Filed under: myself/this blog
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Filed under: world affairs
This might have easily gotten buried even if the midterms weren’t ruling the news, but regardless: Hillary Clinton’s trip to Asia this week highlighted (in a wonkish kind of way) the administration’s new tack with China.
Since diplomacy fell flat last year, the White House has begun building up soft alliances against Beijing. It is not an easy task, but it is nonetheless a serious pursuit that has garnered at least a modicum of success in the form of Vietnam’s drift away from its cold war ally (on Monday Clinton nudged Cambodia to do the same). Among leading powers, the effort has gained some traction but not as much as the US has hoped. As the New York Times reported, at an economic summit two weeks ago,
the United States won support for a concrete pledge to reduce trade imbalances, which will put more pressure on China to allow its currency to rise in value. But Germany, Italy and Russia balked at an American proposal to place numerical limits on these imbalances, a step that would have further isolated Beijing.
It’s hardly surprising that these negotiations have become so thorny, what with China playing the same game with some of the same countries (even in Europe, where it’s boosting ailing economies as far-flung as Greece and Ireland and eyeing meatier prospects in between).
It’s unclear yet what kind of fruit this new tactic will bear, but with President Obama joining other G-20 leaders for a summit in South Korea next week, get ready to hear all about it. At least now you’ll have a little background.
Update. Apparently the Daily Beast agrees that this was the #1 sleeper story of the week. It feels good to get back to real news…
Filed under: politics
I’ve been ignoring articles about the midterm elections for months now. I mean, there just can’t be that much news. Matt Bai is about the only reporter I’ve been following regularly, but he’s an exception. There’s a piece by Michael Tomasky that is very good, though. It was written about a month ago but is still strong. It takes a slightly more macroscopic view of this election season, which is a relief since most coverage deals in thundering ideology or the kind of minutiae that no one really has time for. (I’m all about higher standards, but who told the mainstream media that your average newsreader is some kind of tenured political scientist? See, I always sound really stupid when I talk about domestic politics, but seriously, what is an average Joe like me supposed to do with something like this?) Anyway, this Tomasky piece offers a good mixture of larger narrative and specific cases — and yes, even a little hard data. Tomasky is the editor of the journal Democracy and one of the Guardian’s senior newsmen here in America.
Filed under: myself/this blog
Trying yet another template. The sidebar was starting to take over the actual blogging, so I’m bringing the focus back to the writing, which I hope to do at least a few times a month, maybe more. In the last few weeks I’ve cut out Facebook, Gchat, and Twitter almost entirely. It’s not part of an experiment or anything, I just got really sick of them. Probably not forever, but for now I’m enjoying the time away. In theory this should lead to more substance; in practice it’s lead to piles of newspapers and magazines waiting to be read (now that I’m reading more, that is), but I’m still liking that more than the other way. My New York Review of Books subscription began yesterday. I figure if I have to live through the death of ink-and-paper journalism I might as well take advantage of the exorbitant discounts on offer. There has been a long string of friends – usually older – trying to get me to read NYRB. I’ve always resisted it. It seems really detached. But now for some reason I’m embracing that. Maybe it’s because the New Yorker isn’t as special as it used to be – although I still adore it. I wouldn’t rule out that it’s because NYRB is still all about a big, bold print edition and most other magazines and newspapers keep shrinking. I really admire a publication that doesn’t get all agitated about it’s business model. Maybe that’s naive, ultimately, but it gives me comfort as a reader. They’re using a model that’s been perfected over at least a century, so I just trust their product a bit more. Having had a little peek behind the curtain of long-form journals courting online trends, I have to say somewhere in my gut I feel like there’s a lot more adjusting to do. If nothing else, there’s a terror that goes with producing a print product that you just don’t get with the Web — and which working with Web journalism can weaken in the print culture. I guess that’s not exactly the best way to kick off a new blog. I sometimes wonder how much of what I do comes from contrarianism. I’d say at least half if not most. But you have to get by somehow.
I guess simply not blogging this month isn’t going to stop summer from ending after all. Best to at least introduce the new issue, then, which hosts some really solid articles: Rufus Phillips, who worked and advised in Vietnam from 1954–68, offers a few thousand words on the state of Afghanistan (what we’ve learned, what we haven’t); Alexander J. Motyl examines how Stalin’s forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians has become a contemporary political flashpoint for the country’s tense and complicated relationship with Russia; and Ali Alfoneh argues that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has eaten up much of the Islamic Republic’s political and economic power — and might soon go after the rest. Plus PJ O’Rourke takes a long look at the Tea Party, Ethan Porter defends historical guilt, and former CIA director Michael Hayden assesses intelligence reform. And in the issue we’re currently closing out you can look forward to articles by Europe expert Walter Laqueur (reviewing new histories — one British, one Russian — of the Cold War), the New York Times’s Helene Cooper (profiling Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf), and NPR’s Tom Gjelten (delving into the world of cyber disarmament) — along with a ray of hope shed on the peace process by longtime ABC News correspondent Robert Zelnick, who just returned from a Mideast trip.
If you still need more to read after that, I can recommend a few recent finds. Perhaps as a reaction to the increasing frivolity of online journalism, I’ve found myself digging deeper into the world of print periodicals. This weekend, for the first time ever (I think), I went on a trip and did not take a book — just a potload of magazines and newspapers. It made for very informative travel. At the top of my list, Greg Grandin reviews the controversial history of “I, Rigoberta Menchú,” a personal account/oral history of state-sanctioned massacres in rural Guatemala. As I’ve mentioned before, Latin America is a big blind spot for me, so I’m always looking to learn a little more, and that’s basically why I enjoyed this piece (the debate itself proved less interesting). Same goes for Michael Reid’s Economist report on the region, which I’ve finally cracked open (sidenote: Reid has an excellent and expansive history of Latin America called “The Forgotten Continent”). In the newspaper world: on Friday the Times ran a great dual update (news story here, analysis here) on US-Chinese relations, and on Monday the WSJ ran a long report (which has apparently been shoved behind the paywall now) on the eurozone meltdown last spring. Finally, for the highbrow readers, an essay from the London Review taking apart Matt McGurl’s new book on MFA programs. All in all, a pretty good weekend of reading. Oh and another sweet journalist (Murray Sayle) has shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving behind an awesome obituary, which included this tidbit:
Mr. Sayle resigned from The Times [of London] in 1972 after it refused to publish his account of Bloody Sunday, the killings of 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators by British soldiers in Derry, Northern Ireland. Mr. Sayle reported that the soldiers had not been fired upon by the demonstrators — a finding vindicated by a British government report this year, leading to an apology by Prime Minister David Cameron — and that the massacre resulted from deliberate government policy.
