Monday Morning Montaigne: Of books

I’m back! As with other forms of exercise, it was difficult for me to return to Montaigne’s essays after putting them off for a while. As Bizarro Aristotle says, “You make the excuses, and the excuses make you.”

What better essay to mark my return to this project than one entitled  Of books? In this one, M. discusses what books mean to him and why he reads. With his typical disingenuousness, he begins, “I have no doubt that I often happen to speak of things that are better treated by masters of the craft, and more truthfully.” He blames himself and not the books, claiming, “If I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retentiveness.”

He proceeds to write about particular histories and memoirs that mean a lot to him, but I’m taking this opportunity to discuss another aspect of the essays, namely their strange relationship to art.

That’s because M. makes a digression to cover “books that are simply entertaining.” He finds Rabelais and Boccaccio “worth reading for amusement,” then writes, “As for the Amadises and writings of that sort, they did not have the authority to detain even my childhood.”

I was struck by the irony of that comment, since “writings of that sort” inspired Cervantes to write Don Quixote. In fact, this brings me to one of the complaints I have toward M.’s writings; his lack of interest in fiction or poetry. Now, I know that the novel wasn’t All That during his life (1533-1592), so I’ll let him off the hook with regards to the former.

Regarding verse, M. takes the opportunity to praise Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, Horace and Lucan, but chiefly for the beauty and grace of their writing. Throughout the essays — at least, in the first 375 pages — the ancient poets get used as “color commentary,” a line or stanza here or there to illustrate a point M. has made, not as the center of an argument or a passage from which to learn. It’s clear that he knows his poetry, but it’s not clear that he gained much from it, beyond rhetoric and a sort of “beauty for beauty’s sake.”

Don’t get me wrong; I understand that the project in which he’s engaged is learning “how to die well and live well,” and that he finds essays, philosophy and histories much more useful to that process. Praising the work of historians, M. comments:

[M]an in general, the knowledge of whom I seek, appears in them [histories] more alive and entire than in any other place — the diversity and truth of his inner qualities in the mass and in detail, the variety of the ways he is put together, and the accidents that threaten him.

It’s a pity that he died before Cervantes and Shakespeare got their groove on, even though there’s a strong possibility he’d have missed the point of their work, too, given his dismissal of “Amadises” and his criticism of writers who rely on ancient plots. My reason for this crops up a page or so later, when M. dismisses long-windedness in the works of Cicero. He writes,

For me, who ask only to become wiser, not more learned or eloquent, these logical and Aristotelian arrangements are not to the point. I want a man to begin with the conclusion. I understand well enough what death and pleasure are; let him not waste his time anatomizing them. I look for good solid reasons from the start, which will instruct me in how to sustain their attack.

I’m all for a cut-to-the-chase mentality, but I think the same things he complains about in Cicero may also render M. unable to grasp the life-changing-ness of art.

Since it’s almost Monday Afternoon Montaigne, I guess I’ll have to let this go for the moment.

Publish and perish

Here’s an article about how Perseus Books Group is closing down two of its imprints: Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth Press. The further away I get from my indie-publishing days, the less I can understand how any of them stay afloat. This passage summed up how I tried to see things back then:

“When you see the book world conglomeratizing, it can only mean less diversity of voices,” said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, a Brooklyn-based imprint distributed by Perseus. “When I sign up a book, it matters more that I love it than that I’ve identified a good marketing niche for it. That’s the real essence of independent publishing — it’s not a deal, it’s supposed to be a labor of love.”

Then I lost the love.

I hope the founders of those presses got a decent purchase price when they joined up with Avalon Publishing (which was later acquired by Perseus), but I have a feeling that I can see where the “labor of love” part collided with the “good marketing niche” part:

“At Carroll & Graf, we bridged the gap between small, lesser-known presses and the larger houses when it comes to gay literature,” said Don Weise, a senior editor who is losing his job. “In the four years that I’ve been here, I’ve acquired more than 100 books, and no one has ever told me no, I couldn’t do that. In the book world, that’s unheard of.”

I probably would’ve moved his attribution, along with the “senior editor who is losing his job” part to the end of the paragraph, to make my point.

