X
Verse Chorus Verse
My last set had been played,
My strings were shot;
they could no longer be tuned,
would no longer hold their notes.
Whatever crowd there had been
was face down dead, snoring bubbles
into what had been spilled,
or had long since taken to the door,
having ignored my heartfelt keening
while talking smack to some bottle blonde
with a hearing problem.
Fuck it. To extend this salty conceit, the act was a bust.
The proprietor was not amused.
The tip cup wouldn’t fund a hand job.
And anyway I no longer cared.
Then, out of nowhere, this girl singer
stalks in like T-Rex on her high heels
with tinted hair, looking for a gig.
Hot damn, fire up the amps!
Cue the spot for an encore performance!
Verse chorus verse,
(so ran the score unfurling in my mind)
then the bridge.
Right after the break
she comes in, swingin’ it hard,
torchin’ it like a banshee!
xxxxxx[…]
Yeah, right—
here I am, alone again,
me and my brown-bag bottle,
yodeling in the alley…
But I did help
launch her new solo career
and world tour…
Do you think maybe I could get a tee-shirt, bitch?
X
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Readings: of The Ghost in the Machine
X
from the fourth essay, “Thinking Again,”of Marilyn Robinson’s book, Absence of Mind – the Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self:
As Bertrand Russell pointed out decades before Gilbert Ryle coined this potent phrase [i.e “the Ghost in the Machine”], the old, confident distinction between materiality and nonmateriality is not a thing modern science can endorse. Physicists say a change in a split photon occurs simultaneously in its severed half, at any theoretical distance. As if there were no time or space, this information of change passes instantly from one to the other. Is an event that defies any understanding we have of causality a physical event? Yes. Can the seeming timelessness and spacelessness that mediate this change also be called physical? Presumably, since they have unambiguous physical consequences. Then perhaps we cannot claim to know the nature of the physical, and perhaps we ought not to be so confident in opposing it to a real or imagined nonphysical. These terms, as conventionally used, are not identical with the terms “real” and “unreal,” though the belief that they are is the oldest tenet of positivism. The old notion of dualism should be put aside, now that we know a little about the uncanny properties of the finer textures of the physical.
This consideration, which has long lingered on the periphery of my knowledge base—as an uninvited squatter of sorts—has indeed (now that Ms. Robinson has so forcefully rubbed my nose in it) caused me, of necessity, to put aside my old notion of dualism.
I have not been a positivist. But I have been a dualist of the type: Spirit Good / Matter Bad. As such distinctions become ambiguous, however, so must that species of dualistic assumption. The only sort of dualism left standing would be that of the Good as opposed to the Evil. But if, as we are sometimes told, the Evil has no real existence, but is only an absence of the Good, then what? It’s all Good?
You tell me. I’m stumped…
X
from the fourth essay, “Thinking Again,”of Marilyn Robinson’s book, Absence of Mind – the Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self:
As Bertrand Russell pointed out decades before Gilbert Ryle coined this potent phrase [i.e “the Ghost in the Machine”], the old, confident distinction between materiality and nonmateriality is not a thing modern science can endorse. Physicists say a change in a split photon occurs simultaneously in its severed half, at any theoretical distance. As if there were no time or space, this information of change passes instantly from one to the other. Is an event that defies any understanding we have of causality a physical event? Yes. Can the seeming timelessness and spacelessness that mediate this change also be called physical? Presumably, since they have unambiguous physical consequences. Then perhaps we cannot claim to know the nature of the physical, and perhaps we ought not to be so confident in opposing it to a real or imagined nonphysical. These terms, as conventionally used, are not identical with the terms “real” and “unreal,” though the belief that they are is the oldest tenet of positivism. The old notion of dualism should be put aside, now that we know a little about the uncanny properties of the finer textures of the physical.
This consideration, which has long lingered on the periphery of my knowledge base—as an uninvited squatter of sorts—has indeed (now that Ms. Robinson has so forcefully rubbed my nose in it) caused me, of necessity, to put aside my old notion of dualism.