Good reading, everyone.
I’ve been thinking today about all the young and old minds that are heading back into our classrooms today. I don’t know about you, but droves of Americans heading back to school always makes me feel good inside, despite the twilight of summer and all of that. Just in time, Brainstorm has a post questioning the conventional wisdom of reading tests. Some scholars now posit that prior knowledge (or “domain knowledge”) of a reading topic will increase a student’s reading comprehension significantly. This casts doubt on whether a given passage can assess a student’s reading skills just as well as any other comparable passage on a different subject. The claim makes for an interesting debate. I am most inspired, however, by the final graph of this post, which imagines curricula blending reading comprehension and the learning of subjects into a single lesson:
If reading is not an abstract, transferable skill, if reading comprehension relies upon sufficiently broad knowledge of important cultural, political, scientific, historical, and artistic materials, then we run squarely into delicate Culture War questions of curriculum. The inevitable question arises, “Who’s to say which traditions and histories and literature and philosophies should be required in the classroom?”
I’ll take Hirsch/Pondiscio’s advice: “Rather than idle away precious hours on trivial stories or randomly chosen nonfiction, reading, writing, and listening instruction would be built into the study of ancient civilizations in first grade, for example, Greek mythology in second, or the human body in third. . . . Let’s say a state’s fourth-grade science standards include the circulatory system, atoms and molecules, electricity, and Earth’s geologic layers and weather; and social-studies standards include world geography, Europe in the Middle Ages, the American Revolution, and the U.S. Constitution, among other domains. The state’s reading tests should include not just fiction and poetry but nonfiction readings on those topics and others culled from those specific curriculum standards.”
I realize this isn’t exactly revolutionary — that this sometimes happens on its own anyway — but I’m still struck by the vision behind it: that reading should encompass all areas of interest; that students who “like to read” shouldn’t just study stories and poetry; and that reading forms the basis of most learning and that we need more of it, not less.
At moments like this I’m reminded of how lucky I am to have job where I get to read so often, not to mention one that gives me the time to still be a student in the off hours. Most days, of course, that is easier said than done. The struggle against mindless entertainment is harder now than it has ever been: In every brain in this country there rages a battle for finite time and attention, and the worthier pursuits do not always win. But to know that we’re at a watershed in the intellectual tradition, that fewer and fewer stand to carry the mantle into the future, surely makes each little triumph all the sweeter.
Somewhat related to this: while looking into the work of Tony Judt, the acclaimed historian who died a couple of weeks ago, I came across an interview with Charlie Rose wherein Judt discusses his book “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century” and asserts that students today have lost their citizenship in the country of time. By this he means that although history in the classroom used to be rather boring it nonetheless prepared students to comprehend the important issues and events they would encounter in their lives — it gave them reference points from which to draw larger ideas about the world (and in this sense history encompasses not just politics but the whole array of endeavors and developments that have come before us). To go back to the terms of the reading study, history used to give us domain knowledge.
Despite Judt’s assessment, though, I take hope in another thing that the Brainstorm post mentioned: with regard to future comprehension, the gap between no knowledge on a topic and some is greater than the gap between some and much. Understanding, therefore, can grown from a meager basis, which means that a little effort every day remains a powerful thing.
Filed under: world affairs
Despite the hemming and hawing over this war, it’s pretty clear that we are not leaving anytime soon. We’ve only just drawn down in Iraq, and all President Obama hoped to do there was leave. As World Affairs’s own Ann Marlowe has pointed out, the administration’s number one talking point on this matter is pretty simple: we need more time. The Pentagon, too, is proceeding with plans for a major military commitment: Walter Pincus reported earlier this week that the Defense Department is asking Congress to fund three $100 million expansion projects on air bases that won’t be completed until late 2011 (and no, they’re not for Afghan use).
I don’t say this to foreground a critique of the war itself, but these facts were nonetheless swirling through my mind when I read Ann Jones’s column in this week’s Nation. You should really read the whole thing yourself, but it’s basically a counterpunch to everyone — from politicians and policymakers to the fanciful editors at Time magazine — who see this war as a kind of hero’s journey to save the women of Afghanistan. After debunking the more mythic version of the “Aisha” story (which lead the Aug. 9 cover of said weekly), Jones lays into the meat of her argument, worth quoting in full. Pay special attention to the ends of the 3rd and 6th graphs:
The Taliban do terrible things. Yet the problem with demonizing them is that it diverts attention away from other, equally unpleasant and threatening facts. Let’s not make the common mistake of thinking that the devil we see is the only one.
Consider the creeping Talibanization of Afghan life under the Karzai government. Restrictions on women’s freedom of movement, access to work and rights within the family have steadily tightened as the result of a confluence of factors, including the neglect of legal and judicial reform and the obligations of international human rights conventions; legislation typified by the infamous Shia Personal Status Law (SPSL), gazetted in 2009 by President Karzai himself despite women’s protests and international furor; intimidation; and violence. Women legislators told the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) last year that they have come to fear the fundamentalist warlords who control the Parliament. One said, “Most of the time women don’t dare even say a word about sensitive Islamic issues, because they are afraid of being labeled as blasphemous.” (Blasphemy is a capital offense.) Women journalists also told UNAMA that they “refrain from criticizing warlords and other power brokers, or covering topics that are deemed contentious such as women’s rights.” A series of assassinations of prominent women, beginning in 2005, have driven many women from work and public life. Women working in women’s organizations in Kabul regularly receive threatening letters and, recently, high-tech videos on their mobile phones showing women being raped.
The Taliban claim responsibility for some, but not all, of the assassinations and threats, while most members of the Karzai government maintain a complicit silence. These developments have sent into reverse what little progress women in the cities had made since 2001, while most women in the countryside have seen no progress at all, and untold thousands have been harmed and displaced by warfare. All this has taken place on Karzai’s watch and much of it with his connivance. Our government complains that the Karzai administration is corrupt, but the greater problem — never mentioned — is that it is fundamentalist. The cabinet, courts and Parliament are all largely controlled by men who differ from the Taliban chiefly in their choice of turbans.
If our government were truly concerned about the lives of women in Afghanistan, it would have invited women to the table to take part in decision-making about the future of their country, beginning with the Bonn conference in 2001. Instead, they have been consistently left out.
