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I'm finally feeling brave enough to link to my newest blog, simply called Another. Initially, it was meant to be a diary, a dumping grounds for posts that felt too personal and self-indulgent to inflict on this Cup's readership. But the new blog changed genres and became something more specific when I realized that the only posts I'm hesitant to put here are the ones dealing with depression; and so, Another became a "literary" mental health blog, focusing on the relationship between writing and depression, but also linking to abstracts of clinical studies, essays about therapy, and reviews of recent and relevent books.
Some posts that may (or may not) appeal to this Cup's readers include
In Laura Miller's latest column, we get an unwanted sense of her sexual past:
For some, it's like a loss of virginity; you never forget the book that defeated your naive faith in the contract between an author and his or her reader, the promise that your time and effort, even your irritation, will be fairly repaid.Throughout her column, Laura quotes writers on what makes them quit, or persist, reading a novel, and the explanations consistently evoke sex and relationships. Ayelet Waldman says, ''I have to feel personally betrayed by a book to quit, but sometimes, exactly like some relationships I've had, the betrayal becomes so catastrophic that I keep going back to it.'' Tom Bissell observes, ''It's like dating … You need to know if this is serious or just a fling.'' And Robert Gottlieb, proving himself a willing target for pity sex, "says he'll sometimes read an old, forgotten book just because 'I feel sorry for it.'" So: to those looking to set up a dating site for writers, you now have one excellent question for the featured personals.
(The best sex-related line from this week's NY Times book reviews, though, comes from Janet Maslin's review of The Rule of Four: "When Poliphilo is overcome with physical attraction to the architecture he sees," Tom explains, "he admits to having sex with buildings. At least once, he claims the pleasure was mutual.")
I've been behind in my blog reading, and only just got around to The Reading Experience's excellent critique of Emily Barton's review of Gary Lutz's I Looked Alive. Here's a short excerpt of the post to encourage you to click on over there:
Perhaps the most damaging of Barton's criticisms, if it was true, is that Lutz "can't even write prose of middling intelligibility," fails to "maintain a crystalline clarity." Certainly Lutz could write prose of "middling intelligibility" if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He's deliberately confronting the standard of "crystalline clarity," asking why literary experiment can't include experiment with conventional uses of language. In the book's very first paragraph we are told by the narrator that "I had not come through in either of the kids. They took their mother's bunching of features, and were breeze-shaken things, and did not cut too far into life." This is not immediately "informative" in a "crystalline" way, but if you pause (and pause you must, throughout most of this book) and consider it, it makes perfect sense as a description of the way this man might see his children. It's just a "new" way of expressing features we are accustomed to seeing signalled in more familiar phrases.(No comments on the post here, since I already wrote down my reactions in a comment over there.)
As graduation, and the need for a real-world job, approaches, I wonder if Craigslist posts like this one will seem more, or less, funny:
Star Search for Photogenic and Articulate WritersThe same post can also be found at Craigslist under the title "Outstanding Writer Needed to Write About Dogs."
Exciting opportunity with a unique marketing-oriented publishing firm. We are searching for outstanding writers of non-fiction capable of quickly turning exciting topics into mainstream best-sellers. Candidates must have superior writing and speaking capabilities, sparkling personalities and be highly photogenic.
Other job opportunities posted this week:
James Hynes traces the genesis of his latest novel, Kings of Infinite Space, for the Boston Review:
The year my second book, Publish and Perish, came out, I took a job as an office temp for a large Texas state agency, working for eight dollars an hour. This was one of the inevitable low points on the sine wave of my career, a boring day job being the default mode of a midlist writer’s livelihood. Still, I had never worked in an office before, and the experience was more exotic than humiliating…Further down in the essay, Hynes lists some of the book's major plot points:
I had an epiphany one soporific mid-morning when I stood up in my cubicle to stretch myself awake. Turning slowly in place, I scanned a complete 360 of the cube horizon. The scene was slightly underlit, and while I could hear all sorts of human activity—talking, phones ringing, keyboards clattering—I couldn’t see another living person. I felt as if I was working in a room full of ghosts. The alienation of cube life was suddenly revealed to me as something gothic, a variation on the creeping dread of a Poe character. I could be walled up alive inside my cubicle and no one would even notice—the Cube of Amontillado. Immediately I dropped to my seat and jotted down a paragraph that appears almost without revision in my new book, Kings of Infinite Space.
Finally, Paul is increasingly alarmed by a series of odd events at work—strange noises in the ceiling, a mysterious death in the next cube, and unsettling visitations by bloodlessly pale guys in white shirts and ties. On top of all this, Paul continues to be haunted by Charlotte, the cat he drowned in “Queen of the Jungle.” It all comes together in a blood-and-thunder climax featuring ritual human sacrifice and a fight to the death with office equipment.Resistentialism = awesome.
This is kind of cool: Located in the North lobby of the Main Library at University of Iowa, there's a Book Drop Vending Machine, selling "Ethiopian bookbinding kits" and "case construction Journal kits." (If you're not a UI student, you can order the kits here.)
I spent the morning browsing through Glossarist, a searchable directory of glossaries and topical dictionaries. Here, some of my useful, interesting, or unexpected finds, with examples of terms and definitions:
"So in 2001 I started a contest much like the Bulwer-Lytton, only with entrants limited to 25 words." The task was "to write the first line of an imaginary novel." The goal was "to make it hilariously bad."
Some of this year's winners:
Dude, this magazine's gonna rock.
John Holbo, one of the Crooked Timber bloggers, recently posted a long piece of commentary on academic blogging, especially blogging concerned with literature. Here, a summary and some responses:
So, when John writes that literary studies can use blogs to generate more "interest and excitement" and then mentions (Cup favorites) Maud Newton and Old Hag, is he implying that these blogs are not only helping literature get more attention, but also helping the state of academic "literary studies"? In my opinion, the lit blogs I read are no better a model for "literary studies" blogs than most other blogs. When a blog's subject is as broad as "literature," the treatment of the subject becomes more important than the subject. Or, more to the point: I don't know how blogging affects the way a subject is treated, and it may be that blogs are better suited for shorter commentary than for longer pieces of scholarship.
