I covered a lot of ground in yesterday’s reading, but once in a while a few quiet periods give you time to truly lose yourself in a great story.  And Mansfield Park keeps getting greater, despite my utter failure as a Doc Jensen-style prognosticator.  Sir Thomas’s return at the end of Chapter XVIII was unexpected…and it also marked a terrific climax.

Austen engages in ultra-modern literary device from Chapter XIII until Sir Thomas’s return with a “story-within-a-story,” the attempt, spearheaded by Tom Bertram’s fashionable visitor John Yates, to stage an “amateur theatrical” at Mansfield Park, a German play called Lovers’ Vows.  Since at the end of Chapter XII Edmund and Mary were tapping into burgeoning but unshared mutual affection, Maria and Julia were waging silent war over Henry (with poor Rushworth tenaciously clinging to his last precipice), and Fanny was starting to have her eyes opened as to her own romantic nature, the choice is apt.  But Austen’s parallel does not come from an actual performance—which never comes—rather, in the way the characters bicker and negotiate over who plays what part to create suitable combinations, the sudden ambitions of the bored, idle rich men (Rushworth’s pride in having “two-and-forty speeches” is the funniest running joke in the story), and the effect the episode has on Edmund and Fanny. 

Edmund is initially highly opposed to the project.  He calls it a violation of decorum, especially for his sisters, but this reader detects a fear in the would-be clergyman of both dissemblance (for as Austen is pointing out, the real and the artistic can frequently get muddled) and upsetting the well-arranged order of Mansfield Park.  In a climate where order was prized (my earlier thoughts on the Napoleonic wars), Edmund’s misgivings feel that much more genuine, but those objections falter when he realizes Mary likes the idea.  Fanny, on the other hand, insists she does not want to act.  How appropriate, for she becomes the great SPECTATOR of the event.  She witnesses more than anyone how Julia and Maria nearly sever their sisterly bond in a rivalry no one else notices…a rivalry which brings her into deep sympathy for Julia.  She is shocked and understanding when Edmund explains his reversal, fully comprehending his reasons.  And she remains consistent and mistrustful of the other men’s enthusiasm, watching with frightened wonder until Sir Thomas arrives and puts an end to the enterprise.

Sir Thomas’s return can initially be seen as a bit of an anticlimax—the play is never performed—but really it is the most fitting conclusion.  With the departure of Yates and Henry Crawford and the ultimate occurrence of the Rushworth-Bertram marriage precipitated by his coming, the end of the play marks at the same time the end of an entire period where all the characters are forced into somewhat strained roles…and emerge, like good actors, with something of a deeper understanding of their own souls from a time of pretending to be someone else.

Indeed, at the episode’s conclusion, Austen returns to the underlying ideas of the book: “improving” oneself or other things and searching for the right “scheme of happiness.”  The focal point of this new emphasis—positioned right where the action is starting to steeply rise after a momentary lull—comes in Chapter XXV, the dinner party given for the return of Fanny’s beloved brother William.  Theirs, by the way, is a bond between siblings 180 degrees from the Bertram sisters’.

During a game of speculation (chosen over the more genial whist—great touch, Jane!) Henry needles Edmund about the run-down state of his future parish, insisting he can “make improvements.”  Henry is already improving his own scheme of life—he has made a vow to romance Fanny and thus make all the single ladies of Mansfield Park fall for him.  Henry is even stirred to temporary raised moral ambition when he sees the Prices’ goodness, though unlike Edmund, he is too fickle to pursue these lofty ideals.

The card game speech serves to fully turn Mary around; Mary, who earlier said that “a large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”  Her affections for Edmund going back and forth, her attraction undercut by her refusal to take what matters most to him seriously, Mary cannot see herself living at Thornton Lacey.  In Austen’s exact words, “her speculation was over.”  And yet…we still feel for Mary.  Austen gives more attention to Mary’s point of view than any other character apart from Fanny, and in some passages—the opening paragraphs of Chapter XII, the closing ones of Chapter XXIII—Mary’s inner struggle to figure out why she is so emotionally attached to a man who never would have caught her eye anywhere else is actually moving.

The largest improvement, however, lies in Fanny, who, though still with almost no self-esteem and the brunt of Mrs. Norris’s criticisms on her back, is at last beginning to bloom.  She begins to be noticed for her looks and graciousness.  She becomes a social figure, a dinner guest, even a friend to a lonely Mary after the Bertram sisters depart—and a friend who never tells Mary how she can’t stand her dalliance with Edmund.  And most of all, she unconsciously finds her own scheme of happiness by sticking to her principles and ideals in all situations, even if they cause her temporary pain.  But these same principles which force her to keep silent with Edmund and Mary and opt out of the theatrical also allow her to fully experience the joy of being reunited with William, and tell off Henry when he speaks too far out of turn.

Only Edmund is as committed to things as Fanny—even though he can’t see yet that Mary has no more deep interest in him.  By this point, Edmund Bertram has become the prototypical chick-flick-or-lit leading man, a perfect specimen of his sex except for the one flaw that he can’t see what’s in front of him.  By now he is not just making sure Fanny is happy as possible, he is consulting her on everything personal—including the romantic—praising her as the most sensible person in his life and the best listener he could ask for.  And the reader like me wants to give him some very hard slaps in the face.

