Saturday, December 31, 2011
Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security | ThinkProgress
Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security | ThinkProgress:
"“Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.”"
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
The Artist, or an Oscar for Uggie!
I enjoyed The Artist. It's an entertaining, sometimes touching story done professionally. I would not nominate it for Best Picture, which means it likely will win. My Best Picture, Margin Call, probably won't even get nominated.
My favorite part of The Artist was the "dreaming of sound" sequence. But another part of the film bothered me considerably. This silent movie wasn't silent enough. The musical sound track never stopped, and it drove me crazy. I left the theater with a headache. Sound movies use SILENCE to good effect but there's no silence in The Artist. A silent movie that is never SILENT.
And Uggie the dog is worth the price of admission. Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Uggie!
My favorite part of The Artist was the "dreaming of sound" sequence. But another part of the film bothered me considerably. This silent movie wasn't silent enough. The musical sound track never stopped, and it drove me crazy. I left the theater with a headache. Sound movies use SILENCE to good effect but there's no silence in The Artist. A silent movie that is never SILENT.
Canzano: At ESPN, money talks, journalism walks | OregonLive.com
Canzano: At ESPN, money talks, journalism walks | OregonLive.com:
I know a few sports fans here who hate Canzano but I love him.
I know a few sports fans here who hate Canzano but I love him.
Six months
Looking back through my blog, I see my first notes about the short novel were in June. So it's been a six month process to get a presentable draft, maybe even a pretty close draft from my reading thus far. The older I get, the harder the work is.
Quarterbacking
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| Cal Tech coach Bert LaBrucherie |
I had a ball in both formations. As a freshman, as starting QB, I played every down except two, when I was out catching my breath after being creamed. I was creamed a lot. In fact, this is why I was the QB! The coach gave all the big guys the ball and I was the best passer among them. In fact, I was a decent passer and that saved me, I could throw on the run and usually got the ball off before being creamed but not always. I got creamed often enough that dear mother wouldn't come to my games after seeing the first quarter of the first game. Dad came to them all, however. We weren't very good. Our best game we lost only 52-12. Our worst game we lost 85-0 in a rain storm and mud bath.
During spring training, I also was set to be starting QB, which in the single wing is a blocking position. I also was 2nd string tail back. But QB at single wing was fun because I got to call out the signals and most of my blocks were of poor linemen who'd been trapped, so I got them blind-sided. I'd call signals and knock unsuspecting people down. Great fun. But I got injured during spring training and then decided to leave Cal Tech, so that was the end of my football career.
I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. You get a good perspective on competitive sports when your best game is a loss by 40 points. Of course, we were smarter than anybody we played! We were the students in student-athlete.
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| Sacking the QB |
Looking good
I'm delighted with my reading of the draft so far. I've added a few vignettes and cut a few, sharpening the focus. So far I see no major structural issues. I think the fine-tuning may boil down to pacing. We'll see.
But I like what I see so far.
But I like what I see so far.
End of year?
Just doesn't feel like the end of the year, or New Year's eve, or any of that. Feels like just another day, with the usual work to do. I'm not complaining. Just find it a tad interesting.
With WeVideo, you can edit video in the cloud, then share it - latimes.com
With WeVideo, you can edit video in the cloud, then share it - latimes.com:
" the first company to offer a video-editing platform in the cloud as powerful as many desktop editing tools. WeVideo, which has versions ranging from free to $60 a month depending on the amount of video you want to edit and share, allows people to edit within their Web browser — to splice video clips, add audio and weave in visual effects to create the kind of polished video that previously required sophisticated and pricey software like Apple's Final Cut Pro."
This sounds pretty hot. Check it out.
This sounds pretty hot. Check it out.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Proofing
Proof reading on the Kindle is one of its best features. Just email any .doc file to your Kindle address, it uploads, and you're in business. Fantastic feature.
New Year's Eve
I made a silent movie myself a couple years ago, a short comedy called The Heirs. Does this make me ahead of the curve? ha ha. Don't I wish.
All four of my readers are available. Think I'll be able to get the pdfs off next week, the hard copy a week or two after that, two and two by request.
I am doing a final reading on Kindle before releasing it. Reading on Kindle gives me distance, as if I'm reading somebody else's book. I find this useful.
I have had almost no interest in the bowl games this year. Overkill. Corruption. Watching college football isn't as fun as it used to be.
Well, there's always the Triple Crown in the spring and this year the Summer Olympics. (March Madness has gone downhill, too.)
Wisconsin should beat Oregon, according to 'Beef Bowl' results [Video] - latimes.com
Wisconsin should beat Oregon, according to 'Beef Bowl' results [Video] - latimes.com:
"The team that eats the most meat goes on to win the Rose Bowl 71% of the time, according to Gina Doyle, the general manager at the restaurant's Beverly Hills location.
If that stat proves true, Wisconsin should win by a landslide."
If that stat proves true, Wisconsin should win by a landslide."
Solid start, rapid fizzle hits movies' domestic box-office take - latimes.com
Solid start, rapid fizzle hits movies' domestic box-office take - latimes.com:
"Die-hard fans are still rushing to see a film in its opening weekend, but more casual audiences are becoming increasingly difficult to lure to the multiplex."
Instant ebooks
Digital technology permits a far quicker birth cycle for new books than the old print media does. Here, for example, hot off the e-press, is The Patriot News' consolidation and expansion of its coverage of the Sandusky scandal:
Hear No Evil: How the Sandusky sex abuse scandal rocked Penn State, toppled Joe Paterno and stunned a nation [Kindle Edition]
This is an engaging book, fair and comprehensive, that brings the situation up to December, when the book was published. It covers much more than one saw on the daily news.
Another new ebook is by writer and editor Dan Meadows:
The book is based on his blog, with each entry updated by Meadows. This is a personal and passionate book written by a man whose own journalistic career was affected by the changes in technology.
