that makes life worth living for the ordinary

I don't know if I'll be able to respect myself in the morning after this post, but, so be it. It's spring and the trees are delicate green and I am finally able to walk outside without automatically cringing at the chilled air. I did not wear black today, and everyone made comment, but I did not feel self-conscious. I believe I may have entered an entirely other realm. Maybe because it was "Take your Child to Work Day" and I had friends' babies placed in my arms every five minutes (not something I usually find any comfort in ...) and spent my lunch hour being fed Cheerios by (how time flies) one-year-old X on the grass in Central Park. Maybe it was because I was able to just do my job (which is a joyful one) and not deal with the murk of office politics (we should have babies everyday).

Whatever it was about today, everything about it just made me happy. And to celebrate children, happiness, and budding trees, I thought I'd post a note today about a wonderful children's book Art & Poetry Series that Welcome Books published in the mid-nineties. And much like that mix of springtime and babies, the editors at Welcome took beautiful poems and songs and equally lovely artwork and matched them up just as naturally. I own, no surprise, Dance Me to the End of Love, which uses that most romantic, nay, giddy as Leonard Cohen gets, songs, and combines it with the ever bold, bright, and joyous (and sensual) images of Henri Matisse in that comfortingly familiar, for me anyway, slim page count and oversized trim. A tactile experience that automatically makes me feel five-years-old again.

The Art & Poetry Series has been out of print for a number of years, however, each of the books is set for re-release, and this time I will not miss snatching up a copy of the perhaps doubly romantic May I Feel Said He, the edition that takes that playful e e cummings poem and one of my favorite artists, Marc Chagall, with his misty-floaty imagery--and creates perhaps the only combination that is sexier, more lyrical, and giddier than the above.

Oh, I'm going to have a helluva hangover because of this tomorrow ...

words such as buzz or murmur that imitate

"Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact."
--Willa Cather
I wonder if any of us can remember when we learned to read. It's a memory I wish I held, but can't seem to bring it up in my mind fully.

Perhaps because it was more structured, I can remember learning the meaning of pieces of words--roots, prefixes, suffixes (Conjunction Junction on Saturday mornings, not withstanding)--and the power of the order of words. I remember learning how to curse. I do remember learning to write, I even remember learning how to write in "cursive style." In notebooks with rows of two solid lined pages with the dashed line in between. But I do not remember the moment I learned to read or to recognize words on a page. I wonder if anyone who learns to read at a young age can. I wonder if it is possible to remember what it was like before words had context or if that is something that disappears seconds after language is understood. All I know is, the moment letters put on a page came mean something to me is unknown.

I've been playing most of this evening with Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus (clicking on the images will enlarge them for a better view of the text). It's not new, I've known about it for a while, and have played with it now and again, but, today, for some reason, maybe because my brain has been more frazzled than usual, I found myself in front of its tentacled connections for hours, fascinated with the word play.

I've often enjoyed toying with language and words. But I am especially fascinated by the language of thought and perception, their interwoven nature, and their visual associations. How lists of ideas and events, and even physical sensations may be associated with images and words; or sounds and words, or words and other words (ditto/Dorito as a friend has placed in my mind recently). I wonder why there are times words form visual associations other than the letters they use to form themselves. And what happens inside an individual's brain that makes these associations, it's not necessarily simply how something is read or misread, or misheard. I believe there is more to the fragmented narrative of our brains.

What I love, today especially, about Visual Thesaurus is how successful it is at pretending to achieve the randomness of human associations (or perhaps that is because they are not random after all?). It does not simply list synonyms and antonyms, its programmers were much more clever than that. It takes words and offers phrases that are not casually referenced and go beyond a computer's usual linear connections, mimicking the chaos of a human brain. And you can click on the associations endlessly, each time finding a changing relationship, between words, with new words and phrases; they shift, meanings altered, contexts lost, refusing conclusion.

judgment of the intellect is only part of the truth

"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
- Voltaire

I haven't bought a copy of the Sunday New York Times in close to 10 years. It was one of those NYC pretentions that I actually allowed myself. I think I stopped because, despite having lived in a mostly Jewish neighborhood during those years, I couldn't find a place that made a good bagel to save my life. That, and the fact that Sunday Styles just annoys. I always liked to see what had made it to the cover of the NYT Book Review, however, at some point their dissection of Clinton and their quaint "pat on the head" views of those of us in outer boroughs came to be too much. And so, once again this rainy Sunday morning, not actually reading the Times, but of it, has me grinding my teeth. I steadied myself before reading Sara Nelson's most recent PW column, but to no avail. They are (or rather the editor is) planning on of my biggest pet peeves--the naming of the definitive. But, first a little primer.