Track Record

Alan Bacchus at Daily Film Dose offers us a list of great long tracking shots in cinema (with clips)! Because there are 10 bazillion commenters, he’s supplemented the post since it first went up two weeks ago. There are some great ones, so if you like the long tracking shot — I’ve been a sucker for them since I saw The Player when I was in college — check it out.

Unfortunately, this Kylie video doesn’t exactly qualify, but it is ingenious:

Watch this space

Back in college, I remarked that the weirdly pointillized head-shots on the front page of the Wall Street Journal looked like they’d been put through the “Drew Friedman-izer”. I’m not sure if it was funnier to make a joke about a cartoonist best known for The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin, or to make a reference to the Wall Street Journal at Hampshire College.

Anyway, if there was ever a perfect example of the Journal‘s Drew Friedmanizing process, it’s this pic of Tom Ford from an article in today’s ish:

The article’s about Ford’s post-Gucci career, because he’s about to launch a line of menswear, which will include “classic custom-made suits, shirts, ties, shoes, luggage, jewelry and fragrances.” Here’s some drivel about it:

Mr. Ford says he isn’t aiming only at fashionistas but also at rich businessmen in the U.S. and developing countries who “have been deprived of luxury.” He doesn’t plan any womenswear, “having nothing new to say.”

To me, the only interesting things about the article are that incredible pic and the fact that Ford is launching TWELVE fragrances this month with Estee Lauder. I’m holding out hope that one of them is “Friedman.”

Lazy Sunday

It’s a quiet Sunday here at Chez VM. Well, it was louder earlier in the day, when I was shredding bills and records as part of the process of rearranging my home office. The process started when I bought a new desk on Wednesday, replacing the two tables that occupied a wall of my room. The process continued yesterday, when I picked up a leaning bookcase from C&B, a desk organizer from Pottery Barn (they don’t list it on their site), and a couple of bulletin boards and paper drawers from the Container Store. Today involved figuring out where to put everything (hence the bill-shredding). If there’s good light tomorrow morning, I’ll take some pix and post them for those of you who are obsessed interested in such things.

Before buying up this stuff, Amy & I finally got to the local (within 30 miles) Imax to catch 300. It was

  1. a hoot
  2. utterly insane
  3. possibly the gayest movie ever (okay, the Gayest. Movie. Ever.)

I enjoyed it a bunch, even if it did overplay the “we’re fighting to defend reason and logic” angle. Gerard Butler was fascinating to look at, and this hearkens back to my original post about this flick: I’m more interested in the stylization of the movie, and the filmmakers managed to get the lead to resemble classical Greek art. I’m not talking about the chiseled abs phenomenon, which are major contributors to the “gayest movie ever” trophy, but the angles of his face, his beard, and his hair somehow gestalted into this living representation of a Greek bust, to me.

We had a laugh later in the day, when we noted that Gerard Butler’s filmography includes Beowulf (where I thought he looked a little like Paul Rodgers) and Attila the Hun. Looks like he can’t get away from historic slaughter flicks. Still, he did a great job in this one, making the Spartan king a, um, raging Scot. It’s not a movie to be taken seriously as history, but it was a thrill ride. My biggest problem with it is that it’s success means that the director is going to get the greenlight to make a movie of The Watchmen, which will be a disaster.

This morning, I realized that I’ve had a pretty strange run of Easter-weekend trips to the movies. I don’t tend to go to the movies often, but I guess there’s something about Easter: Hellboy in 2004, Sin City in 2005 and 300 in 2007. Can’t remember if I saw anything last year, and I’m not finding any references in the blog, which as we know is a backup drive for my brain.

Anyway, I hope all my Christian readers have a good Easter today.

Yesterday’s meander

I took a half-day yesterday from work. Cousins of my wife were in NYC and we were meeting them for dinner. Rather than risk running late with traffic, I decided to head in early.

Based on the location of the restaurant where I thought we were eating, I parked down in the west Village. As it turned out, Amy’s cousins (Wade, Robin, and Wade’s parents) weren’t interested in Italian that night, so she switched plans and we met up at a BBQ place near Times Square. In-between, I had about 5 hours to meander.

You know what that means: you can just skip this post and check out my collection of photos from the afternoon, or you can read whatever ramblings I come up with as I recollect my walk. If you’re one of those stupid brave souls who wants to stick with me through thick and thin, you’ve been warned.

