Category: literature

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Not Feeling the Pynch

I’m in between books right now. This condition never lasts long, but it’s strange that it’s happening just now. See, there’s a new book out by an author who used to be my fave, but I’m not interested in reading it, and I’m not sure why that is.

Last week, I stopped by a nearby bookstore and took a look at the new novel by Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day. I used to consider myself a devotee of his books, but I was surprised to find that I had little interest in buying this one. This is a marked change from the winter of 1990, when I got out of a (barely) moving car to run into a B.Dalton’s after seeing the newly published Vineland in the window. There was even some bating of my breath in 1997 when Mason & Dixon was released. Now? Bupkes.

It’s not because of an aversion to long / involved books (AtD is nearly 1100 pages); I just finished a 600-page exploration of the history and meaning of the mourner’s kaddish, worked my way through a 1200-page biography of Robert Moses last summer, and read Proust’s opus in the spring of 2005.

The problem (I think) stems from a short work by Pynchon: his introduction to a recent edition of George Orwell’s 1984. I read the intro a few weeks ago, and was amazed by how much Pynchon came off as an aging hippie who was trading off his old licks. Pynchon’s attempted hijacking of 1984 to tacitly denounce the Bush administration read as something far less nuanced than I’d come to expect from the writer. This, of course, led me to suspect that I was too kind in my past readings of Pynchon’s work, but I haven’t gone back to check.

(A gentleman named Mark Ciocco summed up pretty nicely some of his problems with Pynchon’s 1984 intro in a post and a followup) on his blog a few years ago.)

So, by the time this new book saw print, and the first review (from a right-wing newspaper) mentioned the cardboard-ness of The Bad Guys in the novel, it struck me that maybe I’m just too old for Pynchon’s whole Merry Prankster / anarchist counterforce approach, in which the doomed valiant create chaos just about for its own sake, with the corollary belief that order is inherently evil. Or maybe he’s too old to see the present era with the vivacity of his earlier work. Or maybe he’s still writing allegories of the struggle against Nixon.
I’m rambling, which you’re used to by now. I’m trying to convey this suspicion I have that, despite all the gorgeous, Rilkean prose and labyrinths of symbolism he broke out in Gravity’s Rainbow, and all the intricate, encapsulated plotting of The Crying of Lot 49, and even the wondrous camaraderie he evoked between Mason and Dixon, this guy may be a burned-out wreck who complains about The Government, Big Business, Dehumanizing Technology, and other embarrasingly obvious targets.

Driving home tonight, I heard a song by the Who on my Sirius radio. I hadn’t heard Cry if You Want in a bazillion years, and my first thought was, “Man, Kenny Jones was a boring drummer.” But then there were the lyrics, which feel apropos:

Don’t you want to hide your face
When going through your teenage books
And read the kind of crap you wrote
About “Ban the Bomb” and city crooks

So I’m back where I started: between books. I’d start Ron Rosenbaum’s Shakespeare book, but I’m flying soon (Toronto to visit a couple of clients) and I don’t want to carry a big hardcover with me. I could always follow Ron’s recent suggestion and start reading the Philip Kerr Berlin Noir omnibus. Choices, choices. . .

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 24, 2006

It’s the Black Friday edition of Unrequired Reading, dear unreaders! Amy & I are skipping out on the shopping chaos, since we took care of a bunch of it during our Paris trip. Plus, what with these here internets, we can get plenty of holiday shopping done from the comfort of the old fainting couch! Without further ado:

Here’s a BW piece on how the Analog Meat Market is performing. No, it’s not an article about offline dating services, it’s about The Rise of Tofurky!

* * *

Michael Kinsley has decided that, because “the market” doesn’t set “the right price” for a share of stock in a company, capitalism is inherently flawed.

