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Get Breaking News on your cellBeach reads: 'Enlightenment for Idiots,' 'The Spiritualist'
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July 2008
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Beach reads: 'Enlightenment for Idiots,' 'The Spiritualist' Categories
dallasnews.com
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July 3, 2008
If you're still looking for great beach reads (or just great "curled up in a chair, in front of a fan, clutching a lemonade" reads), consider Anne Cushman's Enlightenment for Idiots and/or Megan Chance's The Spiritualist. Ms. Cushman's beautifully written, remarkably assured debut novel Enlightenment for Idiots (Shaye Areheart Books, $24) follows Amanda, a young wanna-be yoga teacher who gets sent to India to write a guide book to finding the titular "enlightenment." But at every "peace center" -- ashram, Buddhist temple, yoga/spa -- she visits, things go horribly, hilariously awry, from ripped knee cartilage to verboten guru love. Amanda's biggest hurdle, literally and physically, comes when she discovers she's pregnant and must choose: enlightenment? motherhood? are both possible?  Comments (2) Leave comment
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Before everyone scatters to the beach/mountains/liquor store for the holiday weekend, are you up for a meaningless literary debate? Good, here we go. It's an American literature version of "Beatles vs. Rolling Stones" battle for July 4: Which is the greatest American novel: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Toni Morrison's Beloved?
Gatsby deals with the very American ideals of excess wealth and the nature of being a self-made man. And it has the closing line most discussed by high school English teachers.
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| E-mail entryThe entry "Literary smackdown: Huck Finn vs. Gatsby vs. Beloved" is tagged: Beloved , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Great American Novel , Huckleberry Finn , Mark Twain , The Great Gatsby , Toni Morrison Not the fireworking kind? The Dallas Poets Community's monthly poetry reading takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at Half Price Books, 5803 E. Northwest Highway. It's an open mic event. But the organizers note: "...with freedom comes responsibility --please keep you[r] language PG rated (we're right next to the children's section & lately we've heard a few overly spicy phrases). Also, plan to keep your reading to 3 poems or 5 Thanks to Susan Vogel Taylor for passing the information along.
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Huck Finn has contains the Mississippi River, a very American road trip (albeit on a raft) and a confrontation of racial issues that's still rattling us all these years later. It also has the blessing of Hemingway's quote: "All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
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