making my day

i have been looking at this all day and laughing to myself:

thanks, matsui.

life is goooooooood

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love from norway

about a week ago, i received this incredible email. it was an epic letter, filled with ice and passion, travels to the fjords, stars in the austrailian bush, typos and grammatical errors, and much lust and longing. it was titled: "love from norway", and no, it was not any of my norwegian lovers anna, qs or aileen. i read it over and over again until i could take it no more and emailed it to several friends. due to popular demand, i will now post the following correspondence.

-

from Walter Elvenes
to diana.ali@gmail.com
date Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 2:12 AM
subject love from norway


Hello Lover,

Missing you. Seems so long since I was last wraped up in your wonderful body. Don´t worry that the CD didn´t work. The tracks are playing in my head and reminding me of how much I love you and have been laying them on Walter´s guitar. "Hold on to your heart let´s go home"

Reception not so good on phone and can't afford to ay for stuid texts from students while I´m away so the next time you hear my voice will be 9.30am on thursday when I touch down in manchester.

Weather good here. Have fallen on my arse badky navigating snow turned to ice. Walter is such a real man, traversing glaciers in dress shoes with a fag in his mouth, while I cling on for dear life - sliding towards the icy bottomless depths of the fjord.

Journey was a bit of a bugger and am knackered. Quite a lot of work involved in this alication. Have swallowed up all the information from copious app forms and advice sheets and now need to not panick while I let it distill and come up with a killer solution. It is now a matter of ride that this proposal is a success
.
Two french friends have just arrived and we must socialise and have dinner.

Wishe you were here lover. Walter sends love and welcomes you with open arms if you ever want to visit. It is erhaps like your south africa visit. Amazing geograhy but nothing to do except talk and be (and work in my case)

No sun or moon but more stars than I have seen since the bush of australia - and these shiny illuminations remind me of your love (and mine for you)

Home soon

Dan

-

so after my fifth read, i realized, with much disappointment, that this was not actually addressed to me (wah wah). it was a case of mistaken identity. so after consulting louie (as i habitually do with all of life's questions), i decided to wait, because clearly, this was a hoax. or spam. or a crazy person.

a few days later, this lands in my email:

-

from Walter Elvenes
to diana.ali@gmail.com
date Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:52 AM
subject why you not chatting to me?


Where have you gone lover. I am very tired nd frustrated. This week has been very hard, like trying to get a round eg into a square hole. a few hours ago we gave up the ghost and started from scratch. Have come up with a much simpler and less ambitious idea, but have a chance of creating a viable application with it.

Miss you so much. Working so hard. Very tired and not looking forward to the journey back or the mountains of work waiting for me.

I love you.

Write to me please

-

so now i start feeling bad because clearly, this is not a fake email, and the passion and longing are very real, at least to one of us. after a few more days of deliberation, i finally wrote a response back.

-

from Diana Lin
to Walter Elvenes
date Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 11:37 AM
subject Re: why you not chatting to me?

Hi Walter,

I don't mean to disappoint you, but I'm afraid you've been emailing the wrong person? It's taken me so long to tell you this is because, one, I thought this was a hoax, and two, because I thought if this wasn't a hoax, these are pretty personal emails, and I didnt want to make you uncomfortable. In the end I decided it's better to email you anyway; just in case these are real I didnt want to leave you hanging. I'm not sure who you are trying to email, but I'm quite sure it's not me. However, I wish you luck in reaching the person you intended to email, and would not mind knowing if you are successful.

Best,

Diana

-

another case of mistaken identity!!

-

from walelv
to dianaali@gmail.com
date Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 3:33 AM
subject About the mail


Hello Diana !

I'm sorry about the confusion the messages has brought you, but it's a friend of me who has sent this. He was visiting me (here in Norway) last week from Nottingham and used my laptop to send some mails. I do believe you know one called Dan. If you do, I like to say hello and thank for the time in Nottingham before Christmas.

Walter

-

from Diana Lin
to walelv
date Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:08 AM
subject Re: About the mail

Hi Walter,

I see, however, Dan actually has been emailing the wrong person, since I have never been to Nottingham. My email address is dianaali@gmail.com, and he's been trying to email diana.ali@gmail.com, so Gmail has been sending it to my mailbox. Would you mind forwarding my last email to him so that he's aware of this?

Thanks very much, Walter. Stay warm in Norway!

Diana

-

from walelv
to Diana Lin
date Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:45 AM
subject Re: About the mail


Hello again Diana

I'll tell Dan about the mistake and make sure he want do it again.

