Category: lit

Book­ish stuff, includ­ing things that relate to the writ­ing, read­ing or dis­cus­sion of literature.

Categories
architecture ideas lit

Readings / Design, westerns, obsolete vernaculars

Thomas Allen - Fathom
This is a pho­to by Thomas Allen. I first noticed his stuff when I saw the cov­ers of Vin­tage reis­sues of James Ellroy's nov­els (like this one for Sui­cide Hill). The pho­to above is from a series of dio­ra­mas that Allen cre­at­ed from cut-outs of 50's pulp nov­els. I love the use of the book-ends as tex­tured under­wa­ter scenery here. Genius. Pho­to: Foley Gallery.


A lot of what I've been read­ing seems to res­onate with my 9‑to‑5 work. Last night, I was read­ing archi­tect Witold Rybczynski's account of a shed-build­ing exer­cise that turns into a much, much more — The Most Beau­ti­ful House in the World, and this pas­sage jumped out at me, most­ly because it spoke so elo­quent­ly of the stuff I val­ue in design work:

The psy­chol­o­gist Bruno Bet­tel­heim once char­ac­ter­ized children's play as an activ­i­ty "char­ac­ter­ized by free­dom from all but per­son­al­ly imposed rules (which are changed at will), by free-wheel­ing fan­ta­sy involve­ment, and by absence of any goals out­side the activ­i­ty itself" …

Bet­tel­heim quotes a four year-old who asks, "Is this a fun game or a win­ning game?" The soli­tary build­ing game is a fun game–there is no oppo­nent. The con­cept of fun is elu­sive and resists easy def­i­n­i­tion, but it is an undis­put­ed element–perhaps the element–of play. In the present con­text, it is enough to note that fun does not imply fol­ly or lack of seriousness–quite the oppo­site … What keeps [the archi­tect] involved for such long peri­ods of time is that the out­come of the design process is unpre­dictable: it is the result of chance, as in play. He does not know ahead of time exact­ly what the result will be. He could save him­self a lot of time and look for a sim­i­lar build­ing to repro­duce exact­ly; but this would make as lit­tle sense as build­ing the same house of cards again and again, or solv­ing the same cross­word puz­zle. The issue here is not orig­i­nal­i­ty but fun.

The empha­sis in that para­graph is mine. This week­end, I was read­ing a New York Times fea­ture on my man Robert Irwin, and I found myself smil­ing at this:

A favorite term is "par­tic­i­pa­tion." [Irwin] cites, for exam­ple, his 1997 trans­for­ma­tion of a room that over­looks the Pacif­ic at the La Jol­la branch of the San Diego muse­um. Rea­son­ing that he could not com­pete with the sweep­ing view, Mr. Irwin cut three rec­tan­gles — squares almost — into the exist­ing win­dows. "At first I didn't real­ize the glass was tint­ed," he said. "So not only did my holes let in air and sound, adding anoth­er dimen­sion to the expe­ri­ence, but they made every­thing seen through them appear in greater focus." You might say he opened the win­dow, that age-old pic­to­r­i­al device, let­ting in a cool rush of reality.

Once upon a time, I wrote a long post about Irwin's biog­ra­phy, See­ing Is For­get­ting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Wech­sler; when I say that it blew my mind, I mean that the book expand­ed my mind, made me real­ly think about the way I rec­og­nize, inter­pret and under­stand the things I see. Final­ly: Cor­mac McCarthy. I'm reach­ing back in time, back to 1994, back to the night I dis­gust­ed­ly flung my copy of All the Pret­ty Hors­es out the win­dow of my apart­ment. (Lat­er that night, I saw the same copy for sale at 16th and Mis­sion BART). Any­way, I'm will­ing to recon­sid­er my judg­ment that McCarthy is no more than a smar­ty­pants Zane Grey writ­ing for arm­chair gau­chos. The Road stuck with me, real­ly deeply upset me, and I respect that. So I'm giv­ing him anoth­er try, and so far, so good: I got a nice copy of The Bor­der Tril­o­gy, and was quick­ly trans­port­ed by the prose, though of course I was remind­ed of Owen Wilson's char­ac­ter Eli Cash, in The Roy­al Ten­an­baums. His book, Old Custer, was writ­ten in what he char­ac­ter­ized as an "obso­lete ver­nac­u­lar," exhib­it­ed in this excel­lent bit:

The crick­ets and the rust-bee­tles scut­tled among the net­tles of the sage thick­et. "Vámonos, ami­gos," he whis­pered, and threw the bust­ed leather flint­craw over the loose weave of the sad­dle­cock. And they rode on in the frisca­lat­ing dusk­light. [More quotes from the Roy­al Ten­an­baums]

Damn, that's good.

Categories
lit visual

Lit / No room for anything but the old verities

The NYT book blog Paper Cuts recent­ly pub­lished a nice entry about William Faulkner's late-in-life vis­it to West Point. It remind­ed me of one of my favorite moments from the (appar­ent­ly out-of-print) Faulkn­er Read­er: his accep­tance speech for the 1949 Nobel Prize.Reading it again this after­noon, this por­tion of his speech seems espe­cial­ly time­ly and eerie … 

Our tragedy today is a gen­er­al and uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal fear so long sus­tained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer prob­lems of the spir­it. There is only the ques­tion: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writ­ing today has for­got­ten the prob­lems of the human heart in con­flict with itself which alone can make good writ­ing because only that is worth writ­ing about, worth the agony and the sweat.He must learn them again. He must teach him­self that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teach­ing him­self that, for­get it for­ev­er, leav­ing no room in his work­shop for any­thing but the old ver­i­ties and truths of the heart, the old uni­ver­sal truths lack­ing which any sto­ry is ephemer­al and doomed — love and hon­or and pity and pride and com­pas­sion and sacrifice.

The rest is here, on the Nobel Prize site. You can also lis­ten to Faulkner's speech from the Nobel archives [requires Real Player].

Owl - Lantern in grass
A few weeks ago, I sub­scribed to an arty Port­land blog called Urban Honk­ing. Every cou­ple of days, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who goes by the name of "Owl" posts a few qui­et, dark pho­tos. This is one of them. As with Faulkn­er, I'm both jeal­ous and inspired. Check out more Owl pho­tos; it's total­ly worth it.


Categories
lit outdoors the ancient past visual

100 Northern California Hiking Trails

I stum­bled upon a trea­sure trove of old out­doors books at Icon­o­clast Books in Ketchum, Ida­ho this week­end; this one's from 1970. 

100 Hiking Trails - CoverThe cov­er ulti­mate­ly doesn't make much dif­fer­ence, but I like this one.


100 Hiking Trails - SectionIf only hik­ing through sun cups like these was as serene and love­ly as the pho­to implies. Also, the intro­duc­to­ry text instructs Yosemite vis­i­tors, "DO NOT FEED, TEASE OR MOLEST THE BEARS." Noted.


100 Hiking Trails - TrailThe page lay­out is classy, and the book is sim­ple to nav­i­gate — each set of fac­ing pages describes one hike. Also, the map is intend­ed as a thumb­nail overview, not as the actu­al guide for use dur­ing the hike. (In 1970, maps could be acquired by send­ing $0.50 to the USGS.)


100 Hiking Trails - DetailHow do you know which map to pur­chase from the USGS for $0.50? The rel­e­vant USGS map ID infor­ma­tion is in the top left cor­ner of each page! Each hike has a sum­ma­ry that con­tains all the impor­tant stuff — dis­tance, ele­va­tion change, esti­mat­ed time, and so on, ordered from most broad (and impor­tant) to most specific.