* * *

Poor Kinsley. If only the state could become more involved in determining how companies do business. Well, actually, there was significant legislation passed during the Clinton administration to “shame companies” into doing the president’s idea of the right thing:

Clinton’s brainstorm: Use the tax code to curb excessive pay. Companies at the time were allowed to deduct all compensation to top executives. Clinton wanted to permit companies to write off amounts over $1 million only if executives hit specified performance goals. He called [Graef Crystal, author of a book on corporate greed] for his thoughts. “Utterly stupid,” the consultant says he told the future President.

Now, 13 years after Clinton’s plan became law, the results are clear: It didn’t work. Over the law’s first decade, average compensation for chief executives at companies in Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index soared from $3.7 million to $9.1 million, according to a 2005 Harvard Law School study. The law contains so many obvious loopholes, says Crystal, that “in 10 minutes even Forrest Gump could think up five ways around it.”

* * *

Even when people try the old Robin Hood routine, it goes awry (thanks, Faiz)!

* * *

Charles Krauthammer doesn’t like Borat.

* * *

When I first saw the Beth Sholom Synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, I called it “Battlestar Judaica.” Here’s a piece about the architecture of houses of worship, which seems to be an excuse to post a sldeshow of neat photos.

* * *

I really need to sit down and read the Aeneid sometime.
* * *

I’ve long contended that Paul Allen has the anti-Midas touch, but I had no idea that his Portland Trailblazers have the most incredibly messed-up business situation in professional sports. This one’s long, but it makes for pretty entertaining reading, if only to find out that a man worth $22 billion should never come along with you to negotiate buying a car.
* * *

I don’t have any pity for car salesmen, esp. after the guy at the Mini place tried scamming Amy into buying a $550 stereo system. Looks like they’re under plenty of pressure.

* * *

And, in honor of Black Friday, a Christmas display you won’t forget (thanks, Tina).

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Too marvelous for words

In the new City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple lays a whomping on Steven Pinker’s theory of language development. Dalrymple being Dalrymple, he draws out the moral implications of Pinker’s theory:

The contrast between a felt and lived reality — in this case, Pinker’s need to speak and write standard English because of its superior ability to express complex ideas — and the denial of it, perhaps in order to assert something original and striking, is characteristic of an intellectual climate in which the destruction of moral and social distinctions is proof of the very best intentions.

Given that Dad’s english isn’t among his top two languages, and that my first writing influence was Stan Lee, I’m pretty amazed that this site isn’t filled with pages of fragmented alliteration. Fortunately, I had Mom (and Chris Claremont).

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 17, 2006

What we see at Ground Zero and what we will see:

When the towers first fell and, in practically the same moment, so many turned to imagining their replacement, I was appalled. Later, when I started to write about the site, I avoided proposing designs of my own, both because they were banal and impracticable — I thought it would be cool to flood the bathtub — and because I felt such activities were beyond the scope of a responsible critic. I would often say, however — as I think I wrote or at least implied here once — two things: that the ultimate form of the reconstruction was unimportant as long as the process to achieve it, from the first planning session through the ribbon-cutting, was conducted with dignity; and second, that New York should be left to be New York.

t was as obvious then as now that those two ideas were in absolute conflict — that the city could in no way be the one we love and also comport itself with a special reserve — so I concocted a third idea, one that has proved remarkably durable, by way of resolution.

* * *

Last week in this space, I mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld is more than just The Guy Who Blew the Iraq War. He also tried to revolutionize/transform the U.S. military. This profile on him in the New Yorker is more charitable than I expected, or at least more willing to see the grays than to place him in a Manichean context.

And he blew the Iraq war.

* * *

Look, kids! An interview with writer, critic and Official VM Buddy Paul Di Filippo!

What do you use for note-taking, capturing ideas and tracking submissions? Are you a proponent of pencil and notebook; do you favour proprietary software; or is it open source everything for you, even though your initials are PDF?

I am old-fashioned enough to still stick with pen and paper for my note-taking. I have a pocket notebook brand that I love, Oxford Memo Books, because it’s sewn together instead of employing a metal spiral, and so when you sit on it, it doesn’t imprint your butt like something out of a Re/Search tribal scarification volume.

