Makeup Blog -What I see in a book...

Here's the blog I was supposed to write for last week, but didn't because I am a forgetful loser.

I like writing that teaches me how to write and also something I can relate to:

"In July my father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into the enormous book of holidays, its pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears" (The Street of the Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, 25.)

When I first read this it changed my life. It changed my writing. Nothing was ever the same again. That's Schulz's first paragraph of that story. Sucks you right in. He writes about color and smell like I could only dream of. I also like his writing because I feel like I can relate to him, both culturally and personally. He was a pale, bookish guy who kept to himself and he was a Polish Jew. I'm Jewish and my family is from that part of the world, so I feel like I really understand his cultural perspective. He unfortunately didn't get a chance to write much. While in a ghetto he was shot by a S.S. officer. Supposedly he was working on a manuscript called The Messiah, but it was lost.

Something that blows my mind, opens my doors:

e.e. cummings' "pity this busy monster manunkind" poem (look it up, it's great!)

When I first read this poem I was blown away. Both by the content and the writing, but especially the latter. e.e. cumming's taught me that it's okay to break the rules. He breaks the rules and does it WELL.

Something that shows truth:

Colors magazine, issue #20 Beijing you can see some of it here:

http://www.colorsmagazine.com/issues/70/index.php

This was another life-changing experience for me. All it is is photos of various people and things from Beijing and little monologues of the people in them. Reading it was like walking down the streets of Beijing and talking to whoever you ran into. The photography, the writing has influenced me so much! The first time I read it was two summers ago or so and I still pick it up and flip through it. Every time is like a new time. I strive for the same kind of realism in my writing.

Underground by Haruki Murakami

Murakami was interested in individual accounts of what happened during the Sarin Gas Attacks on the Tokyo subways in 1995. After an agonizing search, Murakami triumphed and was able to transcribe the first hand accounts of victims and even members Aum Shinrikyo cult. How Murakami writes the accounts is amazing. It is like true voice but in writing. I really admire this. I also admire how Murakami turns the sterile statistics of a newspaper into a tangible reality for the reader. I WANT to do that so badly. Also, it was a real challenge to get this done in the first place. Japan, as a whole, has a very unique behavior towards victims of disasters, etc. they usually keep to themselves and do not want to talk about it, sometimes they are even ostracized. So, yet again another complex cultural perspective that you don't see done so well that often.

Tokyo a certain style by Tsuzuki

I've already gone on and on about this one in class, but now you can actually look at it for yourselves:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wB8UKJuGw_gC&dq=tokyo+a+certain+style&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=-ecAS4WIPIHesgP5jvC9DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

It's not just the pictures for me (even though those are a huge part of it for me) I also love the brief yet extremely evocative little tidbits the photographer gives you about the person who lives in the apartment and about what's in the photograph. It's usually barely a sentence yet it is just so PERFECT! Gah!