It’s the story of how I got from Point A (a total disgust for the industry that had fed and clothed me) to Point B (an actual plan for a real, viable future to feed and clothe myself). Most of all, it’s the result of a nearly three-year experiment in the modern forms of mass communication.Each of these new ebooks are a great read.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Kudos to me
Some of my favorite strokes over the years, official and unofficial, in no particular order.
Just little sweet memories that pop into the head once in a while. I have many more good memories than bad memories.
- "This play has balls!" The spontaneous exclamation of a guy sitting behind me after the final lights came down on Country Northwestern.
- Each of my three "Roll of Honor" citations in Best American Short Stories in the early 1970s, validation when I needed it most.
- The critical success of Famililly, winning two contests, one international, and (especially) being the highest ranking stage play in the New Millennium writing awards.
- A sweet little old lady creating a theater award so she could give me a five grand check and write it off. Closest I've had to a patron.
- A poet telling me my short story "The Idaho Jacket" is the best fiction he'd ever read about the Pacific NW, including Kesey.
- 3 writer friends being blown away by my novel "Kerouac's Scroll" and taking the time to write me so, totally "getting it."
- Being the only writer in Oregon (as far as I know) to get Oregon Arts Commission fellowships both for fiction and drama. (This happened in a small window when they allowed repeats, then changed their mind again.)
- The director telling me the blue toilet paper bit in Christmas at the Juniper Tavern is the best visual joke he's ever seen on stage.
- Getting a standing ovation for my Guthrie show. Whenever and wherever it happened.
- Arts writer Bob Hicks' continued enthusiasm for my work over several decades.
- Harriet's heartfelt response to my book of poems.
- My acting partner in Albee's "Zoo Story" amazed that as Peter I could cry on cue.
- A short letter from Hal Prince praising The Comedian In Spite Of Himself.
- Dick Crooks' life-long enthusiasm for my guitar playing. The fool.
- Self-congratulation for living this long.
- Sketch licking my nose, no matter what I've done, ever.
Just little sweet memories that pop into the head once in a while. I have many more good memories than bad memories.
Brooding about the future
Now that the short novel is in a secure spot -- no ringing telephone or interrupting remark from H can shoo away a budding thought now -- I've been wondering what my creative life will be like after Sodom is done. I really do hope this is my last novel -- I don't want to work this hard any more, to be honest. If I write something new, and I probably will, I want it to involve fewer words. Maybe more posthumous plays. Or very short stories. Nothing as difficult and as ambitious as the work at hand, which I rather consider my swan song in the Go For Broke department. I want to relax in my final years.
I also want to catch up on reading. I've been so prolific for so many years that I've never had time to do all the reading for pleasure I've wanted to do. I want to fill my Kindle with classical literature and read it all. I want to discover new and exciting audio books, like the U.S.A. trilogy I'm still listening to (about 6 hrs to go).
I've put aside, retired, some projects I thought I'd be doing -- the art song animations, the music for the Varmints libretto -- again because I just don't have the energy to work as hard as the projects would require. I'm through with marathons, so to speak. I may still jog around the track once or twice.
I wish I could come up with a video project that wouldn't be as demanding as my past projects -- just so I have an excuse to edit. Editing is great fun. But you have to have something to edit. I was toying with putting together A Day In The Life Of Sketch story on video and may yet. I don't want to quit video entirely, though The Farewell Wake surely was my last Go For Broke project on video, having the same relationship to video as the present project has to writing prose.
Well, something will occur to me, I'm sure. I ain't dead yet. Knock knock knock.
At the end of the short novel, CJ the protagonist is listening to Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" as an audio book as he drives across Mississippi countryside on his way to Florida for the winter. He starts laughing so hard that he misses a stop sign ahead and ...
Actually it's a positive ending. A positive ending! Written by me! Listen up, o ye gods ...
I also want to catch up on reading. I've been so prolific for so many years that I've never had time to do all the reading for pleasure I've wanted to do. I want to fill my Kindle with classical literature and read it all. I want to discover new and exciting audio books, like the U.S.A. trilogy I'm still listening to (about 6 hrs to go).
I've put aside, retired, some projects I thought I'd be doing -- the art song animations, the music for the Varmints libretto -- again because I just don't have the energy to work as hard as the projects would require. I'm through with marathons, so to speak. I may still jog around the track once or twice.
I wish I could come up with a video project that wouldn't be as demanding as my past projects -- just so I have an excuse to edit. Editing is great fun. But you have to have something to edit. I was toying with putting together A Day In The Life Of Sketch story on video and may yet. I don't want to quit video entirely, though The Farewell Wake surely was my last Go For Broke project on video, having the same relationship to video as the present project has to writing prose.
Well, something will occur to me, I'm sure. I ain't dead yet. Knock knock knock.
At the end of the short novel, CJ the protagonist is listening to Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" as an audio book as he drives across Mississippi countryside on his way to Florida for the winter. He starts laughing so hard that he misses a stop sign ahead and ...
Actually it's a positive ending. A positive ending! Written by me! Listen up, o ye gods ...
Progress report
Looks like I'll have 144 vignettes in the book. Also I have a good shot at preparing the public draft before school starts. Onward.
Oklahoma foundation buys Woody Guthrie archive - Yahoo! News
Oklahoma foundation buys Woody Guthrie archive - Yahoo! News:
Ramblin': the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie performed by Charles Deemer and Jim Wylie.
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| Wylie & Deemer |
When I think back through my life to everybody that I owe, I mean the ones I can remember. Of course I know that I owe these folks, and that they owe some other folks, these are in debt to others, and all of us owe everybody. The amount that we owe is all that we have. --Woody Guthrie
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Robert Reich: My Political Prediction for 2012: It's Obama-Clinton
Robert Reich: My Political Prediction for 2012: It's Obama-Clinton:
I would like this but it sounds too good to happen. I like it because it makes Clinton the front-runner in 2016. Apparently Biden really wants Sec of State. They switch.