Two final thoughts.  Austen pauses the action for the first, and so far only, time in Chapter XVI, when she describes Fanny’s quarters and with them, the way her mind works.  It is not as poetic as some of the great descriptive passages in Eliot or Warren, but it is movingly written and sets up the greatest triumph of Fanny’s life thus far, when, after this psychological examination from the writer, a character seconds it, as Edmund tells Fanny that he cannot do without her approval for his decisions.  What greater sign of respect is there?

And the Mrs. Bertram and Norris are now insufferable.  I can believe it when Austen describes Lady Bertram as someone who “never thought of being useful to anybody.”  And Mrs. Norris—why did she want Fanny in Northampton at all?

I am rather annoyed because I was just about to post a very good entry when my hand slipped on the mouse and I lost all my work!  Tomorrow's entry will be a lot better, I promise, but here is the summary of my thoughts on the "Sotherton" sequence, the clearest sign of Austen's literary genius as yet, both psychologically and as a narrative constructionist.
Psychologically, Edmund Bertram is torn between Fanny Price and Mary Crawford.  There are several points in these chapters where Edmund discusses his desire to be a clergyman, which Fanny admires and Mary treats with irreverence.  Fanny and Edmund, as Austen portrays them without ever overtly saying a word, are completely simpatico, but they have been raised to think of each other as brother and sister...espcially Edmund...and Mary, for all her flaws, is still rather decent and very charming.  As a man who has been attracted to two women at once and struggled with how to favor one over the other, I can say that Austen gets the emotional actions and reversals right.
Narratively, here is the almost chapter-by-chapter turn from directly before to directly after the Sotherton visit.
A. Enchanted by Mary's conversation and harp-playing, Edmund convinces Fanny to let horse-loving Mary borrow her pony.
B. Edmund discovers that Fanny has taken a turn for the worse because of her physical exertion without a pony.  He feels greatly responsible.
C. Edmund convinces the Bertrams to let Fanny join them on Mr. Rushworth's tour of Sotherton.  (Comiclly, Mrs. Norris objects not because she doesn't want Fanny to go, but because she doesn't want anything to upset her precisely detailed scheme of the visit.)
D. Sotherton has a "wilderness," deliberately overgrown (hilarious when we consider Rushworth's obsession with improvements).  Edmund enters this "uncharted territory" with both Fanny and Mary--whom, it must be noted, always get along and never think ill of each other.  When Fanny again grows tired, Edmund gallantly has her rest, then goes off for an hour with Mary.  Fanny observes the two other well-arranged trios as she waits in her sad solitude.  First the love triangle of Maria, Rushworth (her intended), and Henry (whom she wants to land and ultimately goes off alone with).  Second, the schemers of happiness, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Rushworth, and Julia, unhappy at being stuck with them because she wants Henry herself.  There are moments of unconscious sympathy between Fanny, Julia, and Rushworth which really work.
E. At night, Fanny and Edmund watch the stars, talk wisdom...and Edmund leaves to her Mary make more beautiful music.  Full circle.

So this is where we really get started.
I like Jane Austen.  I've liked her ever since the summer of 2002 when I read Pride and Prejudice.  But I know I don't like her as much as those who LOVE her.  The people who watch the BBC miniseries of her work over and over, who make the film versions Oscar-worthy hits, and maybe above all...every time I stroll through the fiction section at Barnes & Noble, I see so many novels which either directly continue her stories or re-tell them from other, usually male, points of view (The Pemberley Chronicles) or quite frankly steal every page from her playbook, with lavish settings and gentle satire and unabashed romance which never crosses the bodice-ripping line...Jane Green and Emily Giffin and Sophie Kinsella.
What makes Jane Austen, by current standards, a literary immortal on the same level as Dickens and Shakespeare?
The answer, for me, lies in the first sentence of Mansfield Park. 
"About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the country of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and cosnequences of a handsome hosue and a large income."
Let's leave aside the biting humor of that sentence, or the keen observation which makes it a novel in itself.  On the basic level, what Austen is saying is: poor (or relatively poorer) girl meets rich guy, they fall in love, she gets his name and his lifestyle.  It's wish-fulfillment.  The idle thoughts we have every day when we're engaged in the more humdrum or depressing aspects of life.  "If only I had a great-looking partner.  Or a fortune.  Or both..."
Jane Austen psychologically understood the two sides of wish fulfillment.  There is the "Be careful..." aspect, of course, but also the euphoria which comes when you have gotten exactly what you wanted in the end on your own terms.  This is why P&P has endured for so long.  The joy readers feel at the end of the novel comes from more than our happily-ever-after satisfaction...we also love that neither Elizabeth nor Darcy sacrificed their personalities, principles, or idiosyncracies to get to becoming husband and wife.  The bumpy, funny-because-it's-true road they took to the altar was worth it.
Mansfield Park promises to be along the same lines, but from a different point of view.  Unlike the disadvantaged Bennets, the Bertrams START the novel with wishes fulfilled...they are living the rich, comfy life they desire.  When Fanny Price enters the scene, she reacts as someone who had a wish granted which she never made.  Julia and Maria Bertram are raised by caring but emotionally distant parents and are educated to have factual knowledge and social graces.  Everything they want, they can have.  They are spoiled and unconsciously cruel.  Fanny, on the other hand, has been raised to deal with the real world, and to be close to her mother and multiple siblings.  Knowing what life is like when the love you have for others is even more the great sustainer, Fanny takes time to adjust to her separation and catch up in education, making the Mansfield Park circle call her ungrateful and stupid.  And when she weeps at Sir Thomas's departure to the West Indies--even after the unobservant man has declared she is still the same at sixteen as at ten--the dry-eyed Bertram sisters call her a hypocrite.
Suffice to say we're rooting for Fanny from the get-go...and Edmund Bertram, the one member of the house who isn't cold, ignorant, or wasteful, and who actually takes the time to befriend Fanny and speak up for her.  How a personage like Edmund came out of this environment unscathed may be an invention, but it is a good one and realistically depicted.

