on the road. jack kerouac. (7)

in college, as a pleasure read versus an academic one, i read john leland's "hip: a history", sadly i wasn't too familiar with majority of the social movements or time periods it discussed.  i remember reading about the beats but hadn't read "on the road", "howl" or "naked lunch" so the impact of their hipness didn't really reach me. since then "on the road" has kinda haunted me. whenever i went to a bookstore, the back of my mind told me to finally pick up "on the road" but i never did.

what forced me to finally pick it up was an ed rusha exhibit at the hammer museum. on display was ed rusha's book version of "on the road". (the plaque next to his piece also taught me that kerouac wrote it all on one scroll. i can't remember if that scroll was on display, hmm). i can sadly admit that there were a series of pieces that i loved in this exhibit that i thought were solely ed rusha but turned out to be "on the road" quotes when i finally read the book. (yeah i am quite the poser.)

after reading "on the road", i reached one conclusion about myself. i have always been labelled a "flower child" by my family and though i do have hippie tendencies, i think my nomadic life is more on par with the beats. there is a rawness and grittiness to their lifestyle that is more attractive to me than putting flowers in my hair in san francisco.

if i was a male during the 1950's, i would have been a beat. i would have hitchhiked across the country, got drunk, got high and slept with girls and boys. and at the risk of sounding sexist, i would have to be male, there really wasn't a place for females in this movement; unless you wanted to end up used or abuse (not like physically or sexually though this did happen but also as a source of income as seen in the book) or dead like williams s. burroughs' wife (as in real life). as a female, i am not offended, these men were jaded by the war. did anyone actually survive the weird tension in the us caused by the cold war? all the creative spirits we recognize now were all tormented by it but that led to their genius. as i explained recently to darlene, i have a greater tolerance for communists and socialists in that historical context because society was so static that you had to believe in the extremes to have any hope for change. so i don't hold anything against the beats. they did let their women drink, do drugs and have sex so in a way that is liberating. their women were equal in their access to life's vices.

"on the road" is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and it will probably be on my list too. it would make my list due the great quotes in it. what i loved most about "on the road" was kerouac's poetic style. he had a chaotic and beautiful way of describing life (surprisingly at times, my life.)

my favorite quote of course was:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everyone goes "awww!""

i also enjoyed:

"people change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal."
(why i am a foodie)

"she threw down drinks when it seemed she was about to chuck up the last."
(how i drink)

"...and like the prophet who walked across the land to bring the dark word, and the only word i had was 'wow'!"
(how i feel at coachella)

one quote that stood out, was kerouac's nostradamus moment. he wrote:

"dean has a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. he said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up new york."

random, right?!?! i googled to see if at then time of 9/11, anyone drew a parallel to this. they didn't. but i did find an article about a professor who noticed post-9/11 that his students normally wrote their class papers on that excerpt.

but what i loved more was his descriptions of the city i love the most, los angeles:

"LA. i love the way everyone says ‘LA’ on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done."

"on corners old women cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hot sauce on newspaper napkins"

while in LA, sal eats at what i assumed was clifton's cafeteria downtown, so i emailed "ask chris" from los angeles magazine on the topic and he said possibly though there were multiple clifton's back than.

i love this book because of its carefree spirit. sal just went with the flow of life. and sometimes it worked for him and sometimes it didn't. sometimes he lived like a king and other times he had to scrape and scramble to get life together. the importance was the experience of life versus living by society standards.

i will admit that "on the road" made me romanticize a time period that was not as glamorous as it read on paper. it made me nostalgic for something that i never lived or could have ever live or even survive. i realized that today, i can not travel like sal paradise did, especially being a female. i can even admit that at the end i started to get a little bored and found the lifestyle tedious. being on the road would be exhausting however like the saying goes, it isn't the destination but the journey. and kerouac proves that to a t by making the destination obsolete. and i think this is why i would be a beat, it's about experiencing life instead of where you end up.

ps here is one of the pieces from the ed rusha's exhibit. it reminded me of delano, which is why i initially loved it.

