On our way to Quincy to see my family today, but I wanted to thank everyone who has been in touch with TBG and I for their generous support. I'm very lucky to have a community — both corporeal and digital — with whom I can share such joyful and momentous occasions. Thank you all.
• A quick note for your Sunday: William Logan reviews Louise Glück's new book A Village Life at The New York Times. It is hard to gauge whether the review is 'positive' or 'negative' in the simplest sense, but there are a few moments of really high praise, such as when he compares Glück favorably to Rilke: 'At her discomforting best, she reminds me of no poet more than Rilke, who was also a case of nerves and who also lived close to the old myths. Though her comments about him have been hedged, of all the Americans now writing Glück is the closest to being his secret mythographer.' How complimentary! Although I think that the registers of language that Glück employs are not nearly as diverse as the language used by Rilke.
Logan does well to point out that Glück settled into the style of her 'dotage' early. I have often thought of her as a poet who writes one poem or one type of poem over and over. It's a reasonably good poem, but her range as a poet has been limited regardless. Glück's new collection apparently makes a significant attempt to broaden that approach into a more narrative style, a piecemeal set of scenes. Logan compares it to film, and writes that reading her poems are 'like watching a black-and-white movie; the landscape is drawn in chiaroscuro. For a poetic world to be this narrow, the poet’s desires must be powerfully austere.' It's a vivid and appropriate metaphor; art-house noir comes to mind. However, I try not one to make claims about the interior life of a poet based on their work: reading through poetry into the poet's psyche is a dangerous game, prone to inevitable failures.
As one can always expect from a William Logan piece, the review has already stirred up detractors and controversy around the internet — one commenter notes, 'It isn't legitimate to critique a poet primarily on the basis of tone or attitude. If Logan feels she fails to express that tone effectively, OK. But he doesn't say that. Logan isn't reviewing her book, he's competing with it. Gluck "beadily watches her prey"? No, that's Logan.'
I actually thought that particular extended metaphor ('Every desire in Glück is cautious, every pleasure suspect. She’s almost a feral poet, beadily watching her prey before making a devastating remark — her favorite form of greeting is the ambush.') quite accurate, if somewhat unnecessarily elaborate. Yet those elaborations are what make Logan's reviews entertaining, and are the fodder over which we all then argue and bicker. Not a bad thing; and, it may just be the point of a newspaper review. I'm on the fence.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Crazy Thursday, August 27
In not too long the motorcade carrying Senator Kennedy will be passing through the downtown area of Boston, where I work, so I need to get this out and quick in order to step out and pay my respects.
* At The Nation, James Longenbach reviews the new edition of Wallace Stevens' Selected Poems. He writes, 'Stevens stands simultaneously among the most worldly and the most otherworldly of American poets, and it is paradoxically through his otherworldliness — through poems whose plain-spoken diction feels spooky — that his respect for the actual world is registered. What is uncharacteristic about "The Men That Are Falling" is not the desire to write about a controversial war; Stevens often did that. What distinguishes the poem is the unconvincingly urgent rhetoric in which that desire is registered.'
* Ed Byrne gives a 100-title poetry reading list for the 20th Century. Thoughts? I think that collected or selected editions ought to be disqualified; regardless, I'm struck by how sparse the century was in terms of really obviously great poetry. This list probably could have been 50 titles and some of them still would've been in dispute.
* At The New Yorker, James Wood cogently (to my mind) criticizes the two major forms of godlessness: the New Atheist clan and what I'll term the Terry Eagleton approach. [subscription req.] There are plenty of problems with Wood's description of both sides — one could say he oversimplifies each — but the point he seems to want to make is that atheism in any form today has not constructed a truly fulfilling alternative to the religious lifestyle. As a professed non-believer himself, I suppose that this is a piece of articulate frustration with that fact.
* At The Nation, James Longenbach reviews the new edition of Wallace Stevens' Selected Poems. He writes, 'Stevens stands simultaneously among the most worldly and the most otherworldly of American poets, and it is paradoxically through his otherworldliness — through poems whose plain-spoken diction feels spooky — that his respect for the actual world is registered. What is uncharacteristic about "The Men That Are Falling" is not the desire to write about a controversial war; Stevens often did that. What distinguishes the poem is the unconvincingly urgent rhetoric in which that desire is registered.'
* Ed Byrne gives a 100-title poetry reading list for the 20th Century. Thoughts? I think that collected or selected editions ought to be disqualified; regardless, I'm struck by how sparse the century was in terms of really obviously great poetry. This list probably could have been 50 titles and some of them still would've been in dispute.
* At The New Yorker, James Wood cogently (to my mind) criticizes the two major forms of godlessness: the New Atheist clan and what I'll term the Terry Eagleton approach. [subscription req.] There are plenty of problems with Wood's description of both sides — one could say he oversimplifies each — but the point he seems to want to make is that atheism in any form today has not constructed a truly fulfilling alternative to the religious lifestyle. As a professed non-believer himself, I suppose that this is a piece of articulate frustration with that fact.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Edward M. Kennedy, 1932–2009
I was saddened this morning to learn of the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the age of 77. Teddy stood in a long shadow cast by two more famous brothers, and by his own enormous personal flaws and failures. Yet, I think his will be the more lasting and important legacy of the three famed Kennedy boys.For all the promise embodied by John's shortened Presidency and Bobby's run for the same office, Teddy Kennedy will be remembered as the one who realized their egalitarian ideals. His legislation over the years expanded and emboldened the democratic dream for millions of people, from killing the Poll Tax, to raising the minimum wage, to making more college loans available — the latter of which made it possible for me to get a degree. He was the consistent voice of the multitudes in our government: if you believed that those without riches deserve to be represented equally, you inevitably admired Teddy, whose admirable bipartisan success 'owed more to craftsmanship than charm, more to diligence than blarney.' To my mind, there is no higher praise than that.
