too many Daves

Frozen raspberry thawing in our kitchen sink right now. Time to...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:57:00 -0800

Frozen raspberry thawing in our kitchen sink right now.

Time to quote Rilke again:

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.

"My writing isn’t experimental. When I’ve nodded to the reportoire of avant-garde..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:20:00 -0800

“My writing isn’t experimental. When I’ve nodded to the reportoire of avant-garde effects, I took it for granted that the experiments in question were conducted by others, in the past. Now they’re part of the palette. A literary critic who puts the word “experimental” within a mile of my stuff is either in bad faith or ill-informed about a century including Oulipo, Language poetry, and, well, surrealism.”

- - a quote from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence that I like in spite of being so thoroughly “ill-informed about a century including Oulipo” that I don’t think I’d ever seen the word?/surname?/floor wax?/dessert topping? “Oulipo.”

Wikipedia’s list of “Oulipian constraints” includes:

Replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun after it in a dictionary. For example, “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago…” becomes “Call me islander. Some yeggs ago…”. Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used.

Youngling can always count on a murrain for a fancy proselyte stylist.

————————

UPDATE (moments later):

And now I’m questioning whether “you,” being a pronoun, should have been made into “youngling” or not. Never mind.

(SUPPOSEDLY) FUN FACT: My dad refers to me as “the...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:51:00 -0800

(SUPPOSEDLY) FUN FACT: My dad refers to me as “the miser.”

Today I treated my cheapskate ass to something nice. I intend to defray my costs by reading every word either very slowly or twice.

Why do I expect great things from an issue of n+1? This.

Book pitch I may have made here before and/or may be plagiarizing

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:19:00 -0800

I will spend one year reading nothing but books written by people who wrung a book deal out of their decision to do a particular thing for one year.

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:12:00 -0800

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me unreasonably happy. I love colored endpapers and a two-color foil-stamped cover as much as the next guy. But I hate the thought that a one-size-fits-all price would ever prevent someone from buying a book they’d love.

Only yesterday I couldn’t get myself to hand over 22 bucks for Wislawa Szymborska’s 96-page Here. Offer me a paperback. Offer me motel-room-Bible-grade paper stock and a binding I’ll need to mend with duct tape midway through the first read. I won’t come crying when a few pages rip.

The photo above is from today. I found this copy of Pale Fire on a nonprofit’s 25-cents-a-book cart. I talked it up. I declaimed “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the windowpane” to an audience made up of one third-grader, one fourth-grader, and one fellow dad. The dad shelled out his 25 cents and bought the book, which will only encourage my grating evangelism.

"We’ve gone many months, and once nearly a decade, in the dark, not knowing whether we’ll..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:18:00 -0800

“We’ve gone many months, and once nearly a decade, in the dark, not knowing whether we’ll speak again. I’m furious at her now, but writing this as a valentine, I’d like to think: Come back, crazy friend. I’m big enough for you still. I’ve got what it costs to know you, and though I may seem reluctant to spend it all in one place, I’d hate to die with it in my pocket.”

-
- from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence

The whole setup to that passage is also great. Here’s part of it:

I’m still looking for the crazy wherever I can find it. It’s hard enough to kick against the plastic Victorianisms of our culture, the social sarcophagus of daily life. Even attempting it can make you crazy, let alone succeeding as well as (Philip K.) Dick did. I like helpless braggarts, obsessive fools, angry people. My ears prick up at the word “pretentious”—that’s usually the movie I want to see, the book I want to read, the scene I want to make. Nearly anyone I’ve found worth knowing was difficult enough, vivid enough, to qualify at some point as my crazy friend.

===========

UPDATE (a few minutes later)

A couple more things:

* Thanks to Austin Kleon. His 1/27 post is the reason I’m reading Lethem’s book. Just the picture, really. All that highlighting. I was intrigued and needed to read it myself. Please consider pre-ordering Austin’s forthcoming book, Steal Like An Artist.

* Narcissism prevents me from thinking of Lethem without also thinking of this old post of mine, documenting Lethem’s uncommonly memorable 2009 appearance here in my neighborhood. Since I already used the word “narcissism” in the previous sentence, I don’t need to be coy about linking to Macy Halford’s newyorker.com post about my post. Part of me still can’t quite believe that happened. I will continue to link to it until it feels real. Daily, perhaps.

"… if you want to drive a person mad in a fame culture, offer him only a little fame, the very least..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:57:23 -0800

“… if you want to drive a person mad in a fame culture, offer him only a little fame, the very least amount you can scrape up. This happens every day, but it happens in slow motion to novelists. We’re like the guy who gets voted off first on Survivor, except instead of departing the island we walk its beaches forever, muttering.”

-
- from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence

"Your parents are the first memo to come across your desk, on a page so large you can’t see..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:51:29 -0800

“Your parents are the first memo to come across your desk, on a page so large you can’t see past its edges.”

- - from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence

Photo

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:27:23 -0800

Not available on Kindle at this time.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:42:00 -0800

Not available on Kindle at this time.

Though friends and relatives always admired him for his empathy,...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:30:00 -0800

Though friends and relatives always admired him for his empathy, the pigeon in the drugstore parking lot doesn’t want to hear about your bad day.

Nice belt. Or so I’m told.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:22:03 -0800

Nice belt. Or so I’m told.

A belatedly posted sight from my Saturday afternoon run with...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:04:36 -0800

A belatedly posted sight from my Saturday afternoon run with Lulu, our fast, young dog.

