40 Days of Lent: Day Sixteen

Drawings by Carl Jung






Granted, he's not as good as my friends Andrea or Cindy, but I think these drawings done by psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung are still mighty impressive. Which is to say that when I saw them in person, all I could think was "Wow"" as I felt my head buzz.

I don't know if I accept any of Jung's theories as anything more than myth, but the fact that he sought to express his ideas in visual terms apart from analytic theory makes me think that he understood exactly how these things work and makes me want to cut him some slack.

All of these drawings come from Jung's Red Book, a work in which he struggled to reconcile his ideas of myth and individual consciousness. I may write more about this book and Jung later on, but for now...wow.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fifteen

Ghostly Hands Wave Arian Christianity Good-Bye

Arian Christianity was a branch in the first few hundred years of Christianity that argued that Christ, while important, was not the equal of the God that created the universe.

Many of the barbarians that sacked the Roman empire were, in fact, Arian Christians, which, in addition to their destructive tendencies, put them at odds with Roman Catholic Christianity. In fact, this argument over the precise nature of Christ's divinity was one of the reasons for the Council of Nicea, which determined the belief structure of Catholicism for almost 2000 years.

Once Arian Christianity was defeated, traces of it were wiped out even from churches built to practice the faith, which leads to the interesting moment in the second episode of the BBC's History of Christianity when Diarmaid MacCulloch visits a form Arian Christian church. The barbarian king Theodoric has been replace in the church mosaics by a gold field and his courtiers have been replaced by curtains.



But whoever did the censoring didn't do a perfect job, because as MacCulloch points out, you can still see their hands on the columns in the mosaics.



I love these ghostly hands, reaching out of the darkness. They're like something from a surrealist painting, or, had they been in black and white drawings rather than multi-color mosaics, like something you'd see in an Edward Gorey story.



I love how they beckon us into the darkness, into the past. "Step into the dark" they say "and we'll tell you what we believed before we were erased from our own church." Join us.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fourteen

The Chilean earthquake was so powerful that it has shifted the Earth's axis and shortened the day.

Read that sentence again, and here's the article from which I got my info:

Chile earthquake: Earth axis shifted, day shortened
March 02, 2010 04:17 PM EST

The earthquake that rocked Chile has apparently shifted the Earth axis, according to a report by Ker Than of National Geographic news.

The magnitude 8.8 quake is the fifth strongest ever recorded, according to the USGS, and apparently caused the axis of the Earth to shift by about three inches.

Calculations done by geophysicist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say that, by speeding up the Earth's rotation, the quake could have shortened an Earth day by 1.26 millionths of a second.

Scientists explained the phenomenon by drawing comparisons to a figure skater. Keith Sverdrup said that as a skater spins and pulls her arms in, she starts rotation faster. During the quake, a portion of Earth's mass pulled in, speeding the planet's rotation ever so slightly.

Don't expect to notice a significant change to your day, or any change at all, for that matter. Apparently scientists can measure Earth days only with an accuracy within 20 millionths of a second, meaning the recent changes can be estimated but not scientifically proven.

I have two thoughts about this. One: "Cool." The other: "Uh-oh."

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirteen

Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs

So I finally got around to reading Naked Lunch on its 51st birthday. Unlike other literary touchstones, it’s half-century mark passed fairly unnoticed, apart from a hardcover facsimile edition put out by its publisher. However, the copy I read was (improbably as it may seem) the movie tie-in edition meant to capitalize on the David Cronenberg film of almost twenty years ago. Yes, that’s how long I’ve been buying and holding on to books without actually reading them. Disgraceful, isn’t it? Oddly enough, it feels like yesterday when I bought the book. In defense of the book, it has not dated at all in those 20 or even 50 years. There are contemporary writers who wish there work was this fresh and inventive.

So it is a black humor fantasmagoria mix of pulp detective and science fiction, addiction memoir, perverse sex, Mid-Eastern travelogue, and beat poetry. It’s also funny and the closest to a Hieronymus Bosch painting in print as you’re likely to find. Oy. Look, anything I have to say about Naked Lunch has already been said by better writers than I, so there’s not much point in trying to describe a book as ludicrous and impressionist as this.

Naked Lunch, like most of Burrough’s work, seems to fall in the “Grandfather” category. Not meaning things that are allowed to slide despite laws passed afterwards, but things that influenced people who influenced me. Cronenberg and Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and the Firesign Theatre: all of them were influenced by Burroughs and all of them influenced me, but did Burroughs himself? Reading this book, as much as I liked it, it’s hard to find a line of heritage.

However, it did make me laugh. That’s something, in the face of the horror of human existence, n’est-ce pas?

