Start Spreadin' The News!

That's right, folks! Tomorrow afternoon, this little blogger gets on a plane heading for NYC! I've been preparing by indulging in as much New York themed art and culture as I can get my hands on. Fortunately, there's no shortage of options! Mark Kurlansky's latest book The Big Oyster is already climbing the best-seller's list. Kurlansky is an amazing writer, whose background as a history scholar and food writer has endowed him with the power to make a rather peculiar argument, that an understanding of the oyster is central to our understanding of the whole concept of Manhattan, a compelling and enjoyable tale. It's a great read, though I still haven't made it out of the 1600's yet!

Colson Whitehead's opus, however, was a much quicker read. In fact, I devoured it in one sitting (kind of like eating an oyster, really, I sucked it down whole, alive and screaming!). The Colossus of New York is a gorgeous ode to the city that never sleeps, addressing the joys as well as the omnipresent malaise with insatiable zeal. Whitehead's technique, which is intended to recall the freeform style of jazz music, is unique and complex, while remaining thoroughly readable. Highly recommended!

I've also managed to pull my eyes away from the page, and set my sights on a few films. Woody Allen was a must, but since I've already seen quite of few of his films, I went with New York Stories, a trio of three shorter films, one of which is written and directed by Allen, but the other two are directed by Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola. I enjoyed all three films, though I was particularly stunned by Nick Nolte's performance as an aging painter grappling with issues of self-doubt and desire in Scorsese's film. And, I just finished watching New York, New York, a film which I checked out from the public library, mostly for the sheer novelty of it. Robert DeNiro in a smash-hit musical??? Fortunately, he only sings once. And, fortunately, Liza Minelli sings a whole lot! Man, what a set of pipes! Again, Scorsese does an amazing job of portraying a vastly complicated relationship between two headstrong and richly talented individuals. It was striking to see a film that was both entertaining as a musical, but also gave space to develop each of the central characters into compelling portraits of real humanity. Of course, it took nearly three hours for Scorsese to accomplish this, but what the heck, the vibrant jazz music keeps everything flowing, and I was riveted to the edge of my couch.

So, I haven't left yet, and I'm already sure I've forgotten something. Oh well. If they don't have it in New York City, I probably don't need it!

Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Ambien

Ads for popular sleeping pills such as Lunesta, Sonata, and America's favorite, Ambien, suggest that these drugs provide the experience of deep, soothing sleep, the ideal remedy for the occassional insomniac and the stresses of daily living. My favorite commercial, I believe for the drug Lunesta, depicts a slender woman, prone on purple satin sheets, drifting off to sleep as an animated glowing butterfuly swoops over her. Emerging data about these drugs, however, suggests that perhaps the twinkling butterfuly is in fact a nefarious halluciation induced by these supposedly innocuous sleeping pills. In fact, if glowing insects are all you see, count yourself among the lucky ones.

A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times highlights several reports of bizarre behavior in users of zolpidem, also known as Ambien, the most prescribed sleeping pill. The editorial cites concerns about repeated occurances of "sleep-driving" as well as acts of violence commited by otherwise mild-mannered individuals while under the influence of Ambien. Yet another article in the New York Times discusses the rising association of sleep-eating disorders in Ambien users, in which insomniacs endanger their families by turning on stoves and gas ranges in the middle of the night and endanger their wastelines by cooking and consuming food by the thousands of calories in one sitting, only to wake up and recall nothing. Sanofi-Aventis, the French makers of Ambien, claim that these behaviors are either not related to Ambien use or are caused by mis-use of the drug, but repeated and outrageous testimonies by Ambien users tell a different story. (Besides, call me cynical, but since the makers of Paxil admitted to covering up studies linking Paxil-use with suicides, I'm not inclined to cut Sanofi-Aventis any slack.)

Though cases of traffic accidents caused by Ambien are perhaps the most troublesome, I find myself fascinated most by the sleep eaters. According to the NYT article, sleeping and eating are connected in "primitive" ways in the brain. Something in the drug itself seems capable of unlocking these animalistic desires, allowing insomniacs to get some shut-eye, while at the same time evoking other passions. One woman who needed to take sleeping pills in order to sleep during the day so she could work a night shift described this bizarre experience: "One day," she said, "I got up — my husband describes this in great detail — I got a package of hamburger buns and I just tore it open like a grizzly bear and just stood there and ate the whole package."