UPDATE: After I posted this entry, I spent some time reading the blogs listed under "Literature, language, culture" on Crooked Timbers' sidebar. Most of the blogs, written by graduate students or professors, are diary repositories or anti-Bush portals. I bookmarked the exceptions, and will try to link to some of them soon; for now, I'm linking to just one, Critical Mass. CM's author, Erin O'Connor, has also posted a response to John's post, and the response, unlike mine, benefits from a current and first-hand knowledge of academia. It applauds most of what John wrote, but also expresses "reservations about whether the blog-induced revival Holbo envisions is possible, given academic literary studies' attitudes toward technology and transparency." Erin continues, further down in the post: "…one sign of the systemic disorder of literature departments today is that their members are positively hostile to the idea that their relevance may and should be assessed by--horror of horrors--uncredentialled laypersons, the great nonacademic unwashed."
Meanwhile, the comments on John's post are piling up, and John's responding to them with clarifications and extended definitions. John wants literary scholarship to participate in more "bookchat," a term taken from this speech by Scott McLemee. John summarizes "bookchat" as "saying what you like, what you are enthusiastic about, trying to be smart about it, trying to interest others, but not really worrying about the Big Picture right this second." That's what non-academic lit blogs do, and what literary scholarship, in his opinion, needs to learn to do more often. To that, Chun (link goes to Chun's blog, not his CT comment) responds,
What does trouble me is the repressive tolerance of bookchat Holbo endorses. I, Vidal, and all freedom-loving peoples use the term contemptuously. Like the masturbation it is, I often find reading 4500 empty words about the eternal verities of Henry Green pleasurable. A forty-five word blog-post pointing me to it is even appreciated. The idea, however, that it’s a catalyst for textual and historical scholarship on this novelist is astonishing. Rather, inane, evaluative bookchat is parasitic on scholarship—generally low-level, biographical scholarship—but scholarship all the same. It does not advance knowledge; it uses an appeal to taste and kulchur to sell a certain class of audience to advertisers.Heh. John writes back, "Chun wants literary studies to stay the same, only more so? Phlegm fatale."
Like all good educators, I’m an obscurantist. The circulatory function of bookchat that Holbo mentions is very real and dangerous. The blog can exercise chat. If there is a problem with literary studies, it’s that it isn’t sufficently phlegmatic. Consider Pinker’s parable about the elephant’s trunk, for example.
I've been reading lit blogs all afternoon and feel like the fat kid getting lapped, once, twice … I'm trying to resist the temptation to start walking.
But, I've been online all week. I'm just working on a couple other projects, in particular setting up another blog, which I'll introduce tomorrow or Monday. And, the redesign -- oft mentioned, but never seen -- is coming along slowly but nicely, and should arrive here soon.
But, before I get lapped again, here's some good links:
-I've always been a fan of Studio 360, and especially enjoyed today's show, which featured Terry and included segments on critics' mistakes, the challenges of reviewing children's lit, and Ryan Adam's dislike for a certain critic.
-During his interview with Studio 360's Kurt Anderson, Terry mentions that, when teaching students how to write criticism, he recommends investing extra energy in the plot summary and treating description as a form of commentary. In his NY Times review of Bergdorf Blondes, Choire shows how it's done: "So: a nameless Manhattanite narrator and her best friend, the callous and severely blond shoplifting enthusiast Julie Bergdorf -- yes, that Bergdorf -- decide they must score P.H.'s (Prospective Husbands). … At Muffy's big charity ball, our narrator snaps up a P.H. herself, a Hot Young Photographer. Ka-ching! … Finally, after a tumultuous interlude of oral sex -- during which she text-messages Julie -- he dumps her."
-Popular girls are rounded up, sequestered, and closely studied.
-Beatrice critiques the first installment of "Pulps".
Gail Armstrong, of Open Brackets, explains why "a collection of the correspondence between authors and their translators would make for a fine and fascinating book":
Collaboration (if any) is generally in writing in the author’s native tongue and, although proud to be read by foreigners, many a writer remains wary of the translator’s abilities to transport him unscathed over seas. Not always without reason.And so a full spectrum of relationships ensues: from openly hostile to be always mine love, by way of reluctant professionalism, obsequious gratitude, and a two-way longstanding mentor-student tug.
On the openly hostile front we have many notorious tales – including those of Nabokov, his Vera and their crisp new Swedish dictionary, scouring the translation of Pnin word by word, then calling for a ritual burning.
Of Kundera who rejected the first three English translations of The Joke, only to later stitch together a “definitive” version using bits of all three, adding: “O ye translators, do not sodonymize us!”
And of old Isaac Bashevis Singer who puffed: “There is no such thing as a good translator. The best translators make the worst mistakes. No matter how much I love them, all translators must be closely watched.” Nobel, indeed.
In the who the hell does this guy think he is category, we have Borges’s longstanding American translator cum tagalong Norman Thomas di Giovanni who diluted and undid stunning prose for what he ruled the American ear, saying the process of translating Señor B., “I liken to cleaning a painting; you could see the bright colours and sharp outlines underneath where you couldn’t before.” [more>]
CNN reports on the annual "Who Reads What?" list, out in time for National Library Week. But, I'd like to know: did the celebrities list their favorite books, or the books they're currently reading? Somehow, the article treats the two possibilities as interchangeable -- as if reading is such a rare activity for celebrities, they're entitled to pretend the past tense is the present. Worse yet, the books named in the "What They're Reading" side panel sound like they're cribbed off an 11th grade syllabus -- implying that most people haven't read much since high school, or read so little in high school they're still catching up.
The New Republic introduces "Pulps":
[What Is Pulps? The criticism of literature has always been one of the fundamental tasks of The New Republic, but there is a difference between the criticism of literature and the criticism of books. Not all books are literature. Yet it is a fundamental fact of American life that large numbers of Americans read books that are not literature. Even if some of those books do not warrant literary examination, they certainly warrant cultural examination. A nation's highest and lowest notions of itself may be found in its amusements. Thinking about America's popular books is a way of thinking about America. In the 1950s and 1960s, critics such as Robert Warshow and Mary McCarthy and Dwight Macdonald taught by example how, and why, intellectual seriousness may be brought to bear upon things that are not intellectually serious; and, in recent decades, with mixed results, the discipline of cultural studies was established on this premise. The aim of this feature of TNR Online will be to toil in the same vineyards, though rather more snappily. Pulps will regularly visit the best-seller list and linger over thrillers, romances, fiction, non-fiction, and even (as The New York Times puts it) "advice, how-to, and miscellaneous" books, as documents of our time, for the purpose of a brief but undoubtedly penetrating exercise in cultural anthropology. After all, influential ideas have a way of turning up in the strangest places. A warning: Pulps will give away the books' plots. Critics have a way of spoiling all the fun.]