Our long history of woeful policies has put us and Afghan women in a double bind. If we leave, the Taliban may seize power or allow themselves to be bought in exchange for a substantial share of the government, to the detriment of women. But if we stay, the Taliban may simply continue to creep into power, or they may allow themselves to be bought (or “reconciled”) in exchange for bribes and a substantial share of the government, all to the detriment of women, while we go on fighting to preserve that same government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assurance that “reconciled” Taliban will agree to observe women’s rights under the Constitution is either cynical or naïve in the extreme. And the U.S. pretense that somehow women’s rights will be preserved if only we stay long enough to shore up the Karzai regime and the ragtag Afghan National Army is at best a delusion. Yet the specter of the demon Taliban somehow makes it seem plausible.
Before feminists and the antiwar left come to blows, we might do well to consider that every Afghan woman or girl who still goes to work or school does so with the support of a progressive husband or father. Several husbands of prominent working women have been killed for not keeping their wives at home, and many are threatened. What’s taking place in Afghanistan is commonly depicted, as it is on the Time cover, as a battle of the forces of freedom, democracy and women’s rights (that is, the United States and the Karzai government) against the demon Taliban. But the real struggle is between progressive Afghan women and men, many of them young, and a phalanx of regressive forces. For the United States, the problem is this: the regressive forces militating against women’s rights and a democratic future for Afghanistan are headed by the demon Taliban, to be sure, but they also include the fundamentalist (and fundamentally misogynist) Karzai government, and us.
In case you have just skipped the quote in the hope that I’ll be summarizing it (it happens), I want to highlight the last few lines again:
The real struggle is between progressive Afghan women and men, many of them young, and a phalanx of regressive forces. For the United States, the problem is this: the regressive forces militating against women’s rights and a democratic future for Afghanistan are headed by the demon Taliban, to be sure, but they also include the fundamentalist (and fundamentally misogynist) Karzai government, and us.
It was no surprise to hear that these guys are corrupt, but I had never thought so clearly about how foolish it is to think that just because American forces are trying to stabilize the country we must also, automatically, be working with some progressive local leaders. Perhaps it wasn’t even that — Karzai, after all, has been a known liability for years — but rather the assumption that just because Westerners are patrolling the streets instead of Talibs that life is steadily getting better for the people there. Unless the U.S. wants to fight this war forever, some nasty deals are going to be made — and progressive Afghans, it seems, are going to fall onto the wrong side of history no matter what the final terms are (which of course raises questions of our role abroad which I should probably strive to address at some future point).
If the Obama administration wants to keep public support for this war going — and I think, for now, it should; counterinsurgencies like this don’t work over night — it can’t let the mission creep from a security measure back into the Bush-era narrative of a humanitarian crusade. But as the Time magazine cover shows, perhaps it already has.
Filed under: world affairs
Today was another rough day in the violent Somali capital. Gunmen from the local Islamist group al-Shabab attacked a hotel in Mogadishu this morning, killing 33 people, including 6 MPs. The story of this region floats on and off the radar of most Americans, but after the attempted Christmas Day bombing over Detroit last year, I don’t think any instability this close to Yemen should go unwatched. If you don’t know much about this issue, you should check out the latest from World Affairs — an article by piracy expert Martin N. Murphy that backgrounds the regional problems and proposes that if the U.S. wants to get serious about helping Somalia, it has to get serious about stopping the pirates who thrive in the Horn of Africa.
Update: Apparently there was a dust-up in Yemen as well today (which also, oddly, resulted in exactly 33 deaths). World Affairs Daily gets the hat-tip on this one.
Update: Now reporting 30 killed in Mogadishu, including 4 MPs.
Courtland Milloy is a Metro columnist for the Post. Every time I read one of his columns, I’m glad I have. Yesterday was no exception:
The Macon Telegraph in Georgia calls it “the iniquitous N-word.”
At the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., it’s “the dreaded N-word.”
Laura Schlessinger gave up her radio talk show last week after using on air what the Chicago Tribune called “the ‘n’ word 11 times in five minutes.”
And just what kind of word is this N-word — N technically being a letter that’s often used in statistics to mean the norm, in chemistry as short for nitro and in physics for nano?
Oh, snap, you mean the N-word — the euphemism for that taboo sound, the racial curse: in eye, double g and . . . er, excuse me; I almost cast a spell. You can’t spell it, either. . . .
I realized yesterday that although the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy has been going on for a while now, I had not actually read anything about it (can’t imagine I’m alone on that) and thus took a few minutes to read the front-page story in the New York Times that profiles Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the proposed community center, and backgrounds his father, who was also a forceful leader in New York’s Muslim community. I recommend everyone do the same. The piece is almost blatantly defensive of Abdul Rauf at times but nonetheless should quell any doubts about this man’s qualifications as a peaceful man respectful of this country and the many religions practiced here. He’s actually gotten a lot of flack from Muslims for this, as the article points out.
This whole issue seems to boil down to a twelve-angry-men kind of scenario: there’s a core of bigotry surrounded by a cushion of discomfort and conformity and it’s going to take a few good men to see that fairness prevails. It’s really baffling that this has become as big of an issue as it has. I mean, does anyone have any idea how much shit goes on in Manhattan? Who would ever set out to shelter the Trade Center memorial from the rest of the city? First, you could never do it. Second, you can’t choose where this kind of thing happens and New York — with all of its chaos and complexity — was the city that was attacked, so let’s just accept that too (to wit). Oh and third, despite what a staggering number of Republicans apparently believe, there’s legally nothing the government could do to stop Abdul Rauf from incorporating a mosque into the fifteen-story facility he’s planning to create.
I also can’t help but think about the counterpoint to people who say a mosque near Ground Zero would disgrace the 9/11 memorial. The terrorists behind the attacks undoubtedly saw all Americans as equally culpable for everything terrible the West had ever done in the Middle East. Yet we reject that premise, and have decided to erect memorials to the dead in our centers of power, at the Pentagon and in lower Manhattan; we believe that even though some bad and — well, let’s just say inconsiderate — decisions have indeed been made by leaders in the government, military, and the world of business, an act such as 9/11 remains wholly unjust. Why then, can we not extend the same nuanced perspective to American Muslims? Wouldn’t that be a better way to react? A terrorist attack is of course very different from the kind of cultural offensive launched against this project, but both are rooted in the kind of ignorance we’ve been asked again and again to resist these last nine years. It just doesn’t make sense to lower ourselves, especially over something this benign.