Addendum:
At The New Republic, E.J. Dionne writes of Ted's honest compassion and liberal humanism: 'for his entire career, in season and out, Kennedy had a righteous obsession with the profound injustices and shameful inefficiencies of an American health care system that bankrupts the sick and inflicts needless agony on those who cannot cross a doctor's threshold. It would be an unforgivable tragedy if Kennedy's death were to weaken rather than strengthen the forces battling for health care reform, which Kennedy called "the cause of my life." . . . His compassion was real, not contrived, and it extended to individual human beings and not just to the masses in the crowds who cheered him, and will keep cheering for a long time.'
CNN reports on the lengths to which Ted Kennedy went for small but human victories. By request of grandmother Katz, settled in Boston, Ted traveled to Moscow and won freedom for a group of refusniks from Soviet Russia: "A bunch of KGB men came with [Kennedy] into the room and he just turned around and told the KGB men, 'Go away,'" Katz recalled. "This was clearly the first [time] ever I witnessed something like this. Here the all-powerful KGB men wanted to be at the meeting and the senator just told them to go away, and they looked at each other and just left." The daughter, Jessica Katz, who was deathly ill and without proper treatment in Moscow, 'lacks the cynicism about the government that many others in her generation may have. Kennedy, she said, proved that some politicians have a desire to accomplish good things and fight injustice.'
The Boston Globe has a slew of articles today, and it is worth reading them all.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Delinquent Monday
Sorry about the late post today. I arrived at work to my computer crashing — an ongoing problem, so I had to lug it up to the Apple Store on Boylston Street (yeah, that was me). Was graced by petty cash with a cab ride back. But then it rained; like, The Who "Rain on Me" screaming explosion of God's wrath rain, and I wore a co-worker's babyfood yellow polo shirt (the extra he always keeps in his office) for the rest of the day. It was better than being wet though, and TBG thought I looked sexy.
Tonight's Boston Poetry Union reading at Pierre Menard Gallery was really great, thanks to everyone who came out. Melissa Green and George Kalogeris were both brilliant, as I have come to know that they are, and the other BPU readers ran the gambit from MFA student to first-time-wrokshoppers, and were all very enjoyable. Plus, free wine & TBG treated she and I to Mr Barley's Burger Cottage afterward. Huzzah!
Speaking of Huzzah! allow me to direct you to Helen Vendler's review of the new Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens, at the New York Times. It's always a good thing to draw attention to the work of a poet of Stevens' caliber, and I think that Vendler particularly excels in her reviews. Never one to take the obvious track, the critic on this occasion writes of the poet's 'fierce reticence' in his poetry, which belies a richly emotional inner and private life:
'The only deficiency of the excellent new Selected Poems is that it must exclude — being drawn entirely from Stevens’s published volumes — such revealing material. It therefore gives the impression, as the volumes did, of an impersonal poet with no private griefs, a poet chiefly concerned with the relations between the imagined and the real. Stevens himself endorsed this (partial) description; it is not solely the creation of his readers. But it is a mistaken view. Because of his fierce reticence (rather like that of Emily Dickinson, whom he admired), Stevens wrote symbolic rather than transcriptive poetry. How differently might a reader take in “Burghers of Petty Death” if it had been called “A Son’s Lament for His Dead Parents,” or “The Snow Man” if it had been called “Stoicism in a Failed Marriage”? Like Dickinson, Stevens has won a wide audience in spite of the guard he put on his privacy, and we are now better acquainted with his sorrows. . . . What has been omitted? The juvenilia, the unpublished poems of unhappy love, the less interesting verbal experiments and a few of the more difficult lyrics that might turn away beginners. Serio, with distinct courage, has chosen to include most of Stevens’s major sequences, declaring, by this act, that Stevens would not be Stevens without them.'
Tonight's Boston Poetry Union reading at Pierre Menard Gallery was really great, thanks to everyone who came out. Melissa Green and George Kalogeris were both brilliant, as I have come to know that they are, and the other BPU readers ran the gambit from MFA student to first-time-wrokshoppers, and were all very enjoyable. Plus, free wine & TBG treated she and I to Mr Barley's Burger Cottage afterward. Huzzah!
Speaking of Huzzah! allow me to direct you to Helen Vendler's review of the new Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens, at the New York Times. It's always a good thing to draw attention to the work of a poet of Stevens' caliber, and I think that Vendler particularly excels in her reviews. Never one to take the obvious track, the critic on this occasion writes of the poet's 'fierce reticence' in his poetry, which belies a richly emotional inner and private life:
'The only deficiency of the excellent new Selected Poems is that it must exclude — being drawn entirely from Stevens’s published volumes — such revealing material. It therefore gives the impression, as the volumes did, of an impersonal poet with no private griefs, a poet chiefly concerned with the relations between the imagined and the real. Stevens himself endorsed this (partial) description; it is not solely the creation of his readers. But it is a mistaken view. Because of his fierce reticence (rather like that of Emily Dickinson, whom he admired), Stevens wrote symbolic rather than transcriptive poetry. How differently might a reader take in “Burghers of Petty Death” if it had been called “A Son’s Lament for His Dead Parents,” or “The Snow Man” if it had been called “Stoicism in a Failed Marriage”? Like Dickinson, Stevens has won a wide audience in spite of the guard he put on his privacy, and we are now better acquainted with his sorrows. . . . What has been omitted? The juvenilia, the unpublished poems of unhappy love, the less interesting verbal experiments and a few of the more difficult lyrics that might turn away beginners. Serio, with distinct courage, has chosen to include most of Stevens’s major sequences, declaring, by this act, that Stevens would not be Stevens without them.'
