Well, I can't go on trying to read these uninspiring books. I've wrangled with them long enough. Yesterday while reading some poetry by Dean Young I was reminded what it was like to be excited and inspired by what you read. I don't have anything around that's doing that right now. Marianne Moore and I continue not to gel. Her tone, her subject matter, her style--they all kind of keep me away. JG Ballard's stories are too drably conceptual and the Gene Wolfe is too adolescent creepy. The Eco book on the history of beauty is fine to dip into, but it's filled with typos, it's unfocussed, and much of the writing is garbled and opaque. It's a disappointment.
So, new books. Many new books. I've already checked some stuff out from the library, and now I'm going to amazon. And I am getting down tonight. I'm going to get with it. I'm going to give Santa Monica something it ain't never had....
Two elderly women on walkers just came to the door. They were smartly dressed and I was sure they had been friends of our home's last owner. Instead, they told me they were here to talk about the good news that is contained in God's Bible. That surprised me. I would have liked to have invite them in but right now my Zoroastrian sacrificial altar is still out in the middle of the living room. So, that might have been awkward.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Day 43
"I hate to have to tell my wife I shot my boy."
That was a line uttered last night on Swamp People, the show about alligator-hunting that I described earlier. Junior, the speaker, had taken over control of the rifle. In the process of trying to kill an alligator, he had missed the kill spot. Bits of the bullet had ricocheted off the alligator's skull and lodged in the face and arm of his son, Willie. When they got home, Junior's wife cauterized a needle and pushed the lead bullet remain out from under the skin beneath Willie's eye. Then they got a Bowie knife and cut at the flesh around the skin on Willie's arm. At that point, however, Willie had had enough. He decided he'd rather leave the bits of bullet in his arm than have someone saw at them with a knife. It seemed like a reasonable decision.
Also watched an episode of This American Life called "John Smith." It featured seven different men named John Smith. They were unrelated, spread about the country, and ranged from 11 months old to 79 years old. The idea was to examine a life in all its phases (childhood, early adulthood, etc). It sounds maybe a bit gimmicky but in fact it was one of the most moving hours of television I've ever seen. I don't know why but it totally wrecked me. The nine-year old John Smith, at one point, shows the camera a halloween costume he's made, of the Empire State Building. He's cut out all this cardboard and painted windows on it and then affixed it around him, so he looks like a giant walking building. It was about the best thing I've ever seen.
That was a line uttered last night on Swamp People, the show about alligator-hunting that I described earlier. Junior, the speaker, had taken over control of the rifle. In the process of trying to kill an alligator, he had missed the kill spot. Bits of the bullet had ricocheted off the alligator's skull and lodged in the face and arm of his son, Willie. When they got home, Junior's wife cauterized a needle and pushed the lead bullet remain out from under the skin beneath Willie's eye. Then they got a Bowie knife and cut at the flesh around the skin on Willie's arm. At that point, however, Willie had had enough. He decided he'd rather leave the bits of bullet in his arm than have someone saw at them with a knife. It seemed like a reasonable decision.
Also watched an episode of This American Life called "John Smith." It featured seven different men named John Smith. They were unrelated, spread about the country, and ranged from 11 months old to 79 years old. The idea was to examine a life in all its phases (childhood, early adulthood, etc). It sounds maybe a bit gimmicky but in fact it was one of the most moving hours of television I've ever seen. I don't know why but it totally wrecked me. The nine-year old John Smith, at one point, shows the camera a halloween costume he's made, of the Empire State Building. He's cut out all this cardboard and painted windows on it and then affixed it around him, so he looks like a giant walking building. It was about the best thing I've ever seen.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Day 42
In some of my earlier comments about Art and Craft I think I may not have gotten my idea across all that well. I didn't in any way intend to set the two ideas in opposition. I don't think 'craft' is antithetical to art; I think that Art, as I'm defining it here, consists of those works that manifest a high degree of craftsmanship AS WELL AS a second quality, something harder to name. Call it 'soul' maybe. Or, mojo.
All cultural productions that succeed to any degree can probably be understood in terms of these two qualities. None are ALL soul, or ALL craft, but one may overwhelm the other to such a degree that the work seems, essentially, monolithic. So, for example, if I were going to list cultural productions that seemed to me to be 'mostly soul' (and very little craft) I'd say.... punk rock. Down By Law. A lot of movies of the French New Wave. Everything I've seen by John Cassavetes. The paintings of le doanier Rousseau. The Neil Young one-note solo in "Cinnamon Girl" would go here, too. The point in all these productions, their core quality is...expressiveness, inspiration, intuition, 'mojo.' The emotion is the key thing; and the emotion's so strong and intense that worrying about rules of order, or constructing a pleasurable edifice for the listener/viewer, is seen as insignificant, even oppressive. Think of how the Sex Pistols conceived of the rock music that had gone before them. Being unable to play their instruments beyond basic proficiency was a deliberate rebuke to what they perceived as its deadening ossification. Anarchy, rule-breaking (or at least, rule-ignoring) is a key component of 'mojo.'
