Richard Siken, bartender at the Cup Café, poet:
I'm reading Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar. I first
encountered Cortázar through his poetry; he's famous for
his prose poems. Then I heard he had a novel out, and I had to
read it. It's amazing; it's not quite a novel and it's not quite
an epic poem, but rather, it reinvents the rules for literature
as it goes along. There's a table of instructions on the first
page which suggests at least two ways of reading the book; you
can read the first 56 chapters in order and never know what happens
in the remaining 99--the expendable chapters located in the last
half of the book. You can read the first half and be done, or
follow the program telling you how to jump back and forth between
the main and auxiliary texts. Here's the thing: The chapters are
like prose poems, but they accumulate. The first 56 are connected
by a narrative; the others by theme. So you sort of get your choice:
Do you want to continue to follow the narrative or do you want
to digress? I've been getting frustrated with the traditional
beginning-middle-end, because it's not the way I live and it's
not the way I think. It's so wonderful to encounter a book that's
charting the course of an emotional life and a life of the mind
rather than a simple description of who did what to whom and when.
Michelle Haller, waitress at Café Poca Cosa:
I'm reading Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. It's about
an evangelist preacher who's a womanizer and boozer as well. It's
weird because all of a sudden I've been inundated with all this
religious stuff. I had a friend try to get me into the Landmark
Form, a self-help program run by the guy who used to do EST. The
whole idea freaked me out. Then I read an article in Harper's
Magazine about this man who went to one of these weekend religious
seminars. This all happened within one week and so I'm feeling
like someone is trying to save my soul. I picked up Elmer Gantry
because the movie was recommended to me, but I spotted the book
and decided I'd read it first. Lewis captures middle America quite
well--the small town, Midwestern feeling at the turn of the century.
It's kind of like everybody is very accepting of the life they've
been given, their lot in life; to me the Midwest still has a little
bit of that feel, though the themes of the novel still seem pretty
contemporary. Elmer Gantry feels guilty for his vices: seeing
people on the sly and drinking. At one point he shacks up with
a woman preacher, and they're living in sin while they're preaching
against sin. The back of the book says it's "a penetrating
study of hypocrisy."
Joe Marshall, cook at a downtown restaurant. I've
been reading a bunch of stuff, including Invisible Cities,
by Italo Calvino. In it, Marco Polo describes to Kubla Khan all
the cities of his empire. Some of the cities are real, some are
imaginary and some no longer exist because they've been destroyed
by the great Mongol hoards. It's one of those books you can read
because it's easy and then you can yak about it--you know, "I
like the city with all the plumbing sticking out"--because
it's not written in any particular sequence so it's easy to sift
through and remember. I'm also reading the Acme Novelty Comic
Library, Issue #7, by Chris Ware.
Richard Siken, bartender at the Cup Café, poet:
I'm reading Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar. I first
encountered Cortázar through his poetry; he's famous for
his prose poems. Then I heard he had a novel out, and I had to
read it. It's amazing; it's not quite a novel and it's not quite
an epic poem, but rather, it reinvents the rules for literature
as it goes along. There's a table of instructions on the first
page which suggests at least two ways of reading the book; you
can read the first 56 chapters in order and never know what happens
in the remaining 99--the expendable chapters located in the last
half of the book. You can read the first half and be done, or
follow the program telling you how to jump back and forth between
the main and auxiliary texts. Here's the thing: The chapters are
like prose poems, but they accumulate. The first 56 are connected
by a narrative; the others by theme. So you sort of get your choice:
Do you want to continue to follow the narrative or do you want
to digress? I've been getting frustrated with the traditional
beginning-middle-end, because it's not the way I live and it's
not the way I think. It's so wonderful to encounter a book that's
charting the course of an emotional life and a life of the mind
rather than a simple description of who did what to whom and when.
Michelle Haller, waitress at Café Poca Cosa:
I'm reading Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. It's about
an evangelist preacher who's a womanizer and boozer as well. It's
weird because all of a sudden I've been inundated with all this
religious stuff. I had a friend try to get me into the Landmark
Form, a self-help program run by the guy who used to do EST. The
whole idea freaked me out. Then I read an article in Harper's
Magazine about this man who went to one of these weekend religious
seminars. This all happened within one week and so I'm feeling
like someone is trying to save my soul. I picked up Elmer Gantry
because the movie was recommended to me, but I spotted the book
and decided I'd read it first. Lewis captures middle America quite
well--the small town, Midwestern feeling at the turn of the century.
It's kind of like everybody is very accepting of the life they've
been given, their lot in life; to me the Midwest still has a little
bit of that feel, though the themes of the novel still seem pretty
contemporary. Elmer Gantry feels guilty for his vices: seeing
people on the sly and drinking. At one point he shacks up with
a woman preacher, and they're living in sin while they're preaching
against sin. The back of the book says it's "a penetrating
study of hypocrisy."
Joe Marshall, cook at a downtown restaurant. I've
been reading a bunch of stuff, including Invisible Cities,
by Italo Calvino. In it, Marco Polo describes to Kubla Khan all
the cities of his empire. Some of the cities are real, some are
imaginary and some no longer exist because they've been destroyed
by the great Mongol hoards. It's one of those books you can read
because it's easy and then you can yak about it--you know, "I
like the city with all the plumbing sticking out"--because
it's not written in any particular sequence so it's easy to sift
through and remember. I'm also reading the Acme Novelty Comic
Library, Issue #7, by Chris Ware.
