NOVEMBER 2013
First day. Swam this morning. Heavy rain and bluster. After lunch sun came out, warm. Short walk. Nap. Worked on the letter for Pat Armstrong for Providence. You want to write that all powerful letter that will sway the committee once and for all. Do I write essentially too much about myself, trying to prove I know what I’m talking about rather than describing Pat’s virtues and features in detail? My memory is not that clear or distinct from specific instances. What else can I do?
9:35 pm Finished Knausgaard’s volume 2. A Man in Love: My Struggle. Already 74 pages into Marías’s The Infatuations, protection against total desolation.
pigged out on oatcakes tonight. Waiting sort of for Pat to call. Got all worried that he might have another psu prof writing a rec letter for him. Sent mine off this morning---who knows if it is totally wacky or not. No way to know if he has a chance or not.
Slow morning, very nice, Sunday rituals. Went to Concord for a walk there in Target. Colder but sunny. Think I should muster some energy to post on the blog
We learned yesterday about Gladys Davalos’s death a year ago. We were walking at Docks and I checked into Facebook and there was a page on which someone, Hector, was bidding Gladys a year’s remembrance. I posted a surprise comment and later in the day her daughter Gabriela posted me a note on facebook. How weird the whole thing still is---using facebook to pass every sort of message to people. Life and death and whatever. It is the new new york times I guess. Live with it.
Just ate a package of oatcakes. Why? Relieved to have sent off that rec letter this morning but that is not the reason. No good reason. Weird rebelliousness after a pious morning of dieting down a no meal day or half-meal day. Games with one’s psyche.
Now to finish the last third of Phil’s novel and post a decent review of it on Amazon. Duties. And genuine pleasures. In the scene where Riley Bruce and the old guy in the nursing home are revealing to Mike Cutler the dirty secrets of unions and union-busting back in Bartonsburg’s history.
Just chatted with Pat. He was on his third beer. Has three jobs. No chance of getting the thing at PC so I sure did waste my time on that one. Finished.
Monday
delightful Dear God! email from Phil about McGurl
As I am reading McGurl's book, I keep saying "Dear god, I can't imagine Bob having to read crap like this for what -35 years?" Actually, there are a few good, interesting points in this book but they are buried under pages and pages of tiresomely overdone academic jargon and balderdash - so much so that, even if this was McGurl's doctoral thesis, I can't believe anyone, even those on his degree committee, read it all. Ninety-nine percent of this book is simply evidence that he has read a lot of other literary theorists' works. How fucking boring is that! The book is 466 densely worded pages, and I would say that there is probably a good, interesting 15-page article within all that looking-back-over-one's-shoulder verbiage.
Furthermore, the last thing I expected when I started this book was to read about Brown U. Yet early on, he cites John Hawkes as one of the first "experimental" writers to show up on an American campus and later he coins the term "technomodern" to define the very highest serious literature of the post-war years, and, lo-and-behold, it is Brown U's MFA program that he is writing about. What?!!! A Professor/novelists Robert Coover at Brown was the key guy in developing compiled software that created some sort of hypertext, and of course it was a Brown female (heaven forfend that it would be a "patriarchal" male) student who scored the biggest success with this computer generated?/assisted? hypertext: Shelley Jackson's "Patchwork Girl." I think I remember reading something about Coover in the Brown Alumni mag several years ago, but I didn't take it seriously, and I've never heard of "Patchwork Girl" which, I guess, shows how out of touch with MFA theorists I am. Instead, I thought that a lot of Brown students were showing up in TV, Film, communications, etc, because of the semiotics courses at Brown. And I might have been partially right about that, but apparently Coover, Hawkes and the MFA program at Brown are the major CULPRITS for all this experimental fiction/solipsistic writers from Brown that seems to me to be so seriously wrong-headed.
At any rate I may read some more of this book, but I'm damn sure I won't read all of it. Nor can I feel any pride about Brown's MFA or semiotic programs. I think this "technomodernism," which was developed in the '90s, was little more than an experiment with computers because those machines' growing capabilities were something new under the sun. But now I hope the world will soon grow past this momentary infatuation with machine-produced "hypertext." McGurl points out that we read John Barth's "Giles, the Goat Boy" because Barth became enamored of using the modern university and its new computers as some sort of new universe and guiding spirit. Again, it seems a phase that America had to go through, and, thank god, no longer has to worry about - except in classes about literary history taught, perhaps by Mark McGurl.
Phil
---------- my reply
Delighted to hear your Exclamatory Whoop! Just as I had expected. I glanced at some of McGurl's pages on amazon's Look Inside feature and on google and I could see at once he loves the word "system" and if I skim him accurately he would see your own novels
as the pure products of the Cumberland System---or the 60s system of education that produced you etc. Something like that. ?
So that's what John Barth was all about! I never fully knew. Coover I had heard of and John Hawkes book titled Blood Oranges or something like that I did read or try to read in grad school. Never knew all this stuff was from Brown as the hotbed of it---but that makes a lot of sense now in hindsight.
I did plow through some books with prose like that for some years but not that much really, another reason that taking the state college option was attractive---did not have to pay attention to that kind of crap very much. McGurl I can tell is a real master of it---as you say he says something clearly every so many pages and then the rest is citing all the important people and demonstrating he has read Waayyy fucking more than anyone else. What else is all that full professorship time for? I mean those guys once they get to Stanford teach one or two courses a year and are expected to publish these sorts of books so they are welcome to it if that's what they can pull off---with straight faces. But of course the whole deal is they do indeed take themselves and their ground-breaking work very very seriously.
