UNC Student Organization for Undergraduate Literature

As I think of our loss--our school's loss--

Well, what could I say? Words are hardly enough, and they really might be too much. Art--literature--might need to be quiet in the face of Disaster, might not be capable of anything. I don't know. What I think we can do together, at least, as a school, and as a smaller community within a school, is grieve.

How often, when these things happen, we say: "It's terrible, and so strange to think 'it could have been anyone. It could have been me.'" Let's look away from ourselves tonight. It wasn't anyone--it was one of the best.

Perfection Wasted

By John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

I figure at least some of you will be interested in this - NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, 2007. The idea is to write a novel (defined as 50,000 words) in 30 days - i.e. November. You don't have to write something spectacular, flamboyantly rich, or even particularly good; it's intended rather to spark creativity and such. Plus, it's really fun.

I'm in. I've done it for two years now. The first year I actually succeeded in writing something (although it should probably never see the light of day); the second year was a dismal failure. Best two out of three?

(Uh. I think I should probably have provided a link: http://www.nanowrimo.org . )

Today, irony stuck me in a big way. I listened to my roommate on the phone - she lives in a 4,600 sq. ft. house in a great neighborhood on the West Coast, and has a father who is an aero-space engineer. She told her mother how she would never be happy until she has a multi-million dollar lake house with a pool, movie room, Jet Ski, and boat. Until that point, “which could never happen until like mid-40s,” she would feel bad about herself. I found myself stunned, saddened, and at a complete loss as to how to change her mind. Brain surgery perhaps? I then found myself wondering – is this an American notion? A result of raising? Or simply the way some people are programmed from birth?

To want more than what one has is understandable, to feel worse about yourself because you don’t have it is unreasonable, and ultimately depressing. Why can’t we just be happy with our lives the way they are? How many people are like my roommate? Perhaps more than I ever realized…

Just thought I'd post a link about the recent study reporting that only 1 in 4 Americans read a book last year. The thoughts on this Web site suggest that people do still read, but that literacy is changing. That seems pretty straightforward. Still as English majors it seems worth asking what we lose (or gain) when we switch to reading graphic novels, Web sites, etc. instead of books.