It was stupidly cold for the first week of April: around 35-40 degrees, after a week of 60-70-degree weather the previous week. I wore a warm coat and grabbed my gloves before I left the house in the morning, so I was taken care of for two-plus-mile walk uptown.

See, dear reader, I actually had a goal for this walk, and it didn’t involve buying a ton of Orwell books over at the Strand. (Sure, I made my obligatory stop there, but it was only to use the bathroom! I swear! Okay, so I spent some time among the art books on the second floor, but I managed not to buy anything.)

People with too much time on their hands Astute readers may recall my recent post about Muji, the Japanese “no brand” company, and its amazing products. The slideshow mentioned that the company has a store at the Design Store at the Museum of Modern Art, so I figured I’d see just how ingenious and wonderful their products are.

Look. I don’t tell you how to live your life, do I?

So I made my way uptown from the Strand. I walked through Union Square, was disappointed that no one was protesting Israel, and decided to give my buddy Mark a call. He’s a public school teacher, and I had no idea if he was on break this week. I left him a message and kept walking.

At this point, around 2:30, I was starting to get pretty peckish. See, I have this tendency to Just Keep Going when that happens, and I know for a fact that this leads to my doing incredibly stupid things, as it appears my IQ and my blood sugar have a linear correlation. I needed to stop somewhere to eat, but my decision to keep “Passover kosher” made this a problem. See, in my incredibly half-assed universe, I’ve decided that I’ll stay off the leavened bread (and ancillary stuff) this week, even though I was heading out for pulled pork and brisket at Spanky’s for dinner. It’s hard work, being this inconsistent.

As it turns out, I was already becoming stupid, because I ended up getting lamb from a street-meat vendor. This was a bad idea both in the short term (when I realized I had nowhere to actually eat the stuff, and had to stand on a street corner while I devoured the lamb, lettuce, tomatoes and onions) and in the long term (when I lay in bed that night gripped by heavy nausea and realizing that, since my wife and I shared our dish at dinner, that my lunch was the culprit). Anyway, the lamb was delicious, though indecorous and mildly poisonous. Since I didn’t get too ill from it (basically, I spent the day feeling hungover), I consider myself a stronger man, and none of you can convince me otherwise.

Mark called back while I was huddled under a construction awning, eating my lunch. We briefly played phone tag, but soon got in touch and made tentative plans to get together once I’d finished up at MoMA.

From there, I decided to walk up Madison till I reached 53rd, at which point I’d head west for MoMA, which is between 5th and 6th. I figured that, since 5th heads south, I’d stick with Madison and if I got too cold, I’d get a cab up to 53rd.

(Bonus VM wisdom: David Gates, one of my favorite contemporary writers, once mentioned a great mnemonic for the easterly progression of avenues in NYC: Fat Men Piss Less, which stands for Fifth, Madison, Park and Lexington. Just try forgetting that one.)

New York is composed of a bazillion neighborhoods and districts, so it’s always possible to discover new sites that everyone laughs at you for never having seen. In this case, it was the Morgan Library, which I’d never heard of. I was impressed by the 36th St. side (here’s a pic from my flickr set), but wasn’t so interested in the modern section on Madison. I’ll have to go back some time to check out the collections and reassess the new section, which was designed by Renzo Piano and is supposed to be All That.

Just because I didn’t spend time at the Morgan doesn’t mean I was in some sort of rush. I had hours before dinner, and was conscious of my tendency to start rushing to get somewhere for no purpose. I just felt that I should save the museum for some other trip, when I’ve some idea of what I’d be looking for there (I think they have some Rembrandt drawings in the collection, which could make it worthwhile).

A few blocks up, I headed over to the south end of Grand Central. I’ve made a few visits to the terminal lately, but I came from the north or west. So I stopped and took some pics of the facade, which was typically glorious. I tried to get angles where “MET LIFE” wasn’t in the background.

Paradoxically, I started to become absorbed by how little I was thinking about myself. By now, you’ve surely guessed that I’m my favorite subject of conversation, among other things. But despite the cold and the wind, I found myself simply enjoying a mid-day walk uptown. There was a background anxiety about making sure I could get together with Mark and still get back to the Village in time for dinner (the plans hadn’t changed at the point), but it wasn’t too pressing. It would sort itself out.