40 Days of Lent: Day Twelve

The City and The City
China Mieville

There is a city, Beszel, and another distinct city, Ul Qoma, that exists in the same space and time, as if one city is superimposed on or interweaven with the other. Residents in each city ignore the other, having learned how to not see or interact with them, even as they walk together, inches apart. It is a serious offence to travel between the two cities without permission. When it happens either intentionally or by accident, it is called “breach” and investigated by a creepy corps of the same name.

When the body of a resident of Ul Qoma turns up in Beszel, there’s nothing inspector Tyador Borlu would like more than to turn it over to Breach. But it is discovered to not be a case of breach, and Borlu, in the best tradition of detective fiction, has to solve a crime by moving in circles he doesn’t understand.

China Mieville’s novel exists within the genres of detective and speculative fiction just as the characters exist in two city-states. There is something appealing about a police procedural taking place in an initially unfamiliar world. With his superimposed cities, Mieville has found a metaphor for what living in urban areas is like, how you move without really seeing the other people around you. It’s also a meditation on how different cultures can exist side by side without understanding each other, whether western capitalist vs. communist or Judeo/Christian vs. Moslem.

40 Days of Lent: Day Eleven

A History of Christianity - Episode Two: Catholicism

If the first episode was history of Christianity as travelogue, then Diarmaid MacCulloch traces the rise to power of the Roman Catholic Church in the second episode by touring a number of great cathedrals.





It still seems incredible that what began as a small Jewish sect would ultimately become a world powerhouse religion. It did this becoming adopted by the powerful, most famously by the general Constantine “as he hacked his way to power” and established a Roman empire, and later by the aristocracy as that empire began to fall. Men of privilege, power and wealth kept all three by becoming high ranking members of the church when they began to lose political power.





When he became emperor in 306, Constantine made Christianity the state religion, focusing on St. Peter, perhaps because Christ says that Peter is “the rock on which I will build my church.” In Greek “Peter” means “rock” so it’s one of Christ’s rare play on words. “The power of Christian Rome” notes MacCulloch “founded on a Greek pun.” If this is true, then personally, I love it.

40 Days of Lent: Day Ten

Now The Trees Are Attacking Us*

Following up on yesterday's post about the animal kingdom's revenge when a killer whale lived up to its name, I wanted to note that a man was killed yesterday when a snow-laden tree branch fell on him in Central Park.

Perhaps instead of "40 Days of Lent" this feature should be "Countdown to The End."



------------------------------------
*Which sounds like it could be song idea for Rush.

40 Days of Lent: Day Nine

Neko Case, Modern Day Nostradamus

I saw the below article online this morning:

Whale drags trainer off platform in fatal attack

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. – A veteran SeaWorld trainer was rubbing a killer whale from a poolside platform when the 12,000-pound creature reached up, grabbed her ponytail in its mouth and dragged her underwater. Despite workers rushing to help, the trainer was killed.

Horrified visitors who had stuck around after a noontime show watched the animal charge through the pool with the trainer in its jaws. Workers used nets as an alarm sounded, but it was too late. Dawn Brancheau had drowned. It marked the third time the animal had been involved in a human death.

The whale, named Tilikum, apparently grabbed Brancheau by her long ponytail, according to the head of animal training at all SeaWorld parks, Chuck Tompkins. He told ABC's "Good Morning America" that her ponytail swung out in front of the whale.

"That's when the trainer next to him (Tilikum) said that he grabbed the hair, pulled her under water. And of course, held her under water," Tompkins said...

[A witness] said he heard that during an earlier show the whale was not responding to directions. Others who attended the earlier show said the whale was behaving like an ornery child.

No, the whale was behaving like what it was: a wild animal. While reading the story, all I could think of was Neko Case's remarkably prescient song People Got A Lotta Nerve, released in 2008:

You know they call them "killer" whales?!
But you seem surprised when it pinned you down
To the bottom of the tank
Where you can't turn around
It took half your leg and both your lungs
"When I craved I ate hearts of sharks, I know you know it!"

40 Days of Lent: Day Eight

Long gone graffiti murals once seen in my neighborhood.

40 Days of Lent: Day Seven

Shop Class As Soulcraft
Matthew Crawford

Even though it was several years ago, it’s a conversation I remember well: talking with my friend Scott about how bored we with our office jobs (I had quit mine earlier that year) and how much we preferred making things with our hands. I was surprised how much I liked making stained glass windows and rudimentary furniture, particularly thinking my way around any unexpected problems. Scott grew up in a garage and built his own Volkswagon convertible in high school but had spent much of his adult life as a manager.

It’s a feeling Matthew Crawford knows well. After getting his Ph.D. in political philosophy, Crawford landed a high paying job at a Washington think tank…and quit ten months later to repair motorcycles. Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work is his explanation of why he quit and an examination of how the emphasis on white-collar jobs has affected people. It’s ultimately a contemplation of what makes work meaningful to the individual doing it.

Crawford argues that even as office jobs are being outsourced overseas, the work of mechanics and craftsman has to stay local. Things always break and you will need someone to fix them. If your car is broken, you’re not going to ship it to India to have it fixed.