I'm keeping a close eye on wish fulfillment during the course of the book, and already two thoughts have occurred.  Except for Fanny, the female characters are all obsessed with marriage, though not as a romantic match but as a duty to keep up their advantages in society.  On the one hand, this is rather cold.  On the other hand, Jane Austen was writing during the age of Napoleon, when the foundations of Europe threatened to be rocked to their core at any moment.  Can we blame people for wanting to hold on to every bit of security they could grasp?
And during the dinner party in Chapter VI, much time is spent on Mr. Rushworth talking about the improvements he is making to his estate.  Rushworth is depicted as a rather empty-headed young man with nothing to recommend himself but his fortune...and in reading more and more of his plans to remodel and build upon what seems to be an already beautiful property, I could not help but think of how so many of the characters seem to be aiming for improvement of their own, the Bertrams and Crawfords and their meddling relations all searching for a matrimonial end or lifestyle which suits their desires.  Fanny does not need improvement.  She is starting to blossom into a better person then all of them.  And Austen makes this clear when she has Fanny express dismay at changing natural beauty.

Austen's writing style is interesting.  She covers sixteen years in the initial chapters before starting to slow down with Sir Thomas leaving and the Crawfords coming...there is no exposition through dialogue-and-action as in novels of more compressed timeframes.  But she also makes you work hard and read carefully...in some of the conversations after the Crawford arrival, I could not tell who was speaking and had to reread carefully to pick up on the shifts in dialogue.  What makes this particularly enjoyable is how in Austen society, all these well-bred ladies end up sounding the same.  VERY subtle humor.

Mrs. Norris is the modern-day conservative caricature of the worst kind of liberal...the kind my Uncle Tom will metaphorically blast to smithereens all the time.  A middle-class widow, she is bursting with ideas and ambition...and always manages to get her richer relatives to agree with her and pay all the expenses.  SHE convinces the Bertrams to take Fanny in but never makes a move to pay for her keep, and then SHE advises Julia and Maria in the social game (she is also responsible for their dismal education) while Mrs. Bertram stays a convenient invalid.  Mrs. Norris, who was born in the middle and looks to remain there, may be the novel's biggest victim of wish fulfillment: unable to achieve it on her own, she works that much harder to vicariously live it through others.

One last theme.  In Chapter V, Mrs. Grant, instructing Mary, says "If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another."  Just as Pride and Prejudice was initially and aptly titled First Impressions, so Schemes of Happiness might have been an appropriate title.  Characters are searching for happiness through financial dealing, courtship, or simply trying to mature in a world looking with disfavor at them...and I get an inkling that when one scheme fails, these people are gonig to be very resourceful in how they can succeed: just as one prediction, Mary Crawford, while setting her sights on Tom, finds herself mroe compatible with the more responsible Edmund...who doesn't like anything going on in Mansfield Park one bit as Chapter VI pensively ends...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher of literature—as I hope to be—should be a good reader.

                My pre-college reading plan begins with six of the seven novels the immortal Professor Vladimir Nabokov (he of Lolita, that tale of passion, pathos, and parody writ large) covered in his Lectures on Literature at Cornell and Wellesley.  All but Ulysses, which following the advice of Miss Tressel I still hope to one day take a guided course on. 

                Nabokov began his course with a lecture called “Good Readers and Good Writers” in which he discussed HOW a book should be read.  I perused this with, as might be guessed, considerable interest.

                What leaps out at me from the first is his insistence that one cannot read a book but only REREAD it.  The first time we tackle a text, we are concerned with running our eyes across the page through time, working at getting it all down.  In contrast, our eyes stay still and focused for fixed periods when observing a painting or a film.  Only after we have fully covered a novel can we go back and stop at passages, linger, reflect, and grasp meaning.  Recent excursions into re-reading favorite texts of my own have revealed this to be true.  Boswell , Fitzgerald, and Trollope, all offer so much more rewards both in detail and textual analysis when we go back and reread them.  I never noticed, for instance, the yearning style of Nick’s criticisms of Gatsby or the way Hamilton Fisker’s scruples stand in opposition to Augustus Melmotte’s lack thereof in subtle pictures of card games and financial advice-giving, until I delved deeper into The Great Gatsby and The Way We Live Now. 