breakfast at tiffany's. truman capote. (6)

i absolutely love audrey hepburn's holly golightly. i always watch "breakfast at tiffany's" filled with envy. if only i could have her sense of style (and petite frame)! my dream item is her shades. one of my favorite scenes is when she is peering over them at the girlie show! i googled, i can own a pair of oliver goldsmith's "manhattan", they reissued them last year. but what i admired most was that she was so cool and it was so effortless. i mean my favorite outfit was the mens dress shirt as a nightgown complete with eyelashed sleeping mask and ear plugs (seriously does anyone know where i can find her ear plugs?). such a cute outfit, and yet it was something she slept in!

hepburn was so delightful and charming, you can't help but fall in love with her. i was so excited about reading the novella, but at the same time wondered if it had the same whimsical magic of the film? i know most films ruin books, but i love hepburn's verison of golightly so much, that i couldn't imagine another. however, there was nothing to worry about. the movie stayed true to the book (well as much as society standards would permit back then) and majority of the lines i loved came straight from the novella. and the crazy thing is that most of the storyline stayed the same (there are some major difference but read it for yourself, i promise you won't be disappointed). even with the sameness, surprisingly the film's "golightly" is completely different from the book verison.

as cool as she is in the movie, holly golightly is even hipper in the book. she is this raw, no nonsense, do-as-she-pleases, free-spirited boheminian. as much as i want to be her in the movie, i would much rather be her in the book (well minus all of the sally tomato and jose drama). she is edgier and way ahead of her time when it comes to sex and drugs. it's like this perfect person you always admired ends up having a sailor mouth and does drugs. its kinda like discovering that your grandma cusses (which grandma bea does and did shock me when i first heard her. lol)

holly was never much of a lady in the movie, she did drink at all hours, had numerous male callers, and did go to girlie shows. but that is all child's play in comparison to her behavior in the book. i was shocked that she smoked pot. she also used phrases like "nigger-lip" and "preggers". and though it was implied that she got around in the film, it didn't prepare me for hearing a story about her being bit during sex or advising her friend to have sex with the lights on!??! (remember this was 1950s) here are some things i was shock to hear (well read) from her lips:

"rusty thinks i should smoke marijuana, and i did for a while, but it only makes me giggle"

"i told him look, darling, you've got the wrong miss go-lightly, i'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side."

"i wish, please don't laugh--but i wish i'd been a virgin for him . . ."

the most shocking was how open she was when it came to sexual orientation. i know i shouldn't be too shocked considering capote's sexual orientation. but i was surprised to hear her speak so frankly about it in the 1950s (i mean this was the era of joan cleaver). she used phrases like "dyke", "bull dyke" and was convinced that rusty was gay. but she wasn't opposed to homosexuality. in fact, she thought it was fine for people to be in love with members of their sex. for as she explains, "of course people couldn't help but think i must be a bit of a dyke myself. and of course i am. everyone is: a bit."

even greater are her views on marriage equality:

a person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, i'd respect your feeling. no, i'm serious. love should be allowed. i'm all for it."

i love that last quote not only for showing how silly it is for us to be concern with who others want to marry. but also because it reminded me of when my friend miguel when he told a panel of judges, it shouldn't matter if he loved men, women or giraffes on bravo's "step it up and dance".

but even all this aside, i fell in love with holly golightly for the same reason, one does in the film. her quirks (the stealing, not giving her cat a name becaus they don't belong to each other, her visits to tiffany's) and of course the little tibbits of life advice she gives out.

on diamonds:
"it's like tiffany's. not that i give a hott about jewelry. diamonds, yes. but it's tacky ot wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky."

her mean reds:
" . . . the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. you're sad, that's all. but te mean reds are horrible. you're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. except something bad is going to happen, I ly you don't know what it is."

her free-spiritedness:

"i don't want to own anything until i know i've found the place where me and things belong together."
-her card that read "miss holiday golightly, traveling." which were made because as she explained "after all, how do i know where i'll be leaving tomorrow."-her singing of "don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go-atravelin' through the pastures of the sky" (ps in the book, "fred" gives her a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i googled and he is a patron saint of travelers. adorable huh. also i googled and you can purchase a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i might!)