We are warm up here, north of the arctic circle. We don't have snow at the moment and +5 degrees. It seems like you have more winter and snow in GB.

Take care and stay warm yourself
Walter

-

aww...sad that i will no longer be receiving correspondence from lover dan! i think he should copy-paste me on every email he writes. epic.

a few months after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother decided to lease out the back rooms of her apartments. the tenant was a thirty-something flight attendant, and the family turned out en force to help clear out all the paraphernalia. some old clothes were donated, books given to church, medical equipment thrown out. i claimed grampa's old kmt uniform and his pipe.

in some drawers, my mom found stacks and stacks of letters, from back when people still believed in handwritten communication. they were from my grandfather's older brother, who lives in the pinyuan prefecture of shantung province. he had been a teacher. when my grandfather went to taiwan with the kmt army, the rest of the family had stayed behind.

my uncle had put together a slideshow for grampa's funeral, and it was then i saw a picture of my great-uncle for the first time. he looked exactly like my grandfather, except taller and emaciated. they had the same balding pattern and affable expression.

the letters. my great-uncle would write to my grandfather once a month every month since communication resumed between the mainland and the island. thousands of pages, hundreds of thousands of characters, hometown stories, well-wishes, weddings, births, deaths, documents, the writing becoming smaller and shakier as my great-uncle began losing his vision, and finally a new handwriting all together when cataracts blinded him and he had to dictate his letters. my name, too, amongst the words, spelled wrong but enough to see that i had somehow made my way into his world.

epiphany

today i had lunch with a mildly psychotic woman who is my mom's friend from church. she is also our life insurance agent. this woman has a habit of shouting "感謝主!!" loudly in the midst of sentences. when this happens i cannot but stare at her awkwardly because, i mean, what can you say to that?

this woman - let us call her betty - is one of the multitude of friends of my mother who wishes me to be wed to her son, who, at thirty, is apparently incapable of kindling a romance of his own. then again, guys from my church do oftentimes seem socially deficient.

but you know what, betty's son happens to be Jesus.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - JUST KIDDING! he's not Jesus! just a very sanctified guy who is patient, cooks, loves Jesus, the Bible, and who is seeking the Truth.

"well, auntie betty, i generally don't like guys from my church," i informed her politely over sauerkraut hotpot.
"why not??????" she shouted.
"i find them too conservative."
"my son is not conservative! he is simply seeking the Truth! and True Love!"

this conversation was carried in chinese, and i could see the words capitalized when i translated it in my head. before the meal, throughout the meal, after the meal, at coffee and briefly afterwards, she continued to subtly hint that i should immediately marry her son.

"diana, do you have a boyfriend? will you be going to europe anytime soon? you should visit the saints (ppl from our church) in europe! and my son! you should visit my son! my son is really great! he cooks!"

"oh diana, i love looking at you! you have such a beautiful forehead! i wish my son could meet you! oh how can i get you two young people to meet?"

i scratched nervously around the vesuvian pimple that had erupted on my forehead two days ago and that was refusing to either diminish or altogether vanish.

"diana, you DRAW? AND you write? you are so wonderful! so talented! just like your mother!"

it was then i suddenly realized that what betty really wanted was not for me to marry her son. that was inconsequential. or rather, that was means to an end. she couldnt have cared less about me marrying her son. no. what dawned upon me was that she, in fact, really wanted to marry my mom.

i mean, obviously my mom is married. betty is married. my mom is definitely a closet fag hag, but she also most definitely does not like women. my mother is a very very classy woman, is always put together, very generous, excellent taste in everything. women like betty are drawn to these qualities in a woman. however, a state of union between them is clearly impossible. which is why she turned to me and her son, because hey, if you can't be wives with each other, you might as well be inlaws!

with that, i felt a rush of warm affinity for her son. he was not an uptight, sanctified Jesus freak! he was simply a pawn in his mother's vast conspiracy to gain my mother for her personal satiation! as was i! with that, i sipped my hot chocolate and smiled sweetly at betty. "i hope your son finds True Love, auntie."

yummmm

a lot of people have been asking me for book recommendations lately, and i looooove talking about books, so i decided to post my top ten reads, something i've never done before. most of them are novels that i'd consider my favorites, i guess, but some i've included simply because reading them is a singular and spectacular experience in itself. i was actually surprised by how easy it was to put the list together; i guess i'd already filed these away as must-reads for some time now.

