September 9th, 2009 by Neal

I was like, “Will, I’m on Twitter!”

And Will was like, “Fuck Twitter and fuck you!”

And I was like, “Hey, wait a minute! Yeah! Fuck Twitter!”

And in principle, I still agree. However, I realized something. A Twitter is simply an epigram-length post. I don’t know how many of you know or recall this, but when I was into poetry, and when I put out my books, there were, quite literally, forty pages of epigrams. I love the fuckers.

Ergo, henceforth, I will be tweeting. But not to let you know I’ve shit in my pants or that I am late for a meeting or that I ate a burrito with a spider in it that came all over my sauce. NO! I will, instead, use it as a chance to produce my spunky little shit twinkle epigrams I am so fond of.

And hopefully, this will bring me back to the poetry that’s been largely missing in my life for the last nine months. It’s time for a word baby.

I also believe, should Hal make it, that he will have a twitter account that he uses on the community internet in character to respond to people who have read the book. Oh yes. And one thing you should know about Hal is that he says “internets” in earnest honesty, and that he tells people to “Google on it!” when he wants to research things. He is, shall we say, computer illiterati?

Anyway, here.

June 4th, 2009 by Neal

Confession: I have a love/hate relationship with Shakespeare, and have since I was a kid.

When I was a kid, I used to get tapped pretty regular in class to do the Romeo thing, and it was always one of those gutwrenching moments when you could get to flirt, obliquely, with the gal you had a crush on in class. I even had a teacher hip to the jive, and she used to do it, maybe because she had pity on the shit I was going through, maybe knowing what a young man dreams of, or maybe just randomly, who the hell knows?

Overly analyzing the work made it a chore. It’s the reason most petulant kids throw books to the side and go, “MEH! ME HATE THIS!” I understand that impulse, and embrace it in most things (like sitcoms) that are not books or obviously things that make a person smarter.

I was caught between a simple love of the ideas presented and my utter loathing for busywork, which stands to this day. I can’t stand a thing without a purpose. I once almost got suspended because we plotted a CAESAR’D! (we called it something else) on March 15, whereby we boys would dress in togas, hold a guy aloft spattered with fake blood, and go running down the halls screaming, “BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!” I guess it was too highbrow for the actual doing.

This loathing for bullshit continued into college, where we’d spend oodles of hours discussing a given poem and what it meant, and picking apart the structure of poems in iambic and anaepest. It served no purpose, and did not convey the beauty the words provided.

I had a similar response to Steinbeck, who, after Of Mice and Men, I utterly LOATHED. I could quote the book chapter and verse, and had analyzed fucking Curly until I wanted all boxers dead. Then we did the same to Grapes, and even despite all of the annoyance I had with trying to determine what the significance of Rose of Sharon’s tit was (WHAT’S IT MEAN, OH GOD, WHAT’S IT REALLY MEAN, GUYS?), I realized that this was a book that would stand aside from the teacher’s butchering of it in the name of the more average in the class. And by average, I mean the dipshits who needed it laid out to them that any amount of laying out would never have helped.

I gave it all my fair effort. I went to Ashland and took the Ashland class, that I might understand Shakespeare outside of the bullshit, and that was a rewarding experience. I watched a Mid-Summer so beautiful it made me cry. But the bitterness was there. I lumped Shakespeare into this larger class of people who were determined by teachers to be great somewhat arbitrarily, and since there were other pieces of work I enjoyed more at the time (when I was less concerned with the context of the art I enjoy, as I am now to a further degree as I near thirty), I just forgot them all, discounted them, and dismissed them.

I got WHY people enjoyed them, but I figured most of it was the same way a guy puts War and Peace on his mantle. Not because he’d dead-set committed to good ole Russian authors, but because it makes it seem he is. Just as teachers portray the drama of being masterful of a given thing (sometimes, guys, don’t throw a dart at me) and can often be utter morons on a given thing. For example, the creative writing teachers I had in college who didn’t have any works published who were trying to tell me (in ways that hindered me for near a decade) what the game was.

I don’t trust those people.

However, someone I DO trust recently told me to give Shakespeare another shake. I did. I did it on my own, without anyone sitting over my shoulder, and I did it with cliff notes when I wanted them, and I did it with the full knowledge that I’d probably get bored, put it down, and move on.

I didn’t. Richard III kicked my ass solid. Henry V did the same. Now I’m going to pick up MacBeth, Lear, and Hamlet, and see if my education fucked me up even more than I thought it did.

It’s strange, because I really dig other certain foundational shit that is very similar to Shakespeare. Classic Lit with Greek authors, for instance, I have never questioned. Maybe it’s because I took most of that in college, and the teachers were in large survey classes, and were like, “Either read Agamemnon of FUCK OFF!” I much prefer this attitude toward potential learners. It’s very zen.

If someone asks me to teach them to write a story, I’m not going to call them every step of the way to make sure they’re working on it. That may be the difference between why I learned more in college than in high school. It may also be because high school was behind where I was in terms of learning because of my chronic reading. I dunno.

All I care to say is that I regret the years with Shakespeare that I missed because of the way that education seeks to produce citizens with Shakespeare on their shelf as opposed to critical thinkers at times.

Now if I can only get my ass motivated and read that War and Peace I bought ten years ago for three dollars that’s been staring at me on my “read shelf” making me guilty…