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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Sunday, March 17, 2024

entry arrow11:51 AM | The Great American Novels

The Atlantic just dropped their list of The Great American Novels...



Goodness, I have only read 25 of these. Must really go back to serious reading. But happy for Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters making it. I read that book when I was studying in Japan at 21, and I loved it. [I lent it to a Finnish friend, and when she finished, she told me: “Now I understand you much better,” hahaha.] But I’m perplexed with its inclusion in this list, given its “American-ness” conceit: that novel is very much about post-war Philippines. Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart feels like the better fit.

The list, and my reads thus far:

[✓]  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
[   ]  An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925)
[   ]  The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (1925)
[   ]  Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927)
[   ]  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)
[   ]  Passing by Nella Larsen (1929)
[   ]  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
[   ]  Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)
[   ]  Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)
[   ]  East Goes West by Younghill Kang (1937)
[   ]  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
[   ]  U.S.A. by John Dos Passos (1937)
[   ]  Ask the Dust by John Fante (1939)
[   ]  The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
[   ]  The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
[   ]  The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
[   ]  Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
[   ]  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
[   ]  A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell (1942)
[   ]  All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
[   ]  The Street by Ann Petry (1946)
[   ]  In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (1947)
[   ]  The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford (1947)
[✓]  The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
[✓]  Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (1952)
[   ]  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
[   ]  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
[   ]  Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)
[   ]  The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)
[✓]  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
[✓]  Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
[   ]  Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (1956)
[   ]  Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (1957)
[   ]  No-No Boy by John Okada (1957)
[✓]  On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
[✓]  The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
[   ]  Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
[✓]  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1962)
[✓]  Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
[   ]  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
[✓]  Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
[   ]  The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald (1962)
[✓]  The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
[   ]  The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963)
[✓]  The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966)
[   ]  A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)
[   ]  Couples by John Updike (1968)
[   ]  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
[   ]  Divorcing by Susan Taubes (1969)
[✓]  Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
[   ]  Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
[✓]  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
[   ]  Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (1970)
[   ]  Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
[   ]  Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford (1972)
[   ]  Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)
[   ]  Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
[   ]  The Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta (1973)
[   ]  Oreo by Fran Ross (1974)
[   ]  The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
[   ]  Winter in the Blood by James Welch (1974)
[   ]  Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
[   ]  Speedboat by Renata Adler (1976)
[   ]  Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
[   ]  Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
[✓]  A Contract With God by Will Eisner (1978)
[✓]  Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran (1978)
[   ]  The Stand by Stephen King (1978)
[   ]  Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)
[   ]  The Dog of the South by Charles Portis (1979)
[✓]  Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1980)
[   ]  The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara (1980)
[   ]  Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley (1981)
[   ]  Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson (1982)
[   ]  Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips (1984)
[   ]  Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
[   ] A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1986)
[✓]  Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986)
[   ]  Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
[   ]  Dawn by Octavia E. Butler (1987)
[   ]  Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
[   ]  Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston (1989)
[✓]  Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn (1990)
[✓]  American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
[   ]  How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (1991)
[   ]  Mating by Norman Rush (1991)
[   ]  Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992)
[✓]  The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
[   ]  So Far From God by Ana Castillo (1993)
[   ]  Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
[   ]  The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993)
[   ]  Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee (1995)
[   ]  Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
[   ]  Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes (1995)
[   ]  Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
[   ]  I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (1997)
[   ]  Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
[   ]  The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (1999)
[   ]  Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
[   ]  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
[   ]  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
[✓]  The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000)
[   ]  The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams (2000)
[   ]  Erasure by Percival Everett (2001)
[   ]  I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine (2001)
[✓]  The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
[   ]  Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (2002)
[   ]  Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling (2002)
[   ]  The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart (2002)
[✓]  The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
[   ]  Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (2005)
[✓]  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
[   ]  A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
[   ]  I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (2010)
[   ]  Open City by Teju Cole (2011)
[   ]  Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (2011)
[   ]  The Round House by Louise Erdrich (2012)
[   ]  Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
[   ]  Nevada by Imogen Binnie (2013)
[   ]  A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014)
[   ]  Family Life by Akhil Sharma (2014)
[   ]  Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)
[   ]  The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
[   ]  The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)
[   ]  The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
[   ]  Amiable With Big Teeth by Claude McKay (2017)
[   ]  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017)
[   ]  Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (2018)
[   ]  Severance by Ling Ma (2018)
[   ]  There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
[   ]  Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (2019)
[   ]  Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
[   ]  The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)
[   ]  No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (2021)
[   ]  The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (2021)
[   ]  Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (2023)

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Thursday, March 14, 2024

entry arrow4:20 PM | Thinking Clearly



I’m going back to meds starting today. Been having enormous difficulty concentrating since December, and my usual tricks to go around the ADHD have not been working. I honestly didn’t want to go back to taking psychotropic meds, but I feel now that I do need to—for the sake of work. But this time around, I’ll take care not to get too entangled with the meds.

But I’ve forgetten this is how a normal brain works: without noise, without fogging. Today, while delivering my lectures, I knew exactly what to say, what words to use, what points to make. The ability to concentrate without trying too hard is a gift most neurotypical people take for granted. I envy this of them. The confidence that springs from raw brainpower is like no other. The world clears up before you, and you are able to breathe a little easier. I listen better, I read better, I speak better.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 178.



