Last Update from CS2

A review of Steve Martin's novel The Pleasure of my Company:
http://commonsense2.com/2010/12/book-reviews/the-pleasure-of-my-company-by-steve-martin/
This will be the last review I will write for CommonSense2.com as the magazine is, unfortunately, shutting down. I would like to thank my friend Chuck Brown for giving me the opportunity to work as a reviewer for him, and hope that we can get together again real soon.

JPC

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is the time of the year when I go nuts attempting to write a novel in a single month.

Currently, I'm working on the story of Iris and Brent, working through their relationship. The novel will be called "Relations". And let's hope things go well this time.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/697495

JPC

I caved in

I joined Facebook yesterday and now am finding my life being sucked out of me. You can watch it happening to me and others (in almost real time) here:

http://www.facebook.com/

JPC

New Reviews

The first of the month means new publications at CommonSense2.com:

A review of Wild Nights by Joyce Carol Oates (Just in time for Halloween)
http://commonsense2.com/2010/10/book-reviews/wild-nights-by-joyce-carol-oates/

and
A review of In Rough Country also by Joyce Carol Oates
http://commonsense2.com/2010/10/book-reviews/in-rough-country-by-joyce-carol-oates/

JPC

The Importance of Being Bloom

Currently listening to an audio book of my favorite critic, Harold Bloom. How to Read and Why, which was published in 2000. Aside from the dated political references, the text is fresh in a way most texts aren't after ten years have gone by. Perhaps that is because the case for reading well always needs to be stated.

New reviews coming up soon, within the next few days. Hopefully I'll have more news soon.

JPC

Empty

I've finished the last Millennium volume by Stieg Larsson. Why? Now I feel incredibly upset. Why? It's all over. No more books. The possibility of a fourth volume does not make me cheer--it would be incomplete, and an incomplete mystery is pointless. That said, I would like to see the fourth book published one day, but it could not possibly be a runaway bestseller in the mystery category. Because it is unfinished, and the mystery genre is all about finishing things, wrapping them up and packing them away, this last book cannot be accepted by the mystery community.

JPC

PS Salander, not Bella, is the heroine of our times

The Pale King gets a Cover

JPC

Is Franzen "Franzen"?

Okay. Who is Jonathan Franzen?

Not like who is he as in "Who is he in the public's mind?" That I know. We all know him as the somewhat uptight author of the bestseller of the pre-9/11 eerily accurate Bush-era novel The Corrections. Unlike Updike, the similarly themed malaise-of-suburbia writer, Franzen has the persona of a real jerk. Updike, purveyor of culture high and low, was known as a jolly, happy Pennsylvania boy with a serious side. Franzen is the lonely, self-obsessed and uncomfortable author trapped in the city, peering with contempt into the suburban life. How did he get this image?

Well, that's a long story.

With the release of his new novel, Freedom (which I am currently looking forward to reading--I have my copy stashed away where no one can get it), a slew of media has been dedicated to this man and his reputation and all of the usual stories are being played out again. The "Oprah" snub--a lose/lose situation if ever there was one. Whether he snubbed her or she snubbed him doesn't really matter anymore, considering that her show is going off the air soon.

So why bring it up every story? It's a good way to fill in a few extra columns.

Indeed, in the Time magazine story (the first time in, what, ten, fifteen years that a writer has been on the cover of Time?) includes semi-juicy gossip on this particular angle. I preferred when they described his writing room. Even the pictures (gray-scale and amazingly bland) were more interesting and probably had more to do with the book than yet another "Oprah" moment.

What are the reviews saying? They seem to be reviewing his persona more often than they are reviewing the book--a rookie mistake if ever there was one. The novel is compared with his last, shining glory, The Corrections. No one says if it's a step up from his awful, awful non-fiction works, The Discomfort Zone (which I dare everyone to try and read without becoming frustrated and throwing the book across the room) and the self-righteous essay collection How to be Alone. (Remember, "Alone" is the key word.)