                Nabokov also asserts that “the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense.”  We cannot change the qualities of imagination or memory we were born with.  We may always go out and buy a dictionary.  Sense, Nabokov believed and I affirm, can be developed with committed aesthetic training and recognition.  I could tell you exactly why Middlemarch is a great leap forward from The Mill on the Floss and why most young-adult novels, though good stories, are not candidates for “literature.”  Imagination and memory…people tell me I possess them in spades.  Disney felt that they could die without exercise, so I try to exercise them as much as possible.

                Thus, I want to believe I am a good reader.  On the other hand, I have been guilty in the past of Nabokov’s cardinal sin: imagination to the extent of recognition or identification, worst of all identifying with a character in a book.   In the cases of the second and third best novels I ever read, Konstantin Levin and William Dobbin emerged as people I truly related to, much the same way my caring for Alvy Singer pushes Annie Hall to the top of my “favorite films of all time” list.  I believe that the power of literature comes through in personal interpretation and grasp of meaning.  Nabokov, I feel, agrees, but stops short of saying that the reader must turn the book into a completely personal text.  This limits understanding.  He suggests combining the passion of an artist with the detached, observant patience of a scientist when reading a novel or story, never letting one subsume the other. 

                The difference in our opinions might be semantic.  Nabokov was born at the end of the 19^th century, when people were rushing out to copy the behavior of the Romantics, and came of age in the 1920s when Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Miller were describing a new, easily adapted lifestyle.  What Nabokov stresses is that fiction is great because it IS fiction—it is made up.  It encompasses the details of a period but IN NO WAY should ever be taken as an accurate description of the period.  The “truth” of fiction is in the theme and message.  It is similar to Marcus J. Borg’s brilliant interpretation of the Bible as stories where we’re not sure if they happened that way, but we know they are true.  When we identify with a story or a character to the point where we give all the more weight to their details, we run the risk of taking the least truthful part of a story and turning it into the MOST truthful.  To use a cliché which I am sure will result in one day having Nabokov kick my ass in the hereafter, we overlook the forest for the trees.

                I think personal identification with a character helps a reader find all the more rewards in  a story, but I sympathize with Nabokov’s perspective because I don’t think I could spend years and years pining for a girl like Amelia Sedley (Dobbin) or ruining all my female relationships from neurosis (Alvy) or become so consumed with intellectual definitions of faith and love that it would become something of a self-centered ordeal to sit at my dying brother’s bedside (Levin).  And yet I still want to pursue their ideals of faith as a central tenet of existence and love as the most powerful of emotions, the one which must win the day despite it all.

                In the end, Nabokov says a great writer writes great stories in the roles of inventor, teacher, and enchanter, combining poetry, lesson, and magic.  We are captivated by what the Formalists would call the beautiful inversions of language, we draw philosophical insight and moral strength from their meanings, and ultimately fall under the spell of their creation.  I think that all human beings need to experience such magic on a regular basis, which is why I wish, in the end, to cultivate the artistic sense and give others the power of being enchanted.

This website will never go away.
There will be periods of daily postings and periods where I'll draw a blank, but the Andrew Rostan Blog is here to stay, in some ways.
For the change of direction I hinted at a while ago has taken shape.
When I got back from Las Vegas, there was a letter waiting in my mailbox.  I have been accepted to the Masters program at the University of Chicago.
This is a blessing beyond belief...and a chance for me to share my ideas with a greater audience than ever through their web resources and publishing.
Hence, from now on, the blog will be a testing ground for my academic ideas...and next month you will begin seeing the fruits of the labor.
I love you all who kept taking a look.
Keep checking back...

Things have happened thick and fast in the last five days...things I desperately need to put on the blog but need to talk over face-to-face or voice-to-voice with people first.  The written word, as the ancient Greeks knew, only goes so far.  But I indulged in the simple pleasures of eating fish sticks and peanut butter ice cream, I watched Danny Boyle's spectacular Trainspotting...finally...also realized Boyle's unifying theme over a wildly varied career is his celebration of humanity and the better angels of our nature, creating characters of great empathy be they heroin addicts or 10 year-old boys or teenage Indian game show contestants...but the BIGGEST PART of the weekend was my moment of divine revelation on Friday the 13th/Saturday the 14th.
Here's what happened.

Friday, 12:15 a.m. I'm trying to sleep before getting up early for a breakfast meeting tomorrow when a whirlwind of energy blows into Big Pink.  For the last three nights, Tyler has led various configurations of the house to see Akron/Family, an experimental folk trio who had a three-night stand in L.A.  I didn't go...I'd heard their music and thought it sounded like playing the same note on each instrument over and over for five minutes.  Tyler writes like them, only with better melodies.  But what happened is this...Tyler got to talking with the band about his musical career, and they invited him and my roomies to come see them in Las Vegas the very next night.  Tyler could bring one of his CDs, they could get on the guest list and not pay, etc.  Mike asks me if I want to go.