Of course, eating and sleeping are not our only primitive passions. The NYT doesn't discuss it, but a columnist for Salon.com writes that in addition to allowing him to sleep, Ambien made her boyfriend a more sensitive lover. Tessa Blake writes that by day her bourgeous boyfriend was a high-powered Type-A pain in the ass, but by night, and with the help of a couple Ambien, Dr. Dick became Mr. Wonderful. Sadly, Blake realizes the affair will never work after he awakens one morning and cannot recall that the night before he had proposed marriage. He claimed it was the Ambien talking.

The popularity of Ambien (and now the strange behavior spawned by its use and abuse) is attributable to a $130 million ad-campaign paid for by its manufacturer in 2005. As a result, 26 million prescriptions were written for the drug last year, making Ambien worth $2.2 billion annually. According to the NYT, use of the drug has more than doubled since 2001. Have cases of insomnia also doubled? Doubtful. Like anti-depressants and mind-altering drugs such as ritalin, Ambien is just the newest fad in the quick-fix "I'm Ok, You're Ok" world of modern medicine. After spending a summer working in the office of a medical clinic, I understand all too well the influence pharmaceutical companies have on the prescriptions doctors write for patients, and the affect that advertizing has on consumers who, more than ever, are liable to walk into a doctor's office and ask for a specific drug expressly. And, why not? It's a win-win for doctors and drug companies, since doctors make more off of more patients hooked on the drugs they hawk, and drug companies make a mint off the patents.

But, what I love about Ambien is that it seems to be working to prove a sort of Murphy's Law of human nature. Take a drug that promises tranquility, and you go postal, waking up in a pile of candy bar wrappers and other refuse or, in one case, walking out of your house in your nightgown, peeing in public, and then assaulting a police officer! Kudos to human nature for undoing all our inscrupulous attempts to avoid our primieval selves by dwelling in the oblivion of drugs and docile consumerism. How poetic that a drug like Ambien should cause us to sleep-walk, when it seems that we're sleep-walking through all of our days as it is.

Reading Emma in Northfield

Throughout this academic term I had been slowly slogging through the pages of Jane Austen's Emma, and now that the term has come to a close, so has the book. Finally. Don't get me wrong, I adore Austen for her subtle wit and attention to detail, but in the hustle and bustle of this reader's modern life, it is difficult to get a mental foothold in the lackadaisical world of the British bourgeoisie circa 1815. It would take some time, particularly those passages where the perniciously loquacious Mrs. Bates would ramble on for several pages, until I could to settle into the narrative and awaken to its ascerbic wit. Oh, Mrs. Bates, how you do ramble!

MTV generation beware! (Also, addicts of cult pomo fiction, who have become accustomed to brash shout-outs beginning in medias res such as, "My body was hurdling through the pitch black of metallica tunnel hell and all I could think was Julie and the way the nape of her kneck reminded me that we're all just robots encased in hideous sacks of flesh," and the like. Austen is many circles in hell above a sentence such as this.) Austen's fiction is driven by diction, not plot; so, in order to cope with the utter absence of plot devices to engage my imagination, I recalled a narrative form that was more familiar to me: Soap-Opera. I doubt I'm the first to recognize similiarities between Jane Austen and programs like Days of Our Lives in their parallel accounts of spiraling romantic attachments, family drama, and highly politicized female relationships. A friend of mine who was conducting research on audience responses to the popular HBO drama Sex and the City familiarized me with the work of Tania Modleski, who argues in an article on the soap opera genre that certain narrative devices such as unresolved conflict and an emphasis on relationships within families and between women make the form uniquely "feminine." Because they are expressly "feminine," these narratives empower women even as they reinforce feminine stereotypes. One of the ways this liberation takes place is by assembling real or imagined communities of women around the idolized work of fiction.



