Version 6.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Linux.

1. Laurie Halse Anderson-Fever 1793
2. Paul Auster-Travels In The Scriptorium
3. John Barth-Further Fridays: Essays, Lectures, and Other Nonfiction, 1984 – 1994
4. John Barth-On With The Story: Stories
5. A.C. Bradley-Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth
6. Judith Butler-Gender Trouble
7. Italo Calvino-The Baron In The Trees
8. Italo Calvino-Difficult Loves
9. Italo Calvino-Numbers In The Dark & Other Stories
10. Italo Calvino-T Zero
11. Albert Camus-The Myth Of Sisyphus & Other Essays
12. Junot Diaz-The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
13. Junot Diaz-Drown
14. Terry Eagleton-Literary Theory
15. Umberto Eco-The Name Of The Rose
16. Michel Foucault-History Of Sexuality: Volume One
17. Gary Gutting-Foucault: A Very Short Introduction
18. Homer-Iliad
19. David Hume-Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion & The Posthumous Essays
20. George Landow-Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization
21. Milorad Pavic-Dictionary Of The Khazars
22. Plato-The Symposium
23. Michael Pollan-The Omnivore’s Dilemma
24. Susan Sontag-Illness As Metaphor & Aids and Its Metaphors
25. Gilbert Sorrentino-Aberration Of Starlight
26. Robert Louis Stevenson-Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (read by TOM BAKER)
27. Bram Stoker-Dracula
28. Virginia Woolf-The Second Common Reader
29. Virginia Woolf-Three Guineas
30. Epic of Gilgamesh

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Another aspect of Aberration of Starlight that might only be interesting to me is all the discussion of Lake Hopatcong. I grew up in Hopatcong, on the other side of town from the lake, but spent a lot of time there in the summers before we moved. During summer camp we would go there on Tuesdays. I really hated camp, did not get a long with my peers, and couldn’t stand swimming in public. My antisocial tendencies allowed me to explore the park a lot more than other kids did. I spent a lot of time walking through the woods and thinking. Mostly counting the seconds until I could leave.

It was nice to be reminded that one of my favorite novels takes place in and around where I grew up. We also spent a lot of time in Netcong, where the nearest Shop Rite was located. My formative years in Hopatcong, you may have noticed, inspired a lot of War Prayers.

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One segment of Aberration Of Starlight which was very influental on my own writing while I was originally drafting War Prayers was the question and answer portions of the novel.  The interview style opens up the narrative world for further investigation and plot development.  As readers may have noticed, this week’s War Prayers segments were in a similiar style.  There are a few more like those, but I do regret not pursuing the style further in my own writing.  Perhaps with my next project.

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(sex in general is stupid)

War Prayer 025

The more Drew rejected sex and all of its mind numbing idiocy, the more it came to occupy his every waking thought. The roll of a pair of hips, the toned arms of another, the seductive, alluring, mind of a third. He became obsessed with his idealized concept of what love should be. But he continued to deny it had anything to do with sex. The more he denied, his imaginary world became more developed.

This denial became a game. He could excuse his fantasies by saying he would never act on them, never try to recreate them in the real world. At the end of the year, the tag for books read that year was rather sad and small on his weblog’s tag cloud. So much time wasted on sex that could have been spent on Barth or Sorrentino or hypertext fiction or adhering a sticker somewhere.

Drew and Theresa made love often during this period, trying to recreate that pair of hips and mashing it up with the third’s alluring mind. Sex became as meaningless for them as it was in real life.

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(inspiration)

During the fall of 2004, the following are guilty as charged of offering inspiration for what you are reading.

• Scott Rettberg’s hypertext fiction The Meddlesome Passenger.
• Jorge Luis Borges’ collection Labyrinths, especially The Library Of Babel, The Immortal, and The Circular Ruins.
• The literary weblog Conversational Reading, which, beyond generally getting me excited about literature, introduced me to the work of Gilbert Sorrentino, referenced in the penultimate lexia.
• Jill/txt was a daily, still, source of inspiration.  A conversation with Jill in real life inspired a lexia.
• Grand Text Auto in general.
• Shelley Jackson’s My Body a Wunderkammer, which made me cry more than once and pushed me to be brave enough to write about sexuality issues.
• Of course, The Unknown Collective’s The Unknown, which greatly influenced how I both read and write hypertext, and my aesthetic vision for hypertext fiction.
• Derik Badman’s, who I met on a , writing about constraints at the time I was writing War Prayers inspired me to try to write three hundred word, exact, entries.
• Although offline, Rettberg and Nick Montfort’s sticker novel Implementation was paradoxically what made me create a blog to document War Prayers.  I had to get my words onto a screen somewhere.  I even created a few summary stickers, one of which still is on a wall at The Richard Stockton College Of New Jersey underneath an Implementation sticker.

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(Sorrentino) or (Jukebox). I link, you decide!

War Prayer 024

After three thousand murders and one dead best friend, it took the effort involved with driving a stake through one certain oracle who’d really outgrown his welcome last May to wake Drew up. The one who had all the answers, apparently, was now laying in a morgue, or hospital, somewhere. Who cares. The fog had been lifted and when he wiped his eyes, a lot of things became clearer.

Meaningless sex, as Theresa mocked him nearby, wasn’t just meaningless anymore. It was stupid. Sex in general is stupid. Drew began to wonder just how much of his welcome he had really worn out. The more quarters they slipped into Pizza Hut jukeboxes, the more suspicious and reluctant their hellos and nods became in the halls. It made Drew feel more alive than ever.

People seemed to be friendly only when others weren’t around. Was it all just some crap Theresa pumped into his head because of her special role in his life? No, their increasing hostility at his very presence was because he’d been smart enough to slay that fucking oracle.

Had it all been a dream? Sometimes he just wasn’t sure anymore who was writing this. The moment something goes awry or is uncomfortable most people scatter fast. Theresa screams at them, but they don’t hear her. She’d like to slay that other blond who stole her idea. They walk past a group of staked ideas sitting together and make their way to the back of the student center. No more wasting time; coffee was now reserved for Theresa.

They would hole themselves up this winter and plot and scheme and annihilate. More coffee would be consumed; Borges and Sorrentino would be discussed. Come second term, presidential and academic, things were going to be a lot different.

We can always carve a bigger stake.

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Recently read: Aberration of Starlight by Gilbert Sorrentino.

When I first started getting serious about reading literary weblogs back in 2004, Sorrentino was one of the first authors I was turned onto. I read this back in early 2005 and then again this January while preparing my article for the next issue of The Quarterly Conversation after referencing it.

This is a wonderful novel, chronicling a disastrous day in the lives of a number of characters. I love the blending of styles, especially the question and answer portion, more on that soon, and voices. I’ll have more thoughts on this novel in the coming weeks.

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