Now, since the time I began concentrating on school applications, I have found that a magnificent education has been granted to me.  Through living with my housemates, working at Barnes & Noble, getting more involved at St. James, and continuing my bonds with the Emerson community, I have abandoned--slowly but surely--the "old," insular Andrew Rostan and broken the shell.  The old Andrew would never have gone to Vegas with less than a day's notice.  The new Andrew thinks, "I've got no obligations until Sunday.  Why not?"  I see it as the graduation from the school of life.  I leap at the chance.

6:00 -7:00 p.m.  After breakfast and housekeeping, I hit the road with the group.  Mike drives Chad and Holly in his Volkswagen, while I ride with Tyler and Adam in Kori's Prius.  The drive takes four and a half hours through the Mojave Desert, most of it in pitch-black conditions.  We listen to Tyler's songs, pristinely mixed by Adam.  I get a specially-made vegetable sandwich at Arby's.  We spend the last two hours discussing artificiality in music and the general human nature regarding taste, with Adam taking a leftist view and Kori being more inclusive, Tyler and I contributing when we have something to say.  It's a great ride.

Saturday 12:00 a.m.  We hit the Strip fifteen minutes beforehand after Kori does some masterfully intense driving.  The band told Tyler they'd be on about midnight, so we're happy to have cut it exactly on the dot.  The Neon Reverb festival is partially being held at the Aruba, on Las Vegas Blvd. north of the Stratosphere, farther up from the Strip.  We can't figure out where to park.  I run out to ask the doormen where the lot is...and the cars all drive away to deduce such information themselves.  I'm pissed for a moment, but I get over it.  No point in being negative when we've reached just where we want to be.

1:30 a.m. The Aruba's club, the Thunderbird Lounge, is done up in trippy lights and iridescent electric color...though one-tenth of the size, I hink I shall never be in a place so close to Bill Graham's description of the Fillmore in his autobiography ever again.  We all order beers, a Heineken Light for me, and rejoice in being there and being together.  The crowd is young, diehard, and eager.  I'm wearing a Van Heusen shirt with blue tie and my fedora, in deference to Sinatra and company, and only one other man in the Lounge has a hat, but nobody cares.  Two groups go on while we're there.  A local band with Jefferson Airplane pretensions to the point of covering "White Rabbit" and pulling out an uninspired sitar, but with a girl named Melody who stands like a lonely marble column, focused with intensity on her tabletop guitar.  She's like Richard Burton, grabbing all attention while doing nothing.  When I compliment her afterwards she likes it.  The other band is a blues-rock trio from San Francisco with a female bassist and a drummer who simultaneously plays Farsifa on a few songs.  They play loud, a little sloppy, and with passion.  But as I grab a Newcastle with my crew, we're all ready for the main event.

2:00 a.m Akron/Family takes the stage.

3:33 a.m. Akron/Family ends their set.

How can I possibly find the right words, syllables, chains of any rational, conscious thought, to describe what happened in between?  Three men begin playing music so simple, but so intricately connected that their instruments, though certainly not playing the same notes, sound as if they have been fused together with one mind controlling them all, each pluck of string or hit of percussion forming the second half of a thought begun by another.  I can't understand half the words they sing, but I feel the emotion behind each sound from their mouths.  The songs keep growing louder and twistier and dissolute, a constant crescendo of energy being spent and growing more and more into entropy, but NEVER losing the melodies I am suddenly hearing from all over.  To quote Neil Diamond, a beautiful noise.  And then, 5% due to the lateness of the hour but 95% due to all the thoughts and pressures of the year giving way to this PRESENCE of overwhelming irrational grace before me, I surrender my spirit.  I half see the band, half see myself interacting with 50,000 foot-tall aliens and being escorted by celestial beings to the foot of Heaven, where I dance with God on a giant keyboard like in Big.  I sway and clap and almost bump into Chad with his camera several times.  I am lost, lucidly dreaming...and the cacophony ends in beautiful, acoustic harmonizing where I finally hear the lyrics...about how the sadness of the past is over and we are giving ourselves over to a higher authority.  The progression has gone from order to chaos to a new, greater order of unity and family and love, marked by the crowd singing along with every word at the end.  Even the part in the middle of the set where the bass amp stopped working fit in (more chaos!) and when the P.A. kept playing 10,000 Maniacs' "These Are Days" at the start of the encore...well, that was the last big song at Beth and Andrew's wedding, a celebration of unity if ever there was one,  Like a Japanese tea ceremony, every element fit together to make the gorgeous picture, and I would have cried, it was all so beyond any superlative, but there were no intelligible expressions for me to use at that moment....except to hug Tyler for convincing me to give this a chance.

4:30 a.m. We take the step of trying to engage a room at the Bellagio.  Holly and Kori ask Chad to help them work the front desk, and Chad, who does not mesh with Vegas, asks her for the cheapest and crappiest room there is.  We are told no vacancies.  As we despair and consider an all-night ramble, I offer to try again, turn on the Ol' Blue Eyes charm, and get us a room for $129 as long as we're out by noon.  Everyone, especially those who want to sleep, is thankful.

5:00 a.m. I eat half a portobello mushroom sandwich and, at Kori's insistence, some of her omelet at the Bellagio Cafe.  She asks for no avocado, and a trace of the allergen makes her psychosomatically sick.  Everyone goes to bed except me and Adam.