Even by looking at Franzen's non-fiction (stuff that [I would assume] he's had the final "OK" on), we still don't know who he is. Excluding the media-image on the man doesn't help. The "Franzen Character" that Franzen presents to the media is, perhaps intentionally or unintentionally, a real snot, a jerk. I'm sure he doesn't intend it to come off that way, but that's the way he is received, none the less. Perhaps the media image of himself has become the way he views himself, which would be a sad thing. However, it might just be that he's presenting himself as this kind of know-it-all just for the sake of having people say things like, "He's a total jerk, but man can he write good fiction!"

JPC

The Importance of the Bandanna

Reading through David Lipsky's book on David Foster Wallace, I am struck by the importance of the Bandanna, frequently seen in Wallace's media-interactions, wrapped around his head, as if to keep his brain from overheating (1).

"[Lipsky says] Tell me about the bandanna stuff we were talking about yesterday.

[Wallace replies] I started wearing bandannas in Tuscan because it was a hundred degrees all the time. When it's really hot, I would perspire so much that it would drip on the page. Actually, I started wearing it that year and then it became a big help in Yaddo in '87, because I would drip into the typewriter and I was worried that I was gonna get a shock.

And then I discovered that I felt better with them on...

I mean, I don't wear it all the time. I wear it--I know it's a security blanket for me--whenever I'm nervous. Or whenever I feel like I have to be prepared, or keep myself together, I tend to wear it... [I]t made me feel kind of creepy that people view it as an affection or a trademark or something. It's more just a foible, it's the recognition of weakness, which is that I'm just kind of worried that my head's going to explode." (295-6)

I also saw Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time. Interesting man, dull as dishwater, though. Seriously man, don't get all hung up about the whole gray scale/bland-colors, tortured-writer-working-in-a-wasteland BS that teenagers dream about (2) and just try to get some enjoyment out of it. I hate that Time had to abridge the piece for their online edition. Why? The whole subtext (or subplot or detour or whatever you prefer) about his friendship with Wallace was one of the best parts, humanizing the seemingly un-human writer. As such, the Internet version of the article just seems to enforce the idea of Franzen as a detached, frigid, genius.

JPC

Footnotes:

(1) This is not an original observation; several others have preceded me (including Wallace Himself).

(2) Every writer goes through this phase. I did too. The good ones out-grow it. The great ones make fun of it, play with it; make it their own. Franzen has yet to develop beyond that stage. He is a great writer; he just needs to become a better individual.

That's What it's like to be rejected

Trashed from two magazines in the last two weeks. For legal reasons, I will not name the magazines directly. X(1) rejected 3 poems. X(2) rejected the same 3 poems, rewritten. They [X(2)] were, however, more helpful, offering the following:

Thank you for sending us "3 poems". We appreciate the chance to read
it. Unfortunately, we're going to pass on it at this time. Please refer
below to the editor's notes as to why.

Editor's notes:
Unoriginal subject matter
trite wordings
cliches

Thanks again for you submission.

I doubt the "thanks".

JPC

Hypatia

http://agorathemovie.com/
I cannot wait to see this film. I am also researching the stories behind it, from both perspectives. Work, work, work.

JPC

New Reviews

In my newest pieces at CommonSense2.com, I review:

Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai
http://commonsense2.com/2010/08/book-reviews/the-last-samurai-by-helen-dewitt/

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges
http://commonsense2.com/2010/08/book-reviews/the-book-of-imaginary-beings-by-jorge-luis-borges/

and

Bech at Bay by John Updike, the final Bech book:
http://commonsense2.com/2010/08/book-reviews/bech-at-bay-by-john-updike/

JPC

xkcd is sublime

JPC

I think Salander is a part of me

I believe that Lisbeth Salander is rubbing off on me. Having two hours before an appointment, wandering around in a city I don't know particularly well, I walked into a dollar store and bought black nail polish on a whim. I then painted my nails, something I've never done before, as you can see by the blotchy bits. I happened to be carrying The Girl Who Played with Fire with me, and, when I got to the appointment, they asked me if I was becoming Salander. "I had too much free time," I said. "I would have gotten the piercings, only I didn't have that much time."

But more coming soon.