I think the rise of office work had a lot to do with class snobbery. Middle-class people had jobs in which they didn’t get dirty. Lower class people got dirty. Working in an office with your mind was seen as more civilized, more dignified, than working on machines with your hands. Despite how our economy has changed and the decline in office work, it still seems uncommon for someone with an education to willingly chose blue collar work. But Crawford writes how thinking is involved in such work. It’s a different kind of thinking, more intuitive, more self-reliant.

When I was in school, we rotated between three different shop classes: woodshop, mechanical drawing, and print shop. I don’t recall getting much in the way of instruction in mechanical drawing. I think our teacher, an egg-shaped man, probably thought “why bother?” It was obvious our college-bound class (this was only eighth grade but the kids destined for college were already separated from those who were not) were never going to pursue mechanical drawing. The only thing for the teacher to do was the bare minimum until kids in class fulfilled their requirement, hit them when they got out of line and then never see them again. I didn’t have much aptitude for woodshop and I was convinced I was going to lose a finger in one of the machines. But it was in print shop that I finally understood the concept of having to work and being graded.

The assignment was to make notepads, a process that involved creating a design (which had to include “From The Desk Of,” your name, some sort of border and a picture, which could either be chosen from design books or made with a Photostat), making a metal plate of your design, then printing a number of pads. I made two pad designs: one had the Yellow Submarine on it (in black and white, of course) and the other had an Apple Bonker. Because thought what I was doing was so cool and because of what I was like at 13, I didn’t pay much (read “any”) attention to quality control. I made a pad with the Yellow Submarine on it! It was the only one like it in the world. No-one else had one. Our teacher graded our work surrounded by everyone in the class, not to humiliate but to demonstrate mistakes to watch out for. He took out a pen and mercilessly circled each imperfection, every mark made by a dirt on the metal plate, every flaw accentuated by the printing process. Each mark cost a third of a grade. If I remember correctly, I got a low B on the assignment. But as he ticked my grade down and down, I had, for the first time, the realization that I would have to work, that I wasn’t going to get a pass just because I had come up with the coolest thing. More than a mediocre grade on any test, those circles on my notepads demonstrated the idea of standards that I would have to measure up to or fail. It was the first time I “got” it; it was the first time I cared.

However, lowered grade because I didn’t understand work notwithstanding, I had made something unique in the world and was always proud that my father, who had the same name as I, used the pads in his classroom at school.

I initially began this paragraph with the sentence “It’s hard to think of anything I’ve done in my office job that has made me proud” but that’s not true. I’m proud of the annual reports that we’ve done. Not because they’re outstanding in any way (they're not) but because I spend a lot of time making sure they are free of mistakes, even if they’re mistakes other people would never notice. When we finally send them to print, I’m usually exhausted but feel a sense of accomplishment. This example is part of Crawford’s argument: that work has more meaning when you are creating a physical product, particularly if it is from start to finish. Dealing with products that exist to you only as theoretical concepts robs your job of meaning and introduces a certain nihilism, similar to my mechanical drawing teacher who couldn’t see the point of teaching students who existed only as names in his gradebook rather than as people who might be interested.

Last night I was reading the conclusion of Shop Class As Soulcraft while having dinner at a local bar. While I was there, the man who fixes their pinball machine came in and I got to watch him work, which was fascinating in the way that competence in a field you know nothing about always is. I had never seen the insides of a pinball machine before and loved its mix of the mechanical and the electronic. The man had trouble walking, even with a cane; it was as if his legs were at the wrong angle to his body. But he was able to move quickly around the pinball machine and had it fixed in less than twenty minutes. I’m aware he sounds like a fictional character and a clichéd one at that, but there he was. I asked how he had learned to fix pinball machines. He said that he just started playing around with them, trying to figure out how they worked, and began fixing them, so that now everyone calls him if there is a problem. Watching him figure out what was wrong with the machine, test his idea, repeat to make sure he was right, I saw someone who was less at work and more at play.

40 Days of Lent: Day Six

Number One In Heaven

Below is a list of the ten best rock/pop albums as picked by the official newspaper of Vatican City L’Osservatore Romano.

1. Revolver by the Beatles

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby

3. The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

4. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

5. The Nightfly by Donald Fagen

6. Thriller by Michael Jackson

7. Graceland by Paul Simon

8. Achtung Baby by U2

9. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis

10. Supernatural by Carlos Santana

The opportunities for jokes and cheap shots are too easy, particularly with Michael Jackson's Thriller on the list. "Pretty Young Thing" is certainly something priests and Michael Jackson can agree on. You know they didn't pick Rubber Soul because the Vatican wouldn't like an album with a song called "Think For Yourself" on it. Etc, etc.

In addition to the "huh?" factor (downer stoner classic Dark Side of The Moon is included?), what I like is that the list shows personal taste, rather than just big albums by the usual big stars. David Crosby at number 2? It truly is a miracle.

