Accismus

Most writers were heavy readers first; most heavy readers eventually try their hand at writing. Some successful writers pick up their trade through osmosis, but most need to carefully study their predecessors, to parse their work and identify precisely how they pulled it off. Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer explains (largely by example) how to be a close reader, mostly with the aim of instructing would-be writers in how to model their own prose. She begins, appropriately, with words, moves onto sentences and then paragraphs; after examining the basic components of text itself, she discusses the larger elements of fiction writing. She also includes an entire chapter raving about Chekhov, simply because she’s totally nuts for him. Nothing wrong with that.

Prose loves reading, and this book makes you want to read, even if her devotion to meticulous close reading makes the entire endeavor seem as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Personally, I am not a close reader. I am a frantic reader. While I appreciate Prose’s call to read less and better, I can’t get over feeling like I’m racing the clock. There are only so many books you can get through in a lifetime, and there are an infinite number of books I really want to read. Since graduating from college, I have never once reread a book, which is, of course, a shame. If anyone should feel at leisure to read closely and carefully, it would be me, as I currently have nothing but free time, but still, I read quickly, in gulps. Which, incidentally, is the best way to read non-fiction (or at least, to read non-fiction for informational purposes).

But fiction is about the read itself. Prose says, of reading Chekhov on a long daily bus commute during a particularly dismal period of her life:

Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who say that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on the bus.

This slim book, edited by Toni Morrison, has eleven short essays originally delivered by various PEN writers on the issue of “censorship and the power of the written word.” There’s an interesting divide here between the authors whose subjects have not generally been political (John Updike, Francine Prose, Russell Banks) and those writers who live and work in turbulent or repressive areas (whether they grew up in these areas, or have traveled widely in them) (Morrison, Pico Iyer, Orhan Pamuk, Nadine Gorimer). The first group tends to talk about the literary crappiness of novels written specifically to draw attention to some cause, or to protest an outrage. They emphasize the importance of literature as an observant and non-judgmental work of art.

Banks:

A true novelist. . . has no thought of his or her audience. . . . Not when submitting oneself to the discipline and rigor and tradition of the history of the form, which require that one be at all times wholly honest and nonjudgmental and as intelligent as possible – that one be, as Henry James prescribed, a person ‘on whom nothing is lost.’

Prose:

The polemicist, or the theorist, or the strategist would have trouble with the stance that Chekhov identified as basic for the artist. That is, the notion that writers must admit they understand nothing of life, that nothing in this world makes sense, so all a writer can do is to try and describe it.

The second group, while often agreeing with the first, tends to focus more on the revolutionary potential of the written word, and on the absolute indignity and intolerability of censorship. Both groups essentially agree with each other: the job of writers is to mirror what is true, and nothing – no cause or party or regime or nation or event – that impedes this truth-telling can be tolerated. So that when Orhan Pamuk (whose essay was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting) writes about Turkey, he is writing what he sees in the society where he lives. Whether or not he intends to make an overtly political statement (and if his book is to be of any interest, hopefully, making a political statement would not be his purpose in writing it), his work might still be censored by those who don’t agree with or like the reality it reflects.

Pamuk:

Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights. These freedoms, which modern people long for as much as bread and water, should never be limited by using nationalist sentiment, moral sensitivities, or – worst of all – business or military interests. If many nations outside the West suffer poverty in shame, it is not because they have freedom of expression but because they don’t. . . . Yes, we must be alert to those who denigrate immigrants and minorities for their religion, their ethnic roots, or the oppression that the governments of the countries they’ve left behind have visited on their own people.

But to respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest hat we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. Respect for the rights of religious or ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech.

The only form of activism appropriate for writers (when they are acting in the capacity of “writer” rather than, say, that of “citizen”) is witnessing, and it’s pretty much impossible to write anything of merit without witnessing. On that, it seems all these contributors agree.

Gordimer:

The extremity of human experience does not make a writer.

Updike:

To be sure, as a citizen, one votes, attends meetings, subscribes to liberal pieties, pays or withholds taxes, and contributes to charities . . . But as a writer, for me to attempt to expand my artistic scope into all the areas of my human concern, to substitute nobility of purpose for accuracy of execution, would certainly be to forfeit whatever social usefulness I do have.

Attention, male writers: unless you particularly plan to alienate your readership, try not to cram a bunch of pointless derogatory comments about women into the first ten pages of your book, unless that’s really what you’re all about. I’ve noticed this with a number of books lately – I’ll get all alienated in the first chapter, and decide not to read the rest, and then keep going only to find the entire rest of the book totally devoid of casual misogyny. It’s so weird! I noticed this in Lost Cosmonaut, and now here in David Rakoff’s book of humorous essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. In the first essay, “Love It or Leave It,” about applying for citizenship during the latter Bush administration, on page 2, we have:

After twenty-two years, it seemed a little bit coy to still be playing the Canadian card. I felt like the butt of the joke about the proper lady who, when asked if she would have sex with a strange man for a million dollars, allows that yes she would do it. But when asked if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, reels back with an affronted, ‘What do you think I am?’ to which the response is, ‘Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we’re just quibbling about the price.’

On page 7, Barbara Bush the Younger is described (to absolutely no point whatsoever) as “W’s liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter.” Particularly gratuitous, as Rakoff’s real beef is with Barbara, Sr. (page 8: “Stupid fucking cow.”).

