JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

Christopher Hitchens’ sad rhyming with the malady that did in his father — esophageal cancer — was brought to the fore movingly, and in that strange manner of contemporary life, publicly, as Hitchens almost appeared to be making the rounds in this dire moment. He was on video at CNN, at the Atlantic, and discussed at length on Charlie Rose by Martin Amis.

Amis has a natural gravitas and, as usual, was beautiful in his use of language. Hitchens is lucky to have Amis as a friend. We have both our experience, which we define as our life, but also the spirit existence that our presence inhabits in the memory and thoughts of others. Amis’ mental universe provides generous accommodation to Hitchens. Amis made clear how dear a loss Hitchens’ passing would be for him.

Their friendship goes back. Hitchens regards Amis as the greater of the two — Hitchens is the self-described smaller fish. Hitchens is right. Amis is a novelist and artist and Hitchens is a commentator. A wonderful commentator, and fine writer, but still the field delimits the achievement. Hitchens is only 61, far too young for a prognosis he indicates is little likely to be longer than five years. Of course, it is always too young, always too soon.

Hitchens himself, it is gratifying to say, is still at his best in a short, beautifully written recent essay @Vanity Fair about his experience.

On the land of the sick,

Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited.

Hitchens had been a long time smoker and as many who work on their own, at home, driven by a heartless boss,

I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.

On receiving chemo,

You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

Hitchens can be alternately abrasive and oily, true to his upbringing, with a mother who wished he be part of the upper class “if there is to be one,” and a father who disliked the upper and working classes equally. Hitchens brings a respectability and artfulness to dispute and made the debate more meaningful. By nature he is not a rebel, as Amis would have it, but a provocateur. But Amis is correct in saying Hitchens is a brave man.

I write this as if he were gone, but he is here, and if not “fighting a battle,” a phrase he points out is unique to cancer, he is hardy in spirit both in the videos and his writing — may Hitchens have many years before him to contribute and thrive.

I had always been disappointed that Helen Vendler, a wonderful writer about poetry, did not use a more conversational voice in her book about Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which is linked in the navigation column on this page.

Her writing over the years for the NYRB was always accessible, without the lingo of academia, which often obscures more than reveals. Her deep understanding of the mechanics, and she would probably argue, further appreciation therefore of the value of what she discusses, wasn’t for me a great read.

But she is a subtle thinker, an insightful critic, and no small issue, has her own value system which won’t be subsumed to fashion. So even the Shakespeare book had great interest.

In this NYT review of a book by a poet filled with enthusiasm for his subject, Walt Whitman, Vendler once again offers sharp and helpful remarks (the poet C.K. Williams is Vendler’s reference),

Although Williams calls him “compulsively gregarious,” Whitman could hardly have composed his monumental poems without spending a good deal of his time not being gregarious, but rather sitting, thinking, reading, writing, revising.

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Williams knows that the real meat and drink in Whitman’s work lies in the poet’s unprecedented assembling of rhythm, sound, language and images.

But in the end, for Williams, the didactic trumps the aesthetic: we are brought back to the poetry’s moral demand that we be “greater than we are.”

This, however, cannot be the purpose of poetry, which necessarily subsumes even the ethical under whatever it has set up as the aesthetic law governing a particular construction. Ethics — like landscape, or anecdote, or history, or psychology — is part of the raw material of some (but not all) poetry. Like other ingredients it plays a necessarily subordinate part.

Wonderfully said, Helen Vendler. What Vendler calls, “the aesthetic law governing a particular construction,” is what I would call the poet’s sense of the world and ability to express that overriding sense; to weave it into meaning that is felt.

I write this book to disembarrass my soul of certain notions that have hovered about in it too long for my comfort. I do not seek to persuade anybody. I am devoid of the pedagogic instinct and when I know a thing never feel in myself the desire to impart it to others. I do not much care if people agree with me. Of course I think I am right, otherwise I should not think as I do, and they are wrong, but it does not offend me that they should be wrong. Nor does it greatly disturb me to discover that my judgment is at variance with that of the majority. I have a certain confidence in my instinct.

I must write as though I were a person of importance; and indeed, I am—to myself. To myself I am the most important person in the world; though I do not forget that, not even taking into consideration so grand a conception as the Absolute, but from the standpoint of common sense, I am of no consequence whatever. It would have made small difference to the universe if I had never existed.

You can tell, not only from the way the ideas are expressed, but from the ideas themselves, that this was written by someone from another age. The perspective, modesty (but with substantial ego), and wisdom, suggest it was written at another time.

It was written by Somerset Maugham in “The Summing Up”. I read that book a long time ago but it really left an impression.

The modern memoir is another deal entirely…

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Christopher Hitchens has written a self-described memoir. The NYT has a brief review which scatters such phrases as, “[Hitchens] has a moving personal story and is a pasha of vice”. A pasha of vice.

The review says there is nothing much new in Hitchens’ memoir but it is hard not to like the guy. Damned by faint endorsement.

