WARM THOUGHTS

I was taking a walk minutes ago and I thought that I had hit the tropics. It is steamy hot outside!

Three memorable trains of thought from the walk:

First of all, I thought of a good blog post. It just suddenly hit me that I ought to write about this ‘Y’ topic. I thought of the contours for it and even began to contemplate title ideas. When I got back and sat down to write, something seemed odd and out of place. Only then did it strike me that I had already written about this in January. Conclusion no.1: I am a person of few ideas with a terrible memory who is likely to plagiarize her own writing. Conclusion no. 2: I should force myself occasionally to glance over my own blog. Unlike so many bloggers, I never reread anything of mine that is more than a day or two old.

Secondly, I thought about the email that I got this morning from Kyoto. It is from Mieko (Kazumi’s friend) and it says: “Last Saturday, we had an English Conversation Circle. You became a topic of conversation in the class. 'When Nina will be back again next year, we would like to invite her to our class.' we said.”
I had met at different times a total of four people from the English class at the Cultural Center of the town of Notogawa as they traveled to Kyoto to spend time with me and I had spoken to their teacher over the phone. I consider these “student meetings” no less important than the ones I had with university law students in Kyoto. However, something tells me that my funding source will not pay for me to travel back to Japan next year so that I can make an appearance at the English Conversation Circle of the Notogawa Cultural Center. Which is a shame.

Thirdly, I thought how fortunate it is that I have come to know a very kind soul who is computer savvy (and fellow blogger with a chirpy-looking kind of face; see sketch here) and who is willing to patiently explain to me the basics of the technology that I am using each day to blog with, thereby permitting me some degree of further experimentation with the size, shape and contents of the blog by the self-imposed June 1st deadline. In exchange I have offered to help him establish paternity rights over any nonmarital children that he may have (that is what I did for a number of years in my Legal Clinic). He has thus far not asked for such services, but you never know what the future may bring.

BOOK TITLES

Yesterday, a friend gave me a copy of Alexander McCall Smith’s new book, ‘The Full Cupboard of Life.” It was an extremely thoughtful gesture for a number of reasons, one of them being that she knows I am a fan of the person who wrote it. I have read numerous interviews with him and I find him irrepressibly funny and so full of zest that it makes me feel like I sleep my way through life by comparison. I have gone so far as to order McCall Smith’s 'Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld' series from England, since it is not available here in the States. His books are gently humorous, and from what I can tell, he himself is even more entertaining in person. I was sorry to miss his appearance at Border’s in Madison and so the gift of a signed book was an especially nice treat for me.

The book also made me think about the titles of novels I have come across just this year and how well suited or ill-suited they are, not only to the story, but to the market that they are attempting to impress. I like the title “The Full Cupboard of Life.” It is evocative and memorable and the publisher does well to include the picture of the ordinary cupboard shelves on the cover.

There are other titles that I am looking at right now that I also consider cool - ‘Global Soul’ (by Iyer), or ‘Ignorance’ (by Kundera) – brief, interesting titles.

Then there are, for me, the drip set: ‘Unless’ (by Shields) – completely forgettable, ‘Oryx and Crake’ (by Atwood) – I can never quite get the title right when I am talking about it, ‘Namesake’ (by Lahiri) – good book ill-served by boring title, ‘Pieces from Berlin’ (by Pye) – tells you absolutely nothing about the troubling Holocaust issues it confronts, ‘Three Junes’ (by Glass) – sounds like it should be about three women by that name, etc etc.

I know that some authors have a title in mind before they even write the first word of a novel. There’s a clever little book about this by André Bernard called "Now All We Need Is A Title," where he notes that mystery writer Raymond Chandler compiled lists of great titles for which he never wrote books, including "The Corpse Came In Person," "The Man with the Shredded Ear," "All Guns Are Loaded," "Too Late to Sleep."

Bernard also tells of titles that were changed at the last minute. Hitler wanted to title "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") as "Four-and-a-Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.” "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," by Sloan Wilson was originally "A Candle at Midnight,” and "Catch-22," by Joseph Heller was all set to be "Catch-18" before the author changed his mind.

When books become famous, the title becomes associated with that work alone, so that you rarely remember that Shakespeare was the source for "Brave New World," "Pale Fire," "The Dogs of War," "The Sound and the Fury," and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

To me, Kundera (see also ‘Ignorance’ above) struck gold, though, with “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” That title comes back to haunt me even more than the book itself. It is sheer genius to have four words play with a reader's psyche in such an enduring way.