I have not been a positivist. But I have been a dualist of the type: Spirit Good / Matter Bad. As such distinctions become ambiguous, however, so must that species of dualistic assumption. The only sort of dualism left standing would be that of the Good as opposed to the Evil. But if, as we are sometimes told, the Evil has no real existence, but is only an absence of the Good, then what? It’s all Good?
You tell me. I’m stumped…
X
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Rodak's Writings: Keep Those Home Fires Burning
X
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxKeep Those Home Fires Burning
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa dramatic thingy, in one whatchamacallit
Dramatis personae:
She, the frail, inappropriately garbed victim
He, the unseen voice offstage
[As our thingy opens SHE is seen lying on a thin throw rug on the floor. She is dressed in a bizarre white jacket, which looks as though it might have been constructed of the severed tails of thousands of immature white bunnies, stitched together with eight-pound nylon fishing line. She is propped up on one arm (her right), wearing severely pointed dark shoes which will cause her misery later in life, staring fearfully in the direction of two six-foot tall candles, each of which projects from one of the eye sockets of a human skull, also “resting” on the floor. While the comely woman has only a thin piece of rug to cushion the tender flesh of her vulnerable young hips from what we understand to be the stony unyielding chill of the floor in this dark, dungeon-like chamber, the skull rests comfortably on a soft cushion, which may account for its mocking grin. The dark wall behind the young woman is evidently coated with a black, glossy paint, for it reflects a large circle of light having nothing to do with the tiny flames atop the huge candles and can only be the artificial light of the spot set to enable a visual record to be made of this scene, using primitive photographic equipment.]
She: (fearfully)
Honey? Honey, are you there?
He: (angrily, from the black shadows of the wings, stage left)
What is it now, goddamn it?
She:
I…I think it’s going out!
He:
What’s going out? What the fuck is going out?
She:
The candle! It’s about to go out!
He:
Yeah? Well, there was two goddamn candles the last time I counted, and both of ‘em was lit just fine. Je-sus Christ! Can’t you fuckin’ do anything right?
She:
I…I’m sorry, honey. I guess I got distracted. So, what should I do?
He:
Okay, let’s review: there’s two fuckin’ candles. And you say “it’s” goin’ out. So maybe, if I’m real nice ‘n shit, you will be kind enough to tell me which “it’s” it is that’s fuckin’ going out? Think you can handle that, precious?
She:
Gosh, you don’t need to be so mean about it. It’s only a candle…
He:
Are you gonna tell me which candle it is? Or am I gonna have to come in there and look for myself—and maybe kick your ass while I’m doin’ it.
She:
It’s the one on the right.
He:
Well that’s real good! We’re finally getting somewhere. But—pay attention now—because I’m gonna need to ask you another question—and this one might be just a little bit harder... You say “it’s the one on the right.” That’s good. Now, think hard, sweetheart—is it on your fuckin’ right. Or is it on my fuckin’ right?
She:
Well, gee… I don’t know. I mean, which way are you pointed right now?
He:
Oh, my God! What did I do? Why do I deserve this shit? Yo, genius…I’m not fuckin’ pointed. I’m fuckin’ seated. On the fuckin’ pot. Takin’ a fuckin’ dump. Okay?
She:
Oh. Then it’s the one on your left. ...Honey?
He:
What now, goddamn it? Can’t a man take a shit in peace?
She:
Honey, it’s cold in here! I’m cold!
He:
What you’re cold? Didn’t I light both goddamn candles for you? So how the fuck are you cold? Whaddya want? Another freakin’ skull and two more goddamn candles? What am I? Fuckin’ John Gotrocks, maybe? I work hard to provide your lazy ass with two fuckin’ six-foot tall premium fuckin’ candles and all I get is your freakin’ whining and complaining. You’re fuckin’ cold? Put on your fuckin’ coat— which also cost me a freakin’ bundle by the way!
She:
I already have my coat on!
He:
Oh. You do. Well then—shut the fuck up!
She:
Honey?
He:
Lord-have-mercy! This better be good!