I would like this but it sounds too good to happen. I like it because it makes Clinton the front-runner in 2016. Apparently Biden really wants Sec of State. They switch.
The mystery of Vachel Lindsay - Slate Magazine
The mystery of Vachel Lindsay - Slate Magazine:
"How did the most visible poet in America—and a father of the Beats—become nearly forgotten?"
Old school
Put the book on a flash drive, took the flash drive to a copy center and got it printed. Now I'm going through page by page at a snail's pace, red pen in hand. After this is complete, maybe I'll have the public draft.
It's a wrap, or Now we can begin
The draft of Sodom, Gomorrah and Jones is done, coming in at 216 published pages, 47,000 words.
This is to the finished book as a sketch is to a painting. But I think the structure is solid, the characters mostly there.
Now the real fun begins. Today? Not sure. Maybe I'll brood. Maybe I'll browse through it. Maybe I'll read it and take notes on the Kindle. Maybe I'll go to the copy center and get a hard copy. Not exactly sure what to do with it at this moment.
But it's done! One door closes, another opens. The challenge: I know now the book I conceive can be done. It's all there. I don't yet know if I'm actually the one who can do it. Maybe I'm not good enough. We'll see.
The next milestone, which I hope is completed sooner rather than later, is the next draft, the first "public" draft, the first draft I'd actually share with someone, i.e. assume it is intelligible to someone.
This is to the finished book as a sketch is to a painting. But I think the structure is solid, the characters mostly there.
Now the real fun begins. Today? Not sure. Maybe I'll brood. Maybe I'll browse through it. Maybe I'll read it and take notes on the Kindle. Maybe I'll go to the copy center and get a hard copy. Not exactly sure what to do with it at this moment.
But it's done! One door closes, another opens. The challenge: I know now the book I conceive can be done. It's all there. I don't yet know if I'm actually the one who can do it. Maybe I'm not good enough. We'll see.
The next milestone, which I hope is completed sooner rather than later, is the next draft, the first "public" draft, the first draft I'd actually share with someone, i.e. assume it is intelligible to someone.
Record number of whale sightings something to spout about - latimes.com
Record number of whale sightings something to spout about - latimes.com:
"Whale spotters stationed at Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes have logged a record 163 sightings so far this December, more than they have seen at this point in 28 years."
The same farther north?
"Whale spotters stationed at Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes have logged a record 163 sightings so far this December, more than they have seen at this point in 28 years."
The same farther north?
Rose Bowl Notes: Oregon will have new uniforms for Rose Bowl - latimes.com
Rose Bowl Notes: Oregon will have new uniforms for Rose Bowl - latimes.com:
Terrific. Fire the university president because he emphasizes academics, then make a big deal of new football uniforms. Presumably this is a new permutation and not a new expenditure.
I may have to root for Wisconsin. I've never rooted against the west in the Rose Bowl in my life but Nike U may provide a first. Nike has ruined a great university. It gets embarrassing to root for Oregon.
Terrific. Fire the university president because he emphasizes academics, then make a big deal of new football uniforms. Presumably this is a new permutation and not a new expenditure.
I may have to root for Wisconsin. I've never rooted against the west in the Rose Bowl in my life but Nike U may provide a first. Nike has ruined a great university. It gets embarrassing to root for Oregon.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The incredible joy of rereading a great book
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| Lew Welch |
Here I am pitching it more earnestly than earlier, hoping to convince you to read it. It won't cost much of your time or your bank account. The hard cover is only 128 pages long. You can read it in an afternoon. An incredible afternoon.
Many used copies are available here for as low as $2.20
An ebook version for Kindle is available here for $2.99
Either will be the best book buy you've made in a long time.
Many things distinguish this book and make it so different from other books about the Beats, including the new The Typewriter Is Holy that I just finished, a fine book in its own traditional way. But Genesis Angels is something different entirely. It's more prose poem than history or biography, a short book whose brief chapters read like stanzas, written in a style reminiscent of the Beats themselves. Take a listen.
And one night—in the history of you and me—at the West End Bar, with alive tables and chairs and beers, and incredible conversations about everything under the sun, under the electric light—with West Side traffic outside, and goofed-up drunks, and young couples, husband with his tie loosened, wife with a new permanent—one night John Kerouac is introduced across the table to young, deep-fabled, not long out of New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg. This is the primal meeting, the plug-in that reverses historical currents and lights up new rooms in the mind of generations. One poet and another poet, in America, getting to know the drift of their own, single mind: Hello, I see you. Hello, I see you,And here ...
In America, each of us is a stranger. The communities are mostly too large. Our neighbors are sphinxes, as we are to them. Passionate men and women are confused and rendered inefficient, and suspicious of their own enthusiasm and energy. We hide the poem written in our own soul, or offer it obliquely to the light: daisies in the city window, roses on the dining car table: the landscape speeds by, and our dream is unloosed in meaningless efforts: buying and selling pieces of a lost vocabulary of feeling, the dollars and cents can never replace. These Beat people were gardening in each other's real earth, starting to water and plant a new estate of the mind in the midst of American urban commerce. All the rehearsals of their identities are now like sacred texts of the genesis of an original, native American culture. We hunger for more of the truth of ourselves which they allowed themselves to be.But the focus here is someone treated as a minor figure in other accounts of the literary brotherhood, Lew Welch.
Lew was a poet, and he was still, too, an apprentice poet, which is a complicated thing in its own way. The poet's apprenticeship ends when his life and his art become one, much as any writer's apprenticeship ends. And yet, this is a more difficult passage at times for the poet: words are a kind of spell for the poet to break through; and they can hold a poet longer in their thrall. Finally, when he becomes himself fully, the poet knows the language with an intimacy that is rare among writers because he has endured through so deep an awareness of the autonomous powers of the language itself.
