed to be told.
It was so beautiful that one day, Oprah, being Oprah, declared it “the greatest love story ever told”. She invited Rosenblat onto her show, and he spellbound the audience with tales of his life and claimed that he had written this story from his own experience.
Now, there was just one problem in the magical kingdom of TV land - the story wasn't true. Oprah went on the war path. And lots of Americans, having no sense of irony, got very upset about the whole thing.
The fact that a harrowing tale of life in the concentration camps had basis in truth, despite the fictional love story, was lost on people. The possibility that a person who, having just survived the holocaust, might have very good reasons for wanting to pretty things up a bit, didn't occur to them. And as for the idea that people have artistic freedom and the right to make of their own experiences whatever they will - well, that would be like saying that Oprah was wrong!
Rosenblat's fiction is a lie that tells the truth. And whilst I can well understand the desire to uncover the truth behind the story, Holt's decision to then write this ‘true account' as a novel is baffling. ‘The Apple'...bites.
What you end up with is a badly written ‘true' work of fiction, about a beautifully written ‘fictional' truth. What would you prefer - an ugly truth or a beautiful lie? Read them both. Make up your own mind.