But mojo alone is not enough to make great art. At its worst, it leads to self-indulgent adolescent junk. The poetry that we most of us write in high school has this quality. It's strongly felt, it's got soul, but it's still usually fairly painful to read. ( Oscar Wilde: "All bad art is sincere.") 'Mojo' is narcissistic; it's not about the viewer or the listener. It is about the artist. It's about his (or her) desires, his or her emotions, his or her needs. And though fulfilling those needs is not an insignificant part of the reason art gets made, it shouldn't be the whole reason. The viewer has needs too.
Craft--the second circle in my Venn diagram--involves meeting the needs, or at least the expectations, of an audience. It means creating coherent perceptible orders within the work. It means establishing connections, obeying conventions of form. If a gun is introduced in the first act, it will be shot by the end. If the first act involves two women in a shack in East Texas arguing about what the town's new minister will look like, the second act should not feature the entrance of Batman and The Green Lantern. (Or if it does, it should do so in a meaningful way). We should feel a guiding intelligence behind our experience. We should feel like our needs--for order, for connection, for sensual enjoyment--are being attended to.
Neither craft nor 'soul' submit to a clean definition. It's like obscenity I guess: I can say when I see it, but that's it. I can say that I think 2112 by Rush is finely crafted, but mostly devoid of soul. And I can say that The Brothers Karamazov, while undoubtedly deeply soulful and inspired, feels to me to be too unfocused, too lacking in basic elements of craft, to qualify as high art. (Though I should qualify that by saying that I haven't read it in years, and may well need to reexamine it. So maybe substitute Karamazov for Notes From The Underground.) But, still, the terms remain somewhat unsatisfactory. They can't be clinically, objectively tied-down. Still, they're what I have, and what I use. They may help me to think about the art I care the most about, and they help give me ways to understand why certain artists or...makers of cultural productions ultimately seem, to me, to fall short.
Art, then, is the part of the Venn diagram where Craft and Mojo intersect. At least, that's how I think about it, at this point in my life.
All cultural productions that succeed to any degree can probably be understood in terms of these two qualities. None are ALL soul, or ALL craft, but one may overwhelm the other to such a degree that the work seems, essentially, monolithic. So, for example, if I were going to list cultural productions that seemed to me to be 'mostly soul' (and very little craft) I'd say.... punk rock. Down By Law. A lot of movies of the French New Wave. Everything I've seen by John Cassavetes. The paintings of le doanier Rousseau. The Neil Young one-note solo in "Cinnamon Girl" would go here, too. The point in all these productions, their core quality is...expressiveness, inspiration, intuition, 'mojo.' The emotion is the key thing; and the emotion's so strong and intense that worrying about rules of order, or constructing a pleasurable edifice for the listener/viewer, is seen as insignificant, even oppressive. Think of how the Sex Pistols conceived of the rock music that had gone before them. Being unable to play their instruments beyond basic proficiency was a deliberate rebuke to what they perceived as its deadening ossification. Anarchy, rule-breaking (or at least, rule-ignoring) is a key component of 'mojo.'
But mojo alone is not enough to make great art. At its worst, it leads to self-indulgent adolescent junk. The poetry that we most of us write in high school has this quality. It's strongly felt, it's got soul, but it's still usually fairly painful to read. ( Oscar Wilde: "All bad art is sincere.") 'Mojo' is narcissistic; it's not about the viewer or the listener. It is about the artist. It's about his (or her) desires, his or her emotions, his or her needs. And though fulfilling those needs is not an insignificant part of the reason art gets made, it shouldn't be the whole reason. The viewer has needs too.
Craft--the second circle in my Venn diagram--involves meeting the needs, or at least the expectations, of an audience. It means creating coherent perceptible orders within the work. It means establishing connections, obeying conventions of form. If a gun is introduced in the first act, it will be shot by the end. If the first act involves two women in a shack in East Texas arguing about what the town's new minister will look like, the second act should not feature the entrance of Batman and The Green Lantern. (Or if it does, it should do so in a meaningful way). We should feel a guiding intelligence behind our experience. We should feel like our needs--for order, for connection, for sensual enjoyment--are being attended to.
Neither craft nor 'soul' submit to a clean definition. It's like obscenity I guess: I can say when I see it, but that's it. I can say that I think 2112 by Rush is finely crafted, but mostly devoid of soul. And I can say that The Brothers Karamazov, while undoubtedly deeply soulful and inspired, feels to me to be too unfocused, too lacking in basic elements of craft, to qualify as high art. (Though I should qualify that by saying that I haven't read it in years, and may well need to reexamine it. So maybe substitute Karamazov for Notes From The Underground.) But, still, the terms remain somewhat unsatisfactory. They can't be clinically, objectively tied-down. Still, they're what I have, and what I use. They may help me to think about the art I care the most about, and they help give me ways to understand why certain artists or...makers of cultural productions ultimately seem, to me, to fall short.
Art, then, is the part of the Venn diagram where Craft and Mojo intersect. At least, that's how I think about it, at this point in my life.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Day 41
Day off from writing. I spent the morning doing errands; the afternoon I have to tutor. Act I issues persist but no one wants to hear about that. The deadline is reset for May 15th, which I feel okay about.