PS: In the course of reading up on this story, I also came across a thoughtful and somewhat more conservative take on the issue, from Sam Harris at the Daily Beast. He argues that Islam, despite its equality under the law, is nonetheless unique today in the challenges it poses to followers and non-followers alike — and that we need to acknowledge the difference without simply turning a blind eye in the name of tolerance. I agree with that. But I’d also say Abdul Rauf has proven that he takes this approach as well, so why not bolster his leadership rather than lump him in with “jihadists”?
Filed under: society
Slate has a round table discussion on the “What’s up with twentysomethings?” think piece in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine. It’s a good way to get a taste for the article without having to subject yourself to it. Maybe I’m too isolated, but these kinds of reports never register with me. I just don’t approach humanity in a demographic way. I realize researchers kind of have to do it, but anyone with a touch of liberal education knows, deep down, that this sort of thing runs aground when it moves out of the realm of hard science. Individuals seek to know themselves and others as individuals. That doesn’t mean you can’t track social mores, but it’s kind of futile to translate them into predictors of personal behavior and “life choices.” This article basically takes the kind of discussion parents might have with their own children — which is normal — and amplifies it to the point of obscurity. It’s interesting but it doesn’t really correspond with reality.
One of the contributors to the round table — who happens to be the daughter of the Times reporter who wrote the original piece — throws in an anecdote that I assume was meant as a joke but actually reveals a lot. In the process of asking her friends when they thought they would “change” into adults, one replied, “when someone kills my parents and I have to avenge their death, like Batman.” The jest of comparing our lives to those of superheroes distracts from the deeper truth that we do, indeed, yearn for narratives in our own lives. We seek adventures (in the literary sense) that punctuate our chronology. The problem is that in our current mythology those events have become generational — the World Wars, the Great Depression, the Sixties. The dominant expectation — not of individuals, necessarily, but society — is for some cataclysm that will reshape everyone simultaneously. (All “Gen X” saw was the end of the Cold War — a muted accomplishment that only early generations could really appreciate — so millions of souls were deemed unknowable to history and themselves.)
When Graydon Carter declared after 9/11, “I think it’s the end of the age of irony,” he wasn’t wrong, just late. Irony had become the norm because as a group Americans could not resist the story of “we are individuals forged by tragic events beyond our control — we’ve read ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ lived through JFK and the Vietnam War, and concluded that success, fundamentally, comes not from accomplishment but failure — the cutting short of the individual, the ‘death of innocence.’” You had to be ruined, basically, before you were really an adult. If 9/11 showed anything like what Mr. Carter hoped it did, however, it was that group narratives cannot always sustain themselves: as important and tragic as the event was for most Americans (and as much as people wanted to make it the new “defining moment”), it directly reshaped only a minority of individual lives.
This is where I’ll concede one point from the article, which discusses psychology professor Jefferey Jensen Arnett’s work to establish “early adulthood” as a period of development as distinct as adolescence:
During the period he calls emerging adulthood, Arnett says that young men and women are more self-focused than at any other time of life, less certain about the future and yet also more optimistic, no matter what their economic background. This is where the “sense of possibilities” comes in, he says; they have not yet tempered their idealistic visions of what awaits. “The dreary, dead-end jobs, the bitter divorces, the disappointing and disrespectful children . . . none of them imagine that this is what the future holds for them,” he wrote. Ask them if they agree with the statement “I am very sure that someday I will get to where I want to be in life,” and 96 percent of them will say yes. But despite elements that are exciting, even exhilarating, about being this age, there is a downside, too: dread, frustration, uncertainty, a sense of not quite understanding the rules of the game. More than positive or negative feelings, what Arnett heard most often was ambivalence — beginning with his finding that 60 percent of his subjects told him they felt like both grown-ups and not-quite-grown-ups.
The narrative, in other words, is that there is no narrative — at least for the group. (It’s hardly news that people mature at different rates, although the folks who worked on this article seem to think it is.) I’ll also concede that maybe the anxiety comes from having nothing to push back against. Irony’s end comes not from some horrific event, but the lack of one — as this country slowly accepts its decline, we’re left wondering what to do with ourselves, hence the possibilities.
I realize that it might sound like I’m contradicting what I started out to say — that I’m griping about baby boomers unloading their baggage on the twentysomethings — but my point is that the whole premise of “generations” is superficial at best. It’s all just collective fiction. That’s not to say that group narratives are always bad; they are sometimes an important force in our lives. But generations are never protagonists — they do not read books or fight wars or fall in love. People do. And we cannot presume to know how any event affects those people until they tell us themselves. Researchers can collect all the data they please, but when it comes to making stories out of it journalists are just spinning yarn.
By the way, I’d be remiss if I didn’t let all of you know the real way you know when you’re an adult. It’s not very complicated: If you’re fundamentally the same person drunk — or otherwise altered by chemicals, or even by strong emotions — as you are when you’re unaltered, then you know you’ve fully matured (and have very little else to worry about).
Filed under: world affairs
This week we opened up an article by Claire Berlinski about her not-so-impressive impressions of Turkey. Arts & Letters picked it up on Wednesday and the comments have been coming in ever since. It’s a good read, whether you agree with it or not. You can read it here and tell us what you think. The issue also features Ian Bremmer on China (here), Matthew Kaminski on South Africa (here), Fredrik Logevall and Kennth Osgood on Munich and the myth of appeasement (here), and more . . .
My friend Michelle sent this to me: a request from the writer Antonya Nelson for her friends to reveal the “most famous book you haven’t read” and the “worst book you adore.” It makes for some pretty good reading itself, and I kind of wish someone with a higher profile had done it — I’d love to see the variety of responses if, say, Paper Cuts or Bookslut put this to its readers. But this is fun, too.
Seeing the names of all those big books like “Ulysses” and “Moby-Dick” reminded me of something I’d read earlier today — some brief remarks from Esquire’s Benjamin Alsup touching on the decline of great novels and the triumph of Jonathan Franzen’s new book:
It’s not that Franzen’s prose makes other writers seem untalented; it’s that he makes them seem so lazy, so irrelevant, so lacking in the kind of chutzpah we once expected from our best authors. “Freedom” doesn’t name check “War and Peace” for nothing. It’s making a claim for shelf space among the kind of books that the big dogs used to write. The kind they called important. The kind they called greats.