9:00 a.m. Adam and I go for a walk.  He has won $70 playing Texas Hold 'Em and drinking Jack and Coke.  I come out $20 down from video poker, blackjack, and slots while drinking mimosas and coffee.  We then consume dollar margaritas at Casino Royale after he loses $50, given for free, to a special slot machine.

11:00 a.m. We wake everybody up.  Oddly, only Kori took the bed while everyone else was on the floor.  I enjoy a lovely shower and shave. 

2:30 p.m. We finally leave Vegas after a miserable "champagne brunch buffet" at the Tropicana, where we went after finding that the Circus Circus was serving lunch.  We bang our shoes on the Circus CIrcus parking garage ceiling, but both older hotels feel depressing after the luxury, butterfly gardens, and chocolate fountains of the Bellagio.

5:00 p.m. Tyler stops for gas at an exit called Ghost Town Road where the air is so crisp, sky so blue, and mountains so epic I feel like I'm in a Terence Malick movie.

7:00 p.m. We get home...and I realize how much Akron/Family was truly a divine revelation, a vision from God telling me that my faith in Him, as I have always believed, shall never be misplaced, never be misbegotten, will always come through to help me shine in the grace of the eternal and the spirit even after the hardest of times...

And new stories will be told soon, on new days...
 

The titular character of An Elegy for Amelia Johnson (completed the sixth draft a little before noon today) has two of many desires take center stage for her as she succumbs to cancer.  One is to carefully control her final interactions with her nearest and dearest so her vanity may remain intact.  The other, linked to it, is the human wish for immortality.  Not actually living forever.  Life is sweet, as Star Trek reminds us, because it doesn't last forever.  But to be remembered, to have your presence linger for future generations...that's different.  We all want to know we made an impact on someone else.
Now my days at Barnes & Noble, I fear, are growing increasingly numbered...I can hear Al Kooper's wails and the Blood, Sweat, and Tears horn section creeping up behind me.  The economy is forcing a slash-and-burn practice which doesn't work for a store of our size, and sooner rather than later, I may have to leave the most rewarding job I ever had.  
Rewarding not in terms of pay (Ha!) or job satisfaction (Ha ha!) but in who I got to meet and the lessons they taught me. 
I once mentioned in passing my female co-workers, though only in terms of their fashion sense.  This was pretty shameful on my part. 
This year, which I think will go down in history as "The Year I DIDN'T Get Into Grad School (before eventually getting in and rocking the academic world)," was important for me because living a communal lifestyle and working a commonplace job, I finally got the life experience I never had in the past.  I discovered what it means to truly live, and to be part of the world of the living, not just a smart man with his nose in a book or his eyes glued to the page he's writing.
And as a man so bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the opposite sex for time out of mind, becoming entangled with women on an interweaving personal and professional basis was what it took for me to finally snap out of whatever lingering romantic-idyllic notions I had and face reality.
In their way, they have done as much for me as Nancy Kacenga Rostan and Carlee Katherine Ruth Tressel and the other members of my pantheon of mentors-slash-objects of devotion have.
The odds are reasonable that I might never see most of them again...and that the world at large may never know who they are.
So after a very interesting night of eating, drinking, playing Foo Fighters guitar, and deducing (wrongly) facts about Irish people, I felt inspired to at least put their names on this blog, to let them know that, in what I hope they  believe is a completely sincere and non-stalker-obsessive-mail-you-my-severed-ear way, that there is one man who will never forget them.
The women of the Barnes & Noble of Glendale, California...
...Alex, who got married and always knew how to say "Yes"
...Allison, whom I thought was sixteen when I first met her, only to learn she's an aspiring actress with an Ohio State-educated boyfriend.  Kinda wrong there.
...Betsy, the would-be novelist, reincarnation of Dorothy Parker right down to the deadpan caustic wit, insomniac baker, and firecracker of energy who makes me smile every time I see her
...Cassie, who was a pixie
...Christine (the manager), who always asks me how I'm feeling every time she sees me, who does every little thing and builds it up into a lot, and whose smile melts your heart
...Christine (the cashier), who also uses the Frappucino as fuel
...Courtney, whose birthday I never got to celebrate with, who arouses mounds and mounds of sympathy even with just a little headache, and one of the most loyal friends I shall ever meet
...Jamie, who rolls her eyes better than anybody and throws awesome parties
...Jennifer, whom I adore as the living, breathing Bloody Mary
...Juanita, the hardest-working, gentlest spirit I got to work alongside.  It was a privilege.  I miss you.
...Lata, a woman of many incredible talents and a marvelous way with obscenities
...Lori, who never, NEVER stops giving 110%
,,,Meghan, whose hair just gets redder
...Melissa, always hungry, always moving, always dressed in black, and sweating enthusiasm from every pore.  Go fellow lit students!
...Michelle, a tower of strength, a quirky vamp, a fellow lover of Robertson Davies, a pull-no-punches leader who will also give you a hug, and an appreciator of my passion for Air Supply
...Michelle the formerly employed, cute, sexy, and ready to stab you to death with her high heels...though she's so nice that's unfair
...Michelle the formerly employed manager, who knows how to rock
...Natalie, Paula, Quinlan, and Rebecca, who always got my drinks right, and Beverly, Lisa, and Renee, who ran the show.  I wish I knew them all better...anyone who keeps a sunny disposition in cafe is a marvel
...Norma, who is nothing else but herself
...Rachelle, who will one day watch every movie ever made
...Sandra, who will one day be a fantastic mother whose children will never want to disappoint her
...Shoreh, who hired me, kept me guessing if she would ever fire me, gave me ultra-strict orders and forgot about them five minutes later...and who made sure work was always interesting and never boring.  As a head manager, she is extraordinary.
...Susan, who has a giant heart which goes out to everybody, and burned me Merchant-Ivory films
...Talar, delightfully scatterbrained, always ready to lend an ear, and always ALWAYS looking great in a dress
...Yvonne, who owes me a haggis one of these days
...and Sarah, who when she has the time will have a deep conversation, coaxed me into the only night I ever stayed awake until dawn, has a core of steel and a heart of gold, and smiles at you in a way where you feel privileged she smiles at you
...and most of all Kat, who talks for ten minutes at a time on every esoteric subject under the sun, has more regard and compassion for others in her pinky than most do in their whole bodies--but backs it up with remarkable practicality, who assaults you with pumpkins when you're not looking, and who has imparted more wisdom to me than she knows
If I have forgotten anyone, I am sorry.
For all of you have made my life a joy...and given me a singular education.