I Love Books is asking readers for their favorite sentences from novels. Among the responses:
"He gave me a look, a kind of wide-eyed, reproachful look, such as a dying newt might have given me, if I had forgotten to change its water regularly."I've always struggled naming "favorites." I'm disorganized and I have a bad memory, but, also, books are moments more than texts to me. A sentence fits my mood, and the more precise the tailoring, the less likely it is the sentence will fit other moods as well.
-P.G.Wodehouse"I was never sure I wanted to get married. But I always knew I wanted a divorce."
-Joseph Heller, Something Happened"The most time-efficient way to say no to something is to say yes, and then never do it."
-Scott Adams- The Joy of Work"It was an uncertain spring."
-Virginia Woolf, The Years.
"He noted with distaste his own trick of appealing for sympathy. A personality had its own ways. A mind might observe them without approval."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"The satisfaction she took in herself was positvely plural — imperial."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"And inside the train on the worn green bristle of the seats, Father Herzog sat peeling the fruit with his Russian pearl-handled knife. He peeled and twirled and cut with Europeam efficiency."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"…lights like drops of fat in yellow broth…"
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"Her decisiveness fascinated him, and in such fascination he discovered his own childishness."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"'Poor Moses — unless you're having a bad time with a woman you can't believe you're being serious.'"
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"I cried everynight as I rocked you to sleep. You must have grown up thinking my sobbing was a song."
-Carole Maso, The Art Lover
"He drank till he became drunk, his eyes moist, his laugh general."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"The night, intent seamstress, fed the fabric of water under the needle of our hull, steadily, firmly, except the boat wasn't stitching the water together but ripping it apart into long white threads."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"The silence was thoughtful, as though it were an eyelash beating against a pillowcase."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"I hypothesized a lover who'd take me away … His delay in coming went on so long that soon I'd passed from anticipation to nostalgia."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"That a life could be changed posited the still more thrilling notion that one had a thing called a life, a wonderful being that was growing silently inside like an infant."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"'Let's go,' he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarly empty.) It was one's body feeling, not one's mind."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"'A face is like a name … Yet there comes a time when you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself: this is my self? And why? Why did I want to identify with this? What do I care about this face? And at that moment everything starts to crumble. Everything starts to crumble."
'What starts to crumble? What's the matter with you, Agnes? What's the matter with you lately?'
She glanced at him, then lowered her head. He looked incorrigibly like his mother."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
"No, thinks Rubens; in the instant that he grasps the comical, man does not laugh; laughter follows afterward as a physical reaction, as a convulsion no longer containing any thought."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
"Agnes did not want Paul to suffer from a sense of guilt. Not out of compassion for him, but rather out of jealousy: she didn't want him to feel so responsible for Laura, to be so tied to her in his thoughts."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
That's all I'll type for now. Maybe I'll continue, in another post, sometime soon.
Margo Jefferson writes on quote collectors and collections for the New York Times:
Unreliable or omniscient, I would be the narrator in control.From the age of fourteen to seventeen, I was an avid quote collector. So, after reading Jefferson's article, I entered, folder by folder, the bowels of my hard drive, launched OS 9, and spent some time with a rarely visited, but very familiar, quote collection. Here, the quotes that I loved in my most formative years (and still love in what I hope to God are my least formative years):So I kept notebooks of quotations. Lots of people do. Reading them over lets you scan your own temperament. The words of writers you admire provide a trustworthy language for your desires and for how you'll feel when life ambushes them. They relieve you from being brave enough to say what feels unsayable. Notebooks like this are an informal history of your reading. If you forage through books instead of reading one at a time, the order of entries can look random. Rereading reveals -- or imposes -- a structure, a map of associations.
BeautyPeople say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayCalifornia
Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
— Ross MacDonald(Note to readers: my high school was near the California shore.)
Change
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
— Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics
CynicismThe cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Menchen (1880- 1956)Education
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry AdamsThe test and the use of man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the excercise of his mind.
— Jacques Barzun, in Saturday Evening Post“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and then the different branches of Arithmetic— Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandOne had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problem distasteful to me for an entire year.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mostly in need of freedom; without this it goes to ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”You say I was an unschoolable boy at a bad school. But what is an unschoolable boy? I was greedy for knowledge, and interested in everything, and if school taught me nothing except that school is a prison and not a place of teaching, the conclusion is that pedagogy is not yet a science.
— Bernard Shaw, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
— G.M. Trevelyan, English Social HistoryI have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain (1835-1910)Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde, IntentionsEgotism
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
—Lucille S. HarperEgotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
—Ambrose BierceFear
Always do what you are afraid to do.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonFriendship
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonGoodness/Rightness
No good deed goes unpunished.
—Clare Boothe LuceAlways do right- this will gratity some and astonish the rest.
—Mark TwainHell
Hell is other people.
—Jean-Paul SartreHell is a half-filled auditorium.
—Robert FrostHonesty
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
—Tom StoppardHumility
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
—Golda Meir to a visiting diplomatIgnorance
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
— Sydney HarrisLife
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
— PlatoEverything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul SartreLogic
Logic is in the eye of the logician.
—Gloria SteinemMedia
lmitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred AllenMediocrity
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(Note: I wrote the last quote down when I was fifteen, after losing a creative writing contest.)
The average person thinks he isn't.
— Father Larry LorenzoniMind
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
— John Milton, Paradise LostOther
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. - Ashleigh Brilliant
In time of war the first casualty is truth.
- Boake CarterDiplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie! " till you can find a rock.
- Wynn CatlinIt is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
—Winston ChurchillSometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
— Sigmund FreudNever mistake motion for action.
—Ernest HemingwayFew things are harder to put up with than a good example.
—Mark TwainThe gods too are fond of a joke.
—Aristotle
How can l lose to such an idiot?
— A shout from chessmaster Aaron NimzovichNo Sane man will dance.
—CiceroThree o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
—Jean-Paul SartreIf you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt LongworthGlory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon BonaparteGive me a museum and I'll fill it.
—Pablo PicassoAssassins !
—Arturo Toscanini to his orchestraThe longer l live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)Prejudice
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
—Albert EinsteinCriticism is prejudice made plausible.
— H. L. MenckenSelf as Enemy
Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
—Thomas Browne, Religio MediciHe is his own worst enemy.