40 Days of Lent: Day Five

A History of Christianity - Episode One: The First Christianity




American television has produced similar overviews of Christianity, but none I have seen can compare with the lush visuals and clear language of this BBC production. It’s as much a travelogue as it is a history lesson, one whose images remind you of how visually beautiful Christianity is at its best. Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch visits the locations of important historical events, sometimes to ironic effect. The palace where the Council of Nicea was held is now underwater, so MacCulloch sits beside a calm shore while discussing this first attempt to unify Christianity. Later he travels to China to interview a historian who deduced that an ancient Taoist temple was originally a Christian church based on the feng shui of its design – an impressive piece of detective work. However, irate villagers resentful of interest in Christianity overshadowing Buddhism prevent them from entering the temple.

Perhaps my favorite moment occurs when Professor MacCulloch approaches the site in Syria where St. Simeon stood atop a pillar for almost 40 years. Clutching his little digital camera, MacCulloch tells us how excited he is, having first heard about St. Simeon when he was eight. “I never thought I’d get to come here, and now here I am.” Anyone who has traveled knows that giddy enthusiasm.

Much of this first episode is structured around the church’s divisions (or diversity, if you want to be more positive about it). Leaving Jerusalem, some Christians headed west, a branch eventually adopted by the Emperor Constantine and made into the state religion of the Roman Empire. This is the story of Christianity I know well. However, other Christians headed east to Turkey, Syria and ultimately Asia. The stereotypes: western churches are more theological, eastern churches more mystical. The Council of Nicea was Constantine’s attempt to unify the faith and quell the endless theological arguments threatening to split his empire. The decision that Christ is “of one substance with the father” i.e. divine, worked for about 100 years, until some bishops began asking the damaging question “How?”

Nestorias, the Bishop of Constantinople, argued that Christ’s human and divine natures were like oil and water in the same glass. Even though they were in the same container, they were quite separate. Cyrill, the Bishop of Alexandria, on the other hand, argued that Christ’s human and divine natures were like water and wine in the same glass, mixed together.

There’s something I find both funny and deeply sad about this situation. The phrase “number of angels dancing on the head of a pin” comes to mind. The fact that people spent so much time arguing about something that either doesn’t exist or can never be proven astonishes me. This isn’t like a zen koan, something to be contemplated as way of spiritually training the mind. These were arguments as an attempt to “prove” something supernatural or transcendent. MacCulloch puts it in a historical context, saying “Understanding exactly how Jesus was God explained how He was powerful enough to save you from Hell,” but they might as well have been arguing over exactly how Santa Claus makes all those deliveries in one night.

40 Days of Lent: Day Four

Great Images from BibliOdyssey

40 Days of Lent: Day Three

Sometimes I forget how pretty my hometown is.

40 Days of Lent: Day Two

If you have time, I highly recommend the article in the current Esquire about film critic Roger Ebert (available online here).

Warning: the picture that accompanies the article is rather startling. Ebert has been battling cancer in his mouth and salivary glands for years and the medical treatments have removed most of his jaw. Those who remember his rounded visage from "At The Movies" are in for a shock.

His surgeries have also left him without a voice. He communicates now by handwritten notes, improvised sign language and a computer that "speaks" for him. The article reads like the best short fiction: not in its narrative, but in the way little epiphanies are offered by otherwise mundane details. It is heartbreaking and hopeful, not because of Ebert's condition, but because life itself is heartbreaking and hopeful.

There are two outstanding passages quoted from Ebert's online journal that I want to quote:

(on death)

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

(later)

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

I'm writing "40 Days of Lent" this year because I wanted to quote the second passage online. It should be printed on posters and hung in classrooms, incorporated into speeches, reprinted in anthologies. It should replace the story about the two sets of footprints in the sand. It should be repeated every day. Unfortunately, I'm all teary-eyed now and I'm writing this at work, so I'm going to go answer some emails and schedule some meetings.

40 Days of Lent: Day One

Schmutz Wednesday!

Always my favorite of holidays, getting some schmutz patshkened on your kop, though hopefully not all over your punim. That would be shreklekh.

I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral this morning for my ashes, a place so ploimdik you could plotz. I've written before how there's something about smearing dirt on your head as a religious ritual that appeals to me in a way that more mundane liturgical rituals do not. I don't understand try to understand why; only a shmendrik would try.

I have decided to am going to do my "40 Days of Lent" postings again this year, as you can no doubt tell. Yesterday an email from my friend Andrea reminded me that Lent was beginning, but I planned on not posting this year. Then last night I read something I liked so much that I decided I would post during Lent just so I could share that one passage, which I will do tomorrow or the next day.

As I don't have a lot to say today, I'll conclude with the below picture of some ducks pulling a cart of naked ladies, originally seen in the Chronicle of Saxony (1492).

