memo to myself
"Memo to myself:
'Do all the dumb things I have to do:
Touch the puppet-head...'"
- They Might Be Giants
Wherein you'll find some stray e-mails, posts to forums, & assorted thoughts on stuff.
on literature |
on stuff |
on literature:
"I'm glad you liked my page. I was a bit distressed that you found my language "elevated" -- usually I try to write in the plainest, clearest way I can imagine, though with literature anybody's prose sometimes suffers, partly because you're dealing with very specialized contexts, I think. Below follows a(n overlong) stab at clarifying what I meant. Good luck with your paper.
"_Invisible Man_ is most definitely a moral book. I do not, however, feel that it has any "morals" (as in simple, easily digestible bits of what's good and bad -- partly because of Ellison's use of irony (notice how his moral maxims, such as "social responsibility", are undercut by the context)). My main concern in that essay was with Ellison's use of recurrent aesthetic devices, not with "life-lessons" (thus, for me at least, I think that the author's play with contrasts of all sorts (colors, situations, and so on) is more important than the humdrum conclusions one might derive from such contrasts (say, the black and white paint in the factory representing race)... I believe there's plenty to be inferred, symbol-wise, in the book, but I was more concerned with how it worked, through what aesthetics, rather than with the "deep" (but actually shallow) meanings to be derived from the aesthetic effects (or tropes).
"All I was saying was that there's a whale (Ellison was a big Melville fan) of a difference between morals and morality, and that the latter is way more complex and interesting than the former. Also, that the best way to judge a book is through the aesthetics rather than by the message -- i.e., _Invisible Man_ isn't good because it's saying that prejudice is bad and that it's wrong to oppress people (which everybody pretty much knows anyway); rather, _Invisible Man_ is good because it is well-crafted and insanely sophisticated image-wise, and that through this sophistication you get a complex and moral world.
"As for the grandfather's "doctrine of living", all I can say is that it's but one of several in a book that deliberately stands on contrasts ("Keep running" and "yes'em to death", to mention two) -- that is, that the book is affected mostly by the contrasts between maxims rather than by a sort of deep, overriding moral.
"At any rate, this is a fairly personal aesthetic theory (rooted in Vladimir Nabokov) and full of holes. Take care and have fun and so on.
"Cheers,"
An answer to a letter re. my Ellison piece.
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"Who can forget Mr. Vonnegut behind silver-mirrored shades near the end of Breakfast of Champions?
"There is always something touching and beautiful in even the worst of his stuff -- though I disagree with a previous post dismissing Hocus Pocus, his finest novel. At the heart of every Vonnegut book is the sort of prose that could be easily dismissed and has fallen out of vogue -- clear, direct, bare-boned. His writing seems effortless but that's the hardest trick to pull off, Vonnegut's great stunt, to arrange everything in such a way that a careless reader might breeze through it without realizing how much sweat and revising goes into it (if the reader's thinking about it, then the writer has failed). It is a very American way of writing -- or was, at any rate. It is also the only kind of writing suited to Vonnegut's mastery of comic timing.
"My favorite has always been Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut once said that Mark Twain made anyone recently arrived in America feel American, dapper and witty and wry. He might as well have been talking about himself."
From a New York Times forum on Kurt Vonnegut
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"Ryand? God, no. She is one of the cheapest, most bombastic, thoroughly tired writers around -- I can't for the life of me figure out why scores of angry young men and women waddle through jungles of scribblings and grandiose little tropes (.... is right about Ryand's overuse of similes) to end up with a few bumper sticker-type slogans.
"Writing, at any rate, is not about ideas but about words. Ryand might have amounted to something had she put as much thought into shaping a paragraph as she did in telling a couple of hundred-thousand readers that they were all individuals. That her books are embraced by millions, that her thesis seemed to be that you, of all people, are meant to do great things and that the rest of the world is made up of a foolish, sheepish flock -- that's the great irony about that drudge. Hasn't anyone caught on?"
