Genius and its discontents

I just finished reading T. C. Boyle's The Women, Boyle's fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright and his wives and lovers. I like T. C. Boyle's writing, although I can't say I loved this book. It was interesting to read, despite some slow parts, mostly because, although I  am familiar with a number of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings - and some of their structural woes - I was not familiar with the story of the murder of his lover and six other people at the Wisconsin retreat house he had built on family property.  That's not the central idea of the book, but part of the intrigue behind a man who had an ego larger than life.  He was a certain kind of genius and he knew it, but he also spent a lot of time and money convincing other people he was a genius.

The megalomania and obsessiveness that drives certain creative types to ignore the emotional wreckage they leave behind them are curious personality types that are probably disorders but also responsible for some of the world's marvels of artistic creation. Are there some potential artists out there who are over medicated or therapied into being too nice to create?  Is the greatest struggle for the Christian artist the struggle between his soul which must be humble and his genius which must be exalted?  Can the Christian artist disregard and neglect the people around him enough to create a work of miraculous magnitude?

An interesting side note to The Women: T. C. Boyle was inspired to write the story after he bought a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Santa Barbara where Wright lived for a short time.  I didn't realize we were living a short distance away from this place - although I did drive through Montecito a couple times. It's the neighborhood where Oprah sometimes lives and sells her free range chicken eggs.  I'd guess the average home price is probably in the $10 million range.  (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-wildlife-of-tc-boyles-santa-barbara-27234/?no-ist=&page=1

I also picked up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers.  I know that many people love this book and rave about it, and I wanted to like it more - we were practically neighbors to Lake Forest - and then California - but I just couldn't get into it.  It just seemed too self aware and intentionally attention seeking - the narrative voice reminded me a little of a contemporary Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.  Perhaps in a different mood, I could have worked up a little more enthusiasm for it, but I decided I didn't want to spend any more time with it, and I skimmed until the end and moved on.  I'm sure it is a good reflection on the struggle to live in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional world, and a reflection that normalcy comes in a variety of forms.

Now I'm bogged down in James Martin's My Life with the Saints, which I keep on the back of the toilet to read in short bits. It has some good insights and is conversationally written and definitely readable. I especially liked the chapter on Pope John XXIII and his joviality.  But I'm not inspired enough to read it more quickly or often, so my reading burst has come to an end.

Linkage

Interesting ways to spend time:

First off: Let me plug my own kid's music!  He and a friend have formed a duo, The Righteous Cubicles.  I think I would call their style Americana.  Not sure really. They are their own songwriters and play banjo, guitar and ukulele. The friend's little brother also plays accordion on one song. They just recorded a cd with 7 songs. The quality of the recording is low, but their lyrics and music are good, according to this prejudiced mom.  I love listening to their CD, which is now available for the incredibly low price of $5.  It is priced so affordably because they have only performed live once - at the school talent show - and because they are producing it themselves - and, moreover, because I have bankrolled part of the production costs (Color copies!) Get a preview here:  https://soundcloud.com/righteous-cubicles
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I love my teenagers. I can't believe I was so afraid of having them.  Maybe because my brother and I gave our parents a difficult time in high school. And then my sister went through a difficult time in college.  My younger brother, the quintessential phlegmatic, never intentionally gave my parents a really bad time. He did drive their van into a corn field off a gravel road and got his ears pierced. But he let the holes grow in and is an upstanding father today. Hope for all!

My own kids give me the occasional heart stopper, but usually it is accidental. Like a car accident. Or because I am overcome with pride.  Or because, TIME!  I saw a post from an old friend about her son participating in a senior class Mass. Wow, can he be that old!  But hark! My OWN son will have a baccalaureate Mass in just two weeks!  I am not ready.

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Part of my fear of teenagers is rooted in knowing teenagers who acting like the kids in "Greasy Lake" by T. C. Boyle, always a favorite in my lit class. Well, maybe my acquaintances weren't quite that 'bad,' but they had their sins.  One of my students is writing about Boyle for a research project, so I went on a rabbit trail. He was once a Catholic and counts Flannery O'Connor as an influence.  Maybe someday he'll come back.  Somehow, I got linked to reading about a book about Mormons, always fascinating to me: Latimes review of Elders by Ryan McIlvain, which lead to an article about Marilynne Robinson and her book When I was a Child I Read Books and on to a literary magazine called The Believer I never heard of before.  All interesting.

Needless to say, I didn't get to bed early that night.
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My late night computer habits can sometimes cause a strain in our marriage. I try to keep them to Phase 2, when distance is imperative, at least for now. (Some friends and I just read The Sinners Guide to NFP by Simcha Fischer for an informal book club. Really enjoyed it and the conversation. I left it sitting out in the living room, just in case my teenagers happened to get curious. Perhaps the easiest way to talk about these things with teenage boys? "Here. Read this." End conversation.)

I wrote this about marriage meaning to post it sometime, so now: I have said that marriage is a thing. An object unto itself. Not perhaps a material being capable of being touched, but an idea to be contemplated that is made physical. In the meeting of bodies, love is incarnated.  Here in these bodies of children lolling and lagging about me. Clinging and clashing. Pulling and pushing. A roiling mess of humanity under a roof too low to hold all the emotion and energy that pulses sometimes faster, sometimes irregularly, sometimes in even steady syncopated beats all of one accord.  Not me, not you, not even you and me, but us and it and them. Impossible to decline.  This marriage is not just the two of us, but the household, the furnace at its heart.  Where it is weakest is where the selves attempt to move alone or to grasp too hard.  "Most like an arch"  writes John Ciardi so wisely, falling in when not leaning toward. 

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I love poems about marriage. And here is an article about Wendell Berry on poetry and marriage.  I need to read it more closely, but at first glance it was intriguing.

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And I'm running far again. Thought I'd do a half marathon while we lived here, but can't bring myself to drop $100 on a race I can't win.  Nonetheless, I've started running a 10 miler regularly on the weekends.  It is surprising how easy it is to do this when you have a friend to run with.  Really. An hour and a half of running flies by when you are talking.  Blessedly, one of the Navy wives is right where I am with running, and I really like her. There are certain people you meet with whom you know you have a kinship (also the women in the NFP book club). You see them and know they are kindred spirits even without speaking.  What breaks my heart is when you don't really get to start to know them until it is time to move away. Alas, alack.

Like this quote by Earl Nightingale from seemomrunfar:

"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.
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Also like this article on surfing and God by Peter Kreeft. So many good things to read out there, so little time.  

In my year of little reading, my latest novel to finish is a YA book called Here's How I See It by Heather Henson about a girl whose dad runs a summer theater. The main character, Junebug, is having a difficult summer because of her parents' troubles and her own foiled hopes. Lots of Shakespeare and Chekhov quotes. I'd put it as a book for the 8-15 yr old crowd. And it ends happily! Hooray!

I'd read more if I didn't have a smartphone.  In the old days, when I nursed babies, I sat around and read.  Now I read emails and Facebook.  Lots of people who need prayers out there - for comfort and for gratitude.  At least Facebook is good for keeping track of people who need prayers.
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My days of nursing are growing shorter and shorter. Baby can go all day and has gone 1 whole night without it, but she doesn't like milk, and I don't mind using her as an excuse to sit in a quiet room every once in a while. 

All too soon she'll be graduating from high school.