Instead, I just eased into the throng (as it were), making little observations about the styles of retail in this neighborhood, noting the flow of traffic on different blocks, and keeping my eyes open for good photos. (This generally involves buildings. I’d love to take pix of people, but worry too much about getting my ass beat. This afternoon, the town crazy was on his way into our supermarket, and I thought, “I oughtta take a picture of him,” and then thought, “That’s an awfully big walking stick he’s carrying.”)

So there’s no Joycean reverie about NYC for you, dear readers. Just a guy in a nice coat walking uptown, until he reached the Muji section of MoMA’s Design Store. If you wanna find out what I actually bought there, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go through the flickr set. I kept snapping pix as I walked, figuring I’d get up to the Time Warner Center, laugh at it, get a coffee, and call Mark.

He told me that he wouldn’t have time to come down there to meet me, since he was still cleaning up his apartment, and we’d likely only get half an hour together, but if I wanted to come up to his place, that’d be great.

Now, there are two things you need to understand about my reaction to this invite:

a) it involved using the subway, which is fine in theory, but I’m always convinced I’m going to get on the wrong or mislabeled train, and end up on Staten Island;

b) Mark lives in Harlem and, to paraphrase Avenue Q, I’m a little bit racist.

But Mark walked me through the subway setup (that is, which line to pick up, and where to exit the station near his place), and I remained a little bit racist.

See, when I came up out of the subway stop, I saw a neat building, took a picture, and immediately thought, “I shouldn’t show that camera around here.” Why? Because I’m a racist. I was only a few blocks from Mark’s place, and it was broad daylight, but the lack of people in the neighborhood just made me nervous. “But only because I’m wearing a nice coat” and because I’m white. It was utterly moronic of me. Within a block or two, I said, “Mark’s lived here for years, and never had any incident,” and concluded that it’s Just A Neighborhood. But it was one of those instances where my point of view of white-guy-in/from-the-suburbs really made itself known.

Passing a black guy in a tracksuit, sitting on a stoop, I felt a little nervous. Then he smiled and called out to the UPS guy, and I realized, “This is where the guy lives. Don’t be such a douchebag.”

So, of course, I got to Mark’s place, and we shot the breeze for a while about books, friends, economics, his dad, my dad, his dog (whom I got to meet), Harvey Pekar, Robert Moses, Ben Stiller, and Mark’s unexpected invite to the previous night’s Knicks game, which he enjoyed (he’s not a huge basketball fan). Somehow, this all took place in about 30-40 minutes.

Eventually, I got the call that our dinner plans had changed, so Mark joined me on the trip to the BBQ joint. We had a drink at the bar while waiting for Amy, and continued our rambling conversation. It was a nice way to cap the day, since our conversation tends to be very easy. Even when we’re talking about complex subjects, I always have this feeling that Mark’s able to parse my sentences, and that frees me up to speak better. Because it’s rare that I can use a ton of clauses when I speak, and I really do find them necessary to make and qualify my points.

There’s not a lot more to tell. Amy arrived, and the breeze-shooting continued. I took a picture of the two of them, and realized that we need to get a nice pic of Mark, a good-looking guy who doesn’t photograph well in bars. Her cousins soon showed up, and told us about their day-tour in southern Manhattan. A rowdy Yankees fan kept cursing at the TV over the bar, which led me to say, “It’s only the second game of the season, dude. There are 160 more of ’em. Pace yourself.”

But the meal was good, and the conversation was fun. I like getting the perspectives of out-of-towners. Wade’s dad commented about the walk over from Times Square: “There were some burlesque shows over there.”

It was a phrase so astonishingly archaic that I could only reply, “The Square was a lot seedier in the ’70s and ’80s.”

There isn’t much more to write about. I’m really sorry about the lack of introspection, angst or anything else that you’ve come to expect from my posts (literary references, naked chicks, etc.). But it was a nice day, it yielded some good photos, and there’s always the story of how I scorched my finger while trying to put up a cork board earlier today.

Turning Japanese

Muji, “the Japanese Ikea,” is opening a store at the Time Warner Center (a.k.a., a little bit of New Jersey right here in midtown). You really need to check out this slide show of some of their impossibly minimalist products. The CD player (slide #5) just blows my mind. Not sure I’d trust them to build my house, though. . .