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Wednesday, March 06, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 177.



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Monday, March 04, 2024

entry arrow1:21 AM | Jaclyn Jose, 1964-2024.

What a loss. I hope she makes it to the Oscar In Memoriam, if only to commemorate her Cannes Best Actress win in 2016. [But that's not likely, sigh.]



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Saturday, March 02, 2024

entry arrow11:58 AM | David Bordwell, 1947-2024



All film enthusiasts/film students have their edition of Film Art. This was mine in college, and I still have it. RIP, David Bordwell.

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Wednesday, February 28, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 176.



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Tuesday, February 27, 2024

entry arrow8:08 AM | Cultural Amnesia

The older you get the more horrified you find yourself that many of the cultural milestones you know and that you thought would be forever are completely unrecognizable for younger generations. Sometimes that borders on ageism. I hate it for example when younger people make fun of Madonna today, like she wasn’t a firebrand that completely lit culture for decades and did a lot for the gays. But I take comfort in the fact that there will come a time that future younger people will make fun of Taylor Swift, and totally horrify her fans now. [Confession: Not that I was ever immune to this cultural amnesia when I was younger. When I first heard of the name “Engelbert Humperdinck” in high school, I was like: “The what?” And then laughed so loud. I thought the name so funny. And I actually remember refusing to believe the name was real. I had no idea he was a famous British pop singer in the 1960s. It’s probably just how culture goes. Nothing lasts forever, not even cultural cache.]

Other recent examples:

YouTube: The queens at Roscoe's not knowing who Kyra Sedgwick is.

The Atlantic: Generation Z being unable to read or write in cursive.

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Sunday, February 25, 2024

entry arrow11:05 AM | The Fascination of The Floor



I’m enjoying Rob Lowe’s new game show The Floor but its fundamental flaw is that it will always favor, as the overall winner, a player who will be called in later episodes. He/she succeeds on the labors of previous winners, and just swoop in winning great swathes of territory often after winning only one duel, relegating exhausted previous winners to the exit. But here’s what’s fascinating: the show also obliquely offers insight on how capitalism works. Yes, life under capitalism. It perfectly demonstrates the grit of the rat race: how one tries so hard, often on skills not demonstrably your own, to win life’s little duels — but the biggest “landowners” can rest easy and win the big cash at the end of each episode. The ease of passive income.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 175.



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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 174.



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Tuesday, February 13, 2024

entry arrow9:37 PM | Arbour, Ardor

Work today was exhausting for both of us, but we still made sure we made time out for our annual Valentine dinner, and always on the 13th. The food at Arbour was exquisite, but spending time with each other was the feast. Happy Valentines Day, Renz Torres!









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Monday, February 12, 2024

entry arrow9:02 PM | Today is My New Year's Day

I needed the little vacation from social media [actually, just Facebook] for a month of two. But today, I felt some kind of resurrection: I finally finished something for work that has been the anxiety monkey on my back for the past three weeks or so, and I could feel my body heave with relief the moment I finished that. This came after spending most of January sick in bed, suffering from a severe bout of upper respiratory track infection — although I had to force myself to get up only because the new semester just started. Today was really my New Year's Day. How's everyone doing?

 

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Wednesday, February 07, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 173.



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Wednesday, January 31, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 172.



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Tuesday, January 30, 2024

entry arrow4:42 PM | Do Not Find Me



I am finally done reading this. I struggled! Have you ever read a book that is so excruciating to read, but still mean to finish regardless of your fraying sanity because the memory of the book it is a sequel to is sacred to you? I loved Call Me By Your Name when I read it years ago, even way before the movie came out in 2017. I devoured it within a day, and my copy still occupies a singular place in my bookshelves. There really shouldn't have been a sequel.

But Andre Aciman, perhaps to satisfy a commercial demand brought on by the success of the movie, returns to tell more of Elio's and Oliver's tales. But this time, the language that was so ravishing in the first book — I remember it occasionally made me breathless, and I often stopped reading between paragraphs in sheer writerly jealousy — became so plodding and overwrought in this book. And Aciman knows it.



I've highlighted this passage from Find Me that shows him knowing full well that the tenor of his language was off. [It's the usual excuse by writers who cannot pen meaningfully realistic dialogues.]

And then to begin this book with a loooong section focusing on Elio's father meeting, in a train, a woman he would eventually seduce and marry. That section ["Tempo"] took me months to finish, because I certainly was not interested to read about the sexual escapades and cringy flirtations of Elio's FATHER. It is the longest section, too, significantly eclipsing Elio's section ["Cadenza"], which inexplicably devolved into a strange and unnecessary mystery involving a long-dead composer. Oliver's section ["Capriccio"] was the shortest of all, just a few pages of him trying to get it on with a man and a woman at his farewell party, while day-dreaming about love lost in Elio. The coda ["Da Capo"], when Elio and Oliver finally get together, is so short and so anti-climactic, it is a let-down of extreme proportions -- because we simply have come not to care anymore about Elio and Oliver after all that.

If you love Call Me By Your Name, avoid Find Me at all cost.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 171.



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Wednesday, January 17, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 170.



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Wednesday, January 10, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 169.



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Wednesday, January 03, 2024

entry arrow7:00 AM | Poetry Wednesday, No. 168.



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