Admittedly, on page 8, we do have a derogatory physical description of a man: “The hairy-knuckled, pinkie-ringed lawyer for a Vietnamese fellow behind me….” No mention of the man’s genitals, of course, or sexual appeal or lack thereof, but still, not exactly a flattering comment. But then on page 9, we’re back to women, describing a “Russian woman in her early forties” who has the misfortune to be standing on line nearby:

She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she’s just come from tearing the hide off the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.

It’s safe to assume that leopard was also female.

But here on page 9, we also have our first woman appear without being described physically, or with any tossed-off, irrelevant sexual slurs attached to her person. This is Agent Morales, who interviews Rakoff for citizenship. Then, by page 11, we’re on to Rakoff’s friend, Sarah (who, based on her introduction as “a self-described civics nerd,” I’m assuming is Sarah Vowell), and nobody describes their friends as pointless and/or distasteful vaginas, so we’re in the clear.

And that’s it, for the rest of the book’s 222 pages: no more offensive comments about women, at least not that reached out of the pages and slapped me, like these first ones. In fact, I really enjoyed the book after page 10. The essays were tart, well-written, observant and entertaining. Why the packed in slurs up front?

So, the moral here is: writers and editors (whether male, female, gay, straight or other): when you have your manuscript all ready for publishing, go through at least the first twenty pages or so, with an eye to how you describe or comment on any women mentioned, as contrasted with how you describe or comment on any men. If you note that every, single woman you bring up is described as a slut, a bitch, a stupid bimbo, a nag, or has been physically detailed for no specific reason (ugly, fat, wart-faced, saggy-boobed, clothes too tight, past her prime, sex on legs, etc.), and that every man is described in terms of his personality traits and actions, then think about whether or not you genuinely want half the population to toss you and your book right out at that point. Because not all readers are as patient as I am. A lot of women won’t make it to page 11. And I’d like to think some men wouldn’t either.

I really don’t direct the above rant particularly at David Rakoff. His is only the most recent book I’ve read to follow this off-putting pattern. But really, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is great otherwise. Rakoff is a sharp and articulate social satirist, and his targets aren’t the easy ones. If there is a unifying theme to these essays, I would say it is what we desire and what we buy, and why, and what we tell ourselves about it, with occasional diversions into the weird and often unpleasant things people like to do for fun. He has drawn a bead on class hypocrisy, and conspicuous consumption. He covers foodies, high fashion, fasting, plastic surgery, cryogenics and Puppetry of the Penis. He goes along on a Playboy shoot, attends a midnight scavenger hunt in Manhattan, forages for edible plants in Prospect Park and works as a pool boy at an upscale resort. He waits outside the Today Show, visits Martha Stewart’s crafts department, and shadows the director of the mystifying Log Cabin Republicans.

Fun stuff, all. With the above-mentioned caveat, I’d recommend it.

The essays in Jonathan Lethem’s The Disappointment Artist are all very well written, and interesting, more or less. But yet, something about them bothered me, and I think I put my finger on it right around the time Lethem mentioned that when he was a kid in Brooklyn, he used to ride the subway every day to his performing arts school, with his friend and classmate, Lynn Nottage. Many of the essays in this book concern New York City, and life in New York City. The rest are meditations on books and movies.

Lethem was raised by a well-known painter. His mother died when he was 13. He lived in a commune for part of his upbringing. He spent his childhood surrounded by his parents’ Bohemian friends, and went to an arts high school in New York with a bunch of other students who have gone on to be known names. They were raised in an interesting place by interesting people, and taught from a young age that they were bound to be interesting themselves. In the same way as some people are raised in wealth, others are raised in art, and all these writers, playwrights, actors, etc. were to the manor born. There’s nothing wrong with Lethem’s writing or what he’s writing about, and it’s not like he’s never left New York – why, he went to Bennington, then lived in California! – but yet, I was bored by his well-written meditations on the various movies, writers and filmmakers that shaped him, as well as his experiences in a Brooklyn not sufficiently long gone to be so nostalgic about (Lethem was only about 40 when this essay collection was published).

You do not have to live an interesting life in order to be an interesting writer. Perhaps you have to live an interesting life to be an interesting personal essayist, however, or, barring that, at least be really funny. Certainly, you can write great fiction no matter how narrow and dull your circle, and Lethem has mostly been feted for his novels, none of which I’ve read, although I plan to at some point. Reading these essays, however, made me feel like I was sitting in a grad school MFA workshop listening to everyone read essays about being graduate MFA students, and reminiscing fondly about those long-ago days when they were but callow undergrads.

John Leonard in the New York Review of Books:

I’m glad to learn from The Disappointment Artist that Lethem’s father is more interesting than Dylan’s was; that his mother, unlike Dylan’s, didn’t abandon her boy out of narcissism; that Jonathan, unlike Dylan, has siblings. And I am sorry that none of us can fly, besides which we’re opaque. But it is time this gifted writer closed his comic books for good. Superpowers are not what magic realism was about in Bulgakov, Kobo Abe, Salman Rushdie, or the Latin American flying carpets. That Michael Chabon and Paul Auster have gone graphic, that one Jonathan, Lethem, writes on and on about John Ford, while another Jonathan, Franzen, writes on and on about “Peanuts,” even as Rick Moody confides to the Times Book Review that “comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is,” may just mean that the slick magazines with the scratch and sniff ads for vodka and opium are willing to pay a bundle for bombast about ephemera.

