September 5, 2010
I've determined that the best way to get to where I need to be is to just point myself at the library and walk. Eventually, I get where I want.
Seriously, it's huge. The library is one of the tallest, if not the tallest, buildings on campus. It's like a north star that's actually identifiable and useful, as opposed to the one in the sky. Has anybody ever successfully navigated themselves by the north star? I don't mean astronomers or ship captains who know the sky like they know the backs of their respective hands, but average people. It's highly doubtful, in my opinion.
After using the library to get several places (including though not limited to my dorm, the buildings where my class will be, and two dining halls), I decided to actually use it for it's intended purpose, by which I mean that I wanted to relax and read to a book after racing up, down, and around a very hilly terrain for several hours.
It took all of two minutes to determine that the library was fresh out of my author of choice, Christopher Moore. That man can write! Unfortunately, the librarian informed that they carried not a single one of his works on any of the millions of shelves on any of the twenty-something floors full of books. However, I was welcome to go to the floor where books of his would most likely have been shelved had the library owned any of them and stare at the space and sigh. Which I did.
And that was where I found Dennis Cooper's "Ugly Man." If I had to describe the book in eight words, those words would be: "death and sex, not necessarily in that order." Which could also describe some of Moore's books, although it might be more accurate to exchange "death" with "undeath."
It was a profoundly odd collection of short stories, three of which particularly interested me though all of them were quite enjoyably disturbing. The following describes the three stories that I liked best without using the proper names of characters or giving away too much of the story (though there may be some spoilers, so readers please beware).
The first of those three was about a terribly unattractive male teenager who nobody likes. When the Unlucky Slob finally makes a few friends, they end up being Satanists who promptly sacrifice him. I have to say that I was not particularly sad to see the Unlucky Slob killed, because immediately prior to his death he was mean to a kitten that his friends had caught to sacrifice alongside him (no mention of the kitten's fate is made, aside from saying that Murderous Satanist Friend #1 takes the kitten away from the Unlucky Slob and reprimands him for mistreating it. I like to think that the kitten lived). At any rate, after he is killed, the Unlucky Slob turns into the Disembodied Voice who tells the Satanist Friends that death is just death, and that he can't do anything like haunt or hurt them for killing him. The message that I took away from what the Disembodied Voice said was that death has as much or as little meaning as the deceased ascribes to it. These teenagers who perverted and devalued would get nothing out of the afterlife, just an eternity of blankness and "dark", to quote the Disembodied Voice. That said, I have nothing against Satanism the religion (is it a religion? I think of it as a religion.), but murder is wrong, period.
The second was a collection of snippets from various moments in the Boy's life. Extremely unfortunate moments, such as his witnessing a young girl getting caught on fire or his nearly being killed when a friend accidentally discharges a weapon at him. Basically, it emphasized that people tend to remember the worst times. The way the snippets were displayed on the page, with lots of space between them, seemed to indicate, in addition to the passing of years, that other, presumably positive, things happened between the bad instances. It made me stop and reflect on the mechanism of memory; I love when books make me think, and this one (the whole book, and this story in particular) made me do that quite a bit.
The third and final of my favorites was the last story in the book. It's quite difficult to describe without giving away everything, because the narrative, though somewhat confusing and difficult to follow at times, is essentially several simple conversations between the some of the four characters that appear in it. For me, this story was the most evocative. I felt an acute sympathy for the main character, the Lovely Child, and yet was completely repulsed by him. It was incredible.
So yes, if you want a really great read and don't mind homosexual and violent (I say 'and', not 'or' because the two always occurred together in this case) themes, give "Ugly Man" a try.
At the moment, I'm trying to translate something that wasn't written by Myuuto Morita. I need to find a higher quality scan of the page though, because I can't make a lot of it out. Oh, the thing that I'm trying to translate is the "3 Years After the Formation of Hey!Say!JUMP" page from the October issue of Wink Up. Basically, they all say a short message to their fans/other members of HSJ because it's their third anniversary. I'm about a third of the way through, and once I get a higher quality scan, I should be able to finish fairly quickly. I hope that someone else doesn't translate it while I'm looking for the HQ version.