She:
Why can’t we get a couch?
He:
A couch she says! A fuckin’ couch she wants! The princess wants a fuckin’ couch to rest her pretty little gettin’-fat-already fuckin’ ass on while I’m workin’ my fuckin’ skinny ass off to make a living so I can provide her useless self with not one but two fuckin’ six-foot tall premium candles! A couch! Let me ask you somethin’, princess…
She:
What?
He:
Does my mother have a fuckin’ couch?
She:
Well, no. But—
He:
“Well, no” That’s exactly fuckin’ right. She does not. She does not have a fuckin’ couch. But you think that you should have a fuckin’ couch, while my fuckin’ mother, on whose fuckin’ ass you wouldn’t make a bloody patch, sits on the fuckin’ floor knitting fuckin’ booties for my fuckin’ son, which you better produce pretty fuckin’ soon or I’ll find some other bitch that will. Do you fuckin’ hear me? Do you?
She:
Well gosh, it’s just fuck me then, I guess. (she bursts into tears)
[from stage left we hear the sound of a toilet being flushed]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxFade to black
X
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa dramatic thingy, in one whatchamacallit
Dramatis personae:
She, the frail, inappropriately garbed victim
He, the unseen voice offstage
[As our thingy opens SHE is seen lying on a thin throw rug on the floor. She is dressed in a bizarre white jacket, which looks as though it might have been constructed of the severed tails of thousands of immature white bunnies, stitched together with eight-pound nylon fishing line. She is propped up on one arm (her right), wearing severely pointed dark shoes which will cause her misery later in life, staring fearfully in the direction of two six-foot tall candles, each of which projects from one of the eye sockets of a human skull, also “resting” on the floor. While the comely woman has only a thin piece of rug to cushion the tender flesh of her vulnerable young hips from what we understand to be the stony unyielding chill of the floor in this dark, dungeon-like chamber, the skull rests comfortably on a soft cushion, which may account for its mocking grin. The dark wall behind the young woman is evidently coated with a black, glossy paint, for it reflects a large circle of light having nothing to do with the tiny flames atop the huge candles and can only be the artificial light of the spot set to enable a visual record to be made of this scene, using primitive photographic equipment.]
She: (fearfully)
Honey? Honey, are you there?
He: (angrily, from the black shadows of the wings, stage left)
What is it now, goddamn it?
She:
I…I think it’s going out!
He:
What’s going out? What the fuck is going out?
She:
The candle! It’s about to go out!
He:
Yeah? Well, there was two goddamn candles the last time I counted, and both of ‘em was lit just fine. Je-sus Christ! Can’t you fuckin’ do anything right?
She:
I…I’m sorry, honey. I guess I got distracted. So, what should I do?
He:
Okay, let’s review: there’s two fuckin’ candles. And you say “it’s” goin’ out. So maybe, if I’m real nice ‘n shit, you will be kind enough to tell me which “it’s” it is that’s fuckin’ going out? Think you can handle that, precious?
She:
Gosh, you don’t need to be so mean about it. It’s only a candle…
He:
Are you gonna tell me which candle it is? Or am I gonna have to come in there and look for myself—and maybe kick your ass while I’m doin’ it.
She:
It’s the one on the right.
He:
Well that’s real good! We’re finally getting somewhere. But—pay attention now—because I’m gonna need to ask you another question—and this one might be just a little bit harder... You say “it’s the one on the right.” That’s good. Now, think hard, sweetheart—is it on your fuckin’ right. Or is it on my fuckin’ right?
She:
Well, gee… I don’t know. I mean, which way are you pointed right now?
He:
Oh, my God! What did I do? Why do I deserve this shit? Yo, genius…I’m not fuckin’ pointed. I’m fuckin’ seated. On the fuckin’ pot. Takin’ a fuckin’ dump. Okay?
She:
Oh. Then it’s the one on your left. ...Honey?
He:
What now, goddamn it? Can’t a man take a shit in peace?
She:
Honey, it’s cold in here! I’m cold!