But all of it makes me itch. Welcome to New Dork! We have been airpopped and multimediated unto inanity and pastiche.

David Markson’s The Last Novel is a 200-some page book consisting entirely of factoids about various artists of all kinds and their failures, periods of stagnation, tragedies, thwartings, impoverishments, loneliness, setbacks and deaths. At the back of all this is a protagonist, a novelist who’s about done with writing, but he is only seen in relief, framed by the endless parade of trivia. Amazingly, the book is a roaring good read despite its total lack of story or overt presence of character or conflict. Or perhaps I just loved it, because reading about the failures of great and miserable geniuses is one of my keenest pleasures. Apparently, this book is the last in a trilogy, but I don’t feel I lost anything by starting with this one.

Perhaps we’ll all burst forth Samuel Becketts one day:

En attendant, Beckett writes self-­admittedly “pestilential” letters about waiting. In Dublin, he records the “fruitless retreat from Monday to Friday and then the degrading cotton wool interpolation of the weekend” and acknowledges that he’s “more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another.” In London, he sleeps “more and more — 10 hours at a stretch. I wish it were 20.” In Paris, he is “paralyzed in listlessness” and has “done nothing.”

Certainly describes my year.

Also this:

Laid upon this bare outline, in the course of the letters, is a palimpsest of all the other things that Beckett could have done, or sought to do, but never did. He put in for lectureships at Cape Town and Milan, though with little expectation, or even hope, of success. “Now that I have assembled testimonials,” he wrote of the South African plan, in 1937, “I am in a position to abstain from applying.”

Why do I stir my coffee counterclockwise? Is this more effective, or merely habit? Is it perhaps offensive + off-putting to others? Do not stir coffee counterclockwise, unless certain culture is tolerant of same.

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Oh, how rapturously, tremendously, monumentally do I adore Gide! I want to wrap Gide around myself + go running through the streets! I want to wear Gide around as a hat! I want to lick every page of Gide, to absorb it through my pores, to drink it like water! I want to bathe myself in Gide. Which reminds me: bathe daily.

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Was lying in bed telling H. how much I desired to possess her utterly. Not sure what she said in response, as I was busy contemplating how pretentious my use of word “utterly.” Do not use “utterly” in intimate confessions, as it sounds premeditated + insincere. At any rate, suppose H. did not feel same, as I am now writing this, rather than possessing her utterly. Wait, did she go home? …Shit.

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Had baby.

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Have discovered Kafka! Oh, bless! A thousand, shuddering, deep, rapturous cries of joy spring from my soul! How did I live + breathe + eat before I knew of this felicity? From now on, it’s all Kafka, all the time.

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Bathe every other day.

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I do not feel X. with my son, as much as with H. Not at all X. with Philip. A little bit X. with our current congressional representative. X. with coworker Y. definitely, but only on Tuesdays. Not so much X. with anyone on the weekends…is this because of weekends, or because of X.?

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It seems that a certain pore on my right cheek is slightly larger than those around it. Is this something that can be corrected without great trouble or expense? Look into it.

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Today, created self, destroyed self, + created self again, as usual. Yesterday not so productive – did not create self so much as merely tinker with aspects of self. Philip walked in while tinkering with self. Embarrassed.

After reading the above, considered erasing. But then, reconsidered. I ought to be honest with myself, even (or especially?) in aspects of myself I would rather were not so. Don’t be embarrassed of revealing self in front of Philip, who, after all, loves me. And don’t be embarrassed of admitting (to self or [especially?] in print) own embarrassment about embarrassment, or, for that matter, of admitting embarrassment about embarrassment over own embarrassment.

Considered erasing above, as conclusion drawn seems to negate necessity of initial observation. Reconsidered. All is valid. Do not waste time on such circuitous contemplation in future.

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Bathe, Susan. Bathe. Damn it, how hard is this to remember?!

Hi everyone!  If you are not on my email list, you may be unaware that on Monday, October 27 at 9:30p.m., I’m performing a brief, funny one-woman show at Manhattan Theatre Source!  Here are the details – if you’re in the NYC area, come check it out!!

Crap, I forgot to post all week again.  I keep intending to go back to posting regularly, and I keep not doing it, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why.  Blogging just has not been as much fun for me lately.  Then, I read this post, and I realized that it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling.

If you get too invested in things, there’s a point where ‘everyone’s stupid and I think it’s hilarious’ starts to become ‘everyone’s stupid and it MAKES ME FUCKING INSANE!!!!’  And I think I passed that point some time ago.  I keep drafting amusing little rants only to have them turn into vitriolic endless rants, and at some point during their composition, I leave off typing and begin circling my desk, flapping my hands around and shrieking to myself.