From a New York Times forum on Ayn Ryand
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"I've always thought that Nabokov's Russian novels differed from his English ones only in breadth; there appears to be more of a tremor of intent in the former -- though the spirit of word-play, that distinctive logomancy and logodaedaly (VN's coinage) does abound in both. It doesn't seem as though Nabokov had to re-tool his command of writing when he made the switch from Russian to English -- he'd been extremely well read in both his native and adoptive tongues. Maybe, and I'm very tentative here as the few Russian novels I've read of his have been translations (albeit his own and DN's), the real split here is between a brilliant young writer and a novelist of genius.
"There's passages in _Dar_ and _The Defense_ that spark and crackle, but these two hardly as incandescent as _Pale Fire_, _Ada_, or _The Kingdom by the Sea_. VN's prose seemed more effective, sharper somehow, in the American/Switzerland period, whether this is because he grew more confident as a writer (my own shaky interpretation), or because of the inability of translations to fully convey the punch and cadence of the original, or because of specific problems in translating VN from one language to any other language, I don't know.
"I did, however, come across a Spanish version of _ADA_ the other day -- it was fairly accurate but somehow failed to convey about half the nuances and leadened somewhat the musicality of the prose. _Lolita_ came across unscathed, which shouldn't surprise anybody.
"Regards,"
From a letter to the NABOKOV-L forum
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"Strong Opinions_ left me with pretty much the same opinion, but Nabokov has cheerfully confessed to having a tin ear as far as music is concerned (certainly not for prose!). It is my understanding that he never gave jazz or pop music much thought -- though he does play around with a Cole Porter song somewhere in _S.O._ ("It's All Right With Me" I think).
"Humbert Humbert dismisses Lolita's taste in tunes ("sweet jazz") early on in the second part, I think -- whether author and character share the same disdain is open to debate. Then there was that line in _S.O._ about abhorring "cruelty, stupidity, and soft music".
"I don't know if this helps or not, but there it is."
Ibid
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"Oddly enough, I just saw Kubrick's version of _Lolita_ for the first time this weekend with friends and was very, very annoyed with the "Lolita theme" (for which some poor forgotten fellow actually insisted on getting credit!)... Was it just me, or is that irritating little tune lifted straight out of some awful Italian film from the 60s? Antonioni's stuff seemed to have this kind of tripe running all throughout.
"Otherwise, an enchanting (if flawed) effort. Peter Seller's Quilty's mad Groucho Marx bits were wonderful, as was James Mason's furrowed brow and clumsy speeches. Didn't care for the nymphet tho.
"'One down side: the annoying theme from Kubrick's "Lolita" plays ad nauseam all night. All the more reason to keep your conversation distracting and sparkling.'
"A Nabokovian meal would have to include mushrooms, of course."
Ibid
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"I came back to the US from Colombia three days ago, half expecting the _Lolita_ film to be out already, or at least more or less moored to a release date. I re-read the novel and Nabokov's script over the summer, and also a few angry young man writers (they don't stand up quite so well when you're no longer an angry young man)... Anyway, it was halfway through this fifth re-reading that I stumbled on the post regarding _Lolita_'s distribution trouble which, conjoined with all the angry young man wordage, prompted this question: What, exactly, is so shocking about _Lolita_?
"It may seem dumb to wonder what element triggered the public's imagination (the answer is obvious)... But I was also reading fellows like Burroughs and Bukowski at the time, with a smattering of minor beatnick poets and novelists, as well as a few forgettable paperbacks from the sixties (bought at nickel a piece at an antique store in Cartagena) -- these writers *strained* themselves to shock the reader and most failed... why? Artistic quality aside (which has nothing to do with what makes a bestseller), what is it about _Lolita_ that made it so hot? Why is it still a hot potato? What's baffling me has little to do with the novel and more with what's around it... Why is it more shocking for a man to fall passionately in love with a prepubescent girl than a boy (or any of the milion other "stark, honest" relationship-possibilities featured in angry young man novels) or a bicycle or what have you?