L'chaim!

Oh Damn. The Telephone Bar Has Closed.

A thought that recurred fairly often: "If I can't think of anywhere else to go, I'll just stop in Telephone Bar." Perfectly located on Second Ave, around the corner from St. Mark's Place and St. Mark's Bookstore, a few block from my subway stop, I could always find a seat at the bar. This past Saturday, that thought was quickly replaced by "uh-oh" when I walked past and saw that the windows of the front door and the three red British phone booths that lent it its distinctive look were covered in brown paper.

At first I hoped they were just remodeling, though there was no sign on the door promising to reopen soon. Once home, I went online and discovered that, after 22 years, the Telephone Bar and Grill has closed. It has been sold to someone who owns other bars in the East Village, all of which sound, from their online descriptions, rather crappy. So another piece of "my" New York is gone. Unfortunately I missed their final night on January 31st. Apparently it was a "thank you" for their regulars.

It didn't quite capture the ambiance of pubs in Britain, which at their best, feel like auxillary living rooms, but it was a comfortable place just the same. Their chicken wings had the right blend of sweet and spicy and their portobello mushroom sandwich was wonderful. Nice mix of beers and whatever game was on tv was never too loud.

My friend Karl reminded me that when we first lived in New York, it was our "go to" place in the Village. I think I've taken everyone who ever visited me there at least once, although recently I didn't stop in as often as I once had. To be honest, I don't go to any bar as much as I once had. But four or five years ago I was a regular. I recall one particular couple I met at the bar: he was a researcher in neurology and she was born in Germany. They had met and married while he was stationed there in the army; her accent was still strong. They were at the bar having a drink before they went to see an off Broadway play. She liked experimental theater and he was a good sport. We had a great conversation, which was unexpectedly continued when I stopped in the bar the following Saturday...and there they were in the same seats, this time having a drink before dinner.

This was shortly before I traveled to Europe (which was the initial catalyst for this blog). She had traveled widely and gave me suggestions of places to see and what to avoid. Disappointed that I wasn't going to Germany, she kept making a case for the beauty of her homeland. He and I talked about conclusions drawn from neurological experiments, or rather, he replied to my naive questions with explanations on how the brain works and how this impacts our behavior. I understood a meager fraction of what he was saying but no matter. The conversation helped form a new way of thinking for me, moving the source of human behavior from personalities created by nature/nurture to synapses firing away in our mushy brains. In my completely undisciplined manner, it's become a subject of study for me. Just as her recommendations on travel influenced what I saw in Europe, his explanations on how I was experiencing "experience" influences me still.

I never saw them again after that day.




RIP, Telephone Bar and Grill.

I Want I Want I Want

Stigmittens



This is more appropriate for a 40 Days of Lent posting but it's too good to wait. More info can be found here.

I still regret not buying the religious wristwatch I saw years ago. It had Christ at the center and, instead of the numbers 1 - 12, a name of a different apostle.

04:44 Ghost Story

Ghost Story
Peter Straub

There are two general rules I follow regarding reading. One, I rarely re-read books, even the ones I like. I don’t have enough time to read all the things I’m interested in, let alone re-read old stuff. This policy has saved me from being disappointed by old favorites. For example, I’ve been thinking of re-reading Catch-22, but part of me would prefer to remember it fondly rather than be disappointed by how it, or I, have changed.

My friends Ben and Cindy re-read; mystery novels mainly. Cindy has a good memory and can usually recall the solution, no matter how convoluted. On the other hand, Ben experiences a vague sense of déjà vu while re-reading, but the ending is always a surprise.

“Not enough time” lies at the root of my other rule: I don’t take part in book clubs. I can pick out my own reading material, thank you very much, and while I’m always interested in hearing what other people have to say about books, there’s something about the mandatory nature, the obligation, of book clubs I instinctively mistrust. They’re too much like homework.

However, a few months ago I broke both rules. The Onion’s AVClub (the satirical newspaper’s review section) began an online book club and Ghost Story by Peter Straub was one of their initial selections. The timing seemed fortuitous as I had been thinking of re-reading Ghost Story, which was one of my favorite horror novels of my teenage years, although “horror novels of my teenage years” is a bit redundant. I stopped reading horror,apart from the occasional short story, when I was in my early twenties. There was no conscious decision or reason at the time. I just read other things instead.

Each month, one of The Onion’s AVClub writers selects a novel. A few other writers read it and post essays about the book, and then readers of the website add their feedback on the novel, the essays or, this being the internet, anything at all. The book club started, as new projects often do, with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. It probably helped that the first two books were Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, two utterly strange and fairly unique books. There’s not much in American letters that’s comparable to either novel. A tone of bewilderment pervaded the essays and comments as everyone tried to grapple with both the novels and their reactions. However, books chosen later drew much more mixed reactions, with naysayers slipping into bratty “this sucks” mode rather than arguing intelligently about why “this sucks.” (I am referring to those posting comments anonymously; the reviewers consistently wrote perceptive essays whether they liked the novel or not). Full disclosure: one of the later novels chosen was John Crowley’s Little, Big, a personal favorite, which made the obnoxiousness of some of the comments especially frustrating. I know, I know: anyone who cares what anonymous posters on the internet say is just asking to have their feelings hurt. But still…

So in October I re-read Ghost Story for a book club.

