Reading more fiction

Behold, I’m reading more fiction!. After dipping my toe into the genre, I figured I was ready to tackle a heavyweight—bring on Faulker! I mean, if Oprah’s summer book club of literary lightweights can handle this difficult American master, then it’s high time I read something by the writer that many of the literary “experts” consider one of America’s most influential writers.

Color me obtuse, but I don’t get all the hoopla surrounding the man. While As I Lay Dying isn’t necessarily a difficult read—the chapters are short and cut back and forth between characters—neither is it a particularly interesting read. When I read fiction, I want to be entertained, made to think and most of all, be given characters that I don’t necessarily have to like, but I’d prefer to care about them. None of the characters in this work by Faulker, considered one of his “celebrated” novels, warrants the least bit of compassion, empathy, or any other emotion.

While I’ll finish the novel this evening, having read it in about 2 ½ days, I don’t feel that it’s added anything to my understanding of fiction, or so-called classic literature.

Granted, I do have to keep in mind that when Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying, the style apparently was experimental for his day, with its stream of consciousness narrative and abundant characters, all telling the story in a series of monologues.

While more learned and erudite people than me, men and women worthy of the title of scholar, insist upon Faulkner’s brilliance as a writer, I just don’t get it. Here is an example of a lot more analysis concerning As I Lay Dying’s character of Cash than I came away with. While I saw him as a man without personality or any other trait that might commend him to the reader, this article supplies a great deal of information that I apparently overlooked in my more literal reading of the text. Then, there is this “feminist” take on Addie Bundren, the deceased character that the book centers on. I took Bundren’s character to be the “unnatural, loveless, cold mother whose demands drive her family on a miserable trek to bury her body in Jefferson”; apparently others got that same sense in the normal, literal reading that one usually engages in while reading a work of fiction. However, there is much more going on here, as any good, post modern feminist would posit from the text.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone, particularly people for whom reading is more of a chore than anything. Maybe that’s why so many of our public school students develop an aversion to reading while in school. They associate reading with activities that are more duty than an act of pleasure. I remember clearly, those days of sitting in English class in high school, someone who liked to read, but never "getting" what the teacher was talking about in describing writers like Faulkner, Hemingway and other "heavyweights" we were compelled to read. Even today, better informed and hopefully, better-read (at least when it comes to many subjects in the non-fiction category), I still don't get most of the literary analysis/criticism that I've briefly perused about Faulkner's book. Granted, I’m not an English major, nor a teacher, so I can’t explain why reading Faulkner, or any of the other so-called classics are considered requirements for a well-rounded education. All I know is that this is probably the only book I’ll read by this American author, despite the apparent need to read "giants" like Faulkner three to four times.

Long live vinyl!

Records are a wonderful thing. Granted, I grew up at a time when vinyl was it, as far as listening to music was concerned (ah, yes; I forgot 8-tracks). While the argument that technological “breakthroughs” such as cassettes and even CD’s (what ever happened to DAT’s?) made music more convenient, I still have a hard time getting the same rush of excitement from handling the sterile plastic of a jewel case or other newer methods of preserving music. While IPods and other MP3 players have their disciples, I’m pleased to have my stack of vinyl and a Technics turntable.

Albums have made a comeback with the popularity of hip-hop and sampling, which I rate as a good thing. For vinyl junkies aficianados, might I suggest a trip into Portland to restock your vinyl library?

Most small, indie labels such as Scat, Merge, BOMP! and others still list vinyl as an option for purchase. Finer record stores, usually of the smaller variety also carry a selection of music on vinyl.

If nothing else, in a post carbon world, your vinyl might become like gold. Possibly for sale to melt down and run your vehicle?

Guided by Pollard

Hey!! I’m more than just issues and agitation about Wal-Mart. I also like music and I dug out the guitar tonight, tuned it up and ran through a handful of tunes.

Speaking of tunes, Robert Pollard, the songwriting genius behind Guided by Voices has signed with Merge and will be releasing the double album he’s been threatening for years. The release date will be January 24, 2006, one day after my own birthday.

Watched an interesting documentary, titled Dig!, last night about Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Courtney Taylor, of Dandy Warhols fame. Newcombe, is a tortured genius in the Roky Erickson school of reality.

It’s a sure bet you won’t find either the Pollard release or that documentary at your local chain store. I would guess that Videoport has the documentary and I’m sure Bullmoose will be carrying Pollard’s disc. For anyone wanting to know more about the genius behind the music, check out the new book, Guided by Voices: Twenty-One Years of Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll (Grove Press, Black Cat 2005). Definitely worth putting on your Christmas shopping list for that fan of the rock.

Seeing the movie; making a difference

I attended the USM screening of Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost last evening. Sponsored by a broad-based coalition of groups including Maine NOW and P.O.W.E.R. (Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights), as well as various labor organizations, the movie was worthwhile, despite some early technical glitches that delayed the start of the showing about 25 minutes. The nearly packed Luther Bonney auditorium became a bit antsy waiting for members of Maine NOW to figure out how to use the projection technology. The frustrating delay, the movie’s 98 minute running time and my desire to get home after a long day prompted me to join numbers of people foregoing the discussion taking place afterwards.

