Take the Books to Disney World: Kennedy Space Center

After our night of rocketry on Cocoa Beach, we were enthusiastic about going to Kennedy Space Center today. Except, that is, for that dismal damned Kierkegaard book, who stayed home to pout. He said he doesn't like being taken out of context. Well.

At Kennedy Space Center, a non-NASA company has been contracted to make the visitor complex into an amusement-park-like experience. When Benny said, "This is just like Disney World!" I knew that either they had succeeded, or else Benny is getting his nerd on very young.

At first We the Living was a little giddy on all the iconography:

But she took a seat with a friend:

To watch The House of the Seven Gables ride the Space Shuttle simulator:

Speaking of our quiet, colonial friend, The House of the Seven Gables was shy around the living astronauts:

But was chillingly comfortable with astronauts of the past:

So I said, "Let go of that suffocating history, The House of the Seven Gables. You can be free." Free in a Mercury rocket crew capsule. C'mon, everyone climb aboard!

As I Lay Dying kept sidling up to the robots. This one quipped, "How about As I Lay Rusting?" Ha ha!

All three of the books enjoyed the IMAX 3D movies:

However, We the Living just had to point out that the lock on the bathroom stall was very ineffeciently put together, the screw holes skewed, the whole mechanism crooked. Well, NASA? Is this your idea of the pinnacle of man's technological achievement? His hand reaching like a rocket into the void? This crappy bathroom stall lock? Sickeningly unRoarkian. Tsk tsk.

So full of eye-rolling and scorn was she after her trip to the potty that she wouldn't even join the other books on the lunar rover.

I think my guests all learned something, and they definitely all made friends. When even a musty and tremulous book like The House of the Seven Gables can get its spine around an astronaut, certainly Faulkner would have no trouble charming my kids:

Take the Books to Disney World: Fear and Trembling at Cocoa Beach

We are still on our way to Disney World. No one should panic.

Tonight we went to see the Delta IV Rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. We stood on the edge of the ocean at Cocoa Beach to watch it go up. I took along Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard, and We the Living by Ayn Rand. I thought that Fear and Trembling would really appreciate the way the rocket was subverting the universal for the individual, and of course, the trembling beach beneath us. I knew that We the Living would deeply respect the simultaneous frailty and power of that rocket climbing into space, an expression of human achievement, and another mad swipe at the firmament.


(terrible video uploaded from mobile phone!)

Unfortunately I got excited watching the rocket, and forgot to take either book out of my bag so that they could experience the sublime rumbling, the flash of orange that lit up the ocean, and the cries of fellow rocket nerds: "Happy Birthday, NASA!"

There was a bit of grumbling and a "What's that, a piece of apple core?"

To make up to the books for my gross neglect of their entertainment, I took them instead to the world famous "Ron Jon Surf Shop." It was on our way back to the car, and I thought they might enjoy it?

Here are the books:

And again:

See how the blonde loves literature? We the Living is the short one. Fear and Trembling is taller.

About this surf shop experience, Kierkegaard had the following to say:

"It goes without saying that the tragic hero, like any other man who is not
bereft of speech, can say a few words in his culminating moment, perhaps a few
appropriate words, but the question is how appropriate is it for him to say
them. If the meaning of his life is in an external act, then he has nothing to
say, then everything he says is essentially chatter, by which he only diminishes
his impact, whereas the tragic conventions enjoin him to complete his task in
silence, whether it consists in action or suffering."

I chose that quote for him because I see that as an undergraduate I wrote the word, "HAH!" next to that paragraph in the margin. I must have been anticipating the culminating moment of this particular book, outside the Ron Jon Surf Shop, and Kierkegaard suffering in knightly silence.

Take the Books to Disney World: On the Road without Jack Kerouac

The books had to be up early. We left at 6:30.

Here is The House of the Seven Gables sticking his head out the window, getting some air, letting his jowls go flapping:



It's been years since he felt the wind ruffling his pages.

Here are Anxious Pleasures and The House of Sand and Fog checking out the space coast, from our hotel room in Cocoa Beach:



Zzyzzyva made itself useful making coffee. Bustling around, all purposeful:



All in all the books behaved well on the trip. The Heidegger kept its comments to itself, for now, and Moby Dick gave Hawthorne his space. Now we're going to watch the Delta IV rocket launch. Taking a few books with me. Hope they like it.

Nanowrimo Day 10: Nano on the Road

Look, I wrote something!



In the laptop, in the car, with the laptop plugged into the little converted thingy, and the headphones firmly on.

I managed to generate two new chapters, and for those of you keeping track, these were two chapters of completely separate material, not connected at all to the Scene That Must Not Be Written. So, the Scene That Must Not Be Written has to be written NEXT. There is no other detour to be taken. It's just next and that's it.

I'm going to try and hit 10,000 by the end of tonight, after we go see this rocket launch that NASA has cooked up solely for our family entertainment. Nice of them. I am not goign to write that scene tonight though. I'm going to go back and beef up what I wrote today. Because, obviously, that scene must not be written so how can I write it?

Take the Books to Disney World: Disney Eve!

Some time ago, I decided to take some books to Disney World. I asked for help in narrowing down my guest list, and now I've made my final selections. I've narrowed it down to twelve, and here they are:



1. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (Wanted specially to go, to see Cinderella's castle.)
2. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Look! Already wearing mouse ears!)
3. Anxious Pleasures by Lance Olsen (To make up for not reviewing it sooner.)
4. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard (Because he deserves it.)
5. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (Must see Flying Dumbos.)
6. We the Living by Ayn Rand (A smile means friendship for everyone!)
7. Zzyzzyva (This is a literary magazine, sent to me by the publisher, to thank me, or scold me, or inform me after I wrote my screech about how literary magazines are dead.)
8. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus (A reader suggestion, thank you.)
9. One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse (For help in staging protests at gift shops.)
10. On the Way to Language by Martin Heidegger (For interpreting words like "Imagineers.")
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Because it is my favorite book ever.)
12. House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Because Moby Dick wanted him along.)

If you aren't on the list and you expected to be, it was because I didn't have a paperback copy of your book (Joshilyn Jackson, looking at you) or because I couldn't find my copy of your book (Sylvia Plath, hello). There you are. Tomorrow we start our trip. May we all have a damn good time. If you can't wait to see where we are and what we're doing, you can follow us on our mobile blog. I will try to write while I am away, but if the internet doesn't smile on our timeshare, I will see you when I get back.