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Reading Tomorrow in Boston
Tomorrow night (Monday, August 24) at 6:00 pm, poets Melissa Green and George Kalogeris will be reading from their work along with select members of the Boston Poetry Union. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served following the reading.
Where: Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge
When: 6:00 pm
For more information visit the event's webpage
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Robinson, by Weldon Kees
"Robinson"
by Weldon Kees
The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,
Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.
Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.
Which is all of the room — walls, curtains,
Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson's first wife,
Rugs, vases panatelas in a humidor.
They would fill the room if Robinson came in.
The pages in the books are blank,
The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair,
Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here.
All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson
Calling. It never rings when he is here.
Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun.
Outside, the birds circle continuously
Where trees are actual and take no holiday.
[Thanks to Fulcrum editor Stephen Sturgeon for this recommendation.]
by Weldon Kees
The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,
Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.
Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.
Which is all of the room — walls, curtains,
Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson's first wife,
Rugs, vases panatelas in a humidor.
They would fill the room if Robinson came in.
The pages in the books are blank,
The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair,
Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here.
All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson
Calling. It never rings when he is here.
Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun.
Outside, the birds circle continuously
Where trees are actual and take no holiday.
[Thanks to Fulcrum editor Stephen Sturgeon for this recommendation.]
Friday, August 21, 2009
Penguin's Great Ideas
Robert Hanks, at The New Statesman, has an essay on the pleasant surprise of Penguin's success with its Great Ideas series. In response to the criticism that the series is 'too Eurocentric' and 'too male,' Hanks writes, 'The series has, on the whole, resisted tokenism in favour of continuities of debate: what was satisfying about Frantz Fanon's appearance in last year's third series, in the shape of an extract from The Wretched of the Earth, was that he stood alongside Burke, Trotsky and Ruskin — that he was treated not just as a post-colonial thinker, but as a philosopher arguing on equal terms about the nature of politics, violence and freedom.'
I would argue that all thinkers, all writers maybe, ought to be seen in this light. The historical context of someone like Fanon is absolutely key to understanding his ideas, as is his racial identity, as is his place in the traditions of Marxism and postcolonialism — but his engagement in a wider and older debate is just as important. The ideas of a Franz Fanon or a Virginia Woolf are appropriate to all human beings, not only to the postcolonial and the feminist. Their ancestry should not preclude access to the forum, nor should their own particular traditions be erased. Although we live in a world that still very much draws the terms of its most important arguments from Europe's historical thought, there should be more of the world in this series. Is there a single South American (or Spanish-language) author? Or any Islamic or middle eastern thought? Anything from Asia besides The Art of War? Obscure European authors are a poor substitute; it would be better to see a libertine author next to Confucius, or an Islamic and a Carolignian iconoclast paired with someone like Ruskin.
I would argue that all thinkers, all writers maybe, ought to be seen in this light. The historical context of someone like Fanon is absolutely key to understanding his ideas, as is his racial identity, as is his place in the traditions of Marxism and postcolonialism — but his engagement in a wider and older debate is just as important. The ideas of a Franz Fanon or a Virginia Woolf are appropriate to all human beings, not only to the postcolonial and the feminist. Their ancestry should not preclude access to the forum, nor should their own particular traditions be erased. Although we live in a world that still very much draws the terms of its most important arguments from Europe's historical thought, there should be more of the world in this series. Is there a single South American (or Spanish-language) author? Or any Islamic or middle eastern thought? Anything from Asia besides The Art of War? Obscure European authors are a poor substitute; it would be better to see a libertine author next to Confucius, or an Islamic and a Carolignian iconoclast paired with someone like Ruskin.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Cardinal Sin of Teaching
Stephen Zelnick at Minding the Campus writes about the cardinal sin of teaching poetry. 'I told a student her interpretation of a poem was wrong. From that moment I was regarded as an enemy to freedom,' he writes. This is a familiar scene to me. I sat through many hours listening to some half-baked, half-assed, juvenile interpretation of a poem or passage with an otherwise perfectly capable professor nodding their head all along the way. I'm not sure when a university classroom became a place where students go to be told how wonderful their baseless readings are. It seems to have something to do with the diffusion of Deconstructive readings, which appear random, and arbitrary; in fact, they intend to point out the arbitrariness of language itself on some high level so the students are not wrong to perceive this. They are only wrong to mis-interpret it as the most virtuous quality of that approach.
Anyhow, I feel for Zelnick. He goes on: 'It is a sad business for students that words mean something particular, that "churlish" is not a term of praise, as I had to tell one "Humpty-Dumpty-ite." She called me "pretentious," though I am not sure what she meant. It is sadder still that readers must attend to all parts of the poem and not grab hold of something familiar, as they pass in and out of consciousness, and build their case on that. Unhappily, form counts; meditative poems don't use jingling rhymes. Few poems are effusions that flow unimpeded from the poet's heart. Poets work hard revising their creations, as manuscripts demonstrate, even for the most direct-sounding lyrics. Except for Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" few poems pretend to be dream episodes. Poems, sad to say, are not Rorschach patterns but carefully constructed designs. Poetry for my students happens in a sacred grove where creativity runs naked and free and where no opinion is unworthy or fails to earn astonished praise. I tell myself: "Be warned: smile sweetly; learn to say "how wonderful!" But I can't do it.'
