Steal Like an Artist

What a great read, and yes they do sometimes come in short, compact reads!  The book, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, is a wonderfully creative book that outlines ten things nobody told you about being creative.  So here is the list:  1.) Steal like an artist (yes borrow other people’s work and let it become your own), remember nothing is original!  2.) Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started (fake it until you make it!). Good theft is to honor the person you have stolen from, study others, steal from many, credit those you steal from and remix!  3.) Read the book you want to read (I love this, makes such sense!).   4.) Use your hands: art that comes from the head isn’t any good.  5.) Side projects and hobbies are important (I tell all of my life clients to ensure that they develop their fun and creative side – so go write a poem, draw, or play the guitar).  6.) The secret: do good work and share it with people.  We have the internet – now go blog, share your crazy ideas and have people reflect and give you some feedback… what’s the down side?  7.) Geography is no longer our master: leave home; you are no longer tied to where you grew up!  8.) Be nice, the world is a small town (we all need curiosity, kindness, stamina, a willingness to look stupid!  9.) Be boring, it’s the only way to get work done, “be regular orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”  10.) Creativity is subtraction – choose what to leave out after you create something… not everything you create is going to be great.  The book has some great quotes from distinguished poets, artists, philosophers, and other smart writers such as T.S. Eliot whose quote notes: “Immature poets immature; mature poets steal… the good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that which it was torn.”  I loved the illustrations, doodles and simple language / ideas and great quotes throughout.  This generation of “I’m going to make it, but I’m tired now” will get a kick in the backside reading this book.  I loved it.  Go spend $11.95 and give this one for yourself.  I think it should motivate you, it did for me!  A keeper!

Shantaram

Once in a while you read a long, very long, did I say this was long?, book and you think this is too long… but you don’t put it down because it is actually really compelling.  That was the case for Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, which is “influenced” by his real-life story of a convicted bank robber from Australia who struggles with heroin addiction and escapes to an adventure of a lifetime in Bombay, India.  Roberts escapes from a maximum security prison, Victoria’s Pentridge Prison, during daylight in an unusual escape plan with another inmate. After hiding out in Australia, an old college professor and mentor meets up with him and encourages him to leave the country before he is captured (as he is listed on the top ten most wanted convicts in the country).  Roberts names the main character Lindsay, or known as Lin, and the bulk of the book focuses on the many people that Lindsay meets after his entry into Bombay.  His friendship with a local, Prabaker, who helps him find a hideout in the slums of town, changes his life and how he is viewed by those who interact with him when Lin becomes the local “doctor”(!) helping locals with low-level illnesses and other problems within the village.  Lin learns the local language and becomes a hero for the lowly and those in need of a bit of care.  Lin falls in love with Karla, a woman with a very sordid past and eventually is recruited into the underworld “mafia” of Mumbai, which leads to a jail term in which Lin is tortured, as are many of his fellow-jailers.  Lin finally gets out of the jail through the help and protection of an Afghan mafia don, Abdel Khader Khan, a man who befriends Lin time and time again. He later goes to Afghanistan to smuggle weapons for the freedom fighters. Later his mentor is killed and Lin finally realizes he became everything he grew to hate and falls into depression. He finally reunites with his love Karla and guess what happens?  Does Lin reunite with her?  The character of Lin is continually evolving, questioning his ability to be good and do the right thing, struggling with drug use, and never sure of how he can feel the kind of emotion that he never received from his parents.  Reminder, this is a really long read, but it is hard to put down.  Lots of learning about the underworld, the Indian culture, and the crime underworld.  There is sadness and a depth in the various characters that Lin meets during his travels.  Prabaker is my favorite.  This might be a great holiday or spring break read.

McTeague

McTeague by Frank Norris is truly a pre-cursor to what we now watch in movies or television.  The story is set in the late 1890s during the time of San Francisco’s gold rush and finding quick money.  Imagine being a dentist, well kind of, and losing your ability to practice after it is found out you self-taught yourself!  Then imagine this same “dentist” falling in love with his friend’s girlfriend, who is his cousin, and taking her away from your best friend.  This is really a pretty dark story.  Lots of violence and raw emotion from characters, who are singularly focused based on their emotions – love, anger, and despair.  McTeague, the lead character, is the self-proclaimed dentist who meets Trina as a patient when his friend Marcus brings her in with a series of issues with her teeth.  During his working on her mouth, McTeague falls in love with her and makes his move.  Marcus is furious, but gives in to McTeague’s overtures to Trina when he sees that she feels the same way.  McTeague and Trina do marry and simultaneously Trina learns she wins the lottery, a $5,000 win!  Marcus leaves town angry, having lost his love and also the access to a $5k lottery win.  McTeague and Trina live in a modest home as Trina becomes a miser after her winnings.  McTeague loses his dental practice when it is believed that Marcus (based on his anger of the situation) has told the local authorities that he has no educational credentials to be a dentist!  Trina and McTeague’s neighborly friends’ (an older married couple) relationship comes to a demise when the woman’s husband slits the throat of his wife over an argument and later the husband commits suicide by jumping into the river and drowning.  This theme of anger and violence continues throughout with McTeague and also Trina exhibiting unnatural and wild animalistic behavior.  As Trina becomes more miserly, she demands her husband to live more frugally until the point she throws him out of the home for not providing more money (she wanted him to live on pennies and she would then pocket the extra money for savings).  After the last blow-up between the two, Trina throws him out for good, but McTeague steals $400 from her hidden chest.  Trina gets more frugal by moving to an even smaller apt, cashes in her $5k lottery winnings and then refuses McTeague when he returns with no money and in total destitution.  McTeague goes crazy and brutally kills his wife and steals the money she hid from her lottery winnings.  He escapes out of the area but is chased down in Death Valley desert by none other than his nemesis… Marcus!  I won’t reveal the final battle!  The story reminded me of the movie No Country for Old Men, non-stop senseless violence.  The story was written by an aspiring author who died at a very young age and it is believed he drew upon a real life story in San Francisco for the story.  In any case, not my cup of tea.  Well written, but not the type of story that inspires me.  The characters were rather uninteresting while the storyline was a bit over the top.  A relatively quick read with a ton of reflections by other authors after the story.  I’d pass on this one…

