You Can Get F*****

So rarely do I blog that, at times, one wonders why I blog at all?  

Certainly I so wonder.

I blog rarely because the "events" that comprise my life tend toward the minimal and the mental.  And thus the uneventful.  E.g.: an "event" of last month was borne of a documentary I watched about Bowie (Five Years on Showtime).  The key moment: Robert Fripp, describing the difference between POP and ROCK said something….

Well, what he said is R-rated.  But the essence is: danger.  Danger.

And that gibes with the Ian Buruma NYRB review of the Bowie museum exhibit he saw at the Victoria and Albert--the element of danger in his music.  A meaningful revelation to me.  Yes.  An event, though mental, in my life: that is an element I respond to in his music.  Deeply.  The danger.  Non-ironic danger.  Real danger. 

In graduate school (I have a BSS in orthopedic dentistry) I remember driving some people somewhere--probably to the Corn Rodeo--and I put on Diamond Dogs--which opens with a spoken-word section about dogs eating cats, and filth, and the broken city--and this silly person in the backseat, who's now a semi-famous writer, asked me in a whimpering, doll-voice to please, turn it off.  It was scary.  And I did so, smiling, and wishing her destroyed….

And that's true, utterly, what Fripp and Buruma note.  That IS one of the great powers in his music: the sense of real danger.  Of, to use the LA-appropriate word, stakes.  

The Fripp quote: "the difference between pop at rock is that, at a rock show, you can get F******"

Meaning the last word in all its senses.  And Fripp--bespectacled and buttoned-up as he comes on--is, in truth, a dark, subversive wizard.  (Like Burroughs, another seemingly buttoned-up martinet).  Listen to early 70s King Crimson, and you'll know.  "Starless and Bible Black"--that song, to this day, unsettles me.  It is legitimately menacing.  In the best, most non-negotiable way.  

Anyway, that insight seems to me utterly true.  (Is this why, as we age, we tire of rock music?  Because  danger seems much less appealing at 40 than 20?  Because it has become real?  Much more, uhm, dangerous.)  And explains why I have so much weariness for, say, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Elton John, and Bruce Springsteen.  To pick at random.  Where there is no danger, there is no rock.  This is what McCartney lacked--why without Lennon, there was no greatness. 

Not to say that danger alone suffices to make great, or even good, music.  (Exhibit One: solo John Lennon).  It clearly does not.  But madness, depravity, being TAKEN--that is always in the cards, at a good rock show.  On a good rock album.  "You might get F******."  Literally or otherwise.  (Hence the deep linkages between rock music and mind-altering drugs.  "You might get F*****").

So that was an "event" of the last month--seeing that documentary, being reminded of how much of Bowie's power derives from danger and also, seeing him in images (and I'm moving to a new topic now, in the non-eventful way of thought, as captured--the rhythm of thought I mean--in Eno's Music For Airports) from his unearthly beauty.  (A brief clip of him striding from a hotel in Paris in 1976 clad in trousers and a loose black knit sweater has convinced me to never wear jeans again.  Really.)

Which made me think of the dissappointing last season of a much-overrrated show, Mad Men--one of the few great moments in a forgettable ending involving a junior nobody who's been fired telling Don that the only reason for his success is that "he's good-looking."  Yes.  Correct!  That reminds me of Jaigello in the Aubrey/Maturin books--the sense we all have, I believe, of wanting to befriend and to be liked by those who have true beauty.  Not the beautiful people… but the truly beautiful.  And there are very few of those.

If Bowie looked like Meatloaf, but wrote the same songs, would he be Bowie?  Of course not.  And it's a stupid question, obviously, because if he looked like Meatloaf he wouldn't have had the same experiences that Bowie had, and could never have written the same songs.

So that's an event, so to speak.  Or reading the Palliser series.  Or watching the sublime Jiro Dreams of Sushi.  And my thoughts about Trollope.  Or Charles Baxter's essays, which include one about Bartheleme which deserves to be read.  Or The War On Drugs, which is who I'm listening to a lot, but who cares?