I should have stood by my two rules.

Ghost Story is about a vengeful spirit who returns to punish the men who had killed her many years before, and destroy the town where they live for good measure. Except she was already a ghost then, so they didn’t really kill her, but that, along with much else in the book, doesn’t make sense when examined closely.

The novel touches on several potentially interesting things: men’s fear of women, the purpose of storytelling in our lives, post-modern ideas that the characters are self-consciously aware that they are taking part in a story, the difference between horror in life and horror in entertainment. But Straub doesn’t have address any of these ideas.

Re-reading it, I was surprised at how stodgy it seemed. Why did I like this as a teenager? I think the answer lies in the fact that at that time, Ghost Story was considered the “classy, literary” horror novel, especially when compared to Stephen King. In the same way, as a teenager I preferred Michelob because I thought it was the classy beer. Its story of a small town slowly dying is deliberately patterned on King’s Salem’s Lot, but whereas King is not ashamed of his pulpy influences and has fun with them, Straub seems to be a bit of a snob and aims for respectability rather than scares. Much of Ghost Story reads less like a ghost story and more like a soap opera. It recalls those 1970s novels about middle-class college professors having affairs in the suburbs, the spawn of Updike and Cheever. It’s not the book’s language or ideas that made it seem literary, but the fact that Straub refers to Hawthorne and Henry James, Poe and Stephen Crane.

Worst of all, it’s not scary. Just as I want my comedy to be, you know, funny, I expect my horror to be scary. The lack of chills wasn’t due to my having read the book before, either. There was plenty my memory had wrong. It just seems hard to believe that once I read this book thinking that, supernatural elements aside, it was an accurate depiction of what adult life was like, whereas now I know better.

03:44 The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño

While in his early forties, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño discovered that he had an incurable liver disease that would ultimately prove fatal; precisely “when?” was unknown. After this diagnosis, Bolaño seems to have turned away from his previous life as a combative enfant terrible and spent his remaining years focusing on ambitious literary works including The Savage Detectives, which details the failure of a literary movement made up of combative enfants terrible.

The above is not intended as gossip but as context. Bolaño’s life is discussed in detail in the excellent introduction by translator Natasha Wimmer. Knowing this, it’s hard to read The Savage Detectives without thinking of it as a roman à clef or perhaps a parody of Bolaño’s life. One of the main characters is named Arturo Belano, for example, and his misadventures seem to follow a pattern similar to his creator’s.

The overriding theme is failure, the wasted potential and the directionless lives of middle aged men whose youthful dreams never paid off. The book is made up of three sections; the first, “Mexicans Lost In Mexico,” is perhaps the most enjoyable. It consists of diary entries by Juan Madero, a teenager who has fallen under the spell of a loose collective of poets called the Visceral Realists, who are defined less by what they stand for and more by what they dislike. As I live in a country in which poetry is irrelevant and literature is just another entertainment option among many, it’s heartening to read about characters who take poetry so seriously that they get into brawls over it. This is the “youth” section of the novel, which captures the joy of discovery, the excitement of new ideas and the mixed blessings of being accepted by those older than you but also dragged into the soap operas of their lives. Juan’s coming of age tale, however, ends abruptly with a cliffhanger. His absence and the lack of any explanation is keenly felt in the second section “The Savage Detectives.”

This is the longest section of the novel and consists of first person remembrances by those who encountered Belano and his fellow Visceral Realist Ulises Lima in the years after “Mexicans Lost In Mexico.” It’s an oral history (similar to George Plimpton’s biography of Edie Sedgewick) about a literary movement that produced little in the way of literature because its founders were too busy discussing it rather than writing. Love affairs, jail terms, dead-end jobs, political turmoil: it’s all here and at length, which makes the breadth of this section problematic.* It seems churlish to say “Can you cut your life story down a little bit cause I’m getting a bit bored” to a terminally ill man, but I think the novel would have been stronger had this section been edited. I was talking to a friend of a friend who was having the same experience with the book: he loved the first section but was stuck in the long second part.** However, at that point I had finished the novel and could tell him the payoff at the end was worth it, just as in Joyce’s Ulysses you have to slog through the novel’s two most tedious sections before you can reach the transcendence of Molly Bloom’s monologue at the end. Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima’s final tales include moments of grace for each man, and one of the most moving depictions of the selflessness of true friendship I have ever read.