He:
What you’re cold? Didn’t I light both goddamn candles for you? So how the fuck are you cold? Whaddya want? Another freakin’ skull and two more goddamn candles? What am I? Fuckin’ John Gotrocks, maybe? I work hard to provide your lazy ass with two fuckin’ six-foot tall premium fuckin’ candles and all I get is your freakin’ whining and complaining. You’re fuckin’ cold? Put on your fuckin’ coat— which also cost me a freakin’ bundle by the way!
She:
I already have my coat on!
He:
Oh. You do. Well then—shut the fuck up!
She:
Honey?
He:
Lord-have-mercy! This better be good!
She:
Why can’t we get a couch?
He:
A couch she says! A fuckin’ couch she wants! The princess wants a fuckin’ couch to rest her pretty little gettin’-fat-already fuckin’ ass on while I’m workin’ my fuckin’ skinny ass off to make a living so I can provide her useless self with not one but two fuckin’ six-foot tall premium candles! A couch! Let me ask you somethin’, princess…
She:
What?
He:
Does my mother have a fuckin’ couch?
She:
Well, no. But—
He:
“Well, no” That’s exactly fuckin’ right. She does not. She does not have a fuckin’ couch. But you think that you should have a fuckin’ couch, while my fuckin’ mother, on whose fuckin’ ass you wouldn’t make a bloody patch, sits on the fuckin’ floor knitting fuckin’ booties for my fuckin’ son, which you better produce pretty fuckin’ soon or I’ll find some other bitch that will. Do you fuckin’ hear me? Do you?
She:
Well gosh, it’s just fuck me then, I guess. (she bursts into tears)
[from stage left we hear the sound of a toilet being flushed]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxFade to black
X
Friday, October 22, 2010
Readings: Are You Positive About That?
X
I am currently about one-third of the way through Marilynne Robinson’s interesting book of essays, Absence of Mind: the Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. Specifically, I am on the second essay, entitled “The Strange History of Altruism.” In this chapter, Robinson briefly recalls the history and cultural influence of positivism, and offers her thoughts on the pernicious effects positivism has had on the concept of the self, in science as well as in art and literature.
Since Darwin, Comte, Freud, et al. and the advent of what she labels “parascientific thought,” the notion of persons acting to benefit others at a real cost to themselves has been discredited, she argues, at a huge cost to the idea of an essential human nature.
I shall post an excerpt from this chapter below, and ask that my readers—particularly the writers and poets among you—to contemplate the significance of this kind of parascientific thought on your creative life project:
…[evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey] Miller states, ‘Evolution cannot favor altruistic information-sharing any more than it can favor altruistic food-sharing. Therefore, most animals’ signals must have evolved to manipulate the behavior of another animal for the signaler’s own benefit.’ And other animals have evolved to ignore them, because it didn’t pay to listen to manipulators. Ergo, it seems, we, alone among the animals, have language. Why the complexity of language and our adeptness in the use of it? Gazzaniga says, “Considering this conundrum, Miller proposes that language’s complexities evolved for verbal courtship. This solves the altruism problem by providing a sexual payoff for eloquent speaking by the male and female.”
Is it true? Are the astonishing sonnets of Shakespeare and the elegant word-play of a Dylan Thomas or a Sandra Agricola (plug!), nothing more than grand elaborations on such classic pickup lines as “Fuck me if I’m wrong, but isn’t your name Martha?”
Is a poet essentially of a kind with the short-lived and behaviorally hard-wired moth on its herky-jerky flight towards an artificial light?
X
I am currently about one-third of the way through Marilynne Robinson’s interesting book of essays, Absence of Mind: the Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. Specifically, I am on the second essay, entitled “The Strange History of Altruism.” In this chapter, Robinson briefly recalls the history and cultural influence of positivism, and offers her thoughts on the pernicious effects positivism has had on the concept of the self, in science as well as in art and literature.
Since Darwin, Comte, Freud, et al. and the advent of what she labels “parascientific thought,” the notion of persons acting to benefit others at a real cost to themselves has been discredited, she argues, at a huge cost to the idea of an essential human nature.