—Cicero of Julius CeaserSelf-criticism
All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-priase, and all the reproach of falsehood.
— Samuel JohnsonSelf-knowledge
He who knows others is learned
He who knows himself is wise.
—Lao-Tzu, Tao-te ChingReal knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
—ConfuciusSilence
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb ColtonWe have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
—EpictetusThe world would be a happier place if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
— Benedict De Spinoza, EthicsTemptation
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayThought
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
—Bertrand RussellWhether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
—Henry FordTruth
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
— Andr GideThe opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
— Niels BohrWords
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
—Abraham LincolnWhen ideas fail, words come in very handy.
— GoetheWriting
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
— Flannery O'ConnorWhy don't you write books people can read?
—Nora Joyce to her husband James
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
— T. S. EliotFrom the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
—Groucho Marxl have read your book and much like it.
—Moses HadasEverywhere I go I'm asked if l think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
—Flannery O'ConnorIn science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
—Paul DiracI can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody - who can write better.
—A. J. Liebling
-The NY Times printed a short, but glowing, review of A Terry Teachout Reader. It articulates many of the reasons I read, and encourage my readers to read, Terry's blog:
Cultural critics may lack the depth of knowledge that comes with specialization, but Terry Teachout's self-issued carte blanche to submerge himself in whatever he wants (he is the music critic of Commentary, the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, and ''critic-for-hire'' on everything from opera to television for many other publications) has left him with an unusual and singular perspective on the last 15 years of American cultural activity. Now that the country has crossed its ''great cultural and technological divide,'' Teachout writes, as well as finally left postmodernism behind, he hopes his collection will ''have some value as a chronicle, a road map of how we got from there to here.'' That the 58 engaging essays in ''A Terry Teachout Reader,'' on subjects ranging from Dawn Powell and Louis Armstrong to David Ives and Martha Graham, tell us as much about America as they do about Teachout's evolving sensibility makes the book an intellectual memoir by way of enthusiasms. His detailed snapshots of bygone cultural moments are introduced by a thoughtful history of our cultural climate over the last half-century.
-Workshop friend Daniel Alarcón has a story in the debut issue of Swink. You can read an excerpt of his story, "Florida," online. (Last night I saw the chosen cover for Daniel's upcoming collection, War by Candlelight. Pretty awesome: the cover, but also the reality of his success.)
book( re)marks-The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced; L.A. Times takes home five. The prize for fiction goes to Edward P. Jones's The Known World. And, at About Last Night, Terry comments on the music, nonfiction, and drama prizes.
-The NY Times discusses, and quotes from, from a new play on Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. (HANNAH: You are a sort of murderer, I think. MARTIN: I am a scholar!)
-The James Brothers are really getting around.
-Laura Miller looks at the life of Baudelaire. (When Moore, at Friday's Q & A, said she never missed a class in grad school, I tried to calm myself with thoughts of Baudelaire. It's still remotely possible, after all, to be irresponsible, unproductive, and widely read.)
-Lizzie, aka Our Favorite Hag, reviews Our Savage for The Washington Post.
-Links to excerpts from Never Threaten To Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs.
-Andrea's Like the Red Panda gets a glowing write-up in People.
-"Memo to film-makers: Painters, composers and sculptors work superbly in movies. Writers don't."
-Amy Poehler and Janeane Garofalo first bonded over their shared dislike for A.M. Homes.
-another online collection of children's books, from 1850 to now
-Books for Soldiers
-How grammatically sound are you? (via TT, who's a "Grammar God")
-Litterati Caption Contest
Here's a transcript, lightly abridged by my ADD, of Moore's thoughts and responses.
-Moore says she "may be the only writer constantly discouraged from writing novels. I try not to take it personally." As most of you already know, Moore's currently working on a novel.
-(Before I arrived at the Q & A, I decided that if any student asked about "the autobiographical elements" in "People Like That are The Only People Here," I'd allow myself to glare.) A frizzy-haired girl with an overly loud voice asks about "the autobiographical elements" in "People Like That are The Only People Here." Moore's response makes note of the impersonal titles, instead of names, assigned to the story's characters ("the Mother," "the Husband," "the Baby," "the Surgeon"). That stylistic choice, she goes on to say, was meant to convey something about catastrophe's ability to turn people into "roles," and people's desperate reliance on "domestic scripts." (She slightly rolls script's r. Her pronounciation of words throughout the Q & A feels very prep school posh.)
-At Cornell, where she did her MFA, she never missed a class, and looked down on classmates who "took the weekends off" from writing. (This made my heart, and a couple other organs in close vicinity, sink with Titanic-like finality. I used to feel that way, too, but nowadays only apply discipline to work-avoidance.)
-Someone asks if she's brought anything she's learned from teaching (Moore teaches English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison) to her writing. The only thing teaching really does, Moore says, is pay for groceries. (Her books don't make good money? I'm surprised. Her last was a bestseller.)
-Moore breifly discusses the benefits of setting work aside for a month or two and then coming back to it with fresh eyes. She also mentions how much she can't stand reading her first two collections, though she recently opened up Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and loved it. "Can I still write this well?" she asked herself -- and then, "Should I have just written little novels" about teenage girls my whole career? (Readers who agree with me that, compared to her story collections, Frog Hospital is shit, might wonder if this undermines her claim that time gives her self-assessments more objectivity.)
-She thinks a writer's last novels tend to never be his best. She thinks Philip Roth's most recent books are lousy.
(-Observation: when students ask her about particular quotes from interviews, she never remembers having said them. We know her interviews much better than she does.)
-Moore's asked how it feels to be so widely copied. (Many girls give nervous smiles.) "I don't know anything about that," Moore responds.
-Moore talks about a writer's need to find "their voice." She's heard that other teachers assign excercises requiring students to imitate famous writers, but she's unsure those excercises are helpful. Ethan Canin, the Q & A moderator, mentions that when he was younger, he liked to type out passages from favorite novels, and that, in the olden days, this was common practice for beginning writers. Moore mentions that she recently had to retype some paragraphs by Updike for use as quotes in a review. She really enjoyed that, particularly because she was getting paid by the word.
-She's asked who she reads. "I read everybody," she says. She's asked again. She reads everybody, except for authors in translation. Having had her own work translated, she suspects that translations are often unfaithful to authorial intent. (To be honest, people's reluctance to read translations annoys me. I explained why here [scroll down to part II].)