The Blue of Distance

In the short story "The Blue of Distance," Rebecca Solnit presents a series of people who lived during different periods of time in the United States and transitioned to a new life during their journey.  Each character had a similar transformation, being captured by a “tribe” or group of some sort, losing their identity, and becoming someone new.  The first person came in 1527 with a group of Spaniards.  Alvar Nunez Cabeza ventured to the southern part of the US through the Florida region who came seeking gold.  He was captured by a group and later became a slave to the tribe who held him for the rest of his life and as the author describes “loses his skin like a snake,” becoming someone different along the way.  In 1704, Eunice Williams is captured by a party of French and Indian raiders at age seven and stands by as her mother and other family members are killed.  She is adopted by the group and forced to marry one of the community members.  She ends up living with him for the next fifty-two years and with the community until she dies at age 92.  Mary Jemison is the next who was captured in 1758 when there was a raid on her parent’s frontier farm.  She too was adopted by the group who kidnapped her and her life changes as she joins the Seneca tribe.  Then there was Cynthia Ann Parker who was captured by the Comanches on a Texas plain where she also needs to shed her past and become a member of the group that she is now a member.  Finally, Thomas Jefferson Mayfield transitions in the US from one culture to another after the Civil War broke out, adapting the difference that now exists after the war.  As the author notes, “even in the everyday world of the present, an anxiety to survive manifests itself in far more rugged occasions than those at hand, as though to express some sense of the toughness of things and readiness to face them.”  There is a readiness for what comes next in those days, where transitions occur seamlessly.  “The strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange, at least awkward”… what a beautiful way to state how change was dealt with and became a part of the being whose life changed in a moment without care for the individual.  Solnit makes the point how cultures go through a sense of “anguish” and people are taken away without thought or ability to fight back.  Her description of the butterfly that goes through distinct stages very much fits these characters and the lives they live.  The days described in the story capture the idea of transformation consisting “mostly of decay and then of crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt” like that of the butterfly.   Solnit’s story captures the times and connects our thinking of change through that which we link towards the butterfly’s metamorphosis. Her writing is creative and her symbolism connects the past to the picture we visualize of change, transformative and stage like, one that is clear and far reaching.  When you take the brief character overviews of the four you see similarities on losing your identity and becoming someone else, all doing so very easily.  It makes me wonder whether that is still present in our lives today? Or is this only the way it used to be?  Are we all not like the caterpillar, crawling along looking for our way so we can finally fly away into a more meaningful and connected life?  Ah, the blue of the distance – it’s out there, yet can we ever get there?  

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62

For those who love the historical war books, this one is for you: A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62 by Alistair Horne.  The Algerian war lasted 8+ years and through this blood bath over a million Algerian Muslims were killed. Six French governments fell from power during the reign of terror.  This was a war for the declaration of freedom of Algeria from French governmental rule.  The war began shortly after World War II ended.  A weakened French army defends its position as the ruler of its “declared French state” (Algeria) and fights to the finish by using torture and murder by battling the FLN (The National Liberation Front).  The war involved a large number of rival movement groups which fought against each other at different moments and against the French.  The book presents the leadership’s perspective, especially the French General Charles de Gaulle and how he changed his approach along the rocky road to the point of giving up Algeria back to its people.  There are in-depth descriptions of the military undertakings to the point of the independence of Algeria.  For those who like the turnings of the people and the leadership undergoing a civil war, this book will provide everything you’d like and more.  For me, this was a LONG read introducing many pro-independence individuals, and those for keeping Algeria a captive of the “motherland,” France.  The brutality of the murders is pretty graphic and present a horrible state of terrorism to fight against France.  The author does a nice job of balancing perspectives and sharing the thoughts (from primary sources), statements, and quotes from the various players during the war.  Again, those with a liking towards historical readings, this will be a huge read for you…. for me, not really my cup of tea.  I’d say take a pass, or else be ready for a really long read!