The Justice Department yesterday shut down the three major American online poker sites. It's unclear how long the shutdown will last. It may be permanent. Online poker has been in a legal gray area for a while now, but since there's been no real effort to stop it by the DOJ, a lot of young guys (anda few women) have developed an entire lifestyle based around playing online. They 'grind' for a certain number of hours a week, playing (some of them) 30 or 40 tables at a time. The best at it can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If online poker is permanently banned, their way of making a living is over. Yes, they can play in live casinos, but I doubt many of them will. It's an interesting story to follow. As someone with one foot still in that world, I'll keep up with it as it plays out.
I won't make NBA picks because I'm going to end up having the Laker and the Bulls in the Finals, and everyone already thinks that's going to happen anyway. (Well, actually, no. In Vegas the Heat seem to be the favorite to win the East. But I think that's a betting thing--reflecting the ignorance of the masses, as it were.) Philadelphia was up 15 on the Heat when I just flipped on the game. Imagine if they get upset in the first series. What sweet sweet justice.
The Justice Department yesterday shut down the three major American online poker sites. It's unclear how long the shutdown will last. It may be permanent. Online poker has been in a legal gray area for a while now, but since there's been no real effort to stop it by the DOJ, a lot of young guys (anda few women) have developed an entire lifestyle based around playing online. They 'grind' for a certain number of hours a week, playing (some of them) 30 or 40 tables at a time. The best at it can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If online poker is permanently banned, their way of making a living is over. Yes, they can play in live casinos, but I doubt many of them will. It's an interesting story to follow. As someone with one foot still in that world, I'll keep up with it as it plays out.
I won't make NBA picks because I'm going to end up having the Laker and the Bulls in the Finals, and everyone already thinks that's going to happen anyway. (Well, actually, no. In Vegas the Heat seem to be the favorite to win the East. But I think that's a betting thing--reflecting the ignorance of the masses, as it were.) Philadelphia was up 15 on the Heat when I just flipped on the game. Imagine if they get upset in the first series. What sweet sweet justice.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Day 40
Watched Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law last night. His most critically acclaimed film, Law is the story of two small-time nobodies (Tom Waits, and some other guy) who are both set up from crimes they don't commit and end up together in a cell. They are joined by an Italian traveler (Roberto Benigni) who has accidentally killed a man in a fight over a card game. The movie is the story of their time together in jail, and of their eventual escape.
The movie--especially in the beginning, as we follow Zack and Jack (the two 'nobodies') around the broken down back streets of New Orleans--feels a lot like a Tom Waits song set to images. For me, this opening sequence was the most successful. Once the men end up in jail there's a lot of squabbling and random outbursts. Essentially, the viewer is watching people get gradually more irritated and annoyed. It's not a very interesting experience. Benigni's arrival in the jail lightens the mood considerably and when they finally escape, into the Louisiana swamps, the change of scenery goes a long way towards reinvigorating the viewing experience.
But, on the whole, I'd Down By Law was a bit too loose and meandering for my tastes. There's an essential emptiness at the core of all the Jarmusch films I've seen. To his admirers, it's a profound admission of our collective spiritual anomie. To me, it feels like a failure of imagination.
The movie--especially in the beginning, as we follow Zack and Jack (the two 'nobodies') around the broken down back streets of New Orleans--feels a lot like a Tom Waits song set to images. For me, this opening sequence was the most successful. Once the men end up in jail there's a lot of squabbling and random outbursts. Essentially, the viewer is watching people get gradually more irritated and annoyed. It's not a very interesting experience. Benigni's arrival in the jail lightens the mood considerably and when they finally escape, into the Louisiana swamps, the change of scenery goes a long way towards reinvigorating the viewing experience.
But, on the whole, I'd Down By Law was a bit too loose and meandering for my tastes. There's an essential emptiness at the core of all the Jarmusch films I've seen. To his admirers, it's a profound admission of our collective spiritual anomie. To me, it feels like a failure of imagination.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Day 39
Taxes just mailed. Airline ticket situation for flight to Houston/Puerto Rico soon to be resolved. This morning is going to be about TCB.
In Herodotus last night I read a description of how the Egyptians catch and kill alligators. It was similar enough to the way I described earlier in Swamp People that I want to find and excerpt the passage here. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians, having pulled the alligator from the Nile, would smear mud on its eyes before they killed it. Presumably that made it easier? Except wouldn't getting the mud on the eyes be more difficult than just killing it outright? Herodotus also relates that Egyptian prostitutes used to smear alligator dung on their faces to keep them looking young. When it fell off, their faces collapsed into looking old again. On the other hand, they no longer stank of dung. So, it kind of evened out.
I watched Obama's budget speech yesterday afternoon; not intending to watch the whole thing, I found myself sucked in. He was a little vague on some of the details (we're cutting Social Security and the Military, but I'm not sure how) but overall I found it impressive. Maybe not the plan so much as him. He seems like an adult, maybe. That may not sound like much, but a fair number of his contemporaries often do not. (On both sides of the aisle.) I trust him, I guess. I don't see how anyone will beat him in 2012. There's talk now Trump will run. First Palin, then Trump. What has happened to the Republican Party?