My restraint and good taste will now prevent me from nodding to "THE LIGHT INSIDE THIS MORNING" (this morning's previous post) by calling this post "THE LIGHT INSIDE THIS MOURNING." You're welcome.

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:06:53 -0800

So, dear Mr. Kappus, you shouldn’t be dismayed if your sadness rises up in front of you, greater than any you have ever seen before; or if a disquiet plays over your hands and over all your doings like light and cloud-shadow. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don’t know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break out, for that is how it mends itself.

Rilke also cautions “Do not draw over-rapid conclusions from what is happening to you.” I will not be snide and ask whether “All one has to do is help it to be ill” constitutes solid, up-to-the-minute science or, rather, “over-rapid conclusions.”

This is no time for snide. Mostly.

THE LIGHT INSIDE THIS...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:06:00 -0800

THE LIGHT INSIDE THIS MORNING

————————————-

Last night, I started Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet and found words that rhyme with the spirit that’s guided my photography for the last seven years or so:

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.

hmhpoetry: Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska passed away...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:11:14 -0800

hmhpoetry:

Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska passed away today, at 88 years old. She says it best herself:

A Note

Life is the only way

to get covered in leaves,

catch your breath on the sand,

rise on wings;

to be a dog,

or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain

from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,

dawdle in views,

to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance

to remember for a moment

a conversation held

with the lamp switched off;

and if only once

to stumble upon a stone,

end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;

and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing

something important.

“An extraordinary chance / to remember for a moment / a conversation held / with the lamp switched off”

Yes.

In real life, imaginary friends drink for free.

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:24:00 -0800

In real life, imaginary friends drink for free.

"Affenlight didn’t hate David, not anymore. Not that he had much regard for the man, but..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:55:00 -0800

“Affenlight didn’t hate David, not anymore. Not that he had much regard for the man, but he’d spent more time thinking about David in recent years than about anyone in the world besides Pella and Owen, and that kind of constant mindfulness, over time, could mellow into sympathy. He would never forgive David, but David had become a part of life, and Affenlight had achieved a grudging acknowledgment of the fact that David would continue to live and breathe whether he wanted him to or not.”

- - from Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding

I wrote a paragraph explaining why this passage speaks to me during this phase of my life, but it’s clumsily, uncomfortably personal. So I followed the advice you’ll read later in this post: I axed it.

Meanwhile, to distract you from my clumsily, uncomfortably personal disclosure that I wrote and deleted something clumsily, uncomfortably personal, here’s another striking quote from Harbach’s novel:

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn’t matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren’t a painter or a writer—you didn’t work in private and discard your mistakes …

That last bit holds a healthy reminder for writers: Revising isn’t a burden; it’s a luxury.

So junk thousands of words. Start fresh. Be glad. And know that the shortstop whose game-deciding throw missed the first baseman’s glove by ten feet is deeply envious.

"Part of Affenlight felt peeved at Owen for interrupting or dismissing his bliss. Because it was..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:22:00 -0800

“Part of Affenlight felt peeved at Owen for interrupting or dismissing his bliss. Because it was bliss, he felt, to be here with Owen and to read to him, even when he was reading dry-as-dust sentences from a poorly xeroxed course packet. Of all the activities two people could do together in private, Affenlight had a special fondness for reading aloud. Maybe this was part of his instinct for solitude and self-enclosure; a way to reveal himself while hiding behind someone else’s words.”

- - from Chad Harbach’s novel, The Art of Fielding

I’m with Affenlight. Whether or not you’re hiding behind someone else’s words, reading to a loved one is bliss. So is being read to.

And when I say “a loved one,” I mean that broadly, to include everyone from your lover to your own infant, whose brain detects no story but only the song of your voice.

One of the most comforting deathbed scenes I’ve ever found myself imagining involves a late-middle-aged version of my daughter reading to an old-man version of me as I fade and fade and finally am no more.

"“You shouldn’t eat so much flour,” Owen said, taking a single pancake for himself...."

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:41:00 -0800

“

“You shouldn’t eat so much flour,” Owen said, taking a single pancake for himself. “Even when I’m stoned I don’t each much flour. The other reason, of course, is that I’m a staunch monogamist. In practice, if not in theory. I can’t help it. Do I acknowledge the oppressive, regressive nature of sexual exclusivity? Yes. Do I want that exclusivity very badly for myself? Also yes. There’s probably some sort of way in which that’s not a paradox. Maybe I believe in love. Maybe I just badly crave my mother’s approval. Hang on a sec.” Owen jogged back to the hot-food line, spatulaed up four more flapjacks, and slid them onto his plate. “Sorry to babble on like this, Henry. I think I’m immoderately stoned.”

After brunch they went to the union to play Ping-Pong. Owen, even immoderately stoned, proved to be a surprisingly good player.

”

- - from Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding

A little like Owen, I have nothing but maybes to explain why I like this passage. Maybe it’s because I’ve stubbed my toe more than once on those “In practice, if not in theory” tree roots that lurk just below the tips of the grass blades when your spirit is more bold than your flesh. Or maybe I’ve just read “In theory, if not in practice” so very many times that I hallucinate a twisting backflip in Harbach’s “In practice, if not in theory.”

Maybe the spelling of “spatulaed” looks so wrong that it’s just got to be right.

Maybe it’s as simple as being a sucker for a good Ping-Pong reference. Your serve, Mr. Nabokov.