Which Books Should We Stop Calling Classics?

By Jason Diamond on Feb 19, 2014 1:01pm

Recently, at Salon, Laura Miller wondered what makes a book a classic, and who gets to say which books should be included in the conversation: do booksellers or online book communities like Goodreads get to make the call? Do critics? Should we consider David Foster Wallace’s work among these classics, even though it’s so recent? Does a canon even exist or matter?

Taking all of these questions into consideration, we asked a handful of critics, writers, and publishing industry people for their take on which books should be considered classics — and also which titles they would drop from the so-called canon. Today we present the answers to the latter question, and hope you’ll join the conversation in the comments by letting us know which books you don’t think should still be called classic works of fiction.

Adelle Waldman

So this is awkward because Stoner isn’t exactly in the canon, although not for lack of trying, at least lately. For the past few years Stoner has become the darling of so many in the literary world, who argue that it has been unjustly neglected. Personally, I find the novel wholly unconvincing — not so much in its realism but in the moral message that so many readers seem to attach to it, the sense that the life it depicts is quietly heroic and more than a little tragic. To me, the novel reads like hagiography, an unbalanced attempt to make the eponymous Stoner out to be a noble-souled victim of his neurotic and unstable wife. I have no problem believing that some women really are as bad as the horror show of a person Professor Stoner married — Pride and Prejudice’s Mrs. Bennet comes to mind — but Jane Austen, unlike Williams, is careful to show us that the blame goes both ways. Mr. Bennet chose poorly and in Austen’s estimation bears a good deal of the blame for what happens in the Bennet household. Williams, in contrast, lionizes Stoner. But let’s be realistic — the man was old enough to know better. A 20-something Ph.D. student in literature, some of it rather deeply concerned with love, he wasn’t an innocent fresh off the farm when he courted his haughty, unappealing wife. His subsequent unwillingness to stand up to her when she was, in his view, tormenting their daughter makes him not a victim but a coward who valued his own domestic peace over what he believed was his daughter’s best interest. Believable yes? Tragic in its way? Sure, I guess. But Stoner’s no hero, unless poor judgment, passivity and an abdication of moral responsibility are your ideas of what constitutes the good.

Adelle Waldman is the author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

Miriam Markowitz

The idea that some classics “should be retired” or “are talked about too much” doesn’t sit right with me. I would never advise someone not to read a classic — I’m not in the business of advising people not to read books. A lot of books are dated, but their time may come again. Classics are classics for a reason even if not all of those reasons, or the books themselves, are truly good.

A book may not speak to you; that doesn’t mean it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There are entire national traditions I find a little boring, but I wouldn’t dare defame them here, and not just because I’m scared of angry professors and pedants, but because it’s possible that I may not really get those traditions, at least not right now.

Books change for readers over time. There’s this bizarre notion out there that if you consider yourself a Serious Reader you must read everything that matters by the time you’re 25, at which point you must be able to articulate an intelligent, coherent, and defensible opinion about each of the titles you have so dutifully digested. After that, all you need do is spend the rest of your life repeating this process with new books and — presto! — you are a person of letters.

But reading a book when you’re 25 isn’t the same experience as reading it when you’re 45 or 85, and if all you read as an adult are new books, you will forget the cadences of the old. This may sound crazy, but the more you read, the better a reader you will become, but only if you push yourself beyond what’s trendy or fun or your kind of thing. If you return to the books you loved and also to the books you didn’t, you will likely be surprised. Which is kind of the point, isn’t it?

Miriam Markowitz is associate literary editor of The Nation and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her most recent essay, “Here Comes Everybody,” is about about old books, women and publishing, VIDA, MFA programs, Miley Cyrus, and Syria. Follow her on Twitter @MiriMarkow.

Ilan Stavans

An eclipse would do John Updike quite well. The House on Mango Streetdoesn’t deserve its place in middle school. And we can do without To Kill a Mockingbird — it’s cheesy and self-serving.

Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books.

Adrian Todd Zuniga

Does anyone still read Ulysses unless they have to? I feel like Ulysses does more harm to new readers than any other book. “If it’s the best book ever, let’s read it!” quickly turns into, “What have I gotten myself into?” Put something like Lolita v. Ulysses. One is a gem of literary might and accessibility even today. The other is a giant, painful slog.

Adrian Todd Zuniga is the creator and host of Literary Death Match.

Justin Taylor

Salinger. Ayn Rand — though I guess that’s more for politicians than critics or readers. I’m just tired of seeing people pretend that citing her work or influence is a sign of anything other than intellectual degeneracy and profound moral failure. Oh and I was going to say Updike, but it seems like this is already happening on its own. I bet a few of his books are pretty good. It’ll be interesting to see in thirty years which 3 of the 70 or whatever it turns out to be.

Justin Taylor‘s third book, Flings, is forthcoming in August from Harper Collins. Follow him on Twitter at @my19thcentury.