,.. When the Beat Generation broke over the national media, Lew Welch was surprised and awakened and struck with the pang of yearning to be there, finding his old friends Philip Whalen and Gary Snyder right there in the news. What is this? Where am I? Why didn't I continue to bicycle into the stars? What left me out in this silly charade of being a normal American copywriter when I know I'm as crazy as the others, and sincere.
...Good-bye advertising. Hello poverty and joy, pain and language. This was April. By July he had written a dozen poems that cut through all the rhetorical, Yeatsian superfluity and apprentice questions of the past, and started an original, Leo talk with the entire planet from his neat desk. "Chicago Poem," for instance, beginning: "I lived here nearly 5 years before I could/meet the middle western day with anything approaching/Dignity."
...He was talking now, and his language was suddenly inhabited by his life, rather than a squeezed version of himself between rules of grammar and precision choices. He was on.
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| Reed College poets: Snyder, Whalen, Welch |
If you have a few hours, if you have a few bucks, if you respond to literature, get Genesis Angels. You won't be alone in your appreciation of this book, even though it seems to have fallen out of sight. I hope the new ebook version can give it a renewed readership. It well deserves one.
What others have said:
It is immensely moving. Joan Didion.
...approaches Lew from the inside--a comradely, intuitive, bold book that is a creative work in its own right. Also accurate, I vouch for that. Gary Snyder.
A fine memoir. Lawrence Ferlinghetti.This book is so poetic it should be read aloud -- and to this end, it deserves an audible book version read by an accomplished actor. I'd love to hear it read this way. I've been listening to David Drummond read -- perform is more accurate -- the U.S.A. trilogy by Dos Passos, and it's an extraordinary experience. A good reading of this book would be just as moving.
Don't rush it
Was in my basement office and started one of the last three vignettes but stopped and thought, Why am I rushing this, the key to the development of this story has been patient brooding, no need to rush because the end is so near ... and I stopped.
Steinbeck's lonely high
Nearing the end of my draft, I'm reminded of what Steinbeck wrote in a letter to his agent about finishing the draft of "Of Mice and Men." He was alone in a cabin in the mountains -- the Sierra Nevadas maybe. Anyway, he finished the draft of the novel and found himself both exhilarated and lonely -- he was high from finishing but had no one to share this emotion with except his dog, alone in the mountains.
To celebrate, he started drinking -- and kept drinking for a couple days. When he sobered up he discovered that his dog had destroyed the manuscript. Then he drank because he was depressed.
Finally he sobered up and decided to start over -- but he didn't have the energy to write the long novel all over again so he told the same story as a short novel. This is the wonderful hit version we have today. Steinbeck thereafter called the dog the best literary critic he ever knew.
I don't think writers ever get to celebrate their highest high, alone or not, because this happens during the work, at the moment when one sees that everything has come together and is working. This is a solitary moment but the highest high of the entire process, at least in my case, that first realization that the concept has found form and has been done. The rest is fiddling.
Finally he sobered up and decided to start over -- but he didn't have the energy to write the long novel all over again so he told the same story as a short novel. This is the wonderful hit version we have today. Steinbeck thereafter called the dog the best literary critic he ever knew.
I don't think writers ever get to celebrate their highest high, alone or not, because this happens during the work, at the moment when one sees that everything has come together and is working. This is a solitary moment but the highest high of the entire process, at least in my case, that first realization that the concept has found form and has been done. The rest is fiddling.
Round Bend Press: A Year in the Life--Wrap Up
Round Bend Press: A Year in the Life--Wrap Up:
The press history concludes.
On a personal note, Terry has done wonders with the press, and I am honored to be associated with it and in such good company. This is the new technology paying the right kind of dividends, something that would have been so costly as to be prohibitive for Terry before print-on-demand. Far down the road, this period will make an interesting literary history indeed.
The press history concludes.
On a personal note, Terry has done wonders with the press, and I am honored to be associated with it and in such good company. This is the new technology paying the right kind of dividends, something that would have been so costly as to be prohibitive for Terry before print-on-demand. Far down the road, this period will make an interesting literary history indeed.
First day at Santa Anita
Three to go
Okay, have the rest of the book scribbled out, 3 vignettes to go. I could finish later today or tomorrow. This is very exciting, even though it really is just the prelude to the real work, the sketch for an artist's painting, but it is the most fragile step in the process because it's the only step in which something is created from nothing. All the rest is reshaping something that already exists, which provides a kind of security blanket. Interruptions when nothing yet exists can be disastrous, a thought can disappear like smoke in the wind. But interruptions during rewriting do not remove the existing material at hand. Very very different levels of work, in my view. I'm a nicer guy when I'm rewriting than when I'm creating a first draft.
So I'll take a break, get dressed (still in my bathrobe), go out for coffee -- and see where I am and what I feel like doing the rest of the day.
I love this book. Serial monogamists always speak this way.
So I'll take a break, get dressed (still in my bathrobe), go out for coffee -- and see where I am and what I feel like doing the rest of the day.
I love this book. Serial monogamists always speak this way.
Getting close to the end
My draft is at 45,000 words, and I have 4 or 5 vignettes to go. Barring disruption, finishing the draft this week is a cinch. Knock on my wooden head. Or is this the moment I crash to the floor with a heart attack? Well, like I say, barring disruption, the week looks great for finishing up the draft -- and then the "real" writing, the re-writing, the high fun of the process, can begin. The draft will be in excellent shape, structurally. The characters are full, though still clearer in mind than on paper, some filling in to do. No major plot tweaks seem necessary. I think the rewrite will be a focus on tone and pacing. We'll see.
At any rate, another good morning of writing.
I've started rereading Genesis Angels. What a joy! I'll have much to say when I finish. Reading great writing is a real high.
At any rate, another good morning of writing.
I've started rereading Genesis Angels. What a joy! I'll have much to say when I finish. Reading great writing is a real high.
Oh?