Hence, Karen Joy Fowler's enormously famous Jane Austen Bookclub, which may now be purchased in one of two highly fashionable paperback covers, either blue or red (to match your outfit, I suppose). Fowler imagines a group of women, and one male (lucky or desperate?), who gather to read and discuss the works of Jane Austen. Their first book? Emma, of course. A mise en abyme, so to speak, of the role of feminine literature in the lives of women, since readers of Fowler's book are invited to imagine themselves as part of a community of readers of Austen as well as the community of readers of Fowler. Leave it to contemporary women to make reading Jane Austen a thoroughly ironic act -- Anyone want to start a Jane Austen Book Club Book Club???

As distant as we are from the gentrified countryside of Austen's novels, it is fascinating the ease with which readers identify with her characters. I myself discovered, or perhaps fabricated, parallels between the characters in Emma and the people and events in my own life. I have to admit that my romantic life became a bit more interesting around the time that Emma discovered her true feelings for Mr. Knightly, but I'll leave it at that.

For as much as I enjoy these similarities and my associations with fellow readers of Jane Austen, particularly as the act of reading Austen's highly stylized depictions of ideal femine sexuality and romantic relationships seems almost rebellious on a college campus where relationships are more often characterized by libertinism than restraint, what I really love about Jane Austen is how difficult she is for modern readers, like myself, to read. Austen's books cannot be brashly skimmed or picked up and set down between bites of fast food take-out. To read her without feeling the urge to pull your hair out, you have to become absorbed by her delicate prose. Not only does your mindset have to adapt to her pace, but you must physically adapt to the experience of reading Jane Austen. I feel my breathing slow down as I follow her languid sentences, waiting for the pause of a long-awaited period. Descending into Hartford, the modern world finally slips away, and you enter a world without high speed internet, six-second sound bites, and the mass annoyances of mass media. I wound't trade places with Austen or any of her characters even if it afforded me that measure of peace, but I take comfort in having found a space for peace and orderliness in this chaotic world that is often as stressful as it is terrifically exciting. I would go crazy if I had to write like Jane Austen, sitting in a Victorian drawing room and covering up my work with my embroidery anytime someone would enter the room, but I'm glad she did it.

Spring Has Sprung! 

Ok, so we were just whacked with ten inches of snow. Tell that to my dwarf tomato plant friend here! That little globule of emerald flesh? That's right, folks, my very first tomato! They said you couldn't grow tomatoes on the windowsill of a poorly heated urban apartment complex in the middle of winter. What do they know?

Habitual Obituaries

A recent book by Marilyn Johnson entitled The Dead Beat: Lost souls, lucky stiffs and the perverse pleasures of obituaries chronicles the life and times of an avid obituary writer. The excerpt on her website describes the thrilling emotional roller coaster ride of waiting for one of her famous subjects to wade into the great hereafter. Her reviewers describe her as exhibiting reverence for life and death, yet this appetite for famous last words seems little different than the medias voracious appetite for paparazzi character assasinations. Nonethless, I admit that I too am fascinated by obituaries recently, though perhaps not for the same reasons as Ms. Johnson.

A colleague of mine at Carleton College, Lillian Waluconis, died recently, having succumbed unexpectedly to a liver ailment she had long suffered. Although she was a member of my graduating class, I admit that I never knew her. In fact, on a campus of fewer than 2200 students, I never even met her. Seeing her photo in the school newspaper, I couldn't even place her face. I'm not real socialite myself, but based on my inability to recognize Lilly, I assumed she was one of the many unwashed agoraphobes holding court in the basement of Sci-Fi house, gorging herself to death on Dungeons and Dragons matches and reruns of Red Dwarf. Then, I read her obituary. Lilly may not have had an abundance of acquaintances, but she was a delightful young woman with a handful of friends who adored her. Her employers in Campus Activities, a central unit of Carleton social life, in fact, treasured her as a diligent and cheerful worker. Lilly not only left behind friends on campus, but friends in Japan where she spent one year studying traditional Japanese artforms. Had she survived, she would have been married this summer. Like so many of my peers, hers was a life full of promise. That this life was so hastily snuffed out is more than shocking, it is the sort of tragedy that forces even the best, brightest, and furthest from death to ponder the inevitable. This is the sort of obituary that resonates with me.