JPC

PS. Anthony Weiner, you're my hero:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=38485863&#38485863

Favorite Borges

Found this little number tucked away in my stacks; will review it in the new issue of CS2

JPC

The Best Margin Comments Ever

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/07/26/alex-abramovich/oh-i-get-it-its-a-sci-fi-novel/
Some of the best margin comments ever have been discovered in a copy of White Noise by Don DeLillo. Leave it up to the London Review of Books (sans-"Naughty Lola") to up the ante, RE: Literary Laughs.

JPC

E. M. Forster (misread)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Toibin-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

Colm Toibin, author and critic, reviewed a new biography of E. M. Forster for the New York Times a few weeks ago and, as I was reading it over, I began to wonder, why does it appear that Toibin is misreading or incorrectly reflecting on Forster. The incorrect reflection? That after "A Passage to India" Forster wrote

"merely a few short biographies, some essays and literary
journalism."

Nowhere mentioned in the article are the radio talks he gave for the BBC (transcripts of which were published a few years back, reviewed by Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books [Smith is E. M. Forster's most powerful disciple, perhaps a tad too influenced by him]). His essays fill several books. And to say that

"he wrote no more novels"

is technically wrong. He never finished writing the novels, but he did continue to write. There are fragments of two books, one of which was published in 2003 (Arctic Summer). And don't forget the libretto to Billy Budd. I know that Toibin is a devotee of Forster as well, and I can only hope that this was a slight oversight.

Also from the New York Times, a new biography of Maugham is reviewed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Leavitt-t.html?ref=books

Most Intriguing

JPC

Literary Non-News Stories

New Kafka papers to be revealed to the public? I think not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10682482

According to the BBC, these documents (part of a long-running feud) will only come under the eye of a "Kafka Specialist" and will not be released to the public.

I don't understand this. Why not make these public? Even Nabokov's manuscripts have been seen in public. Laura has come into the public eye (after 25+ years of debating). I have a Laura manuscript upstairs, in Nabokov's own hand.(*)

They've even discovered Kafka's stash of pornography and made selections of the contents public knowledge.(**) If his choice of porn has literary value, why not let us see the real stuff?

JPC

*Attention possible theives, the "manuscript" of Nabokov's Laura is no real manuscript, it's just a copy of the book, which reproduced the index cards he wrote the text on.

**http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/aug/15/kafkasguiltypleasures

New to Review

"Nox" by Anne Carson

Of Gaga and Twlight

What happened here?

Anyway, last night, listening to the radio, I heard a song which I was later informed was Lady Gaga's "Teeth". Listening to the song, stuck by the odd rhythm of the beat (like an old gospel number) it also hit me that, with one or two alterations, this song could be the theme song for Bella of Twilight, particularly in light of her obsessive devotion to this guy who's really kind of a jerk ("My religion is you.")

"Show me your Teeth, Edward," she said.
"Sparkle Sparkle," he said as he glittered in the moonlight.

Why do I even care?

JPC

That's the way to do it

Mark Twain and his post-departure publishing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html?ref=books

Be honest, the best thing about this is going to be the insults he couldn't get away with in life. Only in death does free speech exsist.

NPR yesterday had a talk about libel suits, saying that in this economy and with various other factors (including "THE INTERNET") libel suits are on the wain. No one's suing anyone anymore. Good or bad? Don't know quite yet.

JPC

My Next Reviews

JPC

Two New Pieces in CommonSense2.com

This month I have two new pieces in CommonSense2.com.

The first is a review of Alice Walker's poetry collection A Poem Travelled Down My Arm:
http://commonsense2.com/2010/07/book-reviews/a-poem-traveled-down-my-arm-by-alice-walker/
Alice Walker and I have had a troubled history (my review of her collection Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth is the only 100% negative review I have ever given), and so I found myself surprised when I enjoyed the new collection of poems. Indeed, I have great respect for Walker's recent work, which seems to be a return to form after a dry spell.

The second piece is titled "The McLaughlin Group (with Monica?)":
http://commonsense2.com/2010/07/cultural-criticism/the-mclaughlin-group-with-monica/
In which I attempt to figure out what Monica Crowley was put on the McLaughlin round table and beg Tony Blankley to come back.

JPC

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman finally gets a new outfit after 69 years. Well, you know how hard it is to find a good pair of shoes that match the dress...

