Glenn's little ugly blog

I just sat down to think about the books that I have on my to-read list.

Here's the list:

• The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
• Imperial by William Vollmann
• Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

I think that's the list. To be honest, I've never really made a list of books I'm planning to read.

You may notice that the list is entirely composed of books written by men. I don't know if it's accidental or if I simply gravitate towards male authors. Looking at my bookshelf it is very heavily male, with a major exception of my Kathy Acker books (which take up half of a shelf).

If I ever make a list of favorite authors, it tends to be heavily male as well: Pynchon, Vollmann, Acker, Burroughs, Murakami Ryu, Murakami Haruki, Tolstoy, Cormac McCarthy, and so on. I wonder why this is? Is there just something about the writing of men that resonates with me? Or is it that there are more men writing literary and more experimental fiction? I like Jeanette Winterson but wouldn't call her a favorite. The same with Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. I loved Cat's Eye but was never moved to read much more of Atwood.

Even my taste in poetry shifts towards male poets. Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are particular favorites of mine. I can't even really name a woman poet other than Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. At university I took a 20th Century American poetry class and the professor was an expert on Marianne Moore, but I never really got into her writing.

No other female novelist, poet, or writer in general has become someone who I need to read, except for Kathy Acker. Her books occupy a special part of my soul, and I like her work so much that I seldom speak of it to anyone. There would be too much to explain.

I'll have to think about why I read men so much and seldom read anything written by women. It could possibly be a cultural issue – that I was raised to listen more to men than women, especially in terms of knowledge and information. This may still be the atmosphere in the world around us, which could contribute to the continued dominance of men in the literary world.

Looking at the New York Times Bestseller list today, out of the 45 books listed in 9 different categories, 14 of them are written by women. In the top 5 hardcover nonfiction, none of them are written by women. 4 out of the 5 children's books are written by women. In the top 15 hardcover business books 2 are written by women (one as a co-author).

Is my imbalance a reflection of a societal imbalance?

I'd be happy to hear if you have similar experiences and if you have any recommendations for great books written by female authors.

I just sat down to think about the books that I have on my to-read list.

Here's the list:

• The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
• Imperial by William Vollmann
• Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

I think that's the list. To be honest, I've never really made a list of books I'm planning to read.

You may notice that the list is entirely composed of books written by men. I don't know if it's accidental or if I simply gravitate towards male authors. Looking at my bookshelf it is very heavily male, with a major exception of my Kathy Acker books (which take up half of a shelf).

If I ever make a list of favorite authors, it tends to be heavily male as well: Pynchon, Vollmann, Acker, Burroughs, Murakami Ryu, Murakami Haruki, Tolstoy, Cormac McCarthy, and so on. I wonder why this is? Is there just something about the writing of men that resonates with me? Or is it that there are more men writing literary and more experimental fiction? I like Jeanette Winterson but wouldn't call her a favorite. The same with Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. I loved Cat's Eye but was never moved to read much more of Atwood.

Even my taste in poetry shifts towards male poets. Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are particular favorites of mine. I can't even really name a woman poet other than Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. At university I took a 20th Century American poetry class and the professor was an expert on Marianne Moore, but I never really got into her writing.

No other female novelist, poet, or writer in general has become someone who I need to read, except for Kathy Acker. Her books occupy a special part of my soul, and I like her work so much that I seldom speak of it to anyone. There would be too much to explain.

I'll have to think about why I read men so much and seldom read anything written by women. It could possibly be a cultural issue – that I was raised to listen more to men than women, especially in terms of knowledge and information. This may still be the atmosphere in the world around us, which could contribute to the continued dominance of men in the literary world.

Looking at the New York Times Bestseller list today, out of the 45 books listed in 9 different categories, 14 of them are written by women. In the top 5 hardcover nonfiction, none of them are written by women. 4 out of the 5 children's books are written by women. In the top 15 hardcover business books 2 are written by women (one as a co-author).

Is my imbalance a reflection of a societal imbalance?

I'd be happy to hear if you have similar experiences and if you have any recommendations for great books written by female authors.

Right now I'm in the middle of three books, one of which is Europe Central by William Vollmann. I've read most of his books, except for a couple of his latest non-fiction works.

Above and beyond his literary ability, I'm most drawn to Vollmann because of his openness to other people. He has traveled a lot and written about some of the poorest and most marginalized people in the world, but he lives with them and observes them with compassion and an understanding that is very rare.

His book, Poor People, collects some of his best journalism about time spent with poor people around the world.

But it is his novels that I appreciate the most. He travels to research his novels, and the strands of reality and fiction blend together, giving the novels a feeling of truth, but giving the truth a feeling of transcendence or greater meaning. Everything is a means to telling a story, and the story is most often people living on edges, in cracks, outside of the margins, in the dark, in the cold, or lost.

His unfinished series of seven novels, Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, is a retelling of European interactions with native North Americans. I liked The Rifles and
Fathers and Crows the best and am hoping that he someday finished the last 3 books in the series. They are only loosely a series; no characters appear throughout the books. They are simply a thematic series.

Vollmann's work can often be somewhat conceptual. For instance, his collection of stories, Rainbow Stories is a thematic palindrome. His style ranges from straightforward, journalistic to somewhat magical realism.

I think that he is one of the best writers writing in English alive today. He assembles powerful sentences that bring people, situations, and ideas to life, and is equally comfortable writing about prostitutes, war, nature, violence, ethics, and art.

Check him out and let me know what you think.

I'm in the middle of reading The Age of Empathy by Frans de Waal. So far it's really good, even though I'm somewhat struck that it takes scientific experiments to verify what many animal activists have taken as a given for so long.

I'll likely write up a more comprehensive review of the book when I finish, since I'm enjoying it so much, but for now I thought I would just offer some quotes from the book that I have found important or meaningful.

Our nobler strivings come into play only once the baser ones have been fulfilled. If attachment and empathy are as fundamental as proposed, we had better pay close attention to them in any discussion of human nature. There is also no reason to expect these capacities only in humans. They should manifest themselves in any warm-blooded creature with hair, nipples, and sweat glands, which is part of what defines a mammal.

This obviously includes those pesky little rodents.

(p. 69)

...Animal studies are now seriously lagging behind what we know about human empathy. This may be changing though, thanks to a new study by Canadian scientists, titled "Social Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice." This time, the word empathy is free of quotation marks, reflecting the growing consensus that emotional linkage between individuals has the same biological basis in humans and other animals.

(p. 70)

With preconcern in place, learning and intelligence can begin to add layers of complexity, making the response ever more discerning until full-blown sympathy emerges. Sympathy implies actual concern for the other and an attempt to understand what happened.... Since this is the level of sympathy that we, human adults, are familiar with, we think of it as a single process, as something you either have or lack. But in fact, it consists of many different layers added by evolution over millions of years. Most mammals show some of these – only a few show them all.

(p. 96)

...Taking someone else's perspective is not limited to human adults. It is best developed in animals with large brains, but those with smaller brains don't necessarily lack the capacity.

(p.98)

Commitment to others, emotional sensitivity to their situation, and understanding what kind of help might be effective is such a human combination that we often refer to is as being humane. I do believe that our species is special in the degree to which it puts itself into another's shoes. We grasp how others feel and what they might need more fully than any other animal. Yet our species is not the first or only one to help others insightfully. Behaviorally speaking, the difference between a human and an ape jumping into the water to save another isn't that great. Motivationally speaking, the difference can't be that great either.

(p. 107)

Have a look at this photo and story about chimpanzees gathering to mourn the death of one of their own. A timely example of animals exhibiting emotions.