Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: book reviews

  • ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ by Jennette McCurdy


    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    When I first learned of this sensationally titled book with the pinky perky cover photo of the author from the New York Times Book Review, I knew I had to read it because of its boldness and frankness that I believe would strike the chords of many who must have felt or wished it (let’s be honest). However, it was more like seeking a kindred spirit in such a titled book because I felt exhilarated with camaraderie and, once exonerated from such membership, a desire to revolt against mothers.


    But the book isn’t an angst-ridden, hate-filled, violence-saturated memoir nowadays in-vogue among celebrities who live to tell their dark life histories. Although it isn’t precisely wholesomely hall-mark like loving family history, it is worth pointing out the moments of love and warmth that childhood memories sometimes invoke because we thrive as human beings on those memories. McCurdy’s mother may not have been perfect, but who is an ideal mother anyway? The Bard once said that look not with the eye but with the mind. She was the one who saw talents in her daughter, encouraged them, and made them blossom into a pink dandelion when many parents either ignore or overlook the bests of their children for their future. Although I can understand McCurdy’s disaffection with her passionate mother controlling her life, I am envious of having such a mother who was willing to sacrifice her hard labor for her daughter’s success.


    The cover photo is puzzling. The author has a smile but not smiling, or instead trying to smile but is subdued as if her emotions are changing instantly or frozen in the moments between joy and sadness, independence and confusion in the transition of belonging to freedom. I can’t honestly fathom what the author thinks inside, but one thing is certain she loves her mother, who is now unburdened with the cares and pain of the world. Perhaps, that is why she is glad her mother died.



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  • ‘Idol, Burning’ by Rin Usami

    Idol, Burning by Rin Usami

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    We are such starstuff made of fire, spirit, and dew that we are instantly drawn to stars that sparkle and shine. And what do we call the beautiful star (and young, of course) that sings, dances, and acts even? If we call it a singer, it is also an idol. Akari calls it Masaki, puts him in the constellation of super idols and worships him like an Apollo to whom she gives meaning to her life as if he were her lighthouse on the dark ocean. He is her God, the Idol, and the Guiding Light of her lonely life. Then what?


    Masaki is a member of a boy band called Mama Maza, which feeds on the cult devotion reminiscent of Dionysus accompanying the Maenads sans frenzied ritual of animal-human ripping of fleshes. Akari is something of the high priestess of the cult, running fan blogs filled with tributes to the exalted, glorified awesomeness of her Idol. Her life is centered on, evolved around the solar system of Masaki, and everything she is about, all the things she does about, is because of him. So imagine what is it like when her God becomes mortal full of human frailty, fallen from the constellation of the stars? An emotional vacuum is soon filled in her heart, leaving her lost in the direction of life, wandering about, wondering about the sense of purpose in life ahead. Her sense of void in life with the declination of Masaki from stardom illustrates the existential dilemma that struggles to find a new objective in her life in which the meaning of life depends on achieving the goals in daily tasks, which were to follow any updates on her figure of love, the source of her life energy.


    Of course, the love of one’s favorite entertainer is not to be criticized. Beatlemania was not a hysterical totalitarianism but a collective popularism that entrained the ears and minds of people. The gist of this book echoes what Marcel Proust advised: “Never meet the people you admire. You’ll be disappointed.” There’s a reason for it.



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  • On Reading ‘Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman’ by Allison Gilbert and Julia Scheeres

    Elsie Robinson (1883-1956) was an unforgettable writer whose nationally syndicated column “Listen, World!” spanned over 30 years and garnered more than 20 million readers. Yet, her legacy has not met with the justice of recognition, forgotten in the careless oblivion under the shadows of her contemporary starry women writers. Nelie Bly was sensational as an undercover in a mental asylum and an ambitious challenger to Phileas Fogg of Around the World in 80 days. But Elsie Robinson was a champion of writers whose heartfelt writings touched the finer tissues of the millions of hearts who found solace and support in her words. She was honest, and her words were real, alive, and alike, and there was none other like her.