BUT.. here's why I bother writing... Oh--remind me--I have a link you all need to read--about computer languages...the best thing I've read on the net in months, especially great for all those (like me)who always wonder what comptuer programming's really all about, and what all those languages are and mean.  It's not brief, but you will love every word.  And you'll finally have a sense about the difference between Perl and Python and Java and C.   Just give it a few paragraphs.  WHAT THE HELL ELSE DO YOU HAVE TO DO YOU RECALCITRANT NINNIES!

Where was I?

Man, isn't Mad Men such a wearying, tedious, repetitive show?  Not that it doesn't have its moments, but how limited it proves to be in the end?  You know why?   Because no one ever takes any action, ever, out of generosity of spirit.  There is no altruism, no kindness, no wit (has there ever been a popular show that had so few moments of humor?  Which is a central experience of all life!) 

All actions in Mad Men are borne of covetousness and fear and vituperation.  As if that's the sum total of the human experience!   I mean, yes, obviously: humans tend frequently toward the petty, toward the fearful and mean.  No doubt.  But to represent human expereince in ONLY those terms--as Mad Men does (has Betty ever done anything even slightly generous?)--is just as stupid and ignorant as would be a show that showed people acting only out of high-minded ideals.

Contrast it to The Sopranos, a show that's two orders of magnitude greater.   Obviously, on The Sopranos pettiness and cruelty abounds.  But what makes it a great, a transcendental show, is that there is a full spectrum of emotions depicted there.

I'm suddenly so tired.  So so tired.  And I can't go on about The Sopranos.  But do I need to?  You all know that its powers, how it shows many, many more aspects of human emotion.  Meadow cleaning the floor of her grandmother's house after she has the party there, in Season One.  Tony and his conflicted efforts to be a good son.  His attempts to help Irina to find a better life.  Carmela hungering after a true spiritual life.  AJ trying to join the military, in the final season, to help his country (stymied by his parents).

But wait.

My ultimate point is subverted.  Because, though mostly I don't experience any real events, I did, this weekend.  

Yes.  Yes yes.  A Real Event!  Involving other people! And wine!  And some lawyer insulting my wife!  And more wine!  Wine that's better than any I've ever had.  Wine that costs 1200$ a bottle!  And people insulting Texas!  And me having to translate French poetry!  And plastic surgery!  

This is all true.  Activity!  And activity that's not only mental!  But real!  In my life!  And it will be described to you, my friends.  Soon.   So, so, soon.....

And you know what?  I'm listening, right now, to August and Everything After.  And I love it.  And I won't apologize!  SO DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME.

You don't want to waste your life, now, baby....

"Moral Indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity"

I love the site Brain Pickings in general, but I'd like to point my reader(s) to this post about the perniciousness of 'intellectuals.'  It's taken, mostly, from a Tom Wolfe commencement address.  Check it out.  

Sample:

"One of the things that I find really makes it worth watching all the Academy Awards, all the Emmys, all those awards ceremonies, is to see how today’s actors and television performers have discovered the formula. If you become indignant, this elevates you to the plane of “intellectual.” No mental activity is required. It is a rule, to which there has never been an exception, that when an actor or a television performer rises up to the microphone at one of these awards ceremonies and expresses moral indignation over something, he illustrates Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that “moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity.”

It's A Drive-In Saturday

So I'm not going to pretend that the howling absence of responses to my last hundred posts hasn't, slightly, discouraged me.  It has.  It has discouraged me.  But, on I go.  Unbowed.  Unbroken and dauntless.  Or, at least only slightly broken.

It may be that only posting about books is a recipe for crickets?  So, ok.  Fine.  You peasants…. I'll post about sports.  Will that make you happy?  SPORTS.  AND KIM KARDASHIAN.  AND AMERICAN IDOL.

Sports.  I am following the run-up to the NFL draft with my customary guilt-ridden obsession.  Last night I made my patient wife watch the Jon Gruden "QB Camp" on Marcus Mariotta and Jameis Winston.

To both of our benefits, I believe.

Let's start with Mariotta.  Prior to last night, I'd generally been positively disposed towards Mariotta.  Good kid, Hawaiian, never been accused of sexual assault…. Ok, I'm on board.  Yes, he plays a running-style offense.  Yes, Oregon quarterbacks have had a pretty poor history of transitioning to the NFL.  But, you know... I can see how San Diego might trade Rivers and move up to draft him.