"What's bugging me is the (apparent) break between what's going on in the public's mind and the novel proper... Any ideas or suggestions as to where I might turn to on this subject?
"Peace,
"Juan
"P.S. Re. Angry (and not so angry) young men: Jim Thompson still stood out as a great and shocking novelist of devilish economy -- better, in fact, than I remembered him... Also, Thomas Pynchon's new novel [Mason & Dixon] turned out to be more mature and a bit less fun than everything else he's written, but it's also less sloppy and probably his best work."
Ibid
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"I wish I could agree -- most likely it was a carelessly chosen chunk of words. The reviewer must have had something else in mind when he wrote "lunatic esthetics" but, other than it paralleled Exley's memoirs, God knows what that was (maybe VN's stylistic hi-jinks... in which case "lunatic" was meant in a good way or (Case B) as colorful substitute for "elaborate", or (Case C), VN's authorial control over his funhouse fiction [which *could* be construed as lunatic], or (Case D) VN writing himself in as a character in his own fiction, or (Case E + F + ....) something).
"The reference to Nabokov, however, is too vague and too strange to actually add up to anything useful or constructive -- anybody who writes weekly or at any rate regularly for money knows that, sooner or later, the pen not only will slip but also skid a long way, which seems to be the case here... The reviewer had probably much more innocent purposes in mind and meant no one harm. The real danger is in over-interpreting a newspaper column (see paragraph above).
"'Perhaps "lunatic esthetics" is just a misprint; if you read "lunatic esthetes" it makes more sense, as a reference to Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote. And an esthete is in a much better situation to go in for self-display than esthetics is.'
"Regards,"
Ibid
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">On the net, a generally amusing daily web-page called "suck"
>(http.//ww.suck.com.--or something like that) today has a
>sarcastic little editorial on the new Lolita film, attacking it on
>the basis that Lyne isn't much of a director. However, since the
>editorialist hasn't seen the film, the credibility is a bit weak.
>--C. N."In all fairness, the editorialist's concerns are well founded regardless of whether he has seen the film. Anyone forced to sit through one of Mr. Lyne's previous efforts can attest to that. There's always been a fundamental crassness to his stuff, which is somehow made even more aggravating by an abysmal sort of artsy approach (big sweeps of the crane, lots of shots lit by shafts of light coming in through venetian blinds, oodles of fans cropping up everywhere, etc.) -- all in all, all too slick and terribly boring... Not to mention Mickey Rourke's insistence on *leaning* on things (usually w/ cigarette in hand) when he's in one of Lyne's movies.
"There is of course a very strong chance that the superior material got the best of the filmmaker (quite literally in this case, not colloquially). I certainly hope so, anyway.
"The article's tone was certainly inappropriate and annoying -- but he has raised a few good questions, such as the movie being taken up as a _cause celebre_ by the media as quickly as, say, that godawful _Kids_.
"Regards,"
Ibid
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"You're right about Fitzgerald and the others. I think that what Capote was driving at (rightly, in my mind) was that, regardless of the social scene surrounding a writer, what matters in the end is the *writing*, the aesthetics of a book -- something which wasn't exactly Kerouac's forte... But -- OK, senselessly -- that's precisely what I dig about a novel like _On The Road_, its unabashed head-long rush of words even if it does creak a bit (say, Kerouac's overuse of now anacrhonistic slang). In literature a work's shelf life is tied up to the language, and the beats are slightly past due their expiration date, I think.
"That said, I agree with you in that Kerouac opens a wonderful window into a very strange and vital scene in the 50s.
"Regards," From a letter to a fellow NY Times Forum addict
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on stuff:
"Good morrow. Just thought I'd let you know how much I miss all of you, particularly you, ____(fill in the blank)____. :-)"(....)
"We had a blast.