Edward Champion 

As someone spending many years of his life reading a canon with some caveats (see my Modern Library Reading Challenge — in both fiction andnonfiction forms), I have significant problems with junking a canon, or pretending that certain strains of literature — even the odious ones — didn’t happen. It’s not unlike historical revisionism. I’m on the side of literary expansionism, where a canon naturally expands and contracts over time. Books are a kind of universe, yes? Newer titles are absorbed into the promising cosmos, and titles get naturally pushed out over time: not overnight and not without decades of serious consideration. A literary canon is helpful in affirming literary taste, while simultaneously offering a place for everyone to rebel against certain greatest hits, which is also good. For example, I’m not especially fond of Arnold Bennett’s fiction.  (He also had detestable views on women.) On the other hand, the idea of obliterating his reputation with one essay — Virginia Woolf’s “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” — seems unreasonable, especially if we want to understand why so many held this regressive and often voluble author in high esteem during the early part of the 20th century. I think there’s a place for understanding how certain authors rose to the top during a particular epoch. But it is irresponsible to demand restitution when your response to a sophisticated novel is little more than “Ugh!” rather than a lengthy argument. A monosyllabic cry of disgust may aid a stoned undergraduate braying for another beer, but such gormless egotism has no place among those giving serious thought to literature.

Edward Champion is the host of The Bat Segundo Show.

Katherine Bucknell 

For me, science fiction classic is an oxymoron. What could possibly go out of date more rapidly than a book imagining what will happen in a future time or place? I believe readers are attracted to them because they like to be amazed at how long such fantasies do continue to interest readers. And they like to be in on the game of prophesying and guessing. The discussions I hear about science fiction “classics” usually focus on how amazing it is that the author was so close to imagining how things really turned out. But real technological, scientific and also cultural change are far more interesting. Even the best-informed books about the future and the best-written soon become boring. I’m afraid Brave New World is the last of Huxley’s many interesting books that I would recommend. And I would ditch Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and the like.

Katherine Bucknell is the author of four novels and the editor of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries.

Benjamin Samuel 

I’ll probably catch some flack for this, but can we stop talking aboutFinnegans Wake? Sure it was innovative. Experimental, evolutionary, sure. But it also seems like it might be a practical joke that we keep falling for year after year. Then again, the best jokes are the old jokes, and this one’s one of the biggest. That’s what she said?

Benjamin Samuel is the co-editor of Electric Literature.

Toby Hartwell

Too many to mention all of them as there are a lot of so called ‘classics’ that deflect people from reading some of the great undiscovered works, but here are some thoughts. If you are a young reader, Black Beauty is overrated. There are better books with horses in them, read Stuart Littleinstead. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs could do with some time on the classic subs bench. Try Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler, the original spy thriller. Also Brave New World seems less of a classic on recent reading.

Toby Hartwell is the Managing Director of The Folio Society.

Okey Ndibe

I wrestled for long with this question, and here’s why. I don’t think there’s quite a “problem” of over-hyped, over-discussed classics. My suspicion is that, on the whole, people may be reading far less than used to be the case — and that includes less of the classics. And here’s my example of a veritable classic that’s not read enough: Gilgamesh. I’m often astounded at how many people, everyday readers as well as scholars of literature, have NOT read this great Sumerian epic. Apart from an apocalyptic flood scene that predates — and most likely informed — the Biblical account of the flood and Noah’s ark, Gilgamesh is also a riveting adventure story and speaks to timeless questions of the rampant ego, the uses and limits of power, sexuality, and the fluid boundaries between the sacred and the human. At any rate, my instinct is not to annul any classics, but to urge the expansion of the canon. I’d like to say to people, by all means read Shakespeare and Dickens and Sophocles and Jane Austen, but also read Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz.

Okey Ndibe is the author of Foreign Gods, Inc.

Via Bauman Rare Books

John McElwee

Is The Alexandria Quartet a classic? I’ve never been able to make it through one-eighth of it.

John McElwee works in the fiction department at the New Yorker and contributes special projects to the New Inquiry.

Image via Book Witch

Jennifer Weiner

I’ll pass on the question “what doesn’t belong in the canon?” It seems like an act of unimaginable chutzpah for a writer to say, I have read this book and found it inadequate for the generations. The only thing more arrogant than reading a book and saying it doesn’t stand the test of time is NOT reading a book and saying the same thing (Exhibit A: the affrighted clucking over all the zipless-you-know-what-ing in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, from writers who didn’t seem to understand that the zipless fuck was an unrealized fantasy, and that Isadora Wing was hardly promiscuous and that what she wanted more than anything wasn’t anonymous sex with a soldier but for her ne’er-do-well lover to marry her).

Jennifer Weiner’s novels include Good in Bed, In Her Own Shoes, and The Next Best Thing. Her new book, All Fall Down, will be published in June.

Meakin Armstrong

I spent my adolescence in Charleston, South Carolina, where it’s all very beautiful, but it’s also where the “War Between The States” was still talked about and debated. As our teachers often reminded us, the Civil War began in Charleston. Gone With The Wind’s “Rhett Butler was also from there — we had a lot to live up to.

The more liberal classes had us read To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have to admit: as good as that book is (and it’s damned good), it leaves me cold. It has a white guy as the savior, not an African American. African Americans freed themselves despite white America — they didn’t need our white asses. After all, they were the ones getting lynched and water-hosed, not us.

Meakin Armstrong is a writer and Senior Editor-Fiction Editor at Guernica.