Milos Forman claimed that he wasn’t specifically attacking communism in 1967…he and Ivan Passer and a friend of theirs happened to attend an actual firemen’s ball and found it to be so much stranger than the fiction they were working on that they HAD to make a movie out of it.  But The Firemen’s Ball, completed just before Prague Spring, is one of the most stirring indictments of any institutional lifestyle ever created.  And it’s one of the smartest and funniest comedies I’ve ever seen.

Of course, communism has to be the main target.  At the ball to honor their 86 year-old ex-commander, every gift for both the lottery and the guest of honor is stolen, the brigade members prefer to dicker over policy and ogle the girls (all unwilling) drafted for the beauty contest then actually let their guests have fun, and when an actual fire breaks out…dear Lord.  I was praying that my housemates were not accidentally burning Big Pink down at film’s end.  Forman and Passer’s screenplay features some tragicomic philosophizing (the climactic debate on how to acknowledge that everyone has indeed swiped everything from the oppressive organization in particular) which would have made Orwell proud, and Forman’s direction already anticipates the epic sweep of his great American films (Amadeus). 

Notice before I called The Firemen’s Ball an attack on all institutions, because the “take what you can and work the system” mentality Forman’s Czech masses display could very well apply to capitalism, socialism, and any –ism you can name.  I’ve been thinking a lot about institutions lately…because of that great institution called religion.  For Lent, I am reading books which all have a partly religious focus at least, and I just completed Jonathan Kirsch’s excellent biographies of Moses and David.  Besides being entertaining, informative, and accessible to the masses, they provide enlightening thought on the nature of human institutions.  Moses leads a people out of slavery to an oppressive political system into a land of milk and honey…of freedom…and then, as the mouthpiece of God, gives them a code of 613 laws they took all too literally and leads them in genocidal wars of conquest.  Is the fact that this was all supposedly done in God’s name enough to make it okay?  David is an even more troublesome figure.  A traitor, adulterer, murderer, and disrespectful figure…but a great, unifying warrior and king.  Morally neutral if anyone could ever be described that way.  This was the man chosen to be God’s anointed, the man the Jews still look to as the basis for the Messiah who will one day come, the man whose authority entrenched the Mosaic law further and deeper and led one day, tragically, to the death of a gentle young man from Nazareth who spoke of a newer covenant based on love and inclusion, not rigid adherence to customs designed only for a select few.

Of course, Christianity is no better, and often far, far worse, than Judaism.  One of the reasons I love my faith is that the very first sentence of The Book of Common Prayer admits our fallibility.  “There was never anything by the wit of man so well-devised…that hath not in time become corrupted.”    I appreciate institutions for the benefits, such as community, they bring, but for what really matters, I turn inward to the spirit.

Last night, as Daylight Savings Time stole an hour from me after eight hours of dealing with the most unruly group of Barnes & Noble customers imaginable…leaving books all over, refusing to leave at closing, and doing it all on a night when we had a skeleton crew due to the economy…I felt my spirit completely renewed and my bad mood vanish as I drove home and listened to the Beatles and one of the greatest singles ever recorded.  “Let It Be” is my favorite Beatles song of all time.  I can almost imagine now what McCartney was thinking when he wrote it.  His best friends were becoming enemies due to many different factors, the band he loved was falling apart, the world was teetering on so many brinks…but the memory of his late mother and the love of his fiancée stirred him to comfort in how all that happens, good or bad, is not always in our control.  We let it be.  We take the sorrows because life brings beautiful, sometimes unexpected joys as well.   And the band sounds FANASTIC on it.  Then the B-side…Lennon and McCartney wrote melodies better than 99.99% of the world, so when they take one of them and spin four minutes of insane nonsense, as they do on “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” it can’t help but make you smile.  Certainly made me smile.