The final section “The Sonora Desert” functions as an epilogue, returning us to Juan Madero’s diary and explaining what happened after the cliffhanger at the end of section one. It also provides closure to one of the storylines in section two and relates an “original sin” that explains the end of Visceral Realism as a movement and why Belano and Lima were doomed to lives of failure.

There’s much in The Savage Detectives that’s impressive. Bolaño is address a variety of life’s basic experiences by examining the day to day stories of a number of characters. He doesn’t overdo either the contradictions between stories or the distinct voices within. Even living as failures, the experience of life, with its attendant joys and sorrows, comes through. The book is also very funny.




-----------------------
* This is the first book I wished I read on a Kindle. I didn't take notes while reading and the ability to instantly SEARCH the text to access the myriad character names, places and incidents would have been a godsend.

** My nephew had the same reaction. While reading "Mexicans Lost In Mexico" I impulsively bought him a copy, thinking that, as he was going through some of the same things as Juan Madero, he would love it. He did, but then got bogged down in the second section's various monologues.

The Book I Read

My 2009 new year's resolution to read 44 books over the course of the year ended in dismal failure. In fact, I don't have a final count, but I know I did not even accomplish half my goal. Oh well. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I liked a number of the books I did read this year and will be posting about them in the days to come.

I'm not going to even bother setting a goal for 2010 for several reasons:

One: I have several big books this year I'd like to finish and I just don't see how I'm going to tackle Against The Day or The Complete Stories of JG Ballard and stay on a reading schedule.

Two: I have a couple of projects in mind for the coming year that will severely cut into my reading time. This means, of course, I'll probably read more in the coming year than I have in a long time because I am Mr. Contrary. Best way to get me to do anything is to tell me I don't have to do it.

Unfortunate Headline of The Day

Clueless Star Brittany Murphy Dies

It took me a moment to realize that she was in a film called Clueless. I know it's a Sunday before Christmas and a huge snowstorm has hit the northeast, but was no-one around to proofread or copyedit this?

Tales of Uncle Chuck

My uncle Chuck's funeral was this past weekend, and Lyle Lovett summed up my feelings in a song he wrote over 15 years ago:

I went to a funeral
Lord it made me happy
Seeing all those people
I ain't seen
Since the last time
Somebody died

Everybody talking
They were telling funny stories
Saying all those things
They ain't said
Since the last time
Somebody died

I served as a pallbearer, honored to be asked. Pallbearers pay their respects to the deceased first, then wait in a room while the other mourners say goodbye. While waiting in the room, my cousin Chip told several stories about his father that I thought I would post, as I think they're too good to be lost in time.

My uncle was born to a wealthy, or once-wealthy but still pretending, family. He had a habit of getting expelled from the private schools in which he was enrolled, and it was during one of these enforced vacations that, rather than immediately tell his parents he was thrown out of school, Chuck decided to enjoy his freedom for a while. As a way of evading truant or police officers who might question what a teenager was doing driving around in a convertible all day, Chuck asked a friend whose late father had been a doctor to forge him a note saying that he had the measles. The ruse worked for a while until the unexpected happened: Chuck came down with the measles. Going for treatment, the inevitable questions came up: how does one get the measles twice? and how does one get treated by a doctor who's been dead for a couple of years?

I also heard the story of how my uncle messed up his nose. Apparently, he and some friends were having an impromptu kegger in the woods. They didn't have a tap but weren't deferred. They instead popped the cork and then poured all the beer from the keg into a small metal tub, dipping their cups into it punchbowl style. But the police raided the party and everyone scattered, with Chuck putting the tub of beer in the back of his convertible.

Trying to stay ahead of the cops, Chuck took the highway's curves at high speed. From the driver's seat, he reached back to steady the tub and keep the beer from spilling out, only to crash and smash his face against the windshield and break off (?)/ cut off (?) the end of his nose. He then dropped his nose in his cup of beer and drove to the hospital to see if they could reattach it. At the hospital, they put the nose in a sterile metal cup until ready for reattaching. This was in the 1950s, so plastic surgery was still fairly primitive, and from that day forward, Chuck had a nose that was always "off." Something else he had from that day: the metal cup from the hospital. It was used as the bathroom cup for many years afterwards.

"What?" my cousin Chris said. "I drank from that cup and it had his nose in it?"

"That's what he said."

"Keep in mind," my cousin Bill said "our father liked to embellish. A lot."

RIP, Uncle Chuck.

Sometimes

Sometimes it's just easier to post photos I've taken than try and write something new.

The Best of 00's (Intro)

To be honest, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that this decade is ending until I saw the Onion’s AVClub summing up the last ten years by picking their favorite tv shows, albums and movies. Years ago, when my friend Troy’s Cheeky Monkey website was a collective effort, Troy actively sought year-end “best of” lists from his friends, including a decade overview in 1999. The most difficult thing about those lists was avoiding repetition. How many times could I say I liked “The Sopranos” before seeming like I liked little else?