Molly Antopol 

The Fountainhead. The “political” writers I’ve always admired most write with as much emotion as they do intellect: James Baldwin, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, to name a few. I’ve just always felt that Ayn Rand was pushing her views down my throat in a creepily pedantic way. And I find the rape scene between Roark and Dominique gratuitous and awful.

Molly Antopol is the author of The UnAmericans.

Spring Renewal: Things to Titillate the Senses.

Via Gerry Ellen Averyon Mar 1, 2014

When a new season is on the horizon, energy is swirling around and people tend to have a bouncy spring in their step and sly smirks on their faces.

It’s as if they are alert to the changes coming in the next few months.

My favorite time of year happens to be the transitional seasons, autumn and spring. Both carry a sense of newness and relief all the same. Both usher in the more extreme seasons from cold to hot.

Spring is alive with color, smells, sounds, smiles, and more flair than the senses can take in at any given moment. Our eyes, ears, noses and touch desire to reach out and latch onto the freshness with vim and vigor. Commitments forge ahead with more passion and purpose. Any momentum gained over the cold, dark, long winter months start to see the light of day. Fireplaces are no longer burning their embers into the evening sky.

The pots of chili and soup are stored away in the freezer, as the juicers and salad spinners return to the barren kitchen counters. Herbs begin to cast an aroma from gardens to tables. Reflections and renewals are heaven sent, with serendipity occurring at any smidge of time.

Mother Nature gives a sincere nod to go ahead with life and live it to the fullest until the onset of summer where the days become longer, the air threatens to stagnate with heat, and we have lost a bit of our mojo. Spring is not like that at all. Spring is pausing for deep breaths and creating and committing.

March holds a certain appeal on a multitude of levels within the body.

We cleanse from winter’s junk and the heaviness of too much food.

We begin to shed our layers and expose more skin. We explore new paths in nature. We practically feed on the intuition of our senses to guide us into a brand new day and awareness. We try unique forms of yoga and explore ways to increase our strength and stillness within a group or at home.

We take in more eye candy at the grocery stores, as shelves become stocked with seasonal vegetables and fruits of every color imaginable.

Our gardens take shape from the tiniest seed to a sprouting of leaves, berries and buds.

Potted plants adorn our decks and front doors and absorb the leftover indoor toxins of winter’s gloom.

Glimpses of baby fawns with fresh white spots are emerging from the forest. Little animal beings of all species are coming out of wombs and signaling that there is creation happening all around.

The heavenly planets are so full of water, earth, conjuncts, retrogrades and cosmic alliances that I can barely keep up with all that the universe provides on a monthly basis.

But I do have a list; a list of things to titillate our senses this spring; things that have given me pause in recent days and will continue to force me to look at the world with new perspectives and reasons of wonder.

The smell of fresh wood chips scattered on garden beds and paths; the sight of a new baby being held by the mother for the first time; the sound of my little neighbor singing her own rendition of the “Frozen” movie theme.

The smell of fresh Tex-Mex food while running through the streets of my city; the sight of wild bluebonnets sprouting from dull paths and creaky pavements; the sight of puppies who are given another chance to live with a new home and new family

The feeling of clean air that hovers between 70 and 80 degrees; sunsets with colors that blow my mind from oranges to pinks to reds and blues; the smell of citrus fruits being split open to taste the sweetness and juiciness and health.

The feeling of moving forward with projects that have taken a long time to complete; the touch of a soft velvet cat; the sight of waterfalls trickling through drought-stricken boulders and rocks; the sight of turtles and ducks and loons sunning themselves on logs and tree branches.

The smell of new essential oils applied to the chakras; the feeling of trying a health regimen for the first time and succeeding in small increments; seeing a commitment come to a solid fruition.

This is spring time.

The list may grow and the list can morph. Whatever the chosen form it takes, and whoever wants to add their own style and renewed sensations is more than welcomed.

I am simply full of  blossomed hope and newness and appreciation.

March is here.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Spicy Moroccan chicken tagine

 

Prep time

8 hours

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

9 hours

 

This easy and delicious recipe will fragrance your house with the spices of Morocco and take your tastebuds on a Moorish journey. Don’t be put off by the long prep time – that’s just time absorb the spice rub!

Author: Jeanne Horak-Druiff

Recipe type: Entree

Cuisine: Moroccan

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 2kg chicken pieces (I used drumsticks and thighs)
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 5 tsp ground black pepper
• 4 Tbsp paprika
• 4 Tbsp ground ginger
• 3 Tbsp turmeric
• 5 Tbsp ground cinnamon
• 6 Tbsp olive oil
• 6 Tbsp argan oil (I used sunflower)
• 6 large onions, finely diced
• 9 cloves garlic, minced
• 500ml tomato juice
• 3x400g tinned chopped tomatoes
• 300g dried apricots, halved
• 150g raisins or sultanas
• 2 preserved lemons, chopped
• 200 g blanched flaked almonds
• 2 tsp strands saffron, soaked in cold water
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 3 Tbsp clear honey