-Moore says she reads very slowly, and thinks most writers do. (Ethan -- whose questions have so far been responded to by Moore with bewildered "No"s or "Next question?" -- is very happy to add, I read slowly, too.)
-Moore's asked about her similes and metaphors by a classmate who once gave a good speech in class on Moore's similes and metaphors. How do they function in her work? What is she trying to accomplish by using them? "I don't think about that," Moore answers.
-Prodded further, Moore says that her similes help "register voice and rhythm," and probably point to the "inadequacy of the original description."
-Moore talks about her similes some more. Some that seem normal or obvious to her have seemed "dangerously odd" to others. She recalls that, in her first New Yorker story, a line -- something like Alarm buzzed through her like a low-level tea. -- got cut by an editor who didn't think it made much sense. But, by the time the story was set to reappear in a collection. she'd reincluded it. (Back home, I found the line on p.85 of Like Life. From "You're Ugly, Too": "Alarm buzzed through her, mildy, like a tea.")
-She almost always has a story's ending in mind before starting it. Then, one-third into the story, the ending becomes clearer, and she skips ahead and writes it.
-A student asks how she goes about assigning characters their jobs, "something poets don't need to think about." It's a "real weakness for me," Moore says. She keeps on accidentally letting characters work at historical societies.
-Moore describes the process of writing a short story: First comes "some idea"; then, "things fall in from the world" -- things that have "correspondence" to that first idea; and eventually, there's a moment when the story "closes" shut and becomes a "hot house … of a fictional world."
-She's asked about motherhood's effects on her writing. "For my writing, it's been terrible. For my life," she pauses, and then says flatly, "good."
-On the other hand, she says that "Marriage is very good for writing. Most writers are married … it cuts the solitude of writing." She continues, "The trick [for writers] is not to be too busy or too lonely … Solitude, with company built into it — that's the best thing."
-The Q & A's last question brings up the title story in Like Life. Why was that the title story? Actually, Moore says, she wanted to name the book after the story "Vissi d'Arte," but the people in marketing didn't like foreign words. And, though "Like Life" won the title slot, she believes it's "the most failed story in the collection. It wasn't what I wanted it to be at all." (I want to write, Like Life?)
#
Snagged from the University of Central Florida's website, Lorrie Moore and T-shirt Simulacra:
Official Caption: "English Department with Lorrie Moore." And, somehow, the moment seems ripe for a Lorrie Moore short story.
Neal Pollack summarizes, for the benefit of lit snobs, the uber-popular "Left Behind" series:
1. Left Behind: A Novel Of The Earth’s Last Days: Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, comes under the spell of Gilbert Osmond, the Antichrist, who attempts to offer her as a blood sacrifice to the succubus Madame Merle. Can born-again fighter pilot Ralph Touchette rescue Isabel before it’s too late?2. Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama Of Those Left Behind: Jake Barnes, an American war hero, develops mysterious stigmata on both palms. He falls in love with Brett, a chic, sexually unattainable Englishwoman who also happens to be the Antichrist. It’s up to bullfighter Pedro Romero to save the Iberian peninsula from being sucked into an abyss of eternal darkness.[more>]
I attended a Workshop-sponsored Q & A with Lorrie Moore yesterday and took down copious notes for my blog readers' benefit.
I'll post those notes sometime today -- maybe after breakfast. But after that, I plan to be away from the computer for at least a couple days. Knowing myself, that's not going to happen, and you'll probably see the same amount of posts as always. But if you don't, all I can say is, you've been forewarned.
There are certain blogs -- among them, The Reading Experience and Collected Miscellany -- that I respect but rarely agree with. They provide the type of commentary I long for: long posts on literary trends, aesthetic values, and the philosophies -- invisible or explicit, personal or cultural-- that guide the production and consumption of literature. But the degree to which I'm invested in something is also the degree to which I'm critical of it; perversely, I reserve most of my hate for instances of what I love. And, another twist: most instances of what I love I hate.
Last night, I read a post that typifies, perhaps to the point of caricature, what I'd name the worst -- and most common -- impulse in arts-related writing. You'll recognize it as very familiar to most discussions of the value of art, and what art we should value:
A few posts down I discussed a 2 Blowhards post on the question of "light entertainment." Michael was wondering if we aren't a bit too quick to write off light hearted fare as lacking higher merit while we reserve this merit for more "serious" works. My short answer was that the key is to value each for what it is, but that there is a difference.These thoughts aren't at all "scattered." Each idea is compatible with the next, expressing a codified liberal humanism. In high school most of us quickly learned the value of humanism: it provided our conclusion to every English essay. Its ideas feel simple but authoratative, esoteric and yet self-evident. Words like "timeless" and "human" and phrases like "universal truth" function both as an argument and that argument's support. So, while they sound earnest, they're also smug, and using them we're not unlike Humpty Dumpty using the word "glory":
Art in the big sense needs to rise above the here and now. There is something transcendent about art. It teaches us something about what it means to be human; it captures something bigger than the medium with which it communicates. Timelessness is certainly one category. If something can speak to people across generations and time periods then it obviously goes deeper. But something can also be art because it captures something perfectly or in a unique way. It doesn't transcend time so much as capture it and so transmits meaning to us from the past. Such are my scattered thoughts.
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.Humanist keywords, by seeming so self-evident, signal similar pretension. When we use them, we take them for granted, when, like all words, their meanings shift over time, and have a history determined by events that are not at all "timeless." (For a very good analysis of humanism's many permutations and political uses, check out Tony Davies' simply titled Humanism).
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't--till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
I don't think I'm being uncharitable. I recognize that the post was probably quickly written ("scattered thoughts"), but if it was, that just strengthens my case: humanist keywords feel so irrefutable, we use them without explication.
And if the last three sentences in the quoted passage seem to suggest that "timelessness" is not the only criteria for great art, and that the argument offers a nuance I'm ignoring, I'd ask how a text's ability to "capture" the past and "transmit" its meaning offers a criteria that's different from "timelessness." If the captured meaning can still be understood, it implies that the meaning of the text is timeless. Interpretation is not affected by culture, and even if "interpretation" implies that a text has variable meanings, none of them are ever lost or gained. (Almost every word meant to add something new establishes a more violent circularity: transcendence means timelessness; timelessness refers to the essentially human; the essentially human is transcendent.)