Categories
lit tip

Literary blogs / Paper Cuts

Cormac McCarthy ad

I've spent a lot time comb­ing through the archives of Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review edi­tor Dwight Gar­ner. It steers clear of smar­ty­pantsness, focus­ing on what one might call the lighter side of seri­ous lit­er­a­ture. In fact, most of the con­tent is on the periph­ery of the strict­ly lit­er­ary — a music playlist assem­bled by Miran­da July, a quick, fun inter­view with Judy Blume, a scan of Jack Kerouac's obit­u­ary ("his sub­ject was him­self and his method was to write as spon­ta­neous­ly as pos­si­ble"), a scan of an ad for Ralph Ginzburg's lit­er­ary super­no­va Avant Garde that looks like the label on a Dr. Bronner's soap bot­tle. Gar­ner also has a pod­cast in which he inter­views authors and review­ers from cur­rent and upcom­ing Book Reviews. Every once in a while, you'll suf­fer through some crap (e.g., Frank Rich gush­ing and gig­gling while furtive­ly and unsuc­cess­ful­ly try­ing to hide the king-size man-crush he has on Don DeLil­lo). That said, most of the pod­casts are infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing.The image at right is from a slide show of adver­tise­ments that appeared dur­ing the "gold­en age" of the NYT Book Review — 1962–1973.

Categories
lit

Weekend reading / Nuclear war, office drama

The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor

I came upon the work of jour­nal­ist William Lang­weis­che in pre-Inter­net times, read­ing a fad­ed and dog-eared pho­to­copy of "The World In Its Extreme," a series of Atlantic Month­ly arti­cles that trace his trav­els across the Sahara desert. A vivid scene leaps to my when­ev­er I'm in an air­plane: He is on his way to a remote Sahara out­pust, fly­ing at a low alti­tude above the swel­ter­ing desert in a rick­ety old plane and sur­vey­ing an end­less expanse of what appears to be noth­ing­ness. I think of this as I pass over (my home­land) the Mid­west. Like the Mid­west, he finds that it's only most­ly noth­ing­ness, that there are actu­al inhab­i­tants and real-life oases, and his accounts of the peo­ple, places and cul­tures are real­ly riv­et­ing. (He expand­ed this piece in a book called Sahara Unveiled). Langewiesche's new book, The Atom­ic Bazaar, was the cov­er sto­ry of this week's NYT Book Review. I have no doubt that it will be great, even though the top­ic is one that I'd almost pre­fer to think about less: The cir­cum­stances under which a group of ter­ror­ists could acquire high­ly enriched ura­ni­um and then build a bomb. If you lis­ten to these NPR inter­views with him (part one; part two), you get the sense that it's a lot eas­i­er than it should be, but that the like­li­hood is still there. Now that the book is out there, I know I have to read it. 

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End: A Novel

Ear­ly this week, I plowed through Then We Came to the End, the debut nov­el of Joshua Fer­ris. It's a book about office life at ad firm in the ear­ly 2000's, specif­i­cal­ly about how the fat, hap­py days of the late 90's give way to the slow, scary days of the ear­ly 2000's. In a nut­shell, real­i­ty crash­es into the fairy­tale; nor­mal­cy is shat­tered; there are efforts to deny the inevitable; the inevitable hap­pens; a new nor­mal­cy is even­tu­al­ly erect­ed amidst the rub­ble. It's good, though: Lots of inter­est­ing, authen­tic char­ac­ters, fun­ny dia­logue, a few geni­une­ly mov­ing moments. Geeks will appre­ci­ate that the nov­el is writ­ten in first-per­son plur­al omni­scient, mean­ing that the sto­ry is told from the point of view of "we," but the iden­ti­ty of the "I" behind the "we" is nev­er estab­lished. It works, I think. After 50 pages or so, I thought to myself: "Is he real­ly going to keep this up for the whole book?" But Fer­ris nev­er gets cutesy with it, and it effec­tive­ly evokes a very office-like sense of dis­as­so­ci­a­tion, of total incor­po­ra­tion into the whole, of mem­ber­ship in a group that has com­plete­ly assim­i­lat­ed the iden­ti­ties of its constituents.