I grew up in the South, where nice people consider public displays of enthusiasm unseemly.  It’s understood that one has one’s political opinions, but to get yourself worked up about it is to show a level of involvement with life outside your immediate sphere that reflects poorly on your ability to manage your own affairs.  Likewise, while it’s expected that everyone be religious (in a general way), those who feel sufficiently possessed with the spirit as to go around talking about God all the time and wearing Jesus accessories are at best tacky, and possibly a little touched.  Nobody wants to be without money, but to admit of difficulties concerning it is to drop down a class level – money should simply flow, unseen and unremarked upon, into one’s coffers, as gently and steadily as rain from heaven.

All of this is to say that my blatant interest in this year’s primaries is making it difficult for me to maintain a cool, ironic detachment.  What’s needed is some perspective:

The two parties are, at heart, not very different from each other.  Neither will totally save us, or utterly damn us.  My complete lack of active (or financial) involvement in anything even remotely concerning politics (or other people, or life outside my apartment) makes any pretense of actual concern about the world in general or this country in particular hypocritical beyond all belief.  My own personal life will be unlikely to change in any significant way as a result of anything short of an apocalyptic disaster, or a profound personal attitude adjustment (which are both equally unlikely).  People are stupid, especially me, and it is hilarious.  Ten people read this blog on a good day.  I have many friends who are actually out there working real, positive changes in the world, rather than just sitting around bitching all the time.  And sometimes, it’s a blessing when the internet goes out.

To sum up:  Oh, wait, I forgot – I don’t care again!

Hello, lovelies. I feel utterly fried. And scrambled. And poached. This blog’s taking an impromptu vacation. See you back here a week from today.

Viennese artist Oscar Kokoschka had a doll made to resemble Alma Mahler (this is a letter to the doll’s maker):

“I was honestly shocked by your doll which, although I was long prepared for a certain distance from reality, contradicts what I demanded of it and hoped of you in too many ways! The outer shell is a polar-bear pelt, suitable for a shaggy imitation bedside rug rather than the soft and pliable skin of a woman. The result is that I cannot even dress the doll, which you knew was my intention, let alone array her in delicate and precious robes. Even attempting to pull on one stocking would be like asking a French dancing-master to waltz with a polar bear!”

(via Kottke)

Also, Jeremy Bentham’s corpse is an auto-icon:

As requested in his will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet, termed his “Auto-icon”. . . . For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-icon was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where he was listed as “present but not voting”.[12] Tradition holds that if the council’s vote on any motion is tied, the auto-icon always breaks the tie by voting in favour of the motion.

Also, the creator of Pringles was just buried in a Pringles can.

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George Packer on why it’s impossible for us to discuss Iraq intelligently:

Throughout the opinion classes, the impulse to keep a little part of the brain open to inconvenient facts seemed to have been extinguished. In magazine offices, bloggers’ bedrooms, Hollywood studios, and the White House, a fantasy war was underway, a demonstration of American virtue or a series of crimes against humanity-both of them self-serving fictions.

(via 3QD)

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On those humorless Commies:

Humour offered the early communists the same philosophical conundrums that every other area of culture offered: what belonged to yesterday and what to tomorrow? Many argued that humour could be used to ridicule the old bourgeois habits that persisted … But, said others, given that the Soviets were creating a perfect world, there would soon be nothing left to laugh at in Russian politics or society …

(via 3QD)

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Ian McEwan on why it’s probably not a good idea to romanticize the end of the world:

The apocalyptic mind can be demonising – that is to say, there are other groups, other faiths, that it despises for worshipping false gods, and these believers of course will not be saved from the fires of hell. And the apocalyptic mind tends to be totalitarian – which is to say that these are intact, all-encompassing ideas founded in longing and supernatural belief, immune to evidence or its lack, and well-protected against the implications of fresh data. Consequently, moments of unintentional pathos, even comedy, arise – and perhaps something in our nature is revealed – as the future is constantly having to be rewritten, new anti-Christs, new Beasts, new Babylons, new Whores located, and the old appointments with doom and redemption quickly replaced by the next.

(via A&LD)

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Haruki Murakami likes to run:

Sometimes I find it too hot to run, and sometimes too cold. Or too cloudy. But I still go running. I know that if I didn’t go running, I wouldn’t go the next day either. It’s not in human nature to take unnecessary burdens upon oneself, so one’s body soon becomes disaccustomed. It mustn’t do that. It’s the same with writing. I write every day so that my mind doesn’t become disaccustomed. So that I can gradually set the literary yardstick higher and higher, just as running regularly makes your muscles stronger and stronger.

. . . Working artistically is unhealthy; an artist should lead a healthy life to make up for it.

(via The Book Bench)

Just a quick post to say that “People I Am Sick Of Hearing About,” originally posted on this blog awhile back, is published in the new issue of Ducts.org.  Check it out!

Newly discovered fossil shows live birth and egg-laying evolved together:

Dubbed “mother fish” by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, Materpiscis attenboroughi is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.

(via tmn)

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Photos of well-known prisons and other high-security buildings:

To question the pervasiveness of intimidating, “disgusting” architecture, the images in Ross’ book are both striking and inviting. Ross intentionally makes the photos of oppressive structures look seductive. “You can convince people a lot easier by whispering in their ear rather than hitting them over the head,” says Ross.

On a lighter note, a photo of a light fixture made of cereal. And fake libraries, for those who have no time to assemble picturesque collections of books.

