Results: I'm a slightly smarter, slightly leaner, slightly wealthier person. But boy, do I mean slightly.
Anyway, here I go!
Beloved 2343234 no-bake cookies and a HUGE glass of milk
Beloved is America, and you can too! I jest in an attempt to lighten a really tough subject, but sans-silliness, Toni Morrison's classic is a truly fantastic novel.
I'm clearly a late comer to the book. At my high school, it was lumped in with other period novels, and I selected another book to read in its stead. But I must say, I'm quite pleased with my recent resolve to make up for lost time. I'm not going to go into a summary of the novel, or even descriptions of the characters/events--it's easy to find that stuff elsewhere; I plan to just talk a bit about the musings it's evoked.
Aside from the fact that it took me so long to finally read it, another unfortunate aspect for me in relating to the book is that it's too often categorized, and thus labeled. It's usually described as a "must read" for February because of Black History Month, or a required text for particular American history or literature classes because it's about a dark time in our nation's past. However, I think it's a disservice to try to categorize the novel in these ways because it gives perceived limits in readership and literary themes.
The story is much more than a story about slavery or the inhuman way people treated each other. It transcends the epoch in which it is set to provide a much wider commentary on contemporary society, women's issues, and more generally the human spirit as a whole. This is part of what allows for so many different interpretations of events and characters in the novel, and it is what makes the story so moving and salient for me. Characters are dynamic, and so is Morrison's writing style. Evolution occurs throughout the story, in the development of the women's personalities and relationships, the unraveling fragmented narrative, and even the style of the prose used to convey events.
The supernatural elements at work in the novel are presented at the very beginning of the novel, and are completely taken for granted by the characters. At first this was a bit hard for me to access because I didn't originally anticipate the need to suspend reality--it's a historical novel, right?--however, much like in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, [another book I love without reserve,] this element of wholeheartedly believing in the supernatural creates an effect that draws a person in, if not as a coconspirator in a sense, then at least as an assimilated member of the community. Towards the end, Morrison also flirted with elements of Faulkner, bringing American style stream-of-consciousness to bear. Readers had a distant view of each character's actions, feelings, and thoughts throughout the novel, but the new direction the writing took for a limited time offered even deeper insights and revelations. The end was sort of unexpected, yet very satisfactory.
Hand well played.
Music
To use an old expression, Bandcamp pwns face.
I posted a link to my NOLA pal Gabriel Goldstein's album Sad Stories and Cautionary Tales quite a while ago, but I didn't talk about the Bandcamp site itself.
If you're an artist it's potentially cool because you can sign up for free and get your music out there in a way that wasn't available even a few years ago. You can set the price, give your stuff away, or allow listeners to decide what to pay for themselves.
If you're looking to discover new artists it's great because you have a wide variety of music you would never otherwise hear, available for instant download.
Personal recommendations:
Smokey-voiced/experimental Josh Garrels,
Where the Wild Things Are, Argentina style Julio y Agosto,
Bordering on lo-fi Cathedral Pearls,
Folky Chris Rubeo, and
Ethereal Chris Staples.
Free. Do it. Now.
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