In this series I'll be corresponding with writers and bibliophiles about what we've been reading lately.
Bryon Dudley has been an avid reader for as long as he can remember and became an avid writer not long after that. He reads everything from comic books to post-modern literature to technical manuals, has most of a Master's degree in American Literature, and once taught high school English and creative writing. He writes about music and culture and lives in Ames, Iowa, with his wife, two cats, and a neurotic dog.
Nate: Nice, that sounds great. You think you
might keep going with the series?
Bryon: At the moment, I think I'm planning on reading the
whole trilogy, yeah. I bought the second book anyway, so I'm at least THAT
committed hahaha.
Nate: Okay, for my first book
I'm going with one that's very relevant to me and this blog, which is Index, a History of the by Dennis Duncan. I obviously have a unique interest
in this topic, but Duncan is writing for a general audience and I think it'd be
illuminating to anyone who is interested in book studies or literary
history.
It traces the history of book indexes all the way from the pre-history of ancient libraries and monastic concordances into the invention of the printing press, the proliferation of periodicals, and all the way up to our present-day uses of search engines. I never really appreciated that Google works by creating an index of the internet and then searching that index when you type in a term.
Duncan shows how developments in indexing paralleled, and in many ways drove, changes in reading habits and the uses of books. When you have an index, you can do research by looking up a specific term and not have to read the entire book searching for that term. Some scholars have historically objected to that type of reading and those concerns are mirrored in contemporary anxieties about Google making us dumber by letting us look up any tidbit and abstracting it from its context.
It traces the history of book indexes all the way from the pre-history of ancient libraries and monastic concordances into the invention of the printing press, the proliferation of periodicals, and all the way up to our present-day uses of search engines. I never really appreciated that Google works by creating an index of the internet and then searching that index when you type in a term.
Duncan shows how developments in indexing paralleled, and in many ways drove, changes in reading habits and the uses of books. When you have an index, you can do research by looking up a specific term and not have to read the entire book searching for that term. Some scholars have historically objected to that type of reading and those concerns are mirrored in contemporary anxieties about Google making us dumber by letting us look up any tidbit and abstracting it from its context.
Oh, and an inspiring nugget: Virginia Woolf was an indexer! She made indexes for nonfiction books published by her and her husband's Hogarth Press. She's one of my favorite writers so it was very cool to see quotes from her about being mired in the indexing doldrums. I was like, "I've been there, Virginia Woolf, I've been there."
And that's amazing that Virginia Woolf was an indexer, wow! I never would've guessed that from her writing.
Nate: What else have you been getting into lately?
Bryon: Outside of the N. K. Jemisin novel, I've been reading a book that walks through the Gentle Giant albums, track by track. Gentle Giant are a progressive rock band that were fairly popular in England and Europe, but never really struck paydirt here in the States. Their songs are pastoral but intricate, and I've been getting more into them, so I wanted to read up on them a bit more and dig a little deeper.
I also started what is essentially a textbook about music production in Cubase, the software I use for recording. It's pretty dry, and a tome of technical writing, but I'm also really excited to see if there's something more I can learn.
And I read a ton of comic books. Right now, I'm reading a run of new Avengers comics. They've had the same writer for the last four years or so, and he's wrapping up a huge story that he's planted the seeds for along the way, so it's fun to see that come into fruition. And I'm also on a run of Doctor Strange comics from the early 70s. I'm a sucker for that stuff, where comics were just starting to experiment with getting a little less square and a little more weird. You can tell it's right when writers and artists were just starting to experiment with drugs lol.
Nate: My son is getting into comic books and I'm unfortunately not well-versed in that medium at all. He actually was just expressing some interest in Avengers comics. What would be a good place to start there? Could that new series you're reading a launching point, or should he go back further?
Bryon: I'd say for Avengers comics it might be better to go back a bit. The really early stories are pretty dated, so I wouldn't go back to the beginning, but a good place to start would be a story called the Kree/Skrull War. It's been published in trade paperback format a bajillion times and should be widely available. That one gives a good overall background of the Avengers team, throws them into the middle of an intergalactic war, gets a little cosmic, and plants the seeds for tons of stories after that.
Nate: I’ll try that! Another notable read for me recently was Yukio Mishima's
short story "Patriotism." I checked out the Criterion DVD of the film version from the library and it came with a nice booklet that included the
short story among other writings. I'm not endorsing Mishima's politics at all
or claiming to understand all the historical context behind them, but this
story and the film (which he directed and starred in) are very powerful.
It's a stark narrative about a soldier's preparations to commit seppuku (a gruesome ancient form of ritual suicide) as a symbolic protest against Japanese modernity intended to demonstrate support for the Emperor, who was no longer the primary source of power in Japan after World War II, a development that disturbed Mishima. He enlists his wife as a witness and entrusts her with following him in death.
It's especially chilling to read this and see him act it out on film because Mishima actually did this in 1970, ten years after the publication of the story: he disemboweled himself as a political gesture. In Paul Schrader's film Mishima:A Life in Four Chapters there's a scene showing Mishima acting in and directing the film adaptation and it looks exactly like the original film.
It's a stark narrative about a soldier's preparations to commit seppuku (a gruesome ancient form of ritual suicide) as a symbolic protest against Japanese modernity intended to demonstrate support for the Emperor, who was no longer the primary source of power in Japan after World War II, a development that disturbed Mishima. He enlists his wife as a witness and entrusts her with following him in death.
It's especially chilling to read this and see him act it out on film because Mishima actually did this in 1970, ten years after the publication of the story: he disemboweled himself as a political gesture. In Paul Schrader's film Mishima:A Life in Four Chapters there's a scene showing Mishima acting in and directing the film adaptation and it looks exactly like the original film.
Bryon: I agree with you on the Mishima stuff - it's super compelling, even though I don't agree with his politics. Still, you have to admit, he was very, very committed to his worldview! He was not messing around in the slightest. And the film was incredible.