Almost two years ago Sam Tanenhaus took over top editing spot for the Book Review section, probably one of the least-known well-known facts (knowing is simply another example of publishing's myopia. I'd reckon a guess that two people outside of the business would be able to name him, though why they should is lost on me). Tanenhaus who wrote, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is also a historian, and a former Vanity Fair editorial alum (a favorite mag, despite its celebrity adorations), among many other literary pursuits. He has managed to meet two of the three main concerns folks had at his appointment: 1. Pull the section to the right and 2. Ignore fiction. Number 3 was dumbing down the section, which hasn't really happened to the extreme that was anticipated (unless you are of the opinion that any continued attempt at defending the actions of the "person" in the White House is, by association, dumb. I'll leave readers of this post to take a wild guess as to where I stand on that). But, Tanenhaus is, generally perceived as, an intelligent man. A view still held despite his continued employment of (the much limned ... heh) Michiko Kakutani (and A.O. Scott, frankly). It seems he plays as conservative and safe as an editor as he does as a writer. I say that, because, despite publishing's tendency to believe the whole world cares about books as much as we do, I'd guess there were a limited number of us who would be able to cite his book about us, Literature Unbound: A Guide for the Common Reader. In it there is a quote, which had many of us mailing reader cards for Sunday subscriptions from L.A., that reads, "our greatest triumph is usually not doing, keeping things in balance, refraining from the act we can't redeem." Not doing, yes, I believe that is a good view of his work, and they are his own words. That book received a little more play upon his ascention to the post, and there was much discussion as to what it could tell those of us who cared about what to expect. Arrogant enough to have written the tome in his early twenties, the views are difficult to really take seriously, as is the case, with any certainties so soon in life (or at least they should be). In Unbound, he provides us "literature as game," a lot of reviews of Western authors (no surprise there considering his politics), accuses Joyce of "double-speak," highlights Ayn Rand (again, no surprise), and generally offers up the usual conservative wariness of difficult prose (and please, as I have lamented Pynchon and DeLillo myself, note the difference in the definitions of difficult [his view] vs. oblique [mine]).

So, back to Nelson's article, which was about the Times' most recent pandering publicity stunt, the fact that come May 22, Tanenhaus is going to announce "the finest work of fiction published in the United States since 1980." Why? Why would this question need asking? Why waste more time on a question without any possible answer other than to force debate and provide fodder for the letters column. Modestly, the decision is not to be his alone. He will even have those "difficult" writers helping out. I hope that come a month from now I can avert my eyes, though, I'm sure I am not so strong and despite my attempts to extricate, still all too human, there will be some rubber-necking on my part, for sure. A few posts ago I noted that there were over 4,000 novels published in 2004, another few thousand more, at least, since then. Add to that the 20+ years prior and anyone who has read more than a handful of books during that time will tell you to pick either their favorite or the best, is a nigh impossible and unwelcome challenge. For one who plays his hand close, I guess I should applaud Tannenhaus' attempt at taking a chance, however, I'd venture to say that the result will be more of what we feared of him to begin with.

people whom even children’s literature would corrupt

“It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky.” - Muriel Spark

As with a lot of the things you think are useful when you are in college, I took a course in British Children's Literature, which turned me into a British Literature major (perhaps not useful, but prescient, in retrospect). In any event, one of the books we read was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark. I was surprised at the time, and still am, that this was considered kid lit, particularly since its original publication date was 1961. It was quite risqué, as they say, what with its free love and general disdain for traditional English crumpets and tea. The book, ever-so charming on its surface, never completely hid what others have called Spark's tendency toward "dark tales of perversion." I wish YA novels were still written with this kind of subversive and thoughtful intellect.

Perhaps it was her beginnings as a writer of propaganda during WWII, perhaps it was her connection to Graham Greene and her Catholic conversion, perhaps her early influences of Mary Shelley and Evelyn Waugh, perhaps it was the Scot in her, or perhaps she was simply ahead of her time. Whatever the "perhaps," Dame Muriel Spark (nee Muriel Sarah Camberg), died April 15, at the age of 88.