Anyhow, I feel for Zelnick. He goes on: 'It is a sad business for students that words mean something particular, that "churlish" is not a term of praise, as I had to tell one "Humpty-Dumpty-ite." She called me "pretentious," though I am not sure what she meant. It is sadder still that readers must attend to all parts of the poem and not grab hold of something familiar, as they pass in and out of consciousness, and build their case on that. Unhappily, form counts; meditative poems don't use jingling rhymes. Few poems are effusions that flow unimpeded from the poet's heart. Poets work hard revising their creations, as manuscripts demonstrate, even for the most direct-sounding lyrics. Except for Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" few poems pretend to be dream episodes. Poems, sad to say, are not Rorschach patterns but carefully constructed designs. Poetry for my students happens in a sacred grove where creativity runs naked and free and where no opinion is unworthy or fails to earn astonished praise. I tell myself: "Be warned: smile sweetly; learn to say "how wonderful!" But I can't do it.'
Thursday's Twosome
• The New York Times reports that the Brooklyn Library has a secret vault where they keep the banned children's books — no, kidding. 'The objection [to Tintin au Congo] was reviewed by a panel, in keeping with the library’s policy. It determined the book no longer belonged on the open stacks, but rather should be tucked away in the Hunt Collection, which are kept in a vault-like room accessible only to staff members.' Et tu, New York?
• Scott Esposito (of Critical Flame and Quarterly Conversation fame) alerts us to a new set of W.G. Sebald guides coming out from New Directions. He writes, 'It's strange to say, but from Austerlitz on I've rigorously marked up my Sebalds with a pencil, and I feel so connected to each of his books while I'm reading each that it's difficult to imagine coming back to any one of them and finding something the feels wholly new.' I enjoyed but was underwhelmed by Austerlitz. After hearing so much praise for its mix of media, I had expected the use of illustrations to really inform the text — but they only seemed to illustrate passages of already lucid verbal descriptions. They added little, to my mind, but I'm curious to read up on it. Otherwise, I thought it a beautiful book. Will have to pick up more Sebald: what should I read next?
• Scott Esposito (of Critical Flame and Quarterly Conversation fame) alerts us to a new set of W.G. Sebald guides coming out from New Directions. He writes, 'It's strange to say, but from Austerlitz on I've rigorously marked up my Sebalds with a pencil, and I feel so connected to each of his books while I'm reading each that it's difficult to imagine coming back to any one of them and finding something the feels wholly new.' I enjoyed but was underwhelmed by Austerlitz. After hearing so much praise for its mix of media, I had expected the use of illustrations to really inform the text — but they only seemed to illustrate passages of already lucid verbal descriptions. They added little, to my mind, but I'm curious to read up on it. Otherwise, I thought it a beautiful book. Will have to pick up more Sebald: what should I read next?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Quick thoughts on finishing The Portrait of a Lady
I've finally finished Henry James' classic novel The Portrait of a Lady, which I enjoyed enormously. It is fairly difficult to find a critical word against the novel — which is to say, one has to wade through an enormous amount of praise to arrive at some — and these negative criticisms seem to exist primarily through the lens of hindsight.
Just after its publication in 1881, the Atlantic Monthly described the novel's effect: 'What renders it distinct from, say, Thackeray's method, with which it has been compared, or from George Eliot's, is the limitation of the favorite generalizations and analyses. If the reader will attend, he will see that these take place quite exclusively wirhin the boundaries of the story and characters. That is to say, when the people in the book stop acting or speaking, it is to give to the novelist an opportunity, not to indulge in general reflections, having application to all sorts and conditions of men, of whom his dramatis personae are but a part, — he has no desire to share humanity with them, — but to make acute reflections upon these particular people, and to explain more thoroughly than their words and acts can the motives which lie behind. We may, on general grounds, doubt the self-confidence or power of a novelist who feels this part of his performance to be essential, but there can be no cloubt that Mr. James's method is a part of that concentration of mind which results in a singular consistency.'
This seems to remain the leading view. It goes on to point out that many readers felt disappointed by the novel's ending, suspecting that 'something of the reader's dissatisfaction at this juncture comes from his dislike of Goodwood.' Which may be true — he is a 'jack-in-the-box' of sorts and an odd set of characters on which to end the novel (in contrast, Lord Warburton seems more persistently present throughout). Of course, the ending is the great point of contention, and probably the novel's lasting interest is due in part to our ability to now conjecture over its 'meaning.' To my mind, Goodwood and Stockpole (both Dickensian names, incidentally) form an excellent contrast against which the absence of Isabel's character is to be felt. The coincidence of her departure and end of narration, leaving her two possible redeemers to a return to her husband (perhaps, heroically, for Pansy's sake), seems to me to imply the erasure of her character. I'm sure my feelings on this will change.
It is clear how the novel foreshadows a number of imminent literary movements. James begins an earnest and authentic dissection of the interior life that would be more completely realized by the likes of Faulkner, Gilman, and Joyce. His trans-Atlantic and international social groups also seemed to mimic the lost generation to come. I was surprised by the several gaps of knowledge or certainty in the personal, and not free-indirect, narration — the expectation on my part was formed by having so many critics use the novel as a byword for the free indirect style, along with Flaubert. No, this is very much one person's voice attempting to explain the motives and inner life of others, as made obvious in Isabel's meeting with Caspar Goodwood in chapter XXXII. After a cursory search, I see that Adré Marshall refers to the style as quasi-figurative, in which 'the intrusive narrator is intermittently visible — or overtly audible — temporarily displacing the figural medium,' in his study The Turn of the Mind: Constituting Consciousness in Henry James. It seems worth noting.
