Selling My Soul for Five Dollars or Less

I have just made a bargain with the devil. With sulfur on his breath and lies on his lips, he asked for my soul in exchange for five dollars (or less) and I gave it to him. Let me explain.

I'm broke. In fact, I'm worse than broke - I'm in debt. I owe so many people so much money that my paycheck, the one I thought would be noticeably substantial now that I've started my new job, is gone before I get it. I just got paid today, and guess what - I'm broke.

So after receiving a lecture from my most ruthless creditor, my grandmother, on the error of my spendthrift ways (and this is after I told her I've been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner), I decided it was time to investigate some supplemental income options. Surely someone is willing to pay me for my witty insights and educated opinions on literature. Right? Right.

And while I was building the courage to send a query email to some of the more respectable publications, I happened to come across www.allreaders.com. What do I see at the top of the web page? "Enter a book review or reviews online (click here) and make $5!" Oh, man. This is too good to be true, I thought. They're willing to pay me five dollars outright for my review, samples unseen?

I'm no sucker (at least, not most of the time), so before I got too excited I surfed the site looking for anything that screamed "Scam!" As it turns out, there is no scam. The editors of allreaders.com will pay you five dollars or less, depending on how much they like your submission, but there's a catch. The catch is they don't want a review, they want a summary a la high school book report-style. They want their "reviewers" a.k.a. "paid scholars" to give away the book's every detail except the ending.

Oh, the horror! What an insult to reading! Don't they know the journey is just as important as the destination? Who would read such a site ("Over 2,000,000 monthly visitors!")? Who would contribute to such a site? Sigh...That would be me. What can I say? I'm desperate.

I've just finished writing a plot summary (oh, god) of Angela Knight's Master of the Moon. I feel terrible. I feel cheap. I've gone against every bookworm bone in my body for a measly five dollars; if the editors don't like my review I might get even less. I don't know what's worse: having my plot summary rejected by the editors of a site I despise or having it accepted, knowing that if it is, I'll be writing another.

Will in the World, pt. 1

by Stephen Greenblatt
pgs. 11-105

Lately, it seems I've been reading several books set in Europe or - as in the case of All Souls' Rising (Haiti) - set in countries which fell under the scope of European rule. Together, with Captain Alatriste (Spain) and now with Will in the World (England), they have reinforced one undeniable fact - my European history sucks. Once upon a time, I knew the names of the kings and the queens, the princes and the princesses. I knew who married whom, what religion started where, who had a revolution, when, how, and why. But that was a long time ago. Now all these books set in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe has my head spinning. Sadly, I've been spending a lot of time on Wikipedia.

In spite of (or maybe, because of) my crappy knowledge of European history, I've wanted Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World for a long time. For years, in fact. I've only recently added it to my collection because I don't like hardbacks. (I'll buy a small one but I find the larger hardbacks too heavy, I don't care how good they look on my bookshelf.) So, I bidded my time and waited. When I saw the paperback Will in the World in the bookstore, I snatched it up like it was the last copy.

I fell in love with Shakespeare the day I read my first Bard play, The Tragedy of Macbeth. I won't torture you with talk of how much I love that play ("Out damned spot! Out!") but when I attended university, I bravely took a course in Shakespeare with the hardest professor in the department because I absolutely love the Bard's way with words. Unfortunately, during those four blissful months, I learned much about Shakespeare's plays and very little about the man. Will in the World is intended to rectify that situation.

Yet I'm beginning to doubt that it can. The facts of Shakespeare's life are based on more speculation than I thought. Several of Greenblatt's sentences begin with qualifiers such as: if, could have, it's possible, and maybe. When discussing Shakespeare's (possible) early education, Greenblatt writes,

"No surviving records indicate how often the Stratford teachers during Will's school years had the boys perform plays or which plays they assigned. Perhaps there was a time, a year or so before Will left school, when the teacher - Oxford-educated Thomas Jenkins - decided to have the boys perform Plautus's frenetic farce about identical twins, The Two Menaechmuses. And perhaps on this occasion..."

Thanks to Greenblatt's writing, the scholarly speculation which composes much of Shakespeare's early life, hasn't become annoying. Instead, it just seems honest.

A New Yorker Occurance on the Bus

by Me

Ah, ha! This morning I saw a man reading the January 15, 2007 issue of the New Yorker on the bus. Now I don't feel so bad for just beginning the January 29 issue. This week though, I am making a concerted effort to catch up (this week's anniversary issue has an article on the creators of "24" that I can't wait to read). However, I'm also determined not to skip ahead. I will give my New Yorkers their due respect and read them in the order they were published.

