Poets Reading Poetry: Billy Collins

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.





In the separate--but often connected--worlds of academia and poetry, few ever garner major popular attention in our modern world. Yet, Billy Collins is about as close as what we have to trendy and fashionable in those worlds today.

From 2001 to 2003, Collins was the U.S. Poet Laureate, and for good reason. His work is lauded for being approachable, accessible, and admirable. It's often humorous and light, but without being flimsy. Collins regularly finds a slice of our everyday lives and remarks upon it, seemingly with a joke or two, but always with an underlying message to be had.

Approachability with Collins doesn't simply stand with his poetry, but with the man himself. In a world where famed writers often align themselves with Ivy League or elite institutions (ahem, Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, etc.), Collins has chosen to work at places like Lehman College, Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY Stony Brook Southampton, CUNY, and Rollins College.

He's gone on tour to read his work with singer/songwriter Aimee Mann. He regularly appeared on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show, and was even animated as himself for a PBS show about an animated dog called Martha Speaks. Collins has also given multiple TED talks, one of which was voted as one of the 100 best ever given. His approachability and popularity has become so infectious, that when signing a contract with Random House, he was given a six-figure advance, something unheard of in the world of poetry.

In the reading of "Marginalia," Collins' voice rarely is too animated, nor is it monotone. It's a voice that's straightforward, the kind you'd expect to hear while talking over coffee with a friend. It's accepting and observational and just wants to talk about your respective days.


Marginalia, by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
'Nonsense.' 'Please! ' 'HA! ! ' -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote 'Don't be a ninny'
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls 'Metaphor' next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of 'Irony'
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
'Absolutely,' they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
'Yes.' 'Bull's-eye.' 'My man! '
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written 'Man vs. Nature'
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; 
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'

Ryan Seacrest is an American hero.

It's college commencement season, which means it's that delightful time of year when everyone baking in the midday sun catches heatstroke while desperately trying not to nod off during a lengthy speech about changing the world, living your dreams, yada, yada, yada. Commencement speeches are a lot like those "inspirational" quotes your annoying friend on Facebook posts, only fifteen minutes longer:

This should inspire you to try and use a comma better.

Some colleges and universities actually pay for their commencement speakers though. The idea of an honorary degree from, say, a Columbia or Yale is enough to lure most anyone to speak for free. Lesser known universities, especially state universities, can't woo big names though, not unless the wooing comes with a briefcase of cash.

Take, for instance, the University of Houston, which paid retired astronaut hero Scott Kelly $35,000 this year to speak at their commencement, according to the Associated Press. This was practically fun money for the school, which spent $166,000 last year on Matthew McConaughey to speak, plus an extra $9,500 for his airfare. To be fair, McConaughey donated the speaking fee, but the airfare cost wasn't, and the school still ponied up the fee regardless if it went to charity.

Likewise, Kean University in New Jersey reportedly spent $40,000 on its 2016 commencement speaker, Brandon Stanton. If you know who Brandon Stanton is, odds are you're his grandmother--and that's just adorable. (Hey, Grandma!) For the rest of America, Brandon Stanton is the founder of HONY--the website/social media creation better known as Humans of New York. Kean University also spent an additional $40,000 on having its own retired astronaut speak, too. Mark Kelly, the twin brother of Scott Kelly, was Kean's second speaker--proving once and for all that being the second fiddle sibling doesn't mean you get the second fiddle speaking fee.

"Our students worked very hard, and they deserve it," said Margaret McCorry, a spokeswoman for Kean University, to the Associated Press. "It makes their commencement just that much more memorable." Imagine how memorable it might be if you actually knew who the person was beforehand!

The University of Texas at Austin paid $3,300 for its alumnus, Darren Walker, to come back last year to speak. Walker is the president of the second largest philanthropic organization in America, The Ford Foundation. The $3,300 was spent on Walker's two night stay at the Four Seasons Hotel, which covered a $450 spa tab. Philanthropy apparently starts at home.

The University of Georgia paid $22,000 to charter a private plane for ABC news anchor Amy Robach to come on down. This is reasonable when you consider only 216,000 people fly in and out of Atlanta every day at the world's busiest airport, so it's not as if she could have found a Delta or United flight connecting there.