also, i dont discriminate between high lit, bestsellers and genre. if something's good, it doesnt matter which section of the bookstore it's in (i do however discriminate against stickers. for example if there's a nobel sticker slapped on it, i'll probably hate the book. just about every british book is nominated for the orange, and if it's an oprah club book i probably wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole).

the list

10. the alienist, by caleb carr

a long time ago, someone once donated a large suitcase full of books to me, filled mostly with crap i dismissed, like the alienist. but after i exhausted the seemingly more interesting books pile, i grudgingly turned to the second-tier options, starting with creepy-looking alienist. one chapter in and i was hooked. i'm not a history buff, and carr specializes in historical fiction, but the story was so engaging, the characters so well developed that i finished the book and immediately hunted down the rest of his work.

the story is set during theodore roosevelt's presidency (teddy makes a few appearances throughout), and follows an alienist (what they called psychiatrists/psychologists in the 1800s) and his motley crew of investigators hot on the heels of a brutal serial killer. all this occurs right at the cusp of the development of forensic evidence, which carr uses to bring the history to life. i like calling this book the thinking person's da vinci code: an action-packed thiller wtih head, heart, and humor, written so well it hardly seems fair to call it pop fiction.
the alienist was so successful that carr wrote a sequel called angel of darkness, almost as good as the alienist, but lacks a little of the originality of the first. but forget reading the rest of carr's books, they suck pretty bad.

9. yellow, by don lee

once upon a time this book was my all-time favorite. why is it not ranked higher then? well after seven years you kind of get over it. that doesnt discount the value of these vignettes, though. yellow is a collection of shorts i came across accidentally when looking for frank wu's yellow: race in america beyond black and white. as-am authors are so fucking original. anyway, back then my concept of "asian american lit" was defined solely by the twin terrors of amy "i sold my soul for piles of solid gold royalties" tan and maxine "i sold my soul to sit on the peak of the mountain of chinese corpses who died for my tenure at berkeley" hong kingston. the popularity of these two bit-i mean-writers pretty much saturated the market for the "asian american" section of required reading. as a result, america seems to think that most asians have a tortured family history with a lot of skeletons rattling in the oriental jade pearl dragon closet. ANYWAY, i digress.

yellow was a breath of fresh air. for the first time, i read about the lives of people that could be me in ten, twenty years, living lives of complexity and normalcy in california. and i read about them through a screen of simple, elegant prose that bears none of the scars "ethnic" literature so often carries with it. i think part of the attraction of yellow was the identification factor, but with portraiture that is beautifully rendered.

senior year of college, i actually met don lee. when viet (an english professor i was mildly in love with) introduced me to him, i was reduced to a blithering idiot who babbled on about how much she enjoyed yellow. what i SHOULD have said, was, "don, how long will you be in town for? would you be free for coffee at some point? and if you need someone to show you around LA just let me know."


8. a prayer for the dying, by stewart o'nan

oh my God, this book is hands down the darkest book i've ever read. not depressing, dark. o'nan has a reputation for experimental writing, and prayer is written in second person. the narrative arc is simple: diphtheria wreaks havoc on a small town, and the narrator, the town's sheriff/deacon/pastor does his best to maintain order as the world crumbles around him. simple, yes, and o'nan uses this backdrop to create an atmosphere that grows bleaker and bleaker, ultimately blanketing both the town and the reader in a shroud of gloom. some critics say that this is o'nan's examination of morality in a time of extenuating circumstances, but i think considering this sort of detracts from the novel's efficacity. what o'nan succeeds in is crafting a nameless, shapeless horror that rises from the pages, and envelops the reader. it is as much about the structure of the story (linear) as it is about the delivery (very fine, very subtle prose). there really has been nothing else like this.

so clearly, this is not a 'favorite' of mine, but i think that you don't necessarily have to like books to enjoy them. the enjoyment from reading prayer is to witness the skill and draftmanship of a master writer. but again, prayer is very much a singular experience. i was so impressed by o'nan that i went out and got his novel night country and it was a terrible disappointment.