While I'm on the subject, I guess I should write a New Yorker post, which I've been neglecting to do as much as I have the magazine. --

Jerome Groopman's article on how doctors think ("What's the Trouble?") validates, sadly, my grandmother's belief that doctors don't know what the hell they're talking about. We all know that doctors are occasionally wrong - they are human, after all. But of course, the scary part is, frequently when doctors are wrong someone dies. The even scarier part is that the problems which often cause misdiagnosis are problems that seem to be the result of, well, human nature. For instance, a heuristic to which doctors may be particularly prone is "availability," which refers to "the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind."

If you are an overworked doctor with a roomful of patients waiting to be seen, how likely is it that, given human nature, your diagnosis will not be based on how quickly examples of the relevant symptoms and diagnosis come to mind? My guess is, not very likely. Of course, all doctors should try to be as thorough as possible, especially since not doing so could put lives at risk. But the likelihood that that will happen every time, all the time, is idealistic. Yet, as with all ideals, it is certainly something to which doctors should aspire.

Steve Martin's "Seventy-Two Virgins" was surprisingly funny. I say "surprisingly" because reading an article in the "Shouts & Murmers" section is often like reading a mystery: I'm always trying to figure out where the hell the joke is. Yet, "Seventy-Two Virgins" was entertaining and even, on occasion, laugh-out-loud funny. For instance, Virgin No. 16: "Even I know that's tiny." Or, Virgin No. 49: "I really enjoyed that. Thank you very much. Gee, it's late." Or even, Virgin No. 45, "When you're done, you should really check out how cool this ceiling is." Come on, you gotta admit, it's a little harsh but it's funny.

David Sedaris' piece "The Birds" is typical Sedaris fare - a memoir-ish piece in which he finds the funny in a situation that, in anyone else's hands, would be a typical, everyday occurance. On this occasion, two birds begin to ram themselves crazily into Sedaris' window for no apparent reason. Sedaris' plan - to tape album covers onto the windows to discourage them from attacking - strangly enough, works. "There I filled the windows with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Armatrading, and Donna Summer, who has her minuses but can really put the fear of God into a chaffinch." Only David Sedaris. Why can't my life be that crazy? Then again, maybe it is and I'm just not observant enough to notice.

What the hell is happening in Russia? In "Kremlin, Inc." Michael Specter writes, "Since 1999, when Vladimir Putin, a career K.G.B. officer, was, in effect, anointed as President by Boris Yeltsin, thirteen journalists have been murdered in Russia. Nearly all the deaths took place in strange circumstances, and none of them have been successfully investigated." And here I'd thought Russia was trying to work its way out of its Communist era. Apparently though, with the permission of his people (at least, according to Specter), Putin is working Communism back in.

Specter is quick to point out that, though the death of dissenting journalists may be placed at the feet of Putin and the K.G.B., the destruction of free media is as much the media's fault as it is their government's. In an effort to ensure that Yeltsin would win the 1996 presidential election against a pro-communist conservative, the media purposely skewered their reports in favor of Yeltsin. But, Specter writes, "...when Russia's young democrats jettisoned the rules of democracy they also forfeited their independence."

Because democracy has been a part of the United States' fabric for so long, it's easy to forget that applying its principles may not be as simple as it looks to us Americans. In fact, half the time, it's not even simple for us (see abortion rights and gay marraige) and we've been doing it for a few hundred years. Even still, the protection of the rights we hold so dear require constant viligence and clarification. If they didn't, what would the Supreme Court do with its time? So we have to ask ourselves, if we were forced to make the same choices that Russians have had to make recently, would we choose differently? "In today's Russia...stability is everything and damn the cost," Specter writes. It's a tough choice: civil liberty or stability? Which would you choose?...Are you sure?

Captain Alatriste, pt. 1

by Arturo Perez-Reverte
pgs. 1-70

I haven't read a good action novel in a while. A few days ago I decided I wanted to read something that would send a rush of blood through my veins and make my lungs burn as I held my breath. Because Jack reacher never fails to leave me with an anxious heartbeat, I thought I would be best served by picking up Lee Child's The Hard Way. But as I browsed my shelf, attempting to make a decision, Captain Alatriste kept whispering my name. So, I drew it out, stuck a bookmark in it and hoped I wasn't making a decision I would regret. I offer my assurances, here and now, I don't.