Found this comment at a Yahoo! Group for Defense Language Institute alumni, which is what the Army Language School in Monterey is now called:
This became a novella instead, Baumholder 1961 (free pdf; also available as paperback). It must have been quite a while ago when I conceived this as a screenplay, which would be expensive to make and therefore a risky spec script. You'd need an actor or director married to the material to get this done as a film. It would make a good movie. It's a surrealistic setting that has received very little attention in any media. Actually the entire era would make a better documentary film if done accurately, including all the raunchy elements. In the 1950s an American magazine called Baumholder "the sin city of Europe" and this was right on. I don't think any of us, American students for the most part, were ready for it.
Here's one of my favorite passages from the novella:
The swastika on the cover has puzzled some. It's because many of the German farmers in Baumholder remained unrepentant Nazis, as noted in the story. So here you have clean cut American students (think 1950s) coming into a town filled with Nazis farmers, prostitutes for the G.I. bars and con men after the American buck. Quite a mix.
When I became a writer, I knew this was extraordinary material, but it took me almost half a century to get it down. I had many false starts as an epic Army novel. They ended up boring me. What was essential to the experience didn't need that much space, hence finally the novella. I remain pleased with how it turned out. This got rid of one of the narrative monkeys on my back, and the short film Deconstructing Sally got rid of the other.
No more monkeys!
An example of participation is RU Alumnus Charles Deemer, who is writing a screenplay about 'Monterey Marys' set in cold war era Berlin. If you have annecdotes, please visit the community discussion, ALS era.
Here's one of my favorite passages from the novella:
This routine is a true story, performed by a Russian linguist colleague and drinking buddy named Jim Donovan, from Boston, who introduced me to the guitar jazz of Charlie Christian. I adapt a lot of "true events" for the novella.Sullivan disliked sentiment and sloppy thinking andsometimes performed a routine that demonstrated asmuch. With a few drinks in him, he was known to recite aportion of a poem by William Blake to much delight andhoopla from his inebriated colleagues: “Tiger, tiger,burning bright,” Sullivan would begin, his blonde hairshort but long enough to comb, which really meant longenough to look uncombed because Sullivan always had theshaggy look of an absent-minded professor, and as hebegan the poem, his hand would sweep the hair from hisforehead in a theatrical gesture, “in the forests of the night,what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearfulsymmetry?” Here Sullivan would look positively baffled bythe question, as if it had cosmic significance. “What thehammer?” he asked next. “What the chain? In whatfurnace was thy brain? What the anvil?” – and at thisprecise moment Sullivan would scrunch his ruddy face intoan expression of speechless horror and bewilderment, as ifthe questions were too great for the contemplation of meremortals, hanging in the air like painful reminders ofhuman ignorance and insignificance – and after holdingthe moment for all it was worth, and perhaps making yetanother theatrical sweep of his hand to brush hair from hisforehead, Sullivan would shout with an exuberance thatnever failed to set the first-time listener aback, “What thefuck!? WHAT THE FUCK!?
The swastika on the cover has puzzled some. It's because many of the German farmers in Baumholder remained unrepentant Nazis, as noted in the story. So here you have clean cut American students (think 1950s) coming into a town filled with Nazis farmers, prostitutes for the G.I. bars and con men after the American buck. Quite a mix.
When I became a writer, I knew this was extraordinary material, but it took me almost half a century to get it down. I had many false starts as an epic Army novel. They ended up boring me. What was essential to the experience didn't need that much space, hence finally the novella. I remain pleased with how it turned out. This got rid of one of the narrative monkeys on my back, and the short film Deconstructing Sally got rid of the other.
No more monkeys!
Anonymity and pseudonymity have a long history - latimes.com
Anonymity and pseudonymity have a long history - latimes.com:
"Authors have many reasons for writing anonymously or under a pseudonym. While less prolific these days, Anonymous is still at it."
The colors of a family - latimes.com
The colors of a family - latimes.com:
"The white son of a black man: May he transcend the differences."
Monday, December 26, 2011
Contrasting images
Japan is quite a bit ahead of us in the practical use of digital technology. I remember a decade or so ago seeing a short documentary about the future of technology. The film contrasted two students taking a working holiday to write on their graduate theses, one from Japan and one from the U.S.
The U.S student took several boxes of books with him, having to haul them to the car, upstairs to the room at his destination, and so on. The Japanese student had more books than the U.S. student and stored them all on an early electronic reading device, which he carried in a small backpack.
I saw this and thought, wow!, I can't wait for the convenience of a reading device. It's the content of a book that interests me, not the package. Books are better than scrolls and e-readers are better than books. Technology moves on, making content easier to access.
It took about a decade for U.S. students to catch up. Who knows what the futuristic Japanese are doing today?
The U.S student took several boxes of books with him, having to haul them to the car, upstairs to the room at his destination, and so on. The Japanese student had more books than the U.S. student and stored them all on an early electronic reading device, which he carried in a small backpack.
I saw this and thought, wow!, I can't wait for the convenience of a reading device. It's the content of a book that interests me, not the package. Books are better than scrolls and e-readers are better than books. Technology moves on, making content easier to access.
It took about a decade for U.S. students to catch up. Who knows what the futuristic Japanese are doing today?
Introducing the Anonymite
In my book v. Kindle post below, an anonymous reader left a comment suggesting I am not a "real" reader because real readers read BOOKS. Pre-Gutenberg, no real readers existed, apparently.
Well, "real" commenters leave their damn names instead of hiding behind "anonymous" ha ha.
The comment, however, does remind me that the book is a technology. People read before books and they will read after books, and the issue is not which mode is more "real" but more convenient for the particular reader making the choice. Indeed, Kerouac typed his draft of On the Road not on pages, in the manner of a book, but on endless teletype paper in the manner of a scroll, because it was more convenient to write spontaneously when he didn't have to stop to reload sheets of paper.