Ah well. California has its own problems. I thought of them (well, some. There are too many to think of briefly) while writing my check for my state tax payment. After living in Texas so long, it always strikes me as an injustice to have to pay STATE income tax. Especially when the state is as wasteful and incompetent as this one is.
The play deadline has been pushed back another month. I will have done by then, however. I will. Act I--the real problem for the last few weeks--is finally starting to come into shape. I've inserted a massive car chase right in the middle, and given all the characters lasers. I think that's really helped pick things up.
In Herodotus last night I read a description of how the Egyptians catch and kill alligators. It was similar enough to the way I described earlier in Swamp People that I want to find and excerpt the passage here. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians, having pulled the alligator from the Nile, would smear mud on its eyes before they killed it. Presumably that made it easier? Except wouldn't getting the mud on the eyes be more difficult than just killing it outright? Herodotus also relates that Egyptian prostitutes used to smear alligator dung on their faces to keep them looking young. When it fell off, their faces collapsed into looking old again. On the other hand, they no longer stank of dung. So, it kind of evened out.
I watched Obama's budget speech yesterday afternoon; not intending to watch the whole thing, I found myself sucked in. He was a little vague on some of the details (we're cutting Social Security and the Military, but I'm not sure how) but overall I found it impressive. Maybe not the plan so much as him. He seems like an adult, maybe. That may not sound like much, but a fair number of his contemporaries often do not. (On both sides of the aisle.) I trust him, I guess. I don't see how anyone will beat him in 2012. There's talk now Trump will run. First Palin, then Trump. What has happened to the Republican Party?
Ah well. California has its own problems. I thought of them (well, some. There are too many to think of briefly) while writing my check for my state tax payment. After living in Texas so long, it always strikes me as an injustice to have to pay STATE income tax. Especially when the state is as wasteful and incompetent as this one is.
The play deadline has been pushed back another month. I will have done by then, however. I will. Act I--the real problem for the last few weeks--is finally starting to come into shape. I've inserted a massive car chase right in the middle, and given all the characters lasers. I think that's really helped pick things up.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Day 38
The wife is back, as of last night, which is a cause for celebration. We did so by watching TV and playing with the dog. We are white people in our late 30s, after all. (Well, she's not in her late 30s, but I am). We also drank a little bit of what turned out to be maybe the worst bottle of wine I have ever bought. A South African Pinotage, acquired at Whole Foods for a price that should get you something decent. It tasted a little like I imagine the chemical spray they put on leather furniture to keep it supple would taste if it were turned into a liquid. Really really horrible. I have to find the name of it, so I can caution people off buying it.
I had to eat a late dinner which is not good for my attempts to lose weight. Any time I eat later than 7:30 I feel like I'm fatter the next day. My body hasn't had time to burn it off. And then the wine was in there too. We're going to Puerto Rico in June so I'd like to trim down a little bit before then.
Next to my computer I keep a piece of paper where I jot down names of books I want to buy. Whenever anyone recommends something to me, whenever I come across something on the web that sounds interesting, whenever I think of a book I once had but have no more and want to reacquire, I write it on that piece of paper. I write large and fast and at various angles, so it fills up haphazardly but nevertheless at this moment it is nearly full. And a few weeks ago I bought a new bookcase for my office. That means I actually have spare room right now, which is a rare and exciting occurrence. Of course I can't just fill the whole thing up immediately. All those blank shelves have to last for the next few years. So I parcel them out slowly. Some of the books on the list don't get ordered, when it comes time to do so. The whim that made me write it down in the first place has gone, and my interest has waned. The Counterfeiters, a book by Graham Greene set in Haiti, for example--that will probably make it. (I heard about the book watching Anthony Bourdain in Haiti). Death Comes for The Archbishop, however, which I decided to buy after seeing it as one of the books chosen to appear in the Western Canon lecture series I'm listening to on CD right now--that might not. Although, yes--it will. I like Willa Cather. And I need to read more American fiction. But then I can always find a reason to buy any book. ("I need to read more poetry." "I need to read more books written by women." "I need to read more books about a man who trains an army of mechanized penguins to lead a slave revolt on a moon of Neptune.")
Binks has come into the office to give me the look. The look that says "my pee pad has been altered. Go and see what I have done there. And reward me. Reward me!" I must go.
I had to eat a late dinner which is not good for my attempts to lose weight. Any time I eat later than 7:30 I feel like I'm fatter the next day. My body hasn't had time to burn it off. And then the wine was in there too. We're going to Puerto Rico in June so I'd like to trim down a little bit before then.