(In fact, the NYT is steadily drifting from the pop culture’s version of a “newspaper of record,” to yet another tabloid expression of contemporary junk culture.)

To see the full bloom of the latter you can read the Q&A, in which Hitchens bats the sludge back with some dignity,

Q.Your mother committed suicide, in a pact with a lover, in I973. Did she suffer from lifelong depression?


A. No. I think she was having a bad menopause, and she was losing her looks, which were pretty impressive.

Hitchens is a bracing, unpredictable thinker. People like Hitchens (and there are only a handful) should be given awards just for shaking things up — the hive mind being what it is: smug and intolerant. There is nothing less allowed than trying to work out an issue for oneself. Hitchens’ unfortunate affirmation of his “consistency” in the Q&A is less a bragging point than his efforts at his own brand of honesty, which will often result in honorable contradictions.

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The review is titled, “Do I Contradict Myself?” Perhaps unknowingly meant to be snide (no surprise at the NYT); perhaps knowingly, quoting,

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
—Whitman

Charlie Rose interviewed Ian McEwan recently. Listening to McEwan speak is such a civilized pleasure.

“Humor is such a delicate and changing thing,” McEwan said, in the flow of conversation — a brilliant throwaway — saying why he did not like comic novels. Comic novels try too hard.

McEwan expressed his admiration for the moving ending of Joyce’s “The Dead.”

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Awesome, the way the rhythms and resonant depth of the paragraph and story resolve, in the last line, and then spreads out, into more than itself: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

[ via John Gruber ]

This article about iPad / eBooks / physical books pointed out things anyone creating books / eBooks has thought about. How to present the content. I’m currently working on two books and so the idea of presentation floats in the day to day for me.

The author, Craig Mod, thinks that eBooks present in a “formless container” — a useful designation, and I agree; one reason I have so many posts on the index page of this weblog. Why not take advantage of the long form the web page can display? Enforced scrolling is sometimes disdained in web design, but a long page format seems a natural for the digital framework, far less intrusive than “paging”, which often leaves the reader suspecting ad views are the basis of the truncated content. The eBook form, at least as epub, is a web page really.

That said however, my take is slightly different than the author as to the value of the eBook “container”. Currently eBooks are a dumbing down of books as demanded by the limitations of technology. The nascent eBook form demands no aesthetic. Rather the technology has to get better. The formatting and presentation of books was honed over centuries. It contains the wisdom of those centuries in its form. Nifty eBook effects like page turning work because, like desktop folder icons, they are familiar. Sometimes familiar is good.

Did you see how engrossed uber-geek Steve Jobs was when he turned the page of an eBook in his iPad demo?

To his credit, Mod says each to his own. That some books work better as physical books. But some of his examples are dubious and vitiate his arugment; he admires some books that are art school high concept non-books — the tired postmodernist default, where idea and form are all, aspiring to drained coolness (what a reviewer at the NYR called “the dread hand of design”); or alternatively, he provides examples of handmade books, which are really craft objects and, in that same framework, old books, which are sentimental artifacts. Such stained warriors have an Antiques Road Show charm, but for the wrong reason, given his argument — i.e, their interest is not as books but as, once again, grunge craft objects.

One of the great unintended jokes of technology is that the more precise and golly-gee-it’s-real things get, the more grunged up, stained and flickering the most “advanced” digital creators get. Anal retentive precision forgets the soul of the image. The lack of content’s centrality in the high concept formalist approach to books is what drives people to the popular culture for content. Any content to which they can connect.

The idea that “new forms of storytelling” are intrinsically good seems a reach, both as content goal and format benefit. It’s not even clear if there is much new there. Such outlier experiments may inform more traditional storytelling, but we shouldn’t be fitting our inherent inclinations to the demands of technology. Vice versa. Good TV shows like Damages, and bad ones, like Lost, use time shifting to affect a new form of storytelling. But this tactic is an annoying artifact which does not serve the story or the viewer. The central argument: is a predisposition for the physcial book form inherent, honed by the generations into a wonderful “container” that speaks to human needs or simply a product of necessity?

My current feeling: Physical books are an expression of the genius of our species; the physical book as form, now established, is worthy of retention in the virtual world as well.

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Some
of
my
books.
(A few are available as eBooks.)

I haven’t read Susan Orlean’s books but I’ve liked many pieces by Walter Kirn. These writers discussed film adaptations of their books @bhtv. It went on too long, but it is an interesting subject: writers and pop culture.

Kirn pointed out to Orlean that because she admired “The English Patient” Elaine (Seinfeld) wouldn’t like her. You gotta love Kirn.

About having their work adapted by the movies:
Orlean despaired that being anointed by Hollywood is perceived by some as being a better writer. She is right. Kirn felt movie interest means that he “created a character”, and that is an affirmation he appreciates. Kirn thinks that if the movies have a character they “can find a story”. Kirn is wrong about the centrality of character. Movies are storytelling machines. The characters stay with you because of the acting. Story and directing is what makes a movie.