Seriously, it's huge. The library is one of the tallest, if not the tallest, buildings on campus. It's like a north star that's actually identifiable and useful, as opposed to the one in the sky. Has anybody ever successfully navigated themselves by the north star? I don't mean astronomers or ship captains who know the sky like they know the backs of their respective hands, but average people. It's highly doubtful, in my opinion.
After using the library to get several places (including though not limited to my dorm, the buildings where my class will be, and two dining halls), I decided to actually use it for it's intended purpose, by which I mean that I wanted to relax and read to a book after racing up, down, and around a very hilly terrain for several hours.
It took all of two minutes to determine that the library was fresh out of my author of choice, Christopher Moore. That man can write! Unfortunately, the librarian informed that they carried not a single one of his works on any of the millions of shelves on any of the twenty-something floors full of books. However, I was welcome to go to the floor where books of his would most likely have been shelved had the library owned any of them and stare at the space and sigh. Which I did.
And that was where I found Dennis Cooper's "Ugly Man." If I had to describe the book in eight words, those words would be: "death and sex, not necessarily in that order." Which could also describe some of Moore's books, although it might be more accurate to exchange "death" with "undeath."
It was a profoundly odd collection of short stories, three of which particularly interested me though all of them were quite enjoyably disturbing. The following describes the three stories that I liked best without using the proper names of characters or giving away too much of the story (though there may be some spoilers, so readers please beware).
The first of those three was about a terribly unattractive male teenager who nobody likes. When the Unlucky Slob finally makes a few friends, they end up being Satanists who promptly sacrifice him. I have to say that I was not particularly sad to see the Unlucky Slob killed, because immediately prior to his death he was mean to a kitten that his friends had caught to sacrifice alongside him (no mention of the kitten's fate is made, aside from saying that Murderous Satanist Friend #1 takes the kitten away from the Unlucky Slob and reprimands him for mistreating it. I like to think that the kitten lived). At any rate, after he is killed, the Unlucky Slob turns into the Disembodied Voice who tells the Satanist Friends that death is just death, and that he can't do anything like haunt or hurt them for killing him. The message that I took away from what the Disembodied Voice said was that death has as much or as little meaning as the deceased ascribes to it. These teenagers who perverted and devalued would get nothing out of the afterlife, just an eternity of blankness and "dark", to quote the Disembodied Voice. That said, I have nothing against Satanism the religion (is it a religion? I think of it as a religion.), but murder is wrong, period.
The second was a collection of snippets from various moments in the Boy's life. Extremely unfortunate moments, such as his witnessing a young girl getting caught on fire or his nearly being killed when a friend accidentally discharges a weapon at him. Basically, it emphasized that people tend to remember the worst times. The way the snippets were displayed on the page, with lots of space between them, seemed to indicate, in addition to the passing of years, that other, presumably positive, things happened between the bad instances. It made me stop and reflect on the mechanism of memory; I love when books make me think, and this one (the whole book, and this story in particular) made me do that quite a bit.
The third and final of my favorites was the last story in the book. It's quite difficult to describe without giving away everything, because the narrative, though somewhat confusing and difficult to follow at times, is essentially several simple conversations between the some of the four characters that appear in it. For me, this story was the most evocative. I felt an acute sympathy for the main character, the Lovely Child, and yet was completely repulsed by him. It was incredible.
So yes, if you want a really great read and don't mind homosexual and violent (I say 'and', not 'or' because the two always occurred together in this case) themes, give "Ugly Man" a try.
At the moment, I'm trying to translate something that wasn't written by Myuuto Morita. I need to find a higher quality scan of the page though, because I can't make a lot of it out. Oh, the thing that I'm trying to translate is the "3 Years After the Formation of Hey!Say!JUMP" page from the October issue of Wink Up. Basically, they all say a short message to their fans/other members of HSJ because it's their third anniversary. I'm about a third of the way through, and once I get a higher quality scan, I should be able to finish fairly quickly. I hope that someone else doesn't translate it while I'm looking for the HQ version.