Just after its publication in 1881, the Atlantic Monthly described the novel's effect: 'What renders it distinct from, say, Thackeray's method, with which it has been compared, or from George Eliot's, is the limitation of the favorite generalizations and analyses. If the reader will attend, he will see that these take place quite exclusively wirhin the boundaries of the story and characters. That is to say, when the people in the book stop acting or speaking, it is to give to the novelist an opportunity, not to indulge in general reflections, having application to all sorts and conditions of men, of whom his dramatis personae are but a part, — he has no desire to share humanity with them, — but to make acute reflections upon these particular people, and to explain more thoroughly than their words and acts can the motives which lie behind. We may, on general grounds, doubt the self-confidence or power of a novelist who feels this part of his performance to be essential, but there can be no cloubt that Mr. James's method is a part of that concentration of mind which results in a singular consistency.'
This seems to remain the leading view. It goes on to point out that many readers felt disappointed by the novel's ending, suspecting that 'something of the reader's dissatisfaction at this juncture comes from his dislike of Goodwood.' Which may be true — he is a 'jack-in-the-box' of sorts and an odd set of characters on which to end the novel (in contrast, Lord Warburton seems more persistently present throughout). Of course, the ending is the great point of contention, and probably the novel's lasting interest is due in part to our ability to now conjecture over its 'meaning.' To my mind, Goodwood and Stockpole (both Dickensian names, incidentally) form an excellent contrast against which the absence of Isabel's character is to be felt. The coincidence of her departure and end of narration, leaving her two possible redeemers to a return to her husband (perhaps, heroically, for Pansy's sake), seems to me to imply the erasure of her character. I'm sure my feelings on this will change.
It is clear how the novel foreshadows a number of imminent literary movements. James begins an earnest and authentic dissection of the interior life that would be more completely realized by the likes of Faulkner, Gilman, and Joyce. His trans-Atlantic and international social groups also seemed to mimic the lost generation to come. I was surprised by the several gaps of knowledge or certainty in the personal, and not free-indirect, narration — the expectation on my part was formed by having so many critics use the novel as a byword for the free indirect style, along with Flaubert. No, this is very much one person's voice attempting to explain the motives and inner life of others, as made obvious in Isabel's meeting with Caspar Goodwood in chapter XXXII. After a cursory search, I see that Adré Marshall refers to the style as quasi-figurative, in which 'the intrusive narrator is intermittently visible — or overtly audible — temporarily displacing the figural medium,' in his study The Turn of the Mind: Constituting Consciousness in Henry James. It seems worth noting.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Nefarious Undercurrent of Health Care Reform
At The Root today, Sherrilyn A. Ifill writes, 'There is a legitimate debate to be had about health care reform. Without question, some town hall participants legitimately want to engage in this debate. But the use of swastikas, racist imagery and death threats against the president have nothing to do with single-payer, public option or end-of-life counseling. It has everything to do with racism. That racist imagery and threats have infiltrated some areas should be cause enough for serious concern by the elected officials who preside over these events.'
I had seen reports on the hysterical vehemence of the opposition to reform, but not the details included in this piece — it's a bit startling. Given the enormity of the change that is being enacted, though, we should expect people to be scared. They have a lot to lose, and as with any change there is no guarantee of success. Fear, societal fear, always allows for manipulation by the most detestable elements of a culture; they take hold of the least admirable part of ourselves. Let's hope that our more democratic virtues stem these undercurrents of ignorance: no good can come from legislature crafted without reasonable debate.
I had seen reports on the hysterical vehemence of the opposition to reform, but not the details included in this piece — it's a bit startling. Given the enormity of the change that is being enacted, though, we should expect people to be scared. They have a lot to lose, and as with any change there is no guarantee of success. Fear, societal fear, always allows for manipulation by the most detestable elements of a culture; they take hold of the least admirable part of ourselves. Let's hope that our more democratic virtues stem these undercurrents of ignorance: no good can come from legislature crafted without reasonable debate.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Kind of Blue for 50 Years
Miles Davis' milestone album Kind of Blue turns 50 today, and Fred Kaplan has a great explanation of why the album is so beloved, so important, and so unbearably great. 'Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which was released 50 years ago today, is a nearly unique thing in music or any other creative realm: a huge hit — the best-selling jazz album of all time — and the spearhead of an artistic revolution. Everyone, even people who say they don't like jazz, likes Kind of Blue. It's cool, romantic, melancholic, and gorgeously melodic. [. . .] what made it so great? The answer here is simple: the musicians. Throughout his career, certainly through the 1950s and '60s, Miles Davis was an instinctively brilliant recruiter; a large percentage of his sidemen went on to be great leaders, and these sidemen — especially Evans, Coltrane, and Adderley — were among his greatest. They came to the date, were handed music that allowed them unprecedented freedom (to sing their "own song," as Russell put it), and they lived up to the challenge, usually on the first take; they had a lot of their own song to sing.'
Friday, August 14, 2009
Treasure Trove of Distraction
For your Friday:
• Well, tenure was fun while it lasted, wasn't it? The Chronicle of Higher Education and Mark Bauerlein predict the end of this once-necessary, now corrupt and absurd system. No one's job should be perfectly and immaculately safe, just as no employer should be free to fire at whim or will. Bauerlein writes, 'tenure has been declining for a long, long time. Professors with tenure haven’t been fired, to be sure, [except in the most egregious cases, they can't be fired — ed.] but when tenured profs have retired, the administration hasn’t replaced them with tenure-track lines. It’s a simple process of attrition, and because the remaining professors keep their tenure, they aren’t inclined to raise a ruckus.'