All of this brings us to Ryan Seacrest. The most ubiquitous human being in America is apparently also the most sensible about commencement matters. This past week he returned to his alma mater, the University of Georgia, free of charge to speak at their graduation.

Whereas Toni Morrison once charged Rutgers University $30,000 for her to scowl for twenty minutes, Ryan Bleepin' Seacrest flashed his polished Chiclets for free--and was probably more memorable to a bunch of twenty-somethings in the audience than Toni Morrison will ever be.

But imagine how much Ryan Seacrest could charge if he was a semi-famous retired astronaut.

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post might incite a fear of words.

If, in your lifetime as a reader, you've ever read Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Chinua Achebe, Mark Twain, or others, and didn't feel emotionally harmed in the process, you might have escaped a horrible fate--of feeling.

According to the New York Times, colleges are struggling with requests from students (and others) to affix a 'Trigger Warning' in a syllabus regarding texts which might instigate an adverse reaction or emotional trauma to the reading material--for any reason. Colleges and universities like Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, and George Washington University have all instituted rules regarding these 'Trigger Warnings,' which has some people concerned that things have gotten out of hand.

Says the Times:


"The most vociferous criticism has focused on trigger warnings for materials that have an established place on syllabuses across the country. Among the suggestions for books that would benefit from trigger warnings are Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” (contains anti-Semitism) and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (addresses suicide)."

Chinua Achebe realizes he just triggered himself.

As the tide toward being overly-sensitive to literary texts gets excessive, professors--who are usually overtly sensitive to texts' potential to offend--are now fighting back. Oberlin College released a guide which suggested professors mark up a syllabus with 'Trigger Warnings' in case any text might offend a student.

Continues the Times:





“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the [Oberlin] guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.” For example, it said, while “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe — a novel set in colonial-era Nigeria — is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”


If you've experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, and suicide in your life, not only do you need to reexamine what you did to piss off a variety of religious deities, but you're also going to be a millionaire once you get that memoir published. But I digress.

Pause for a moment to think of Oberlin's logic regarding Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart." Achebe's novel is something "everyone in the world should read," but--hey, not everyone everyone. Just everyone with a pathological inability to feel human emotion.

Since being emotionally cold and distant to literature isn't really how reading works, some are arguing against 'Trigger Warnings,' like Jill Filipovic at London's The Guardian, who writes:


"College isn't exactly the real world either, but it's a space for kinda-sorta adults to wade neck-deep into art, literature, philosophy, and the sciences, to explore new ideas, to expand their knowledge of the cultural canon, to interrogate power and to learn how to make an argument and to read a text. It is, hopefully, a space where the student is challenged and sometimes frustrated and sometimes deeply upset, a place where the student's world expands and pushes them to reach the outer edges – not a place that contracts to meet the student exactly where they are."


Except college is becoming an intellectual vacuum--at least in the humanities departments--where professors fear the wrath of offending students with literary choices, even if those choices lead to enlightening discussion and collective examination of broader topics by the entire class.

Don't believe me? Professor Marc Blecher tells the Times:


“If I were a junior faculty member looking at this while putting my syllabus together, I’d be terrified. [...] Any student who felt triggered by something that happened in class could file a complaint with the various procedures and judicial boards, and create a very tortuous process for anyone.”


"Torture."

And, so, the triggering cycle begins.  A book triggers an unpleasant emotional response in a student...who files a complaint with the university...who sends the faculty member to meetings and judicial boards...who decide the professor was egregious with their literary selection by not realizing the depth of triggering response potential...so the board places the professor on some sort of academic probation...causing the faculty member to be traumatized (because they aren't tenured and are only making $32,000 a year without health benefits, and the rent's due)...so the following semester the teacher can't bring themselves to create a class syllabus with any meaningful text...and are frightened by the sight of stacks of blank syllabi...and, thus, incapacitated and incapable of doing their job, so their employment is terminated.

The circle of life.



photo: mije.org

Chipotle cups now showcase the work of Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, and sanctimony.

Starting today, Chipotle's cups and bags are featuring new, short-form work by a variety of high profile writers, including Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, Michael Lewis, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

It's a cute idea. Have famous modern writers jot down something small and quaint to read while you're eating your burrito.

