When I started this blog a little over a year ago I committed myself to uphold three precepts:
1) Entries will in topic conform to my whim,
2) they will in production
avoid excessive effort, and
3) they will require no more than five
minutes to read.
Looking back on what I've done here so far, I believe I've done well with #1, but have increasingly lost sight of #2 and #3. This is par for the course for me. Just about every "low commitment" creative enterprise I've ever undertaken has followed a similar route—more effort creeps in as I try to improve the thing, and eventually it becomes a burden and I give it up. In recent months I've often thought about dashing off a quick entry here only to hesitate when I deemed the quality of the thing too low to publish. And I've been sitting on some ideas, not posting them because I don't think they're sufficiently developed.
Do you know this quote from Samuel Beckett: "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
It is one of my favorite quotes ever (second only to Goethe's "Without haste—without rest."). And so I resolve! herewith! to realign myself with the original intent of this project. However, I also want to feel free to put more effort into something if it really seems worth it. What I'm hoping for is a more inclusive approach that includes short, undeveloped entries like this one but also incredible entries like Anna Karenina.
Therefore let it be known that on this day of 2012 I added the following, fourth, precept to my blog inconsequentialia:
4) unless I decide otherwise.
Liveblogging Star Trek
I was obsessed with Star Trek as a kid in the late '70s when it was in its syndication loop. I could turn on the TV and know instantly which episode was playing. Now I'm returning to the show for the purposes of liveblogging an episode. I procured Season Two from my local library, and shall now commence!
Here we go—the DVD menu is taking me in . . .
Wow—the bridge of the Starship Enterprise! Yes!—just like old times! Kirk and Bones are talking about how much it sucks to be hosting a bunch of dignitaries. Sounds like it does suck. More are arriving even now on the shuttle. Cut to shuttle bay—bunch of security forces are there and the orchestra plays “danger music.” Who's going to emerge from the shuttle? The orchestra switches to “ennui music.” A vulcan gets out. When he greets Spock, there's tension. This guy is Spock’s dad. I totally remember this episode. Okay, fade to commercial ...
Fade in: The opening credits! Man, does this ever make me feel nostalgic! I remember Sunday summertime evenings, the sun streaming through the basement windows... “to seek out new life, new civilizations... to boldly go..." The music is so great!
... but... hold on a sec? Because this does not seem quite right?
This is not the same as before! Look—that planet flying by, there—that's not right! THAT IS A COMPUTER GENERATED PLANET NOT FROM 1967!?—
OMG, they redid this whole sequence with computers and re-recorded the music! I can't believe—this is not happening so much that Igm frekajging trieu!!! My childhood...! Lost! All lost!
[weeps, head in hands.]
Okay—back to the episode. “Captain’s log, blah blah..." The plot finally thickens—there’s a stowaway! Security! Captain’s log! The explication related through the captain’s log is too boring to transcribe. Basically, these ambassadors could start kicking the shit out of each other at any moment. There's a brief example of this provided in the form of "pigman vs. antennaman," slugging it out in the cantina.
More plot: there’s a spaceship out there. Spock peers into his bluelight gizmo. I —whao, hold on: where is that lady’s pants? She should be taken to the brig because there's no way that is okay. Yet, no one seems to notice ...? I wonder if it’s some kind of alien mind control making it so no one can tell she has no pants. Surely this will be important later, but for now, back to the ambassadors—pigman makes trouble with Spock’s dad. Then, one scene later, pigman's dead! “Security to captain Kirk—pigman’s dead.”
Fade out for for ad.
Fade in: Spock’s dad is the prime suspect in the pigman slaying. They confront him. “Where were you while you were killing pigman ..." This is the flabby middle of the show. We all know Spock Senior is innocent. Oh, but he collapses—some kind of geriatric Vulcanic health issue!
Meanwhile, on the bridge, where is her pants? Still, no one notices ... I’m starting to think that this is not an alien mind-control thing? That this ... is ... her actual uniform. Women’s uniform is "no pants" on Enterprise! Good god, how could Space Control Command do such a thing? To think that I watched this show as a kid and never even gave this a second thought.
But then—knife fight! It's Kirk vs. antennaman. I predict victory for Kirk, and am quickly proved correct. But he's injured, faints ...
This episode is really long. Has it only been thirty-five minutes? Spock’s in command now, but he's also got to give his dad a blood transfusion.
Spock: "Mom, I’m in charge of this ship now."
Mom: "But what about your Dad, Spock?"
Spock: "Ugh."