---

obits
Guardian UK
New York Observer
works
Muriel Spark Archive - National Library of Scotland
What War and Peace ought to have been called - Slate Diaries


[Muriel Spark's desk at home in Tuscany, by Scottish journalist Alan Taylor in 2003]

the horrible burden of Time wrecking your back

And if sometimes you wake up, on palace steps, on the green grass of a ditch, in your room’s gloomy solitude, your intoxication already waning or gone, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, ... ask what time it is. And the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, will answer, "It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk constantly! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you choose.” - Baudelaire

Oh, I'm exhausted. Haven't been sleeping well. The time shift didn't help much (good to know I'm not alone as "springing ahead" apparently increases both traffic accidents [by 7%] and the overall accident death rate [by 6.5%]). Enjoying, too, correspondences, interludes, and connections (and lots of ice cream). Have this buzz running through my brain and my thoughts have become cut-ups without need of any chemical assistance. A definite sign of sleep deprivation. That and difficulty focusing the eyes, moodiness, hallucinations, fragmented thinking, slurred speech, and diminished mental ability (though, no, I am not so far as to have gotten to some of these, as yet). And so, what better time than to return to creativity and altered consciousness? Paging Dr. Benway ...

In 1951, having been released from a Mexico jail after accidentally shooting and killing his wife in a "game" of William Tell, William S. Burroughs, who it goes without saying, was no stranger to altered states, journeyed to the Amazon in search of "the final fix"--a rumored telepathic, hallucinogenic drug called yage (pronounced ya-hay). Burroughs became fascinated with the drug (also known as ayahuasca) after learning of how it was used by natives to find things--lost bodies and souls, specifically. He recorded his journey and all of its lush incidents, in letters to his good friend, Allen Ginsberg, in what was later published as The Yage Letters. These notes and Burroughs' experiences during his travels also became the base for Naked Lunch (once criminal, now one of Time's "All-Time 100 Novels") as well as his "cut-up" writing form. The Yage Letters also includes Ginsberg's experiences during his own exploration of the drug, and his corresponding visions and terrors while on it.

As with Kerouac's structured quest for altered consciousness, so too was Burroughs', though his was also a quest through drugs to achieve this. He found himself a curandero and worked with him closely in order to experience not only the high, but also the ritualistic trance-state that the drug produces. It is not a casual experience, as both Burroughs and Ginsberg found out. After his first attempt, Burroughs wrote "checked into the hospital junk sick and spent four days there. They would only give me three shots of morphine and I couldn't sleep from pain and heat and deprivation." Without going into all of the gruesome detail of the body's reaction (you can read it here) the effect of the drug is to first purge you, bodily--from both ends--and then release you mentally. However, unlike Kerouac, for Burroughs (and for Ginsberg as well) the discovery was painful indeed, he did not find the enlightenment that he sought from the experience, not immediately anyway--the aforementioned novel and, more important, his "cut-up" form came afterward.

While his cut-up technique was literal, he would cut passages (by himself and other writers) and rearrange them randomly, from a prose perspective, he was seeking "the lost"--the hidden meaning of words. For Burroughs, the cut-up was "a montage of fragments ... consciousness is a cut up. Every time you walk down the street or look out of the window, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors." The cut-up disturbed continuity, but he worked within the randomness, assigning it limits with a result he felt went only so far as the fact that it was unintentional. It was about the subliminal flow of information, and perception hidden from our conscious. It was meant to directly contradict popular-culture manipulations--to be guided away from the visible and the "virus" that words have become in our culture. By juxtaposing sentences--logical sequences not represented in our brains--he renders the words meaningless and their control over our brains harmless. The cut-up is a method for direct action against mind control. And while he did not accomplish this under direct influence of yage (he certainly wrote under the influence of many others, whether in Tangiers with Paul Bowles, or in New York, under any number of substances), what his experience of it did was open this mind view.

City Lights Books has just this month published a new, more complete edition called, Yage Letters Redux. The text includes some previously unpublished (and previously unpublishable) correspondence, as well as a detailed history of both the drug, and Burroughs' obsession with it.

so it is the basic law of life

A friend recently sent this bit of text to me, and I had never encountered it before. As with all things mysterious about the brain and its functions, I was truly tickled by it:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a
wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.