Instructions

1. Place the cayenne pepper, black pepper, paprika, ginger, turmeric and cinnamon in a small bowl and mix to combine. Place the chicken pieces in a large bowl and toss together with half of the spice mix. Cover with cling film and leave overnight in the fridge.
2. Preheat the oven to 150C.
3. Heat 3 Tbsp each of the olive oil and argan oil in a large casserole dish that can be used on the stove top or in the oven. Add the onions and the remaining spice mix and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes until the onions are soft but not coloured. Add the garlic for the final 3 minutes.
4. Heat the remaining oil in a heavy griddle pan and when it is really hot place the chicken pieces skin side down in the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes (use a splatter screen – it’s going to sizzle and spit!). Turn over and cook for another 5 minutes, then remove from the pan and place in the casserole dish.
5. Pour 250ml tomato juice into the griddle pan and stir well, scraping up all the bits on the bottom, then pour the contents of the pan into the casserole dish.
6. Add the remaining tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, apricots, preserved lemon, raisins, flaked almonds, saffron, stock and honey to the casserole dish. Bring to the boil, cover with a tightly fitting lid and cook in the oven for 30-45 minutes or until the chicken is tender.

Notes

It makes rather a lot of sauce – and leftover sauce can be frozen and used later: just add chopped cooked chicken breasts and heat through.

- See more at: http://www.cooksister.com/2010/04/moroccan-chicken-tagine.html#sthash.UjIOzqbJ.dpuf

Why I Will Always Choose to be a Little Bit Fat.

Via Jamie Khooon Sep 29, 2013

Photo from The Hilda Gallery, ToilGirls.com

How we can all feel good about ourselves, whatever our size.

I saw an article a few weeks ago with this incredible before-and-after set of photos of an overweight, post-baby woman who then became totally “bikini-worthy.”

So I had to click the link, of course, to have a look. No question about it—the ‘after’ photo of this woman was a stunning shot. She looked fit, toned, healthy and gorgeous. I read on, eager to discover what her secret was, what profound magical method it was that she had used to shed however-many-number of pounds.

There it was, a long and detailed tract of the super lean, restrictive diet she had put herself on for a year. No carbs, no dairy, no fruit, no nothing. The sample diet she had shared in the article seemed to consist of little more than hummus, celery and endless amounts of steamed fish. Healthy—yes. Exciting, delicious, fun lifestyle—no.

I decided in that moment that I would choose to continue being a little bit fat. Yes, I could do with losing at least about 10 pounds so that the Bébé dress I bought earlier this year would fit that much more snugly. But if it’s at the expense of not eating fruit, freshly baked breads, Greek yoghurt and honey for a year, well then, I choose emphatically to continue being 10 pounds more than I should be.

Science is a wonderful thing. It’s revealed so many revolutionary ways of understanding the way our bodies work and the effects of new foods, super foods, bad foods and good foods on our health. It’s sad though that ‘health’ has so often come to be equated only and necessarily with thinness.

The glut of diet programs, weight-loss fads, fat-burning supplements and specialized bikini-body workouts are now as much a part of our daily consumer choices as the aisles of (‘forbidden’) food in supermarkets. There seems to be no excuse not to be ‘healthy’ (read: thin) given the huge number of aids, YouTube videos and literature on the subject.

Articles like the one I read aren’t necessarily always an encouraging inspiring thing. They don’t just tell the story of an overweight person who chose discipline and a healthier lifestyle. There is often also a more sinister sub-narrative that raises its eyebrows at the reader and challenges her—“If this person can lose xx pounds, why can’t you?”—even if the reader may not actually be unhealthy or overweight.

The titles of these articles alone are almost always weight-centered, like “I lost 120 pounds, ask me how!” or “How one man lost 200 pounds in a year.” Rarely are these articles presented through the perspective of someone choosing a healthier lifestyle, discarding bad nutritional habits or incorporating fitness into their daily routine.

There it is: the continuous, unceasing reminders that we should all be striving towards thinness. From cabbage soup fasts, to low-everything diets, to 20-minute fat-blasting workouts, the desirable end result is usually almost and entirely about becoming become a thinner version of ourselves.

I am not ignoring the fact that for a percentage of people who may really be facing the health risks of being dangerously overweight, losing weight is necessarily a part of becoming healthier. I don’t discount that and understand how important it is in these cases to count calories and lost-inches.

Problems arise when that very same method is being adopted by people who aren’t facing any health risks — who may, in fact, be completely healthy, fit peopl —but who still feel that they would be healthier if only they were five, 10, 20 pounds lighter.

So I’d like to suggest flipping things round a bit, looking at things through another lens.

Let’s focus on being healthy—and just that.

Logically and biologically, it would follow that by following a healthy way of living, eating and exercising, everything else will find its proper balance. We would lose weight if we needed to lose weight, we’d gain muscle if we needed to gain muscle, we’d balance out all the other things that come from not being healthy—stress, cholesterol, diabetes, poor complexion, hair loss etc.

And what does it mean to live healthily? In the face of all the new diet and exercise schemes, I think that actually, we all already know what it means to life a healthy, balanced, feel-totally-awesome lifestyle, without having to follow any fad or buy any specialized products.

Intuitively, deep down inside, we do know the most basic things of living well. We know when we’ve had enough to eat, what kinds of foods are good for us, what makes us feel good and what makes us go into a slump, how much exercise we need to do, when to stop when we’re exhausted, when to rest.