I shall post an excerpt from this chapter below, and ask that my readers—particularly the writers and poets among you—to contemplate the significance of this kind of parascientific thought on your creative life project:
…[evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey] Miller states, ‘Evolution cannot favor altruistic information-sharing any more than it can favor altruistic food-sharing. Therefore, most animals’ signals must have evolved to manipulate the behavior of another animal for the signaler’s own benefit.’ And other animals have evolved to ignore them, because it didn’t pay to listen to manipulators. Ergo, it seems, we, alone among the animals, have language. Why the complexity of language and our adeptness in the use of it? Gazzaniga says, “Considering this conundrum, Miller proposes that language’s complexities evolved for verbal courtship. This solves the altruism problem by providing a sexual payoff for eloquent speaking by the male and female.”
Is it true? Are the astonishing sonnets of Shakespeare and the elegant word-play of a Dylan Thomas or a Sandra Agricola (plug!), nothing more than grand elaborations on such classic pickup lines as “Fuck me if I’m wrong, but isn’t your name Martha?”
Is a poet essentially of a kind with the short-lived and behaviorally hard-wired moth on its herky-jerky flight towards an artificial light?
X
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Readings: Talk Radio, Back in the Day
X
I am currently deep into reading a remarkable novel by Stanley Elkin: The Dick Gibson Show. I don’t like to look ahead while I’m reading, but I can report at this point that the novel is comprised of at least two parts. The first gives us a bit of the boyhood and familial background of ‘Dick Gibson,’ as well as depicting his self-designed apprenticeship in the world of radio, pre-WWII. Part I ends with ‘Dick Gibson’s’ stint, during WWII, as a d.j. on Armed Forces Radio, and a mind-bending hunt for a magical dodo bird on the island of Mauritius.
As Part II opens, ‘Dick Gibson’ (a nom de mic, btw) has established a radio talk show at an AM station in Hartford, CT. Now, this novel is copyrighted in 1970, so it had to have been written by Elkin largely in the sixties. The long excerpt which I’m going to share below is an index of the kind of Special Guests that Dick Gibson has had on his show. What is remarkable about this list is that although it was imagined by Elkin in the 1960s, it could have been imagined by anyone creating a similar character in 2010. Here is Dick Gibson, contemplating the nature of his guests, after having contemplated his audience:
No, he knew little about his listeners. They were not even mysterious; they were there, but distant as the Sioux. He knew more about the passionate extremists who used his microphones…-- the wild visionaries, opponents of fluoride, palmists, astrologers, the far right and far left and far center, the dianeticians, scientologists, beatniks, homosexuals from the Mattachine Society, the handwriting analysts, addicts, nudists, psychic phenomenologists, all those who believed in the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman and the Communist Conspiracy; men beyond the beyond, black separatists who would take over Idaho and thrive by cornering the potato, pretenders to a half-dozen thrones, Krebiozonists, people from MENSA, health-food people, eaters of weed and soups of bark, cholesterolists, poly-unsaturationalists, treasure hunters, a woman who believed she held a valid Spanish land grant to all of downtown San Francisco, the Cassandras warning of poison in the white bread and cola and barbecued potato chip, conservationists jittery about the disappearing forests and the diminishing water table (and one man who claimed that the tides were a strain on the moon), would-be reformers of a dozen industries and institutions and a woman so fastidious about the separation of church and state that she would take the vote away from nuns and clergymen, capital punishers, atheists, people who wanted the abortion laws changed and a man who thought all surgery with a knife was a sin and ought to carry the same sentence as any other assault with a knife, housewives spooked by lax Food and Drug regulations, Maoists, Esperantoists, American Nazis, neo-Jaegerists, Reichians, juvenile delinquents, crionics buffs, anti-vivisectionists, witches, wizards, chief rabbis of no less than three of the twelve lost tribes of Israel, and a fellow who claimed that he died the same year Columbus discovered America.
And to imagine that this list is not even close to exhaustive!
