The Education of Henry Adams

It is difficult to know where to begin and, on the face of it, impossible to do justice to one of the underappreciated masterpieces of American letters, The Education of Henry Adams. Sweeping across the nineteenth century from 1838 to 1905, The Education presents Henry Adams, who writes of himself in the third person, as a wry, slightly foolish, even feckless steam-age Socrates—knowing he knows nothing, agog at how little anyone else does, wondering at the massive transformations buckling and warping his world, from Darwinian evolution to railroads to the Civil War to Cunard ships.

To Hell and Back Again

Last night I had the chance to see a screening of To Hell and Back Again here at Princeton, thanks to React to Film and Prof. Meredith Martin.

This documentary tells the story of Sergeant Nathan Harris, a Marine squad leader who gets wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan. Using footage from Afghanistan and after, director Danfung Dennis weaves an affecting, complex story about the effects and experience of war.

Hamster Wheel Warp

So the semester's off with a bang. I'm taking two seminars for a grade (Poetics w/ Charles Bernstein, and Autobiography and Modernism with Maria DiBattista), auditing two others (Lit & Photography w/ Eduardo Cadava, and Problems of the Self, with Galen Strawson), taking a poetry workshop with Mark Doty, coordinating the graduate poetry colloquium, trying to get our anthology of vets fiction, Fire and Forget, off the ground, attempting to nag an agent into selling my war novel, War Porn, and some other bits and bobs.

As if I ever spent much time blogging, this semester may be especially strained. Yet at the same time, being crazy busy--and digging it--feeds some kind of energy demon (like Maxwell's demon, infinitely sorting through self-perpetuating magic) so who know? Maybe I'll be blogging more. Not procrastinating, proper, but burning excess.

So, all that all that, I must away to The Education of Henry Adams, an underappreciated American masterpiece I last (and first) read on my sweat-salt-stained cot in Baghdad. There are several upcoming poetry events in Princeton, for those down here on the plantation, that I'll let you know about--and one special literary event in Brooklyn, in November.

In the meantime, check out The Quivering Pen, the blog by David Abrams, whose Iraq war novel Fobbit just got picked up. Also, this, from Matt Gallagher's Kerplunk:

Caleb Cage, of the fantastic literary journal The Nevada Review, just published an essay at Small Wars Journal entitled "Journalist-Soldiers: Blogs, Books, and Freedom on the Battlefield." It's a thorough, intriguing analysis of the new type of combat memoir that has emerged from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and has a lot of very kind things to say about Kaboom. Check it out when you can.

Ulysses

And they're off! My semester began with an unexpected treat.

I had the great pleasure Monday of talking to some of the people at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia about a program they're developing for veterans and their children.

Helping them with their work was only half the fun, though. I also got to handle James Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses... which was awesome. The Penelope/Ithaca notebook gave me chills.

Thoughts on the Last Ten Years

In the New York Times: "The Only America They've Ever Known."

"Dirty Realism" in Granta

Check out the new Granta, which includes Phil Klay's story "Redeployment"--reviewed this week in the Economist.

Also don't miss his web-only story "OIF."

Chemin de Walter Benjamin

After Paris then Grenoble, I went to La Muse, a writers' retreat in Labastide-Esparbairenque (in the Aude in the south of France), where I spent three weeks finishing a rough draft of my memoir (currently titled Atopic M) and hiking the low, rugged slopes of the Montagne Nord.

One of the best things I did was lead some of my retreat-mates on a day hike through the Vallee de Resistance to le Roc de l’Aigle--but I’ll post more about that later.

I capped off the summer with a hike along the Chemin de Walter Benjamin (or la Ruta Benjamin, or the Walter Benjamin Trail), following the path he and Leslie Fittko took over the Pyrenees in 1940 to escape the Nazis.