We know this not just intellectually, but physically—our bodies are always telling us what we need to do, we just need to listen.

Our bodies will tell us when it feels like a massive binge on Chinese take-out. It will also tell us when it’s had enough so we don’t insist on finishing every last fortune cookie. Our bodies will take us dancing, running, swimming, trampolining and playing; but they will also make us rest and sleep.

I read something beautiful awhile ago, about how we shouldn’t change our bodies because so we can love it.

Instead, we should create change in the way we treat ourselves because we love our bodies.

Ultimately this is about focusing on health: the physical health of our bodies and the emotional health of how we see and relate to our bodies. We love our bodies—this temporary shell on loan to us for this lifetime—so we treat it well, nourish it, feed it, move it, hug it, stretch it, let it dance, discipline it, give it a treat sometimes and most of all enjoy it.

Enjoying our bodies is to indulge in the beautiful sensual things of good food, good sex, the rush of an energetic run in the mornings. But also, I think, enjoyment is about ensuring our bodies are at their prime health so that they truly get the most out of all these things and appreciate, at our body’s fullest capacity, the good food, good sex and energetic run.

This is true whatever size we’re at, whether we’re trying to lose weight or gain weight, whether we’re severely overweight or dangerously underweight.

This is true because it’s a matter of health and of helping our bodies be at their optimum functioning levels, not merely a matter of what we look like.

Yes, ideally, I would still like the scales to tell me that I am 10 pounds lighter and to see my dress size drop to a single digit. But then, I have to ask myself what it really is that I’d like to get out of being that much thinner. I don’t have any illnesses, I life a happy, active life, and I’ve been medically cleared for good, prime health.

So what is it? To be more attractive? To feel more energetic? To turn more heads? To tighten that gap between me and the Victoria’s Secret models?

I realize now that if I only just went back to focusing on being health, everything else would find its rightful place. When I’m feeling healthy, my skin glows, my hair is shiny and I’m a face full of radiance. When I’m feeling fit after a big run and deep session of yoga, I’m also confident, joyful and there’s an extra bounce in my step.

Automatically, without being a single ounce lighter, I realize now that being healthy alone is enough to be more attractive, feel more energetic, turn more heads and gain almost as many admirers as the Victoria’s Secret angels.

With a focus on health, instead of weight, I find too that I enjoy life a whole lot more. I eat without guilt and play with abandon. I move and shift and indulge the very real needs of my body instead of spending good hours of my day fussing over diet plans, exercise schedules and meal replacement shakes.

It isn’t only when I achieve a vision of thinness that I am deemed healthy and attractive.

I am attractive because I am living healthily.

And if that means I shall always be a little bit fat, with a few extra pounds to shed, then that’s exactly what I shall be.

Found on elephant journal - Over 18's only !

The Ins & Outs of Penetration. ~ Zoë Kors {Adult}

Via Zoë Korson Feb 28, 2014

Men are built to penetrate, not only anatomically, but also emotionally and energetically.

Not too long ago, I was putting my five-year-old son to bed. We were indulging in the practice of finding creative ways to express our enormous love for each other. I told him I loved him so much my heart was going to explode. He took that in, grinned, and in a moment of inspired one-upmanship said, “I love you so much, my heart is going to explode right into your mouth so you can swallow it.”

On another occasion, in a genuine burst of affection, he said, “Open up your love hole, Mom, and let me fill it up.” Terrified by the loss of innocence I might detect, I asked nervously, “Where exactly is my love hole?” To which he matter-of-factly (and to my great relief) replied, “Your heart!”

My son’s expressions of love and affection are devoid of sexual meaning for him. He has no idea about such things, but the energy behind his words got me thinking. I often observe my son moving through the world with ferocious enthusiasm—on the soccer field, on his scooter, the way he hurls his whole body at me when he wants a hug.

It’s beyond how he thinks or acts; it’s who he is. And it’s how he loves.

Neuroscience tells us that that a small almond-shaped structure, deep in our anterior temporal lobe, called theamygdala, plays a big role in our emotional reactions and emotional memories. It is widely accepted that women have smaller and more efficient amygdalas, which enables them to have more emotional memories and engage in what scientists call “ruminative thinking.” There are other gender-based differences in our brains. The right and left hemispheres are connected by tissue called corpus callosum, and men have less of it. Women spend more time acting and speaking from both sides of their brains. Men think and act more linearly, leaving emotion and intuition out of the equation.

According to Simon Baron-Cohen, Cambridge University Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, “The male brain is programmed to systemize, while the female brain is taught to empathize.” Perhaps the most obvious difference in the brains of men and women happens in the womb. A female brain in utero is bathed in estrogen; a male brain in testosterone.

Largely in an effort to understand the nature, causes, and prevalence of autism, Baron-Cohen conducted multiple studies looking at the amount of testosterone a baby is exposed to in the womb and then followed them through their infancy and early childhood, evaluating their capacity for human connection. About testosterone, he says, “The more you have of this special substance, the more your brain is tuned into systems and the less your brain is tuned into emotional relationships.”

