Books Acquired Recently

Books Acquired Recently:


I've gone a little crazy buying books in the past few weeks. Not all of them have even arrived yet! These are the ones I've received so far.


Brooks, Gwendolyn. The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks. Ed. Elizabeth Alexander. New York: Library of America, 2005.


I would love to teach Brooks extensively sometime rather than just a few poems from an anthology, but her Selected Poems does not include any of her work from the Black Arts Movement, which is what I am most interested in, so I ordered this collection to see if it would be suitable to use instead because it covers her entire career.


Germano, William. From Dissertation to Book. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.


My big writing project this summer is to revise my dissertation into book form so that I can begin submitting book proposals to publishers. I read Germano's book last night and it was quite helpful in giving me a map for going about my revisions.


Johnson, E. Patrick, and Mae G. Henderson, eds. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology. Durham: Duke UP, 2005.


Amazon recommended this to me, and it looks interesting. African American literature and LGBT studies are my two scholarly foci these days, so this should be a helpful resource.


Koch, Kenneth. Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems. Ed. Ron Padgett. New York: Library of America, 2007.


I've been meaning to read Koch for years because of his close friendship with my favorite poet, Frank O'Hara. There have been numerous times in the past few years when I've almost bought this collection, but then didn't. Labyrinth Books had it on sale for $6.00 new, so I decided now was the time.


McEvoy, Seth. Samuel R. Delany. New York: Ungar, 1984.


My next book project is on Delany, so last week I ordered copies of all of the books on him that I didn't already own. Delany says in About Writing that McEvoy's book is the worst one about his work, so I won't use it much (if at all), but I like to be throrough. There is little enough criticism on Delany that one can't be choosy.


Moore, Honor, ed. Poems From the Women's Movement. New York: Library of America, 2009.


This looked really interesting when I saw it in the Labyrinth Books catalogue, and it was only $6.00. It might be fun to teach in a Rhetoric course. I am a total sucker for Library of America books because they are so aesthetically pleasing.


Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.


Amazon recommended this to me after I ordered Johnson and Henderson's anthology. I am very much interested in the literature of terrorism and more broadly the continuing after-effects of 9/11, so Puar's book sounds very interesting to me, though I probably won't have time to read it for a while.


Stine, Jean Marie. Season of the Witch. 1968. San Francisco: Eros, 2011.


I read about Stine's book in Thomas Disch's The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of, and it sounded interesting. I am constantly looking for examples of transgender fiction, and they are few and far between, so Stine helps fill the gap.

"We would have been safe" (and game six)

I just finished re-reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to teach it tomorrow, and even though this was the sixth or seventh time I have read it, the last quarter of the book still makes me cry. It concludes about as happily as it possibly can--Oskar's father is still dead (no magical realism here), but he solves the mystery of the key, he and his mother are reconciled, and he realizes he has to/will be able to move on with his life--though the actual ending is heartwrenching. Oskar's final words, "We would have been safe" (326), signify the final loss of his childhood innocence, which is normally a healthy, important moment of growth. Foer does such a good job of making readers care about Oskar, though, that we hope he can just stay protected and happy forever. Oskar grows up instead, and we are left with the fact that for all of our childhood nostalgia, we live in a world where, as Abby Black says, "people hurt each other" for no good reason, even when we try our best not to (290).


Oskar's last sentence, coupled with the flipbook that shows a body falling back up into the World Trade Center, is also a public lament for Americans' pre-9/11 hopeful naivete that we were somehow in the violent, messy world, but not of it. We all share that desire for safety, but as Oskar says, "In the end, everyone loses everyone" (74), so we must confront the danger and live our lives to the fullest.


Anyway, to cheer myself up I watched the tenth inning of game six from the 1986 World Series. It still always amazes me that the Mets win; I get nervous every time I watch it.


Today I watched both halves of the inning (usually I just watch the bottom half), and it was shocking how much it looks like Boston is destined to win. I can't imagine having watched it as a Red Sox fan. Just before Dave Henderson hits a home run to put Boston ahead, NBC replayed his home run from game five of the ALCS, so it plays like he was pre-ordained to hit another one. Shortly thereafter, there is a shot of Henderson and Bill Buckner with their arms around one another in the dugout, laughing. Later in the inning, Buckner comes up with a runner in scoring position and Rick Aguilera hits him. Buckner glares out toward the mound and the home plate umpire has to get in front of him and guide him toward first base. This reaction is completely ridiculous on Buckner's part because there is no way Aguilera would be throwing at him intentionally. It is like the baseball gods punish Buckner for his reaction in the bottom half of the inning. As gods are wont to do, their punishment far outweighs the crime.


My favorite part of the bottom half of the inning* is Ray Knight screaming with joy to the heavens (I use this term intentionally--Knight explicitly thanks "the good Lord" in his post-game interview with Marv Albert [so does Mookie Wilson]) as his teammates mob him after he scores the winning run. It looks like he is barely able to breathe, like he is drowning in a sea of Mets. It is also wonderful how once the run crosses the plate Vin Scully stops talking and just lets the crowd noise and the camera shots speak for themselves.


* For those of you unfamiliar with the bottom half of the inning, here's a re-creation of it using the old Nintendo game RBI Baseball with the original NBC audio: