Site of the Day

Check out Poets.org, the site of the Academy of American Poets. I have only taken a quick glance, but the site includes biographies of poets, some poems, and a calendar of readings around the country.

John Irving Holds Forth

Powells.com Interviews - John Irving

But we live in a prudish, stupid country. We live in a country virtually without a culture. And there isn't anything in the arts — film, painting, novels — that can be reviewed without the issue of good taste, so to speak, being brought to bear. Given the sexual explicitness of this novel, I can't imagine that half of the critics, the so-called good taste police, will resist calling it prurient or pornographic. But I don't think readers are going to balk at that.

It's not only a divided country because of Mr. Bush's war in Iraq; it's a divided country culturally, and this is an explicit and a dysfunctional novel. A lot of people will simply be turned away. Aren't we the only country in the world that could have been offended by that brief millisecond of Janet Jackson's breast? Aren't we the only country in the world that could engender a half-time show at a Super Bowl with an aging Beatle — my age! — because he couldn't possibly offend anyone? You're talking about a dog-stupid culture here.

Read the interview. To the end. You wouldn't want to miss the money quote on the Bush administration and gay marriage. In the meantime, Irving disses Joyce, compares himself to Ondaatje, and praises Vonnegut. (O.K., I admit I have not been able to put up with Vonnegut since I got out of high school.)

My one disappointment is that he did not discuss the World According to Garp, the first and best of his novels that I have read. I was on a college tour with a good friend, and we stopped at my friend's cousin's house in Exeter, where his cousin taught school. I threw myself on the couch and read Garp over the weekend, almost straight through. It had to be one of the most compelling books I had read.

Henry James, 100 Years Earlier

ThinkExist.com Quotations

"No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools / no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class / no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life."

Hunter S. Thompson Dead at 67

Hunter S. Thompson Dies at 67 (washingtonpost.com)

Hunter S. Thompson, whose life and writing, vivid and quirky reflections of each other, made him one of the principal symbols of the American counterculture, shot and killed himself yesterday at his home near Aspen.

My roommate and I used to read HST in college as a diversion from our studies. Tonight I feel a little older and a little sadder than I did before. Not a surprising way for Thompson to bow out, but what a tragic waste.

Wanderlust

It seems fortuitous that I finished Joyce's Ulysses on the day before Valentine's Day. Any comments are likely to be too little or too much, but I will make a couple of brief observations.

It is remarkable that Joyce wrote the book between 1914 and 1921, encompassing the years of the worst catastrophe in human history until that date, the First World War. Despite its obvious allusion to a great war (or post-war) poem, Ulysses has nothing to say about war. It has a great deal to say about life. Ulysses is a demanding novel, but it rewards patience.

The core of the story is the fractured relationships that knit the central characters together. Leopold Bloom's quasi estrangement from his unfaithful wife, dating tragically from the premature death of their little boy. Stephen Dedalus's estrangement from nearly everyone, owing in part to his hypertrophied intellect, and his rapprochement with Bloom. Gerty McDowell's flirtation with Bloom born in part of her isolation owing to her limp. If there is a single emotion that characterizes Ulysses for me, I would say that it is yearning.

Joyce has a preternatural power of observation and description, and no detail is beneath his notice, whether it is a dirty handkerchief, a visit to the restroom, or a forgotten key. One has the sense that Joyce has missed nothing, and that everything is related.

In fact, one could easily conclude that Joyce viewed himself as the Shakespeare of his day, an obvious inference from Joyce's recurrent references to and analyses of Shakespeare. Joyce undoubtedly had the encyclopedic vision, but he just as obviously lacked the common touch.

On minor note, I was struck by the fact that Morocco and the "Moorish" quality in Molly Bloom seem to represent the exotic sexuality of the East for Joyce (a very "orientalist" perspective). Ironically, Morocco also represents a country that is perilous for Jews (as perhaps Molly is for Poldy).

One thing that detracted from an otherwise magnificent novel for me was Joyce's periodic slurs toward African Americans and his adoption of minstrel show dialect at points in the novel.

Lisbon, 1er novembre 1755

Voltaire was deeply shocked, and his fundemental belief in nature's goodness was deeply shaken, by the earthquake in Lisbon in 1755, a disaster similar in kind, if not extent, to the devastation that has swept South Asia in the wake of the tsunami. In Candide, a parody of Leibniz's philosophy that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the work for which Voltaire is perhaps best remembered today, the Lisbon earthquake is one in a series of disasters that shake Candide's faith in the optimistic philosophy of his mentor, Dr. Pangloss:

Quand ils furent revenus un peu à eux, ils marchèrent vers Lisbonne; il leur restait quelque argent, avec lequel ils espéraient se sauver de la faim après avoir échappé à la tempête.

A peine ont-ils mis le pied dans la ville en pleurant la mort de leur bienfaiteur, qu'ils sentent la terre trembler sous leurs pas(1); la mer s'élève en bouillonnant dans le port, et brise les vaisseaux qui sont à l'ancre. Des tourbillons de flammes et de cendres couvrent les rues et les places publiques; les maisons s'écroulent, les toits sont renversés sur les fondements, et les fondements se dispersent; trente mille habitants de tout âge et de tout sexe sont écrasés sous des ruines, Le matelot disait en sifflant et en jurant: ‹‹ Il y aura quelque chose à gagner ici. — Quelle peut être la raison suffisante de ce phénomène? disait Pangloss. — Voici le dernier jour du monde!›› s'écriait Candide. Le matelot court incontinent au milieu des débris, affronte la mort pour trouver de l'argent, en trouve, s'en empare, s'enivre, et, ayant cuvé son vin, achète les faveurs de la première fille de bonne volonté qu'il rencontre sur les ruines des maisons détruites et au milieu des mourants et des morts. Pangloss le tirait cependant par la manche. ‹‹ Mon ami, lui disait-il, cela n'est pas bien, vous manquez à la raison universelle, vous prenez mal votre temps. — Tête et sang! répondit l'autre, je suis matelot et né à Batavia; j'ai marché quatre fois sur le crucifix dans quatre voyages au Japon; tu as bien trouvé ton homme avec ta raison universelle! ››

Voltaire, Candide, Ch. 5

When they had come to themselves a little, they made their way to Lisbon; they still had some money, with which they hoped to ease their hunger after having escaped the storm.

Hardly had they set foot in the town bewailing the death of their benefactor, when they felt the earth shake under their feet, the sea rose boiling about the port smashing the ships at anchor. Whirlwinds of flame and ash descended upon the streets and public places, roofs were overturned upon their foundations, and the foundations disintegrated, thirty thousand people of all age and sex were wiped out beneath the ruins, The sailor whistled and swore, "There is something to be gained here." — "What reason is sufficient to explain this phenomenon?" said Pangloss. "It's the last day of the world!" cried Candide. The sailor chased recklessly through the debris, risking death in order to find some money, found some, seized it, got drunk, bought the favors of the first willing young woman that he found among the ruined houses amidst the dying and the dead. Pangloss plucked him by the sleeve, "My friend," he said, "this is not good. You are not adhering to the universal law, you are not spending your time well." "By my head and blood!" replied the other, "I am a sailor born in Batavia, I trod on the crucifix four times in four voyages to Japan; you have really found your man with your universal law."

At such moments, one is simply thankful for not being swept up in the universal catastrophe.

Reading Ulysses

After more than 15 years, I am reading Joyce's Ulysses for the second time. I have made it through a little more than the first hundred pages, and it is coming fairly easily so long as I do not try to force the pace. I have to pay close attention, or I lose track of the speaker or the subject. Joyce has a tremendous power of description; he can do with words what Picasso could do with a few lines on paper. The book is full of vivid sights, smells, and tastes. The associations between apparently disparate images and themes are dazzling. However, it is not an easy read.

My wife dislikes Joyce because she believes he is too self-aware of his own cleverness. More troubling is that she thinks I like him for the same reason.

Having it all

MoorishGirl: Writing with Children

Writers who have children write, produce, the same way writers without children do. They find a spot, a closet, a room, and a writing tool, and they string words together on essentially borrowed time.

Randa Jarrar is matter of fact about finding time to write while raising children. Obviously, however, it is never as easy as it sounds, and it is a measure of her dedication, and accomplishment, that she can write about finishing a novel and baking cupcakes for her son's eighth birthday at the same time.

Books

On my way back from West Virginia, a friend persuaded me that I need to read the Da Vinci Code. (I suppose that I had been a little put off by its runaway popularity, although I was amused by the gravity with which theologians had started issuing books refuting its "errors." Lighten up, people, it's a novel.) A friend has also just sent me a copy of Tahar Ben Jelloun's Le dernier ami.

What's cooking?


This slightly unorthodox cookbook is based on the premise that to please the woman in your life, you should figure out what kind of women she is and cook her what she wants. Naturally, the book is ready to offer its assistance in figuring her out; hence the quiz above (which concludes that if I were a girl, I would be "Academic Girl"). The fact that the quiz is aimed at women, although the book is ostensibly aimed at men, suggests that there may be a lot of men receiving this book as a gift with a hint.

A Choice Morsel

The New York Times > Magazine > Shakespeare's Leap

Stephen Greenblatt gives us a glimpse into his new critical biography of Shakespeare. Greenblatt discusses how Shakespeare at once incited laughter at Shylock and made his audience self conscious about that laughter. In an England where all Jews had been expelled 300 years earlier and Jews were stock figures of malevolence, this was both an innovation and an accomplishment. As an antecedant to the play, Greenblatt cites the notorious execution of the Queen's physician, Ruy Lopez, born Jewish and condemned for treason. Greenblatt argues that in the fascination and repulsion that Shakespeare felt at the mob's reaction to Lopez's dying words, the Merchant of Venice was born.

Viking Relics

The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) -- Archaeologists in northwestern England have found a burial site of six Viking men and women, complete with swords, spears, jewelry, fire-making materials and riding equipment, officials said Monday.

The sagas I read recently told quite a bit about Vikings serving in the Court's of various English kings (as well as raiding in England). It is therefore gratifying, but in a sense not surprising, to learn of the discovery of a Viking burial ground in England.

The Post Reflects on Chalmers Roberts

The Chal Roberts Story (washingtonpost.com)

Chal's article of Saturday illustrated a 93-year-old mind that works as well as anyone's, at any age. Those who know him, and the thousands of older Post readers who read his work so often, could only wish for many more decades of Chal. But the same friends and readers can only admire the qualities he brought to his decision, the same toughness and lack of sentimentality that have served us all so uniquely and so well.

For better or worse, toughness and lack of sentimentality are what we prize in our reporters. To be fair, the Post also lauds Roberts' "fairness, intelligence, and nuanced judgment."