I have concluded that we should all mandate some big-book reading for ourselves on a regular basis, perhaps with some government-subsidized programs that let us read on work time. I think our nation would benefit greatly. I’m only sort of kidding.
(By the way, I do not read Esquire nearly as much as this blog makes it look like I do at the moment. But it does churn out a good piece now and then, even though it is essentially Maxim with a better, and mostly lost, history. And better covers.)
Filed under: smersh
There’s a story in the latest issue of Esquire about a private endeavor to create an escape capsule for astronauts. A major step will be to test the technology for skydiving from the middle stratosphere — which, of course, means someone has to skydive from the middle stratosphere. Which is precisely what Felix Baumgartner will attempt later this year. He will free-fall from about 23 miles above the surface of the Earth, spending the first five minutes in a violent, 115,000-foot drop (during which he’ll break the sound barrier) before deploying his chute and spending the last fifteen minutes floating back to the ground. The video on the link explains the history in a much cooler way, but only one other person has survived a jump from above 100,000 feet (Joe Kittinger in 1960); the last person who tried to break the record died when his suit failed at 57,000 feet. Baumgartner will be jumping from about 120,000 feet. In an added bit of journalistic awesomeness, Esquire sent a homemade balloon/camera unit designed by Robert Harrison up to the same height to shoot the lead photo for the story — which, unfortunately, seems to only be available in print. You can see the making of the picture on the link above, though.
My friend Mark sent me a letter recently that tipped my interest toward Edmund Wilson, who I sort of always knew about but never quite looked into. Then, a few days later, I was watching a Charlie Rose interview with John Updike wherein possibly the most renowned American book reviewer in recent memory said there really wasn’t anyone around anymore – including himself, and I do see his point – who is doing comprehensive criticism of whole swaths of the canon. Not since Edmund Wilson, anyway. So I couldn’t help but check up on this guy. And really, it’s long overdue. This guy was a haus. Here are a few highlights from, uh, Wikipedia. Of all the amazing things, my favorite is that he lobbied for what eventually became the Library of America series; I find it deeply moving for some reason. Also, it’s pretty stellar to be Fitzgerald’s “intellectual conscience.”
Edmund Wilson (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary and social critic. He is considered by many to have been the 20th century’s preeminent American man of letters. . . . He began his professional writing career as a reporter for the New York Sun, and served in the army during the First World War.
Wilson was the managing editor of Vanity Fair in 1920 and 1921, and later served as associate editor of the New Republic and as a book reviewer for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. . . . He wrote plays, poems, and novels, but his greatest strength was literary criticism. . . . “Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930″ (1931) was a sweeping survey of Symbolism. It covered Arthur Rimbaud, Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (author of “Axel”), W. B. Yeats, Paul Valéry, T. S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. . . . In his landmark book “To the Finland Station” (1940), Wilson studied the course of European socialism, from the 1824 discovery by Jules Michelet of the ideas of Vico culminating in the 1917 arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station of Saint Petersburg to lead the Bolshevik Revolution.
Wilson lobbied for the creation of a series of classic U.S. literature similar to France’s Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. In 1982, ten years after his death, the Library of America series was launched.
Filed under: movies and tv
So it’s gotten a little toasty here lately. I’m not making any claims that it isn’t also hot elsewhere; I’m just saying it was 100 degrees yesterday, and also that when I was up at like quarter to five this morning sitting in front of my fan trying to get cool enough to go back to sleep, I couldn’t help but think of all the movies I would like to be watching just then. So here’s my little list of the perfect movies for hot summer days and nights.
God, I miss the 70s.
10. Rear Window – Let’s start with a classic. Jimmy Stewart’s got it so tough. There’s a heatwave in New York City and all he can do is sit in his itchy cast and watch his neighbors kill their wives and have Grace Kelly bring him dinner from 21. What’s an immobilized photojouranlist to do?!
9. The Day After Tomorrow – This movie kind of sucks. But it’s about the whole world getting covered in ice and snow. So, you know, it’s kind of hard to resist at a time like this. Close runners up in the portrayals-of-unbearably-cold-climates category are “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Shining,” and that scene in “Blade Runner” where the escaped replicants visit the guy who makes eyeballs.
8. The Bad News Bears – There’s nothing quite so satisfying after a long, hot, sweaty day of work than seeing a dirt-smeared kid pop open an ice cold beer. He deserves it, after all. And so do you. Besides, what’s a summer movie list without baseball? “Breaking Away” should probably also get a nod in the sporting category. No better cure for the summer heat than a dip in the old quarry.
7. Independence Day – Americans take out their heat-induced rage on aliens who try to ruin everyone’s Fourth of July cookout with their silly plans of intergalactic colonization. And while we’re talking about the US of A, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tip my hat to “1776.” Watching our founding fathers scream (and sing!) at each other in a windowless room dressed in wool from neck to toe … well, it makes you feel a bit better about your sitch. Also, if I remember correctly, there’s actually a song about how hot it is.
Hey, hot enough for ya?
6. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – Watch Humphrey Bogart go slowly insane under the crushing heat of the Mexican desert. Also gold fever.
5. Dog Day Afternoon – This one makes it for the title alone. Also the stellar performances and all of that. Al Pacino’s ill-fated bank heist ought to put anyone’s shitty day in perspective.
4. Alien – This remains the perfect movie to watch in the middle of any night, no matter what the season, but it’s especially perfect for a hot summer night. It’s cold, dark, and slow: the perfect antidote after a frantic July day.
3. Lawrence of Arabia – In the if-you-can’t-beat-it-join-it category, a 3 1/2 hour tribute to the desert and the fine people who call it home. “He likes your lemonade!”
2. Stand and Deliver – Any movie that includes a monologue about how to convince yourself you’re not as hot as you think you are should be standard viewing at a time like this.
1. Summer of Sam – You know, going a little insane is kind of what the height of summer is all about. So why not just celebrate it? I mean, sometimes you’re just a regular Joe livin’ in the Bronx, just tryin’ to hold down your part-time job as a male hairdresser while you’re pluggin’ your boss and your friend is gettin’ really into The Who and working as a male prostitute so he can start a band and may or may not be part of a satantic cult and the local goons you buy your coke and ludes from are always bustin’ your balls and all you want to do is get your pretty Catholic wife to join you at a sexy orgy downtown so you can have a fight to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” And then, all of a sudden, some psychopath starts shootin’ up the whole city because an ancient demon has taken possession of his neighbor’s dog – and everybody just goes batshit crazy! I mean, sometimes people are just really strange like that. Seriously, though, this movie defines the mania of a long, hot summer. Probably even better than “Do the Right Thing,” although that deserves a mention as well. Also, Jimmy Breslin calls David Berkowitz a “sick fuck” and John Leguizamo proclaims, “I can’t be a whore cause I’m a man!”