I can see that no longer.  I'm totally unqualified to evaluate his physical attributes, so I'll put that to one side.  His personality, though, is… I mean, watching him do an interview, it was like watching a ferret go to sleep.  It was like watching a teenage boy, at a dance, think about going up to ask a girl to dance, and then deciding he doesn't want to, and he goes to huddle in the corner, and looks at old baseball cards or something.

The guy is a total dud.  It's not just that he's quiet or reserved, he's just utterly devoid of personality.  Trying to imagine how he could possibly command a locker room, or get a bunch of veterans to believe in HIM as a leader…impossible.  He's just a big nothing.  Add that to his proclivities to run before pass, his unfamiliarity with an NFL-style offense, and I say: no no no.   He's another Akili Smith in the making.

Winston, on the other hand…. I was predisposed to loathe Winston.  And I still kind of loathe him.  But, I don't know.  Seeing him interviewed, I have to say: I would not be at all surprised if he turns out to be a very good NFL quarterback.  He's a real leader, first of all, and I can absolutely imagine him taking over a team as a rookie, and getting veterans to buy in.  I think he's got the physical skills (though, again, I'm massively unqualified to make that judgement) but more than that, he seems like he has…the will to win.  He lives and breathes football, and he's got charisma (score of 17).  Will he be in court in a year, on another sexual assault charge?  Maybe.  But, if he's not, I bet he'll be a great QB.

Let's Flay the Dead Entrails?

So maybe I should adumbrate the failures of Birdman?  Which are legion….

The characters exist as nothing more than types.  Once you've named their station and status in life, you've said everything there is to say about them.  So, M Keaton is "successful Hollywood actor who wants to be taken seriously as an artist."  His daughter (Emma Stone) is "neglected LA child who's been in rehab."  Edward Norton (still, to my mind, the most overrated actor of his generation--what has he been good in?) is "tortured genius actor."

And it's fine and true enough to say: yes, those types do exist in the world.  They're not unrepresentative.  But the role of a good--or even decent--writer is to make those types more than types.  To give the washed-up, popular Hollywood actor some kind of dimensionality.  Of distinction.  To make him more than just a type--to make him a person.  An individual.  Maybe, for example, he's a washed-up Hollywood star who loves racing motorcycles.  Or is obsessed with the book of Job.  Or is flirting with becoming a Jehovah's Witness.  Or has a foot fetish.  Or…just…something!  Something that makes him an actual person, and not just a lazily-conceived, hastily sketched, poorly-imagined type.  Because types do not excite interest.  Types do not compel imagination.  They don't make us care.   They reflect, merely, the laziness, and imaginative paucity of their creators.  And so, you watch this movie, and because Keaton's character is so faintly sketched, and has so few attributes about him that remind us of what it is to exist, of what it is to be human, his failures as a father and husband and actor, they mean nothing.  We don't care, at all, that his play is about to bomb.  In fact, more than that, we actually root for him to fail.  Because, why not?  He seems like, in balance, a fairly horrible person.  Let his stupid reductionist take on Raymond Carver disappear into nothingness.  Why does it matter?

And, also, the whole conceit that this theater critic (who perches every night at the same bar, laboring, with demonic concentration, over her all-important reviews) can, with a single review, utterly destroy his play offends credulity.  I mean, come on.  Maybe in, like, 1940, a single critic with The Times actually could torpedo a play.  But in 2014?  Give me a break.  Every exchange between the critic and Keaton is embarrassing.  Beyond embarrassing--shameful.

* * *

I've been reading…well…quite a lot.  But let's start with H Is For Hawk.  My wife said, tonight, that everytime she asks me about this book I say something diametrically opposed to what I said about it last time.  Is that true?  It might be.

It's got, at minimum, three strands running through it.  One involves the details of what's involved in training a hawk.  That strand is fascinating.  Hawks, it turns out, are far more difficult to handle than falcons.  Falcons are birds for the rich, the elite.  They need large expanses of land--which, in the UK, generally means, the land of the gentry.  Hawks, on the other hand, tend to hunt in more constrained parcels.  So, their connotations are more to do with the un-landeded.