So, back to where I started. I'm interested in reading good, challenging, innovative commentary. Now that so many lit bloggers are reconsidering their aims, I think it's a good time to mention that. Ed's calling for more journalism-styled initiative ("making … phone calls … confirming facts … arranging … author interviews"); Laila's devoting more blogtime to book reviews; Sarah wants to post less often, and spend more time on each post; and Maud's veering towards "more original reviews and content." Dan, of The Reading Experience, is also thinking through the blog form's possibilities, and has been discussing them with Mark, who, in an email quoted at Dan's, wrote that "this blog thing really represents a new model, and I think we need to challenge ourselves to figure out how to use it beyond the familiar." I'm hoping that lit blogs, however, don't transition from "familiar" linkage to just-as-"familiar" commentary: reviews that sound like the reviews of any major newspaper. Yes, more literature needs to be reviewed; too much of the space once devoted to reviews has been cut. But to what degree was that influenced by the way reviewers understood and wrote about literature? Investing more time in reviews and commentary doesn't have to mean just counteracting literature's loss of exposure; it can also mean challenging reviews' conventions, experimenting, taking advantage of blogs' relative freedom. After all, there's no form of commentary, or model for a book review, that's "timeless."
What impresses me about Terry, besides his ability to write simple, smart, and elegant sentences [ridiculously quickly], is his sharp eye for quotes. I love his Almanac feature (and just wrote him that I might steal it someday), but also the quotes he smuggles into longer posts. From his recent post on completing his short biography of Balanchine, these two quotes, the first from Balanchine and the second from Stephen Sondheim:
Subject: MEDIA ALERT! March 31stAt first glance, yes, it seems horrible. But then, take a moment to imagine what upgrades you could offer the Great American Love Story if you volunteered yourself for a sentence. Here, some possible responses to the "call" of "Bushnell’s handwritten line":A New Love Affair Begins
AUTHOR CANDACE BUSHNELL TO BEGIN MONTBLANC’S GREAT AMERICAN LOVE STORY
WHO
Candace Bushnell, Author Sex and the City, Trading Up
Jan-Patrick Schmitz, President/CEO Montblanc North America
Montblanc Solitaire Royal, ultra glamorous fountain pen covered with 4,810 pave diamonds set in 18k gold.
Marcia Gay Harden, Oscar winning actress
Jason Lewis, actor, last appearing in HBO’s Sex and The City as Jared Smith, Samantha’s younger boyfriendWHAT
Candace Bushnell handwrites the first line of Montblanc’s Great American Love Story with the world’s most expensive pen, the Solitaire Royal fountain pen, valued at $125,000. Bushnell’s handwritten line will call on all New Yorkers, to develop this unconventional love story. The modern day fairy-tale is built line by line, “author” by “author”. The story will be submitted to the Guinness Book of World’s Records for the novel with the most contributing authors.The Novel: Larger than any best-seller, the Great American Love Story stands two feet tall with over 1,000 blank pages.
Check out the comments for my more wtf reaction. But, here's hoping that, given the dates involved, Montblanc simply has an uncommonly self-deprecating sense of humor.
Amy's Robot investigates Ann Widdecombe, whose debut as the Guardian's "Agony Aunt" took place yesterday. Among Amy's discoveries: Ann's personal homepage, littered with cat pictures, and her ongoing dalliance with novel-writing.
Further research on my part yields this excerpt from Ann's latest book, An Act of Treachery, which tells the story of a French girl who loves a Nazi:
Then, as I returned her smile wondering for how long I could take such greetings for granted, I stood stock still, my eyes fixed on the yellow star, my spirit screaming with shocked but silent protest. The order had gone out about a week ago that all Jews over the age of six must wear a yellow Star of David. Until now I had not seen any and had hardly paid much attention to this latest manifestation of persecution but now the cruel reality confronted me from the jacket of a girl younger than myself and I had not even realised she was Jewish.A Guardian interview provides further insight into Ann's psychology:Her smile weakened a little as she followed my gaze but she continued towards me.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know."
"No? I'm afraid I always thought it was obvious."
I looked at her and supposed it was, although now I came to think of it I had little idea what distinguished Jewish features. I recalled something about large noses and felt myself ignorant and insensitive. I glanced again at the star, remembered Yvette Levin and thought such a regime could be the product only of savages not of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century.
"I am afraid I qualify several times over under the definition. Both parents, all grandparents. Not very assiduous but it isn't that which counts. The time will probably come when you will be afraid to acknowledge me in the street."
They are Jews according to the definition to which we are obliged to work......I do not make these laws, Catherine, and so I do not have to justify them. Klaus’ words rang through my brain tolling moral desolation.
"It isn't fair." How often had I roared those words in childish protest at some petty injustice, how pathetically inadequate they sounded now.
"Nothing's fair. Children lost in the Exodus, tiny babies sent to Drancy, not knowing what happened to some of the men who fought, old folk not having enough to eat und so weiter, und so weiter as those beasts would say."
"I am in love with one of those beasts."
Her mouth slackened and her eyes widened but she said nothing…
When did she last cry, I ask. "When did I last cry?" she repeats scornfully. "I would say that was my business. I mean, it's such a wet question." As it turns out, it was last week - but only "very slightly" - at a viewing of Mel Gibson's crucifixion flick, The Passion of the Christ. "Terrific film, very powerful, very moving. I admit I closed my eyes from time to time. Very true to the New Testament."So, I hope you'll forgive me if I tell you that, in the context of the above quotes, I found this comment by Widdecombe a little unsettling: "Going blonde is the only thing I've ever done that's got 100% approbation." (If you don't know what I mean by 'unsettling,' please click the link.)
From New York Mag's Intelligencer column:
Sometimes, what a writer wears can be as important as what she writes. “Can I try the little lynx mini-top?” asks Plum Sykes, at the new J. Mendel boutique at Bergdorf Goodman. A furry shrug is produced—“Very cool, very bohemian, very Kate Moss–y, perfect for the Houston book party,” she says in front of a full-length mirror. “There are five book parties, you know!”Read more, or spare your tooth enamel. (link, and vomit theme, snagged from Emma)Indeed, in the next few weeks, New York, London, Houston, L.A., and possibly Palm Beach will fête Sykes’s Bergdorf Blondes, the tale of an unnamed heroine—she goes simply by “Moi”—navigating New York’s social world, filled with PAPs (Park Avenue Princesses), PHs (Prospective Husbands), and “ana” girls. “Someone once said to me, ‘Plum, you’re so ana!’ ” says Sykes, a five-eleven Brit with Ritalin-kid energy. "I was like, ‘Anna Wintour?’ She said, ‘No, you’re completely anorexic! I worship it!’ ”
"Sven Birkerts discovered he was the latest target of Dale Peck's rage by noticing his book My Sky Blue Trades being hacked through with a hatchet in the New York Times photograph." That wonderful mental image is provided to you via Bookslut's Jessa, who links to Birket's appraisal, currently up at Bookforum, of contemporary literary culture.
