Where There's a Will, There's a Way. Where There's Two, There's Too Many

Will Grayson Will Grayson

A unique pairing of authors, John Green and David Levithan toss together the most unlikely characters.  Tiny, the huge and hugely gay musical-writing football player bounces between the concentric worlds of the two Will Graysons.  False identities have led the Graysons to a porn shop in downtown Chicago, a store neither of the boys frequent, but one that serves as the launch pad for new relationships, confessions, and confusions.  When Tiny and Jane finally reunite with Green’s Will, Will fumblingly connects Tiny with the latest of a long string of crushes as the two Wills explain the unusual situation.  Through the difficulty of wading into and out of young romantic relationships, the four high school students form a bond that surprises them all when they appear on stage at the novel’s close, celebrating the often uncomfortable experiences that bring friends closer than they ever imagine.

How to Be Good

With characteristic off-handed wit, Nick Hornby steps into the muddy shoes of a would-be divorce struggling with her husband’s bitter-turned-sweet outlook on life.  Katie Carr, in defense of her goodness, finds herself dropped onto the sarcastic and sour team her husband’s relocation has left vacant.  Two visits to the hothanded miracle man, GoodNews, and David Grant is inviting homeless kids into the house instead of raving about them as the Angriest Man in Halloway.  As a doctor in an NHS surgery, Katie is accustomed to being the recipient of positive assumptions about her character, she’s a doctor for goodness sake.  But goodness has never been as simple as she believed.  Despite projections about the fabulous life of a divorcee, Katie finds herself unable to commit to the decision to leave or stay until she withholds medical aide in exchange for advice from the priest who has appeared in her office.  Under duress, the priest tells Katie to stay; though Katie may not have chosen the path of her own accord, she resigns herself to giving up the idea of divorce and begins to reconcile with the reality of her family.  While David will never be exactly who she wants him to be, they decide together that no News is better than GoodNews and they settle in to struggle up out of the muck they have made through mutual neglect of each other.  

What to do, what to do

I've been working on a number of rough drafts for my statement of purpose lately.  Each time I start again in the hopes that a new thought will bring about a better, tighter description of what it is I want to get out of a degree in library sciences.

I think I am waiting until I begin volunteering at the library to have specific examples to cite.  But I do not want to continue to wait.  I offer a draft.  It is unfinished, but perhaps there may be something in it...

Often labeled as one of the less useful, a degree in English opens many doors but neglects to offer a kick through any one in particular.  Advice often pushes students towards careers in publishing, a money generating business that will provide a respectable income an impressive resume of alumni for the university.  I have wet my feet with publishing, but I find the draw of an impressive resume insufficient to gratify the very human need to feel that I impart any lasting impact on my small corner of the world.  My current job pays well enough to cover my rent, but the rote actions I perform each day fill me with a sadness and a nagging sense that I am standing on the wrong side of the creation and distribution of literature.
In absence of a syllabus, I have effected my own course of reading, and I find it rife with literature that belongs to the future.  I say this not to indicate a story’s placement thousands of years ahead of our own but to highlight to whom these works belong.  Literature for young adults and children opens doors the first of all those many doors, inviting young readers to investigate mysterious figures alongside Nancy Drew or discover empathy for those who must learn to coordinate two cultures through the concerns of Jin Wang in American Born Chinese.  But it is not only the unfamiliar to which young readers are drawn.  John Green writes stories about relatively average high school students who find themselves caught in something dramatic for a short period of time.  All of these stories access the multitude of desires for young minds: to encounter the fantastic, explore the traditional, and understand the phenomenal in the seemingly ordinary.
It is not the business of publishing these stories in which I want to be involved.  I have seen and experienced the solitude required of an editor; I have mourned the marathon between when a proposal for a new book first crosses the threshold of the publishing house and when it finally becomes available to the audience for which it was conceived.  The process is necessary and important, of course, but I know I am on the wrong side.  I do not want to make books come into being; I want to make them come alive.  I do not want to work to think of books distributed for the purpose of selling as many as possible.  I want to work to circulate books into as many hands as possible without the worry of inflicting cost.  

I adore reading on my own, but it is much more gratifying to know that the reward for reading a particularly challenging or enjoyable text is that the experience has been shared with others.  English departments foster this for college students through classrooms and departmental activities.  Outside of academia, this is the role of the library.  I still return to the English department of my alma mater, happy to volunteer my time to promote departmental activities that foster.  While an undergraduate, I helped with numerous student supported programs for high school students and younger that brought together young readers and writers from throughout the community for a day full of events specifically designed to cheer them on to continue following their dreams.

Potential other projects to start soon.   I hope.  I am bearing up to buy a desk; it will be my present to myself if one or both of the job potentials pans out.  We shall see, we shall see.

The Three Rs: Reading, (W)riting, and Reving your engines!

Or maybe just my engine.

I've been in a reading slump for the past week.  I want to get into White Teeth, which I am currently borrowing from a friend, but I can't seem to get myself to sit down for more than ten minutes at a time with book in hand.  Everytime I think to sit on the porch to read, I end up calling a friend, sister, mother and talking until some other social obligation pops up and I leave the house to go and play.  I like the playing, but I am reminded of the importance of making time for reading and writing by this article, shared by a lovely professor of mine.  After one reading, I knew I would want to come back to it later in the day to read it again in a less cursory rush as an early morning article wake up exercise at work.  It discusses why we need to read to be informed to write, be it a basic development of a well-rounded library of influences, or the need for specific writers to inform our own writing.  Without reading, how do we know what challenges authors have already tackled?  How can we know we are not perpetuating a cycle of the same tropes over and over and over and over? 

Thoughts for the day.  And a kick in the pants to start a project that's been knocking around in my head for a while.