JPC

New Projects

Working on a few new things which require my full attention and so I may be posting intermittently for a while. Having very little time what with running around, yet I shall have two new pieces in CommonSense2.com in the next issue and I am also planning four new pieces for the one after that, a double issue.

I'm looking into new things, new possibilities of publishing. I realize that I cannot keep publishing in just one place--I must expand my range as I writer.

As such, I may be coming and going. But, never fear, if I find something interesting, I'll let you know. I'll also keep posting links to new pieces when they appear.

JPC

A Postscript to Snarky

I must admit, I rather enjoyed writing that bit of nonsense. Once you open yourself up to the realm of the unimaginable phantasmagoria, it's really quite fun.

Reminded of Virginia Woolf, "It's really quite fun being mad. You have wonderful ideas, much more interesting then when you're sane."

Lewis Carroll as we know him, never existed. It's a pen name. It's Dodgson, his real name. There's a fascination with this "Lewis Carroll" figure, speculations on his sexuality and rumors of his dark, tormented personal life, kept hidden even from the most dedicated researchers. What was in those "missing pages" of his diaries? But we've gotten it all wrong. We shouldn't be obsessing over "Lewis Carroll" but instead we should be obsessing over Charles Dodgson.

The works of "Lewis Carroll" and Rev. Charles Dodgson are one and it is unfair to ignore the works of one while praising the other. The two are even intertwined--the routine spectical of mathamatics pops up in both Alice books and The Hunting of the Snark. There should be as much scholarly dedication to Dodgson's "serious" works (including Curiousa Mathematica, Euclid and His Modern Rivals and Symbolic Logic) as there has been to the fantastical Jabberwocky.

JPC

Snarky

I read with a small grain of salt,

a poem last night without fault

though it made no sense

I'm sure it's not coincidence

That Lewis Carroll authored the thingametault.

*

All of Snarks and Boojums last night

Resulting in Dreams quite afright

I covered my head

While I slept in my bed

to save myself from creatures of non-light.

*

No doubt Carroll is to blame

for this rambling, quite innane,

but the matter of fact

is I don't know where he's at

because Carroll isn't really his name.

*

Snarky Snarky Snark,

JPC

Updike's Archives

I now have a reason to look forward to the future--twenty years ahead, John Updike's first two unpublished early novels "Go Away" and "Home" will be made available to researchers via the Harvard's rare book and manuscript depository.

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/books/21updike.html

Also from the New York Times, a look at the opening page of the manuscript for Rabbit at Rest.
http://documents.nytimes.com/john-updike-at-work?ref=books

And the article which describes the states of "Go Away" and "Home", also via the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/books/21archive.html?ref=books

JPC

J. M. Coetzee scares me

It's not that I have anything against J. M. Coetzee, in fact, I think he's a wonderful man. The thing about J. M. Coetzee that scares me (aside from his almost total lack of a personal life, his robotic and unrevealing public persona) is that he looks amazingly like an uncle of mine.

Observe J. M. Coetzee's recent photograph on the back of his book, Slow Man:

Remove one or two of the wrinkles and you have my Uncle, whom I shall refer to as John. John and Coetzee are two entirely different people, from different backgrounds, and yet they appear almost identical. Where Coetzee cares about the environment, never eats meat, bicycles everywhere to keep in shape and only says as much as necessary, Uncle John doesn't care about the environment (he has a Hummer as his car of choice, I believe), he never bikes, he eats all the meat he can get onto his plate and will never shut up once he gets going (kind of like me).

I only realized the "lost sibling" aspect of their looks while I was browsing around my room, looking for a paperback of Coetzee's Disgrace. I found the paperback next to a stack of other Coetzee texts, including Diary of a Bad Year, Youth, Waiting for the Barbarians and Slow Man. It was on the back picture of Slow Man that I got the nasty shock.

Uncle John and I don't get along well. And now, my interactions with him have poisoned my interactions with Coetzee. I just can't get past the face. (I thought I was deeper than that)

JPC

Bloomsday

Oh,

stately and plump JPC walked past the
riverrun of eve and adam after the fall
(athenaemneowfniaodsosoamownowofahgheowofoofowwllaa!)
of gasoline prices, past the artist, the young man from Dublin and his good Anna, his Molly Bloom, in the land where chamber music comes pennyeach through the night and helpingyhelping lassies lend a hand to the good man of Dublin, the emerald and his shaving water, intoning --Introibo ad altare Dei.

