I finished reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz today. The book was a quick and interesting read. The characters are rich and unique and it has this conversational writing style that I really got into. I would highly recommend it.

Now I’m faced with the tough choice of what to read next. Maybe I’ll go back to What is the What by Dave Eggers. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson just looks too intimidating for right now. I might have to do some free weight lifting before I start that book. Or maybe I should go to one of the classics that I have yet to read, which include To The Lighthouse, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and works by Flannery O’ Connor, among many others.

Today (technically yesterday now) I bought a book titled Screenwriters’ Masterclass by Kevin Conroy Scott from Borders. I had two coupons and I think it was a great purchase. I’m hoping that it will inspire me to start doing the one thing I haven’t done that I really planned to do here in Omaha: write a script. Not come up with an idea or write an outline or write 15 pages and abandon it, but finish the whole thing. 112 pages. Or 107. Either one of those is a good number.

So the book is a compilation of interviews the author conducted with writers, discussing one particular work of theirs, plus the whole writing process and other fun stuff. He’s chosen a diverse and talented group of screenwriters, including Lukas Moodyson, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Lisa Cholodenko, David O. Russell, Michael Haneke, Wes Anderson, Chris Weitz, Scott Frank, Guillermo Arriaga, Paul Laverty, Francois Ozon, Carlos Cuarón and Darren Aronofsky (among others). From the skimming I’ve done, it looks like it’s pretty solid stuff too. I didn’t notice any embarrassing questions and the answers look pretty meaty. It also reminded me that I still have to see Lilya 4-Ever, a movie I’ve wanted to see 4-ever, or about 5 years.

Anyway, thought someone else out there might find it interesting. It should also provide me with the opportunity of making more double-sided, photocopied handouts for my students to ignore. More importantly, let’s hope it does the trick of getting me in the writing mood.

Finished Vendela Vida’s And Now You Can Go. Liked it a lot. Started Jonathan Franzen’s book of essays, How to be Alone.

I am back from Wisconsin. I had a great time. Jamie and Erin are gone. They left for Minnesota. My Moving Image Lab class starts tomorrow. I am exhausted.

Consider the Lobster And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace is hilarious, informative, insightful, thoughtful and just all out really awesome. I’ve always been intrigued by Wallace and he’s one of those many authors that I’ve thought so much about reading, but just hadn’t really gotten around to. I did start to read Infinite Jest, found it funny and challenging and for some reason (perhaps due to its massive size or to the fact that I’m just realizing I may have lost it under the bed and just forgot about it) I stopped and haven’t returned to it.

I listened to a podcast of him reading a portion of “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s”, an essay on 9/11 included in Consider the Lobster. Then I listened to another podcast of him on Bookworm. Having my interest piqued even further (and having heard him read at a Downtown for Democracy awhile ago and loving it), I decided to pick up Consider the Lobster. I am really glad I did.

Luckily , I still have a few essays left, and I’m going to cherish them. Although he does have at least one other book of essays and a few other huge, complex novels, so I should get it through my head that I don’t really need to ration his words.

“Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think” is a biting, absolutely funny essay on John Updike and his novel Toward the End of Time. It is worth buying the novel just to read the last sentence of this essay.

Other subjects include the porn industry, Kafka’s humor, lexicography, lobsters and lobster cookers, sports memoirs, John McCain, talk radio and Dostoevsky. If none of those interest you, I don’t know what will.

I finished No one belongs here more than you by Miranda July. I liked it very, very much. Unfortunately, I had already read six of the stories in other publications. I also attended a reading where she read two more that I hadn’t read before: “This Person” and “The Sister.” I loved hearing “That Person” read aloud, especially by July herself with the sort of even, non-inflection that perfectly characterizes the voice of that story. That brought the total of previously read/heard stories up to eight, leaving me an equal eight completely new stories to cherish. And cherish them I did. I read seven in spurts and then for some reason left “Mon Plaisir” unread until last night. All of the stories were great. Out of the new ones I read, “It Was Romance” and “Ten True Things” stick out. “Birthmark” is an older one that I really love.

Suffice it to say, I am a very big fan of all of July’s varied work in multiple mediums, her writing included. I guess my biggest compliment to her is to say that she is one of the most inspiring artists to me that is working today. Inspiring sounds like a lofty, oft-used word, but in this context is means simply her work makes me want to do stuff. Stuff like writing, making films, videos, and drawings. It’s rare that a work of writing or art can entertain, connect with you emotionally, prompt introspection, make you laugh, surprise you, and get you excited about creating something yourself; July’s work often reaches these heights.

The stories in No one belongs here more than you are deceptively simplistic. I don’t want to get all analytical and/or descriptive here, it just seems kind of inappropriate for her work, and I don’t feel like it, but I do want to recognize that her work contains these layers: layers of self-recognition, self-deception, self-loathing. So much is said by what is left unsaid in these stories, and how they’re told. I’m not making much sense, and this is why I didn’t want to go here in the first place. Trying to talk about them almost unravels the stories themselves…not in a way where they don’t stand up upon closer inspection, but in a way that…I don’t know takes away their magical quality. I suppose magical is a word that is sometimes used to describe July’s work and while I think it is fitting in ways, it also carries the connotation of being thin or flighty…whimsical…like unicorns and rainbows. I don’t think this describes her work at all. I think what is so striking about her work (writing especially) is that it is grounded in a very real, often dark and sad world. The fact that she can find the unique, the wonderful, the uplifting, the magical in the mundane, often depressing world is joyful, but if she is a writer of fairy tale like wonder, she more closely resembles the Brothers Grimm than Hans Christian Andersen.

