Where the Wild Things Are

I always get really nervous whenever my favorite childhood books are turned into movies. Hollywood has a habit of destroying my childhood. One memory I have is of seeing the Golden Compass and leaving the theater in tears because it had been so bad.

So I was a little afraid when I bought my ticket for Where the Wild Things are, even though it's been so long since I read the book that the only sentence I remember is, "LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN," and to be honest I remembered it because it was a Facebook bumper sticker.

When the music by Karen O began, however, and Max began to dig around in the snow nostalgia was stirred up in me. When he slid belly-first into the ice cave, immersed in a private blue-glowing world, I thought, yeah, this is childhood.

And for all of its plot problems-none of the Wild Thing's problems reaching any kind of denouement being the major one-that is the movie's greatest quality. The high-energy music and the creation of a richly unique world brought me back to a time in my life when imagination was for its own pure creative enjoyment, and not something to marketed.

The scene that stands out as a perfect moment was not even from the book but particular to Spike Jonez's creation. It's when Max sticks his head into the world Carol has created out of sticks, perfect mountains painted and little clay figurines, and he pours water that rushes towards Max but at the last moment slides around. The quiet, miniature moment was crystalline and beautiful and entirely Jonez's own.

So yeah, thanks Spike Jonez for not stomping on my childhood. And I really mean that.

-Alyssa

fifteen books in fifteen minutes

I took this from ruth_the_sleuth.livejournal.com

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

Copy these instructions and tag your friends - because I'm interested in seeing what books are in your head.

1. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
2. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
3. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
5. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
6. Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
7. Watership Down
8. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (just saw part of the movie)
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
11. The Diaries of Anais Nin
12. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
13. A sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
14. The first Animorphs book (did those have titles?)
15. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.

A lot of these I've read recently or just enjoyed a great deal.

I tag anyone who happens to be reading this. Post it in the comments. I want to know.

-Alyssa

Women Hold Up Half The Sky

Not exactly a literary post, but I thought this Times magazine article is definitely something worth advertising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=7&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

I hate it when well-educated girls claim that they hate feminism, because they assume being feminist means being ugly and angry. Part of being a feminist is just being aware.

An Epistolary Post

Dear Blogland,

I am once again preparing to move vast distances in order to finish up my extremely expensive and possibly useless degree. I'm leaving behind a few friends scattered in the West and a few who have temporarily defected to Asia. Now, I've got to figure out how I'm going to stay in touch with all of these people.

No one likes finding out important personal information about a close friend through Facebook. Facebook puts your best friend on about the same importance scale as that random chick who friended your entire class during New Student Orientation. It's insulting, and depressing, but it's also so damn easy, which is why people just change their relationship status instead of picking up a phone and saying, "By the way, I'm getting hitched."

The problem is that I hate my cell phone. It's heavy and gets too hot and I can hear my own strange laugh in it. Deep down, I'm also afraid it's going to give me brain cancer. I also have a problem with emails, mostly that I never write them. In the deluge of mass list-serve messages and emails from professors I always forget to reply to anything that isn't urgent.

The one form of long-distance communication I love but am also bad at are letters. Also postcards, but I am so bad at sending those that I've been known to step off the plane and hand my friends the postcards, written out months ago, that I'd meant to send them.

I have a distinctive memory of one letter I received, which is more than I can say for any message or email. I was a freshman in the middle of my first semester. I came back from class exhausted and went to check my mail if only to delay when I had to go back up to my room and see my roommate, a slim girl who drank yogurt smoothies for meals and told me that, "everything bothered" her.

In the mail slot was a clutter of junk mail and letters for former occupants that I just let sit there. That day, however, a new letter had been slipped in the little aluminum slot. I opened the little door and found that the letter was from a friend from high school. When I turned the envelope around, I was greeted by a cartoon drawing of ghosts chasing a dragon across mountains, with little speech bubbles that said, "RAWR RAWR."

Just the drawing on the letter eclipsed all the dull tired crapiness of the day and is one of my favorite memories of that friendship. I took one small step towards being a happier person because of that letter.

