Month: October 2007

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Trash day

In my favorite movie, the lead says, “They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids.”

My parents weren’t grifters; they’re packrats. And that trait, I’m sorry to say, has passed on to me. At home, I’ve held on to far too many oddball mementoes over the years. (Can you call something a memento if you can’t remember where you got it?)

I’m the same way at work. Things pile up. Fortunately, much of what I handle now is digital, and storage space is pretty cheap. I can get a little lost among files, but I’ve learned to organize my work-materials pretty well. Of course, I wasn’t always like that, and I’ve been loathe to throw something out “in case I need it,” which is probably the same rationale my parents have. In their case, you can sorta explain things in terms of coming of age in postwar Europe & Israel. Me? No excuses.

Today I decided that this really had to change. I looked around my office and concluded that I will never refer to most of the annual reports, meeting brochures, economic studies, business magazines, and conference guides that have piled up. And so, after the loose paper went into the recycling bin, I managed to generate a pile of trash that was nearly as tall as my wife:

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Better read than dead. Or vice versa. I think.

Maybe I’m misreading the signs, but it looks like we’re due for a round of worlds-enough-and-time! In this case, the publication of Pierre Bayard’s How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read opens the door for literary types to name the “great books” that they’ve never read (and likely will never get around to).

In this case, Slate has followed up 2001’s Literary Critic’s Shelf of Shame with a new piece: The Great Novel I Never Read. While the former canvassed critics (duh), this new feature garners responses from contemporary authors.

I’m usually leery of this sort of exercise, as it can degenerate into people disparaging some legitimately great novels because they’ve never gotten around to reading them. I used to think that I keep that gigantic list of all the books I’ve finished since I began college in 1989 just to scare people out of asking my opinion about any particular book. After looking over this article, I’m starting to think that my real reason is to justify not having read some of those great books, myself: “Ferchrissakes! Look at how many other books I’ve read! There are only so many hours in a day!”

(Of course, I’m guilty of disparaging great books on flimsy grounds, most recently in my rant about the immediate sense of alienness (not alienation) I got when starting Middlemarch earlier this month. Of course, now that I’m around 500 pages in, I’m wondering how I managed to get this far in life without reading it. And, sure, maybe I felt more sympathy for Casaubon than the average Middlemarch reader, but I’m a sucker for a classically trained scholar who can’t bring himself to start writing his great work. Go figure.)

Fortunately, that snide attitude isn’t on display in the new Slate piece. Instead, I noticed something funnier: while I’ve read a number of the books cited in this article, I’ve actually read only one book by any of these contemporary authors (Little, Big by John Crowley).

Now back to Raffles & Bulstrode! (which means I’m just about to finish book five)

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Treadmilling

I tellya, dear readers: I’ve been in overdrive at the office for about 5 months now, and it’s been burning me out something fierce. I’ve been facing one big issue of the magazine after another, plus a ton of responsibilities for our annual conference. I think it reached a point where I didn’t know how to slow down. But I figure that’s a lot better than being unemployed.

On the plus side, it means I actually hammered the crap out of our November/December issue, wrapping it up today even though it’s not due at the printer till Tuesday. Our issues have been running late all year for a variety of reasons, so I was just hoping to get this one ish out by deadline. Even though I was early, I still sprinted to the finish line, working on news pages last night and spending the early morning gathering photos for the features.

The upshot? I got the last few files to my production manager by noon, which meant I could take a half-day and chill the heck out.

In my world, that means driving down to Montclair, picking up some coffee over at Bean’s, walking around town a little (cold and drizzly today, but hey), and hitting the Book Center for a little stochastic research!

Within a minute, I opened a book to a page that provided all sorts of grist for the imagination-mill. You can expect my novel sometime around 2020.

After that score, I browsed for books on my wishlist, and ended up finding a bunch of little treasures on the cheap —

Waiting for the Weekend – Witold Rybczynski

Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces – Frank Bruno (from the 33 1/3 series of books-about-albums)

Prince’s Sign O’ the Times – Michelangelos Matos (ditto)

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 – Robert Caro

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia – Peter Hopkirk

— for a grand total of $35!

Now it’s on to a nice, relaxing weekend of wrapping up the annual NBA preview, reading Middlemarch, and, um, sleeping.

So don’t call, is what I’m saying.

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Penn Paul

Driving to Pennsylvania yesterday (for this news event), I was reminded of what it’s like to live in a swing state. In presidential elections, NJ’s firmly in the Democratic camp, so we tend not to get much (any) outdoor political advertising.

In fall of 2004, I drove on Rt. 95 into Philadelphia and was amazed by the sheer volume of election signs as I approached the city. My favorite enormous billboards were the ones that complained about the loss of our freedom of speech.

Now, the general election is more than a year away and the state’s primaries are six months off, but Pennsylvania reminded me of its swing state status almost instantly. Moments after I entered the state, I saw yard signs for Ron Paul. As I drove below overpasses, I looked up to see banners for the guy.

No other candidates had any presence, so I’m not sure if this means that Paul’s got an iron grip on the Rt. 78/22 corridor of Pennsylvania or if his supporters are jumping the gun by a few months.