"We spent the first few days in Cartagena, a coastal town. Lots of sightseeing (old castles, gorgeous sun-sets, etc). Most of the day was spent on beach-side lounging -- where vendors creep up to you and offer beer, cigs, mangoes, shrimp cocktails, oysters, live crabs, etc. A. learned how to say "No, gracias". I bought a carton of Marlboro Lights (they don't sell Camels in Colombia). Said "No, Gracias" to weed a couple times. Then we flew a bumpy, rickety DC-9 to Bucaramanga, my hometown, where we mostly vedged, bought trinkets from the natives (anklets, bracelets, cheap silver jewelry sold street-side by Colombian "hippies" -- the five-leaf motif was very prevalent, as well as some sad looking bongs and pipes). Then we flew to Bogota (slightly less bumpy. slightly.). Lots of clubbing; Aimee learned how to _salsa_ and _merengue_... I still suck at it. Two of the most complicated dances going round. The trance scene has hit it big here, beanies and all (was offered some; looked too iffy and too cheap to be real MDMA, turned it down) -- consolation prize: most colombians are very lame techno and trance dancers... They either look like they're jogging in place or like they're impersonating gorillas in heat. Visited an old boss, one of the editors of the newspaper I used to work for, who now owns a bar -- dubbed, believe it or not, El Lizard King... very groovy place: Lotsa Document-era R.E.M., Lou Reed, ska, punk, 70s rock... All in all, Bogota hasn't changed since I last left it. The traffic's a bit heavier, is all.
"Anyway, I do miss you, ____(fill in the blank)___, so please write back and let me know how you're doing.
"Signing off,"
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"Hi!
"Just thought I'd send out a general sort of message -- it should work, but you never know with Hotmail. I've clicked on the thingies and everything, so there's a strong chance that whatever's written here will reach you (I hope). There's been a few things going on below the equator.
" -- I'll be going under the knife tomorrow. Nothing major -- just getting two wisdom teeth removed. I did ask for general anesthesia or tranquilizers or something that'll sort of cloud over whatever's happening, but no luck -- apparently I'll be conscious (my eyes, however, will be tightly shut). They (or rather, she, my doctor) slice your gum open, pry the tooth loose, and sew you up. I am very uptight about this operation as I am a major weinie. Wish me luck.
" -- On a happier front, I've been officially free of tobacco products for two whole weeks, maybe a bit more. It's been mostly two weeks of grouchiness and short-temperedness (is that even a word?)... I've been nicotine-free for a week -- it takes only a week for your body to rid itself of the nicotine circulating in your system, a couple of months for your lungs to clear of tar, about two years for the poor fellows to go back to their pink state, about ten to fifteen years for a former smoker's chances of acquiring cancer to go down to those of a non-smokers. Joy, joy. It was a good thing my sister and I didn't make it to Cuba (she almost made the qualifying times for the 200-free at nationals... almost), as I would have been smoking up a storm.
" -- Also, Bucaramanga (my home town) has seen fit to give me a driver's license, which I should be getting in a couple of days. My driving lessons lasted about a week and a half, during which we (my instructor and I) drove around small towns that swarmed with trucks (nearly hit one), bikes (nearly hit one), and pedestrians (nearly hit one) swerving on cobblestone roads, bouncing, rattling, making impossibly tight turns against absurdly high sidewalks (hit one, nearly took a fender). After all that and some so-called highways, I feel I'm ready for whatever the US has to offer, driving-wise.
"That's about it. Hope everything is going well with you in this last leg of the summer.
"Ciao, bambini,
"Be seeing you, (sayeth Patrick McGoohan in _The Prisoner_)
"Hasta luego,
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..
"I'm back in Orlando and thrilled with my classes (for the most part). You were right about cigarette dreams -- nothing particularly strange about them, per se, just horribly, horribly vivid. Woke up with a very guilty conscience, convinced I had actually smoked one, a Marlboro Light of all things. Ugh. There is something to be said about the very physical reality of dreams -- "a second life," Nerval calls them at the beginning of _Aurelia_.