• At Booksquare, Kasia Kroszer makes a good point: 'The competition for books isn’t necessarily other books as much as everything else in life. Given all the demands readers face, I am amused by publishing people who insist on “preserving the value” of what they publish. I’d be more sympathetic to this argument if publishers could make it less patently obvious that “value” often means “supporting our pricey, risky business decisions”, such as paying million dollar advances for books about cats. . . and I say this as a cat person! Even if this title earns out, even if the advance is structured with lots of hoops, honestly, one million dollars? Am I going to “value” this book the same way the publisher does? Or am I going to look at a book priced to recoup this crazy amount of money and think, “You know, I just don’t need it.”' A book about cats? No one does.
• At The Huffington Post, Tom Matlack complains that publishing is dominated by women and has given up on male readers as an industry. 'We collected a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Charlie LeDuff), an NFL Hall of Famer (Andre Tippett), a New York Times war photographer (Michael Kamber), a Sing Sing inmate gone straight (Julio Medina), a fantasy baseball legend (Mark St. Amant), a poet Laureate (Robert Pinsky) along with normal guys (black, white, straight, gay, rich, poor, married and divorced) with stories to tell about being fathers, sons, husbands and providers at this turning point in man-history. We hired the best agent in the business, wrote a detailed book proposal, and went shopping for a publisher. Fifty (that's 5-0, including a who's who list of the literary world) turned us down. They told us guys don't read, would never read any kind of anthology, and most certainly wouldn't read an anthology about men. Apparently we are all mindless fools.' This is not a completely baseless complaint.
• The New York Times reports that the prominent textbook publisher Cengage will start a new program by which students rent their books instead of buying them. 'Students who choose Cengage’s rental option will get immediate access to the first chapter of the book electronically, in e-book format, and will have a choice of shipping options for the printed book. When the rental term — 60, 90 or 130 days — is over, students can either return the textbook or buy it.' Their biggest competition: the library, where they cost $0.
• Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Yes Brain, but how are we going to find out what Stephen Burt is reading this summer? Well, Critical Mass has the answers.
• I'm not sure that this actually happened, but it amuses me anyhow: Neatorama reports that a gang of actual clowns rallied against and made fools of a bunch of white power morons.
• Well, tenure was fun while it lasted, wasn't it? The Chronicle of Higher Education and Mark Bauerlein predict the end of this once-necessary, now corrupt and absurd system. No one's job should be perfectly and immaculately safe, just as no employer should be free to fire at whim or will. Bauerlein writes, 'tenure has been declining for a long, long time. Professors with tenure haven’t been fired, to be sure, [except in the most egregious cases, they can't be fired — ed.] but when tenured profs have retired, the administration hasn’t replaced them with tenure-track lines. It’s a simple process of attrition, and because the remaining professors keep their tenure, they aren’t inclined to raise a ruckus.'
• At Booksquare, Kasia Kroszer makes a good point: 'The competition for books isn’t necessarily other books as much as everything else in life. Given all the demands readers face, I am amused by publishing people who insist on “preserving the value” of what they publish. I’d be more sympathetic to this argument if publishers could make it less patently obvious that “value” often means “supporting our pricey, risky business decisions”, such as paying million dollar advances for books about cats. . . and I say this as a cat person! Even if this title earns out, even if the advance is structured with lots of hoops, honestly, one million dollars? Am I going to “value” this book the same way the publisher does? Or am I going to look at a book priced to recoup this crazy amount of money and think, “You know, I just don’t need it.”' A book about cats? No one does.
• At The Huffington Post, Tom Matlack complains that publishing is dominated by women and has given up on male readers as an industry. 'We collected a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Charlie LeDuff), an NFL Hall of Famer (Andre Tippett), a New York Times war photographer (Michael Kamber), a Sing Sing inmate gone straight (Julio Medina), a fantasy baseball legend (Mark St. Amant), a poet Laureate (Robert Pinsky) along with normal guys (black, white, straight, gay, rich, poor, married and divorced) with stories to tell about being fathers, sons, husbands and providers at this turning point in man-history. We hired the best agent in the business, wrote a detailed book proposal, and went shopping for a publisher. Fifty (that's 5-0, including a who's who list of the literary world) turned us down. They told us guys don't read, would never read any kind of anthology, and most certainly wouldn't read an anthology about men. Apparently we are all mindless fools.' This is not a completely baseless complaint.
• The New York Times reports that the prominent textbook publisher Cengage will start a new program by which students rent their books instead of buying them. 'Students who choose Cengage’s rental option will get immediate access to the first chapter of the book electronically, in e-book format, and will have a choice of shipping options for the printed book. When the rental term — 60, 90 or 130 days — is over, students can either return the textbook or buy it.' Their biggest competition: the library, where they cost $0.
• Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Yes Brain, but how are we going to find out what Stephen Burt is reading this summer? Well, Critical Mass has the answers.
• I'm not sure that this actually happened, but it amuses me anyhow: Neatorama reports that a gang of actual clowns rallied against and made fools of a bunch of white power morons.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
J.M. Coetzee; Edward Byrne: Editor; Jane Austen
Good morning! Just a few quick notables for the moment:
* The New York Review of Books has posted the Podcast / MP3 of J.M. Coetzee reading from his forthcoming novel, Summertime. Take a break sometime today and give it a listen. I need to pick up his last book, and have been meaning to for some time; and I must do it before I read the new book, if I ever do. The line, 'So he is cast back on his father as his father is cast back on him', particularly struck me.
* At Very Like a Whale, a 10-questions interview with Edward Byrne (who runs a very enjoyable blog himself) on his editorial philosophies at the Valparaiso Poetry Review. A bit of interesting feedback, although one gets the impression that Byrne is exhibiting a certain moderation and restraint in his responses.