Happy Bloomsday Everyone,

JPC

Bech at Bay

As I work my way through the final Bech volume, I find that Updike knew full well that this would be the final volume and, as such, is paying tribute to Bech. The Protestant's Jewish alter-ego is constantly reflecting on the aspects of his past which we already knew about, having read the last two books. Also, we can see semi-touching portraits of Updike's contemporaries, including a self-referential section of "Bech Presides" in which Updike and several others are suggested as nominees for an arts and culture group called "The Forty". Semi-touching portraits as in, some are sympathetic characters with fatal flaws and others are flawed characters who are fatally sympathetic.

The quizzicle raised eyebrow of Henry Bech on the back illustration of the book presents the attitude of Bech through this Quasi-novel, eyebrows raised and lips in a slight, knowing sneer. After awhile, one gets tired of the sneer, but you still find yourself becoming more nostalgic and quizzicle with Bech as the stories go on.

JPC

New Review: Bech Is Back by John Updike

This is my review of John Updike's "Bech is Back", part two of the Henry Bech series and part three (or four, I haven't decided yet) of my series of Bech reviews.

http://commonsense2.com/2010/06/book-reviews/bech-is-back-by-john-updike/

JPC

Again, Martin Amis

I'm reading through Norman Mailer's The Prisoner of Sex and Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow and reading them side-by-side, I begin to see a connection in their views of women. The master and the pupil take from one another, though of course the pupil takes even more than the master.

Amis has a break from Mailer, however. He has a more favorable view of the sexual revolution than Mailer does (though both clearly benefited from it). Mailer looks terrified seeing the Women's Libbers, Amis looks detached, but fondly. He views the revolution with terror. Of course, he was afraid of a left-wing totalitarianism stemming from the more militant and radical feminists. Amis and his crew seem more afraid of the idea that the sexual revolution might end before they've slept with everyone.

Mailer was interested in it for a political reason (misguided and paranoid, in my opinion, but still valid and worth hearing) where Amis was interested only in his personal benefits, until recently.

JPC

Martin Amis

The Pregnant Widow is either being heralded as Mart's return from bad writing to the good stuff we remember him for, or as absolute crap, just a notch above the dreaded Yellow Dog. It all depends on whose reviews you read.

As for me, I'll probably be having a review of up for CS2.com coming out over the summer. It is a good summer read, even though the territory is already well-trod. Michel Houellebecq comes to mind when I read some of the passages about physical peculiarities.

Still, there are some original moments, though I'm not quite sure yet how my review will go down.

JPC

Stephanie Barron betrays Virginia Woolf

Having just finished this morning the novel "The White Garden" by Stephanie Barron, I can now understand why my mother never finished reading through Barron's Jane Austin Mystery series. The books, while somewhat lighthearted and enjoyable at times, lack all academic background, paint over the obvious, center around duller than dull and dumber than dumb characters and contain only occasional moments of insight into anything other than Ms. Barron's own dwindling imagination.

The portrait of Virginia Woolf (and her lover, Vita Sackville-West) is a cardboard cut out from "The Hours", running around like a paranoid little bird from one person to the next, demanding to be saved while attempting her own distruction. The character of Margaux, however, is the most interesting of all the characters--as a parody of a shrill feminist scholar, she actually does make a few things clear and helps the story along alright, but other than that, she's worthless, as is the rest of the lot who appear in the book. She stands for one of the many (incorrect) versions of Woolf's personal life floating about academia.

Modern writers, attempting to delve into the mind of a woman writer whose whole buisness was that of delving into the mind and it's failings, fail in their efforts because they only paint Virginia Woolf with one brush--she was always the mad woman in a long, heavy coat, chain smoking and talking to herself, never anything else. She did go through periods of bliss, you know. Vita was a wonderful influence in her life, as was Leonard. The three of them were very happy for some time, not that you would know it from Ms. Barron.

However, I'll probably keep a copy of the book, just for my collection of Woolfinalia.