The movie hammered home many points that I was already familiar with. Yet, seeing them grouped together, with stories of actual people economically, physically and emotionally harmed by Wal-Mart provided added motivation for me to do more to stop the Wal-Mart juggernaut.

NOW was handing out buttons with the slogan, “Wal-Mart Always Discriminates”, a play on the company’s slogan of “Wal-Mart—Always the Lowest Prices”. Wal-Mart violates so many basics of human decency, that make it deserving of much of the criticism and actions beings directed its way.

An employer with a miserable record towards women and minorities, it has built its international retail empire by denying workers a living wage, adequate health benefits, and equal opportunities to advance.

The most powerful part of the film for me was the real life struggles faced by two families and their businesses that Wal-Mart crushed when they came to town. The Hunter family’s hardware business in Middlefield, Ohio, started by the grandfather in 1962, was forced to close its doors after 43 years, after the gala opening of a Wal-Mart. Additionally, three IGA stores, owned by Red Esry, went out of business in 1995, when Wal-Mart came to Cameron, Missouri. Esry, founded his first supermarket in 1970. When Wal-Mart came to the area in 1995, aided by millions of dollars in subsidies, Red lost almost half of his business overnight. He appealed to the local government and cut costs, but refused to stop paying his employees a decent wage and continued to provide them with full health-care benefits and a pension package in reward for their loyalty and hard work. None of the subsidies given to Wal-Mart were made available to the Esry family. What did Red Esry get for his efforts at being an honest and ethical businessman and a model business owner? After two painful years of Wal-Mart’s unfair practices, Red was forced to close down.

The end of the film highlights the many communities that are taking a stand against Wal-Mart’s predatory practices and jihad on small town America. Rather than merely magnifying the negative, portraying Wal-Mart as an evil empire, the last part of the film provides positive empowerment to ordinary citizens, helping them to adopt the belief that they have the power to organize and stand up for the values that built their communities.

As I sat in the auditorium, seeing municipality after municipality, roll out the red carpet with tax breaks and incentives given to Wal-Mart that weren’t offered to other business, I thought about my local paper, and its coverage of a taxpayer revolt occurring in Auburn, Maine. Knowing that Wal-Mart had come to town a decade ago, only to close its existing building recently and move across the street to build a super center, I wondered how many irate taxpayers in Auburn were regular shoppers at the local Wal-Mart. Recognizing that the community now had an empty building that will become difficult to fill, due to its size, I wondered how Auburn’s tax policies towards Wal-Mart and many of the other big box albatrosses that the town has acerbated with these tax increases. As I glanced at today’s front page of the Lewiston Sun Journal, there is a picture of the Wal-Mart store, with a graphic showing Wal-Mart receiving nearly $80,000 in tax breaks. Meanwhile, local homeowners have seen 50 percent increases in their property taxes.

The moral to this story and my pseudo review of this worthwhile documentary is this; our actions do have consequences. We can’t have everything we want, when we want it, without others suffering from our selfishness. To watch this film and be aware of the pain and exploitation that Wal-Mart perpetuates and not find better alternatives seems suicidal, if you care about people and place and the communities of Maine and other areas of the country.

I am more optimistic after seeing the film, knowing that others are taking up this cause. I think the tide has turned and more and more Americans are looking for alternatives to shopping at Wal-Mart, choosing to forego mindless consumerism, for a more thoughtful and deliberate way of purchasing their products.

Wal-Mart: Killing a small town near you

Local sustainable economies are the best way to ensure healthy communities, whether you live in Maine, Florida, Missouri, or California. Keeping commerce close to the people keeps it in the hands of local owners, often family-run, and most importantly, accountable to the members of that community.

It is the advent of box store retail, particularly the Wal-Mart phenomenon, that has crippled local economies and more than anything else, killed the sense of community across our nation. When people decry the loss of familiarity, closeness and civic spirit in our towns and cities, forsaking the local business down on Main Street to shop at Wal-Mart is a primary cause of that loss.

The most frequent excuse given by the uninformed and ignorant for shopping at Wal-Mart is that merchandise is cheaper. It is for those people that Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is must see filmmaking. This feature length documentary once and for all puts to bed the notion that Wal-Mart’s low prices are without consequences for each and every one of us who value life before the mega store. This retail giant has enacted a civic jihad against small towns across the country and this documentary clearly lays out the damage that has been done by low prices, all the time.

With a clear presentation of the facts, documenting the damage inflicted, this film clearly indicts the Walton clan for its predatory retailing and destruction of an American way of life—American Main Streets and local business districts. For instance, in the film, mention is made that when Wal-Mart opens a store in Maine, on average, $7.8 million dollars are taken from small and family-run businesses during the first year of operation.

Next week (November 13-19), 400 organizations have come together to offer public showings of Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. In Maine, there are several showings taking place at the following locations:

November 15, 7pm-Portland/USM (Luther Bonney Auditorium)
November 18 and 19, 7pm-Brunswick/Bowdoin College (Sills Hall)
November 20, 7pm-Damariscotta/Skidompha Library (Porter Auditorium)

I hope as many people as possible see this important film. After seeing it, if you still think it’s in your best interest to shop Wal-Mart, then you’ll only have yourself to blame for killing our local communities.