7. middlesex, by jeffrey eugenides

jeffrey eugenides is probably one of the greatest contemporary psychological novelists alive. with virgin suicides, he was able to summon an amazingly believable portraiture of youthful ephermerality that is completely suffocated. it was daring and effective.

middlesex is a completely different work from its predecessor. it's a first-person account of the life of an intersexual individual, with his family history woven throughout. the writing is very rich and lush, quite a departure from the delicate and fluffier prose that held together virgin suicides, and the feeling you get is that watching a luscious tapestry of words and phrases unfold before you as our narrator grows and matures.

middlesex won eugenides the pulitzer, because them poo-leet-zuh folk love them family histories and stories of LIFE! i mention this another book that i read long ago also won the pulitzer and i constantly compare the two of them. the stone diaries, by carol shields, is possibly the worst and boringest book i've ever read in my life. worse than siddhartha, i promise. it follows the life of a really really boring canadian woman from the time she is born until she dies. she does and accomplishes absolutely nothing. the writing, however, is magnificent. one of passages in the novel contains the phrase (roughly), "and she remembers her father's words coming at her like a blizzard of dots." it's a characterization of words that i have never forgetten. middlesex, however, approaches a paradigm of sexcellent writing and engaging plotlines and characters. the unusual characteristics of our hero also breeds for a unique reading experience. there are, i recall, some sections that waxed rather boring since i am not greek and i am not interested in the greek immigrant saga. but besides that, middlesex is a brilliant read by one of best writers of this literary generation.

6. the english patient, by michael ondaatje

i'm still surprised by how much i love this novel. typically i'm not taken by prissy shit that could be characterized as "elegaic". But elegaic it is, and there is really no other way to describe it. the english patient is held together by patient observation of the human condition, deep compassion and a beautiful, gentle isolation. the story surrounds three central characters: a nurse, a soldier, and the title character, a man delivered to the nurse's care burned beyond recognition. the youth of the nurse and the soldier, who is sikh, are set against the experience and worldview of the english patient; a collective relationship between the three evolves amongst the distant backdrop of world war ii. i didn't think it possible, but as elegaic as this book is, it is also really sexy. oh, and you know what else is sexy? ondaatje is SRI LANKAN canadian, hell yeah!

the english patient is an amazingly complete novel, so full of bittersweet longing that after i finished reading i felt like my whole body gave a sigh of contentment. i had a very similar feeling after i watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, and to a much lesser extent, the hours (the movie).

5. snow crash, by neal stephenson

yes!! top five!! now it gets good. SNOW CRASH. so, i'm totally into instant gratification when it comes to movies: i like shit with a lot of bangs (both kinds) and attitude, aka aksion movies. it doesnt necessarily translate into what i like in literature, but there's this little subgenre called CYBERPUNK, that gives me everything i could ever want in life. it crystalizes into an art form in SNOW CRASH. basically, think of the funniest, most bad ass, most attitudous books you ever read, put them on crack, and there you have SNOW CRASH. snow crash is so funny that i would crack up laughing in the middle of reading and crack up afterwards just thinking about it.

there's a lot of discrimination when it comes to "genre" fiction, and sci-fi labors under a lot of the same misconceptions that popular fiction falls under. EXCEPT...in the case of cyberpunk it is totally unwarranted. stephenson's works are meticulously researched and draw with detail and precision from many vast bodies of knowledge and the writers are masterful at what they do.

um...a weak attempt at summarizing the plot: it has something to do with programming, a virus, sumarian language, saving the world and this aleutian dude. forget it, just read the fucking book.

4. neuromancer, by william gibson

neuromancer is another cyberpunk novel, there is less attitude and much less humor, but it is uniformly the most perfectly stylized book i've ever read. the nature of cyberpunk - fast-moving, futuristic, low-brow vs high-tech - makes the plot hard to follow, but that is quickly obliterated by the fact that you are reading pure, unadulterated STYLE. nothing comes even close to how fucking amazing neuromancer is as an exemplar of cool writing. every person, every object, every situation is just brimming with energy and colors.

it's about a hacker junkie who hired to do a hack in the wicked crazy cool futureverse of jaypannn set some time in the future. he's paired with this hot mod slice molly who is possibly the baddest of asses ever pulled out of thin air and together they go forth to save the world! actually i dont know about the last part, but everything is so fast paced and exciting it's hard to keep up!! but in all seriousness, gibson's writing is not just beautiful it's moving. it's like looking at a piece of metal that is reflecting a spectrum of lovely lights except these are words that he's manipulating to create these illusions of colors.

what stephenson and gibson are so successful at is the ability to really characterize the era well. they not only show you what the city looks like, but they give its residents collective quirks and idiosyncrasies to place you somewhere completely alien, yet unsettlingly familiar.

ALSO, fun fact, and this shows just how fucking cool neuromancer is: you know those head jacks that everyone's plugged into in the matrix? they got that idea from neuromancer! that's right bitch!