I think I'll coin a new word, in the fashion of Luddites. Anonymites are those readers who refuse to accept new technologies for reading. (But are the "real" anonymites reading clay tablets or scrolls or ... ?)
Well, "real" commenters leave their damn names instead of hiding behind "anonymous" ha ha.
The comment, however, does remind me that the book is a technology. People read before books and they will read after books, and the issue is not which mode is more "real" but more convenient for the particular reader making the choice. Indeed, Kerouac typed his draft of On the Road not on pages, in the manner of a book, but on endless teletype paper in the manner of a scroll, because it was more convenient to write spontaneously when he didn't have to stop to reload sheets of paper.
I think I'll coin a new word, in the fashion of Luddites. Anonymites are those readers who refuse to accept new technologies for reading. (But are the "real" anonymites reading clay tablets or scrolls or ... ?)
Zero-sum universe
The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
--Samuel Beckett
Bill Dwyre: Santa Anita opener brings a sense of renewal - latimes.com
 |
| Spectacular Santa Anita racetrack |
"Horse racing has been written off in many quarters as a dying sport, but the start of Santa Anita's annual winter/spring meet suggests a sport very much alive as buildup to Triple Crown races begins."
The opening of Santa Anita was a big deal when I was growing up, even though no one but my granddad played the horses very much. My dad followed jockeys more than horses, as one might follow a baseball team. Willie Shoemaker, Eddie Arcaro. When we did go to the track, mom bet colors, not horses. Interesting, in retrospect, that horse racing was such a big deal without the gambling element. I think it was the spectacle. And, of course, the location of Santa Anita, with the San Gabriel mountains in the distance, is spectacular.
I've lived in Oregon longer than I've lived anywhere. But stories like this in the L. A. Times this morning remind me that my soul is still in Southern California. (It's the weather, stupid.)
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| Willie Shoemaker |
I've lived in Oregon longer than I've lived anywhere. But stories like this in the L. A. Times this morning remind me that my soul is still in Southern California. (It's the weather, stupid.)
Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state is 'on the brink' - latimes.com
Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state is 'on the brink' - latimes.com:
"The toll of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is catching up with the Washington state communities near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the form of suicides, slayings and more.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
A surprise hit
The Christmas meal was great. The surprise was one of the two stuffed mushroom recipes, which I made up myself, so here it is ...
In heated butter and olive oil, saute: diced scallions (3 incl green part), diced shallots (3 bulbs), a small handful each of chopped almonds, walnuts and macadamia nuts. Add mixture to just enough soft room temperature cream cheese to hold the nuts together. Stuff liberally into stemless mushrooms. Top with grated cheese (I used a pre-grated Italian mixture from the store). Arrange on cookie sheet, bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Yum!
My Christmas present to myself
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| Aram Saroyan |
Well, naturally I bought the book and now, after I finish the new one, I'll have the pleasure of rereading it on Kindle, probably my 5th or 6th time through the short book. I marvel at its poetic delivery every time I read it. My brother, by the way, is listed in the "thanks to" section, Bill having known Lew Welch in San Francisco.
Genesis Angels for $2.99! Oh American literary culture!
Damn, it's exciting to have this book on my Kindle! It is always at hand. Another nice thing about Kindle, you can carry around your favorite books without effort. Always close at hand.
LATER. And to add to my excitement, my favorite novel (Connell's Mrs. Bridge) just came out on Kindle and next year Mailer's major works are coming out. Good reading in 2012!
If I have a good week ...
I have a shot at finishing the draft this week! I have less than 10 vignettes left, I'm sure. Man, that would be so cool! Also have to update my syllabus but there's no rush yet with that. Finishing the draft is first priority. Then it will be SO MUCH FUN to start the serious rewrite! I love rewriting.
Christmas meal for four humans and a dog
H has the turkey in the oven, stuffed with sausage and cornbread stuffing. I have my stuffed mushrooms ready to go into the oven later for a first course:
I don't know why I'm in a holiday mood. I usually am down on Christmas (it reminds me of how un-Christian many Christians are the rest of the year), although I used to like the bar scene on big holidays, everybody was buying everybody else drinks, lots of sentimental histrionics, felt like being in a Cheever short story. Maybe I appreciate the holidays because I have so few left.
Got a phone call from L. in L.A. She often calls on a holiday. But with the cheer was bad news, her cousin and son of my long-time friends down there, got arrested late last night and may have relapsed. He's a film editor with an on again, off again, drug problem. I knew him when he was a kid. At about 8 he got a kid's typewriter for Xmas because he wanted to write books. He's also gay, which the traditional family had to come to accept, which they finally did in flying colors. He's a great guy and I hope he actually didn't relapse and there's another reason he got arrested (someone was with him in his car). L. is worried, though, because he's been "out of sight" lately and disappearance from the family often means bad news. And the family traditionally hosts the large extended family Christmas dinner -- so it's a bad time for something like this to happen. He'll miss dinner because he's in jail.
I went to Starbucks for an iced coffee and it was a zoo. I was 18th in line! After a few slots forward, a barrista recognized me, mouthed "same?" to me and I nodded, he made my drink and opened a new register, gesturing me forward. I was in and out of there like a, well, like a regular. Merry Christmas.
oh those or-durvies, ain't they neat; little piece a'cheese and a little piece a'meatas we used to sing at Thanksgiving after too many Ramos gin fizzes. At any rate, I have a selection of two, crab-stuffed and a nut mixture stuffed (walnuts, pecans, macadamias, shallots), 19 mushrooms for four folks, should be enough. They are large mushrooms.
I don't know why I'm in a holiday mood. I usually am down on Christmas (it reminds me of how un-Christian many Christians are the rest of the year), although I used to like the bar scene on big holidays, everybody was buying everybody else drinks, lots of sentimental histrionics, felt like being in a Cheever short story. Maybe I appreciate the holidays because I have so few left.