The best laugh I got from Part I, btw, was this passage relating the point in the post-adolescence of ‘Dick Gibson’ when he is leaving home to begin his career:
His mother…called Dick aside and before his eyes transformed herself into a sacrificing mother in a sentimental fable who covertly slips all her life’s savings and most trusted talismans into her boy’s pockets to tide him on his way. She managed to make him feel like someone off to medical school in Edinburgh, say, fleeing the coal mines in which his father and his father’s father before him had worked for years, ruining their healths and blunting their spirits. When he looked in the envelope later he saw that she had given him her recipe for meat loaf.
This book is one hell of a good read.
X
I am currently deep into reading a remarkable novel by Stanley Elkin: The Dick Gibson Show. I don’t like to look ahead while I’m reading, but I can report at this point that the novel is comprised of at least two parts. The first gives us a bit of the boyhood and familial background of ‘Dick Gibson,’ as well as depicting his self-designed apprenticeship in the world of radio, pre-WWII. Part I ends with ‘Dick Gibson’s’ stint, during WWII, as a d.j. on Armed Forces Radio, and a mind-bending hunt for a magical dodo bird on the island of Mauritius.
As Part II opens, ‘Dick Gibson’ (a nom de mic, btw) has established a radio talk show at an AM station in Hartford, CT. Now, this novel is copyrighted in 1970, so it had to have been written by Elkin largely in the sixties. The long excerpt which I’m going to share below is an index of the kind of Special Guests that Dick Gibson has had on his show. What is remarkable about this list is that although it was imagined by Elkin in the 1960s, it could have been imagined by anyone creating a similar character in 2010. Here is Dick Gibson, contemplating the nature of his guests, after having contemplated his audience:
No, he knew little about his listeners. They were not even mysterious; they were there, but distant as the Sioux. He knew more about the passionate extremists who used his microphones…-- the wild visionaries, opponents of fluoride, palmists, astrologers, the far right and far left and far center, the dianeticians, scientologists, beatniks, homosexuals from the Mattachine Society, the handwriting analysts, addicts, nudists, psychic phenomenologists, all those who believed in the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman and the Communist Conspiracy; men beyond the beyond, black separatists who would take over Idaho and thrive by cornering the potato, pretenders to a half-dozen thrones, Krebiozonists, people from MENSA, health-food people, eaters of weed and soups of bark, cholesterolists, poly-unsaturationalists, treasure hunters, a woman who believed she held a valid Spanish land grant to all of downtown San Francisco, the Cassandras warning of poison in the white bread and cola and barbecued potato chip, conservationists jittery about the disappearing forests and the diminishing water table (and one man who claimed that the tides were a strain on the moon), would-be reformers of a dozen industries and institutions and a woman so fastidious about the separation of church and state that she would take the vote away from nuns and clergymen, capital punishers, atheists, people who wanted the abortion laws changed and a man who thought all surgery with a knife was a sin and ought to carry the same sentence as any other assault with a knife, housewives spooked by lax Food and Drug regulations, Maoists, Esperantoists, American Nazis, neo-Jaegerists, Reichians, juvenile delinquents, crionics buffs, anti-vivisectionists, witches, wizards, chief rabbis of no less than three of the twelve lost tribes of Israel, and a fellow who claimed that he died the same year Columbus discovered America.
And to imagine that this list is not even close to exhaustive!
The best laugh I got from Part I, btw, was this passage relating the point in the post-adolescence of ‘Dick Gibson’ when he is leaving home to begin his career:
His mother…called Dick aside and before his eyes transformed herself into a sacrificing mother in a sentimental fable who covertly slips all her life’s savings and most trusted talismans into her boy’s pockets to tide him on his way. She managed to make him feel like someone off to medical school in Edinburgh, say, fleeing the coal mines in which his father and his father’s father before him had worked for years, ruining their healths and blunting their spirits. When he looked in the envelope later he saw that she had given him her recipe for meat loaf.
This book is one hell of a good read.