And that's good and interesting.  So, too, is her discussions--which occupy at least a third of the book--of T.H. White.  We all know White as the author of The Once And Future King but he wrote and lived a million lives before and after that one book, and one of those lives saw him live alone in a cottage with a wild hawk about whom he also wrote a book (Goshawk).  And White was, essentially, insane.  The details of his life are too complex and intricate to go into here, but, suffice it to say, that anyone saying anything about his biography is bound to say something interesting.

But, then, the third strand of her book (we're back to MacDonald) involves the death of her father.  And her grieving over it.  And so…I'm not sure why I didn't really like this bit, but I sure didn't.  I felt the language was overwrought and that it strained, unsuccessfully, most of the time, for effects it couldn't establish.  And, in general, I found her prose to be tautened beyond what it would bear.  And that it had a labored "written" quality which deeply bothered me.

But, on the other hand, she was writing about a deeply moving thing--the death of a parent.  Which is a subject I find difficult to approach. So maybe the flaw and fault and failing was with me?  Very possibly.

A bit of minor trivia: someone who handles hawks (as opposed to falcons) is an austringer.  

Or is that something everybody knows?  It's always hard to know, isn't it?

I have been reading, also, some Charles Baxter stories, some M Robinson criticism, a scholarly work about image reception theory in the history of art, Gravity's Rainbow (trying to get through it to the end, this time) and Turgenev's Sportman's Sketches.  

Striped With Love and Emblazed Tattoos

So I saw Birdman.  Man, that was bad.  And I mean, not just, "OK but overrated." But out-and-out bad.  Like, it had been written by a dim, bipolar college student who was high on bath salts.

So part of me is like, let's go to town on this.  Let's dissect it.  And then another larger, tireder part is like, why?  There's a great quote about Randall Jarrell lamenting how, as a critic, he spent far too much of his time beating and beating on clearly dead horses.  (Sorry for the animal cruelty image).  The point being: why spend so many pages and so much energy explaining and dissecting exactly what makes a failure a failure?  Why not expend your energy on praise?  Or at least, on art that is in the middle?  That is debatably good or bad?  Which Birdman, clearly, is not.  And it's true that Jarrell--who was a bit mad--could go on forever about some mediocre book that would sink into oblivion irrespective of what he or anyone else did.

And this is valid, I think.  And I bring it up because...  Birdman was just horrible.  I mean…my wife, who has a far higher tolerance for junk than I do (and I mean that not as an insult--but rather that she's way way more tolerant and forgiving, whereas I am predisposed, sadly, to just hate everything)...my wife, halfway through, announced she'd had enough.  (It was right after the absurd and bizarre lesbian moment between Naomi Watts and whoever the woman playing Keaton's wife was).  And my wife NEVER gives up on crappy art.  She's a positive person!

So the point is, I lie awake sometimes, now, enumerating all that's horrible about that movie.  I feel like, if called to a podium at some university and asked to talk for an hour on the subject "All That Was Bad about Birdman" I could go to town.

But should I?  And should I do it here?  I mean, it's effort, you know.  Effort I could use to make a chile colorado.  Or to memorize the kings of Judea (I'm reading The Bible, these days, too.  On which more later.)

Anyway… I mean, I know the Academy gives lots of bad movies awards (see Crash) and all that, but I just can't believe they'd be so bamboozled by such jejune and juvenile nonsense.  And there's a part of me that wants to launch into a 5000 word rant where I explicate and pore over every iota of its horribleness.  But then there's a much, much larger part that wants to just…move past it, as though it were a terrible accident on the freeway that I was happy not to be a part of.  And that's what I'll do, now.

 *  *  *

I'd never heard of Charles Baxter until a month ago.  Is that odd?  But then I read about him in the NYRB and now I've read four of his books.  And they're great!  I mean, really good.  Check him out, if you haven't already.  Criticism too.

 *  *  *

And here's another thing that's great: The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber.  I say that slightly provisionally, however; I'm only halfway through it.

But I mean…wow.  It's really making me happy.  But I don't want to talk about it, at all.  And the reason is, I think if any of you want to read it, you should know as little about it as possible.  The less you know, the better.  Not that there are a bunch of plot twists and exciting Usual Suspects-like reveals.  There aren't.  But…it has a quality of wonder and innocence and…whatever the opposite of cynicism is…that I absolutely love and respond to and want to praise.