Ah, chaos. If only the mind could find a set of keys so easily in a disheveled room as it can read the above paragraph. I am struck by redundancy. I notice, when reading--for any reason, be it pleasure, a subway advertisement, or to edit--it is one of the first things I pick at. But, generally it appears to me on a less intricate level. Never so much to the letter, as it were. Having never been good at math, I find the fact that my brain is so good at structure--planning, dates, organization--odd. It seems to come from some unknown piece of myself, yet it is one of the first things people notice about me.

In any event, the trick to the above (though there really isn't one), is that a good reader is able to successfully comprehend the text as written because only the internal letters have been randomized. Essentially, there is a logic to the disorder (there is enough information for one who has some essential knowledge) the mind is able to reconstruct the information so that it makes sense; it can extract, deconstruct, and rebuild before you even realize it has done so.

And amid another twist of connections, this evening's conversation, that at some point turned to the events of September 11 (I may dare touch on the novels that have appeared recently about this date, but I am not certain I can do so without some personal regret for it), brought to mind the children's book Unbuilding by David Macaulay. Macaulay is a fascinating artist and author who is known for is intricate explorations of the mechanics of everyday things. Macaulay's work, though written for children, is extraordinarily complex. His line art is minute and exacting in its detail. He takes items, usually architectural in nature (though also the human form), and he explains their essential being. For him, the forms he examines must be deconstructed in order to be understood--order to chaos for comprehension. Unbuilding takes the Empire State Building and undoes it. Bolts and all; in specific sequence.

There is a spread in the book (and also on the cover) that is a view looking downtown from what appears to be about 40th Street. And the Twin Towers, in their linear certainty still stand. Later, in a similar spread, they are obscured by clouds, and the Empire State Building is half dissolved (and there is one last image of this at night). I remember having the random thought after the first tower fell that, it couldn't stay that way. They both had to fall. To have one and not the other, would have been some kind of cruel rearrangement.

To those of us
who don't always
appreciate things
until they're gone

[the dedication for Unbuilding, published 1980]

some people never go crazy

"Almost everyone is born a genius and buried an idiot."
- Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man
After all my talking, this post will surely be a letdown, one that I'll want to write and rewrite again. But, gotta let go sometime. Not going to go into individual books here, might prefer to touch on those somewhere down the road. I consider this a preface.

Why I love Bukowski. Because he was reflective; because he was funny; because he was socially awkward; because he was able to say a profound thing in a simple way. Buk died March 9, 1994. I was working at a comic book company at the time. And in fact, he was the reason I got my first full-time job in publishing. I had to fill out a questionnaire before the interview, and one of the questions was, "Name some of your favorite writers." I almost didn't write him down. But, it turned out the woman who would become my boss, was a huge fan as well. So she hired me. When I got to the office that morning, I found on my desk that a friend (and future boss) had left the NY Times obit there with a note that read, "go home early, mourn Hank." I wish I still had that.

Looking at bookstore shelves with their "newly published" or "newly found" Bukowski titles, it's hard to believe that he only wrote six novels while he was alive. Of those, only one of them wasn't autobiographical (Pulp). His alter ego, Hank Chinaski appears throughout the other five. And like Buk (whose first name was Henry), Hank despised society and loathed and feared the middle class and their values. Hank was brilliant at unearthing the motivations of those he came in contact with and as much as he fails, whether in love or lust, or employment (or housing), his tormentors never escape without having been laid bare by one of his devastatingly funny and brutally honest observations. But, as is often the case, what lay behind that wit and cynicism and bluster was exactly the opposite--Buk was a lonely and vulnerable man full of self-doubt and loathing. Someone longing for love and to be loved--and it is this, this essential part of his soul, that is never gone from the page, no matter how vulgar or crude the scene.