Then listen to Vanity Fair explain Jonathan Safran Foer (the writer of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals) and his involvement in Chipotle's marketing:


"Jonathan Safran Foer was sitting at a Chipotle one day, when he realized that he had nothing to do while noshing on his burrito. He had neglected to bring a book or magazine, and he didn’t yet own a smartphone. “I really just wanted to die with frustration,” Foer told VF Daily."


A plea for death. That's subtle. Yes, those ten minutes it's going to take you to eat a middling burrito from a fast food chain restaurant is a soul crusher of frustration that has led lesser humans to take their own lives just to avoid having to listen to themselves think for awhile. Does Foer usually get this easily frustrated in life? Does eating an ice cream on a hot July afternoon just make him want to strangle himself because he has to spoon frozen deliciousness into his mouth without being stimulated from an iPhone app?

But Foer--a vegetarian, eating at a chain restaurant that kills thousands upon thousands of animals every year for its own profit--continues to explain to Vanity Fair why he felt justified in his involvement:


"I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this."


Well, thank God. For a second there I was worried Foer would sound pretentious. Literacy has come to the plebeian masses via two minutes of text on the back of a paper cup. The poor schmucks with closed libraries nearby, who live too far from a Barnes & Noble, are now saved from budding illiteracy because a messianic Chipotle cup features the snappy writing of Foer, Toni Morrison, and others--and it can be theirs if they fork over $10 first. Hoooray, $10 democracy! Screw offering that good writing for free! Make those losers pay a ten spot first!

Drew Magary at The Concourse shares a similar sentiment in questioning Foer and friends:


Think about how arrogant you have to be to put your writing on a soda cup (FYI, soda will kill you) from a burrito joint (a chicken burrito from Chipotle has 1,300 calories), and then calling it "democratic and good." As if some poor bastard out there will be like, "Well, my town couldn't afford to keep its library open. THANK GOD FOR THIS CHIPOTLE CUP [dies of heart disease from eating too much guacamole.]"


Magary continues:


This is Silicon Valley in a bag. It's regular-old commerce gussied up like runway food and presented to you as some kind of noble humanitarian effort. Why not just say you did this for money? Is it so fucking hard? There's nothing crass or ignoble about licensing your work for money. [...] The crassness comes when you try to fool people into believing this is some kind of exercise in burrito-funded utopianism. Lunch is lunch, and it doesn't need to be more than lunch.


Exactly.

Give me a plain white bag and a crayon and that will serve my artistic impulses and synaptic stimulation needs more than any sanctimony from Foer and friends.

High schools have forgotten James Baldwin.

The New York Times dives into the problem of James Baldwin's non-existence in high schools. The famed writer known for stories and texts regarding race and sexuality in America, who would have turned 90-years old this year, has largely fallen from the educational landscape in high schools after spending the 1960s and '70s as one of the cornerstones of scholarship.

So what happened? Rich Blint, a Baldwin scholar, has an idea he shares with the Times.

“I think he’s not taught as much anymore on the high school level because he’s incendiary and, for some, inflammatory,” said Rich Blint. [...] Paradoxically, the belief that the country is somehow postracial, Mr. Blint said, has shut down some discussions about race. “Think about how impoverished our racial conversations are now,” he said.

Other reasons cited, according to the Times? Censorship, Americans lack of reading, and Baldwin's exclusion on the list of suggested texts in the Common Core Standards all minimize his standing, as does the emergence of other black writers in recent decades, like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou.

What's undervalued here is the Common Core Standard--adopted by 44 states as a guideline for curriculum in schools for math and English--which includes a 183 page document of "suggested" reading material for every grade from K-12. While proponents of the Common Core argue the reading list suggestion isn't a statement on the literary canon, it's hard to avoid the implication that leaving a writer off the list doesn't also devalue their reputation in the eyes of a teacher who, to varying degrees, might feel forced to teach toward said list. When teachers deal with angry parents over book selection, what teacher dares select something omitted from the Common Core? Something involving "incendiary" takes on race and sexuality?

James Baldwin's exclusion from the Common Core and lack of recent interest in high schools? Maybe it's coincidence.

Or probably it's reality.

The 10 (err, 11?) Greatest Sentences Ever Written [according to The American Scholar].

Let's face facts.

First off, The American Scholar's article about 10 Best Sentences is indecisive. It's actually 11, not 10.