Got a phone call from L. in L.A. She often calls on a holiday. But with the cheer was bad news, her cousin and son of my long-time friends down there, got arrested late last night and may have relapsed. He's a film editor with an on again, off again, drug problem. I knew him when he was a kid. At about 8 he got a kid's typewriter for Xmas because he wanted to write books. He's also gay, which the traditional family had to come to accept, which they finally did in flying colors. He's a great guy and I hope he actually didn't relapse and there's another reason he got arrested (someone was with him in his car). L. is worried, though, because he's been "out of sight" lately and disappearance from the family often means bad news. And the family traditionally hosts the large extended family Christmas dinner -- so it's a bad time for something like this to happen. He'll miss dinner because he's in jail.
I went to Starbucks for an iced coffee and it was a zoo. I was 18th in line! After a few slots forward, a barrista recognized me, mouthed "same?" to me and I nodded, he made my drink and opened a new register, gesturing me forward. I was in and out of there like a, well, like a regular. Merry Christmas.
Books on the Beats
But a recent book, The Typewriter Is Holy, is a recommended companion to the earlier book. While Saroyan's book focuses on Lew Welch and is written like a prose-poem, Bill Morgan's 2011 book is a history with an unusual slant: he defines the Beat generation in terms of the network of friendships maintained and directed by Allen Ginsberg and tells the story of the group through time, providing fascinating details ignored in other histories of the beats.
Kerouac's suffering to get On the Road published, for example, writing other books before it finally came out, is communicated in a way that makes the reader feel Kerouac's pain. Morgan also is excellent at putting this literary movement in historic perspective, then and now, detailing how the core meaning of the movement got railroaded by media and publishers out to get copy and money from the new literary energy. In the end, the Beat generation involved none of the core members and turned into a trip to Disneyland, and this legacy remains with us.
These two books read together make an excellent introduction and appreciation of Ginsberg and friends.
Gene Autry
This smash hit was a "B" side that Autry had to be talked into recording, he hated it so much.
What year was it when I got a Gene Autry guitar for Christmas? Must have been 1949 or 1950. My first guitar, with Gene's lasso twisting up the neck. Hot stuff.
Mexico's UNAM aims to put it all online: Cultural Exchange - latimes.com
Mexico's UNAM aims to put it all online: Cultural Exchange - latimes.com:
"But to prove it really matters, the 100-year-old National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, is placing its work on the Internet.
All of it."
All of it."
Michael Hiltzik: Looking for a reason to love the iPad - latimes.com
Michael Hiltzik: Looking for a reason to love the iPad - latimes.com:
"My black-and-white Kindle e-reader may be worthless for Web browsing, but the sharpness of its print display leaves the iPad in the dust and its passive non-backlit screen is much easier on the eyes."
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Stevie Oedipus Wonder, Lost Blind Dog, Reunited With San Antonio Family
Stevie Oedipus Wonder, Lost Blind Dog, Reunited With San Antonio Family:
"The dog showed up at the Animal Care Services on Dec. 11. He would have been euthanized, but a high school teacher agreed to care for him over the holiday. Then she found the lost dog notice on Craigslist, and Stevie went home Thursday. He's getting doggy treats, carrots and toys for Christmas."
Reading: Kindle v. Book
- easier to hold
- easier to turn pages
- clearer text (in fact, you can vary the type size on the Kindle; this is true in daylight as well)
- easier to mark passages (simply highlight and it's automatically saved at Amazon)
- easier to look up words (built in dictionary on the Kindle, put the cursor in front of the word, get the definition)
- easier to take notes (just start typing)
For the life of me, I can't think of one advantage of the book over the Kindle. No, here's one: a book will survive being dropped to the floor and the Kindle may not.
e.e. cummings on christmas
little tree
by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)
ITTLE tree
- little silent Christmas tree
- you are so little
- you are more like a flower
- who found you in the green forest
- and were you very sorry to come away?
- see i will comfort you
- because you smell so sweetly
- i will kiss your cool bark
- and hug you safe and tight
- just as your mother would,
- only don't be afraid
- look the spangles
- that sleep all the year in a dark box
- dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
- the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
- put up your little arms
- and i'll give them all to you to hold
- every finger shall have its ring
- and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
- then when you're quite dressed
- you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
- and how they'll stare!
- oh but you'll be very proud
- and my little sister and i will take hands
- and looking up at our beautiful tree
- we'll dance and sing
- "Noel Noel"
| "little tree" was originally published in The Dial Vol. LXVIII, No. 1 (Jan. 1920). New York: The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. |
Christmas in Afghanistan
Soldiers with the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and service members attend in a ceremony on the eve of Christmas in side a church at the ISAF's head quarter in Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities | WriteBlack
 |
| E. B. White |
by E. B. White, Dec 20, 1952, The New Yorker
Baz Luhrmann Injured On ‘The Great Gatsby’ – Deadline.com
Baz Luhrmann Injured On ‘The Great Gatsby’ – Deadline.com:
"This week Warner Bros released the first official stills for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Now Australian news reports say an on-set injury to the filmmaker forced an early end to this year’s shooting of the pic due in theaters next Christmas."
Christmas joke of the day
"The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin." -- Jay Leno
Doggerel of the day
A vignette a day keeps depression away.Got mine in this morning, after a nice if short Christmasy cruise with coffee, some nice jazz versions of Christmas carols on the radio.
Strange company
From a comment on Tom Clark's blog:
The poems posted on this blog over the past thirty days have all been written by poets (Giuseppe Ungaretti, George Seferis, Stevie Smith, Nizar Qabbani, Bill Deemer, and Charles Deemer, Thomas Hardy, Jim Dine, Ed Sanders, among others) who got better with time, had the courage to stick to their guns.Ha ha.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Indie films that vanish
Salvaging the day
Managed to get some writing done after all. Getting very close to the end and trying to hold back my excitement. Looking good for finishing before school starts, as hoped. Then the real work begins but it's work that's a hell of a lot more fun because you are working with something that already exists, rather than creating something from nothing.