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On women:

In Iraq:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

Among the Roma:

[A girl's] value, as a virgin, is ascertained not by the young groom on the wedding night but, according to archaic folk custom, by the probing finger of a tribal crone: Eberstadt’s partially renegade Gypsy friend Linda explains, “For Gypsies, it’s a nasty old woman who is paid to penetrate the girl, like a gynecologist but with dirty hands, in front of all the husband’s family. It’s terrifying, it’s inhuman.” Landric sums up: “People talk about preserving Gypsy culture. But what am I as an educator supposed to do when the comportment of my students is frankly pathological?”

And again, back to the U.S. political situation, Feministing responds to the study saying we don’t have more women political leaders because women aren’t that ambitious (and does such a great job of it that I’m going to quote nearly all of it):

Most of these things, in my mind, just go back to the fact that we have a fundamentally unfeminist society. Women are saddled with more family obligations, and we have a government that has been unwilling to step in and lighten the load. Girls are bombarded with the message, from a young age, that they should aspire to be pretty, not powerful. (Or that pretty is powerful.) So is it any wonder that grown women doubt their qualifications? Also, saying that women are less likely than men to “be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign” fails to note that, compared to white men, the campaign trail is a helluva lot more rigorous for women. No wonder they’re less likely than men to “perceive a fair political environment.”

But to me, none of that speaks to ambition. Within the social constraints that are placed on women by a sexist society, how can you expect them to sign up for elections in droves? The two parties are basically boys’ clubs, the media is completely misogynist, there is virtually no government support for working mothers, and women get the message from a very young age that they have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to expect half as much. It’s hard to separate out all this junk and figure out how many women really do harbor higher career ambitions. And how many said they don’t because of these very unfeminist realities about our society. “Women may now think about running for office, but they probably think about it while they are making the bed,” as Beloit College political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti put it. For example, would it really be fair to call a single mom with three kids and two jobs “not ambitious” because she doesn’t realistically think she can run for political office?  Please.

These are big-picture problems — ones that feminists are working to solve, of course — but huge and pervasive problems nevertheless. Do these things keep women out of politics? Undoubtedly. But are they a problem of ambition? No. I’d wager a guess that if you reform the media, create better support systems for working mothers, and if the two parties actually made an effort to recruit women candidates, we’d see a huge spike in “ambition.”

Until that grand day, of course, we need a backup plan. So I refer you to the She Should Run campaign, which encourages people to push women to run for office, even in this imperfect world. The good news is when you actually ask women to run, they say yes at rates similar to men. I guess they suddenly discover they had ambitions, after all.

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This man is living my exact same life (except he’s doing it successfully):

Of working in the theatre, he said: “It gets you out of the house, and then you start to hate the people. And then you can go back and sit in a room and write.” . . .Kureishi also said that when he goes to his desk each morning to commence writing, he thinks to himself: “Why am I doing this? Shall I commit suicide?”

I wonder if he’s single…

Also, Umberto Eco is awesome.

Whatever happened to that scandalous military analysts story that broke in the NY Times, and then utterly disappeared from the dialogue?

[It's] made the standard transition from “we don’t illegally manipulate the news” to “of course we did that, why are you still making a fuss about this old story”.

Also MIA: conservatives’ support for states’ rights:

Since the conservative ascendancy in Washington, many of these same people have stopped praising states’ rights and have begun burying them – not to protect citizens’ rights, but to take them away. The Bush administration and its Congressional allies have helped their friends in industry by enacting weak environmental, health and consumer regulations – and arguing that they wipe out more robust state protections.

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The Christian dating site, Bigchurch.com, is owned by Penthouse:

It’s not like BigChurch isn’t about sex. It’s just more subtle than a site that’s explicitly aimed at swingers. BigChurch’s function is to connect people whose concepts of sex are tied so closely to faith and doctrine that it can be difficult to meet potential partners in more traditional settings.

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There’s racism in Japan, and there’s also a parrot who, when lost, can tell you where he lives.

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I am always looking for ways to get by with less sleep (ideally, I need about 14 hours per night to function properly). I also periodically have problems with insomnia, so I’m always on the lookout for causes: apparently, obese people are short sleepers. Wouldn’t you think it’d be the other way around?

What if all the “sleep hygiene” recommendations mean diddly-squat when the prime reason for one’s poor sleep is simply too much weight?

But then, on the other hand, I usually don’t eat enough, and will often wake up from sheer hunger at 2 or 3 a.m. and have to get out of bed and eat something, just so I can go back to sleep until a decent hour. So, you can’t win.

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Is the Internet ruining humor?

Because the Internet lets normal people make as much noise as funny and original people, the lame humor that usually dead-ends in offices instead spreads like crazy.

The net doesn’t kill humor. People kill humor. (Incidentally, for the very best in original online humor content, click this link!!) [And, while I'm at it, do you agree with Jessa Crispin that "more misanthropes should write travel literature?" If so, then click this link!!]

Also funny:

The Wit and Humor of Immanuel Kant

…and others of the world’s shortest philosophy books.

(via The Morning News)

Just a quick mention:  if you know me and/or are in the New York City area, check out the recent updates on my performance calendar page!!  I’ve got some fun stuff coming up…

If you would be successful in any area of the arts, here are some concepts that you would do well to keep in mind:

• Any dislike is really baseless prejudice. Discerning patrons of the arts approve of everything and everybody.