I remember well when the great promise of "hyper-text" first came in. Certain nerdy humanities types went crazy about it because they could foresee that one could read a novel and look up stuff every few lines instantly. No matter that such a process might drive you as a human crazy even if the computer machinery would "love" it.
A book like McGurl's must be the star-pupil work that makes his academic ancestor's very proud because they can say, see, this guy gets it and we were wonderful pioneers. Have to realize too that in terms of academic battles McG represents the triumph of American-based higher thought versus all that airy-fairy deconstructionist french stuff that rule the roost for a while at harvard and berkeley etc. So there are no doubt some deep pockets of budgetary warfare behind a book like this. Who gets what slice of the monetary pie.
As you say, a phase American universities had to go through. Still a wonder that McGurl could have devoted so much time and energy to describing it. But---it moved him from UCLA to Stanford and that's like getting a Guggenheim. Or I guess now it would be a MacArthur
-----
Yes, there are some sections of this book that drop the jargon and just relate a history. Very readable sections. Yet when he does that, his tone is as you describe.
One point he makes - and that I think is true - is that the trend in postwar literature - focus on the self - was a trend that was going on widely in western society. What he doesn't really explore is why that was occurring in the wider society. One possibility is that, in western countries, ethnic groups wanted to talk and think about themselves. The oddity is that top levels of society - the people who ran things, including publishing and academia - went along with that ethnic movement. Suddenly a book about WASPS was derided by everyone, even by WASPS. I can understand why blacks, Jews, Italians, and the Irish did that, but why, I wonder, did WASP society go along. Any theories?
P
This question really seems major to me. I wish I could put it to someone like John Lukacs. When I was at Chicago one of the “big” books everyone read (or it was in all the bookstore windows) was McNeil’s The Rise of the West (a world history). I wonder if a book like that could even be written today? I’ll have to look it up and see what status it now has.
I also wonder if McGurl is young enough that his generation does not even raise the question, so much was the situation the air they breathed as they grew up?
Was it a reaction caused by the shame of WWII (and WWI so close behind); and the end of Empire(s); and civil rights; but taking it farther back, was it part of Zionism and its enemies and copycats? was it an outgrown of the birth of all the social sciences in late 19th C Europe—especially archaeology and anthropology? Was it a response to the horrors of the 20th C in terms of technology—a search for roots and humanness against the factory systems, and social changes of rapid order?
Maybe the WASPS were so out of touch and so on top that they felt a noblesse oblige to favor the downtrodden, ultimate liberal guilt?
Don’t have a grand theory for this question. Might send it to McGurl himself to see how he would answer if he would. ?
Tuesday noon Keith and Gloria just here. Gloria brought another new apron, this one perfect. Over the head with easy velcro closing at the back of the neck, big pockets, full coverage.
Greg returned my call with Jim’s number.
Am sure my letter to Providence C for Pat will become a laughing-stock of the search committee, maybe the department. Foolish tack I tried, my life in review rather than much about Pat. Oh well. Finished with academia, bye-bye. If Pat ever asks for another I’ll say, Nope, I’m outta the game, listen to Rufus Wainwright’s song, he’ll explain.
Friday noon Nov 8
Good swim this morning. Couple from Canada having a tryst at the time-share. We started composing the novel: Cold Spring: A Tale of Passion and
except for planning to feature Polar Caves Motel that’s as far as we got
Plan now is after lunch to head for Concord or Hooksett Target and eventually end up at Azevedo’s movie at 6 pm at Red River. No idea what size crowd to expect.
Based on the past few weeks I’ve begun to re-examine what I really want from my one day a week day off. Not so sure anymore. Maybe sitting in one cafe for a good long time is more what would really feel good. Maximum attentiveness to one thing? The war against distraction, the war against Twitter. My tweet for the day---which Investor will raise the price further by sponsoring a counter-site calling for a war against Twitter. Whalesong declares war against Twitter.
night We went to the SNOB festival in Concord and saw Rob Azevedo and his movie, “Candles in Paradise.” It was on a bill of other short movies.
Saturday night
We went to the Fox Run mall near Portsmouth. Dreadful place. We had forgotten, hadn’t been there for a good while. Walked first at BJs in Tilton, so we did get the 5000 steps after the mall walking at least. Day redeemed itself after a wander-drive in the dark back to Manchester (I missed that darned exit again off 95 to 101) we had a great dinner at Republic. Really great. Sole and Monkfish, two separate dishes. I had a fine two-glass serving of a Côte du Rhone. We had tried to get reservations at Cava or Moxy in Portsmouth since this is restaurant week state-wide, but they were overbooked. Whether we try to go back this week remains to be seen. Doubt it, but who knows. Monday is the holiday so that may remind us to consider it. The blueberry tart was perfect, barely sweet and then on the other side of the tray/plate was a compote of cold, sweeter blueberries. Perfect pairing with the tart. Plus a spread of heavy whipped cream with a mint leaf and a thinly sliced strawberry. I should describe the monkfish treatment with the same zeal for detail but I won’t. Va’s sole was crusted with pistachios.
Sunday November 10 mid-day
Snow on the ground, leaves peaking through. Indoor day after yesterday’s jaunt to Portsmouth and Manchester.