Categories
ixd lit

National nightmares / Restoring a modicum of utility to the Complete New Yorker

I was one of the suck­ers who pre-ordered The Com­plete New York­er mag­a­zine. I am a long-long-time New York­er read­er, and the entice­ment was just too pow­er­ful — 8 DVDs filled with 60+ years of cul­tur­al com­men­tary, quirky car­toons and cool cov­er art, all in a dis­tinct high­brow-yet-prac­ti­cal-mind­ed voice and scanned in at super-high-res? For a few extreme dorks, this was intense­ly excit­ing. Expec­ta­tion-wise, it was like the release of a smar­ty­pants Playsta­tion 3.Upon arrival, it also resem­bled Playsta­tion 3, in that it sucked, big-time. My expe­ri­ence improved slight­ly after The Occa­sion­al Scriven­er post­ed a hack that allows you to copy issues from the 8 inde­pen­dent DVDs onto your hard dri­ve. An extreme dork after my own heart. Many thanks.The real­ly big, un-hack­able prob­lem: The search tool is a house of hor­rors. Imag­ine that you've final­ly been intro­duced to a long-time idol, let's say Bob Dylan, and he agrees to come home with you and sit in your liv­ing room and tell you any­thing you want to know. But then when you ask him to tell you the com­plete sto­ry of the "Judas!" show, you real­ize that he doesn't speak Eng­lish; he just sits there silent­ly, impas­sive. That's how this thing makes me feel. The whole point of get­ting Com­plete New York­er is to have your mind blown by the wealth of cool stuff in the old­er issues. There­fore, the chal­lenge faced by the inter­ac­tion design­ers is to facil­i­tate get­ting at that stuff, i.e. MAKE IT EASY TO SEARCH for what you want. The shot below rep­re­sents the Pro­crustean bed on which each searcher must lie.

The real­ly egre­gious crimes have been doc­u­ment­ed else­where, but I would just like to add: 

  • Per­for­mance that reminds me of the 90's. If this had been released in 1998, I could eas­i­ly for­give the lag every­time a but­ton is pressed or a search is exe­cut­ed. But real­ly, when I type "white" into the gen­er­al search field, and it churns for near­ly 20 sec­onds, I don't know, it makes me homi­ci­dal­ly mad. Anger at slow per­for­mance is like road rage — once you've got it, you can't get rid of it, no mat­ter how much you avoid being in a car.
  • Why the cru­el and unusu­al search com­plex­i­ty? Search­ing is nev­er made eas­i­er by sur­fac­ing every pos­si­ble method of doing so right off the bat. Google — the world's most pop­u­lar search inter­face — seems like an effec­tive guide here. Start sim­ple, and reveal sophis­ti­ca­tion when nec­es­sary. There aren't real­ly even that many ways I could con­ceive of search­ing the Com­plete New York­er — author, date arti­cle title, date range … That's about it.
  • Wast­ed ver­ti­cal real estate. Near­ly 33% of the ver­ti­cal space is con­sumed by tool chrome, those thick gray bars seg­ment­ing the screen. Com­bined with the often biz­zare and most­ly use­less "Abstract" below, this leaves 11 rows for search results, the place where users (I) make deci­sions on what to launch in the view­er. Unforgiveable.
  • What the heck is this thing called?. The fact that the search results do not con­tain a high­ly valu­able piece of infor­ma­tion — umm, the title of the piece — makes it a pain in the butt to scan (for instance) the sto­ries of JD Salinger, the assort­ed work of EB White. Actu­al­ly, pret­ty much every search is com­pli­cat­ed by this.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Here's my sug­ges­tion for CNY 2.0: Con­sol­i­date the exist­ing wid­gets into one wid­get with mod­est dynam­ic behav­iors. The wid­get would have one sim­ple ini­tial menu that deter­mines how you want to search — key­word, author, issue, depart­ment. This selec­tion then deter­mines the fil­ters you'll need — if you choose "key­word," maybe you get "depart­ment" and "date" as fil­ters. In doing this, you buy back all of that chrome real estate, allow­ing more results to be dis­played. Win, win, win. Of course none of this mat­ters much if data­base per­for­mance isn't improved, but here it is anyway:A modest proposal