"I'm playing tennis and not watching cable, a good combo, also reading (Nabokov-Wilson letters + Dickens, loads and loads of Dickens, + also a bit of Saul Bellow + catching up w/ all the _New Yorkers_ I missed lo these 3 months), *and* getting up early in the morning. I am studiously avoiding any serious writing till I have the heart to revise my proto-novel or till I have the money to make a copy of it. Whatever comes first."
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..
"Hi!
"Recovery's gone well. I am chewing all sorts of food again with frightening gusto -- speaking of which:
">Glad you quit smoking. Filthy habit. I smoked 3 packs daily when I was
>working for newspapers. Still dream about smoking."I've gained some ten pounds since I quit. Which, added to the fifteen I gained when I came back to the States about a year and a half ago, means that I am now officially a porker. The upside is the amount of pent-up energy not-smoking releases -- I've gone rafting for the first time in years, and I briefly flirted with hang-gliding (there are some deep and silvery cliffs on the outskirts of town) but the man in charge of the gliders wasn't in that day.
"Smoking and journalism go together. I took it up when I started working full-time for a newspaper -- never went up to three packs, but there were times when I came close... I was also living in Bogota, though, so it might also have been all the monoxide already drifiting through the air -- you got used to it. As for the dreams, Freudian claptrap aside, I think there's something powerful and primal about smoking -- the conveyance of fire, both its portability and its control ("breathing in ashes / spit out flames"... I forget where that line's from), which I'm sure triggers some kind of collective memory, all that caveman stuff. Or not.
Be seeing you, (sayeth Patrick Hoogan in _The Prisoner_)
it's Patrick McGoohan. One of my oldtime favorite actors. Ever watch
Secret Agent?"There's a strange link in my mind between Patrick McGoohan and Malcom McDowell -- I usually drop poor Malcom's mac, or else I stare at the name for too long and become convinced that I must be confusing him with the other fellow. I don't even like _A Clockwork Orange_ that much. I haven't seen Secret Agent -- any good?
>Stay out of Florida as long as you can. Sounds much more interesting where
>you are. Here it is only thunder and afternoon hail, not much to
>entertain.
"I'd love to, but I have to get back and sign up for job hours for fall. Sigh. "
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"You're probably flooded with e-mail, so I'll try and make this quick. I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done so far; good luck with the elections. I'm sure you'll win but it's bound to be nasty, plenty of cheap shots from the opposing side, mean snipes from everyone, obtuse forecasting and commentary from the folks on the news desk. Bear with it. Dignity's a high commodity in politics.
"I'm a college student and work the graveyard shift at a computer lab on-campus (hence the early hour of this posting -- any other day and I'd be home, snoozing). It's Florida so we have a lot of young Republicans ambling around. Scary thought.
"It seems that the main difference between the two parties is that the Democrats believe that if everyone's doing OK, you (meaning anyone) will do OK too. The Republicans seem to think that if you're doing OK, then the rest of the world will catch up eventually, which is selfish, and a bit frightening. The difference may look semantic, but it isn't -- it's how people look at the world, and whether someone will help you change a flat tire at four in the morning or not, or lend you a nickel if you're short for a soda, or save your life by risking theirs. It's fundamental. It beefs up our belief in something greater and better than ourselves. It comes close to the essence of faith.
"Is it normal to start philosophing when you write to the President? Does it happen often? Sorry. I wanted to ask you what books you were reading right now -- I know you're busy, but I also heard you were a literature buff, so I was curious (I'm an English lit major). So what books are you reading?
"I just finished Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs" -- great novel. I'm halfway through Nabokov's collected stories, and bought Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh" but haven't opened it yet.
"That's about all. Take care. Again, good luck.
"Sincerely yours,
"Juan Martinez
"P.S. Did you read the September 9 issue of The New Yorker? It had some pretty good insights on how people might react to both Al Gore and Jack Kemp. It was funny, at any rate, and showed Mr. Gore in a favorable, if not entirely unquirky, light."
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