All this is not to say that men don’t empathize and women don’t systemize. Each of us is a unique combination of all aspects of the human condition. But there is something compelling in organic gender polarity that has inspired books like John Gray’s, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex, and has made the work of David Deida author of The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire so wildly popular. All we have to do is look around to see and feel how men are more equipped to slide through the world, moving in and out of situations and relationships systematically, without getting bogged down by their emotions.

When I described my heart exploding with love for my young son, the vision was that a warm effervescent blanket would unfurl from my chest and wrap him, contain him and ultimately taking him in. While men are driven to penetrate, as women, it is our nature to want to be filled up by something other than ourselves. The outward expression of this is the way we nurture—whether it’s our children, our lovers, or the world in general. We invite people into our warm embrace.

The passive version of this expression is our desire to be taken, to be penetrated. As women, we hold so much. Most of us have a complex matrix of things and people to take care of—responsibilities. And in the hierarchy of needs, we usually put ourselves last. At the end of the day, we long for a lover to take us away, to force us to let go, to bring us beyond reason—to fuck us senseless.

In the tradition of Tantra, the Divine feminine quality is Shakti—fluid energy, manifestation, and change. The Divine masculine is Shiva, or pure consciousness—the solid, unlimited, unchanging observer. Shiva has no desire, he is the blank screen onto which Shakti projects her desires in full Technicolor drama. When a man and woman come together in alignment with this paradigm, it can be a powerful way to connect not only to each other, but also to explore ourselves and own nature as an expression of this universal principle. Our longing to be fucked senseless is rooted in the desire for Shiva to penetrate the maelstrom of our own dynamic energy and propel us into another state of consciousness—an argument could be made here for the benefits of having “mind-blowing” sex.

The trouble with all this penetration is what happens when it’s not happening.

For a woman, there is a feeling of completeness when a man is inside of her (or a baby, for that matter). She walks around with a hole in her physical body (her vagina, her womb), but also in her subtle body, in her heart.

The question is: How do we cultivate a healthy emptiness?

It is easy to confuse the absence of something as a loss, the space as a vacuum. It is tempting to try to sate the hunger as if we are starving, while we resort to filling ourselves up by eating, smothering our children, or engaging in co-dependent relationships. Ironically, the more we try to fill ourselves up, the lonelier we feel.

In her song, Down to You, Joni Mitchell declares, “Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes. Things that you held high and told yourself were true, lost or changing as the days come down to you.” Allowing the flow of life, of lovers, and of love requires some willingness to tolerate discomfort, but far less than the suffering that results from trying to fight it or to clinging to things past their point of completion.

Holding our internal space is a muscle that can be developed over time. Resisting the urge to fill ourselves up with something other than ourselves give us room to connect with ourselves, to recognize our own voices, to feel our own desires. Relaxing into our inner space affords us the awareness of choice. It is a powerful place to feel sovereignty over who and what we choose to let in and out.

As Joni suggests, it all comes down to us.

When we learn to feel complete in our natural emptiness, to embrace the potentiality in the space, we begin to align with the natural cycles of life, birth, death and rebirth, in a way that makes sense of our true nature, as vessels, of life and love.

Transcendental meditation: does it work?

I did the course some years ago, but don't practise much now.  Reading this re-ignited 

my interest!!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/01/transcendental-meditation-does-it-work?CMP=fb_gu

First he tried sleep apps, then a flotation tank, then mindfulness – but nothing would stop the chatter in Stuart Heritage's increasingly exhausted mind. Would transcendental meditation, currently enjoying a revival, do the trick?

• 
• • Stuart Heritage
  • The Guardian, Saturday 1 March 2014
  • 
    

'My life's fallen into the quicksand of modernity.It's filled with a whirl of TVs and phones and emails and Twitter and noise and bleeps,' says Stuart Heritage. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian

I don't know about you, but I am knackered. I wake up knackered, and spend each morning limply punching away at the fog inside my skull. I eat lunch knackered, then swear at every inanimate object in front of me. I try not to fall asleep at my desk, then stagger to my sofa, pass out in my clothes and crawl into bed for another night of infuriatingly broken sleep. That is my life. It's not like I even do very much.

I daren't complain about this out loud, of course, because I don't want to get into a game of competitive exhaustion with anyone. I don't want to tell somebody that I had four hours' sleep, because they'll reply that they had only three, plus their mattress caught fire at midnight. Worse, what if they're a new parent? "How are you?" they'll ask. "Bit tired," I'll reply. "Oh yeah?" they'll snap back. "Well, I haven't slept since October because I've been scraping baby diarrhoea off my fridge door with a spatula." You can't win with new parents.

But I am tired, and I blame myself. Like most people I know, my life has fallen into the quicksand of modernity, filled with a whirl of televisions and phones and sirens and emails and Twitter and lights and noise and bleeps. Simpsons quotes, video game sound effects and fairground music riverdance madly across the surface of my brain. Switching off takes deliberate effort, and even then it doesn't always work. I'll almost be asleep and suddenly my mind will shriek: "Have you remembered to set your alarm?" or, "You didn't reply to that woman yesterday, you idiot" or, "Remember the Nyan Cat song? No? OK, I'm going to repeat it over and over again at the top of my voice until 6am, hope that's cool."