JPC.

Michiko and Mart

Michiko Kakutani and Martin Amis have always had a kind of love/hate relationship; now that "The Pregnant Widow" has been released in America, Michiko has decided to turn on the hate side of their relationship. She envokes the dreaded "Yellow Dog" (which I have a signed copy of, by the way) and compares it to this novel, with this novel coming out at a marginally better critical standpoint.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/books/11book.html?ref=books

I'm still going to buy a copy for myself, though, to understand what's going on.

JPC.

Kindle/Ipad

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html

Please read about the environmental disaster that is Kindle. I'll be sticking with riding my bike down to the second-hand bookstore, thank you.

James.

My Best

I'm going to include here links to my favorite pieces of work that I've written for CommonSense2.com.



I've been writing for CS2.com since 2008 and it is my favorite place to write. The founder of the magazine, Chuck Brown, used to own a bookstore in Kutztown until he had to move out last year. Chuck Brown gave me my first ever job in the literary world and I will be forever grateful to him.



A short review of Cormac McCarthy's most recent play The Sunset Limited which I gave the subtitle "Est Cormac McCarthy En Attendant Godot?" http://commonsense2.com/2008/06/book-reviews/a-slow-train-comin%e2%80%99-the-sunset-limited-by-cormac-mccarthy/



A review of Gore Vidal's bestselling sin-sation Myra Breckenridge

http://commonsense2.com/2008/08/book-reviews/myra-breckenridge-by-gore-vidal/



Joyce Carol Oates' Beasts in the October 2008 issue (just in time for Halloween)

http://commonsense2.com/2008/10/book-reviews/beasts-by-joyce-carol-oates/

My Obituary for John Updike, titled "Writer at Rest":

http://commonsense2.com/2009/02/book-reviews/john-updike-writer-at-rest/

"With Love, From E. E. Cummings", my true story of love, loss and modern poetry

http://commonsense2.com/2009/06/essays/with-love-from-e-e-cummings/

And my favorite commentary, "Walt Whitman and the Mad Men"

http://commonsense2.com/2009/12/cultural-criticism/walt-whitman-and-the-mad-men/

JPC.

New Review

Here is my new review at CommonSense2.com, published on May 1st, 2010.

http://commonsense2.com/2010/05/book-reviews/the-professor-and-the-madman-by-simon-winchester/

It is a review of "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester, all about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

JPC

Baseball

Having just seen Field of Dreams, the less brilliant rendering of Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, I have since rekindled my love of baseball. Enjoy this graphic I found on Edward Tufte's Website (NOTICE: It is not a graphic by Edward Tufte, he just put it on his website because he thought that it was a good graphic):

JPC

Simone: The Movie

"An Interview with Simone Weil" is a film which was released last year. Here are three trailers:

Short trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKFzgIRmZeU

Medium Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6eHAkn8DuA&feature=related

Long Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLGrwf9TIek&feature=related

I do not know yet if it's been released on DVD, though I'm very interested to see it.

I also came across this link:

"Stretched out with Christ: Martin Luther and Simone Weil"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4ryXVdXs8s&feature=related

All about Simone Weil and Martin Luther's views of pain and suffering, both the hardship they bring and the necessity of pain.

JPC

The Questions of Internet Censorship

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_GOOGLE_GOVERNMENT_DEMANDS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-04-20-19-39-15

Story from the AP feed about Google and Internet censorship. I've been following the Google/China censor debate for some time--even once or twice halting all use of Google as a search engine for curbing to government pressure. However, I greatly approve of the way in which they have now handled the situation.

They have posted a page on their website (a screenshot of which is available in the link to to AP article) which describes which governments have requested Google to censor something (except for China, due to the material being kept a "state secret" for now) and how often it's happened. This is, in a way, kind of the backfire element of the Patriot Act. Originally, the Patriot Act allowed the government of the United States to spy on citizens without warrant--thus causing many people to conjure up a "V for Vendetta" scenario--and without their knowledge. Now, Google is making people aware of what the government does and what they choose to investigate. Google is saying "They came to us for personal information about our users" though without any great detail. The result is that now we have the ability to watch the watchers.