• If it sounds like common sense, it’s probably offensive.

• To fail to stand and cheer is as rude as is to boo.

• Everyone is frighteningly talented, and all people are effortless geniuses.

• In praising an artist or work, make up with emphasis and repetition what you lack in sincerity or actual interest.

• Don’t piss on others’ parades with your quiet disapproval.

• Every given thing is exactly equivalent to every other given thing, and all things are utterly divorced from context.

• If being photographed, appear alongside the fat. If being produced, appear alongside the dull and inarticulate.

• Be controversial in acceptable ways.

• Any successful venture is 1% product and 99% promotion. Don’t waste too much time on content.

• If something seems half-assed, that’s exactly the point it’s trying to make. If something seems pointless, it’s because the audience isn’t working hard enough at interpreting it.

• Life is art. We’re all making it all the time. And we all deserve attention for it.

I recently learned that a friend of mine from Chicago is keeping a blog about a fascinating project she’s doing: she has pledged to take all of Oprah’s advice for one full year. Check it out – it’s both hilarious, and really interesting.

Happy birthday, dear readers! One year ago today, Accismus was born.

I cannot tell you all how happy I am about having kept this blog up and running for a year. As I might have mentioned a couple hundred times, 2007 was a slow year for me, and writing this blog was undoubtedly the best part of it. Other than really forcing me to crank out some words at least once a week for a full year (!!!), it’s been a wonderful way to keep in touch with old friends and reach out to new people. The readership of this blog has expanded from a small circle of friends and family, to new acquaintances, to regulars I’ve never even met. Thanks to all of you, for being so supportive and great (and also for tactfully avoiding comment when I’ve had to phone a post in from time to time). If any of you miss the constant feedback and reinforcement of turning in school papers, I highly recommend you start a blog: nothing perks up your day like getting an email that someone’s commented on a post.

The one-year marker seems a good time to share with you some of the behind-the-scenes blog stuff that amuses and interests me. Obviously, this blog really shot up the google rolls with the igoogle teahouse fox post, and that post continues to get the most traffic. There’s not a day that goes by that it doesn’t get at least some hits.

I am sorry to report that I now know for certain how seldom I am googled, but I am googled sometimes, and it’s fun for me to speculate as to who might be interested. Incidentally, every single fictional first and last name I’ve made up for a post has been googled at some point. And, shockingly, there is apparently no commercial jingle or slogan so obscure or so dumb that several people every day aren’t googling it for some reason.

I especially enjoy getting hits where I know that the person searching was probably utterly confused or disappointed by what they found here. This includes the tons of people searching weekly for ‘tips on how to meet men,’ ‘how to meet men when you’re single,’ ‘ten ways to meet men,’ etcetera. I also get hits for ‘I love women,’ ‘I hate women,’ ‘Women are dumb,’ or simply ‘Wimmin.’ Also probably disappointed customers. And finally, I love that everyone searching for ‘how to deal with a poor listener’ is taken to my post on that topic. I really, really hope they actually implement my suggestions.

Then, there are the really freaking weird searches. I get a lot of hits for people looking for ‘nasty old widows,’ and frankly, I can’t for the life of me figure out what post is bringing them here. I don’t remember having mentioned anything about widows, but I must have at some point. There are also a lot of searches for ‘girl with snakes.’ And lately ‘Clinton Scientology,’ which, is that an actual rumor? Ever since I put up that alien page, there have been a lot of really bizarre searches around some variation of aliens taking over the world. My all time favorite, however, had to be ‘dead preacher on the couch.’ I love that someone was searching for that, and even more, I love that it brought them here.

Anyway, happy one-year birthday, everyone. I look forward to another, even better blog year ahead!

Smooches,
Elizabeth

In last week’s New Yorker, there is a profile of the musician Nico Muhly. Muhly is apparently hip, young, ingenious and in demand. The profile goes on at length about everything from his culinary skills to his interesting childhood. Naturally, he is insanely productive and well-learned, and is constantly throwing out ideas in the jittery, hyped-up fashion common to such talents, but at the same time, he is casual and cool, a guy you could hang out with – cool enough not to think of himself as cool. In his picture, he has wide eyes and mussed hair. Long about the passage which begins, “At eighteen, Muhly enrolled in a joint program at Columbia, where he studied English, and Juilliard, where he got a master’s in composition,” and goes on to tell a story about how Muhly was trying to get through an exam to test out of his music-appreciation course at Juilliard in time to make a flight to London to work on the score for ‘The Hours’ with Phillip Glass, I suddenly managed to perfectly articulate what I had been thinking the entire time I had been reading this article about Nico Muhly, which was, in short:

“Fuck you, Nico Muhly!”