The shadow of death hung with me in the wake of Lillian's passing. More than an acute sense of my own mortality, however, she left me wondering about what my own obituary might look like. Lillian's friends set up a livejournal website to honor her memory (something I find much more vital than some distant onlooker's take on a life lived and lost), and many of the posts lament the fact that they feel they never really knew Lilly. Cutepooface sums up the sentiment nicely: "I wish that everyone could have been on the [Japan] program, that everyone could see and feel what I felt. I wish Lily could have touched each and everyone of you like she touched me." Were I to die, would people say that they regret not having had the chance to really know me?

I admit that what bothered me most about Lillian's death was not that she had left behind so many friends (or so few, depending on how you look at it), family, and a fiancé, but that she had left her senior thesis unfinished. According to her faculty advisor, her thesis "centered on how Japanese social studies textbooks deal with the Shinto and Buddhist religions." This is a remarkable piece of new knowledge! Will this too die with Lillian? Would it be inappropriate to finish the work that she started? When someone dies, we distribute amongst family and friends the material possessions that the deceased have left, but we forget to carry-on the work they have begun and left unfinished. Or, is it only the work of celebrities that is deemed worthy of posthumous release?

Hail the Fallen Hero

I've never been much of a fan of baseball, so I was surprised when the news of Kirby Puckett's death hit me so hard. Growing up in Minnesota, talk of the Minnesota Twins was part of the background noise of adult conversations that I had grown used to, even if I didn't fully understand. I remember being 6 years old, standing in my pajamas in the living room, waving my "homer hanky" with fervor as my mom and my great aunt shouted at the television screen, cheering hysterically as they won the World Series, though never fully comprehending the importance of all this. Kirby Puckett was always the family-friendly face of the MN Twins -- it was his number on the back of the jersey on my Twins teddy bear, his face on my Twins t-shirt -- and so "Kirby" was synonymous with MN Twins fan-dom. More than an emblem, he was our hero in both his skill and his avowed fidelity to our home-town team. His rise from the slums of Chicago to the championship of the great American past-time makes his subsequent fall from grace all the more tragic in our minds.
Despite the PR, Puckett had a long history of abusive relationships with women, a fact that the male-dominated baseball establishment preferred to overlook amid accusations of sexual harassment within the league. According to an article in Sports Illustrated, Puckett not only cheated on his wife, but he also cheated on his longterm mistress who claims that his cheritable disposition was a front for his often obscene dark side. In 2003, his wife finally left him, claiming that he had not only beaten and verbally abused her, but that he went so far as to put a gun to her head while she was holding their child. Suddenly striken with glaucoma in 1996, Puckett was forced to retire from baseball, and his estrangement from the game and his true passion in life seemed only to worsen this dark side. With the onset of blindness, Puckett lost sight of his dream entirely. He abandoned the Twin Cities for warmer climes in Arizona, put on an unhealthy amount of weight, and then succumbed to a stroke at the tragically young age of 45.
It is a testament to the optimism of the American people that we continue to give rise to heros only to watch them fall from grace. Since Watergate, we have long accepted that our national leaders are subject to the same moral incontinence as the average human being. We watch our religious leaders pleading for alms on television, and we half expect the likes of an Oral Roberts to pocket his preacher's share. We understand the pressures on athletes, even as we poo-poo their doping practices. Superman long ago broke his back, yet we've resurrected him as a champion of stem-cell research, and we find new actors to fill the role (Superman Returns comes out sometime this year). But somehow, it still seems as though we are the victims when our heros take a tumble. How could Kirby Puckett betray us by cheating on his wife, pissing in public, and turning his back on the team? Yet, might we also ask if we set the bar impossibly high when our "heros" don't live up to our standards?
There is no doubt that Kirby Puckett was a great man who transformed baseball, and for a short time at least, united Minnesotans around a champion and a winning team. He was the man we wanted for our hero, but sadly, it seems as though he was never really up for the task. I doubt that he was unworthy of the designation, but his collapse under the weight of all our hopes and dreams makes it clear to me at least that it was not something he was prepared to bear.