Catherine Taylor sent a lovely photo of her and the boys in front of Lincoln center a few weeks ago. Both boys growing fast. Max looks much much better than he did in the goofy snap with Emma from last spring.
Monday afternoon Veteran’s Day
Nice sense of “day off.” Young women from the campus Nicaragua Club raked leaves for the past three hours. I think I’ve finished spell-checking the second volume of Chromenos Papers. Now to start the CreateSpace process again.
10 pm Finished Phil’s book. Well, second half of it, or was it last third? Enough to recall the whole. Maybe his most personal book since it is about the Cumberland that has vanished and is in the first person. Not sure about his crime DC novel and his Tunis novel. Interesting how the sense of class structure, rich and working poor, union and union busters, factory owners, rich lawyers, steel mill crooks all follow a pattern of class warfare that shows up in me and even in my son a bit. If that christmas video from 15 years ago is an indication. The book closes with the lament for the loss of big manufacturing and even big coal. But on today’s news business leaders are saying they are bringing back manufacturing and now we have fracking going great guns, so the prosperous times of Bartonsburg may not be gone for good. But Detective Mike Cutler would think so---the details of his town have changed irrevocably. How to review the book? Not your cut-and-dried or cut-and-paste detective or crime novel. The ending especially would make the genre readers unhappy. A split decision ending--one murder solved and one murder still open. Uncertainty befitting loss.
Friday afternoon
Finished the review for the novel few days ago. Posted it, the loose and baggy version and then Phil edited it into shorter version which I then posted on Amazon in place of my double-layered one.
my long one
Review of J P Jones’ A Sense of Loss CreateSpace 2013
“Buy local” came into fashion in the past few years. It might apply to this moving and thoughtful novel by J P Jones, his third available here on Amazon. Detective Mike Cutler tells us about his search for a murderer but what stays long after we finish the story is the depth of his feeling for his hometown of Bartonsburg, West Virginia. Here is a region not really included in the trendy slogan of buying local. Rather it is one of the hundreds of local communities around the country that have experienced great loss over the past fifty years. The victim in the case is a young doctor from India, relatively new to Bartonsburg. Cutler’s search leads him through the back-reaches of the mountain town he knows so well and leads him down paths of reflection on what has happened to it he never expected to explore. We meet lots of interesting and irritating people, from Peter Bremer whose wife Lisa worked for the murdered doctor, to Hiram Greer the crusty steel mill owner, to Riley Bruce the rich lawyer to Bill Atherton the rich playboy and Nelly Simpson living out her days in a home. The whole town comes to life in the telling and a cold case gets uncovered as well. Behind the troubles of the dead doctor lie a long history of troubles in Bartonsburg.
The pleasure of this superb novel, then, is how it gives us a detective story, a crime to be solved, but in terms that are far beyond the boxes we usually associate with that essential plot. Essential in the sense not of formula fiction but the human story. Murder cuts into every tie binding any town together.
*Haunting murder mystery which explores much more than the killing of a young Indian doctor new to the northern West Virginia town of Bartonsburg. When experienced detective Mike Cutler sets out to find the killer, we meet a rich set of characters who deftly portray the whole town and region, and we see not just how the murder has cut into the quick of their lives but how an unsolved cold case still holds open old wounds for everyone.
Racism, drugs, empty factories, union busting, greed, poverty and ignorance, in-bred clannishness and hunger for urban sophistication and wealth, Bartonsburg comes to life with a disturbing yet satisfying intensity.
Mike Cutler takes us into every hollow and cranny of the town he loves, ever more deeply confronting the way the murders have sliced through the community, and tries to understand what all has happened to them far beyond the murders. A whole age of promise, possibility and expectation has gone.
Phil’s compression
In "A Sense of Loss," a moving and thoughtful novel by J P Jones, Detective Mike Cutler tells us about his search for a murderer but what stays long after we finish the story is the depth of his feeling for his hometown Bartonsburg, West Virginia. This once prosperous little city is one of the hundreds of local communities around the country that have experienced great loss over the past fifty years. The murder victim is a doctor from India, relatively new to Bartonsburg. Cutler's search leads him through the back-reaches of the mountain town he knows so well and leads him down paths of reflection on what has happened to it he never expected to explore - racism, drugs, union busting, greed, poverty and ignorance, in-bred clannishness and hunger for urban sophistication and wealth. Bartonsburg comes to life with a disturbing yet satisfying intensity. We meet a rich set of characters who deftly portray the whole town and region, from unemployed drug-taking youths to a steel mill owner, a wealthy lawyer, and a playboy banker dying of cancer. The whole town comes to life in the telling and a cold case gets uncovered as well. Behind the troubles of the dead doctor lies a long history of troubles in Bartonsburg.
The pleasure of this superb novel, then, is how it gives us a detective story, a crime to be solved, but in terms that are far beyond the boxes we usually associate with that essential plot. Essential in the sense not of formula fiction but the human story. Murder cuts into every tie binding any town together. We see not just how the murder has cut into the quick of their lives but how an unsolved cold case still holds open old wounds for everyone. A whole age of promise, possibility and expectation has gone.
----------
I do like my version better I guess because it’s more moi. But the whole exercise is good for reminding me that there is no way I could have written anything like Phil’s novel, nor his two others.
One page of Marías and I recall that too. I would like to write like him. Or maybe somewhat like him. But maybe that would be just as impossible as writing like Phil. Or maybe it would not be.