X
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Readings: The Paris Review Interviews #5
X
The interview that I chose to read next was that of Brit novelist, Graham Greene. I have enjoyed several of his novels immensely; most notably The Power and the Glory, Brighton Beach, and The Heart of the Matter. The interview, unfortunately, proved to be a disappointment. Perhaps Greene simply dislikes being questioned. Perhaps he was in a shitty mood. Or perhaps the great man is simply a bore. In any event, his responses to the interviewers' questions did not provide me with that one pithy quote for which I was looking, in order to stay true to the ground rules I established to guide this enterprise.
The best Graham Greene quotes to be had in this interview were some of the ones embedded in the questions put to Greene by the interviewers in the expectation, I'm sure, that they would evoke something comparably memorable to submit to The Paris Review.
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men...right? An example of these would be: "You made Scobie say in The Heart of the Matter: 'Point me out the happy man and I will show you either egotism, selfishness, evil or else an absolute ignorance.'" Now, that one could have been the centerpiece of this post. But, alas...
In the same question, the interviewer quotes from The Power and the Glory: "The world is all much of a piece: it is engaged everwhere in the same subterranean struggle...there is no peace anywhere there is life; but there are quiet and active sectors of the line." Yeah. That's why I love the novels.
The one "live" quote in this interview which I found mildly amusing was Greene's response to the question "Do you see much of your fellow authors?" Greene replies:
Not much, they are not one's material. A few of them are very dear friends of mine, but for a writer to spend much of his time in the company of authors is, you know, a form of masturbation.
That's about as good as it gets. Granted, the question wasn't very interesting in the first place...
Probably the quote that best describes the way the whole interview went (and perhaps best characterizes the man as well) is the one with which the piece ends:
[The telephone rang. Mr. Greene smiled in a faint deprecatory way as if to signify he'd said all he wished to say, picked up the instrument, and spoke into it.]
Hello? Hello Peter! How is Andrea? Oh, it's the other Peter. How is Maria? No, I can't do it this evening. I've got Mario Soldati on my hands--we're doing a film in Italy this summer. I'm coproducing. How about Sunday? Battersea? Oh, they're not open? Well, then, we'll go to my pleasant little Negro night club round the corner...
One can see why the piece abruptly cuts off right there.
X
The interview that I chose to read next was that of Brit novelist, Graham Greene. I have enjoyed several of his novels immensely; most notably The Power and the Glory, Brighton Beach, and The Heart of the Matter. The interview, unfortunately, proved to be a disappointment. Perhaps Greene simply dislikes being questioned. Perhaps he was in a shitty mood. Or perhaps the great man is simply a bore. In any event, his responses to the interviewers' questions did not provide me with that one pithy quote for which I was looking, in order to stay true to the ground rules I established to guide this enterprise.
The best Graham Greene quotes to be had in this interview were some of the ones embedded in the questions put to Greene by the interviewers in the expectation, I'm sure, that they would evoke something comparably memorable to submit to The Paris Review.
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men...right? An example of these would be: "You made Scobie say in The Heart of the Matter: 'Point me out the happy man and I will show you either egotism, selfishness, evil or else an absolute ignorance.'" Now, that one could have been the centerpiece of this post. But, alas...
In the same question, the interviewer quotes from The Power and the Glory: "The world is all much of a piece: it is engaged everwhere in the same subterranean struggle...there is no peace anywhere there is life; but there are quiet and active sectors of the line." Yeah. That's why I love the novels.
The one "live" quote in this interview which I found mildly amusing was Greene's response to the question "Do you see much of your fellow authors?" Greene replies:
Not much, they are not one's material. A few of them are very dear friends of mine, but for a writer to spend much of his time in the company of authors is, you know, a form of masturbation.
That's about as good as it gets. Granted, the question wasn't very interesting in the first place...
Probably the quote that best describes the way the whole interview went (and perhaps best characterizes the man as well) is the one with which the piece ends:
[The telephone rang. Mr. Greene smiled in a faint deprecatory way as if to signify he'd said all he wished to say, picked up the instrument, and spoke into it.]