That was me saying "ugh," actually, not Spock. I’ve got to fast forward this a little... sorry ... bzzzzz ...
NOW THE SPACE WAR SCENE: Gah, everything is computer generated. I cannot tell you how depressing this is. Why would they do this? It's awful! As if the only thing keeping people from watching these is that there’s no computer animation? It’s totally disrespectful towards the work that got put into the original show. Like professionals didn’t sweat over their spaceships in 1967.
Okay, whew, it's finally over. Happy ending, and a good laugh about how when you get into Dr. McCoy’s sick bay, you don’t leave without permission! (har-de-har, oboe and clarinet.)
With the end credits, the intense feeling of nostalgia for sunny Sunday evenings of my childhood returns. Watching TV as a kid. That whole deal. The beautiful childhood times, my Trinitron TV set on the painted red table.
And... ruined by these damn computer bullshits! Not only is my childhood lost but I cannot even see how it is lost because they changed everything! The days—the days! My—salad—days!
[weeps, head in hands.]
Literary Counterparts! - Eco and Juster
[[Let me say in these red double brackets that I really do try to make this a good blog! If someone ever says to you, "I sure wish I had just one more blog to read each week," I hope you'll recommend this one. Thank you!]]
*
A few weeks ago I found two hardcovers in a local thrift store that I wanted to read. I bought them, read them, and had the following idea: Every month I shall buy two hardcovers from a local thrift store and compare them! You know how in The New Yorker when they review two books they always a find a connection that allows the author to make a pleasingly deft transition from one to the other? Such as "Gladwell's thesis on the relationship between the internecine strife of monarch butterflies and the cult of American celebrity may seem a far cry from Romanesque sewage systems, but ..." I want to do something like that. When I was in college one of my instructors held classes called "Literary Counterparts," in which two books were compared. Here's my inaugural effort.
The thrifted hardcovers for January are Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth!
FIRST SENTENCE
The books initially seem very different from one another.
DESIGN
First of all, both have as their endpages maps of the narrative's geography. The map at the beginning is the map of where you'll go, and the map at the end is the map of where you've been. Same map:
STYLE
I skipped a few pages in both of these books when I encountered passages of profuse detail that didn't forward the plot. Both Juster and Eco take occasional refuge in the capacity of lists to house endless desultory inventions. In Tollbooth, I skipped where too many Demons of Ignorance are described, and I skipped a similar passage in Rose featuring too many Demons of Bible. One nice thing about Rose is Eco's admission (through his narrator):
METAPHOR
Tollbooth: Winding road
Rose: Winding labyrinth
Knowledge/wisdom is the MacGuffin of both books (if you don't know that term, take the time to follow my link to Wikipedia and before long you'll be using it all the time)—it is secreted away, and must be found. In Rose, it is hidden in a (SPOILER) secret room at the center of a labyrinth. In Tollbooth, it is imprisoned in a (SPOILER) floating castle. In both cases, the protagonist doesn't know he's looking for it at first and only learns what's up as things progress.
In both books, also, the adventure hinges on an attempt to preserve knowledge/wisdom in the face of barbarian threats from without (weird monsters in Tollbooth and the pope/emperor in Rose), and bureaucratic threats from within (weird monsters in Tollbooth and monks in Rose).
A FINAL INTERESTING SIMILARITY
The physical production of words is important in both books. In Rose, the monks labor all day copying books in the scriptorium, a very prosaic sort of occupation full of longsuffering frowns. In Tollbooth, Milo visits similar production facilities for things like sounds, letters, and numbers—identical in their way to what's going on in a medieval scriptorium. See how the two books are starting to get confused with one another to the point where you can't tell which is which?
I won't say how the books end, but let me just hint that they end identically. You could swap out the last twenty pages of each and not even know the difference.
Thank you for reading LITERARY COUNTERPARTS!
UPCOMING IN FEBRUARY
*
One last thing—when I'm done with the two books for each month, I'll inscribe them as having been used for LITERARY COUNTERPARTS, and then I will re-donate them to a local thrift store.
*
A few weeks ago I found two hardcovers in a local thrift store that I wanted to read. I bought them, read them, and had the following idea: Every month I shall buy two hardcovers from a local thrift store and compare them! You know how in The New Yorker when they review two books they always a find a connection that allows the author to make a pleasingly deft transition from one to the other? Such as "Gladwell's thesis on the relationship between the internecine strife of monarch butterflies and the cult of American celebrity may seem a far cry from Romanesque sewage systems, but ..." I want to do something like that. When I was in college one of my instructors held classes called "Literary Counterparts," in which two books were compared. Here's my inaugural effort.