Found Simon Van Booy ’s Love Begins in Winter and have started to read just because it is such a great line.
Keep imagining the Hotel novel. Why not title it all the words?
Hotel Dilettante Courier & Hotel Envy Chromenos
Hotel Courier Chromenos & Hotel Envy Dilettante
Sunday night Nov 17
Rain and very warm. Last night we saw the Julia Louis Drefus and James Gandolfini movie, Enough Said. Pleasant enough but afterwards lots of flaws turn up and really it is not important enough to even talk about. On Rotten the difference between critics--95% and audiences 82% tells the story and you can tell here who is closer to the truth of the matter. Sweet movie and all that.
Much more intrigued by Infatuations. Learned one new phrase---to be “on a hiding to nothing” --to be getting a victory of sorts but of not much importance especially given how much it has cost you---if I understand the phrase. From horseracing.
Anyway--enjoying Marías again after a session of doubt last night (when I was tired). Especially so because what he does is so very far from the sort of novel Phil writes which even though he never took a writing course still has the earmarks of the way fiction should be in the American late 20th C mode. Whereas Marías presents works that would not last one week in the creative writing classroom, nor in the magazine or newspaper cultural Inbox. The other thing is JM gives me the sense of wanting to do that---to write a book like this one even to copy it and “translate” it somehow, to pull out the frame of the story and embellish “my own” variations on it in my own language. That is an old fantasy and I have even started to try it a few times years ago. Could I make it even slightly work somehow? even as my first worst attempt to write fiction? Now Phil’s book didn’t make me think these things. His is about Cumberland and characters he made up and his voice is so familiar to me I know I can’t imitate it and I know I don’t want to, nor do I want to write a detective crime novel like that one at all. Marías’s book, however, excites me to think of trying some sort of imitation. Is that the response of readerly appreciation or something else, some things else? Imitation highest form of flattery; flattery the highest form of envy?
Today I’ve been feeling so strong and capable and ready. After two or three days previous when I was feeling weak, abandoned, vulnerable, old, quite down. Is that the way it will be from now on? Was it an effect of Phil’s novel---very bleak in its way and added to that the visit with Dr Lloyd. He was in that mood of lamenting America’s decline and fall, we were once pretty good and now we are washed up, finished, downhill all the way. Is that a view that goes with not just aging, with Phil, but also with aging and having recently been through a rough string of real health crises as Lloyd just was, even near death apparently, from the staph infection. Not an easy thing for anyone but perhaps doubly difficult for a doctor?
“. . . what were shaving brushes made or hairpins made of, when was such and such a building put up or a certain film first shown, the kind of superfluous stuff that bores readers, but which writers think will impress.” Infatuations (186 UK)
Monday November 18
Maria (Dolz) has overheard Díaz-Varela talking with Ruibérriz and knows now that he had Desverne killed in hopes that he could then get Louisa to love him. But my guess is at this point that (given the Balzac tale about the dead colonel ghost) Diaz-Varela will have the shock of learning that Louisa engaged his services not to join with him but because she had another lover he had no knowledge of and hence he will end up being the ghost, no, the returned dead man, condemned to crime and guilt and having no chance of being in her life. Our narrator will have to learn this too, first. what will happen to her? Maybe she will find love with ?
The book is so unlike Phil’s idea of a novel or a crime novel I wonder if he could enjoy it at all? He might find it way too preciously long and boring. “Jamesian” it would be. Which means Greg would enjoy it very much. I think.
But again--could I maintain the interest in even making some sort of lame copy of the novel? Maybe I should/could combine projects and make my wandering in Copenhagen and being a courier there also be about writing my forlorn novel there too.
Beautiful warm day. We walked in Wally’s and then after lunch at the docks. No loons or otters but gorgeous light.
Took 10mg Cialis about 5pm. Curious to see effects versus the fake Cialis and Viagra I get from Mumbai. Already--5:20--a headache flush but nothing more. Could be too much caffeine from coffee and tea recently.
But it might be I could no more write like Javier M than I could like Phil J.
I had come to Copenhagen to write a novel, to re-write someone else’s novel that is. I had taken a job as a ghostwriter and I wanted to be in a city of famous ghosts to undertake the task because I had no idea how to write the book I was contracted to write.
Just write any old thing and stop trying.
----------Tuesday morning around 10:30
“I only mention it as proof that even the most transient and trivial of infatuations lack any real cause, and that’s even truer of feelings that go far deeper, infinitely deeper than that. ‘ “ d-v 265
“and all feelings are idiotic as soon as you describe or explain or simply give a voice to them,” 266
---------
phone call according to vonage text from Dave’s cell phone---just called him back and left a message--
today is their sonogram day I think ---
by page 268 (of 346) I wonder if María will kill Diego--have him killed?
“He knew exactly how I felt, the loved one always does, if he’s in his right mind and isn’t himself in love, because in that case he won’t be able to tell and will misinterpret the signs.” 269
“ ‘It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten.’ Perhaps he thought the same applied to real events, to events in our own lives. That’s probably true for the person experiencing them, but not for other people. Everything becomes a story and ends up drifting about in the same sphere, and then it’s hard to differentiate between what really happened and what is pure invention. Everything becomes a narrative and sounds fictitious even if it’s true. And so he went on as if I had said nothing.” (283)
“We do tend to believe things while we’re hearing or reading them. Afterwards, it’s another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking.” 292
The novel finishes up in ways very different from what I thought. So my imagination was way too American about the whole thing.