JPC

David Foster Wallace

Working my way through a series of books by David Foster Wallace, (1) a writer so talented that he makes me want to give up writing fiction. Let me rephrase that. He makes me want to give up writing altogether. He makes most writers look weak, even though he did not publish many books during his lifetime. The books he did publish stand on a much higher plane than the books of most other writers.

Currently reading "Host" from Consider the Lobster which is a typographically intriguing work, featuring many blocks of text connected by arrows, constantly interrupting each other (2). It's one of the reasons I loved David Foster Wallace.

It is interesting to see how he was one of the very few literary authors I can think of to have a truly dedicated fan base, almost making him into a rock star. Indeed, in the photo below, you can almost picture him as "the brooding one" from any band(3):

JPC

***

Footnotes:

(1) Beginning with Consider the Lobster, moving to Oblivion, The Broom of the System, The Girl with Curious Hair and Infinite Jest over the summer.

(2) It pulls the reader aside in the middle of a conversation, causing the said reader to go in circles, almost, trying to figure out what is what before jumping back to the conversation.

(3) Of course, to say that unintentionally adds an insulting tone. I realized almost as soon as I wrote it that it would need to be clarified. Therefore: Wallace was a brooding writer, in the sense that he was asking what "tasted right" (to use his words from a Bookworm interview w/ Michael Silverblatt). Unlike the "brooding one" in the band, he actually had a reason to brood and produced something from that brooding.

The Importance of Being Simone (Part One)

I have always had a fondness for Simone de Beauvoir.

It's interesting to see how many people would agree with the above sentence. Indeed, more and more people who study the French philosophers are now saying "No, it was not Sartre, it was de Beauvoir who was the real influence on the people." Now, perhaps in retrospect de Beauvoir was responsible for more social change than Sartre. However, one cannot forget the importance of Sartre in the very beginning of existentialist philosophy. Albert Camus might be the one who gets you into existentialism (despite the fact that he protested all his life that he was an "absurdest") but Sartre was the one who really explained all of it to the world. Pulling from various philosophers and editing where he saw fit, Sartre created a new form of philosophy which had only been just glimpsed at before him. After him, there were many young Sartres running around, just as after Freud and Jung there were many young Freudians and Jungians running around the psychoanalytic world.

(Indeed, there still are cases of therapists dying their hair gray, shaving off part of it to make themselves bald at the front, putting on glasses, lighting up a cigar and saying "So, how eezz it you feel todaii?")

However, lets not overlook Simone de Beauvoir. In the long run, because she did not become as radical as Sartre did (his apartment was bombed twice) she was able to create more change, rather, she was a more influential thinker. But the question remains: Who was more important in the long run?

People have begun rejecting Sartre more and more since the 1990's. I'm not blaming the 1990's, mind you, I'm just saying. In an odd way, certain philosophers have developed apologists (I'm thinking mostly of Heidegger here, the unrepentant Nazi). Who will apologize for Sartre? The only person I can ever think of who disagreed with him and yet said "Let us not reject him" would have been Simone de Beauvoir. And she's been dead almost twenty years.

To be continued (sometime)

JPC

Orlando

Reading Orlando for an upcoming book discussion. My copy is littered with sticky-notes and tags, underlinings and notations in the wide margins (thank god that it's almost a facsimile of the original edition). I'm the only one (I think ) who's read the book before, or any book by Virginia Woolf. So I've been researching again.

The problem of Virginia Woolf as biographer, and this has been made a point by several critics, is that her stream-of-consciousness style of writing does not meld easily with the art of biography. The result is that in attempting to sound biographical, in attempting to sound like the academic, she comes off as a parody, at best, of the academic history.

I can see this leading to arguments.

Orlando is her strongest biography, even though it is a novel. And I think the reason it's so strong as a biography is because it is a novel. Flush suffers from the limitations of being told through the point of view of a dog. Roger Fry suffers from the fact that it was her only strict biography (the life of her good friend and fellow Bloomsbury group critic, Roger Fry, now mostly forgotten). "The rules of biography do not sit well with Mrs. Woolf" I remember someone having written in a review of the final tome. In attempting to cross fictional techniques with a person's history, she tragically cannot stop herself from embelishing the tale with the things which make her writing her writing.