Charles Bukowski was born in Germany in 1920, and though his first works were published in the 1940s, he gave up writing to generally live the life he would eventually describe when he returned to the typewriter, about 20 years later. He spent his childhood as a social failure, in a lower class family, with an abusive father and horrific acne (the extent of which can be clearly seen on his ravaged face), just as Hank did. For years his work was either compared to the Beats or dismissed outright as too simplistic, but more recently it has been accepted in "literary" circles and has even found its way into coursework and literary theory. Perhaps most famously, was an essay that appeared in Granta by Bill Buford, which dissected Bukowski's novel Factotum (even if by doing so, it missed the point, entirely). Buford called the form "Dirty Realism," and his theory takes Roland Barthes idea of writing in the style of "literary consciousness"--essentially, the reader experiences immediate pleasure at the moment of reading--and turns it on its head. For Buford, dirty realism transfers the consciousness to the writer at their required moment:

Imagine someone ... who abolishes within himself all barriers, all classes, all exclusions, not by syncretism but by simple discard of that old spectre: logical contradiction ... [Bukowski not only] discards ... logical contradiction, but flaunts his disdain for consistency, logic, and accountability. He is not only conscious of contradiction within his text, but celebrates a willful hypocrisy, indiscriminately exhibiting (and conscripting to his own ends) the incongruities of postindustrial capital. Bukowski turns passivity into a subversive practice by self-consciously displaying his subjection to capital's indeterminacy, in effect replicating and co-opting that indeterminacy to empower himself.

In other words, Bukowski was an insecure, confused, uh ... human being. Whatever the thought, this piece did bring much attention and to that book, as well as his other work, and provided much of the long-overdue legitimacy it deserved. More recent theories include British author Jules Smith's critical analysis of Buk, Art Survival and Poetry, that, as the book's blurb states:

Smith investigates in detail the formal influences of Whitman's broadening of subject matter, iterative parallelisms, and revival of narrative, Robinson Jeffers' Inhumanism, and the long, strophic lines of both predecessors. As a poet based for thirty-six years in Southerm California, I am especially grateful for the insightful attention paid to the complex relationship of subsequent generations of L.A./Long Beach writers to the Bukowkian model. I share, furthermore, his conviction that Bukowski's work is of at least the stature of Ginsberg's, Kerouac's, and Henry Miller's - I would, in fact, place him a notch above all three. I also find of great significance the "anxiety of influence," to invoke Harold Bloom's terminology, of Bukowski's Oedipal relationship to his towering, glowering forefather, Ernest Hemingway.

This theory sounds a little closer to the spirit of Bukowski, insofar as considering the thought of his work being deconstructed on the basis of a prurient interest in Papa by a room full of twenty-year-old coeds. The idea of which, I imagine, would tickle Hank no end.

I mentioned I was re-reading Run with the Hunted, to refresh my thoughts on who he was, and even in part to see if what I thought it was that I found so appealing in him was even true anymore. And, it was. It only gets funnier as you get older; more recognizable; just how spot-on his rants about life and love were; and the petty frustrations and petty people you run into throughout both; and how often you revisit it all, no matter what alleyway you find yourself walking down. As far as the book itself, as a concept, Run with the Hunted is an inspired idea for a "biography," and I'd recommend it for that reason alone. Since so much of Buk's work was semi-autobiographical (his short stories and his poems, in addition to his novels) what editor John Martin (the genius behind Black Sparrow Press) did was take excerpts from novels, short stories, and poems and put them in the chronological order of Buk's life. And what this does is provide an entirely different view of him. It reveals just how sensitive to the world Buk was, how utterly dumbfounded. And it also reveals why more clearly. This is important I think, in understanding him. Because, if you read just one book, or if you read many in varying order, it may not occur to you that most of the stories are true. And it's easy to see in that case, how his writing might just come across as simple and profane. But to read these poems, excerpts, and stories in the order of his life puts all of that into perspective. You may still find him repulsive, but you can't help but recognize the pain and humor behind it. And with that recognition, you also come to see how deceptively simple his writing is. There doesn't exist a Bukowski sentence that runs off for a full paragraph. Not only was he incapable of that kind of preening, he was incapable of bullsh*t. Period.

I wish I could include more of his poetry here, because as with his novels, their simple form makes reading poems much less of a chore. It becomes instead, what the form was intended to be, emotion boiled down, in a simple way. Please click to read these, if you have the time.

eulogy to a hell of a dame
for jane: with all the love i had, which was not enough
a radio with guts
as the sparrow
an almost made up poem
confession

I think I can live with this as is for now. Maybe.