And so I'll hope that the last 100 pages or so don't let me down and just say: go and read it.  And consider Phlebas, who was once as tall and handsome as you.

The Jinx and Zeno

To anyone who is not watching, or does not plan to watch The Jinx on HBO--you are missing something great.  Maybe the greatest documentary I've ever seen.  And as if it wasn't great enough on its own--and the final episode was one of the most mesmerizing and amazing things I've seen on TV--Robert Durst, its subject was arrested on Saturday, the day before the finale. 

I won't say anything about the finale, though the articles currently in all the papers that describe Durst's arrest will all probably talk about it. (My advice: watch the show from the start, and don't read the articles till after).  But it was ridiculously good.  And gripping.  And amazing--name your superlative.  Just insane.  My wife loved it even more than I did.  We joked that she was going to have to quit her job and dedicate herself to full-time Durst blogging.

...

A long time ago I started but didn't finish Svevo's Zeno's Conscience.  For some reason I got it down off the shelf last week and have been reattempting it.  And, for whatever reason, it now seems to work for me, in a way it didn't last time.  I'm about halfway through at this point, just at the point where his relationship with his mistress Carla is about to end.  

A funny conceit for how it ultimately seems to fall apart: Carla implores Zeno, during their assignations, to let her get a glimpse, somehow, of his wife.  (She knows Zeno loves his wife and won't leave her, and she wants to see this woman to whom Zeno is so devoted).  Finally, worn down, Zeno directs Carla to a certain street on a certain day, when, he says, his wife can be seen walking to the store.  If Carla goes and stands at a certain spot, she will see her.

But, Zeno has in fact not told Carla how to get a glimpse of his wife, but of his sister-in-law, Ada (Zeno, it should be added, has first proposed to Ada, and then to another sister, Agatha, before finally settling on his actual wife--a third sister, Augusta).  So, Carla goes to the appointed spot and waits to see "Augusta", Zeno's wife. (Really his sister-in-law).  And when she does, she is so moved at the sight of the suffering on Ada's face, so affected by her palpable sadness, that she breaks off her affair with Zeno, in order to stop causing his wife so much suffering! (Carla assumes Ada/Augusta is suffering because she knows her husband is unfaithful).

And then, even another layer of twistiness to the plot, we learn later that Ada, the morning that Carla spotted her, had in fact just that day caught her own husband, Guido, in a compromising embrace with their maid.  So that Carla was, in fact, entirely 'correct' as to the cause of what was affecting "Zeno's wife", but only wrong as to the identity of the sufferer. 

That whole web of interations stands in pretty well for the workings of the book as a whole, whose guiding prinpcial is that conventional and expeted things happen but for odd and irrational and unconventional reasons.  Short on incident, though, it can sometimes lag--since almost the entire 'story', such as it is, occurs in Zeno's mind (the ratio of 'thinking about incidents' to 'incidents themselves' stands at about four to one) it can read a little slow.  And, to audiences long familiar with Philip Roth and Woody Allen and Seinfeld all the other 'artist of neuroses' some of what surely seemed original and exciting during Svevo's own time (he lived and wrote about a century ago) now seems a bit familiar.  But worthwhile all the same.

Rented Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend.  Had been lead to expect it would be a light fun thrill-ride type movie, but I found it pretty standard stuff.  Lots of fights and explosions with no story or character to really care about.  Blah.

March Update

I will post at least once a month--that's the plan.  How ambitious!

I'm reading…what?  Oh…Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.  Recommended to me by a former pupil.  Actually kind of a funny story.  I'd been tutoring, on and off, the son of my boss.  When we started he was in 7th grade, and my boss basically just wanted someone to come hang out with him once a week and act as a sort of intellectual big brother.  We had some kind of purported weekly work--help him with math, I think--but he never actually had any math so we ended up just talking a lot.  Then I told his mother I thought it would be useful if I just gave him a bunch of stuff I thought would be useful for him to learn--maps of the world, world capitals, timelines of history--because his school, while good, wasn't challenging him enough.  So we would spend half of each session going over his 'assignments' from me--I'd have him fill out maps, or make him explain the history of the Reformation--and then for the second half of every hour (we'd only meet for an hour) we'd play Civilization together. (Which I justified to his mother--accurately in fact--in terms of how educational it was.)