To shut out the world, I have turned to transcendental meditation. This was not my first choice. First I tried the sleep app Pzizz, where you get bombarded by binaural sound effects until you drop off. This didn't work because I was convinced it would subliminally order me to eat my parents in my sleep. Then I tried flotation tanks, where you lie inside a tiny pod full of salty water for an hour. This didn't work because it turns out that splashing around inside a dark plastic coffin full of boiling hot tears is the precise opposite of relaxing. After that, I tried mindfulness.

Chances are you've already heard of mindfulness, because people won't shut up about it. Once, Buddhists and monks had mindfulness all to themselves, as a way of concentrating on their thought processes during meditation. Now that we've found a way of stripping out the spiritual aspect, it's everywhere. There are books. There are seminars. Therapists and counsellors prescribe it. There are apps, like the incredibly popular Headspace, where you're guided through 10 minutes of breathing exercises and top-down self-diagnostic checks on various parts of your body until you become the perfect model of beaming self-realisation.

Mindfulness helps thousands of people every day; people with depression and eating disorders and addiction problems. But it's not for me. Mindfulness requires self-observation, and self-observation is exhausting. You have to sit and pay attention to everything. How you're breathing, what your posture's like, what you're thinking about, why you're thinking about it, what to do because you're thinking about whatever you're thinking. It goes on and on. I know people who have been put on mindfulness courses by doctors, only to run away screaming at the piles of homework they're expected to do.

The modern-day resurgence of TM is often attributed to the work of film director David Lynch, whose foundation teaches TM techniques to a number of at-risk groups. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Plus mindfulness makes me neurotic. One exercise I did involved writing down every thought that passed through my mind over the course of half an hour. This taught me that I was worried about work. I didn't know I had been worried about work, but the knowledge sent me into a panicky death spiral. In retrospect, I should have just pushed all my feelings down into the pit of my stomach and ignored them until they turned into heart disease and killed me at a tragically young age. This is the Heritage way.

So I turned to transcendental meditation. I was wary at first, because I clearly remember watching a party political broadcast for the Natural Law party, the politicised wing of transcendental meditation, about 20 years ago. I still remember how colossally creepy it was. There was a man with a thick Selleck tache sitting behind a desk and explaining, in a cartoonishly sinister way, how his party wanted to unite the country beneath a field of collective consciousness. There was a horrible purple mural of the galaxy, the sort of thing you find in shops that sell under-the-counter bongs to 12-year-olds. There were the Yogic Flyers, who were basically a couple of blokes flapping around on a mattress in their pyjamas. There was the claim that the Yogic Flyers had single-handedly reduced crime in Merseyside by 60%, presumably by bouncing cross-legged around Toxteth like a squadron of low-flying Batmen. Some of us tried to yogic-fly up and down the CDT block at school the next day. It did our knees in.

The Natural Law party looked like the smug dinner party guest who had it all figured out and wanted to condescend you into submission. But times change. The Natural Law party deregistered a decade ago. Every idiot's got a beard now. More importantly, transcendental meditation has undergone an enormous PR overhaul. In recent years, it has been reframed as a practical lifestyle choice rather than something for bead-liking soap-dodgers.

According to its website, 4 million people around the world now practise it daily. It's not even called transcendental meditation any more. They played the Kentucky Fried Chicken card, so it's just TM.

Rather than banging on about collective consciousness, TM now sells itself as a cure for modern life. Our fight or flight responses have been mucked up, say TM's advocates, leaving us in a constant state of stress. By spending 40 minutes a day meditating, we can learn to dim those responses a little. They point to evidence from the American Heart Association and other organisations that it lowers blood pressure and risk of heart disease. There is much anecdotal evidence that it increases creativity and efficiency. All this and you get to experience a profound sense of rest in the process.

Perhaps because it's so beneficial – or perhaps because it sounds like a vaguely spiritual fad – a huge number of celebrities have signed on.Jerry Seinfeld does it. Martin Scorsese does it, as does Oprah Winfreyand her entire staff. Goldie Hawn led a TM session at Davos this year.Clint Eastwood does it, for crying out loud. Clint Eastwood, the opposite of a hippy, a man who shoots hippies. In this country, singer Tim Burgess of the Charlatans is a big believer in the power of TM. He has been practising since 2008, and told me it's "one of the most important aspects of my life". He meditates morning and evening. The morning, he says, is "a great time for ideas. Not necessarily world-changing ideas – often little ones about how to organise my day, things I have forgotten, plans and ruminations on what's going on."

The modern-day resurgence of TM is often attributed to the work of film director David Lynch, whose foundation teaches TM techniques to a number of at-risk groups. It helps returning soldiers deal with depression and post-traumatic stress. Under the guise of quiet time, it makes schoolchildren more productive and generally less likely to stab each other. It holds TM sessions in homeless shelters and prisons and orphanages. It has commissioned an ocean of scientific research and academic studies to back up its claims. Before he began practising TM, Lynch has said, he was "filled with worries and anxieties". Someone had suggested psychotherapy but, scared that this might limit him creatively, he turned to TM. "When I had my first meditation," he says, "this inner bliss revealed itself so powerfully – thick happiness came rushing in. And I said, 'This is it.' There it was. And everything just started getting better – way more fun, way more joy in the doing… And it just seems natural. You're happy and there's nothing you can do about it."