["Conversation" line drawing by Charles Bukowski]

art simply facilitates persuading

Martin: What would we do here?
Eddie: Well, you could uh-- tell each other stories.
Martin: Stories?
Eddie: Yeah.
Martin: I don't know any stories.
Eddie: Make 'em up.
Martin: That'd be lying wouldn't it?
Eddie: No, no. Lying's when you believe it's true. If you already know it's a lie, then it's not lying.
--True West

People often talk about the experience of going to the theater; the immediacy, the singular moment of the delivery of a line; the sense that anything can happen. It is true, that a great play, even in the hands of mediocre (but not terrible) actors has a poetry that is often lost on the page. For a while I was obsessed with plays, they were all I read for close a year while in college. I've always been drawn to dialogue, and a writer's ability to capture conversation with all of its imperfect starts and stops. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my two favorites playwrights are Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill and I have been lucky enough to see my favorite by each performed on stage. It hasn't seemed like it, because I usually only go to one or two plays a year, but going through the archives, I realized, I've actually managed to catch quite a few of my favorite plays.

Just a partial list of my favorites (and I was surprised when looking at the cast lists how many movie and TV actors starred) in addition to Long Day's Journey and After the Fall, Sam Shepard's True West (with Gil Bellows [of all people], 1993), O'Neill's Anna Christie (with Liam Neeson, 1993), David Auburn's Proof (with Jennifer Jason Leigh, 2001), Lanford Wilson's Burn This (with, sigh, Edward Norton, 2002).

The only play that I truly miss not having seen, and it was unfortunately out last year, is Shepard's Fool for Love. And if you are familiar that play, and with more than one of those others, you'll note certain themes; love, desire & repulsion, lies and the mind's truth, memory, and point of view. Shepard wrote Fool for Love after a divorce. Shepard described his play as "the outcome of all this tumultuous feeling I've been going through this past year … it's a very emotional play and in some ways embarrassing for me to witness but somehow necessary at the same time." The beauty of Fool for Love is its ability to bridge all different levels, from its soap opera elements to its sensationalistic topics. It's a beautiful allegory of love lost and a vision of it as personal drama--particularly ill-fated love. The other element that always struck me is how the characters deal with their shared past, and how different their interpretations of that past is; how crucial that remembrance is with regard to how each of them manages to (or doesn't) get through their life. And how memory, deep memory--the sort that shapes you--places you. How you become stuck with who you are based on how you've chosen to remember your life and what you are able to do with that remembering.

You see this kind of self-deception a lot in plays, I think it's intrinsic to the medium in a way that no other allows, because unlike a movie, or even a book, everything is so dependent upon the word and character that the result has nowhere else to go but into the mind of the players on the stage. In Burn This, the characters confront desire that is pushed far down, to initially be released as anger and blame; and in Long Day's Journey, the final scene sees Mary Tyrone, no longer able to keep the past or the lies she has had to create in order to survive it, down. And that is only brought to bare--and she is only barely able to survive the recognition--because of her drug-induced state. After the Fall is just a memory. It is the thought and denial--the excuse of memory. Miller's opening stage direction instructs this: "The action takes place in the mind, thought, and memory of Quentin ..." It is the waiting room of the mind where those we have known and who have gone from us appear again and again--the past, and how we blame ourselves and others; missed communication, and conversations not had; or the conversations we force ourselves to believe we've had in order to fool us into thinking all that could have been done was and get through the next days.

"We are freed, at the end ... not because the playwright has arrived at a solution, but because he has reconciled us to the notion that there is no solution—that it is the human lot to try and fail, and that no one is immune from self-deception.” -- David Mamet on Arthur Miller

musicians paint their pictures on silence

Just when I've had enough of the bone-chilling wind down Broadway, the incessant crush of strangers, the fact that Coliseum Books is no longer on 57th Street, and start seriously considering a 12' x 12' shack in Montana again ... New York brings me back in. Today's much-debated decision to go to the Borders in the Time Warner building in Columbus Circle during lunchtime (tourists, crowds, mall, Whole Foods shoppers ... shiver) included an unexpected art interlude. Up on the second floor is a nice exhibit of Terry O'Neill's music photography, which I was able to peruse relatively unscathed while the hoards ran into J Crew and Sephora. A jazz musician, himself, O'Neill started his career as a photographer in the early sixties and by the mid-seventies, had a prolific portfolio having appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, and similar A-list publications. The collection featured a group of some of his most familiar snaps from from the National Portrait Gallery, including a blow-up of the above pic of Frank Sinatra in Miami during the late sixties. Great stuff. Well-worth wading through the masses to find it.