The thrifted hardcovers for January are Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth!
FIRST SENTENCE
The books initially seem very different from one another.
Tollbooth: "There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always."And yet—I shall prove through my rhetorically deft The New Yorkerish circumlocutions that these two books are one and the same!
Rose: "On August 16, 1968, I was handed a book written by a certain Abbe Vallet, Le Manuscrit de Dom Adson de Melk, tradui en francais d'apres l'edition de Dom J. Mabillon (Aux Presses de l'Abbaye de la Source, Paris, 1842)."
DESIGN
First of all, both have as their endpages maps of the narrative's geography. The map at the beginning is the map of where you'll go, and the map at the end is the map of where you've been. Same map:
STYLE
I skipped a few pages in both of these books when I encountered passages of profuse detail that didn't forward the plot. Both Juster and Eco take occasional refuge in the capacity of lists to house endless desultory inventions. In Tollbooth, I skipped where too many Demons of Ignorance are described, and I skipped a similar passage in Rose featuring too many Demons of Bible. One nice thing about Rose is Eco's admission (through his narrator):
"The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wonderful hypotypsis. But I must come to the subject of our discussion..."Another observation I'll make about lists as storage facilities for authorial digression: they're easy to skip if you aren't interested.
METAPHOR
Tollbooth: Winding road
Rose: Winding labyrinth
Knowledge/wisdom is the MacGuffin of both books (if you don't know that term, take the time to follow my link to Wikipedia and before long you'll be using it all the time)—it is secreted away, and must be found. In Rose, it is hidden in a (SPOILER) secret room at the center of a labyrinth. In Tollbooth, it is imprisoned in a (SPOILER) floating castle. In both cases, the protagonist doesn't know he's looking for it at first and only learns what's up as things progress.
In both books, also, the adventure hinges on an attempt to preserve knowledge/wisdom in the face of barbarian threats from without (weird monsters in Tollbooth and the pope/emperor in Rose), and bureaucratic threats from within (weird monsters in Tollbooth and monks in Rose).
A FINAL INTERESTING SIMILARITY
The physical production of words is important in both books. In Rose, the monks labor all day copying books in the scriptorium, a very prosaic sort of occupation full of longsuffering frowns. In Tollbooth, Milo visits similar production facilities for things like sounds, letters, and numbers—identical in their way to what's going on in a medieval scriptorium. See how the two books are starting to get confused with one another to the point where you can't tell which is which?
I won't say how the books end, but let me just hint that they end identically. You could swap out the last twenty pages of each and not even know the difference.
Thank you for reading LITERARY COUNTERPARTS!
UPCOMING IN FEBRUARY
- G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown
- Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune
*
One last thing—when I'm done with the two books for each month, I'll inscribe them as having been used for LITERARY COUNTERPARTS, and then I will re-donate them to a local thrift store.
"Neither rain, nor sleet ..."
I shall now write an opinion-oriented blog post, one which props its claims upon an insubstantial foundation of anecdote and pathos! Witness:
Framing Paragraph
It snowed here in Seattle this week, and Anne and I and our friend Robb walked around on the hill where we live, and my thoughts resulted in AN OPINION.
I.
I worked for ten years as a faculty-member at an art college here in Seattle, and during that time the school almost always stayed open during storms.
I remember one time it snowed in the morning, melted in the afternoon, and in the night turned the entire hill—the entire city, in fact—into a giant sheet of ice, on top of which landed more snow. I had a morning class, and got up at about 5:30. I looked online and saw that the school was open. I couldn't believe it! "All right," I thought. "Let's do this." I got on my bike and rode to school along the empty streets. It was ridiculous—the craziest ice ride I've ever taken. I fell many times. Once, I tipped over on a steep street and my bike fell on top of me, and the two of us slid together for almost a block before stopping in a snow drift. (Actually, it was a fun ride.)
At school, four of my twenty-five students showed up—the four who lived in the apartment building across the street from campus. After class I wrote an angry letter to the school for encouraging students to travel during a snow event, especially considering that ours is a commuter campus, and driving that day would have been dangerous.
II.
Last year when Seattle had a snowstorm the city decided it was going to use only sand, and no salt, on the roads. Because here is the thing about using salt on Seattle roads: it turns into salty water and floods into the bay, changing the salinity there and killing ocean life.
But Seattleites freaked out! About how their cars slid! And the city was wrong about "salmon over people policies"! Kerfuffle!