* At the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley re-examines Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, though, that over the years just about everyone has taken a crack at Austen. Her novels have been translated into dozens of languages and apparently lose nothing in the process. More movies, plays and television programs have been drawn from her work than I can count — a search for her at the Internet Movie Database yields enough links to keep one occupied for a week — and at the moment one of the books on the Washington Post bestseller list is something called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation for the young — or the young at heart — by Seth Grahame-Smith, a Los Angeles writer-producer and Huffington Post blogger. You can even read, if necessity seizes you with irresistible ferocity, Jane Austen for Dummies. My impression, though, is that Pride and Prejudice, along with the rest of Austen's work, remains resolutely impervious to all this meddling.' I have never been able to finish it myself.
* The New York Review of Books has posted the Podcast / MP3 of J.M. Coetzee reading from his forthcoming novel, Summertime. Take a break sometime today and give it a listen. I need to pick up his last book, and have been meaning to for some time; and I must do it before I read the new book, if I ever do. The line, 'So he is cast back on his father as his father is cast back on him', particularly struck me.
* At Very Like a Whale, a 10-questions interview with Edward Byrne (who runs a very enjoyable blog himself) on his editorial philosophies at the Valparaiso Poetry Review. A bit of interesting feedback, although one gets the impression that Byrne is exhibiting a certain moderation and restraint in his responses.
* At the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley re-examines Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, though, that over the years just about everyone has taken a crack at Austen. Her novels have been translated into dozens of languages and apparently lose nothing in the process. More movies, plays and television programs have been drawn from her work than I can count — a search for her at the Internet Movie Database yields enough links to keep one occupied for a week — and at the moment one of the books on the Washington Post bestseller list is something called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation for the young — or the young at heart — by Seth Grahame-Smith, a Los Angeles writer-producer and Huffington Post blogger. You can even read, if necessity seizes you with irresistible ferocity, Jane Austen for Dummies. My impression, though, is that Pride and Prejudice, along with the rest of Austen's work, remains resolutely impervious to all this meddling.' I have never been able to finish it myself.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Metaphors for My Life: Part 1
I enjoy reading the series of critic's responses to television shows on the AV Club (especially the older shows that I already liked enough to hear them recapped). NewsRadio is one of the shows whose response I look forward to each week. Today, Donna Bowman wrote, 'Dave thinks leadership is about clarity, but Mr. James provides an example of leadership through apparent chaos. It puzzles but intrigues Dave, because he senses it's the only way to actually handle creative, unpredictable people. And Mr. James appreciates Dave for his endless quest to make some sense out of the chaos, a noble effort without which we'd just be watching a zany anything-goes farce instead of a masterpiece of short-form comedy.' And I realized, I am Dave. My boss is very much Jimmy James. I spend the better part of a day dealing with esoteric compliments on my shoes, bantering about the wonderfulness of the water bubbler, being asked if there is coffee, and generally leaping from subject to subject at the whim of apparent anarchy. It's all coming together now, and it's sort of pathetic: my real life finds its readiest model in this eccentric, oddball little sitcom.
George Szirtes Blog
I highly, highly recommend that you skip right over to poet & translator George Szirtes' blog now. I could spend all day reading up on the back posts. From today's:
"I am doing a lot of Márai posting at the moment because I am deeply immersed in translating him, that is in between others, like Krasznahorkai and various poets. I do far too much of this sort of thing and I wake in the morning, saying to myself: Stop it and write your own grands oeuvres! and I think I will, I actually will stop it, once I have cleared the decks, taking on nothing more for two or three years. [Carries on talking to himself...]
Ah, Márai on poverty. The fascination of Márai is the sheer intensity and articulacy of his intellect. He feels everything and tries to describe it the way an explorer might describe a voyage. It's what makes him a thrilling read. I don't mean that his mind is a 100% original mind. In many ways he is a man of his time, a self-confessed bourgeois-cum-citoyen, but there is all this substructure and superstructure that is perfectly heroic in scale."
"I am doing a lot of Márai posting at the moment because I am deeply immersed in translating him, that is in between others, like Krasznahorkai and various poets. I do far too much of this sort of thing and I wake in the morning, saying to myself: Stop it and write your own grands oeuvres! and I think I will, I actually will stop it, once I have cleared the decks, taking on nothing more for two or three years. [Carries on talking to himself...]
Ah, Márai on poverty. The fascination of Márai is the sheer intensity and articulacy of his intellect. He feels everything and tries to describe it the way an explorer might describe a voyage. It's what makes him a thrilling read. I don't mean that his mind is a 100% original mind. In many ways he is a man of his time, a self-confessed bourgeois-cum-citoyen, but there is all this substructure and superstructure that is perfectly heroic in scale."
Monday, August 10, 2009
Back from Georgia
Last week I was on vacation in Georgia, on Saint Simon's Island, about an hour south of Savannah. The parents of TBG rented a house there, very large and very close to the beach, and it was extremely generous of them to invite me along with their family. Somehow — amid all the guitar playing, feasting & libation, sailing, walks on the beach, sunburns, driving to and fro, arguments or fights and conversations — I found time to read Roberto Bolaño's new novel, The Skating Rink; to pick through the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets; and to make it halfway through Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, which I'm enjoying more than I had expected and plan to finish. Although, as I also learned and learned well on this vacation, the best plans have a way of unraveling on you.
* It is good to see continued, and I think growing, interest in Geoffrey Hill, a poet you know — if you read my review at The Critical Flame — I admire enormously. I've heard a rumor that there is a complete collected edition in the works; I hope it is fact because no amount of selection does his verse justice. Dipti Saravanamutt has a new essay on Hill at Jacket Magazine, entitled 'Some Aspects of the Tetragrammaton: on Geoffrey Hill'. It is not the finest essay I've read on Hill, but I suppose they cannot all be gems.