What business had I going into Borders looking for books when I have no room left even after having bought another shelf? None. Guilty as charged. It's a harder habit to break than quitting smoking ...

More O'Neill pics: Beatles to Bardot

_________
Photo: Frank Sinatra, Miami Beach. Photograph by Terry O'Neill, 1968. © Terry O'Neill.

so that my nights are not full of regrets

I suppose it has become apparent by now that I am sensitive to certain turns of phrase; certain ways of the written word; and that there are ways of expression that touch me more than others. And that doesn’t refer to the topic, necessarily. It has more to do with intent. I am a romantic at heart, essentially. Not bodice-busting romance, of course not … but the romance of subtle gestures and recognitions; of outright lust and desire; of honest want and need. I doubt if that comes as a surprise to anyone who has read more than one of my posts. And, this is why I have never liked John Updike. And it is why I’ve read almost every book he’s written. Because, as with things I love, I need to know the things I despise just as well, in order to feel comfortable in my opinions of them. It has nothing to do with his writing ability. I think he (and I’m sure he would agree) is an exemplary wordsmith. Yes, he writes a fine sentence. The first 16-odd pages of Rabbit, Run and his description of basketball? Unparalleled. I grant all of that. That is not my issue.

My issue (as a romantic) is this: I hate his view of women. And I suppose, those of you who have been reading closely might find that odd as well. How could I hate good, Protestant, white-bread Updike’s view of women and crush on Bukowski’s? It’s quite simple. Yes, Bukowski wrote extensively of f*cking, and used that word liberally; he used a lot of other less delicate words, too. Here’s the difference: Bukowski loved women. Updike hates them. And please—I'm no prude, no feminist, and no saint, certainly. I would hope my comparison of those specific two writers would be enough to quell that thought. What I hate about Updike are the lies, the ease with which he allows his men to go to and from them. The completely unsympathetic female creations he conjures. The shrill tone he places on all of their tongues (I say this, mind you, as a woman who only in the past few years has been able to have close friendships with other women, and generally prefers the company of men). Bukowski's women could be ugly, vulgar, and often deceptive, but never more or less than he (Hank), his male character, was. It was all on equal ground. And that is the difference.

Since I no longer have any Updike in my library, I am working strictly from memory in this post. And, specifically, I am working from my remembrance of Couples, a book that I despised from its very first page. I understand that I am not alone in this opinion, and in fact, came to it some thirty years after the first reviews were posted. Still, looking back years after reading the book, and finding I am not alone now, and would not have been alone then, makes me feel a little less reactionary in my critique. A clip I found from the New York Times review of the book by Norman Mailer suggested he "keep his foot in the whorehouse and forget about his damn prose style." To that, I say, amen.

I’m not sure what it is about certain men (authors specifically) that exalt in the pleasure of deception, and in the game of deceit. I am not naïve, I know of the nature of desire, of what is unknown, and of what is wrong (and the pleasure in that). But to celebrate it? To offer it up as love (all the while pretending it is not)? To use such talent—and indeed, it is talent—to accomplish this? Let me tell you. That first page I spoke of? I remember it well. It all begins the story as told from “within,” which is the central conceit of this exercise for Updike. The opening scene is a bit of dialogue between one of the couples as they are undressing each other. The man says something to his wife, what he says is not important (though it is a tease of a sentence between two long-familiar and exhausted lovers). What is important is the point of view that we are offered; peeking out from the closet, fly on the wall. Updike is giving us access to this humiliation of the wife through the husband's critical internal narrative of her form as she hopefully awaits his touch. And it is about having this knowledge--of the truth of the lies--that we are to be titillated—not by the naked woman at the end of the page, you understand. That we are there to witness it, that we are in on the joke of her, that is the point for him. And we are to revel in the skill of the paragraph, for his words placed ever so purposefully, cruelly, so there can be no mistake about just how clever he is. That is pornography, in its essential form.

all which isn't singing is mere talking

So I’m re-reading Run with the Hunted again, to prep my thoughts on C.B. It includes many of his poems as bridges in the narrative. And I’d forgotten how much I love his poetry. I say this, because generally speaking, I am not much in love with the form. Nor do I read short stories for that matter. I suppose I find them unsatisfying because it is so rare for one to convey all that I need from the characters. Not sure why I don’t enjoy poetry more than I do. There really are barely a handful of poets I can read at any length and they're pretty standard: e e cummings, W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound, and yeah, Bukowski (the post on him is coming around, yes, slowly ...).