* * *

From science fiction to science disappointment: the 25 worst tech products of all time.

8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

Full of features, easy to use, and a virtual engraved invitation to hackers and other digital delinquents, Internet Explorer 6.x might be the least secure software on the planet. How insecure? In June 2004, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) took the unusual step of urging PC users to use a browser — any browser — other than IE. Their reason: IE users who visited the wrong Web site could end up infected with the Scob or Download.Ject keylogger, which could be used to steal their passwords and other personal information. Microsoft patched that hole, and the next one, and the one after that, and so on, ad infinitum.

* * *

If you’re a professional basketball fan, and you like getting some idea of what goes on behind the scenes in player negotiations, you really need to read this long and candid interview with the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Glen Taylor.

I can tell you that Chauncey [Billups] left not because of Kevin [McHale, the team’s GM] but because of Flip [Saunders, the Wolves’ coach]. Now, have we said that? We didn’t want to say that about Flip because he was here at the time. But I think since then it’s been stated that Kevin asked me if I would pay for Chauncey. I said I would. Kevin said he would, went to Chauncey, Chauncey said he would stay, because we were going to offer him the same [money] as Detroit. But then Chauncey went to Flip and said, would you play me, and Flip — I’m not saying that Flip said the wrong answer, but he said, “I’m not sure that I think that you’re our starting guard.” Chauncey then went back to Kevin, and Kevin says, basically, we’re going to be truthful. Kevin could have said to Chauncey, “Oh, we’re gonna start you.” And I know some GMs do that stuff. Then they get the player but they have an unhappy player. But Kevin doesn’t do that.

Unfortunately, it looks like questions about the remarkably stupid tampering arrangement with Joe Smith were off limits. This is a pity, because you can pretty easily make the case that the T-Wolves would’ve been in much better shape if they had draft picks over the years. But losing those picks and having a salary cap-buster like Garnett on the team meant they had to be the most creative team in the NBA. And with Kevin McHale running the show, that made it a recipe for disaster.

* * *

Amy sent me this great post by Dan Jardine on the varieties of cinematic inexperience:

I am not of the Pauline Kael School of film criticism that argues that your initial impression of a film is the only one that matters, and to revisit and reevaluate a film is a fool’s errand fraught with the potential for emotional and intellectual dishonesty. Indeed, I can think of plenty of legitimate reasons to take stock of a film anew. What if there were mitigating environmental factors — such as problems with the projector or the sound, or even with the audience itself — that hampered your ability to enjoy the film? What of format issues? I mean, what if, like me, your first experience with Lawrence of Arabia was on television, in full screen format and interrupted by commercials? Or what if you were in the wrong head space after a fight with your partner or a bad day at work and weren’t able to give the film the attention and scrutiny it deserved?

* * *

Witold Rybzcsinski on the decline of architecture magazines:

A reduction in intellectual content in the glossies was largely the result of an increased reliance on photography, especially color photography. There’s something about a color photograph that glamorizes its subject, and architectural writers soon adopted the slightly breathless tones of fashion reporters. You are more likely to find tough architectural criticism in the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and The New Yorker than in any of the major architecture magazines.

* * *

Victor Davis Hanson sings “I left my appendix in Tripoli”:

Libyans seem to talk nonstop. It’s as if they have been jolted from a long sleep and are belatedly discovering, thanks to their newfound Internet, satellite television, and cell phones — many carry two to ensure that they are never out of service from competing companies — that there is indeed a wide world outside of dreary Tripoli and beyond the monotonous harangues of government socialists on the state-owned TV and radio stations.