Here’s a little taste of what you have waiting for you:
Filed under: sports
Despite all the excitement and anticipation of stage 17 – and I’ll admit, I was really hoping for some fireworks – Alberto Contador reminded everyone that he was the champion and Andy Schleck the contender. Schleck handled himself surprisingly well considering Contador’s legendary and versatile climbing skills, leading out the Spaniard throughout the entire climb, except during Contador’s one attack, which Schleck tamped down with surprising poise (a reminder that Schleck will certainly be more than just a contender some day soon). But the bodies and the faces of these men as they made their way up the slopes of the Tourmalet foretold what would happen at the summit. Contador (in the leader’s jersey) appeared collected and in relatively good shape (although everyone at this point suffers terribly), whereas Schleck (in white) showed a lot more agony, literally streaming sweat from his face and at one point turning around about half a dozen times in the space of about thirty seconds, looking as though he might be about to crack (this happened before he caught Contador’s attack, which is what made his reply so impressive). The takeaway? Contador proved just too strong for the young Luxemburger, but the two put on a nonetheless exciting show for the Tour’s final mountain stage (watch it here).
As for the last few days (the race ends tomorrow in Paris), Schleck only trails Contador by 8 sec. in the overall standings. Traditionally it’s the climbing stages that determine who wears yellow, but with a difference this small there’s still a chance that Schleck could make a dent in Contador’s lead – or perhaps even take it. Today is a time trial from Bordeaux to Pauillac (52k, about an hour to ride) and although Contador is a superior time trialist, Schleck has vowed to ride like a little demon until he can’t ride anymore. At the moment, they’re both on the road, and Schleck has certainly lived up to his promise, closing the gap to 2-3 sec. (at this moment, that is). Contador could always get some last-minute juice to open his lead a little more; or Schleck, who could certainly be riding too hard too early, might just hit the wall. But there’s no doubt it’ll be yet another stage to remember. And, to be honest, I’d love to see Schleck do it.
UPDATE – Contador won the day, and the Tour, opening a gap of 39 sec. between himself and the man in white. He soldiered through the crosswinds and the final stretches of the hour-long TT, the stretches where Schleck, after sprinting early, eventually tired. It was a good finish for the now three-time champ. He surely didn’t expect contention this difficult, but he rose to it and truly earned his maillot jaune. His 39 sec. lead should also hush any grumbling about stage 15, where he gained 34 sec. on Schleck during a mechanical problem. All around, an exciting close to the race, and one that will make the final ride into Paris tomorrow all the more savory.
Only two months overdue on my original promise to visit Bar Pilar, I finally got up to this joint last week. I did not have whiskey, or really even think about Hemingway that much, but I did have a few beers — and a succulent beef brisket slider — and soaked up the atmosphere of this fine, little bar (which is in the U Street neighborhood, by the way). The crowd was a pleasant mix of professionals and sophistos and more slovenly types such as your reporter, and the flatscreen behind the bar played a silent double-screening of “Cleopatra” and “The Prince and the Showgirl,” which is a pretty classy combination if you haven’t had the pleasure. I think my favorite thing about this place, the “theme” aside, was the look of the bar itself. The room is long and slender and the bar is broken up by wooden frames, which makes it a pretty cozy place to have a drink, either solo or with a friend or two. … So don’t dawdle the way I did! — Get yourself on up there for a drink or a tasty snack. Papa would.
PS Can you see the typewriter over there in the corner of the bar? I mean, that should say it all.
I have not read the book or seen the movie, but I have always been a fan of Junger’s journalism. If you have a few minutes, you should take a look at this essay he wrote for the Daily Beast: a level-headed explanation of what “War” and “Restrepo” are all about and what Junger and his co-director, Tim Hetherington, tried to accomplish with their project. I’m interested to see how this book stacks up with Michael Herr’s “Dispatches”; Junger’s seems like a similar approach to writing about men and war.
Filed under: sports
Well, I’ve been a little quiet this year, but I’m going to make a last-minute effort to drum up some interest in the Tour de France. Tomorrow will likely be the last day for overall contention as it’s the final Pyrenees stage. Each tour has a couple of stretches in the mountains (usually two major stretches, one in the Alps and one in the Pyrenees), and because only the strongest leaders can compete in these grueling stages, the climbing stages almost always determine who will wear yellow in Paris. At the moment, the Spaniard Alberto Contador, who won last year and in 2007, leads the 25-year-old Luxembourger Andy Schleck by 8 sec. – a gap Schleck could potentially close tomorrow.
The race has already seen two days in the Pyrenees. On the second, Contador launched a controversial run on Schleck, who was leading at the time. Schleck’s chain popped off during an important climb (in this picture from AFP, you can see Schleck, in yellow, looking down at his ailing machine as Contador, the second in blue, moves up; you can watch it here), and where racing etiquette strongly suggests that riders do not challenge each other during moments of mechanical (or otherwise unavoidable) difficulty, Contador continued his attack nonetheless. Schleck finished stage 15 like a real contender, despite the setback (team leaders usually receive an incredible amount of help from their teammates in a variety of ways, but in critical moments like these, they have to perform for themselves), but he still lost 39 sec. to the Spaniard – a critical deficit at this point in the race (the third-place rider at the moment is a full two minutes behind Contador; the tenth is 7:51 back; and Lance Armstrong, in 25th place, is down 33:46).
Thus the importance of stage 17 tomorrow, which will contain three major climbs, including a mountaintop finish at the notorious Tourmalet (the first time a stage has closed there since 1974). And, as Schleck himself has remarked, the first climb of the day will take riders up Col du Marie-Blanc, where Armstrong and his US Postal team locked up the Tour (in 1999, I think; still trying to check that). Anyway, it’s a perfect lineup for the final showdown.
The showdown for yellow, that is, by the way, because in addition to overall contention, there are also competitions for climbing and sprinting. The race ends this weekend (there are 20 stages total), and sprinters will be trying to gain points right up through the final lap in Paris on Sunday. Because of the time gaps leaders can achieve in the mountains, however, it is rare that riders will contend in the overall standings through the final stages (which is why you’ll often see the winning team drinking champagne during the final jaunt into the capital city, where the race concludes with seven circuits around the Champ-Élysées).