her musing on love:"never love a wild thing, mr. bell . . .but you can't give your heart a wild thing: the more you do, th estronger they get. until they're srong enough to run into the woods. or fly into a tree . . . if you let yourself love a wild thing. you'll end up looking at the sky."
"--i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street, or a house, something, anyaway, tha tbelongs to me cause i belong to it."

such a character and what a mess but a charming one. i actually think i will put this on my list of 30 before 30. she doesn't make the best decisions in life, but i think she has some great tidbits that one should live by. also who doesn't love a kinky pot smoker who supports gay marriage? so yes, definitely worth the read.

the time machine & the invisible man. h.g. wells (5)

"the time machine" has been on my to read list ever since bravo's "work of art" book cover challenge. not because "the time machine" was the winning cover (it was cool, i almost bought it for that reason). but because the other artist's cover had flowers, a teddy bear (?) and a girl. this sparked my curiosity: what did she read to make a cover like that (turns out she didn't read it. but to help her out, the girl is weena and flowers were mentioned but still confused about the bear).

i read "the time machine" back in october, when the occupy wall street movement was in full force and i was disappointed that the 99% didn't take up "the time machine" as a metaphor for the current class divide and what can occur in the future if things do not change. (i can't be too mean, i for one had no idea that h.g. well's sci-fi classic was so political). "the time machine" can serve to the 1% as an example of what will happen to them if they don't improve the treatment of the 99%; they will be eaten (literally).

as the time traveler discovered 800,000 years into the future there are two species derived from humans, the eloi (the 1%) and the morlocks (the 99%). the traveler first encountered the eloi, lazy, stupid, pleasuring seeking pink-skinned creatures with curly hair, large eyes and tentacle-like hands. at first, he admired them for their "social paradise" but soon discovers that the morlocks (a subterranean species, ape-like with dull white skin and "strange large greyish-red eyes" and "flaxen hair" on their head and backs) are terrorizing the eloi. it is discovered that the eloi's paradise is the result of the morlocks who labor to feed, cloth and house the eloi. but here is the twist! the morlocks no longer have a food supply and since they are carnivores start treating the eloi like cattle and eating them!!! the rich, you have been warned. if you don't start treating the working class better then they will bite the hand they feed.

in addition to this, wells' explanation of how the classes diverged also serves as a warning to the super rich about what the future contains for them if their reliance upon the working class continues. the aristocracy becomes the unintelligent eloi due to their dependence upon the morlocks' labor. as a result of the upper class' lack of labor, they become devoted to leisure which leads to their minds deteriorating due to lack of stimulation. as the traveler explained "the too-perfect security of the upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence." in addition to this, the working class continued labor results in an even wider gap between the classes for as the traveler observed, "in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour." does this sound familiar? it's interesting to consider that although wells' future can appear far-fetch (giant crabs in the even farther future?), however when it comes to class relations 100 years from its publication, "the time machine" is pretty on point.

so why are the morlocks the "monsters" and the time traveler sympathizes with the eloi? because this story is to serve as a warning against the evils of capitalism. wells' was a socialist and wanted to stop the exploitation of the working class. he is not calling the working class monsters but understands that if their oppression continues they will start to push back. (see: occupy wall st, labor strikes)

lastly i want to point out that the eloi were vegetarians. and would just like to share a random fact that i learned at the natural history museum of los angeles. when meat was introduce to our prehistoric ancestors diets, their brains grew and their intelligence increased as a result. so i for one am worried with the current trends of veganism/vegetarianism that the absence of meat in our diets might result in the opposite effects. just some food for thought.

ps being a huge fan of natural history museum, i was happy to see the appearance of one in this novella. it makes me happy that museums ruins will be around in the future.

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the book i checked out also included "the invisible man." i will say that i didn't enjoy it and i hated the invisible man. i was disappointed by the novella because as a kid, i always wanted my super power to be invisible. (as an adult, it would be to teleport and for those of you who have had my teleport convo with me, the ability to teleport out my fat cells and also babies.) but i learned if you are invisible, you'll go crazy. the invisible man was horrible and i am glad (spoiler alert!) he died in the end. i am not sure how to analyze this work. other than people go crazy with power. and science in the wrong hands can be destructive.

all in all, check out "the time
machine" but don't bother with "the invisible man". and do not watch "war of the worlds" (just cos i hate tom cruise.)