They talked about their new gadgetry, and much else, with infectious optimism. As one hopeful Libyan travel entrepreneur with friends in the government explained, there might be some irony after all to Libya’s long, self-imposed insularity. Yes, he conceded, foreign investment declined. Oilmen left. Petroleum production nose-dived from more than 3 million barrels to never more than 2 million. But there was a silver lining: Did all that not have the effect of saving Libya’s precious resource to await the return of the present sky-high prices? Yes, Libya had banked a sort of strategic oil reserve that now was to be tapped at its most opportune moment. Yes, it was Libya’s grand strategy to deny Westerners its petroleum treasure for years, until they finally came around to pay what it was really worth

* * *

At Slate, Daniel Gross discusses the trend of foreign companies to buy U.S. brands that are on the wane:

[T]o these foreign owners, the U.S. market represents the holy grail. American consumer-oriented firms that have saturated the U.S. market, such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Nike, look to developing markets for their growth. But these foreign buyers see a different kind of opportunity here — an unmatched combination of wealth and growth that doesn’t exist in Germany, or China, or Denmark. The U.S. domestic market, 300 million people strong, is composed of wealthy consumers who routinely spend more than they make.
But iconic American brands only tend to come up for sale when they’re damaged.

It’s funny to me is that, for more than a century, China has been the holy grail for U.S. & European companies, along the lines of, “If we just get [x]% of them to go for our brand, we’ll be rolling in dough!”

* * *

Dare to dream and all that, but I still don’t believe Rem Koolhaas’ Chinese Television Authority building is going to stand up.

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More weekend rambling

The rest of the weekend after the reunion? Quiet, generally. I drove home and realized that I needed water and sugar, which the Coca-Cola Corporation was only too ready to provide. Once home, I realized how tired I was, and how tired I was going to stay until Sunday.

So I chilled out with Amy, partook of the hair of the dog, and finished reading Epileptic, a really fine comic by a French cartoonist about living with a brother who has severe epilepsy. It’s an awfully challenging book (about 350 pages, by the way), because David B. doesn’t actually represent anyone in a sympathetic light, except perhaps his little sister. In general, his parents pursue any half-baked cure they can find for his brother, including magnetism, macrobiotics, spiritualism, and other mystic forms. David B.’s “character” (it’s portrayed as autobiographical) concludes at one point that his brother ‘chooses’ epilepsy, and that he uses his disease as a way to avoid life.

Challenging, like I say, because it’s clear the brother’s not in control of his disease at all, but that he’s also not simply a victim of it. Simultaneously, ‘David B.’ plunges deeply into cartooning and storytelling in an attempt to translate his life and his reactions to his brother’s disease. It’s quite compelling, astonishingly drawn, and has a narrative flow that I found absolutely confounding. If you can read comics — and I know plenty of people who simply can’t read them, instead focusing only on the words — you should read this one.

Sunday was going to be a football day, but we kept bailing on games. We left the Jets/Patriots so we could hit a Linens & Things to pick up a new shower rod/curtain setup; we gave up on the Saints/Steelers (Amy knew better about the Saints than I did); and we were too tired to stick with the Bears/Giants. So it was a bits-and-pieces day, but at least we succeeded in dismantling the sliding-panel shower door and replacing it with the curtain.

We’re planning to redo the bathroom once I get a couple of other things squared away (dangerous trees in the yard are getting cut down this week, and I’m getting a plumber in to assess everything that’s wrong with the pipes in this place) and the holiday bonuses are sorted out. In fact, I got all outdoors-ish on Sunday morning, taking down some dead branches, bringing the summer-stuff inside, and wielding that electric chainsaw of mine willy-nilly. Except for the willy-nilly part, which has bad connotations when associated with a chainsaw.

Anyway, the upshot was that I got some of the yard cleared, got rid of the impossible-to-keep-clean shower door, and finished reading a good comic, while also trying to write up the reunion during my free minutes. And that was the weekend.

Monday: now that was a different story. We had an off-site editorial meeting to discuss internet strategy for our magazines. It was at the same location as the sales meeting I attended back in September, but people weren’t, um, “resting their eyes” during this meeting.

Actually, the meeting helped me understand an important difference between editorial and sales personnel. When the online sales meeting wrapped up, the salesmen all headed to the building’s scary bar, where they got a little shikker. When Monday’s meeting finished, the editors were happy enough to get a free lunch out of the deal, and everyone just headed back to the office.