Other issues? The 11 best sentences are written by 7 Americans, 2 Brits, an Irishman, and a Russian. Because if there's anything we can all agree on, it's that England hasn't given a lick to the field of literature. And the rest of the world? Pssh, please.

You might think this is a logical extension of the The American Scholar journal. You might ask, "But The American Scholar is all about America, no?"

No. Their own "About Us" states nothing about star-spangled Americana in literature, or that Jane Austen is an honorary member of the Tea Party.

So how is this top-10/11 made up?

8 men.
3 women.
7 Americans.
2 Brits.
1 Irishman.
1 Russian.
10 Caucasians.
1 African American.

...and that's it. Toni Morrison does double-duty covering quotas as a black woman, but otherwise there's no diversity, no extension of talent, no breadth of real insight into amazing sentences within the realm of literature. If you're a white American male, odds are you're writing literary gold, baby!

And that's the problem.

So who's included on this list? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, James Joyce, John Hersey, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov, and Truman Capote.

It's like a who's who of obviousness until you hit John Hersey. And lord only knows who Tim O'Brien and Joan Didion are blackmailing in the field of literature, because the orgasmic obsession some have for them can only be explained through nefarious means.

Who's needed in this top-10/11? Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anton Chekhov, Wole Soyinka, Doris Lessing, Boris Pasternak, Junot Diaz, Alice Munro, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, Alice Walker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Grenville, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus. Pick a half dozen, swap them out with The American Scholar's list, and you've got something.

But, hey, God forbid.

Oprah picks Ayana Mathis's debut novel for her book club.

Apparently the book club is still a thing?

Oprah says that the debut novel from Ayana Mathis will be the book club's next selection, which is big news considering Mathis...you know...never released a book before. Oprah has her reasons though.

"The opening pages of Ayana's debut took my breath away," Winfrey said in a statement, apparently while taking a hit off an inhaler. "I can't remember when I read anything that moved me in quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison."

[[Phew]] Toni Morrison snuck in there at the end. That was close. I thought Oprah might compliment a writer without invoking Morrison's name.

The Nobel Prize banquet menu seems fancy.

Every year, the Nobel Prize folks hold a banquet for those bestowed with an award for that given year--and tonight is that night for 2012. Here's where the Nobel Prize winner in physics-meets-the-winner-in-literature-meets-the-winner-in-chemistry-meets-the-winner-in-medicine-etc.-etc.-etc., while the Swedish royal family kills everyone's mellow by inviting 1,300 of their closest friends and acquaintances.

Because the Swedes are a bunch of foodies, an entire listing of menus for each annual banquet is posted online. Everyone in attendance receives the same meal--this isn't someone's wedding where you choose between the chicken or the fish--but there's usually a variety of wines available to keep everyone feeling quite nice as the evening unwinds.

Some of the menu items from decades past are obscure and/or Swedish-y. Nonetheless, here's a look at some select menus on years where various literary types won their own Nobel Prize (translated at points):

Someone looks disappointed.

1907 Winner:
Rudyard Kipling

Menu:
Nothing. The banquet was cancelled because of King Oscar II's death a few days earlier.

Bummer.





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Has eaten worse things than turtle soup.

1925 Winner:
George Bernard Shaw

Menu:
Turtle Soup

Supreme Perch Mornay

Nice Turkey    (Ed.: Better than Okay Turkey.)
Artichoke Princess

Parfait Nelusko
Petits Fours

Fruits

Dessert

Various wines


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Damn well wants to know what Ice in the Oven is before he eats it.

1936 Winner:
Eugene O'Neill

Menu:
Turtle Soup

Sole Fillets

Supreme Grouse à la Florida

Waldorf Salad

Ice in the Oven   (Ed.: Eh?)

Assorted Fruits

Treats

Various wines




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Concerned he just ate Prancer.

1946 Winner:
Herman Hesse:

Menu:
Shellfish Consommé

Roasted Fillet of Reindeer with Lingon Berry Sauce

Parisian Apples

Fonds de Celery

Poached Pear with Ice Cream

Treats

Various wines



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Can't pronounce anything on his menu.