Everyone likes mail, except probably mailmen. Maybe it's not the most "green" thing ever, but I'm slowly filling my address book and gathering together my freedom Liberty Bell stamps. I have some elephant stationary a friend gave me and some nice ink pens, good for drawing ghost cartoons. I'm ready for the new school year.

Sincerely,

Alyssa

Some Good Recession Reading

My friend loaned me Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell because I've recently returned from London. She thought the book was completely autobiographical and, knowing my writerly ambitions, said, "Good luck," as she handed it to me. I'm familiar with the grimness of Orwell-the monolithic library in London where I wrote my finals papers was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth-but for some reason I still assumed the novel would be some glamorized version of poverty, with brilliant Lost Generation-like characters who were completely broke but still managed to get a drink at any time.

I was completely wrong, of course. The book is beautifully written but made me feel dismal, which works because I feel like real literature should make you feel something and dismal tends to be the emotion of choice.

The book starts out with the narrator living in Paris and down to his last few hundred francs, and details the hell of pawnshops and seventeen hour workdays in restaurants (which, by the way, made me never want to eat at a restaurant again). When his job back in England is delayed, he begins tramping, which vaguely reminded me of my youth hostel days.

I'm not sure whether I entirely agree with Orwell's beliefs, but the book does make you rethink the way poverty works. I also now have a greater appreciation of food. And Orwell shows characters with an unshakable optimism and ability to stagger through a difficult life. My favorite was Bozo, the sidewalk artist who knew all the names of the stars. He gives the narrator a lovely speech, particular for the reader in a recession, about how you may have no money but if you have your humanity you can still be happy.

So yeah, not my favorite book, but something to definitely check out. Just make sure you have a fridge full for groceries first.

-Alyssa

An introduction to a Surprised Blogger

I originally typed up an entry about the beauty of blogs and the enrichment of Print, but then I realized how incredibly boring it was. I'm not sure if what I'm going to write instead will be any more interesting, but I'll certainly try.

I never thought I would be a blogger. I'm one of the vaguely hipster-ish people wandering around your college campus in clothes bought from Goodwill, the kind who owns a record player not because it is useful but but basically because it is old. My bicycle is vintage and weighs twenty pounds, and I work in a library with huge dusty tomes from the fifteen hundreds. I've spent most of my life around old, heavingly physical things, the exact opposite of what a blog is.

But we must move forward, and I think literature is adapting quite well to this new digital age. Hopefully I will adapt as well. There is a sense in budding writers of my generation that if we don't somehow adapt to the internet, we will all go the way of the wooly mammoth.

And so here I am, your new literary blogger, a title that may make some old-fashioned tweed wearing professors reel. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that title means, and hopefully I will be at least mildly entertaining and informative along the way.

-Alyssa

Musings on my vision for Cavalier

I want the brand to reflect a precocious, child-like sensibility. There should be an aspect of fantasy to it, wish-fulfillment: "Yes, we really are going to do that. We really are going to go there." When you talk to children, they often make outrageous plans, extend logic too far, and proliferate out of sheer momentum (ask a child to describe his/her vision of the perfect ski resort, vacation destination, amusement park, and you'll get something that doesn't quite make sense in places). I want Cavalier to be a grown up version of this exuberant envisioning. It should almost not make sense. A little stretched and strained in places (so that it's as if we're begging the question, "how far can a literary mag go? can it be a whole world?") and yet, polished in every respect. Child-like in ambition but adult in execution.

So please write to me. Tell me what you've always dreamed a lit mag might accomplish (oh I know, you're wondering why I chose to start a lit mag as opposed to some other business like a cafe or a boutique; what better venue for fantasy and adventure than creative writing, which for me is synonymous with those words; there is simply nothing more inherently FUN; certain writers manage to articulate the world in such truthful terms it feels inappropriate and illegitimate to be so deadly accurate; it becomes emotionally erotic to read, a real adventure, whether or not the work at hand actually concerns the subject of adventure).

Or write to me and just tell me something you wish existed in the world. A product, a service, a place, a community. At the very least, I will write back.

A word about our editorial tastes: yes, we love stories and poems that fit the aesthetic of our site snugly but we're looking for pieces that don't, as well. That jaggedness is important to us. So yes, stories and poems about hunting and fishing told in spare minimalist prose could definitely win us over.