But I got some good ideas for things we can do on the magazine’s website, and also had some thoughts about the redesign for this blog, and the overall site, which still needs to be constructed. If I can get far enough ahead on the 400-page issue of the magazine I’m working on, I’ll take some time off during Thanksgiving week and try to put together the new look-and-feel for this site.

Because that’s supposed to be my idea of fun.

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I Live in a Suitcase

Well, them’s the best-laid plans. I decided not to spend $200 just to get into the Magic game (I could’ve gone with a cheaper seat, but it would’ve been pretty high up in the O-rena), and the conference people called to say that they couldn’t sneak me into the Pleasure Island get-together, meaning I’d have to pony up the $120 fee to explore . . . Pleasure Island! (I make a dramatic pause whenever I say the name.)

Deciding drunkenness is the better part of valor, I elected to hit Shula’s for dinner, knock back a couple of Hendrick’s & tonics with my 20-oz. Kansas City strip, and head back to the room for some awkwardly confessional writing. Because I’m all about customer satisfaction.

Which brings us to my hotel room, where I’m sitting in my underwear (black socks, natch) and listening to I Live in a Suitcase, by Thomas Dolby. It came from his fourth album, which is terrible, but I’ve gained an affinity for this song, which is about getting stuck in Los Angeles. Funnily enough, it’s just about the only major city I haven’t been to for a conference or trade show.

It’s also the city I think is least likely to offer itself up over the course of a 3- or 4-day trip. I’ve always had this impression that LA is much more a state-of-mind city than just about any other in America, that it reveals itself over the course of day-to-day life, but not to the tourist. This probably stems from being as spread out as it is, and as devoted to its key industry (entertainment, of course) as it is.

And it probably stems from my mythologizing of it, but I’m really not trying to romanticize Hollywood by any means. It’s just that almost every other city puts me in mind of a particular set of landmarks, of lifestyles, of business, of history, and I find myself drawing a blank over LA. I don’t think “Chinatown” should stands in for the city. Maybe I’ll make an extended trip there someday, but I doubt it’ll happen. If any of you have some commentary/meta-thoughts on LA to share, comment away!

But we’re in Orlando (or, more precisely, Lake Buena Vista, FL): Living in a suitcase also puts me back in the world of USA Today, as I mentioned during last week’s travels.

Over breakfast this morning, I discovered that avian flu is a subject for the Life section, not News. It seems that Indonesia isn’t doing so well treating it because “Decentralized power weakens grip on outbreak.” If only that junta were still running things.

On the plus side, it appears that coffee helps against Alzheimer’s disease, and just about everything else. Is nothing beyond the reach of coffee achievers?

The lead News story is about how Fresno is the most insanely hard-ass city on drunk drivers in America:

Police sneak into the driveways of convicted drunk drivers to plant Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and search their homes for evidence they’ve been drinking.

The “problem,” it seems, is that drunk driving fatalities have leveled off since the mid-1990s, after dropping annually for nearly 20 years prior to that. Rather than credit the reduction in deaths to improved vehicle safety and greater awareness about drunk driving, the article implies that it’s only police & the courts that can reduce the number of deaths. Hence, bugging the cars of convicted drunk drivers.

I also discovered that the Second Amendment doesn’t seem to pertain if you’re drunk:

One officer observes a man walking unsteadily as he leaves the bar. When he gets in his SUV and starts to drive off, other officers swoop down on him. The officers find a loaded Glock handgun in the center console. The man’s friend, who owns the SUV, walks over to show the police his concealed weapons permit. But he has been drinking, too, and the permit is void if he’s intoxicated. They arrest him, too.

In the Money section, we learn the valuable art of spin with the lead story Prius finally available without a wait. In addition to increased production, it turns out that reduced demand is a factor.