Next to my computer I keep a piece of paper where I jot down names of books I want to buy. Whenever anyone recommends something to me, whenever I come across something on the web that sounds interesting, whenever I think of a book I once had but have no more and want to reacquire, I write it on that piece of paper. I write large and fast and at various angles, so it fills up haphazardly but nevertheless at this moment it is nearly full. And a few weeks ago I bought a new bookcase for my office. That means I actually have spare room right now, which is a rare and exciting occurrence. Of course I can't just fill the whole thing up immediately. All those blank shelves have to last for the next few years. So I parcel them out slowly. Some of the books on the list don't get ordered, when it comes time to do so. The whim that made me write it down in the first place has gone, and my interest has waned. The Counterfeiters, a book by Graham Greene set in Haiti, for example--that will probably make it. (I heard about the book watching Anthony Bourdain in Haiti). Death Comes for The Archbishop, however, which I decided to buy after seeing it as one of the books chosen to appear in the Western Canon lecture series I'm listening to on CD right now--that might not. Although, yes--it will. I like Willa Cather. And I need to read more American fiction. But then I can always find a reason to buy any book. ("I need to read more poetry." "I need to read more books written by women." "I need to read more books about a man who trains an army of mechanized penguins to lead a slave revolt on a moon of Neptune.")
Binks has come into the office to give me the look. The look that says "my pee pad has been altered. Go and see what I have done there. And reward me. Reward me!" I must go.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Dickens, Pt III
Like many novelists, Dickens does not submit all that well to being excerpted. Much of his power is cumulative. He paints in broad canvases, not small details. As a result, the pleasure that he has to offer does require a certain amount of time. However, I think this passage (especially in the context of the passage I put up earlier) does a decent job of showing off his virtues.
Mr Pickwick and his friends have checked into an inn where they happen upon Mr Pott, the editor of the "Blue" newspaper mentioned previously. It's been several months since they've seen each other and Mr Pickwick, always the gentleman, makes a polite, somewhat pro forma, inquiry about the state of things in Pott's home town. The contrast between the easy-going affability of Mr Pickwick and his friends, and the near-incoherent rage and smug, self-deluded egotism of Pott help to give the scene some of its humorous power.
'And how are matters going on in Eatanswill?' inquired Mr. Pickwick, when Pott had taken a seat near the fire, and the whole party had got their wet boots off, and dry slippers on. 'Is the INDEPENDENT still in being?'
'The INDEPENDENT, sir,' replied Pott, 'is still dragging on a wretched and lingering career. Abhorred and despised by even the few who are cognisant of its miserable and disgraceful existence, stifled by the very filth it so profusely scatters, rendered deaf and blind by the exhalations of its own slime, the obscene journal, happily unconscious of its degraded state, is rapidly sinking beneath that treacherous mud which, while it seems to give it a firm standing with the low and debased classes of society, is nevertheless rising above its detested head, and will speedily engulf it for ever.'
Having delivered this manifesto (which formed a portion of his last week's leader) with vehement articulation, the editor paused to take breath, and looked majestically at Bob Sawyer.
'You are a young man, sir,' said Pott.
Mr. Bob Sawyer nodded.
'So are you, sir,' said Pott, addressing Mr. Ben Allen.
Ben admitted the soft impeachment.
'And are both deeply imbued with those blue principles, which, so long as I live, I have pledged myself to the people of these kingdoms to support and to maintain?' suggested Pott.
'Why, I don't exactly know about that,' replied Bob Sawyer. 'I am - '
'Not buff, Mr. Pickwick,' interrupted Pott, drawing back his chair, 'your friend is not buff, sir?'
'No, no,' rejoined Bob, 'I'm a kind of plaid at present; a compound of all sorts of colours.'
'A waverer,' said Pott solemnly, 'a waverer. I should like to show you a series of eight articles, Sir, that have appeared in the Eatanswill GAZETTE. I think I may venture to say that you would not be long in establishing your opinions on a firm and solid blue basis, sir.' 'I dare say I should turn very blue, long before I got to the end of them,' responded Bob.
Mr. Pott looked dubiously at Bob Sawyer for some seconds, and, turning to Mr. Pickwick, said -
'You have seen the literary articles which have appeared at intervals in the Eatanswill GAZETTE in the course of the last three months, and which have excited such general - I may say such universal - attention and admiration?'
'Why,' replied Mr. Pickwick, slightly embarrassed by the question, 'the fact is, I have been so much engaged in other ways, that I really have not had an opportunity of perusing them.'
'You should do so, Sir,' said Pott, with a severe countenance.
'I will,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'They appeared in the form of a copious review of a work on Chinese metaphysics, Sir,' said Pott.
'Oh,' observed Mr. Pickwick; 'from your pen, I hope?'
'From the pen of my critic, Sir,' rejoined Pott, with dignity.
'An abstruse subject, I should conceive,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Very, Sir,' responded Pott, looking intensely sage. 'He CRAMMED for it, to use a technical but expressive term; he read up for the subject, at my desire, in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." '
'Indeed!' said Mr. Pickwick; 'I was not aware that that valuable work contained any information respecting Chinese metaphysics.'
'He read, Sir,' rejoined Pott, laying his hand on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking round with a smile of intellectual superiority - 'he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C, and combined his information, Sir!'
Mr. Pott's features assumed so much additional grandeur at the recollection of the power and research displayed in the learned effusions in question, that some minutes elapsed before Mr. Pickwick felt emboldened to renew the conversation; at length, as the editor's countenance gradually relaxed into its customary expression of moral supremacy, he ventured to resume the discourse....