I don’t know about you, but I seem to have been reading a lot of articles about brilliant young people recently (this will happen to you if you subscribe to far more literary periodicals than you ought to have time to skim, and bookmark way too many blogs, all written by young folk who live in Brooklyn and spend all their time worshiping and promoting other young folk who live in Brooklyn [on a side note, isn't it funny that a surefire way to get published in Brooklyn-based lit mags is to write profiles of Brooklyn-based writers who in turn write profiles of Brooklyn-based writers and so forth, ad infinitum]), and I believe I have reached my saturation point. There are a number of people that I never want to hear about again, and more specifically, there are a number of things I never want to hear about anyone again, and these include:

• I do not want to hear about all the open windows on anybody’s Mac desktop while they are at work. I do not want to hear that they work on their novel (for which they’ve received a record-breaking advance) in one window, while editing a small film in another window, while emailing the Hollywood writers of a new subversive satire with sample jokes for their possible collaboration in another window, while updating their popular political blog in another window, while bidding on an antique gramophone on ebay in another window, while watching a Fellini film on mute in another window, while putting together an itunes soundtrack to their show that’s about to go up in a SoHo garage space in another window, while booking tickets for their upcoming inspirational speaking tour of the Eastern bloc in another window, while IMing their eight million friends and admirers in another window, AND all the while doing push-ups and making bouillabaisse and learning Japanese and singing Nessun Dorma and dating a model and cutting their own hair. I’m glad some people are so productive before 10:00 a.m., but I don’t want to hear about it.

• I do not want to hear about anybody who does anything in their 20s. If you are a 19-year-old who has already accomplished the things I’ve only been vaguely talking about maybe taking the first steps toward trying to do for the past seven years, then fan-freaking-tastic. Good for you, and now shut the hell up. In fact, I would only like to hear about the accomplishments of people who did things at five years older than whatever my current age is on an ongoing basis. I am 26 now, so I do not currently want to hear from anybody who did anything before the age of 31. Next year, that will rise to 32. And so forth.

• I do not want to hear about people who audaciously pushed their way to the top, who subverted the system, shoved their foot in the door, knew they had a gift and made their own platform for it. If you have a story of how you were told you would have to wait three years to study with a certain Master In Your Field, but you waited outside his door every day for two weeks, and barraged him with samples of your brilliant work, until he finally agreed to take you on as his personal project, and so you walked away from it as the youngest whatever in the field of whatever…if this is your story, keep it to yourself! If, however, you have a story about how you were told you would have to wait three years to study with a certain Master In Your Field, but you waited outside his door every day for two weeks, and barraged him with samples of your brilliant (at least according to you) work, until he finally called the cops, shamed you, and blackballed you from the whatever community and now you will never work again. . .in that case, yes, I would love to hear your story, thank you.

• I do not want to hear about complete unknowns who manage to become successful without knowing anyone or having any built-up reputation or buzz, who suddenly show up at an audition, or mail something in somewhere, or do an off-off-off performance in a loft space, and are immediately selected for fame and fortune based sheerly off their undeniable talent, vision, originality and insight. People, in short, who manage to pull off the impossible with no effort and little angst. I would, however, like to hear about people marketed as unknowns who were suddenly recognized by the public at large, but who, it turns out, were actually secretly Coppolas all along.

• I do not want to hear about anyone who sleeps less than five hours a night and consumes less that 500 calories a day and runs over three miles every afternoon. If you read upwards of 30 books per week, please keep it to yourself. If you speak more than two languages fluently (and taught them to yourself), don’t ever mention it. I do not want to hear about anyone in any field who, rather than aggressively fighting for work, is fought over by numerous backers and/or employers.

• I do not want to hear about people who, despite being eternally sober and well-behaved in all respects, were still more than welcome on the Super Cool Fun Rock Star Tour Bus Of the Moment, because they’re just naturally such a giant freaking blast to be around. And come to that, I don’t really want to hear about any person or group of persons that have a whole lot of fun all the time: if you’re blindingly attractive and spend all your time having high times all up and down the country with a ton of other blindingly attractive tattooed young kids – all shagging each other under palm trees, and leaping off of mountain crags while half-naked and covered in glitter – well, I don’t really need to hear from you, or see glossy photo spreads of you and your friends, which other people actually pay money to view hanging in galleries just so that they can vicariously gawk at all the toned, tanned young fun you’re continually having. To hell with you and yours, and I hope the good times kill you.

• I do not want to hear about people who left home at the age of 2 and raised themselves in a dumpster, and stripped for a living before being picked up by a traveling circus, and saw the world, and scrapped and grifted and amateur boxed, and that is how they acquired the skills that make them such a successful 24-year-old CEO today. Likewise, I do not want to hear about the day you, as a three-year-old, toddled into your parents’ bedroom gripping a dog-eared copy of A Brief History of Time and announced that you believed you’d come up with a plausible universal theory. If you did anything in your babyhood other than spit up on yourself, or anything in your childhood other than sit around, bored and disaffected, in your upstairs bedroom that smelled of feet, I’m not interested in hearing about it, and anyway, I don’t believe you, you stupid liar.

In short, I do not want to hear from anyone who is successful, charismatic, easy-going, good-looking, charming, accomplished, brilliant, creative, ingenious, multi-tasking, prolific, groundbreaking, subversive, impassioned, irreverent, hilarious, young and/or visionary.

I only want to hear about unattractive, unpopular, cynical old people, who have achieved somewhat remarkable things by plugging away furiously over years and years, with no reward, and in spite of crippling self-doubt; who are damn near impossible to be around, and are thus utterly alone; who are impoverished, angry, diseased and misanthropic, but who are now, finally, at the end of their long, hideous lives, starting to be somewhat recognized for possibly having something insightful to say about the rest of us; although they will very likely die in obscurity anyway. These are the only people that I ever want to hear about, and they are also the only people that I ever want to be around. Less Nico Muhlys and more Harvey Pekars. Capiche, Believer Mag?