Brilliant, though. As soon as I finished it I slipped it into the mailer, walked a block from the cafe to the post office and sent it off to Phil in Washington, DC.
"Once you've finished a novel," says Díaz Varela to Dolz, "what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.”
Dropping the book into the mail felt like I was getting rid of a virus or an infection. It was such a relief. I was glad I had managed to finish reading it in the time I had today with time to get it into the mail. I was glad I enjoyed it so much even though what I had expected to be the final turns of plot or revelation did not happen. But then as I drove over to the town where I was to pick Virginia up from her appointment, I realized that indeed the story had possibilities I had not yet considered and the pleasure was all the greater. Diaz-Varela may have set into motion the events that killed Miguel but are we not sure now, as Maria herself seems not at all to be, that it is Louisa who had delegated the task to Varela. Maria has been blinded by her infatuation with Varela. She does not see as clearly as she thinks she does. Louisa matches the woman in the Three Musketeers story, the woman hanged by Athos, Anne de Breuil, later called Milady de Winter.
Why would it not work with genders reversed? Louisa > Louis is married to Miguel > Michelle. Louis and Michelle have breakfast every morning at the same cafe on Newbury Street. Mark Dolzet, who works in publishing, also goes there every morning.
Why even speculate in this way? Is it homage or envy or both? The book is wonderful and powerful. Reviewer for the Guardian or Observer says it is Marías’ best. Hmm. Maybe. Always skeptical of that sort of claim by reviewers.
What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events do and to which we pay far more attention.
el enamoramiento -- the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I'm referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, though not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning ...
Wednesday 11:17 in Concord at the Subaru dealer for an oil change. Diving in to the Createspace site to continue work on the book. Still rehashing Marías and thinking about whether to really undertake a re-write. Can always start the book at once and write the book about writing the book. Vanity publishing thy name is Jubilation!
Thursday late afternoon---just
posted this on Facebook --- might be dumb to have done so.
I was 19, freshman in college, second year in the monastery. Sunny afternoon. Came back from a jog around the grounds, as I approached the mansion, Chuck S ran along the house, saw me and yelled "The President has been shot.”
could always say it is the beginning of a short story or a novel or some such.
Va went to lunch with Irene and Ermelina. I drove her computer to Concord to the North Point repair shop just around the corner from McDonalds. Crashed last night. Travis said it is a generation that has been famous for failing without much warning or rhyme or reason. Might salvage the documents, might get it to work. I had a lousy burrito at Boloco (“inspiring burritos” who came up with that nonsense?) Then a cookie at Panera where the guy from Pembrook with a new goatee spiral heavily waxed was nice enough to slice the muffin in half, one of those molten chocolate cupcakes. He did four or eight years in the national guard, didn’t have the money for college. Never got sent overseas, did some work on Katrina relief.
Thinking much less about The Infatuations but enough still to imagine re-writes that would tinker with the telling much more drastically. Take out all or most of the literary gameishness. Take out even Macbeth or maybe especially Macbeth. Marías makes fun of writers who fill their books with historical info or local detail but his mode of referencing other literary works is just as pretentious at least potentially so, and just as filler-like in some ways. Think of how Knausgaard would “translate” Marías’s story into something that fits into his narrative or novel.
The car dealer put a new calendar in the front seat after the routine oil change yesterday. “Motivaltional Visions” for 2014. Those hyper sharp colorful images framed in serious heavy black glossy borders that have been motivating office workers for twenty years now. Part of what biz people used to call our pursuit of Excellence. Sure enough, June of next year has a beautiful hummingbird over a pine bough and “Excellence” in Roman Cut Stone Font, all caps. Under that the softcore sermon for the month: “What really matters is what you do with what you have.”
I threw it into the trash when I got home. But a few minutes later I gazed gratefully at it because it had solved a recent puzzle that had been troubling my noggin. In the same small city for the oil change, our state capital, there are two handsome new five story office buildings side-by-side on south Main, sort of a new development area of town. On my second or third walk-by and visit--a big new version of the local bookstore is now in one of the buildings---I noticed two amazing features of the buildings. As you enter one (home to the biggest law firm in town) carved in the brick-rimmed sidewalk entrance rectangle are the words “Love Your Neighbor.” As you pass by the next building, if you look up to the top floor where there used to be on the cornice a keystone there is a large stone tablet with the word “Smile ! “ exclamation point included.
Motivational, soft-core sermonic architecture. Wow, who knew?
“Architecture” is too lofty a name here---business office style brick structures is what they are, neat and trim but hardly architecture. Nevertheless they have Messages. The Smile ! building houses the new offices of the town’s Chamber of Commerce. Of Course ! and a gallery for the State League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, a fine organization of long standing.
At first I thought the whole thing seemed a bit Disneylandish. But the motivational calendar has cleared things up. Maybe I will used it after all and get with the program. Maybe I will frame one of the months even. For the Ishmael-ish month of November next year I will have golden leaves against white birch trees with “Change” in caps and the cutline “The best is yet to be.” Ahh, boosterism, thy favors float down upon us like manna in the desert.
The bare plot of the novel or novella or short story---husband murdered because he has terrible illness to save himself and others from suffering. Woman becomes lover of killer and finds out when she’s in the bedroom. They break up after that. She sees the in-between killer guy and later she sees the former lover killer guy and his new beloved, the wife of his former friend. Oldest story in the book---guy covets his friend’s wife, kills him to get to her. So I guess we could take any of the deadly sins and use them to launch the novel, any novel. All in how the teller tells.