On the more “delightfully offbeat” side, we had Dan Geddis re-imagining The Book of Revelation as Disney’s next Fantasia, Wally Bubelis appraising Keanu Reeves’ Borges in The Aleph, Sarah Schiff proposing a Portnoy’s Complaint filmed by Paul Reubens, Bob William’s jazzy take on Woody Allen’s kvetching Hamlet, and Michael Helsem’s bizarre entry, which had Barbara Streisand starring in the Laura (Riding) Jackson life story with music by Frank Zappa. There were also several new versions of “The Lord of the Rings,” two imaginary concert movies, and a holographic piece of cinema projected back from the future.
First place in the Modern Word's "Adaptation" contest went to a review of Wong Kar-wai’s adaptation of “Dendrocacalia,” a science fiction story by Kobo Abe; second place, to a review of Umberto Eco's documentary, Life: A User’s Manual; and third place, to a review of Joseph McElroy’s Lookout Cartridge, directed by Steve Villa.
links, "in mob form and otherwise"lit
-Moorish Girl just alerted me to J.B Miller's Satanic Nurses, a book of literary parodies. Stories include Vladimir Nabokov's Colita, Toni Morrison's Belabored, and Joyce Carol Oates' List of Works. Bookslut slammed it, but excerpts are available online if you want to arrive at your own opinion.
-Our favorite Hag has another review in the NYTBR, and shit, it's bad-ass. (But we were left with two questions. Can dead mules really be pernicious archetypes? And why has Lizzie's review pluralized us?)
-Ian Jack, editor of Granta, has a short piece on the past and present tenses in the Guardian. Sadly, Jack lavishes space on a discussion of tween-speak, when he could be better supporting his belief in the past tense's superiority. "The past tense is simply the more truthful tense, and in this way it conveys a precision and conviction that the present tense lacks." That's the sloppiest use of "in this way" I've seen since I quit teaching.
-Maud quotes a WaPo review of Phillip Lopate's Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan: "…Lopate has no reporter's eye and, worse, no reporter's will." (As my graduation date approaches, I'm quickly realizing that my self-centeredness, despite being full-time, does not count as a job. And the back-up plan, freelance journalism, would require caring about, and reporting on, things that exist outside myself; so I would have to either give up factual accuracy, or give up solipsism.)
-Hypocrisy about Hypocrisy: The Creation of Selves. "Here I'll dwell on the way in which most attempts to write more effectively exhibit 'hypocrisy upward': the effort to create a work that by its very existence implies an author/persona more wise, more skilful, more spontaneous than the flesh-and-blood author."
-Borders has posted an excerpt from Andrea's novel, Like the Red Panda.
Nothing but lit tonight. Sorry. Or, Sorry?
The Guardian takes a look at The Believer.
To point out these connections, as well as noting in passing some of the multifarious examples of in-breeding and insouciant log-rolling (Heidi Julavits, Vendela Vida's co-editor at the Believer, is married to Ben Marcus; Ben Marcus interviews George Saunders in the current issue; George Saunders nominates Ben Marcus as one of his favourite writers in a recent interview and puffs a new Julavits book - "a terrific and important addition to our literature"; Hornby puffs a new collection of stories by Vendela Vida's good friend and recently -anointed true Believer, Julie Orringer, as well as talking up the latest novel by friend-of-the-magazine, Jonathan Lethem ...) is to risk being branded a "snark".With the exception of this paragraph, the article is quite snark-free, implying that "most truly original new art is the result of group activity."
I'm trying to start updating my other blog again.
This is good.
Like a book review in the New Yorker, this restaurant review made me want to burn something. I disliked Amanda Hesser by the second sentence when she used the phrase "olfactory amuse-bouche". By the end of the piece I wanted to grab her and make her wear clothes from Old Navy and eat Big Macs for the rest of her life.Go read the rest.
Take a peek:
"A maître d'hôtel with carefully rumpled hair wearing a "Late Night With David Letterman" T-shirt and a sports coat takes your name at the door. Lights from the open kitchen in the rear outline a long row of spectators at the bar. A large canopy, resembling the top of a Chinese bed, creates a shadowy garden for a group of diners. Waitresses in silky persimmon-color smocks, open at the back, sweep through. Howard Stern and a girlfriend amble by. You are in a James Bond movie, a high-end bar in Bangkok, a Vong to the 10th power."
I imagine you are probably working on a novel, Amanda. Everyone else in New York is. One word of advice. Stop. You make my teeth want to vomit. The last time you took the subway was in 1983. You once read a Kurt Vonnegut novel and pretended you understood it. You laugh like a hyena, but you crave approval. Your clothes are nice, though. I don't know. I don't know you from Adam. I'm sorry. You just made me angry. It's nothing personal. I bet you're really nice.
Slate reviews Myrna Blyth's Spin Sisters, an indictment of women's magazines.
Although she describes herself as a feminist, Blyth also thinks liberal feminism has pretty much dissolved into narcissism and whining. Paradoxically, it's the most privileged yet still most dissatisfied women—the "Spin Sisters"—who propagate the most negative messages, hyping female victimization and marketing dissatisfaction. Staunch liberal feminists to a gal, they're weirdly preoccupied with promoting newfangled disabling syndromes like stress and perimenopause as universal afflictions. They play up women's vulnerability, describing an array of social and physical hazards—everything from unsanitized pedicure bowls and the deadly infections they harbor, to being stalked by ex-lovers, to possible toxins in plastic food wrap—then offer simplistic solutions like more government intervention (because they're liberals) or more "quality time with yourself." Or aromatherapy. When Blyth totes up the number of victim, terror, and hazard stories that run in an average month, it's hard to refute that she's onto something.
I Am Uninformed tells men how to seduce a mid-list author:
1. Be a good listener:In my opinion, the formula for success with mid-list authors is much simpler. Three dates equals sex? Try three compliments for anal. Just kidding. One should do the trick.