    Robinson was my kind of model writer who wrote from her experience and heart. Edgar Allan Poe would praise a type of writer with a passion for intoxicating the heart and the truth to satisfy reason. The fates had let her go through trials of life, but her mind exceeded the compass of her wheels. She didn’t mind working as a miner as a single mother before a tide of fortune finally took her to her literary career in the Oakland Tribune. While her peers and contemporary writers took the naval-gazing, angst-ridden narratives a la mode, Robinson used her writing to communicate with readers seeking elbow room in her column. They recognized themselves in the plight of a stranger and found commonalities in it, making them feel that they were not uniquely flawed. I guess that’s why Robinson didn’t get recognition as much as her contemporary peers, who enjoyed the stardom of literary legacy. She wanted to tell her woebegone readers their problems were not theirs but yours, mine, and ours.


    Like Kurt Vonnegut, Robinson wanted to let readers know that to express ourselves in the form of art is to allow our souls to grow, however poor or good, by encouraging us to write our own columns. In that regard, blogging is a great platform to express one’s artistic self without fear of rejection or ridicule, freed from the devil’s advocates of literary purists intent upon finding grammar faults in anyone’s writings. To that end, Robinson is a scintillating writer with an eye for truth and a heart for passion – like the sun in the twilight, remitting the splendor while retaining magnitude, dazzling the eyes of the beholders with the hearts’ contents. As a result, Robinson has become one of my darling writers.

  • ‘Just So Stories’ by Rudyard Kipling – book review

    I believe history is a branch of literature full of events and stories made by artists and artificers weaving facts into myth, and vice versa, into a timeless tapestry of the world that was, is and will be. In that regard, Kipling is an artist who spins beautiful tales of how animals became what they look like into a poetic wheel of ear-delighting and cadenced words aided by gorgeous illustrations distinctively graceful and dazzlingly beautiful.

    Kipling’s evolution of animals explains why they look the way they are, such as a Leopard with spots, a Carmel hump, and many more. The stories become a fable and a history of its kind. It’s a literary version of Darwin’s Origin of Species, the wonderful menageries of Man and Beast that cannot live alone despite the differences in species because we are the inhabitants of this world, Earth. But, above all the fantastic tales of wonder, the Cat’s tale stands out in the story and the subject. Kipling’s Cat is proud but not arrogant, independent but affectionate, and vain but graceful. It’s a cat who walks by himself, and everything is alike to him and nothing else. The Cat is a beautiful stranger even if he likes to be a family, a kind of forever loner, the Puss in Boots with a cowboy hat and an empty holster. Kipling’s writer’s eyes saw the romantic solitude in a cat, and the result is one poetic Cat that rhymes well like the graceful way cats do their amazing somersaults.

    Just So Stories are not just for children even though it is classified in Children’s literature on the shelves of libraries. It’s a book for everyone who loves legends and magic, who still has a childlike innocence that refused to put away as an adult because it’s in nature. The stories are not for academic analysis or psychoanalysis but simply for the enjoyment of the mind and the delight of the heart. Remember Freud’s saying, “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.” So are Just So Stories, so delightful and so pleasant.

  • Auto-correction and Titivillus

    Writing has never been easier these days than in the bygone days before the advent of the computer. If you are unsure about how to spell “Tomato,” then the computer will spell it for you by way of auto-correction. And it can even reconstruct your sentences like a pro. The magic is inside the computer, as if it has a mind and even a soul, as it were. This wizardly power of auto-correction can sometimes, however, lead you to an embroglio of nonsense, especially when writing emails or tweeting. Quite devilish, so I think and wonder: are things like auto-correction and the likes a wicked invention of science or science of diabolical existence? Hence, I am talking about Titivillus, the patron demon of scribes.