3. a confederacy of dunces, john kennedy toole

a confederacy of dunces is the most recent book to be added to my best reads. it is the most awesomely nutty book EVER. the book's main character is an obese, megalomaniacal ultra-conservative armchair philosopher with a perverse set of morals that he stands by and exonerates himself from, and within a short period of time you meet a crazy set of characters that populate new orlean's french quarter. the various subplots twist and develop and ultimately collide quite literally.

the book is rich in descriptions and spunky dialogue; the principle character especially is prone to eloquent pontifications a la verbal diarhea on the state of morality in the world. there is some cultural criticism, but executed in a way that makes it seem like toole's objective is far from serving a moral lesson. confederacy is this vast, fabulous cornucopia of crazy topped off with some of the most wacked-out characters you'll ever read. the novel is often described by critics as a 'comic fugue', a very apt description since it basically marks precisely the development and structure of the plot.

this book did make me crack up numerous times, i believe the humor can be said to be maniacally funny. this was the author's first of two books: john kennedy toole committed suicide at the age of 32 and both his novels were published posthumously. it's small comfort that his genius was recognized and he received the 1981 pulitzer.

2. jonathan strange & mr norrell, by susanna clarke

sigh. i just finished reading this 800-paged tome for the third or fourth time this week and like every time previous, i wished it was twice as long. this book is an absolute masterpiece. it was created with so much attention to detail, was so well thought-out and so meticulously researched that it's hard to believe that js&mn was susanna clarke's debut novel.

jonathan strange and mr norrell is the an alternate history novel set in the early 1800s that deals with the return of magic to england. the two eponymous magicians are the centerpiece of a vast magical history that involves faerie kingdoms and a panel of fascinating characters. to spice up the reading, clarke peppers the story with footnotes referencing fictional publications and fictional mythology that sometimes tie into the storyline, and sometimes are just fun sidestories. and clarke not only steeps the story with historical fact, her writing also emulates the style of 19th century prose, down to the very spelling and narration. the structure of the narrative itself is splendidly orchestrated so that all the information you've been given throughout the reading comes into play for a final, powerful ending (that leaves you wanting MORE MORE MORE!!!). it took her ten years to produce js&mn and ten years have given this book verve and authority that even seasoned writers can only hope to acheive. whimsical seems too light of a description to give a magnum opus of eight hundred pages, but clarke dares to take on the tone of whimsy, possibly because she knows the grandeur of the body speaks for itself.

clarke is currently working on the sequel to jn&mn, which has me and clifton positively twitching with excitement, except that we may very well be twitching for another five-eight years.


1. 21st century manzanar, by perry miyake

21st century manzanar gets the number one slot for a couple reasons. one) miyake gets a handicapp because he's asian american. two) it's a fucking great book. three) it has attitude up the ass. four) it's fucking hilarious. miyake is without a doubt the least well-known writer on this list. but it's not for lack of trying. or lack of deserve. hell if it was about deserve, he'd be taught in college classrooms on both coasts. but he gets slammed into a niche despite the fact his writing scorches off the page, and despite the fact his attitude doesnt so much make your butt itch as it does slaps you across the face with a fat dick and make you go "damn where the fuck does he get this shit from?" junot diaz got nothing on this, i promise.

it's an alternative reality piece, posing the answer to the question, what if wwiii were in fact an economic war, and all things japanese - again - were given the short end of the stick aka incarcerated in internment camps? as the answer lays itself in front of you, the prose by which it does will beat you relentlessly on the head, showing you things you'd never want to see, making you smell the nastiest shit, and all the while you'll want to laugh and cry. and then maybe throw up.

i took karen yamashita's as-am lit senior year. she's an amazing writer and the nicest person, but she was a pretty horrifyingly awful teacher. to seal the deal i saw early on that she had put 21st c manzanar on the syllabus but had crossed it out. i asked her why, and she said that it was a great book but it ultimately degenerates into slapstick. this might be true, but part of it is also the nature of the work miyake's presenting. it's a satire of the highest degree and wholly self-conscious. it may or may not be a cautionary tale, but to categorize it as such detracts from its scope as an allegory.


anyway, those are my top ten. i was gonna write about some notable authors, but i think i'm too tired. perhaps a part deux.

case of the crazies

six hours at the library with an old lady at your table giggling intermittently every ten seconds while you are taking diags and slogging through practice problems will make you want to bludgeon someone to death.