Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Ten Little Indians meets Amelie! There is cake here. It is 10:30 in the morning and there is cake in every kitchen, remnants from the company picnic one of the organizers keeps bringing in. It has been there since 9:00 a.m. Cake. (There are over a hundred people in the firm. The attendance of the picnic was approximately twenty, half that number being children and dogs. Even with all the children and dogs, there is still an awful lot of cake. It has been announced there will be cake all this week, every day. In every kitchen.)One of my co-workers was out the entire weekend--he called in the Wednesday before saying he would be out due to "stress." It was announced today another of my co-workers will be out for the entire month. As somebody put it, "the fan has taken a direct hit." We were understaffed before, and now, whenever anyone calls in sick, you can be sure that the remaining people will sag in their seats as if hearing of a familial death. There will be lots of overtime, and some people will gorge themselves on it until they burn out entirely, and then they too will start calling in sick for the regular shifts. It could be a glassy-eyed month. In the kitchens, there is cake, enormous swatches of it, where thin neon tubes of letters have been hacked down the center, rendered illegible, laid on the table in a tribute of violent color, nonsensical. There is cake here, the emails say. There is cake. posted by Jeff | 10:49 AM | Monday, July 28, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Jacob's Ladder Meets The Secret History! ....No you and me/It's John Ashbery's birthday today (although the Writer's Almanac website isn't updated--thank goodness I get their little email now), and I had been struck with something like relief when I saw his name and wee poem--so much so, I broke out my copy of Flow Chart, a book of his I picked up about a year ago and have started three times (I am not your go-to guy for very long poems). I'm on page eight now, which is twice as far as I've made it on any previous read, so I feel like celebrating-- although part of that, I'm sure, is the relief of being able to put both The Castle and A Tale of Two Cities aside (again). I'm writing this at work. How can you tell? Because I'm stopping before I've really started, that's how. That's how work happens here: I start writing and it starts rolling in.... posted by Jeff | 3:42 PM | Saturday, July 26, 2003 The Pitch: It's Like My Fair Lady meets Brave New World! Starring Carl Jung! ...which is all a fancy way of saying it's George Bernard Shaw's birthday today, as well as Aldous Huxley's, and Carl Jung's. I was trying to come up with a fanciful pop music slant ("Just think, without them, The Police would have never had an album called Synchronicity, The Doors would have been called something else, and--") and that's where I stopped. Does George Bernard Shaw have any ties to pop music (after My Fair Lady which is from 1956?) at all? That's kind of a shame. Shaw was a rebel who loved strong women and was a fervent vegetarian--you'd think maybe Courtney Love or somebody would acknowledge him. He had a good run in his day--I guess there are worse things to happen to a guy after he's gone than not having me be able to fit him into a lazily whimsical idea.Lazy, indeed: there is nothing going on here at work, and there has been nothing for the last seven and a half hours (while I was at lunch, someone manned the desk and continued to do nothing in my absence). I finished Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (okay, but the weakest of the three books of the Border Trilogy and a really, really light read), Jeffrey Brown's Unlikely (not nearly as flawed as Clumsy nor, oddly, as engaging), dickered around between Kafka's The Castle and Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (think I'm gonna end up going with Dickens, which is the second time now I've dissed The Castle) and of course, like any monkey with poor self-control, surfed the Web. Ahhh, the Web. Beautiful provider of fact, definition and idea. Ugly succubus of time and attention span. My goal for this week (starting tomorrow) is to write every single day on my off-NaNo project, and I know I can only do this if, when I get up in the morning, I don't turn on my computer but instead go to my writing table and write on beloved Palm'n'keyboard. Because otherwise, I turn on the computer and go to the web to check something, even just my email, and suddenly it's two hours later. The plan, on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning is to write in the morning, before I remember there's anything like the Internet and, worse, remember how to get on it. I suck. On the brighter side of things, John and Tracey Gersten brought a son into the world yesterday. Welcome to the Club, Carl, and congratulations to all the happy family members! posted