III. OPINION
You know that slogan of the US Postal service, "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"? I think we should retire that and just take a break when it snows in Seattle. We have usually less than five days per year with snow here, and it is a very hilly city! Is it so bad to just go sledding, build snowpeople, and drink a beer on those days?
Not including essential services, of course. If there's a power outage at the hospital I think that should get fixed. And probably other things too, which will inevitably result in a big argument about what's "essential," and I suppose lots of different things are essential to different people. Kerfuffle! Also in these economic times (and generally) not everyone can afford to miss work, even for a day, so people who need the money, also, should probably... and... my whole opinion is stupid?
But! School should have totally been canceled that morning when my bike and I slid prone into a snowdrift. And "salmon over people policies" are important these days given how our "people over salmon policies" of the past century have nearly extincted a species that's indispensable to our ecosystem. Do you know how much public art in Seattle features salmon? You cannot walk a block here without seeing a sculpture of a salmon. Salmon sculptures are an ecosystem unto themselves in Seattle! Then we salt the roads, kill the fish, and commission more salmon sculptures.
Also: "Oaks may fall, when reeds withstand the storm." Maybe if we're willing to change our habits a bit instead of barreling through no-matter-what, we'll end up better off in the long run. Maybe even if everything is essential to someone and no one can afford to miss work—maybe we could still encourage a general attitude that is a little more accommodating? Here is my idea for a revised slogan that feels more realistically responsive to the dynamisms of seasonal change:
"Snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night will stay Seattlites from the swift completion of their appointed rounds—with the exception of essential services and in cases where missing work would cause undue hardship, but anyway why can't we at least try to create a culture that's capable of gracefully adapting to the unexpected without feeling like everything will fall to pieces unless we move heaven and earth to avoid even the smallest deviation in our schedules?"
Let me know what you think of that one, Seattle City Council! I think it could be good!
I Will Publish A Book This Fall!
I would like to announce that I will publish a book this fall.
When I sold The Wikkeling to Running Press in 2010, there was a really long editorial process—over a year and a half (understandable if you've seen the beautiful edition they produced). My agent, the excellent Jenni Ferrari-Adler at Brick House, suggested that I keep myself busy in the meantime by working on something else, so I started a new book. It took a little over a year, and considerable revision, to complete.
I recall that it was a Wednesday when Jenni sent it out to a few publishers. Two days later, we had an offer. Over the next week, we got two more. We ultimately chose Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; I signed the contract; and now that book is in the midst of its own editorial process, which will culminate this fall in the publication of The Wrap-Up List.
High Concept: The Wrap-Up List is about a young woman, Gabriela, who gets a letter from Death telling her he's coming for her in a week. During that time, she has to wrap up her life and, if she can, figure out a way to trick him.
I mention this now because I'll be writing about it on and off this year as it comes closer to publication in the fall. It will be a "recurring theme" in my blog this year, but hopefully not a "monomania," because I have room for only one monomania: THE MAKING OF STAMPS! You may be tired of hearing me write about making stamps, but I do not care, because it is my "monomania!" Here is a stamp I made recently for my wife Anne, for possible use as a business card. It features a cormorant flying between the letter A and the musical note A. Because Anne does both writing and music. And because A is the first letter of both Anne and And!
When I sold The Wikkeling to Running Press in 2010, there was a really long editorial process—over a year and a half (understandable if you've seen the beautiful edition they produced). My agent, the excellent Jenni Ferrari-Adler at Brick House, suggested that I keep myself busy in the meantime by working on something else, so I started a new book. It took a little over a year, and considerable revision, to complete.
I recall that it was a Wednesday when Jenni sent it out to a few publishers. Two days later, we had an offer. Over the next week, we got two more. We ultimately chose Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; I signed the contract; and now that book is in the midst of its own editorial process, which will culminate this fall in the publication of The Wrap-Up List.
High Concept: The Wrap-Up List is about a young woman, Gabriela, who gets a letter from Death telling her he's coming for her in a week. During that time, she has to wrap up her life and, if she can, figure out a way to trick him.
I mention this now because I'll be writing about it on and off this year as it comes closer to publication in the fall. It will be a "recurring theme" in my blog this year, but hopefully not a "monomania," because I have room for only one monomania: THE MAKING OF STAMPS! You may be tired of hearing me write about making stamps, but I do not care, because it is my "monomania!" Here is a stamp I made recently for my wife Anne, for possible use as a business card. It features a cormorant flying between the letter A and the musical note A. Because Anne does both writing and music. And because A is the first letter of both Anne and And!
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