Categories
lit

Lit / Quang Phúc Ðông & pornolinguistics

As I poked around new-ish social net­work­ing sites tar­get­ed at wordy peo­ple (Library Thing — con­nect­ing through lists of books) and (Wordie — lists of words), I came across a ref­er­ence to a satir­i­cal paper enti­tled Eng­lish Sen­tences With­out Overt Gram­mat­i­cal Sub­jects.1 The paper's author is list­ed as Quang Phúc Ãông of the South Hanoi Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. As it turns out, the Insti­tute is fic­tion­al and the author's name is a nom de plume of a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor James D. McCaw­ley. This makes sense because the paper is both rig­or­ous­ly argued and pen­e­trat­ing­ly absurd (no pun intend­ed; okay, it was). The Wikipedia entry for scat­olin­guis­tics (also known as "porno­lin­guis­tics") cred­its him with invent­ing the field, the "study (includ­ing ety­mol­o­gy and cur­rent usage) of all rude and pro­fane expres­sions." In any case, there's lots of stuff worth explor­ing further: 

1 I post­ed the paper on my site because the cur­rent web pub­li­ca­tion appears to be part of a mid-90's‑era email thread, and is there­fore rather unfor­mat­ted. I post­ed it here to opti­mize for eas­i­er read­ing on the screen.

Categories
lit the ancient past

Lit / Simpler, more anarchic times

Anarchism!

Let's just say that I've crossed paths with the Anar­chist Cook­book [Wikipedia] [Ama­zon] a cou­ple of times in my life. In my youth, mak­ing a film can­is­ter bomb was a pop­u­lar diver­sion, and the cook­book teach­es you how to make it with stuff you can buy at a sci­en­tif­ic mate­r­i­al sup­ply store. The first step is mak­ing gun­pow­der — a much more straight­for­ward process than you'd think. Before I moved to Berke­ley in 1995, I'd nev­er owned a copy — I didn't even know that it was sold in book­stores. I fig­ured that you'd have to locate some anar­chists and then trade them some veg­an stir fry and/or a black hood­ie if you want­ed a copy. But soon after I moved here, I ran across a real­ly old copy of it (at Shake­speare and Co on Tele­graph, for those keep­ing track), and I fig­ured that it couldn't hurt to have it around. You nev­er know when you're going to need to make mus­tard gas, right? I brought it up to the counter, and the clerk — a griz­zled, old­er Berke­ley bear­do — glanced at the cov­er, then looked grave­ly at me. He said: "I'm sor­ry, but I'm going to need to see some ID before I sell you this." Assum­ing that one need­ed to be 18 years old to buy it, I start­ed to reach into my pock­et. He start­ed laugh­ing, and said some­thing like, "Hey man, I'm just kid­ding. We still live in a free coun­try, right?" I laughed, and then anoth­er clerk added, "Yeah, some­day you'll have to reg­is­ter that book with the local police." It was qui­et for a moment, and then we all laughed. Was 1995 real­ly that long ago? It seems like a much sim­pler time.Related: the Draino bomb. Beware.UPDATE: I didn't read the Ama­zon entry for this book before I wrote this, but I just noticed that it con­tains a note from the author, William Pow­ell, who request­ed that the book be tak­en out of print: "Dur­ing the years that fol­lowed its pub­li­ca­tion, I went to uni­ver­si­ty, mar­ried, became a father and a teacher of ado­les­cents. These devel­op­ments had a pro­found moral and spir­i­tu­al effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had writ­ten ear­li­er and I was becom­ing increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with the ideas that I had put my name to."Salon chimed in when it learned of Powell's request: "It must be hard to spend your whole life try­ing to live down an unedit­ed screed that you wrote at the surly age of 19, which just hap­pens to con­tain some recipes that might acci­den­tal­ly kill, maim or oth­er­wise dis­com­bob­u­late the bud­ding anar­chists try­ing to brew them."