by Jeff | 4:47 PM | Wednesday, July 23, 2003 The Pitch: It's like The Corrections meets When Harry Met Sally...or is it? From Granta:I've read this story half a dozen times over the years, and when I think of it, I always remember that woman envying her ex, the writer. But when I looked at it again recently, I was surprised to discover that it's not just him she envies but them—that is, not just her former husband but her current one. Different from each other as they seem, they have both 'decided what to do about everything they run across in this world, what attitude to take, how to ignore or use things'. What she envies is not something about being a writer, but something about being a man. This piece by Kathryn Chetkovich is an amazing piece of work--both inspiring and agonizing. Supposedly the man in question, is Jonathan Franzen but the piece is strong enough on its own that you don't need to know that to enjoy it. I just mention it because I'm a fucking gossip. posted by Jeff | 1:17 PM | Okay, real quick, because I have an assload of writing and laundry to do today: Last night, I dreamt I was in the upstairs bathroom, getting ready to take a leak, and I looked over at the magazine rack to see what reading material was available. And there was a leatherbound collection of three short novels illustrated by Edward Gorey. And the novel in the middle was titled: Where He Is Eaten. And then I woke up. And I'm just recounting this dream very quickly because I'm pretty amused: I don't think my conscious mind would have wed Gorey to Hamlet but now I think it's a perfect match. I can just imagine a Gorey picture book of Hamlet, with Claudius and Gertrude wearing those heavy animal furs, and Hamlet skulking around with a tennis racket in one hand, and Ophelia wandering around half-mad (or perhaps more like this). Jesus. You get the picture. It would have been great. posted by Jeff | 10:18 AM | Monday, July 21, 2003 The Pitch: It's like The Talented Mr. Ripley meets Animal House! Ooo, my poor brain. Haven't posted around here much because I've been busy spreading joy everywhere I can. I wrote this week's Savage Critic for the CE website, all by my little self (and co-wrote the week prior with Brian). Work was a grand nightmare on Saturday, and may well be today (certain amount of quiet before the storm here at the moment, thanks in no small part to other people's inability to work a fax machine), and the CE newsletter is on my plate for this week.God, I can't believe I typed a sentence like that. And now the fax machine is finally sending hte pages I've been waiting twenty minutes for. It's John Gardner's birthday today--I have two copies of his The Art of Fiction on my desk at home. It's also Ernest Hemingway's birthday. It is also my father's. Happy birthday, Dad. posted by Jeff | 9:33 AM | Saturday, July 12, 2003 Topple Government Child Translated Delay As much as I hate Spam, I appreciate that the makers have hired surrealists to craft their headers. The above is an actual email I received today. The body of the message is an ad for penile enlargement, and I'm trying to figure out if that's the "topple government" part. Some of the spam I get at work have text at the bottom some of which is some creepy form of mystical language like: lmwzajc sswigoj eyxm hxxwrxnjrol u znrg ctki irzipj cdin ltqbl vhumccvtxafevxi (one string of it started: perceptionprepositionbs, and I'm now wondering if that's what that line of text is known as to spammers: perception preopositions.) But I sort of miss the good ol' days when that stuff was usually complete, albeit disconnected sentences. One example of which, "So you think you're going to pop the question?" "With an axe, Joe!" still continues to haunt me.Another creation of surrealists which continue to haunt me? Circus peanuts: those odd things that looked like soap, felt like pencil erasers, and tasted like sugared bus seats. On my way back from lunch, I dropped into a W**gr**ns with (1) the intention of picking up a Hostess product. Fortunately, I managed to talk myself out of a Hostess product by walking myself over to the freezer section with promises of a (2) ice cream bar. Fortunately, on the way to the ice cream section, I noticed that they had (3) diet vanilla coke, and realized I could get all the syrupy, cringe-inducing sugar I craved in a (relatively) dietary manner. Unfortunately, while waiting in the interminable line to the checkout, I started fixating on the rows of cheap mass-produced candies they had below and in front of the cash registers, and ended up walking out with (4) a bag of circus peanuts. I love the smell of these things. Ironically, they are filled with the very thing (high fructose corn syrup) I switched to diet sodas to avoid. Ho, ho, ho! Those wacky surrealists! They have tricked me again! All this talk has got me thinking: what if, in some nearby, dystopic future, you had a