* Robert Shnall at The Boston Review reviews the late Reginald Shepherd's collection of essays, Orpheus in the Bronx. 'In this National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated collection of essays, the late poet, critic, and editor Reginald Shepherd rejects what he calls “identity poetics,” or “the use of poetry as a means to assert or claim social identity.” Such an approach, he argues, is “constraining, limiting the imaginative options of the very people it seeks to liberate or speak for.” As a gay African-American writer raised in the Bronx ghetto, Shepherd sought to transcend sexual and racial “otherness” through poetry. . .' As I came across this review it struck me — strangely, since I knew him exclusively online or in print but never personally — that I actively miss reading his blog and his writing at the Poetry Foundation website.
In the midst of many arguments and much beating of the breast (by myself as well) over contemporary poetry movements and their underlying theories, I recall this reasoned and reasonable paragraph by Reginald: 'In the interstices of being horribly sick (this was another chemotherapy week, with the usual panoply of crushing exhaustion, constant diarrhea, intermittent attacks of abdominal pain, continual nausea, and serial vomiting), I have been thinking about Lin Dinh’s fascinating recent Harriet post “Our Bodies, Our Selves,” which begins by juxtaposing my recent litany of my various physical ailments with Kenneth Goldsmith’s claims that an undefined “we” no longer have coherent selves, that “We’re infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute.” Lin Dinh’s response to Goldsmith begins with these words: “Could someone with even a single serious illness believe that he can be ‘everyone and no one at all’? That’s he’s ‘infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute’ I don’t think so. Hell, even a simple headache brings me back to my senses, reminds me of the limitations of my body and mind.” I think that everyone is at least a somewhat different person in different situations, but I don’t believe that people are wholly malleable. Nor do I think that anything is infinite, not even the universe: the most decentered self still has boundaries. But I can see the truth in both viewpoints.'
His ability to see the truth in so many viewpoints was a true and unqualified virtue. I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said (likely it is apocryphal) that intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing viewpoints in the mind at once and still be able to function. That we could all be so intelligent!
* And: an interview with myself! At Between the Lines, a blog run by book lover Kevin Neilson. Here is a little tidbit.
'KN: Actors, comedians, and athletes are often elected to political office. Is there a novelist you think would make a good senator? Explain.'
'DEP: No decent novelist would burden himself with the world of government — which is essentially the business of being for others. Writers are for themselves and their writing, too solitary to shake babies & kiss hands. (Actors are used to being for others, having a different relationship with the audience.) Bad novelists, on the other hand, would love to win an election but would be terrible statesmen, and ought really to give up fiction and write obituaries for a living.'
* It is good to see continued, and I think growing, interest in Geoffrey Hill, a poet you know — if you read my review at The Critical Flame — I admire enormously. I've heard a rumor that there is a complete collected edition in the works; I hope it is fact because no amount of selection does his verse justice. Dipti Saravanamutt has a new essay on Hill at Jacket Magazine, entitled 'Some Aspects of the Tetragrammaton: on Geoffrey Hill'. It is not the finest essay I've read on Hill, but I suppose they cannot all be gems.
* Robert Shnall at The Boston Review reviews the late Reginald Shepherd's collection of essays, Orpheus in the Bronx. 'In this National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated collection of essays, the late poet, critic, and editor Reginald Shepherd rejects what he calls “identity poetics,” or “the use of poetry as a means to assert or claim social identity.” Such an approach, he argues, is “constraining, limiting the imaginative options of the very people it seeks to liberate or speak for.” As a gay African-American writer raised in the Bronx ghetto, Shepherd sought to transcend sexual and racial “otherness” through poetry. . .' As I came across this review it struck me — strangely, since I knew him exclusively online or in print but never personally — that I actively miss reading his blog and his writing at the Poetry Foundation website.
In the midst of many arguments and much beating of the breast (by myself as well) over contemporary poetry movements and their underlying theories, I recall this reasoned and reasonable paragraph by Reginald: 'In the interstices of being horribly sick (this was another chemotherapy week, with the usual panoply of crushing exhaustion, constant diarrhea, intermittent attacks of abdominal pain, continual nausea, and serial vomiting), I have been thinking about Lin Dinh’s fascinating recent Harriet post “Our Bodies, Our Selves,” which begins by juxtaposing my recent litany of my various physical ailments with Kenneth Goldsmith’s claims that an undefined “we” no longer have coherent selves, that “We’re infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute.” Lin Dinh’s response to Goldsmith begins with these words: “Could someone with even a single serious illness believe that he can be ‘everyone and no one at all’? That’s he’s ‘infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute’ I don’t think so. Hell, even a simple headache brings me back to my senses, reminds me of the limitations of my body and mind.” I think that everyone is at least a somewhat different person in different situations, but I don’t believe that people are wholly malleable. Nor do I think that anything is infinite, not even the universe: the most decentered self still has boundaries. But I can see the truth in both viewpoints.'
His ability to see the truth in so many viewpoints was a true and unqualified virtue. I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said (likely it is apocryphal) that intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing viewpoints in the mind at once and still be able to function. That we could all be so intelligent!
* And: an interview with myself! At Between the Lines, a blog run by book lover Kevin Neilson. Here is a little tidbit.
'KN: Actors, comedians, and athletes are often elected to political office. Is there a novelist you think would make a good senator? Explain.'
'DEP: No decent novelist would burden himself with the world of government — which is essentially the business of being for others. Writers are for themselves and their writing, too solitary to shake babies & kiss hands. (Actors are used to being for others, having a different relationship with the audience.) Bad novelists, on the other hand, would love to win an election but would be terrible statesmen, and ought really to give up fiction and write obituaries for a living.'
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