Categories
lit

Lit / Fall reading list

Flickr photo

Some­how a recent NYT Book Review con­vinced me that I need­ed to read this season's hott new thing, Spe­cial Top­ics in Calami­ty Physics by a much-blogged-about lit­er­ary debu­tante, Mar­isha Pessl. It's no Secret His­to­ry, if that's what you're look­ing for. It's not bad, but on the oth­er hand it's not espe­cial­ly deli­cious, nor smart, nor scary. It also con­tains a few draw­ings done by the author, none of which are very inter­est­ing; the draw­ings are ran­dom­ly scat­tered, not espe­cial­ly reveal­ing, and actu­al­ly in these regards, they sum up my ambiva­lence about the book. Also on the list: Noth­ing If Not Crit­i­cal, a col­lec­tion of art crit­i­cism by Time crit­ic Robert Hugh­es. In gen­er­al, I dis­like "crit­i­cism" as a genre because it so fre­quent­ly comes across as insu­lat­ed from, I guess, real­i­ty. The very few suc­cess­ful crit­ics suc­ceed because their writ­ing expos­es the object of crit­i­cism to new light, a fresh per­spec­tive — and the list is short: Lester Bangs and Robert Hugh­es, maybe Antho­ny Lane. Hughes's review of Julian Schnabel's auto­bi­og­ra­phy made me laugh out loud, repeat­ed­ly, even as I await­ed a den­tist appoint­ment: "Schn­abel is to paint­ing what Stal­lone is to act­ing — a lurch­ing dis­play of oily pec­torals — except that Schn­abel makes big­ger pub­lic claims for him­self." Ziing! Now that's crit­i­cism! In 2003, the UK's Guardian pub­lished an inter­est­ing bit on Schnabel's endeav­ors to res­ur­rect his career. Post Office by Charles Bukows­ki is both bet­ter and worse than I remem­bered it. I read it in my ear­ly 20's, a time when I could iden­ti­fy (or thought I could, any­way) with being down and out, so I admired the cranky tone, the dis­dain for the "straight" world and all the "suck­ers" who buy into it. Nowa­days, I would prob­a­bly qual­i­fy as a suck­er, and I can con­firm that the straight world real­ly is as bor­ing and soul-crush­ing as Bukows­ki presents it. As I was read­ing it, I kept think­ing: What would Bukows­ki do in my sit­u­a­tion? At the very least, he would stash a bot­tle of booze in his desk. And prob­a­bly duck out for a stiff drink or two in between meetings.Finally, the best of the lot is Eric Newby's (mis)adventure clas­sic A Short Walk in the Hin­du Kush. What hap­pens when two refined British gen­tle­men with no moutaineer­ing expe­ri­ence decide (on a lark) to climb an 18,000-foot moun­tain in Nuris­tan, a war­lord-con­trolled region of Afghanistan? The book chron­i­cles this mid-1950's boon­dog­gle, includ­ing Newby's means of trav­el­ing to Afghanistan — an auto­mo­tive jour­ney through Europe and the Mid­dle East. [A sad note: New­by recent­ly passed away. The BBC obit.]

Categories
lit tip

Lit / Philip K Dick on building universes

In 1978, Philip K Dick pub­lished an essay called "How to Build a Uni­verse That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Lat­er." The title sort of says it all; it's about how to envi­sion the world of a sto­ry in a way that lasts. He cuts right to chase, too, con­fronting the hard ques­tion that most writ­ing how-to's like to gloss over: What is worth writ­ing about? Where to start? How to make a state­ment that doesn't age badly?

… I ask, in my writ­ing, What is real? Because unceas­ing­ly we are bom­bard­ed with pseu­do-real­i­ties man­u­fac­tured by very sophis­ti­cat­ed peo­ple using very sophis­ti­cat­ed elec­tron­ic mech­a­nisms. I do not dis­trust their motives; I dis­trust their pow­er. They have a lot of it. And it is an aston­ish­ing pow­er: that of cre­at­ing whole uni­vers­es, uni­vers­es of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to cre­ate uni­vers­es, as the basis of one nov­el after anoth­er. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days lat­er. Or at least that is what my edi­tors hope. How­ev­er, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build uni­vers­es which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the char­ac­ters in the nov­els cope with this prob­lem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. 

It just gets bet­ter from there, really.