On Not Writing

As you can see, or read, I am still not really writing.  I am getting migraines a lot now.  It truly fucking sucks, as I simply cannot afford the med.s to deal with the pain.  I can only afford to take care of the nausea. I need to hurry the fuck up and get certified already.

The last time I was in my fave. used bookstore, the owner recommended The Woman Warrior.  I have been skeptical about this book for like ever, but for some reason I just looked it up again, I think after perusing some archived college syllabi.  And for once, it looks interesting to me.  I love the book's opening line: "You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you.  In China, your father had a sister who killed herself."  I think I will eventually give this book a shot.  It is considered creative non fiction, as it cannot really be 100 percent memoir, as the author, Maxine Hong Kingston dabbles (wrong word, prolly) with myth and the like.  


From the syllabus where I saw this book, there were others.  The syllabus is from Columbia and it is from an undergrad. course: 


Flannery O'Connor, selected short stories

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

John Updike, Rabbit, Run

Saul Bellow, Herzog

Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night

Donald Barthelme, selections from Sixty Stories

Grace Paley, selected short stories


I fucking adore Grace Paley, and never had to read her an an undergrad (um, or as a certification program student in this nit wit education program I am currently in...) But I adore her.  I have even seen her read/speak.  She had an amazing story about a woman running through the projects which a former AA/ English professor recommended... Interesting, I do not remember her dying, but it looks as though she dies with all of them:  David Foster Wallace, Madeline L'Engle, Mr. JD Salinger, etc. 

Raymond Carver, selections from Where I'm Calling From






I have always wanted to write my own story, or personal essay about working in a call center and I wanted to title it "WhereI'm Calling from, or at least include some of Carver's text in the essay.  

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

Don DeLillo, White Noise

Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold




I hate that I am even posting this stupid blog and that I would even think stoopid Columbia University could help me come up with an idea of what to read.  Reading works for me, b/c I see it as a subversive act.  Reading for school or for anyone is fucking stupid.


But wouldn't it have been amazing to have an English major from a badass school like COlumbia, Fuck. 

Too lazy to fix the font issue.  Who fucking gives a gives a?!?!