The Sports section told me that Ricky Williams is some sorta zen master:

When it comes to the search for elevated self-awareness and a higher plane of existence, Ricky Williams may be the [most] introspective athlete of all time. He is a vegetarian, a yogi, a vertiable Buddhist philosopher in shoulder pads. Unfortunately for the enigmatic running back, pro football does not place a premium on the quest for eternal truth and personal fulfillment.

Also, he really likes weed.

And I found out that Doogie Howser, M.D. is gay. All this over breakfast!

* * *

By lunch, I learned that there’s a staging of The Winter’s Tale that you might be interested in seeing, if you’re around NYC the next few weekends. It’s being directed by a guy who used to be my closest friend, but he’s been a douchebag to me for three-plus years now, so I figure I’ll skip out on this performance.

I do find it pretty funny that he can’t return a phone call or e-mail to me since 2003, but is quite content to send group e-mails asking for people to come out and see and/or promote his show. We’ve got different ideas of friendship, is what it boils down to.

Speaking of which, a bunch of my high school friends (Pennsylvania edition) have invited me to a mini-reunion next week down in Philadelphia, so I may come back with some entertaining anecdotes or photographs by Sunday. It’s one of those things where I realize how close so many of these friends have stayed in the 17 years since we graduated high school, and how close they stayed to me even though I only attended school for one year down there. Different ideas of friendship.

That said, I’m at a point in my life where I really don’t want to crash on someone’s sofa or air-mattress, so I’m trying to find an inexpensive hotel (sans bugs) that I can stay in Saturday night. I’m gonna get back to that right now, since I’ve given up on trying to figure out why my buddy Chip likes that Nightwood so darn much. It’s baroque; fix it.

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Reporting from Mauschwitz

Got into Orlando safe and sound. I didn’t think about the fact that a flight here on a Sunday morning would be filled with screaming kids traveling to Disney World. The stewardess didn’t even ask me to turn off my iPod for takeoff.

I took Nightwood with me. It’s the favorite book of one of the authors I used to publish. I read about 20 pages of it once before, but the floridity of the prose tired me out. So I figured I’d make it the only book I have with me, like I did with Foucault’s Pendulum a couple of summers ago.

Of course, I took a break to do the crossword puzzle in the Continental in-flight magazine, but that only took about 20 minutes.

Anyway, the conference/exhibition starts in a few minutes, and I’ve got ironing to do. This place sure is, um, pleasant.

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 3, 2006

Official VM buddy Tom Spurgeon & his brother Whit sacrifice themselves to The Guiding Light in order to chronicle the soap opera’s tie-in episode with Marvel Comics.

* * *

Two tax articles from Slate: the continuing phenomenon of Bushenfreude — those who benefit from the Republican tax cuts but contribute to Democrat politicians, and Bono/U2’s decision to reduce its tax burden by moving its music publishing company out of Ireland:

“Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market … that’s a justice issue,” Bono said at a prayer breakfast attended by President Bush, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and various members of Congress earlier this year. Preaching this sort of thing has made Bono a perennial candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued:

Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents . . . that’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents . . . that’s a justice issue.

And relocating your business offshore in order to avoid paying taxes to the Republic of Ireland, where poverty is higher than in almost any other developed nation?

* * *

Dan Drezner examines the importance of China in negotiations with North Korea. I believe I’ve said it before: When you manage to get the U.S., Russia, China and Japan on the same page against you, you have severely messed up.

* * *

BLDGBLOG remains one of the most eerie/haunting sites out there. This post about offshore oil rigs proves my point.

* * *

When we gaze into the Barack, does the Barack gaze back at us?

* * *

In honor of the premiere of Borat, the UK press has been doing interest stories from Kazakhstan.

* * *

Reason on misreading the Beats.

* * *

I know enough small publicly-held company execs who would agree with this post: SOX sucks.

* * *

It’s Ron-Ron’s world.

* * *

And in honor of the NBA season kick-off (as it were): Kieran Darcy gives up on the Knicks, about 10 years after I did.