Day 37
I've settled on Herodotus as the book to read for the next while. I'm not allowing myself to buy more books till I finish three things I have here. I'm going to cheat and make one of those three a book of poetry (The Ghost Soldiers, by James Tate, which I bought because of a positive review by Tony Hoagland in Poetry, and am finding to be not all that impressive). I won't finish Herodotus any time soon, but he's a good book to read at night. The Histories has a boys', swords and sorcery book feel to it. Oracles, kings visited by dreams, battles--it's actually something of a page turner. Last night I read Herodotus' theories for why the Nile floods each year. That was not a page turner, but it was fascinating. He suggests the flooding is due to the motion of the sun, which sometimes moves over Libya, absorbing extra water from the land and then....well, actually I don't know. The theory was incredibly confusing. I might have skimmed there, a little. It's 700 pages long; I'm allowed to skim a little.
Wife comes back home today. Yay! We'll celebrate by eating a leftover lentil and sausage soup that I made last Friday. That was not the greatest recipe, but it wasn't bad.
I've reduced the number of major questions to answer in the play to two. Rilke says to treat your problems, your questions, as your friends, to love them, to revel in them. I need to read the entire passage to get the context (it's from Letters to A Young Poet) because I'm curious what, if anything, he means by that.
All right, have to go.
Wife comes back home today. Yay! We'll celebrate by eating a leftover lentil and sausage soup that I made last Friday. That was not the greatest recipe, but it wasn't bad.
I've reduced the number of major questions to answer in the play to two. Rilke says to treat your problems, your questions, as your friends, to love them, to revel in them. I need to read the entire passage to get the context (it's from Letters to A Young Poet) because I'm curious what, if anything, he means by that.
All right, have to go.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Day 36
I don't know why I like watching golf, but I do. I always have. Only the four majors, and usually only on the weekends, but still. I tend to make an effort. Now that I have DVR, it's much easier. I can record the whole day's competition, and then parcel it out in thirty minute increments whenever I feel like I want to take a break.
I don't play golf (I have. But not in a long time. And not well) and I don't really have some predisposition towards liking it. But it's a strangely enticing viewing experience. It's a reflective game, obviously, and that brings entirely new levels of stress and pressure to the people playing it. The collapse yesterday of the 54-hole leader, Rory McIlroy, illustrated perfectly how difficult the mental part of the game can be. It was also one of the more heartbreaking things I've seen in sports. McIlroy had a four-shot lead coming in to Sunday. For those who don't follow golf, that's close to insurmountable--assuming, of course, that McIlroy could just not make mistakes (play par golf, in other words). If he could play at one or two under (which he had been doing all week), he was assured of winning.
Instead he shot eight over par. An 80. That is not at all good. It's a score an amateur would shoot. It's the equivalent of a baseball pitcher giving up four home runs in the first inning. Except when a pitcher starts out that bad, his manager will take him out of the game. In golf, you have to keep playing. McIlroy's only 21 years old; it was his first experience being in the lead of a major tournament and you got a sense that he fully expected to win it. Instead, he fell apart--on national TV. He shot a triple bogey on one hole, and a double on another. He was tight, he was struggling, his shots were all going in places he didn't intend. It was a total meltdown. There was a moment--I think on the 12th?--when he'd shanked yet another drive. He kneeled down for a moment and covering his head with his hat, rested it on the butt of his golf club. He was about to start crying. He had realized at that moment that it was too late; no matter how well he played for the rest of the round, he couldn't win. The dream was over. And we were watching him think those things. The mask of cool imperturability that most pro athletes wear had slipped. Not just slipped, it had burst into flames. It was impossible not to feel sympathy for him.
I had to teach 20 year olds when I was a grad student, and one thing that surprised me (and lead to me making some teaching mistakes) was how emotionally fragile so many of them turned out to be. One of the commentators yesterday, watching McIlroy, said something along the same lines; "we are all of more fragile than we like to admit." And I thought: yes. Great insight, Roger. (Or whoever).
In the movies, McIlroy would come back in a few months having learned from the experience. Newly toughened, he would have a similar chance at the US Open, but this time he would win. And McIlroy might do that; he seemed very professional in the interviews afterward, all of which he handled with grace and class. But pro sports are not the movies, and sometimes people don't recover (especially in golf). There are dozens of stories of people who have a terrible meltdown in a key moment on national TV who never recover. I don't think that'll happen to McIlroy, but you never know.
And then, at the end of it all, a South African won. I don't know why, but that made me grouchy.
I don't play golf (I have. But not in a long time. And not well) and I don't really have some predisposition towards liking it. But it's a strangely enticing viewing experience. It's a reflective game, obviously, and that brings entirely new levels of stress and pressure to the people playing it. The collapse yesterday of the 54-hole leader, Rory McIlroy, illustrated perfectly how difficult the mental part of the game can be. It was also one of the more heartbreaking things I've seen in sports. McIlroy had a four-shot lead coming in to Sunday. For those who don't follow golf, that's close to insurmountable--assuming, of course, that McIlroy could just not make mistakes (play par golf, in other words). If he could play at one or two under (which he had been doing all week), he was assured of winning.