Friday rainy and cold
Lawrence Weschler does not write fiction, cannot write fiction, “For me the world is already filled to bursting with interconnections, interrelationships, consequences, and consequences of consequences. The world as it is is overdetermined: the web of those interconnections is dense to the point of saturation.” quoted in McSweeney’s 44:247-248.
He also defends using “I” in his reporting and writing. “It is so stupid when someone writes he said to a reporter. Is that you, or is there a third person in the room?” he asks with rhetorical incredulity. “You use the ‘I’ not because of the ego, but to avoid it. It is more modest, it is not claiming to be the voice of god.”
McSweeney’s 44:246 Bayard Woods, “Hopeless Marvel: The Philosophical Reporting of Lawrence Weschler.”
Both comments seem interesting in the wake of the wake left by Marías. Are all of his novels in the first-person? I’ll have to look back. But Infatuations I recall liking precisely because it is---even though we eventually come to judge the narrator as perhaps not having a total grasp of events she thinks she does. But that might be precisely the great appeal of first-person narration to begin with, at its core. As to not writing fiction---hmmm maybe. I can see that if one has in mind fiction of a certain sort. But of Marías’ sort? Or Sebald’s? Or Walser’s?
-------
mail from Phil from Nov 20 continuing our rants about McGurl’s book about writing programs---
At one point, late in his book, McGurl admits that "While this book is not without its pretensions to novelty, it is simply as assemblage of what used to be called 'influence studies.'"
EXACTLY!
That's all it is, and, like so much of modern fiction, it's a big, overblown nothing.
All he does is point out that creative writing programs adopted 3 basic rules which were derived from Hemingway:
1. Write what you know.
2. Show, don't tell.
3. Find your voice.
Fine. That should be worth about five pages of text and isn't new to anyone.
What he doesn't admit, however, is that the schools failed to emphasize the need for an interesting story/adventure/experience because they would lose virtually all their students who totally lack such experiences. In Hemingway's case, he wrote about war and its aftermath. Since I'm reading Moby Dick, I can point to Melville who shipped out on a couple of whalers for a couple of years. A terrific adventure in an area that virtually no one knew anything about - whaling. But attending grad school or a creative writing program or having trouble with your girlfriend or failing to get tenure or being a drunk simply doesn't count as an interesting adventure/subject.
Oh my, what to do?
In my opinion, because both the professors and students lead boring lives and lack any truly interesting experience to write about, they turned virtually their entire attention to voice. The more extreme and difficult the voice, the happier the profs and students are because it allows "analysis" of stories that are, if the profs would admit it, trivial and boring. But if the writer's voice is weird enough, the profs and students can spend class hours "analyzing" it and, above all, looking for influences in the writer's life: authors read or the writer's biography: Did he come from a lower class family? Is he from the Midwest? Or, best of all in these "enlightened" times, did the guy suck cock at Boy Scout camp? Woweee!
So this book concentrates to depressing lengths on the biographical influences in the stories of contrasting pairs of writers. In order of appearance:
Thomas Wolfe vs Flannery O'Connor
Wallace Stegner vs Ken Kesey
Raymond Carver vs Joyce Carol Oates
He also touches very lightly on Hemingway, Roth, Skip Gates (Blacks), Scott Momaday (American Indians), plus Coover and Hawkes at Brown (computer generated hypertext).
Yet none of this is interesting or, in my opinion, shows any true "novelty." "Pretensions to novelty" yes, but true novelty, no.
So, to repeat myself, Dear God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Phil
----------
Am curious but will not ask about that referencer to boy scout camp. Phil rarely if ever mentions sex of any kind so this stands out a bit. Might be a generic bio nonsense thing, might also refer to something McGurl notes about someone.
Glancing further at McGurl, I never knew Thomas Wolfe would fit into this context at all---progressive education from Dewey and teaching writing at NYU in the late 20s. Never new Wolfe did that. Heavy teaching load too. Composition.
Still glad I’m not going to read McGurl’s tome.
SUNDAY evening Narrowly avoided going out into the fierce winds outside. Been blowing all night and all day. Temps low too. Feels like a dry storm. Snow squalls on the highway last night coming home but not too bad. Temp then was about 28 but the road did not seem to be freezing. We got home around 9:30.
Was a bumper day. 9292 on the Pedometer. Started at Target in Concord, then lunch in Nashua. Gridlock traffic there so we skirted that and drove to Burlington mall. There we did lots of walking with the big crowds. Dinner in the Nordstrom cafe, Blue Stove, a tapas sort of restaurant, and very good. Drive back we stopped in Concord for a break.
Great photos on Facebook today. The family is having a Christmas holiday lights day in Paris. Decorations in the Galerie Lafayette windows and just now a ride in the ferris wheel overlooking Paris by night. How glorious.
Email from Donald. He’s been in Europe since Oct 14, comes home Dec 14. Three weeks in England and then back and forth in and out of Paris with Jean Jacques and they are off to Capadocia now with his niece. So glad JJ is taking him along on lots of things. Last year the carnival in Venice. They both miss Patrick and now they have one another for company at least.
Night. Wind still howling outside. Until midnight says the forecast. Such a strange, aimless day. Recovery I suppose from yesterday’s focused pursuit of walking in malls. And driving. The driving does wear me out but yesterday went well in that regard.