    The birth of Titivillus could trace back to the 13th century when Franciscan theologian John of Wales pinpointed the malicious demonic trickery for the scriber’s mistakes. That’s not a footless excuse for the faux-pas made in a beautifully ornamented medieval script. In medieval times, copying the passages of the Holy Scripture was a painfully punctilious task for a monk to accomplish with perfect penmanship and exquisite illuminations. And the job cost a good amount of his youth with arched back, squinted eyes, and cramped arms and fingers, not in the least due to the time spent scribing. Toiling (even though for the glory of God) and Rejoicing (for the joy of self-fulfillment), Sorrowing always hoovers over the glories. Titivillus often brings this Sorrowing by making the scriber err in labor, such as misspelling or miscopying. When that happens, a corrector scraped off with a penknife or an acidic solution was applied to loosen the ink. Or sometimes he just made little dots under a wrong word, meaning the reader should ignore that bit. In case of more significant errors, the passages were sometimes lined through, and the correction was written in the margin or copied on a smaller piece of parchment and glued into the book.


    To think of it, Titivillus has not returned to the Ninth Circle of Hell, always making himself a reason to stay as long as humanity continues writing. Writer’s block is a dark cloud hovering over the soul’s palace, the dome of thoughts. Philological carbuncles, including misspellings and awkward syntax, combine the demon’s interruption and the writer’s fear of writing. The fear is more than devilish trickery or neurotic obsession because it stifles creativeness and imagination of the writer. Still, I cannot help but think that today Titivillus manifests himself in the form of auto-correction, which can change the entire meaning of a whole sentence, often most embarrassingly and awkwardly. You agree?

  • Hounds of Night

    The curtain of the night has drawn. Selene has started her nocturnal promenade with a moon mirror carried on her celestial chariot across the starry highway. Then the earth begins to bellow with great silent roars, trees to dance with leaves rustling in the wind as the chariot is racing, owls to call with their wings flapping, and the hounds howl from the end of the horizon in the glimmering light of the distant stars like lamps flickering in the desolate wilderness amid the haunting sound of Pan’s flute yonder. It’s Hecate’s Time, the Wandering Goddess of Night, appearing from the crossroads with her faithful hounds, heralding the staging of their divine mistress.

    Hecate has often been associated with all things witchery, magic, and death, not in the least due to modern-day Wicca practice identified heavily with the Greek goddess, but there’s more to her. She is a protector of the wrongfully accused, a goddess of retribution against injustice and impurity, and an advocate for underdogs. Perhaps, that’s why her animal is a dog, not a cat, which betrays a common association of the latter with someone like her. (In fact, Artemis is the only goddess whose animals are a cat because she was once transformed into it when chased by a besotted man.) Her hounds all have names: Kynegetis (Leader of Dogs from the Orphic Hymn), Kyneolygmate (Howling like a dog), Kynokephalos (Dog-headed), Kyon Melaina (Black Dog), Philoskylax (Lover of Dogs), Skylakitin (Lady of the Dogs). Of all the hounds, Kyon Melnia, aka Black Dog, used to be the wife of the last Trojan King Priam named Hekabe, who threw herself into the sea after the collapse of Troy by the Greeks. Hecate took pity on the queen and transformed her into a great black dog that became her familiar. What a manifestation of divine mercy it was.


    It is said that dogs and cats see the spirits of the dead, especially at night. If you have heard a dog howling, another howl, then another, and so forth, as if all of them sing in a canine polyphonic coda. When Hecate’s hounds howl, mortal dogs respond to their divine canine entity as the goddess and her entourage pass by. The hounds also bring victuals offered to Hecate to their mistress at a cemetery where she partakes her daily victuals. So if you think it’s just an ancient myth, listen carefully when your dog or any dog within your earshot howls. It’s either it sees a spirit or Hecate and her nine hounds. For me, well, I have a tabby cat named Toro, and he sees it and them but won’t participate in the chorus because he has her mistress at home.