Hello? Hello Peter! How is Andrea? Oh, it's the other Peter. How is Maria? No, I can't do it this evening. I've got Mario Soldati on my hands--we're doing a film in Italy this summer. I'm coproducing. How about Sunday? Battersea? Oh, they're not open? Well, then, we'll go to my pleasant little Negro night club round the corner...
One can see why the piece abruptly cuts off right there.
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Monday, October 11, 2010
Readings: The Current List
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For much of my life I did most of my reading in bed. But I never read in bed any longer. I now do all my reading in my recliner, deep in the basement of my chilly house, often in the company of a cat or two.
People sometimes ask me what I'm reading. This is irksome because I'm never reading just one thing. And when they ask, the full list evades my tongue. And as I mentally grope to run down the full inventory, I see their faces begin to go out of focus after the third title anyway. What I am providing is too much information.
To accommodate this tall stack of titles, I have a small end table of blonde wood next to my recliner. Because this long since proved insufficient to hold a sufficient quantity of volumes, as well as the couple of notebooks I find it necessary to have at hand, I added a snack table, also of blonde wood, next to the end table. It is about an inch higher than the end table. But that's alright. It does the trick. The fact that it is also of blonde wood is just a happy coincidence.
So, in the event that you are one of those people with some curiosity as to what I'm reading, I'm going to provide you with the full list. Read it all, or read it not. Read some of it now and come back later to finish it. Or don't. That's the beauty of it: you choose.
So here we go:
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (stories)
The Book of Folly by Anne Sexton (poetry)
The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin (novel)
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, ed. J.D. McClatchy (1990)
The Ohio Review - Number Fifty-five, ed. Wayne Dodd (1996)
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (novel)
Anne Sexton - a Self-Portrait in Letters, ed. Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames
Stories from the Sixties, ed. Stanley Elkin
And a Voice to Sing With by Joan Baez (autobiography)
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II
That's the complete list. You see what I'm up against when people ask. I've already posted notes on readings from some of these books, either here or on Facebook. And I'll be posting more. I recommend them all, by the way. That pisses you off some, doesn't it?
_______________________
Addenda: I should mention that I'm also reading The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, but I left that at work. I have Anne Sexton's The Awful Rowing Towards God at work, too. Sorry.
X
For much of my life I did most of my reading in bed. But I never read in bed any longer. I now do all my reading in my recliner, deep in the basement of my chilly house, often in the company of a cat or two.
People sometimes ask me what I'm reading. This is irksome because I'm never reading just one thing. And when they ask, the full list evades my tongue. And as I mentally grope to run down the full inventory, I see their faces begin to go out of focus after the third title anyway. What I am providing is too much information.
To accommodate this tall stack of titles, I have a small end table of blonde wood next to my recliner. Because this long since proved insufficient to hold a sufficient quantity of volumes, as well as the couple of notebooks I find it necessary to have at hand, I added a snack table, also of blonde wood, next to the end table. It is about an inch higher than the end table. But that's alright. It does the trick. The fact that it is also of blonde wood is just a happy coincidence.
So, in the event that you are one of those people with some curiosity as to what I'm reading, I'm going to provide you with the full list. Read it all, or read it not. Read some of it now and come back later to finish it. Or don't. That's the beauty of it: you choose.
So here we go:
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (stories)
The Book of Folly by Anne Sexton (poetry)
The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin (novel)
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, ed. J.D. McClatchy (1990)
The Ohio Review - Number Fifty-five, ed. Wayne Dodd (1996)
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (novel)
Anne Sexton - a Self-Portrait in Letters, ed. Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames
Stories from the Sixties, ed. Stanley Elkin
And a Voice to Sing With by Joan Baez (autobiography)
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II
That's the complete list. You see what I'm up against when people ask. I've already posted notes on readings from some of these books, either here or on Facebook. And I'll be posting more. I recommend them all, by the way. That pisses you off some, doesn't it?
_______________________
Addenda: I should mention that I'm also reading The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, but I left that at work. I have Anne Sexton's The Awful Rowing Towards God at work, too. Sorry.
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