Monday Already everything is quiet and Ken and Carole posted their Thanksgiving dinner photo on Facebook already. They had his niece and new husband up over the weekend I think. We’re off to get all the stuff today, wind seems much quieter at last. Lucky we didn’t lose power because seems many in the area did.
On the creative front, the urge to re-do Marías seems almost totally gone now. Interesting aftermath of a good read but nothing more. And what degree of willpower was involved in the read too---the urge to make it a good read far beyond the real quality of the book. That is a question for research to consider.
Phil sent great quote from Bertrand Russell:
"The Infatuations" is certainly a European novel, not an American one. In their fiction, European writers always seem to be musing about philosophical possibilities more than relating a story. In reading this work, I'm constantly reminded of an observation by Bertrand Russell: "Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically, with an incredible display of hustle and pep, and at last achieve the desired result by chance. Animals observed by Germans sit still and think, and at last evolve a solution out of their inner consciousness.”
I don't know if you're interested, but rather than view Hollywood's version of history (ugh!) in this new film "12 years in slavery" read the book written by Solomon Northrup, the free black who was kidnapped in 1841. The book is only 125 pages and is available on kindle for 99 cents. Solomon was literate and obviously intelligent, but I'm pretty sure his editor played a major role in rewriting the book because it is so professionally done. In fact, since I'm reading Moby Dick I was astonished at the similarity of language, viewpoint, and practical concerns (how do they skin a whale, how do cotton plantations actually work) throughout both works. These two books were published in 1853 and both books are like a deep view into the mentality of Americans at that time. But of course, an additional message in Northrup's book is just how cruel and evil "bondage" and slavery can make (white) men. Total control of another will soon produce insane cruelty. And it's amazing just how ignorant southern whites were.
Phil
Now I wish he had also made a comment about how animals behave in Latin American experiments---then we would have the right analogue for LA fiction.
At least you can see how non CW program the europeans are--guess they always have been. I love imagining Marías as a student submittiing that sort of work to a workshop at Iowa, Brown or Plymouth State.
Also I think the euro writers know that they can gab on and on, just like chat at any coffee house or cafe, and give the slight illusion of knowing something about philosophy or contemporary thought or whatever---they don't really--in a novel--have to prove that they have a grasp on much that is very real or very probable.
Probably I give them too much credit in my desire to find something special and un-American mainstream. Once the glow is over on a novel like Infatuations I think back over it and find it flawed in ways I didn't bother to notice while I was reading.
In fact this is the topic I now want to get foundation funding for to carry out genuine scientific inquiry: just how much is response to a book, to reading, a feature of willed enthusiasm, imagined enthusiasm, mild interest etc? I mean why have we not yet pinned these things down?
(we now watch an episode of Showtime's Masters of Sex every Sunday night and it is remarkable how they got people to have sex together while wired up with all sorts of gizmos hooked to electro devices for measuring, monitoring and recording every sort of neurological blip they could try to observe at that time. Masters and Johnson at Indiana U.
Tuesday night
Phil sent this---earlier today about Marías--so I am confirmed by a greater source---
My friend Mike Oudyne called today and in our conversation he went on and on about how much he likes Javier Marias and "Savage Detectives" by Bolano. He's read five of Marias' novels, all in Spanish and says that Marias' writing (in Spanish) is exquisite.
Mike added that leftist lit critics in Spain ( a group he finds rather stupid) constantly criticize Marias because he isn't sufficiently political. They accuse him, according to Mike, of being boringly loquacious because of, believe it or not, influences in M's writing of Americans and English authors! They call his writing "angloboring." Also according to Mike, Marias totally ignores them.
An interesting sidelight: Mike doesn't like Marias's short stories but loves all his novels.
Do you know how St. George's day is celebrated in Spain? According to Mike, men must give women a rose and women must give men a novel. So Mike wrote a novel entitled "Wake Me When I'm Dead" and published it for St. George's day. The defining characteristic of Mike's novel is that it has no words as he explains to a group of Spanish friends in Madrid or Barcelona in a Youtube video. Go to youtube and search for Oudyne. It will pop up. Mike's presentation is all in Spanish so I don't understand a word, but the audience seems to think it's rather humorous and fun. Mike points out the various advantages of a novel without words. You and Va might enjoy it.
P
---------
at the start of his wine blog--winetripping wordpress Oudyn
has these quotes from Rabelais
April 13, 2009
“I drink no more than a sponge”
“When I think, I drink. When I drink I think.”
“No clock is more regular than the belly.”
And my personal favorite, “There are more old drunkards than old physicians”
He teaches in Boston and speaks Spanish, lived/s near Barcelona. But note that Phil does not say---hey you guys should go down to meet him some time, am sure you would enjoy each other’s company.
A little strange?
----------
Phone call from neighbor Janice N few hours ago. Ruth Millar is now in the psychiatric ward of the Laconia hospital.
Water is running out of the hose at her house and Jeff and Joe E are trying to get in but no one has a key.
Poor Ruth---she deteriorated fast---and they ganged up on her and dosed her with the med. But she was losing it too and getting very anxious and unable. Janice said at the end here she stopped doing anything. My immediate thought was she just felt unbelievable rage and decided to refuse everything---sort of a high Simone Weil action. But of course that is all my imagination and I have no idea what her dementia is like as a illness that took her over. She lost her mind. Happens to millions every day.