Kirn was quite effective in describing the shallowness of movies — their skeletal narrative capacity — and at the same time accomplished the hat trick of admiring the adaptation of his own books. He seemed sincere.

Orlean said she doesn’t look at all like Meryl Streep, who played her in a movie which was based on her book. But she said that people are so benumbed by the movie form that they overlay Orlean and Streep. Strange effect the movies have. Orlean does belong to the same gene pool as a Seinfeld character however: a woman who dated Kramer but drove Elaine crazy, describing this character as so enthusiastic she was like a “game show contestant.” This is the character who thought everything was “really, really great” — the actress does resemble Orlean, although Orlean is nothing like that ditzy character in manner.

Kirn said he wasn’t looking foreward to Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” — comments that reflect my own sentiments. Burton is limited — an illustrator attempting to inhabit a masterwork of imagination. Movies lately, in their imagery, have adopted a video game gothic kitsch; very well done as an expression of craft, but dreary as engrossing visual material.

Avatar is a huge industrial project, said Kirn. He feared movies would become like Avatar. They already have.

Here is a link to an interesting interview with Terry Teachout. Teachout is a writer on cultural matters for the WSJ. Teachout has written a book about the great Louis Armstrong, which he discusses in the interview. Armstrong was at one time criticized unfairly for being too ingratiating; but his enormous talent and authentic ebullience as a man overcame many barriers, including those partisan criticisms. Armstrong was underestimated as a musician and as a man. Teachout said Armstrong was “a man who embraced and loved life”.

Teachout, whose name is Dutch — he is from Missouri — has a nice easy going manner that one doesn’t often encounter in the media.

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Speaking of audio, just finished listening to a really excellent audio CD rendition of Joseph Finder’s “Paranoia”. It is an industrial espionage thriller. Cleverly and tightly plotted. The book isn’t dumbed down the way many mystery writers affect a common man persona to seem more “authentic”. Of particular note, Jason Priestly did a wonderful job reading the book.

Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
—Saul Bellow

Reasoning has its limitations. It can’t express, only conclude.

Holden Caulfield was such a brilliant expression of cranky adolescence that the persona persists, an icon, since the character was first created by Salinger. Figures from folklore are honed over the ages into group memory, but Salinger by himself created a figure that has the resonance of myth. Who didn’t as an adolescent, (and doesn’t still?), see the world as phony?

Salinger’s fame, from that singular creation in Catcher In The Rye, was enhanced over the years by his self-exile. “I vant to be alone,” wasn’t a tactic, it was revulsion at the pop culture’s sleazy stare.

In this post a writer for the NYR says,

In The Catcher in the Rye, a virtuosic jazz pianist has stooped to “dumb show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass.” The people in the club listening to the pianist roar their approval, “the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny.” Attending a Broadway play starring the universally worshiped actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Holden remarks “…they were good, but they were too good.” … Holden is instinctively postmodern, too knowing to suspend disbelief, and hyper-aware of the motif or trope that is behind every formal performance. At Radio City Music Hall “a guy came out in a tuxedo and roller skates on, and started skating under a bunch of little tables, and telling jokes while he did it. He was a very good skater and all, but I couldn’t enjoy it much because I kept picturing him practicing to be a guy that roller-skates on the stage.” To be a true artist, the performer must give up being on stage… [Salinger] seemed to regard his literary success as a moral stain.

Louis Menand’s book about education, “The Marketplace Of Ideas,” is under review at the NYT. Menand is a subtle writer and fine-grained thinker, so it is worthwhile paying attention, especially given the serious subject matter, and the  useful summary provided by a credible reviewer.

Menand shows that general education curriculums have been criticized since their inception less for being too broad in focus than for being too narrow in intent, more invested in making education socially “relevant” than in encouraging the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The earliest exponents of general education — John Erskine, Jacques Barzun, Lionel Trilling, Mortimer Adler — believed in teaching students the wisdom of the ages to prepare them to confront the pressing issues of the day…

The reviewer indicates that Menand does not usefully confront the glaring, obvious distortions in contemporary education — partisanship has poisoned the landscape. A lack of overview is denied students, cultural survey courses intimidated by politically correct directives.

[Menand] … does not explain, say, why Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1 in departments of physics.

Some might say, “What’s the diff?” After all, it is physicists, and their charge is fact. Fact is slippery, is the answer. And the colored glasses worn outside of a discipline can make any judgment toxic. It is the way of thinking that poisons. This seems obvious, but for Menand, perhaps, being part of the club makes one reluctant to make a hard won membership precarious in criticism.

The reviewer suggests in conclusion that a more robust look at academic prejudice might be worthwhile.

A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously, in a form which frees his mind, his energies.

Why should he hobble himself with formalities?

—Saul Bellow

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Although theory is necessary to figure out what you are doing, it should come later, after you have allowed out into the world what needs to get out — after you have a lot of work under your belt.

Theory should extend work and not be a Procrustean bed to which the work is fitted. Theory at its best is not a defense, nor a pedestal — it is an appreciation.