1948 Winner:
T.S. Eliot

Menu:
Consommé Chesterfield

Helstekt oxfilé Polignac
(a beef tenderloin dish, in case you're wondering)

Glace päron Belle Hélène
(a fancy pear ice dessert)

Various wines






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Is seriously peeved there's only two kinds of booze.

1949 Winner:
William Faulkner

Menu:
Crème d´Argenteuil
(cream soup from a region in France)

Gosling with Swedish Red Cabbage
Horseradish sauce

Napoleon Cake

Only two kinds of wine





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Doesn't go for "Princess" anything.

1954 Winner:
Ernest Hemingway

Menu:
Smoked Brown Trout
Spinach Cream

Beef Tenderloin Roast
Artichoke Princess
Fresh Mushrooms in Porto

Parisian Apples

Pears Roberta

Various wines and after dinner liqueurs


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Disappointed he got french fries.

1962 Winner:
John Steinbeck

Menu:
Smoked River Trout à la Parisienne

Chicken Roasted Foie Gras with Madeira Sauce
Fried Potatoes
Seasonal Salad

Peach with Grand Marnier
Whipping Cream

Various wines and after dinner liqueurs




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Not sure avocados should ever be stuffed with salmon

1969 Winner:
Samuel Beckett

Menu:
Salmon Stuffed Avocados
Moscow gourmet sauce

Beef tenderloin Roast Périgourdine

Orange sorbet  (Ed.: The low point on Nobel desserts.)

Various wines and after dinner liqueurs





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Really ecstatic over the salad.

1971 Winner:
Pablo Neruda

Menu:
Cold Foam Stuffed Turbot
(Ed.: A kind of flatfish)
Champagne à l´Edlund

Roast chicken Christineberg
Salad

Grand Marnier Soufflé Ice à la Solliden
(Ed.: Solliden being the summer residence of the Swedish royal family.)

Various wines and after dinner liqueurs 


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There should be photos with the rest of these, but Blogger/Google is acting wonky today. It's changing fonts for no apparent reason, too. In short, formatting isn't just a nightmare...it's impossible today.

Thanks, Google!


1982 Winner:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Menu:
Marinated Reindeer Fillet
Dijon Sauce

Char braised in cream dill
Rice

Nobel Perfect Ice
Petit Fours

Various wines, liquor, and coffee

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1993 Winner:
Toni Morrison

Menu:
Marinated Char on a Bed of Radish Salmon Eggs
Honey Vinaigrette à la Raineri
Nobel Croissant

Sirloin with Chanterelle Reindeer Forests         (Ed. O---kay?)
Butter Cabbage Terrine of Fresh Blackberries
Foam Potatoes and Sliced ​​Salsify

Nobel Ice Sailing
Sorbet Strawberries and Vanilla Parfait

Various wines, liquor, and coffee

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2001 Winner:
V.S. Naipul

Menu:
Lobster on Mashed Cauliflower
Frozen prawns
Samphire Salad

Quail Stuffed with Foie Gras and Pan of Mushrooms and Dried Tomatoes
Asparagus and Mashed Chervil

Duo of Vanilla Ice Cream and Blackcurrant Perfect Meringue

Various wines, liquor, and coffee

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2009 Winner:
Herta Müller

Menu:

Lobster Consommé with Shellfish Tartare
Lobster and Kalix Bleak Roe

Truffle-stuffed Quail with Parsley Root
Brussels Sprouts and Port Wine Gravy

Lemon and Fresh Cheese Mousse with Sea-Buckthorn Sorbet

Various wines, liquor, and coffee

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2012 Winner:
Mo Yan

Menu:

Marinated Arctic Char with Cauliflower Terrine
Kalix Bleak Roe and Dill Mayonnaise

Pheasant with Chanterelle Mushrooms
Poached Pear, Winter Vegetables
Almond Potato Purée and Red Wine Gravy

Trilogy of Cherries with Pistachio-Covered Mascarpone Cheese and Black Cherry Sorbet

Various wines, liquor, and coffee

To be honest, Toni Morrison was never setting trends with her hair.

Rutgers University came out with a list of speaking fees for celebrities.

Rumor has it that writers occasionally become celebrities. Like Stephen King and someone else, undoubtedly, that is so famous I can't recall them right now.

