Nil Oat

Tao Lin writes things that are good.

If he wrote a sentence that said something is good it would be better than the sentence I just wrote, even if he wrote the same exact sentence.

That is how good he is.

Read everything he has ever written and ever will write, including things that he writes and publishes on the internet. Or in The Stranger.

I just read Richard Yates. Before that I read Shoplifting from American Apparel, which I bought at the reading so Tao Lin could sign it. I am a fangirl. Before that I read You are a little bit happier than I am, which is an important book of some short poems and some long poems and some poems with long titles. Before that I read Bed, which is a book of stories of a normal length. Before those books I read Eeeee Eee Eeee. That one is my favorite but not just because it was the first one I read.

Books are good but I wish Tao Lin would write zines because zines are good too and his zines would be better than good. They'd be a lot better than mine, which are crap.

Tao Lin is good at book readings, especially in Seattle at Elliot Bay. I'm not sure why the people who read his books have stupid and/or racist questions. I'm not sure why those people read his books and then go to his readings. But they do. It's fine though; it's ok to watch him defeating the audience. This September, I witnessed many small deaths.

No one will read this except people I already know. Most of you have already listened to me talk about these books. Or you have listened to me read from these books, in a fake-sounding monotone. By now you have already decided to read these books or not. It's your life.

What I Saw & What I'm Reading

Today in Portland I spotted a mustachioed deer through a forest of ribbons in a shop window on Hawthorne. The causes of the current mustache/beard craze had eluded me- until now. Something about the addition of that little muddy brown plume of facial hair makes me trust this deer and whatever advice it would offer with quiet patience.

Michael Ruhlman doesn't have a mustache in the author photo on the jacket of his book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, but, like the mustachioed deer, I trust this book with a wheel of cooking ratios depicted on its cover. Ruhlman's plainly stated suggestion is this: cooking can be streamlined down to a matter of ratios. Having been known to spend (waste??), hours of my life pouring over cookbooks and collecting recipes (some of which I'm sure I'll never use), I felt a little lost at first but this is about building a knowledge base and developing competencies, not about abandoning recipes altogether. To make cookies, just remember the method and 1 part sugar : 2 parts fat : 3 parts flour. Anything else, like chocolate, eggs or lavender, is just a variation on the basic dough. Pie crust, brine, pasta dough: knowing the ratios of each respective food might not make recipes irrelevant but it does seem to make them nonessential. This calculated, analytical method to cooking appeals to my desire to broaden the repertoire of foods I can prepare without a recipe. What a great day I'm having.

Independent people: an epic by Halldór Laxness; translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson

Halldór Laxness is perhaps the only Nobel Prize Winning authors otherwise respectable English majors have not read. Or heard of. But they should, and here's why:

Laxness' well-crafted but plain language punctuated by complex poetry sets a sophisticated stage for the contemporary Icelandic saga. In Independent People, he delivers an early 20th century tale that feels like a Medieval saga and is startlingly relevant to contemporary Icelandic and Western culture. Opening with the superstitions and of old Iceland, the story maintains an air of the conflict between ancient and modern Iceland, as well as a conflict between where modern Iceland is and is headed. Conflict between pagan ritual and Christian doctrine, co-operative society and capitalism, ancient verse versus modern poetry, and the saga of Orvar-Oddur against Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Not only do issues of ancient versus modern society arise but also Iceland's own isolation from Europe specifically but also from the rest of the world. Snow White is not only a modern threat but a European one. While the idiotic World War rumbles, Icelandic farmers continue to calmly discuss amongst themselves the best way to deal with wormy sheep and bask in the profits as Icelandic goods raise enormous prices while others romanticize crossing the green glass sea and yearn for foreign travel.

In the middle of all of these conflicted values is the stoic Bjartur, an independent man. He has ended a term of near-slavery under the Rauthsmyri and now plans to be indebted to no one. He takes up sheep farming at a legendary haunted and ill-fated croft he has nameed Summerhouses. He is proud of the roughly-constructed and humble dwelling he's built for himself and takes pains to use what he has and not go into debt by doing anything foolish like buying a cow. Things quickly go downhill before the new wife has crossed the real threshold of the land and thus begins a bleak ride through the decades-long hard times of one determined crofter.

Bjartur lives primitively, eating dried waste-fish in a muddy floored lousy hovel at a time when wealthier individuals enjoy luxuries in storied houses and ride around in automobiles. He's not only a producer but an anti-consumer and an ultimate survivalist. Even so, when all is through, these truths are apparent: man is man's worst enemy; "no matter what he does, man can not gain independence": wanting more than a basic hole in the earth for shelter is more than what any man can afford and will bring forth his ultimate financial demise (and death of independence); capitalism cannot sustain itself in Iceland's isolated economy but socialism, maybe. Oh, and "a free man can live on fish better than meat." Think about that one.

Independent People is a complicated novel that picks out and flags economic and social failings early on that have contributed to the current financial crisis in Iceland and elsewhere. Harsh realities are revealed and difficult relationships unfold in the often sublime but sometimes punitive natural landscape. This is certainly one of the best works of Icelandic fiction I've read this year and definitely worth a try if you're interested in such. Watch out for thorns: misogyny, woman-slapping, white ethnocentric attitude. Suggested for fans of Sigrid Undset.