Instead he shot eight over par. An 80. That is not at all good. It's a score an amateur would shoot. It's the equivalent of a baseball pitcher giving up four home runs in the first inning. Except when a pitcher starts out that bad, his manager will take him out of the game. In golf, you have to keep playing. McIlroy's only 21 years old; it was his first experience being in the lead of a major tournament and you got a sense that he fully expected to win it. Instead, he fell apart--on national TV. He shot a triple bogey on one hole, and a double on another. He was tight, he was struggling, his shots were all going in places he didn't intend. It was a total meltdown. There was a moment--I think on the 12th?--when he'd shanked yet another drive. He kneeled down for a moment and covering his head with his hat, rested it on the butt of his golf club. He was about to start crying. He had realized at that moment that it was too late; no matter how well he played for the rest of the round, he couldn't win. The dream was over. And we were watching him think those things. The mask of cool imperturability that most pro athletes wear had slipped. Not just slipped, it had burst into flames. It was impossible not to feel sympathy for him.
I had to teach 20 year olds when I was a grad student, and one thing that surprised me (and lead to me making some teaching mistakes) was how emotionally fragile so many of them turned out to be. One of the commentators yesterday, watching McIlroy, said something along the same lines; "we are all of more fragile than we like to admit." And I thought: yes. Great insight, Roger. (Or whoever).
In the movies, McIlroy would come back in a few months having learned from the experience. Newly toughened, he would have a similar chance at the US Open, but this time he would win. And McIlroy might do that; he seemed very professional in the interviews afterward, all of which he handled with grace and class. But pro sports are not the movies, and sometimes people don't recover (especially in golf). There are dozens of stories of people who have a terrible meltdown in a key moment on national TV who never recover. I don't think that'll happen to McIlroy, but you never know.
And then, at the end of it all, a South African won. I don't know why, but that made me grouchy.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Day 35
For the last few days I've felt an immense lassitude whenever I try to work. It's like the month plus of constant relentless writing has drained my will of the desire to do anything more than sit on the couch and watch stupid television. I have only a few more problems--none very large--to solve in order to be able to write the first totally 'correct' draft of the play ('correct' meaning everything works, all the storylines are in place, and all the structure is set. The house is built, but not decorated). And yet every day it's harder to motivate myself. Maybe it's that I know I'm going to miss the April 15th deadline, and without that pressure it's a harder to work. Or maybe I'm just tired. I don't feel tired. Maybe I need something new to read, something to inspire me. Or maybe it's just the weather. ("There's always a change in the weather. I thought this time we might get it together....")
The wife left for Washington today. We always have these fun nights the night before she leaves, and then her absence is even more sad than it would be usually. The freeway was deserted. I guess 7 AM on a Sunday is the one time in LA when driving doesn't get you into traffic. Took twenty minutes to get to LAX from our house in the valley. On the way we listened to a lecture on "Paradise Lost." (Because what wakes you up better than that?) I told my wife how the spring after I'd decided to go to grad school for poetry I'd made myself read "Paradise Lost", thinking that since I was going to study poetry I should have read one of the most famous poems ever written. Naturally, in the two years I was there, "Paradise Lost" was mentioned exactly once. Not that I regret having read it (mostly). It just shows how little I knew what I was getting into. I should have been reading Lyn Hejinian, or language poets, or Michael Palmer. People I hadn't heard of, at the time.
A poem that turned out to have a much larger significance in grad school was Wordsworth's "Prelude." That's really what I should have read. I should reread that, actually. It always inspires me.
In the lecture the professor talked about how "Paradise Lost" really marked the end of the Poem as a major vehicle for writers to work in. It was almost like...poetry was used up. There was nothing more to be done in the genre (at least as far as storytelling went. The lyric poem obviously did fine.) Instead, the novel slowly became the default form for writers wanting to reach a large audience. So that by the time Joyce came along to write a new, modern epic, he didn't write a poem, he wrote a novel.
He also talked about the 'lyric novel' emerging as a genre at the beginning of the 20th century, citing Woolf's To The Lighthouse and The Waves as examples. The point being that writers who wanted to write 'poetically' and yet still felt obliged to work in the form of a novel tried to have their wombats and eat them too, as it were, by filling their novels with lyrical, 'poetic' prose. When I checked my blog today, my friend, the redoubtable Cartooniste, had posted on the exact same subject, noting how 'lyrical prose' has become a kind of coded way of saying that the books may be tedious to read, that the writers may not have cared much about the story or the characters, but, hey, at least the sentences are pretty. (Well, that's not exactly what she said. I'm extrapolating.) Which strikes me as true, for the most part. I've been burned too many times buying books that promised me lyrical prose. I don't want lyrical prose, at least not at the expense of every thing else a novel can do. Anyway, look at Middlemarch. For me, one of the three best books ever written; no one would ever call that prose lyrical.
It strikes me that maybe my work on the play would go better if I spent less time writing these blog entries. Is creativity like gasoline: you only have a certain amount every day, and once you use it up it's gone? Or is it like a muscle, that the more you exercise, the stronger it gets?