There are many other reasons to enjoy this race – which, unfortunately, I didn’t have enough foresight to detail this season – but there’s no shame in jumping in at the last moment to watch what is sure to be an exciting final bout for this year’s Tour. You can watch the stage on Versus, which is available at pretty much any sports bar … or your own television, if that’s more your style. The race plays live here in the US around 6 AM (afternoon in France) and replays again around 8 PM.
The Guardian has a good layout of all the standings, etc., if you’re interested.
Filed under: movies and tv
If I were a man, I’d be nervous about taking a date to see “The Kids Are All Right,” a new film from Lisa Cholodenko, now in American cinemas. It wouldn’t be because the film, about a married lesbian couple with two teenage children, presents a threat to family values (it doesn’t), or because Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are so appealing as lesbians that female audience members maybe enticed to switch sides (it doesn’t work that way). I’d be nervous, rather, because Mark Ruffalo, as the couple’s sperm donor, is sexy to a degree that can only be described as squirm-inducing. Few male audience members will come off well next to the actor’s motorcycle-riding, wine-drinking, scruffy-faced character onscreen. He’s so comfortable with himself it makes you itch.
In case anyone missed my tweet yesterday, here are forty amazing pics commemorating the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, courtesy of the Boston Globe’s Big Picture. This particular picture is from the lunar module, looking down on the command module it has just detached from before it (the LEM) begins its powered descent onto the surface.
(Yeah, I kinda used to be really into this stuff.)
Before this whole operation completely runs aground yet again I’m taking it upon myself to write a little something — anything — just to keep a little blood going to it. There are already three other posts in the last month, however, that make similar remarks (I say at least three because that’s where I had to stop counting). It gives one pause. Perhaps I need to move back to the occasional essays model, which I used until about a year ago. I do have doubts about sustaining that, too, though.
The last month has been trying and revelatory. I’ve thought a lot — like, at times, almost constantly — about output. I don’t remember anymore if it’s because I’m reading a lot of David Foster Wallace or if I’m reading David Foster Wallace because I’m thinking so much about output. They’ve both kind of melded into one endeavor. But the effect has been to dwell quite seriously on what I want as a person, thinker, reader, writer, etc., and how it relates to all of these electronic means of expression and communication — and, ultimately, how it relates to communication in and of itself.
Here’s a good starting point for all of this, from a NYR review of David Lipsky’s weird (and not in a good way) new book on Wallace, wherein the late author talks about Tolstoy and how we really can’t expect our writers to write in quite the same way he did, to put it mildly:
Life seems to strobe on and off for me, and to barrage me with input. And that so much of my job is to impose some sort of order, or make some sort of sense of it. In a way that — maybe I’m very naive — I imagine Leo getting up in the morning, pulling on his homemade boots, going out to chat with the serfs whom he’s freed [Making clear he knows something about the texture and subject], you know. Sitting down in his silent room, overlooking some very well-tended gardens, pulling out his quill and . . . in deep tranquility, recollecting emotion.
And I don’t know about you. I just — stuff that’s like that, I enjoy reading, but it doesn’t feel true at all. I read it as a relief from what’s true. I read it as a relief from the fact that, I received five hundred thousand discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. And how am I going to sort those out, you know?
In my pottering around for more bits of information about writing, I also came across this aphorism from Jonathan Franzen, which attempts another cold truth about writing in the twenty-first century:
It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
The DFW quote, it’s worth noting, comes from 1996 — a decade and a half ago, when there were, with all due respect to Wallace’s plight, considerably fewer bits floating around than there are today; and, it’s also worth nothing, a far smaller share — if any? — of the publishing industry considered electronic print media (and the culture of electronic bit-sharing and general online interaction with texts, writers, and other readers) to be in any way integral to business. Now it’s so ubiquitous that a writer like Franzen can only advise, with what I cannot help but hear as a late-Hemingway-esque grunt, to totally disconnect. And yet the agony of the Wallace quote seems to be the actual cold truth that disconnection isn’t really possible — and nor, perhaps, should it be if the aim of the author is to capture human existence in its totality.
To be fair, Franzen probably just means for writers to disconnect at their workspace in the same way that they would avoid taking a phone call. It’s just impractical. But what if we’ve come to exist as connected?
There’s this Wendell Berry essay about going into the woods for a weekend and how long it takes to actually acclimate to a new environment — leaving civilization, entering into the wilderness. That’s kind of how I feel about writing. But if it takes, say, a full twenty-four hours to really disconnect and achieve tranquility, then there’s no way it’ll happen except on a weekend, which is right when all of the texting, chatting, calling, voicemailing, e-mailing, and tweeting seems to reach its weekly climax. So — to be blunt — unless you’re a full-time writer, you’re either a productive asshole or a responsible (but disgruntled) friend. Perhaps I exaggerate, but there’s a tension, a very specific kind of tension, that has become more common and more acute during the last decade.
Connectivity isn’t a ritual anymore, with times and places (a time to meet with friends, a time to write to friends, a time to talk on the phone), leaving a time when you are away from that. It’s more like an unending strain of spasms, as in something you don’t control. You just kind of do it. Which, to be honest, is one of the reasons I’ve found myself shying away from it all — even this blog — in the last couple of months. I do not think it is evil or bad or anything like that. But it is kind of driving me, personally, crazy. (And I don’t think finding an etiquette solves the problem of keeping special relationships special without giving up the search for pure solitude.) Some of it could have to do with electronic connectivity no longer just facilitating flesh-and-blood connectivity but actually replacing a whole lot of it.
I even have serious doubts about publishing this post, which is hardly motivating me to finish it. It’s difficult to explain, but I think I’ve reached the point where there’s not really anything I want to give to cyberspace anymore. I guess I’m OK posting this because I mostly just want to see it put down somewhere, but there’s also the consolation that it isn’t really all of what I’m thinking anyway. Maybe saying that is what satisfies the compromise. But there’s something about plumbing all the raw stuff of life — which is kind of what you have to do before you write anything worth writing — that makes all of this seem very silly, which brings on the great temptation to pack up a few books and move away from all of this forever. The frightening part, though, is that it is not silly. Getting away from it is a relief at first, but then it gets eerie, and I think I know why:
A couple of hundred years ago, when Wordsworth retired to his famous tranquility, he joined not only his fellow poets, but anyone else who could afford a little time alone. Solitude was an institution, not just some personal experiment. And certainly a requirement for a life of the mind. Which, in the end, surely lent a connectivity to disconnection — a man up reading late could sense a few others doing the same thing, or writing in journals, or concentrating deeply upon some thought in the candlelit silence. But he would not sense — as we do every night (and this is the crucial part) — a whole mass of countrymen (and I include myself in this mass, as recently as last night) shutting off their brains and feeding off the tube or clicking incessantly through online pap. He might look down upon some drunken revelers, but he would never sense that his own peers were slipping away into oblivion, which is kind of how it feels now, with all due love and respect to my fellow American intellectuals.