Seriously. She's going to complain a lot. Expect to be inundated with lyrical pronouncements about the unfairness of it all as soon as you walk in the door. Don't try to solve her problems, just be a shoulder for her to cry on (because if you fuck it up, you'll no doubt inspire her to create a new "character" who doesn't listen to his wife/girlfriend and ends up under the wheels of a train).
In the wake of recent speculation over Lolita's genesis, Rake's Progress digs up a 1962 BBC Television interview with Nabokov. An excerpt I've grown very fond of in the past 24 hours:
What was the genesis of Lolita?She was born a long time ago, it must have been in 1939,
in Paris; the first little throb of Lolita went through
me in Paris in '39, or perhaps early in '40, at a time when I
was laid up with a fierce attack of intercostal neuralgia which
is a very painful complaint--rather like the fabulous stitch
in Adam's side. As far as I can recall the first shiver of
inspiration was somehow prompted in a rather mysterious way by
a newspaper story, I think it was in Paris Soir, about
an ape in the Paris Zoo, who after months of coaxing by
scientists produced finally the first drawing ever charcoaled
by an animal, and this sketch, reproduced in the paper,
showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.
I haven't read Salon in ages, but this article looks worth the ads: The confessions of a semi-successful author.
Reader Advisory: By the end of this story I will have broken the most sacred rules of modern authordom. I'll tell you how much my publishers have paid me for the books I've written. I'll tell you how many copies each of those books has sold. I'll share with you some of the secrets, lies and euphemisms told to me by my publishers, editors, publicists and agents in their efforts to comfort, pacify and motivate me, and I'll share some of the salient facts that make those secrets, lies and euphemisms such common industry currency.
Which Classic Novel do You Belong In? (via TT)
UPDATE: and another quiz for Sunday. Which Famous Poet are You? (via Ghost of a Flea)
My results:
'Tis a great mystery, but somehow you have come to
belong in Jane Eyre; a random world of love,
kindness, madness, bad luck and lunatic
ex-wives. There really isn't much to say about
the place you belong in. It's your place, and
though it seems far from reality largly due to
how random the events are, you seem to enjoy
it. You belong in a world where not too many
people understand you, and where you can be
somewhat of a recluse.
Which Classic Novel do You Belong In?
brought to you by Quizilla
-----------------------------
You are Emily Dickinson! Not all that much is
known about Emily Dickinson, probably because
she holed herself up in her room and wrote
poetry. She didn't have very many connections
with the world outside her house, and her
poetry is very introspective and
compartmentalized. You need to get out more.
Which famous poet are you? (pictures and many outcomes)
brought to you by Quizilla
Two books that I've been waiting for, both penned by blogger-friends, have started showing up in bookstores. So, be on the lookout for these two books, their official release dates still a month or two away:
And if you see them, buy yourself (and me, please) a copy.
I am humbly erasing this post, which 1) didn't make much sense anyway, and 2) was rude to the 2Blowhards, who run their show too enthusiastically to deserve my (loopy and besides-the-point) critique.
Also announced today, the PEN/Faulkner Award nominees:
Frederick Barthelme, Elroy Nights
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore
John Updike, The Early Stories
Tobias Wolff, Old School
In case you haven't seen the news on other sites: Sam Tanenhaus has been named the new editor of the New York Times Book Review. Terry writes, "He's absolutely first-rate, smart as a whip and as generous a colleague as you could hope to find. The Times couldn't have made a better or more serious choice."
Jeff MacIntyre's posted a snippet from Nick Hornby's latest column in The Believer. Here, a snippet of a snippet, because the ideas are more fun than what-I'd-call-thorough:
If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. "The Magic Flute" v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. "The Last Supper" v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don't know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it.
Continuing my coverage of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety:
-Over at Splinters, Steve writes,
From Mark Simpson's witty review of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety, I learn that AdB is already an exceptionally wealthy man, and has no need to write superficial books about deep subjects in order to convince the gullible that they're actually reading philosophy, or some such, and thus relieve them of their hard-earned cash. In fact, he seems to be so rich that he could set up a publishing house to match the excellent example of Dalkey Archive and New Directions in the US. Perhaps he could then self-publish his next book ... on redemption.
4. Name-dropping becomes easy after a while: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Marcus Aurelius. See, there's no stopping me.5. Did you know that having more material things doesn't always make you happy? Come to think of it, I expect you did. Never mind. It sounds cleverer when I say it.
What I didn't mention in my previous posts is that not only does de Botton employ stylistic "tricks" that I admire, he also tackles the philosophical subjects closest to my heart -- esp. in On Love and The Romantic Movement : Sex, Shopping, and the Novel. So, my dissapointment in his writing is especially bitter. The novelty of his form might imply novel ideas, but actually seems like it's meant to excuse a lack of them. Kundera's novels, on the other hand, might feel condescending but their theories are relatively original and well-detailed.
Better, or more thematically relevant, comparisons: Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, Stendhal's On Love, Kierkegaard's Either/Or, and Part III of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Even Adam Phillip's silly, aphoristic Monogamy fares well besides dB's On Love. To make my case, three excerpts:
from de Botton's On Love: "Only a thin line seperates love from fantasy, from a belief holding no connection with outer reality, an essentially private, narcissistic obsession. There was of course nothing inherently lovable about Chloe's way of packing the groceries; love was merely something I had decided to ascribe to her gesture, a gesture that might have been interpreted very differently by others in line with us at Safeway. A person is never good or bad per se, which means that loving or hating them necessarily has at its basis a subjective, and perhaps illusionistic, element.
from Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: "The other is my good and my knowledge: only I know him, only I make him exist in his truth. Whoever is not me is ignorant of the other: 'Sometimes I cannot understand how another can, how he dare love her, since I alone love her completely and devotedly, knowing only her, and having nothing in the world but her!' Conversely, the other establishes me in truth: it is only with the other that I feel 'myself.' I know more about myself than all those who simply do not know this about me: that I am in love."
from Phillips' Monogamy: "Being misrepresented is simply being presented with a version of ourselves—an invention—that we cannot agree with. But we are daunted by other people making us up, by the number of people we seem to be. We become frantic trying to keep the numbers down, trying to keep the true story of who we really are in circulation. This, perhaps more than anything else, drives us into the arms of one special partner. Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to a minimum. And, of course, a way of convincing ourselves that some versions are truer than others…"