company that gave away free food, but encoded the food with information? You could eat a relatively stable diet and not starve, but in return you were bombarded with high-power advertising for products you couldn't afford, continuing to keep you maxing out your credit cards and reliant on the free food to survive. Doesn't sound quite right, does it? Doesn't sound quite as interesting as the real world, where the United States offers free food to struggling countries in the form of genetically modified organisms, and then threatens to withhold funds for other programs if they don't take it (info I came across here). There are GMOs that are genetically modified to be sterile (keeping the buyer dependent on the seller of the seeds each season)--how hard is it to imagine GMOs that would make the consumer sterile (two or three generations down the line, so as to avoid suspicion). This is how I channel my disappointment at purchasing crappy food--creating paranoid apocalyptic scenarios. Classy. posted by Jeff | 3:51 PM | Monday, July 07, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Magnolia meets 28 Days Later! An unfortunate morning. If I hadn't decided to download the two excellent Brian Jonestown Massacre albums to my RIO player...and if the software I choose to do so hadn't gone wonky....then I wouldn't have missed the 6:21 52 Excelsior...and then wouldn't have had to stand out in windy misty bellows of Mission Street until 6:53 (which is when the 6:41 Excelsior arrived)...and then I would have arrived downtown before 7:30...and then I would have actually done my morning writing...and then I would probably have shown up for work in a state other than my current one...which is cranky and aphasic...But, you know, I gotta tell ya...those Brian Jonestown Massacre guys are fuckin' great. posted by Jeff | 9:31 AM | Saturday, July 05, 2003 The Pitch: It's like The Seven Percent Solution meets Billy The Kid! Crossing the street today, ruminating about The Sims and fanfic (there's a connection there, I just haven't quite figured out what it is yet), a thought stopped me short. Is Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the most insanely well-researched piece of fanfic ever? Earlier, I'd been flipping through Jess Nevin's impressive Unofficial Companion (with a terrific Alan Moore interview I'll be quoting from below), and the idea sort of struck me.It helps that I've got the loosest definition of fanfic to go off of: fanfic, meaning fan fiction, or fiction crafted by a fan concerning the subject of the fan's admiration. In this world of corporately owned creations, the difference between fanfic and work-for-hire is essentially that the fan does it for love, the pro does it for money. Long after the X-Files had gotten old and stale, the X-Files fanfic had a strong allure for me, not least because the fanfic sought various types of resolution or closure (mainly erotic) that the TV show had no interest in pursuing. Although the most simple appeal of fanfic to the writer is the ability to take the reins of an admired character or mythos's control, erotic fanfic (and its position as the dominant portion of the fanfic landscape) points to something more. Fanfic is an attempt to experience something through a re-creation of an object of admiration or scrutiny that cannot be offered by that original object of scrutiny. My use of closure, clumsy as it is, points to what I mean. Although Moore's idea for the League had been a simple spin on the idea of the superhero group ("one of the ideas behind the League was that I was thinking about superhero groups and various reasons why they don't work....that lead me to thinking about characters of Nineteenth century fiction. I got to thinking about Wells and Verne and Stoker and Haggard adn the rest of them, Sax Rohmer, and wondered if it would be possible to put together a Justice League of the Nineteenth century..."), it changed dramatically ("[P]robably in the first issue when I suddenly realized that I had Stevenson's Hyde kill Zola's Nana upon Poe's Rue Morgue. And it suddenly struck me how poignant and funny and dramatic that was....I suddenly realized that I could make this more than a fantastic Victorian romp or adventure, where I could actually have a great deal of literary fun and maybe strike a few literary sparks by juxtaposing charcters from wildly different stories. That was probably the moment when the possiblities of the League first presented themselves to me.") Although it's tempting to thus think of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a sort of fanfic in which the subject is Victorian literature, Moore makes several mentions in the interview that the Victorian era is not the be-all and end-all of Moore's focus ("The Victorian period is a very, very rich one. But I only wandered into it by accident, and while I've enjoyed my stay there I wouldn't say that it was an era that