Does TM work for non-celebrities? It seems to be having a moment among 30-somethings who are quite emphatic about how calm they are. I tracked down a couple of devotees to be sure. Again, there was no word of dissent. Marketing manager Justyna Sobkowicz started practising in 2012, and happily admits it changed her life. "When someone told me that you have to give up 20 minutes twice a day, I was suspicious," she says. "But it calmed me down. You have less stress." She had experimented with other types of meditation, which didn't work. "They make you try to think you're on a beach, and it's an effort to imagine these things."

Tim Burgess has been practising transcendental meditation since 2008, and says it’s “one of the most important aspects of my life”. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Guardian

Maverick Gutarra (his real name) got into TM because he is a big fan of Lynch's Twin Peaks. He had tried other kinds of meditation: "But after those you still go out to a bar and drink seven pints." After learning TM a couple of years ago, he told me he was much healthier in every way: "You're not as likely to drink a bottle of tequila every night." Maverick talked about booze a lot. "I was raised in Sweden," he offered by way of explanation.

But they would say this, wouldn't they? They do TM, and they want everyone else to do it, too. I still wasn't sure but it was time to try it for myself.

Through tm.org, I found an instructor, Ged Valente. An amiable Glaswegian schoolteacher who turned to TM decades ago, Ged explained how easy it is to learn. You can't pick up TM from a book or an app or an article like this, because the instruction has to be customised to your individual needs. So, instead, an instructor comes to your house on four consecutive evenings. After that, you're on your own. You don't have to pay any more money. You don't have to attend any more classes or meet any new TMers. You don't even have to be that interested in religion or spirituality. Which is good, because I'm not.

Ged talked me through the difference between TM and mindfulness. Where mindfulness practises overt observation, he said, TM is all about letting go. You sit in silence for 20 minutes, and your mind naturally begins to quieten down. You repeat a mantra – a meaningless sound you're not allowed to tell anyone – and eventually, if you're doing it right, you reach a point of expansive silence, and your body floods with a warm and pleasant feeling.

This feeling has many names, but I'll be referring to it as transcendence. Ged likes to call it "pure consciousness", which is a little too mystical for me. Other people call it "bliss", although I won't because that word's been hugely devalued since people started using it as a Twitter hashtag for whenever they get to eat a Twix in an armchair. So transcendence it is.

Training consists of an exploratory chat, an initiation ceremony and three follow-up sessions. Hearing that a ceremony was involved was a worry, but not a big one. As Ged said, "If you like ceremonies, it's fun. If you don't, it's short." It takes five minutes, and by the time you're done, you've got your mantra.

'I felt groggy after my first go. My brain didn’t quite know what to do without the usual clattering din of gibberish and retro sound effects.' Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian

After that, you can get on with meditating. TM, I quickly discovered, was pretty much designed for people as lazy as me. You sit down wherever you like, in your normal clothes, shut your eyes and repeat your mantra in your mind. That's it. As time goes on, you stop feeling self-conscious, and your breathing slows down. Your grip on the mantra loosens and it grows more abstract. Your mind becomes stiller and less troubled by thought. It's a nice feeling.

I felt groggy after my first go. My brain didn't quite know what to do without the usual clattering din of gibberish and retro sound effects. And five minutes later, I told my sofa to go fuck itself. I can't remember why. Inner peace was clearly some way off.

After a few attempts, though, I started to improve. Eventually it became easier to shut up my stupid brain. When you finally achieve this, everything just melts away. It feels like the instant before you fall asleep, but stretched out. I can't say for sure that this was transcendence but it definitely calmed me. To be honest, I might have just fallen asleep – but even that is fine. You're allowed to fall asleep in TM. It's a sign of good practice.

The full benefits of TM don't necessarily show themselves until you've been practising regularly for weeks or months – Maverick told me it took him a year – so it's too soon to say if it has had any concrete results. I don't know what it's done to my blood pressure, or whether I am any less likely to keel over with a giant heart attack before the age of 35. I certainly haven't yet experienced the shimmering, all-encompassing, unbound glow that comes with full-blown transcendence. But I've decided I'm going to stick with it, even if transcendence never comes.

Why? Because it's an almost embarrassingly luxurious thing to do. Aside from anything else it means that, for 20 minutes twice a day, I get to shut myself away. There is no TV, no rolling news, no phone calls or emails or idiots squabbling about specific definitions of feminism on Twitter. Nobody is trying to sell me anything. There's just me, alone, sitting quietly in a nice chair with my eyes closed. TM is the closest I can feasibly get to running off to live in a cave, which is something I'd like to do but probably won't because I don't think Domino's delivers to caves.

More than anything else, TM works for me. It might not work for you, but I find it profoundly relaxing. It gives me a chance to order my thoughts. I've discovered that I can concentrate more easily throughout the day. Most importantly, whether it's down to the meditation or some elaborate placebo effect, I am much less tired than I was a month ago. My sleep is deep and unbroken (so take that, new parents).

And best of all, I am still me. I haven't suddenly got religion. I still don't know what a collective consciousness is. I still swear at inanimate objects. Total relaxation and getting to call your printer a dickhead. That's the dream, isn't it?