–

[Incidentally, and this is a total side-note, but if you are some stranger I have just met and you ask me about what I plan to do with my life (which is annoying in and of itself) and I give you some sort of answer, do NOT under any circumstances tell me all about your daughter, or son, or niece, or employee, or God-sister-in-law, who has had wild success doing exactly what I would like to do, and has worked with all the best people in all the best places, and who I will surely hear of soon if I haven't already. Honestly, why on Earth does everyone do this? Why would anyone think this would endear me (or anybody else) to them? Do you think that I will suddenly jump up and down, applauding, and ask you if your daughter has some sort of fan-wagon I can hitch my life to? No! I don't want to hear about how your daughter is famous, and anyway, she can't be that famous if I'm not already aware of who she's sleeping with. Probably by 'Mom, I'm starring in a major motion picture,' what your daughter really means is, 'Mom, I'm addicted to heroin and sleeping on a cot in the storeroom of a bar in Dubuque.' Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Maybe one day I'll have my own daughter, in which case, I might be able to get interested in her life; until that day, I am only interested in myself - and here's a tip from me to you for your future social interactions: the same is true of every person that you will ever talk to. You're welcome.]

Valentine’s Day seems as good a time as any to air a small grievance I have, and I can even tie it into the holiday by introducing it thus: I think I might have mentioned a time or two (billion) that I don’t generally seem to get a lot of dates. One of the many side-effects of extreme datelessness is great (and ever-increasing) literary acumen (seriously, by retirement age, I believe I might have a shot at beating the ghost of Susan Sontag at Jeopardy), which is why I have the attention span for all of the following: (a) to regularly read on-line humor sites, and thus find the following literary parodies; (b) to be familiar enough with the literary works parodied as to recognize that the parodies themselves are just slightly off the mark; (c) to actually give two shits, and thus, (d) to stew for some time about the slight inaccuracy of the parodies in question, finally causing me (e) to spend a bit of time composing my own blog post explaining to people who most certainly could not care less why these parodies (which they would likely never have read in the first place, had I not brought them up) really ought not to be chuckled at.

First of all, this McSweeney’s article: my only problem with this one is the Jane Austen bit, and it’s a problem I often have with people parodying (or otherwise discussing) Jane Austen. Jane Austen was not a romance novelist (and even if you thought she was, this bit of writing doesn’t even bear a slight resemblance to anything she ever wrote). People so often assume that, because she was a woman and women like to read her, and movies based on her works usually focus on the love stories contained therein (or are at least marketed that way), that she wrote sappy romances. In fact, Jane Austen was a social satirist, chiefly concerned with social classes, hypocrisy, morality, and the (primarily financial) way in which the institution of marriage functioned in 19th century England. Not all of her protagonists are even meant to be entirely sympathetic (Emma, what’s-her-name in Northanger Abbey), and her prose is bitingly humorous. I haven’t seen Becoming Jane, but judging just by the previews, I feel pretty certain that if Jane Austen herself ever saw it, she’d vomit in her handkerchee.

I don’t so much blame people for judging her without reading her, however. There are a number of authors that I feel I’ve gotten enough of a handle on through the general buzz about them that I never need bother with reading any of their works; these include: Ayn Rand, Jonathan Safran Foer, all of the Beats collectively, the Bible. For all I know, the popular reputation of these writers is vaguely inaccurate, and if I were actually to read their work, I would be appreciative of them on an entirely new level, but I probably won’t ever read their work, because I already feel thoroughly exhausted by them all without ever having cracked a spine. It’s possible for a certain book or a certain author to so thoroughly saturate the collective consciousness that there’s just no need to actually sit down and read the damn thing: you already know it by osmosis. In this way, I absorbed A Million Little Pieces, Tuesdays with Morrie, The Da Vinci Code, everything by Michael Pollan or Malcolm Gladwell, and currently, Eat, Pray, Love.

On Yankee Pot Roast today is another slightly inaccurate parody, this time concerning one of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace. As parodied here, David Foster Wallace is indeed hugely verbose, and one of his most-recognizable traits is the heavy use of footnotes (he footnotes his footnotes, and then footnotes the footnoted footnotes), but he isn’t tediously pedantic in the slightest. He’s really knee-slappingly hilarious. All of his stuff is darkly comedic; I laughed all the way through Infinite Jest (and it’s a long, long, long way through). I know I have a (deserved) reputation for finding humor where none is intended, but I really don’t see how anybody could read a word of anything by David Foster Wallace and not at least chuckle. Speaking of Foster Wallace, anyone regularly read The Atlantic? Remember that article on talk radio that he wrote a couple years back? Wasn’t that freaking awesome? Wasn’t it refreshing to see The Atlantic shake it up like that? Isn’t it disappointing that they never followed up on that success by risking any other major departures from their usual (however consistently well-written) content?

Okay, I’m just going to cut-and-paste this entire blog post into a Match.com profile, because for reals, y’all, who wouldn’t want to have dinner with this lady?!

–

UPDATE: Yes! This (also YPR-published) parody of Foster Wallace, on the other hand, gets it exactly right.