"Cling, clang; greetings and godspeed," will be a good way, I think, to summarize Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste. It's dark, it's dangerous, and it's full of cloaked characters engaged in swordplay. Yet, to call this book a swashbuckler would be a vast understatement. It is set in seventeenth-century Spain and it does involve swordplay but "swashbuckler" - at least in my understanding of the term - in no way hints at the creepy suspense or the dark shadows, the damp streets, and the shadowy characters that populate well-written Spanish historical adventure novels. "Swashbuckling" is too cheery a term to apply to something written in the same vein as the dark and dangerous Alexandre Dumas stories, Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, which are nothing like their various romanticized Hollywood treatments.

Atmosphere, including the characters, is everything in a novel such as this and Perez-Reverte does it brilliantly: "In one corner of the room stood a man muffled in a black cape; a wide-brimmed hat of the same color covered his head...The only signs of life visible between the cape and the hat were dark, gleaming eyes, which the candlelight picked out among the shadows, lending their owner and menacing and ghostly air." Doesn't a passage like that just make you sigh with unadulterated pleasure?

And oh! It reads like a serial. Like most modern readers I suspect, I tend to sneer at obvious page-turner attempts. It can turn reading into an exercise akin to watching soap operas and I hate soap operas. But Perez-Reverte is a skilled enough writer to know that, by including sentences at the end of the chapter - sentences you know that, in an earlier day and age would have been followed by the words "To be continued" - adds to the atmosphere and further entrenches the reader into seventeenth century Spain. And it's hard not to love a chapter that ends with: "And I was left standing in the middle of the street, enslaved by love, watching that girl who to me was a blonde angel. Poor fool that I was, oblivious of the fact that I had just met my sweetest, most dangerous, and mortal enemy."

Luckily for me, I'm not a seventeenth-century reader and Captain Alatriste isn't an actual serial but a novel. That's one of the many wonders of this modern day and age - instant gratification.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 - 3.0

The New Mecca by George Saunders
Peg by Sam Shaw
Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing by Kurt Vonnegut
Kenyon Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace

Ok, this is the real real final post on TBA Nonrequired Reading 2006. I promise.

I love George Saunders. It's not too often that one finds a sentimental yet skeptical, let's love everybody and learn together soul-mate but I've found mine in Saunders. In "The New Mecca", while stading outside a wild water-ride in Dubai with an eclectic crowd of people, Saunders writes, "Then the [American] Navy Guys notice the Glowering Muttering Arabs, and it gets weirdly tense there in line." Here's why I love Saunders. Later, as they're all lounging in the water while their pulse rates slow, Saunders relates, "...in my tube at Wild Wadi, I have a mini-epiphany: given enough time, I realize, statistically, despite what it may look like at any given moment, we will all be brothers...Look what just happened here: hatred and tension were defused by Sudden Fun." Saunders is a man who believes in the essential goodness of man. He believes that, no matter our differences, we are all united in our need for love and the desire for our own slice of peace and happiness before we die. But Saunders isn't all rose-tinted glasses. He's also self-depricating and funny, which makes the sentimentality more edible for those of you more cynical than I am.

Sam Shaw's "Peg" is another one of those stories I'll forget as soon as I put it down. I understand the guy George was lonely and all. I also understand that he had dependency/power issues. I don't understand, however, if I'm supposed to think this guy isn't insane when casually takes the decapitated head of car accident victim home and proceeds to talk to it. This guy was nuts, certainly unhinged, and if I had been his wife I'd have done more than back into the bedroom and close the door. I'd have run hysterically to the neighbors and made a call to the guys in white who drive the paddy wagon.

"Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing" by Kurt Vonnegut is another one of those cool, funky pieces I wish I was cool enough to like. I don't dislike it. I even get what he's trying to do (I think), which is to poke fun at creative writing programs which begin by telling you to write one way and end by telling you to break all the rules. I get it, great point. But, eh. It didn't leave a lasting impression. Though it isn't as forgettable as "Peg" I won't be rushing back to re-read this piece and I need all the lessons in creative writing I can get.

And finally, last but not least, is David Foster Wallace's "Kenyon Commencement Speech." Wallace's commencement speech isn't anything like the one I received when I graduated college. I can't even remember who gave out commencement speech, which shouldn't be a suprise since I was asleep during most of the graduation program. Wallace's speech though is true, inspirational...sort of, and, most of all, it's funny. Whoever said that commencement speeches should be humourless and didactic should be made to sit under the hot sun while some windbag drones on and on about how our lives are really beginning.