As DFW rather optimistically told Lipsky,
One of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us . . . that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need, I think — and I’m not saying I’m the person to do it . . . is serious engaged art, that can teach again that we’re smart.
I think we can safely say, however, that Wordsworth’s reality is dead forever, and has probably been dying slowly since the arrival of the television. Maybe this is what I’ve spent all of these days trying to get to, the revelation that the truly frightening thing about disconnection is not that it is the tough but honest path of the consummate thinker or artist but that life itself has become so directionless and scattershot that a writer concentrating in solitude might not even find anything worthwhile because there’s no one else there anymore; that a work so conceived and so composed might not even register with dwindling literary audiences; or that perhaps even thought and narrative (written, anyway) might not be able to hold our experience anymore.
I’m not saying writers should stop writing, but it does feel as though a novelist or a poet working today has basically resolved to fashion a very fine headstone. The way Homer or Shakespeare — or take-your-pick; Tolstoy, if you ask DFW — abides in truth to this day, but a truth more created out of our own reverence or aspiration than born of the work itself.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just always been like this. Maybe we all eventually grow and adapt to the world we’re given. I mean, we have to. But I don’t just want to say that that’s the upside of all of this just so there’s an upside. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe I just have to wait another month and try again.
Harvey Pekar died this morning. I admit that I don’t know anything about him and his work other than what I saw in “American Splendor,” but if even half that movie is true (and I have a feeling that most of it is), then we’ve certainly lost a fine thinker, artist, and man. Even if he wouldn’t want us to say that.
Thanks to Carolann for the word.
Last night I trekked out to Politics & Prose, which is something of a bookstore institution around here (if you’ve seen more than a couple of author talks on C-SPAN, odds are at least one of them was filmed at P&P). It’s always a treat to visit this store. If you use the Metro (for you locals who haven’t been yet, take the Red Line to Van Ness and walk northwest on Connecticut), it’s something of a pilgrimage; at the very least you can’t just happen upon it on the way home from work. You have to go there. This trip was particularly good, though. The bullshit quotient has been on the rise these days for hitherto inexplicable reasons (more of a gut feeling that there’s a lot more bullshit around than there usually is), and this kind of place provides an inherently low-bullshit kind of environment. It’s a safe space in a cruel world, a thing of beauty amid ugliness. I knew I’d made the right decision to come when I walked into the fiction room and saw, smack-dab in the middle of this wall of shelves, the Dover reprint of the first edition of “Ulysses” — blue as the ocean on the first day of creation (can you make it out in the picture?). I knew this book existed but I’d never actually seen it in person, which is kind of what bookstores are all about. In my relatively brief time as a book collector I’ve really come to appreciate the way independent stores stock their shelves — someone decided to order that, to shelve a book that no other store that I’ve ever been to had (and I’ve been to quite a few). It feels very good to be around merchants who care about their wares that way, especially when their wares are something you care about too. And to sit in one of their reading chairs in the cool, air-conditioned room and read Dickens as the evening came up outside … I need more days like that.
Thank you, Sarah, for sharing this gem of a story with me: Pennsylvania widow Jean Stevens, 91, lived with corpses of husband, twin. Actually, the story Sarah sent me was the Daily Intel recap which, although slightly less journalistic, was certainly a better read, starting with the blogger’s opening line: “This is a thing that happened.”
As if we needed another reason to love the world’s best newspaper, the Economist has brought back as a blog a language column, Johnson, that it ran in print from 1992 to 1999. … And, oh my, I cannot wait to start reading BRITISH snoots talking about language. Look at this OED head hatin’ on Webster’s. This is gonna be good.
“according to Merriam-Webster, albeit with no specific attribution, “deplane” dates all the way back to 1923″
Really, Dr Johnson, this just goes to show that if you intend to rely on any dictionary other than your own, you should turn to the OED, which will give you the actual citations rather than just the years. Here’s the earliest example of “deplane” (in the relevant sense) that the OED provides:
1923 Blackw. Mag. July 11/2 Dudley left me, saying..that he was to `deplane’ [sc. by parachute] now.
There’s also an earlier “deplane,” which is now obsolete, but which the OED defines as ‘To make plain, show plainly, declare (to).’
The last few weeks have been full of things to write about so it’s time to finally start working through the pile. First thing’s first: one of the greatest mail pieces I’ve ever received in my life, a Bloomsday card from my mother, which, amazingly arrived right on the day itself (that’s June 16th for all of you ignoramuses out there). Last year I was able to read a whole book of “Ulysses” that day; this year I wasn’t so lucky – in my exhaustion, I just muddled through a few pages of the Cyclops chapter after work and felt utterly defeated. How wonderful, then, to come home to this card. I was coming back from getting drinks with friends, thinking about Stephen and Bloom wandering aimlessly through their day, grappling with the uncertainty of their lives. Their legend had become my model for the day, a way of thinking of my own life, which, to be honest, is the kind of thinking that can make you feel very isolated in a place like DC. Anyway, this card was such a wonderful reminder of all the kindred souls out there who are as crazy as me. Thanks, Mom.
Filed under: myself/this blog
You know, sometimes it’s just best to avoid saying (or blogging) things like, “Oh, I think I’m finally done with all that work for that one thing.” Cause you know what? You are probably not done. And then you feel very stupid. And you still aren’t done.
So I’m not going to make that mistake twice. But I am blogging again regularly.
The Kojo Nnamdi Show had two great segments yesterday on local life in the nation’s capital – “Cultivating DC’s Cultural Life” and “Tracing DC’s Culinary History” (click here and here). The second segment is full of people calling in and remembering old joints around town. I kind of want to go back and listen to it with a map in front of me. Kojo has been on a roll this week for some reason; he has a segment today about identity politics and the Supreme Court – a lot of great call-ins, and a lot of debunking.