1. I just finished a trio of books (in order from most recently read): A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut, History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and Name All the Animals by Alison Smith. One of the good things about traveling is that it makes for great reading time. They were all quite different from each other. It was nice to have such a shift in tone, writing style, and content after each read. Like cleansing the palette. I enjoyed them all very much, and would recommend them all…though there are very few books that I have read that I didn’t enjoy.

A Man Without A Country is a very fast read. It’s just some of Kurt’s thoughts in no particular order, for no particular rhyme or reason, but it doesn’t come off as high-minded or pretentious. Those are two adjectives that are about as far from Vonnegut as I could imagine. It’s insightful, funny, warm, and unsentimental. Then again, I would probably enjoy reading Vonnegut’s grocery list.

I really really liked History of Love. Yeah, it did remind me of Jonathan Safran Foer’s work (her husband), but does it really matter as long as it’s good? Krauss understands her characters, and their full lives off and on the page. If you asked her what Alma had for breakfast yesterday and how she prepared it, she could probably give an answer fully consistent with her character right off the bat. A lot of contemporary, young writers (Foer, Krauss, Zadie Smith, most of all Dave Eggers, et al) have come under fire and some sort of backlash against their postmodern leanings and inventive, witty, sometimes experimental prose and while these writers are vastly different and I’m not meaning to lump them all together or make any sort of statement, but I guess I would want to say “Hey, at least they’re trying. They’re trying to express and to communicate, and to play and experiment with the form…often as a means of getting at a deeper emotional meaning or to evoke a feeling.” It’s true that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but why so many haters? In this case, I think her style works for the novel. The writing, to me, doesn’t attract attention away from the content…I mean in a way it becomes the content, and man, her style is impressive. I mean she really knows how to write. It’s poetic and descriptive, but also taut and honest. The asides don’t feel like asides, they feel like a secret that you’re being let in on, a secret that gives you greater insight into what feels like a living, breathing human being. And the structure is intricate and complex, but totally makes sense (especially upon a partial re-read). I liked how it alternates narrators, who have distinctly different voices and thus writing styles. It had to have taken a lot of work to write this.

Name All the Animals is a memoir. The author lost her brother in a car accident when she was 15 and he was 18, and it is about her and her family coping with that fact and how she formed her own identity in the wake of his death, a kind of coming of age story as well. It is a sad novel, but quite unsentimental, which I really liked. Smith seems to be able to have an outsider’s insightful perspective on herself and her family, which is a difficult skill. It’s less about feelings, than it is about our actions and behavior in the face of something so devastating, and ultimately, our lack of control. She chooses to recount detailed, specific episodes rather than give a snapshot of their lives post-trauma, which is much more interesting and effective.

2. I meant to write this awhile back, after I saw Ocean’s 13. One thing I noticed (besides the fact that Brad Pitt is almost always seen chewing or eating throughout the series of films), was that the featured choice of air travel amongst those highfalutin capers was none other than Southwest. I was proud to see the Southwest orange and ochre displayed proudly. Even a gang of high-rolling, swift-minded, movie-star quality thieves can’t resist those deals. They don’t need assigned seats either.

Laura and I went to the L.A. Festival of Books today at UCLA…which, I must admit, was strikingly beautiful today. It may have space and hills and tree lined sidewalks and statuesque architecture and cleanliness and happy families with their golden retrievers…but does it double as Yale on the venerable Gilmore Girls? That it does not.

We went to two panels, both were great. The first was titled “Page & Screen” or something like that and featured these writers: Marisa Silver, Glasgow Phillips, Tara Ison and Elinor Lipman and was moderated by John Sacret Young. I have read Marisa Silver and some of Glasgow Phillips in McSweeneys and a recent L.A. Times calendar article on Phillips’ recent novel The Royal Nonesuch, but hadn’t heard of Ison or Lipman. They all had some interesting things to say.

Some of the writers had directed (Silver and Phillips), some had written screenplays, and some had their novels optioned by film studios. They talked about the craft of writing prose/fiction, screenplays and directing films, and how one can inform the other. They also talked about the interiority of writing prose and the structure-based writing of screenplays and of the importance of finding a secret inner space in your mind and the importance of separating your everyday life and activities from the time in which you need to be quiet and creative. It was interesting to hear from people who are doing the things I want to be doing: writing (short stories, novels and screenplays), directing, and even teaching.

The second panel was titled “Nonfiction: Humor and Attitude” whatever that means. The writers/talented people on this panel were (from left to right in the photo) moderator Meghan Daum, Samantha Dunn, Larry Miller, Neal Pollack and Jill Soloway. I’ve read stuff by Neal Pollack and Meghan Daum (who writes a column for the L.A. Times in the Op/Ed section, and who moved to Nebraska for a few years) and was a fan of Jill Soloway through her work as a Writer and Co-Executive Producer on Six Feet Under. Luckily, the panel lived up to the title and was quite often funny. Soloway, in particular, was really funny…or perhaps I just related to her the most. She was the only panelist to mention both Courtney Cox’s asshole and feminist revolution. We both bought her book and got them signed afterwards. In case you can’t read it, her inscription reads, “Dear Lindsay, From the voice of ‘Claire.’” From what I’ve read of it so far, which is minimal, it is really funny.

I love books and book lovers. Here, for example (in the background of this photo) is a father and his son, packing up the many books they bought in a roller suitcase.

This was not the only example of a rolling luggage/portable device used to cart around their many wares and purchases. All for the love of the word.