When Wallace writes, "...my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who the fuck are all these people in my way?", I wanted to stand up and clap. Finally, someone who knows how to explain the life college graudates can expect to have as adults without sounding pompous and know-it-all! I didn't stand up and clap of course, but I did laugh out loud. Wallace's piece was a good note on which to end the anthology.

From "Kenyon Commencement Speech": "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'"

I love reading The Best American Nonrequired Reading series because I always feel a little smarter for it. The 2006 installment has been no different. Though it was heavy in Iraq-related material, I can't complain it wasn't relevant to the times. And no matter how off-the-wall some its selections are, I know that I'm just a little step closer to ensuring I won't be a fish who's asking what water is - I'll already know.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 - 2.0

Pirate Station by Rick Moody
The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day by Haruki Murakami
False Cognate by Jeff Parker
Love It or Leave It by David Rakoff
Trauma on Loan by Joe Sacco

Obviously my plan to fit all of my final comments into one post didn't work. I could have tried but I figured no one wanted to read a blog post three full web pages long. Naturally, I could try not to be so long winded but, what's the point in writing a journal if you can't be as long-winded as you like? Yes, yes, I know I'm the one always harping on concise writing but, hey, I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to talk about TBA Nonrequired Reading 2006 and, if you don't mind, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Now, "Pirate Station." There's a metaphor in there somewhere. I know there is but I'll be darned if I can find it. It could be I just didn't look very hard - a perfectly feasible supposition - since, although "Pirate Station" is funky and out-of-the-box, I never find pieces like this very interesting, even though I earnestly want to. It's the story of my life. A cool person would like a cool piece like this. I'm not cool so I just don't get it. Why is the pirate station anthropomorphized at the end of the story? Moody writes, "The pirate station goes off its medication. The pirate station quarrels frequently and is testy about things that never used to bother it." Huh? Isn't this the same pirate station that was broadcasting music a page before? Yes, I'm uncool, I don't get it and, now I'm moving on.

A bit of fatherly advice - "Among the women a man meets in his life, there are only three who have real meaning to him. No more, no less" - becomes the driving force behind a man's relationships in Murakami's "The Kidney-Shaped Stone that Moves Every Day." Despite how much I liked reading Junpei's story, I think I enjoyed the fictional story from which the title of this piece is derived. "The Kidney-Shaped Stone that Moves Every Day" is the title of the story Junpei is writing when he meets a woman with whom he falls in love. "She steps down into the dry stream bed and notices an odd stone...She realizes right away that it's shaped like a kidney...Every morning she finds the stone in a different place." Those are the kind of out-of-the-box stories that, nerd that I am, I like reading.

I have no thoughts on Jeff Parker's "False Cognate" whatsoever. It was one of those stories that, though the writing is exceptional and the story - an expat in Russia with no friends takes a bus ride into the country and narrowly escapes being blown up - is well told, I will forget as soon as put down the book. There was simply nothing remarkable I found about this story. I feel sorry for that but there it is.

I have David Rakoff's Fraud on my shelf. I've read half of it and I've done thatby skipping around. I hadn't decided whether I wanted to read the other half because I had slowly approached the conclusion that Rakoff was a less-funnier and less-talented version of David Sedaris. I still don't know if I'll ever finish Fraud but Rakoff has redeemed himself in my book with "Love It or Leave It", in which Rakoff, a former Canadian, confesses, "George W. Bush made me want to be an American." The description of his subsequent naturalization is funnier than anything he's written in Fraud. And if officially becoming an American so you can vote to get Bush out of office doesn't reflect good ole' American values, I don't know what does.

Joe Sacco's "Trauma on Loan", the last graphic piece in the anthology, is long way from Delisle's funny and deprecating "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea." "Trauma on Loan" graphically illustrates a series of actual interviews Sacco has with two Iraqi men, Thahe Sabbar and Sherzad Khalid, who were held by American soldiers in an Iraqi prison. They have traveled to the States to be defendants a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfield which holds him responsible for the Abu-Gharib-like torture they endured while imprisoned. The story is well told but I didn't find the graphics necessary. Sacco's illustrations are nothing compared to the atrocities my imagination creates when I read these men's horrific stories.