fascinated me above all others."); indeed, Moore talks briefly about a possible fourth book of the League, which would include "a William S. Burroughs character" and "a Neal Cassidy character" and the League as it would exist in the 1950s. So to me it seems closer to say that Moore is actually writing fanfic about fiction itself, and the closure that he seeks, the surreptitious thrill that can't be experienced by the original, is the destruction of all fences, all borders, that separates each piece of fiction from each--his Almanac in the second series, where he tries to map a world that contains every imaginary place mentioned in fantasy literature, being the most extreme example of this. Every act of fiction is the same act, and so every piece of fiction happens in the same place. Copyrights, egos and differences in creative objectives prevent this fact from being acknowledged in literature itself, but Moore and O'Neill's League demolishes those obstacles as the pieces of fiction could never do, and shows us the wonderment of a fictional world that emulates the wonder of the real world. There's more to this, of course. I have some thoughts about this idea being both very post-modern and the most childish, basic, notion of literature available (as someone who remembers having my Star Wars figures fight alongside my Battlestar Galactica figures), and some thoughts about where and when fanfic becomes realfic and whether that's just the difference of a paycheck. But I've gotta get my ass out the door, so I'll have to hit it another time. posted by Jeff | 8:01 PM | Monkey Visits German Pizzeria, Vandalizes Toilet God love the Internet:An escaped circus monkey dropped into a pizzeria in a small German town and vandalized the ladies toilet even though the owner had tried to pacify the animal with salad and rolls.Ahhh, this was just what I needed to soothe my troubled nerves... posted by Jeff | 6:02 PM | The Pitch: It's like The Island of Dr. Moreau meets Gravity's Rainbow! Finished Ratner's Star, and not a moment too soon.Actually, although I found the first half of the book (the "Adventures" section which is about 70% of the book) to be incredibly tedious, the second half (the "Reflections" section) was a lot more interesting, edifying and, occasionally, breathtaking. If the first half of Ratner's Star is frustrating, exasperating parody of academia (good ol' frustrating, exasperating academia....), then the second half is about the terror of creation, and Delillo's use of mathematics and mathematicians as an analogues for literature and authors becomes clear. It was something to be suspected in the first part, but seems to me to become pretty manifest as Delillo splinters the book's viewpoint across several characters, one of whom, a book author, gets such choice bits as this: "Writing is memory, she thought, and memory is the fictional self, the powdery calcium ash waiting to be stirred by a pointed stick." (pg. 362) The book also, with its second section deconstructing the first, reminds me, apocalyptic non-apocalypse, characters swapping identities. and etc., of Gravity's Rainbow, and that made a lot of it easier to swallow. Whereas in the first section of the book (as I mentioned back in my June 10th entry), Delillo deliberately confuses who's speaking, in the second section, Delillo switches internal viewpoints in mid-paragraphs, sometimes in mid-sentences, which I think is to make these characters equivalent to each other (in the mathematic sense, at least). It was a pretty stunning gambit to me--that, a few other meta-fictive conceits, were really fascinating, but none of it was quite enough to erase the memory of the first half's dead-pan tedium. I won't be rereading Ratner's Star anytime soon, I'm sorry to say. Oh, and looking through my previous entries about Delillo, I came across my June 10th entry where I say: I found it hard to believe a twelve-year old math prodigy would be so understatedly sarcastic to adult peers until I realized he was actually fourteen and from the Bronx. (Delillo was once asked if Bob Dylan was one of his heroes, to which he replied: "Someone from the Bronx doesn't have any heroes.") Amusingly enough, Delillo pulled this punchline from Ratner's Star itself--a scene where sinister men of science try to convince the putative protagonist Billy Twillig to do a book tour (and/or being the subject of some medical experiments: "I envision you in a silver lame kimono or a vinyl poncho. Once the incision heals. And the hair grows back. Leaving you without a scar. We'll package you with somebody you really admire. There must be one special figure in the world community of scientists. Who's your hero? Tell us and we'll get him."(pg. 274 in my edition) I think I just mentioned that to pat myself on the back. I probably should have warned you first. posted by Jeff | 5:32 PM | |
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