I used to have a book of poems I had to buy for a college class. As I no longer have the book, and don't remember the class ... one of my writing courses, certainly, I'm afraid I can't offer the title. I doubt if I ever cracked the spine of it more than once. I was never that kind of student, I preferred to listen to the lectures and class dialogues, and study from my own notes and memory. Served me well. In any event, I know that I paged through this book at least once, because I remember coming across a section that dealt with the poetry of song lyrics. I don’t seek out lines of poetry the way I do song lyrics. I don't know if the words mean more to me because I can hear them to the music or not. I imagine that must have something to do with it.

The connection between poetry and music lyrics seems a pretty obvious one to make. I don't think there is anyone who would argue the poetry of certain songwriters. I suppose some might say songwriting is harder, in so far as the musical accompaniment required, but, I don't know that it is a significant enough difference. And from a strictly technical standpoint, they both require a knowledge words and how to twist and play and use them; they require rhythm and rhyme; and the understanding of metaphor extensively, etc. And then, from a historical perspective, there again they are intertwined: the minstrel, troubadour, court jester, what have you. The lyric poem, the poetic lyric, one in the same.

As far as favorite poet lyricists, I can name more than a handful of mine; Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Phil Ochs, Woodie Guthrie, Lou Reed, among others. And as much as I would love to sit a while and discuss each of these artists at length, it’s the first three that are dearest to me, and they were the three who had songs that were used as examples in the book (there is actually a course at the University of Alberta that uses all three together). Unfortunately, the editor’s choice of songs was pretty uninspired; "Suzanne," for Cohen, "Like a Rolling Stone," for Dylan, and "Born to Run," by Springsteen. I admit here, in print, that I loathe the song "Suzanne." Yes, loathe to hear it, the words on their own, however, don't bother me as much, a little trite, but they don't have me running for the fast forward button. As for the other two, they're more than fine tunes, but would not have been my first choice for examining the verse of either artist. I don't think they represent the strengths of any of them. Dylan and Springsteen, are easier to compare (despite their significant differences). They share a similar sensibility, in their ability to put words to the experience of the "common man," the rambling folksy-Americana--Woodie Guthrie, whom they also share as far as an important influence. Cohen's work has the structure of a writer and poet, with language that is more refined, formal, and referential. And many of his songs were poems first before they were put to a tune. Forced to choose, I would have placed these in that chapter instead:

Springsteen: Drive All Night
Dylan: It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Cohen: The Stranger Song (after much handwringing…)

["Bird on a Wire" art as T-Shirt from Meddlesome Kids]

in a calm, clear voice

A little levity is in order. I think I'm gonna hurt myself if I keep those long posts up ... Plus it's April Fool's Day, and an atheist holiday, apparently, and that's as good an excuse as any to feel like I deserve the day off to celebrate. So, a short interlude to mention the terrific show I saw last night out at the Wreck Room in "East Williamsburg" (aka Bushwick, don't tell my father ... heh). Super space, with pool tables and those awesome old tin ceiling tiles, though the mics were a little off, which was a shame. In any event, have taken up part-time groupie status for a friend's band, Mr. McGregor, self-described "trailer-punk-trio" (this is what working in publishing does to you ...). And when they're not being rowdy, they do a great backup for the equally wonderful Mouse (aka Susan Margolis), a petite alt-country/folk singer/cellist/bass player with an absolutely incredible voice. Got to see them all perform way-the-heck downtown a couple of weeks ago, the venue was not on top of things, so they got bumped back a few hours (from 8:30 to 1:30 ...), but I was definitely glad to have stuck around for it, if she was exhausted or rushed, it didn't show a bit. As for Mr. McGregor, they're a riot to watch, with a raw and bawdy Southern-Punk-Pop-Rock sound ... and they do a mean version of Heat Miser ...

On the heels of Mr. McGregor was Candy from Strangers a loud and fun band from San Francisco, though my first guess would have been LA, since the adorable and formidable lead singer Ruby Jordan reminded me of a cross between Exene Cervenka (formerly of X) and Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde).

Good stuff all around. Phew. That was easy ...