Things have changed. This has been a strange decade and not just for culture. The Bush administration’s unnecessary war in Iraq in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 had a paralyzing effect on this country and its culture. We became the land of magical thinking: if we conform and don’t question, then we’ll be safe and we’ll win the war and the troops won’t be harmed. If you do anything else, then the terrorists win. This attitude wasn’t just about politics. The post-9/11 timidity seemed to influence all media. Anyone who challenged this mindset fought an uphill battle just to be heard. Not an ideal atmosphere for creating interesting work.

The other major influence on culture in the 00’s? You’re looking at it right now. My blog? Yeah, right. No, I was referring to the internet. With its immediate access to almost anything, mainly video and audio (text seems to be lagging behind, thank God), the internet has changed the economics of show business, helped put record and dvd stores out of business, and altered how we think of and experience entertainment. Two examples of how downloading from the internet has changed how I experience entertainment. Two weeks ago, I saw the tv show Glee for the first time. I liked it. Within a week, I had seen every episode save one, either by downloading or watching on the official website. Previously, when I discovered I liked a show, I would have to (old school) wait for re-runs and plan my life or vcr around them or (new school) borrow or buy dvds of episodes I missed. The difference is one of time. Then I had to wait; now I have easy access and instant gratification. I still pay for much of my entertainment and have justifications when I download something for free. The fact that I even care makes me a bit of a fossil.

A better example concerns Jacques Rivette’s movie Out 1. Long considered a holy grail among cinephiles, the movie seems made for obscurity (it’s French, it’s 13 hours long, there are very few copies of the film, a new print hasn’t been struck since the early 70’s, etc.). I had resigned myself to never seeing it and only reading about it in books. Then, in 2006, it was announced that the film would be showing in New York and in London. The New York screening quickly sold out. I began planning a trip to London to see the movie, but before I booked my airline tickets, a second screening was announced in New York in March 2007. I went, liked the movie, and accepted that it would be the only time I would see it. Two years later, I found a copy on the internet complete with subtitles and downloaded it. It’s now on my hard drive; I can watch it any time I want. From impossible to see to once-in-a-lifetime event to something I own (for free) in the space of two years. That’s how the internet has changed things.

I think this easy free access to whatever you want has fragmented culture and entertainment to an unprecedented degree. There is no more mainstream, the center could not hold. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you live in times during which the mainstream sucks. When Michael Jackson died earlier this year, it was said that “there would never be another Michael Jackson,” meaning “there would never be a pop star that big.” To which I reply “Good!” If it saves me from having to hear his shrill threadbare music again, hooray! I would rather live in a world in which the mainstream has crumbled and I can find Out 1 or Deltron 3030 online than be stuck with a monoculture that doesn’t interest me at all. However, this fragmented culture doesn’t seem to produce anything that speaks to or explains our current times. Everything exists on its own terms, pursuing its own goals. There was a lot of work from the last ten years that was very good, but it’s hard to think of much that was great and even harder to think of anything that addressed the times and expressed what it was like to be alive during them.

Looking over my list of favorites from this decade, there’s little that couldn’t have come from an earlier decade. We often heard how this was a golden age for television, and while there were many good shows (sometimes it seemed like too many), nothing from this decade impresses me as much as The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Prisoner or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, shows that aired over 40 years ago, and are both of their time and transcend it. With few exceptions, there’s been little in the last ten years that does this.

Eventually I will post my list of favorites from the last ten years, but first I had to explain how difficult it was coming up with such a list.

Up On The Roof

Last night my friend Lysa and I were having a drink in the bar of a swanky new hotel downtown. After checking out the bathrooms in the basement, we decided to see what the roof was like. Well, there was no roof deck or public access, but the doors were unlocked so we decided to go ahead and see what the view was like, at least until security came up and dragged us off.

They never did.

Below are some iPhone photos of the view.




Along those lines, this past summer, I was hanging out with friends when one of them, Kevin, suggested that we go see the view from his roof. "They were refinishing and tarring the roof earlier today, but I think it's dry by now." His building was in Hell's Kitchen so we were surrounded on all sides by the skyscrapers of NYC, illuminated by white lights that compensate for the stars you can't see from the city.





I love these views of the city, so much that it kept my mind off the fact that it was difficult to walk around on the roof because the tar wasn't, in fact, 100% dry. We walked around with the grace of Frankenstein's monster when he is first off the operating table, and my friend Kevin hoped that perhaps his building's super wouldn't find out who it was that messed up the roof, a hope dashed after we noticed the trail of tar shoeprints leading to his apartment door. Actually, we looked back and saw there was an extra set of footprints belonging to Jesus that seemed to disappear during the difficult times of our lives. When we asked Jesus how He could abandon us during our times of trial, He said "perhaps you guys shouldn't have gone up on the roof. You are really in trouble."