And is this such a bad thing? Who's to say. It's not my place. I'm only a reader/reviewer.

JPC

A Message for Helen DeWitt

Hello, Ms. DeWitt,

I'm very sorry to hear of your troubles with publishers. I'm having trouble with publications too. It would appear, too, that almost every author is having trouble with publishers right now (except that bloody James Patterson with his "book-every-eight-minutes" schedule". I'm writing because your debut novel, "The Last Samurai" was one of the most interesting books I've come across in years. Finally! A book which doesn't offer easy cuts and simple solutions--something which was never made for the Nora Roberts crowd. And yet entirely readable; completely worth any effort you need to expand upon the book.

Have you considered going to an independent press? Or maybe seeing if you can get in contact with Grove (publishers of Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs among others) or New Directions (Roberto Bolano, Tennessee Williams, Anne Carson [who, it seems to me, shares your affinity for all things complex, though more linguisticly than statisticly]) or even Milkweed editions (David Rhodes, Susan Straight)?

Or why not take the Virginia Woolf route and publish through your own press? Or pull a Stephen King and publish a serial via the internet, with a 'suggested donation' price (though that didn't work for him in the long-run). Or try Lulu.com and sell through the internet, with no restrictions on your work. Maybe a great patron will come along and finance you. I'd do it but I'm strapped for cash myself.

But whatever you do, please know that your fans (including myself) will support you. We love your books. This is why I write.

Adoring fan, much love, hope things will get better, etc.,

JPC

Simone Weil

Is there anyone out in cyberspace who reads Simone Weil? If so, please answer me this. Is her life a story to be admired or to be feared? Was her death from self-starvation preventable or was it going to happen no matter what? And, by the way, which is your favorite work of her's?

I was introduced to Simone Weil via the short biography of her produced by Francine du Plessix Grey, which came out of Penguin's "Brief Lives" series (along with the somewhat amusing and informative introduction to Marcel Proust by Edmund White and an intriguing look at Virginia Woolf via her lover's son, Nigel Nicholson.) I connected with the tale of a woman who was all too aware of the suffering of others. The question was, "did that awareness kill her?"

It takes a lot to pay attention to suffering. It is difficult to see suffering without politicizing or misunderstanding it. One must care about suffering, however one must worry over two things: Why is there suffering? and Who (or what) is causing the suffering? That is the starting point from which every effort must begin.

Simone Weil made me want to be a better person, though she also almost destroyed me. To read her and fully understand her, you become burdoned with guilt--you realize so much of what you're doing is wrong. But this is what makes her such a great writer. She moves you in a way mystics usually cannot.

JPC

Rein it in

Recent updates on the obvious by the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/business/economy/15fed.html?hp

"US Must start to Rein in Deficit, Bernake Says" by Sewell Chan.

Now if that headline had run six years ago, with Greenspan in charge; with Greenspan's name attached, it might have gotten people to wake up to our economic troubles. But no, alas.

JPC.

Christie and Chatterton

Finding many things confusing about this new tech, having to wonder how people do some of this stuff. Anyway, welcome to the blog. I'm not going to get into all this stuff about what I like and don't like, you'll catch on to that soon enough. I'm not looking for love, so don't ask me on a date. I really don't have the time. Writing and reading and researching eats everything up.

Reading today about Agatha Christie. I grew up reading her books as a young man (even though the school I went to banned them--too many curse words apparently) so I'm interested to see how she plotted out her books. I'm enjoying it so far, though I still have some doubts about how it's possible that one woman could have written so many delightful murder stories.

Last night I read all about Thomas Chatterton, the young poet of the 18th century best known for his forgeries and his death (suicide) at the age of 17.

(portrait "The Death of Chatterton" by Henry Wallis)

Chatterton was a most ingenious young man and it is a pity that he didn't live longer. When I first heard of him, I was seventeen. It was disturbing to look at the volumes of his work in the library, realizing that he'd written all of that before he was my age and that he'd died when he was my age. If I'd died that young I'd have left nothing behind except one or two very bad short stories.

But then he was a genious, a prodigy, wasn't he? I'm not. At least I don't think so.

JPC