My dad and my Uncle Richard, who made me love the Beatles, think “Let It Be” is lousy.  That it “doesn’t sound like a Beatles song.”  First, tell me what, after 1965, a Beatles song was supposed to sound like?  Second, I love my father so much, but I think our spirits are very, very different owing to age and outlook.   There were cultural artifacts from his youth he shared with me when I became a teenager which he told me afterwards he now found “stupid” or “a mistake.”  Films like The Graduate and albums like Tea For the Tillerman which still resonate deeply with me.  God wants us to be wise and strong, but I think a healthy spirit needs a level of innocence, of willingness to accept idealism, of appreciating simple joys and striving to find something better. 

I’m not saying people like my father have lost this, but there are feelings I get listening to the Beatles and Cat Stevens which I hope never leave me.

Full circle…I saw The Firemen’s Ball at the New Beverly in a double feature with one of Jonathan’s favorite movies, Forman’s Loves of a Blonde.  My reaction immediately after seeing it was much stronger than it was after some thought, but it was a great slice-of-life story about human longing and fantasy encouraged…under the oppression of institution.

Today, a week into Lent, I feel spiritually, emotionally, and mentally recharged.  No more angst.  It's time to get down to business, and business this time means keeping "Musings from Big Pink" updated...an updating which will see a slow evolution.  The style and content will be the same at their core, but a few things will change.
Today's musing occurred in the parking lot of Trader Joe's, where I heard 3 Doors Down's new single, "Let Me By Myself."  Nice enough track, with a suitable crying-out-for-empowerment message set to anthemic guitars and earnest vocals.  But one minute in, I started thinking...sooner or later, someone is going to write a songfic about this.  Probably involving Harry Potter or the Twilight vampires.
For those smart enough to not be in the know, the songfic is an off-shoot of fan fiction, the reading of which I sometimes partake in for an hour in times of stress.  Fan fiction, for further explanation for the fortunately uninformed, is amateur short stories and novels using characters already in the cultural marketplace.  Rowling, Tolkien, Whedon, Austen, and Meyer are probably the most prominently plagiarized.  Now there is nothign wrong with the core idea of fan fiction...we all dream of the further adventures of our favorite characters after the screen says "The End," and in a rapidly-changing publishing world where the book is no longer content to stay as text on a page but, thanks to the internet and iPhone, become a shifting, morphing, substance to react to and build on, fan fiction's style could be the basis for a new literary culture: democratic, inviting, and welcoming to all.  As a book lover and would-be English major, that would be beautiful.  However, a lot of fan fiction is also...pretty bad.  Amateurish is a generous term.
Songfics are responsible for some of the msot cloyingly sentimental examples of a genre already cloying enough.  An entire pop song is used to explain a character's mood or be the soundtrack for a romantic declaration or dissolution, the dialogue and actions perfectly synchronizing with the music.  Think every possible sappy ending from the Golden Age of Hollywood, every Rhett-and-Scarlett kiss, over and over again, with "enlightened" commentary by groups such as 3 Doors Down and Hoobastank...do you know how many instances I've seen of "The Reason" being used for everyone from Frodo to Percy Jackson?
But having had some experience with these, I now can identify the ideal songfic song.  It MUST be either romantic or involve an overly-emotional confession of time for a change.  It must be recorded by a group either universally popular or with a spiritual or cultish fan base.  It must be delivered with heart-wrenching tremors in the voice and be backed by either dramatic piano or stirring guitar.  And it must be just dumbed-down enough to fit every variety of situation under the sun.
In the next few months, I think Pink's "Sober" and Carolina Liar's "Show Me What I'm Looking For" will both be making huge appearances on fan fiction websites...sites I thankfully no longer have time to go to.  Give me the Cliff Richard/Phil Everly duet I just downloaded for free any day.

Stephen Christy asked me this question today.  Since my recent blog post, I have heard even more information from so many different sources, and as a result my life stands at more of a crossroads than ever.
I talked about this with Stephen, who suggested that none of my current ideas are exactly right for me.  We spent a very intimate, personal hour which ended with me getting the impression that I have focused too much on what I think I SHOULD be doing as opposed to what I WANT to be doing.
Thus, Stephen's question.  I have about $30,000 to work with to try to figure out "What should I do with my life?"  And what I should be doing does not necessarily involve making a living wage or fulfilling what I think are others' expectations.
What makes me happy?
Reading makes me happy.  Ever since I was two years old, I have never been happier than with a book in my hand.
My faith makes me happy.  Celebrating a love of God and being with others who feel the same way.
People make me happy.  All my families: Rostans, Kacengas, roommates, fellow Emersonians, co-workers, the people of St. James.  I have finally learned how much I need the company of others.
Watching a good film or TV show makes me happy.
Feeling I am doing something fulfilling makes me happy.
Security makes me happy.
Discovering something new makes me happy.
Working as hard as I can on something and accomplishing it makes me happy.
And above all, love, love I receive from others and love for what I am doing, makes me happy.
And some good food too, but that's a little gluttonous.
Two years ago, at another crossroads, I called Stephen and launched myself onto this path.  Now, it may be that I needed his counsel again.
I truly do not know what is next...but I shall do something which makes me happy.