Wednesday Nov 27 11:32
Waiting in BAM for Createspace to call. So far they are late. Wonder if they scheduled without realizing it is today, the day before the big holiday? Probably their office closed down or closed down early without even realizing the snafu. So how long will I wait before I head to the vegan restaurant for lunch?
Email today told us Ken had a double groin walk-in surgery yesterday at Dartmouth for a hernia. Or a double hernia I guess not a double groin. Though that could be more interesting.
Erin did call but the phone didn’t ring.
Long talk with Erin, now 12:34. I think we connected around 12. She is a graphic arts graduate of the Arts Instiute of Charleston, where CreateSpace seems to be located.
Friday morning after Thanksgiving November 29
Jess went back to fix up her house. Her brother Andre and older sister Eve are visiting today for the first time ever (for Andre). Scallops and angel hair pasta. We watched two movies she brought last night. French one about Daniel Autueil pretending to be in the closet to save his job. I slept through most of it, seated in the rocker. Swedish movie about a choir director. Maybe I saw it ten years ago. Very Swedish in the black-white moral problems, sad-happy ending for the director who had found love at last. Also showed her Glee for the first time and the Robin Williams new comedy show.
Sunny out, about 25 degrees. Va found out Ann and Betsy are in Valencia right now so she is asking them if they fancy a day trip to Javea to check it over for us.
Sunny out, about 25 degrees. Va found out Ann and Betsy are in Valencia right now so she is asking them if they fancy a day trip to Javea to check it over for us.
This document file thing has gotten more complicated rather than simpler. I'm now In Open Office and not liking it after all. Have to re-do everything it seems. Pages does not work with Pages 09—how stupid is that?
Nice visit with Jess. Helped make the feast more of a feast to have someone coming, set-up for, etc. Good to get back to normal too. Jess’s family is so messed up it is painful to ask for any details. Her mother died a few months ago. Family lawyer had to tell Jess that she explicitly instructed him to tell Jess that she was getting no money. Her older sister and younger brother got 250k each. At least they sold the house and each got about 30k, so that is something for her. Now she is doing hospice work for probably minimum wage? Seems to value it for the moment. Got two job offers over theh phone within three minutes of each other and had taken the hospice job so decided she could not take the school job and decided too she didn’t want to after all. Maybe she has about four more years or six until official retirement age?
I drank a lot of wine and it was fine for the day. The meal was pretty good. Slept pretty well. Feel a wee unlike normal this morning. But woke thinking that doing the Javier cover novel could be fun, just the sort of project to exercise my mind on in a project way. See what it yields as an experiment in experimentation. Could play games with the template, the original, the notion itself. Fuse it into the Copenhagen novel, Hotel Envy, change the name from Infatuations to Envies. Whatever. Flaneries.
Today and tomorrow we walk. Sunday we go to the ballet and overnight and then mall crawl back home for walking on Monday.
Just remembered that yes I am supposed to be fine-editing the book ms. Should I put “Epilogue” in at the end to cover the entries from the two years after 2010. Maybe so.
Should the next book be collected essays and short pieces? Maybe so. Try Fast Pencil for a change to see what it is like?
Now that I am paying for simple interior format I might be learning a bit more about how to do it again on my own with no pay. Erin said the formatters will set it up in 11 point Garamond. So if I use Garamond in the ms would that not be better?
Friday night
Phil didn’t like Marías much. Good thing his other friend did too. Asked him what to make of that.
Just finished the book. It's an interesting take on people's perceptions. It gets into character's s heads, but those aren't realistic heads. People just don't think/muse about subjects as characters in this work do. Nor, of course, do they talk the way Marias portrays. Well, sometimes he has them say something in a realistic way, but more often not. So this is the author playing games with the reader, and that has its own interest.
I will send the book back to you. Be sure to check out page 135.
Because of this book, I may publish one of my books that I had decided to skip.
One thing: the central characters both fall in love to a degree that they are willing to do virtually anything for the loved one. Never been there, myself. I'm the son of a woman who was an orphan who imbued a certain coolness of heart in both of her sons. As with the Christmas Grinch, my heart seems two sizes too small. And I do find Christmas annoying!
P
Now would he care or believe me if I said well you don’t think people think or react the ways Marias portrays them, but I do---I think I am Just Like those people in many ways. I wonder if Mike would say so too? Should I contact him directly myself? Or wait for permission and a backhanded introduction of some sort?
At least I remain intrigued by the idea of doing a cover---perhaps especially since Phil really didn’t think much of the book. Shows how far apart we are in that respect even though we seem to agree on so much at the level of opinion and the Age.
Tuesday Dec 3
Ben installing faucet and drain we hope. We changed the basement water filter---really full of iron. Yikes. Also put in the front door glass--does not go in well. Back to normal after our two-day jaunt for the Nutcracker and mall crawl back home. Va got 7k steps and we enjoyed seeing the high-ed restored to something of its former levels. One empty space in the Chestnut mall---where the restaurant was that served us a piece of metal shelving with the salad five or six years ago. We missed our chance for a big lawsuit. Or a few hundred bucks in shopping cards. Something. (Ha)
Short facetime with Emma and Dave just as we got into the car. Emma wanted to show us how she is tall enough now to turn on the light switch in her room. Short chat with Dennis today about a new quilt. He’s getting his computer fixed this week.
Va at wetexercise with Kathie. Pretty warm and clear outside.
No comments:
Post a Comment