Or is it like an alligator hunter, who only goes out once a month and has to catch as many gators as he can, without getting eaten?
I've been having luck doing a kind of exercise in which I force myself to write first person accounts of the play's actions from the vantage of all the characters, to help me explore their mental states. Mostly, it's to help me figure out why they do the things they do. This is really the fundamental question that fiction and theater apply themselves to answering; why do people do the things they do? It's a hard question to answer; even when we examine our own actions we often have no real idea what we've done most of the things we've done. This is essentially the action at the heart of Crime and Punishment. Raskalnikov kills the old woman for a complex of reasons that he himself can barely understand, and then spends the rest of the novel trying to make sense of what he's done. Or rather, why he's done it. And in the end, he really has no idea.
Okay, I really am now using this as an excuse not to work. I need to figure out now why a character has started flipping coins to make key decisions in her life, where the practice comes from and why she wants it spread. It has something to do with her mother, I think. (Actually she doesn't flip coins, she opens a book randomly and uses the page number to tell her what to do, but it's the same thing). Chaos and structure; they're the fundamental elements. Art has to have enough chaos to give the illusion of versimilitude but enough structure to allay our fears that life is only chaos. Its skeleton is a consoling lie, its flesh an unacceptable truth.
The wife left for Washington today. We always have these fun nights the night before she leaves, and then her absence is even more sad than it would be usually. The freeway was deserted. I guess 7 AM on a Sunday is the one time in LA when driving doesn't get you into traffic. Took twenty minutes to get to LAX from our house in the valley. On the way we listened to a lecture on "Paradise Lost." (Because what wakes you up better than that?) I told my wife how the spring after I'd decided to go to grad school for poetry I'd made myself read "Paradise Lost", thinking that since I was going to study poetry I should have read one of the most famous poems ever written. Naturally, in the two years I was there, "Paradise Lost" was mentioned exactly once. Not that I regret having read it (mostly). It just shows how little I knew what I was getting into. I should have been reading Lyn Hejinian, or language poets, or Michael Palmer. People I hadn't heard of, at the time.
A poem that turned out to have a much larger significance in grad school was Wordsworth's "Prelude." That's really what I should have read. I should reread that, actually. It always inspires me.
In the lecture the professor talked about how "Paradise Lost" really marked the end of the Poem as a major vehicle for writers to work in. It was almost like...poetry was used up. There was nothing more to be done in the genre (at least as far as storytelling went. The lyric poem obviously did fine.) Instead, the novel slowly became the default form for writers wanting to reach a large audience. So that by the time Joyce came along to write a new, modern epic, he didn't write a poem, he wrote a novel.
He also talked about the 'lyric novel' emerging as a genre at the beginning of the 20th century, citing Woolf's To The Lighthouse and The Waves as examples. The point being that writers who wanted to write 'poetically' and yet still felt obliged to work in the form of a novel tried to have their wombats and eat them too, as it were, by filling their novels with lyrical, 'poetic' prose. When I checked my blog today, my friend, the redoubtable Cartooniste, had posted on the exact same subject, noting how 'lyrical prose' has become a kind of coded way of saying that the books may be tedious to read, that the writers may not have cared much about the story or the characters, but, hey, at least the sentences are pretty. (Well, that's not exactly what she said. I'm extrapolating.) Which strikes me as true, for the most part. I've been burned too many times buying books that promised me lyrical prose. I don't want lyrical prose, at least not at the expense of every thing else a novel can do. Anyway, look at Middlemarch. For me, one of the three best books ever written; no one would ever call that prose lyrical.
It strikes me that maybe my work on the play would go better if I spent less time writing these blog entries. Is creativity like gasoline: you only have a certain amount every day, and once you use it up it's gone? Or is it like a muscle, that the more you exercise, the stronger it gets?
Or is it like an alligator hunter, who only goes out once a month and has to catch as many gators as he can, without getting eaten?
I've been having luck doing a kind of exercise in which I force myself to write first person accounts of the play's actions from the vantage of all the characters, to help me explore their mental states. Mostly, it's to help me figure out why they do the things they do. This is really the fundamental question that fiction and theater apply themselves to answering; why do people do the things they do? It's a hard question to answer; even when we examine our own actions we often have no real idea what we've done most of the things we've done. This is essentially the action at the heart of Crime and Punishment. Raskalnikov kills the old woman for a complex of reasons that he himself can barely understand, and then spends the rest of the novel trying to make sense of what he's done. Or rather, why he's done it. And in the end, he really has no idea.
Okay, I really am now using this as an excuse not to work. I need to figure out now why a character has started flipping coins to make key decisions in her life, where the practice comes from and why she wants it spread. It has something to do with her mother, I think. (Actually she doesn't flip coins, she opens a book randomly and uses the page number to tell her what to do, but it's the same thing). Chaos and structure; they're the fundamental elements. Art has to have enough chaos to give the illusion of versimilitude but enough structure to allay our fears that life is only chaos. Its skeleton is a consoling lie, its flesh an unacceptable truth.
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