When the Rain Stopped...

I finished "Run Between the Raindrops." The narrator is wounded on the last day of the battle. I think he got a bit careless. At any rate, as I have said before, this is one book I had to finish despite it being so bad. I have a habit of (or a responsibility to) finishing the books I start regardless of how bad they might be. After all, someone wrote them so that others may read them. Whether they are good or bad never entered into the equation.

I am reading "A Reading Diary" by Alberto Mangual. It's a short book about the enjoyment of having a reading list for a year. Since I have been doing reading lists for the last few years, I thought this might be a good read for me.

I am playing in a concert on Saturday, February 3rd (here's the advertising). The pieces are mostly experiemental in nature, so I don't know how much of it will go over well with the audience. Of course I can always make this face to the audience if they don't like what they hear.

I might not be able to blog every day this week. Work has to come first :-)

Reading with a Different Goal

I think I now know the reason why I wanted to re-read "Rain between the Raindrops." The fact is that I don't think I finished it last time I read it. I think I was cut short of the last three or four chapters. So, unconsciously I went through the trouble of finding another copy of this book after 21 years just so that I may finish it. I have a habit of finishing even the worst of books. It's strange the things one remembers. I remembered the scene where a Hispanic character is pinned down on the edge of the citadel wall and does some strange dance taunting the enemy. How vividly did I remember this! But I am coming to realize that there's a time and importance ascribed to things that can never be recovered. And this book is far different from my own experience in the war. And no matter what, things cannot be changed. One has to live with it regardless. So, in the end, this book came to me as a revelation of sorts mirrored on my own experience. War is not the answer, really. Even a book can tell you that. One doesn't have to be as unfortunate as I was. "Run Between the Raindrops" is not a very good book, really. It's not well-written. I mean, I hate to sound like a snob, but it is difficult to engage with a writing style that ignores basic grammar rules for the sake of the vernacular. To be sure, better writers can actually pull it off (Paul Auster being one), but Dale A. Dye doesn't. I am deciding on what to read next. I think either the new Murakami short story collection or "A Reading Diary" by Alberto Mangual.

I am embarking on the "Write a Paragraph a Day" project. I already started a short story that has been mulling in my head for quite a bit and have about a page and a half going. So concentrating on the reflective narrator I am going to try and (purposely) avoid dialogue. We'll see how it goes. Also, right on the heels of my html victory I am now going to teach myself Java script and Flash 8. Gonna make this blog look like something right out of Hollywood. :-)

The Citadel

The book is moving too fast for me at the moment, even though the Marines are trapped trying to get over the wall of the Citadel. Believe me, this is the last of this type of books I will read. It's not that I don't enjoy it--I enjoy all kinds of readings. It's just that trying to read a book I read in high school (not a classics book) just to see what I will feel about now was not a productive endeavour.

I suspect that even though the book is based on Dale A. Dye's experience, some of it might be fictionalized. There's a scene of ferocious action, but it falls short when the narrator goes overboard in the description of what he did. It's a little too much. There are passages depicting the harsh treatment of enemy bodies. It's not interesting reading and I know that I am not reading it for enjoyment but just to read something I read long ago. I won't do this again.

The new semester started today. I have wonderful students and I already feel this will be an enjoyable 3 months.

Run Between the Raindrops

What is most amazing to me is the way that--seemingly--all the good titles for novels have been taken up by usually crappy books. One example is the novel that I am reading now. Mind you, I am re-reading it because it was one of the few books I actually read in high school, but it is definitely not a classic of the 20th Century literary canon. Another example: "The Sum of All Fears." A great title "wasted" on a beach novel. So, I am being opinionated today, I am sorry. Perhaps I should stick to the book. The Marines just entered Hue City in the story and casualties are mounting. What is most difficult for me is reading the narrative style Dale Dye employs. There are a lot of fragment sentences one after another. I guess he tries to capture spoken dialogue even when its just the narrator's mental meandering. Here's an example: "Staring through the mist at a pristine field of grass. Some two hundred yards from the railroad bridge that connected the two sides of the city. Grass field formed a well-manicured flank for one of Hue's most popular war attractions. Cercle Sportif. Laid out in concentric circles. Remnants of French colonial days. Picturesque fountain located at its center." And so forth and on. :-) There are some really gruesome scenes that are well written and make a clear picture in the reader's mind. They go to collect recon on a television station that fell on enemy hands. There they look for the remains of a soldier they knew. And find him they did... executed and decomposed, etc. Too terrible for details so please don't mind me changing the topic.

Today I finally learned how to create form pages on html to collect information on my course website. So now I can give students online examinations. I struggled to understand how to do this for a while, so I do feel like I accomplished a great deal. Tomorrow is the last day of final examinations. Thursday is the beginning of the new semester. Cheers.

The End of Trimalchio and Run Between the Raindrops

The end of "Trimalchio," just like "Gatsby's," is one of the most memorable in the history of the literature of the 20th Century. It is that passage that has--for better or worse--jaded teachers to instruct the novel centered around the value of "the green light" at the end of Daisy's dock. The novel really is much more than the green light. The light transformed into Gatsby's dream becomes then a metaphor for reckless ambition and deceit, much more in tune with the main theme of the novel. It is difficult to pick a character to directly associate with; to allow ourselves to be led unquestioningly by Nick Carraway is readers' suicide. Is there a sympathetic character in this novel? If not, why is it the classic American novelistic achievement it is? Tom and Daisy are scratched off from the beginning of the novel. Nick is too much into himself for the reader to give in peacefully into his epiphanies and meanderings. Gatsby earns some pity from the reader, but pity doesn't cut it, really. Jordan Baker is, despite her vampirism, the only openly dishonest person in the book. She accepts her condition because she always gets her way. The Wilson's are not minor characters, as some major literary criticism would have them be, but their effort is a little too late in the book for redemption. So where does that leave the reader? It is only Fitzgerald's technique and artistry that keeps the reader begging for more, even at the end when the catastrophic events bring the novel to a resolution. I always teach this from the stand point of reader's enjoyment rather than to make a political, gender or literary criticism statement. At any rate, reading "Trimalchio" was more than satisfactory. It was like having a conversation about Gatsby with the master himself.

I am re-reading two novels I read when I was in high school. The first one was the first book I read this year, "War Year," by John Haldeman and the second one which I am reading right now is "Run Between the Raindrops" by Dale A. Dye. These are two novels about the Vietnam war. They are written brutally honest, and carry with them all the pain and horror of that conflict. The language is "dirty" language. That is not to say that the language is sexual or deviant in content, but rather that it is written in a vernacular that is so steeped with the language of the infantry man so as to have the effect of ripping to shreds all the stylistic rules of standard novelistic language. The action centers around the Battle of Hue City in 1968. It follows a group of United States Marines in their almost hopeless charge against the walls of the citadel. Why am I reading this book? I have been thinking lately about my own war experience (first Iraqi war) and how memories fade and affect me when I see what's going on in Iraq today. I miss the grunts, that's all.

I am actually going to write a bit more this coming week about the creative process. I am really trying to make an effort to finish some projects I started last year. We'll see where it all ends up.