Anyway… that was our first segment of time, and it lasted about three months.  Then he got busy with school, and I got busy with my burgeoning salmon-farming business, and we stopped meeting.  Then last year, she hired me again to help improve his essay writing--again, the school wasn't really giving him enough feedback (his teacher just gave him an A on all his assignments, seemingly without reading them).  So we read some eight-grade books together and wrote essays on them (Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird).  And that was fun.  He's a very smart kid and generally we'd have interesting conversations about whatever.  Like, he would suddenly remark that he'd seen a special last night about the way the Chinese effected dynastic successions or something, and did I know that in China there was no tradition of philosophy, as such, because all the philosophers gravitated towards writing poetry. (Or something).  And then I'd respond in some way and we'd, you know, engage.  And I bought him a bunch of books to read, too.

Anyway… where was I?  Right, so that was last year.  But then this fall, his mom emails me and says that (NAME OF SON) has been asking about me, and now that he's in high school he doesn't really have time for tutoring--or need--but did I maybe want to think about having dinner with him one night, so we could talk?  Because she thinks he still needs intellectual mentoring, and what-not.  (I should have said that the father and mother have been going through an amicable divorce though all of this, but that he's not around as much).

So anyway, last month we went to dinner and chatted.  And it was interesting on many levels, though not maybe the most enjoyable dinner I've ever had (he talked a lot about video games--which he doesn't actually play, but which he does watch other people play on YouTube.  A lot.  Which seems odd to me.)

Anyway, long story short: he recommended the book, the Kahneman book.  And I'm reading it.  And though I feel a lot of it is sort of common sensical, and though I've already read so many reviews or essays about the book that at least 40% of it seems old hat by now, I'm still enjoying it.

If I posted daily, what would it avail?  Something, I'm sure.

I'm rereading Infinite Jest, which gains significantly on a second pass-through.  Wish I could talk it over with another serious reader--especially the relation between the opening vignette (Hal in Arizona, interviewing for a tennis scholarship at ASU--but wigged out, unable to speak, and making intriguing allusions, in his ((incommunicable)) thoughts to the activities that have occurred between the start of this vignette and the end of the actions detailed in the remaining 1000 pages).

Specifically, what I wonder about--a lot--are the references to a) Gately helping Hal dig up the grave of his father (presumably to search for the "Entertainment"--at the armed behest of the Wheelchair Terrorists) b) the fate of Pemulis and c) the fate of Orin (who, seemingly, at the end of the main action of the novel, is being tortured to death by the Wheelchair guys).

At least ten other questions that I've now forgotten. I don't know what to make of it all, this book.  I mean...that's unsatisfactory.  And you know what really slows down my blogging?  How terribly responsive this keyboard is, I mean the keyboard at my desktop.  It's just typo after typo, b/c I tend to like to, you know, really slam away at these keys.  And with this thing, it's like, you breathe on it, and there's nine lines of type.  GRR.

 My sort of tentative conclusion--which is sadly empty in many ways--is that DFW, while a man of great and preternatural intelligence, was a man of only mediocre (to sub-mediocre) wisdom.  On the axis of which difference I may locate my entire aesthetic biases, philosophy, and interest.

And thinking too of King Lear, which I saw a BBC doc on last night (narrated by the intellectually unimpressive Christopher Plummer).  The great line--which I won't look up and so will probably slightly misquote--"thou should'st have been wise before thou was old."  This sometimes absent (often absent?) relationship between age and wisdom... this is a key thing, for me.

Who are the great artists of old age? Beckett and Yeats are the first two I think of--and of course the Shakespeare of Lear.  Impossible not to find similarities between Lear and the fool, ranting at each other on the heath, and the Beckett of, say, Endgame.

On Meta Narrative and Jelly

I've just read Eleanor Catton's Booker-winning Luminaries.  I'm also reading a lot of Russian history. And poetry.  And writing poetry.  But that's a topic for another wombat.

The Luminaries wasn't very good.  I mean, it wasn't execrable, and I finished it.  But, given the hype, I was disappointed.