Well, it seems Toni Morrison (a writer rumored to be famous among Nobel Prize winners and Tony Toni Toné fans) makes $30,000 per public speaking engagement. This would sound pretty good until you realize that everyone's favorite human gnome, Snooki, from The Jersey Shore, apparently makes $32,000.

The reasoning for Snooki's extra two grand? She actually answers questions from the audience and talks with people. Toni Morrison refuses.

That's because Toni Morrison is just living up to the stereotype that writers are really socially awkward talking with people and/or pompous individuals. Which is hard to believe, because Toni Morrison has always seemed so relatable to...someone.

Not me, though. I send my man servant off to answer all letters sent to this blog. The little people mean a lot.

Carrot cake? Carrots? Same nutritional quality to me.

Somewhere lost between Jackie Collins and William Faulkner is good writing. I'm sure of it. You don't find many knitting circles talking about a Faulkner classic that just tickles them pink, just as you don't find many pipe-smoking literati wearing ascots talking about the latest trashy Jackie Collins book that kept them up all night. Do Faulkner and Collins both serve their purpose? Sure. But are both good writers? Eh. Somewhere lost between the mental candy of Collins and the synapse-firing overload of Faulkner is a happy medium of writing.

I'll probably be excommunicated from the religion of literature for saying Faulkner does nothing for me, but so be it. Math textbooks have kept me more excited than most any Faulkner story. Maybe it's the force-feeding of Faulkner that loses me. When my mother tried force-feeding me beets as a child I rebelled. Faulkner = beets. My only redemption is that I don't rebel against Faulkner just to embrace the lusty nature of Jackie Collins. If Faulkner is beets then Jackie Collins is an ice cream sundae dessert on steroids. But I'll pass on getting literature diabetes as well, thanks.

Debates over good and bad taste are as old as humanity. I'm sure cave dwellers 20,000 years ago argued with one another over charcoal drawings of fish and horses on the cave walls. Today, we have people arguing with Gwyneth Paltrow on her own blog about books she, Madonna, and supermodel Christy Turlington say are good. (I don't know what part of that last sentence disturbs me most--that Gwyneth Paltrow has a blog, or that Christy Turlington is telling me what books to read.) So, if Christy Turlington can sashay down the runway and then turn around and tell me to read The Sound and the Fury by Faulker (as she does...here), then I can turn around and argue what's as equally overrated. Here are a few random strays to get you going:

1.) Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger: I've come across more pubescent angst in a Miley Cyrus song than I ever read in this book. Yet, again and again and again I'm told this book cuts to the bone on examining society and human relations. Maybe it was cutting edge when it was published in 1951. "I Love Lucy" still had Lucy and Ricky sleeping in separate beds after all, so maybe society wasn't ready for Holden Caulfield getting reprimanded by a pimp. Still, I don't see the genius behind it. Shakespeare had cross-dressers 350 years earlier, so it's not like touching on taboo issues was only broached by Salinger.

2.) The Twilight books: Like lawyers and mosquitoes, blood suckers in the form of vampires never did anything for me. A literate 6th grader amped-up on Little Debbie snack cakes and 7-Up could probably conjure up a more interesting premise.

3.) Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison: Morrison is a great writer, don't get me wrong. Sula? Good stuff. It's just that Song of Solomon feels as realistic as a Days of Our Lives plot line. But if this is all it takes to be considered for the Nobel Prize for literature, then I can't wait to win my own in about 30 years. I could use the money.

4.) The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey: Hey, don't knock it. The Poky Little Puppy kept me captivated as a wee one. But the devastation I had at the conclusion of the book when he goes to bed without strawberry shortcake and feels very sorry for himself cut too close to the heart. Here was this puppy--a rebel ten times more powerful than Holden Caulfield--and he gets his comeuppence at the end. Can't we send our children off to bed on a high note??

5.) Anything by Mitch Albom: Like The Poky Little Puppy, only for adults, and more ruthless in trying to convey a "lesson." Pretend The Poky Little Puppy decided to die at the end for no other reason because he led a misbegotten life and didn't hug his children enough. Then you get a Mitch Albom book.

That's it for now. If you don't mind, I need to go see what Christy Turlington and Gwyneth Paltrow are telling me to do next. They promised a "yummy meal" at the end of their best books blog post, so I've got my fingers crossed for a tasty Sunday meal in store!