It's got a whole meta-structure, a vast and creaking meta-narrative.  To do with the zodiac.  And the signs of the zodiac.  All its major figures stand for one of the signs of the zodiac, and all the book's actions take place on certain 'charted' days.  So, at the start of each chapter, there's a star-chart showing you where each figure fits into the astrological...order.  For want of a better term.  So all the sub-chapters have headings like "Virgo in Mars" or "Moon in Scorpio" or "Peanut Butter in Jelly."  And it's all exceedingly tedious and forgettable.  Because, clearly (I think?) the author doesn't believe or find deep meaning in the zodiac.  It's all a bunch of arbitrary nonsense, a way of giving her a structure.  Which, in itself, is fine--we all need structure--but by foregrounding it like she does, she makes the reader feel like it should somehow matter, in its reading.  Which it doesn't.  And can't.  And doesn't.

What it made me think of was Ulysses.  Herman Wouk's Ulysses.  There, a meta-structure is also used, but there it works, or works, at least, insofar as any exoskeleton--an inherently inelegant and slightly repulsive structure--can.  For in Ulysses, Joyce imposes a mythic narrative, the central guiding narrative (or one of them) of Western Civilization.  Which narrative imports, to the seemingly mundane and humdrum lives of Stephen and Leopold and Peanut Butter and Jelly a larger resonance and import.  A sense of meaning in a grand continuum.  And there are many other ways that Ulysses is better, many many other ways... which, as I write, seems an exceedingly stupid comparison, and not useful, because no reviewer, sitting down to think upon a book thinks (or should): Is this better than Ulysses?  Because what the hell kind of criterion is that?

But anyway.  The book, Luminaries, I mean, wants to be a page-turning, pleasure-giving 'yarn' while at the same time gestures, tiresomely, towards wisdom and insight and profundity which it can't maintain.  So, for example, the character introductions and descriptions just go on and on and pretend to a kind of deep insight which they don't live up to.  And, basically, it made me tired.  Tired and indigent.  And tired.

I've read a lot of other things too.  But those are secrets.  Terrible ones.

For No Good Reason

I thought it might be interesting to list every celebrity I've seen at short-range since I've been in LA.

Criterion for 'seen' is: being near enough to be able to walk up and touch them.

In roughly chronological order:

-Carol Burnett
-Barbara Streisand, James Brolin
(same restaurant same night, both people, different tables)

-Dustin Hoffman
(supermarket)

-Warren Beatty
(restaurant, wearing blue seersucker and looking plump)

-Heidi and Spenser
(no longer celebrities, I know, but at a Mexican restaurant--we had to sign release form to go into room where they were, b/c they were still on some reality show)

-the guy who plays Toby on the office
(at a stoplight near our old apartment, walking)

-David Caruso
(at a restaurant, at the next table.  I thought he was NOT David Caruso, and kept telling my wife how much the sad broken man sitting with the woman who was clearly a prostitute at the table next to us resembled David Caruso.  She kept making "shut it" motions at me.  Until I realized--it was David Caruso!

That was fun!)

-Kendra
(at my park, going to walk)

-Jack Black
(at my park, dropping off kids for soccer)

-Dave Grohl
(at a Barnes and Noble, holding one of his kids on his shoulders, wearing flannel)

-Pauly Shore
(I know, he's not really a celebrity.  But he was on a Southwest flight with me).

-Gene Simmons
(at our OLD favorite Italian restaurant, with his much younger wife.  Trying to read menu in dark by light of iPhone.)

-LeAnn Rhimes--at our NEW favorite Italian restaurant.

-Harry Hamlin--also at our NEW favorite Italian restaurant.

-Hank Baskin (but without Kendra!)
at the airport flying to LA, from Santa Fe



HMM.

This feels light.  I can't recall all of them right now, but none are very interesting.  But when I think of more, I'll update.  Don't worry!

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 3320

Today on the radio, I heard--in a row--the following three songs: 1) Bowie and Queen doing "Under Pressure" 2) Aretha doing "Respect" 3) and "Don't Stop Believin'".

It was the most excited I've been listening to the radio in, like, ten years.  It was like...is this what tantric sex is like?  But then I thought, no.  This is BETTER.

Also, I just want to put out as a general statement of credo: if I ever get remarried, and I'm considering someone for a future spouse, if I found out she doesn't like Journey, then that's it.  No wedding.  Also, I might report her to the Feds.  Because, probably, she's some kind of communist.  Or something.