Blah
A strange slow day, except for some necessary shopping so I can make stuffed mushrooms on Christmas day, I haven't done squat. Haven't written. Haven't read. But maybe I can find a gear this afternoon and get something done.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A rare chance to pitch
But this may be too expensive for them, though it easily could be down-sized.
American hallucination
Progressives are not now, and never have been, in the majority in this country.
Tis the season
Got an address book for Kindle and discovered I could import all my Yahoo contacts without having to retype anything. Very cool!
So I'm listening to holiday music and cleaning up my Contacts in Kindle, deleting the deceased, and I'm struck by how many of them there are and by the complete illogical non-sense of my being alive and all those others being dead, especially those with a more healthy lifestyle than I've had over the years. The marathon runner drops dead at 40 and the fat slob on the couch lives to 80 -- you can't figure it out.
I've been living what Raymond Carver called "gravy years" for some time now, a gift from the gods for reasons beyond me, but I surely am making good use of the gift. I've written some good stuff. And I am enjoying myself without worrying about much. As I told my doctor, I'd rather live five years less eating scrapple for breakfast than living longer by restricting myself to a healthier diet. I figure, you can't figure it out anyway so why waste time worrying about it? What happens happens.
I just hope, now, the gods continue to grant me good fortune until I finish the project at hand. And I hope it's my last project about which I say that. I don't want to push my luck more than I already have. After this project, I hope to enjoy teaching, still, but relax with the work and become a consumer/reader/listener more than a creator. My archive is too damn large as it is ha ha.
But this one I'm working on, it's very special to me, and maybe to an audience of a dozen if I'm lucky. I obviously want (and expect) to finish it.
I've been living what Raymond Carver called "gravy years" for some time now, a gift from the gods for reasons beyond me, but I surely am making good use of the gift. I've written some good stuff. And I am enjoying myself without worrying about much. As I told my doctor, I'd rather live five years less eating scrapple for breakfast than living longer by restricting myself to a healthier diet. I figure, you can't figure it out anyway so why waste time worrying about it? What happens happens.
But this one I'm working on, it's very special to me, and maybe to an audience of a dozen if I'm lucky. I obviously want (and expect) to finish it.
Productive morning (once again, on a roll)
Down in the basement office, writing, here because I don't get interrupted in the work as easily. A couple good new vignettes, figure I have only about a dozen left to do, I should be able to finish before school starts, the goal.
Man, it's a mess. But it's a good mess. The structure is there, more or less, and that's always the first thing I want to get a handle on. Structure holds everything together -- or not. The fun will be in the small details but right now it's the big picture I look at, the forest instead of the trees. And I feel pretty good about where I am so far. If the gods grant me time to finish, I should be fine.
Hope to read the O'Hara novella later today. In the mood for it. In the mood to look at those long Arthurian poems by Robinson, too.
Many years ago I heard a story about E. A. Robinson I like -- and then later I heard it about several other poets. It must be folklore. At any rate, it makes a good point and goes this way:
E. A. Robinson (or your poet of choice) was at a dinner party. A woman cornered him and asked what the daily life of a poet was like. Robinson replied, "Well, madam, today was a typical day. In the morning I inserted a comma in the third line of my new poem. In the afternoon I took it out."
Two good vignettes, a start on a third. A decent day's work in my new non-obsessive mode. Time to go upstairs and join the world.
Man, it's a mess. But it's a good mess. The structure is there, more or less, and that's always the first thing I want to get a handle on. Structure holds everything together -- or not. The fun will be in the small details but right now it's the big picture I look at, the forest instead of the trees. And I feel pretty good about where I am so far. If the gods grant me time to finish, I should be fine.
Hope to read the O'Hara novella later today. In the mood for it. In the mood to look at those long Arthurian poems by Robinson, too.
Many years ago I heard a story about E. A. Robinson I like -- and then later I heard it about several other poets. It must be folklore. At any rate, it makes a good point and goes this way:
E. A. Robinson (or your poet of choice) was at a dinner party. A woman cornered him and asked what the daily life of a poet was like. Robinson replied, "Well, madam, today was a typical day. In the morning I inserted a comma in the third line of my new poem. In the afternoon I took it out."
Two good vignettes, a start on a third. A decent day's work in my new non-obsessive mode. Time to go upstairs and join the world.
TV TEASER: Julianne Moore As Sarah Palin In HBO Film ‘Game Change’ – Deadline.com
TV TEASER: Julianne Moore As Sarah Palin In HBO Film ‘Game Change’ – Deadline.com:
I can't wait -- till it comes out on DVD.
I can't wait -- till it comes out on DVD.
Starting the day
I'm a routine kind of guy. My day usually happens this way:
After all this, I begin thinking about coffee, breakfast, work, whatever special projects may come to mind.
The more stability in the external life, the more reckless and cutting edge the mental life can be without interior destruction. This is why so many writers are so different in person than you'd imagine them being from their books.
I'm reminded of one of Norman O. Brown's favorite quotations from William Blake, to paraphrase: the real fight, the mental fight, the Fiery Chariot of His Contemplative Thought.
Our culture is in a rush to destroy environments conducive to contemplative thought.
- I get up
- I feed the dog
- I turn on Kindle
- I pee
- I brush my teeth
- I take my pills
- I let out the dog
- I let in the dog
- I plop down on the sofa and start reading the L. A. Times on Kindle
After all this, I begin thinking about coffee, breakfast, work, whatever special projects may come to mind.
The more stability in the external life, the more reckless and cutting edge the mental life can be without interior destruction. This is why so many writers are so different in person than you'd imagine them being from their books.
I'm reminded of one of Norman O. Brown's favorite quotations from William Blake, to paraphrase: the real fight, the mental fight, the Fiery Chariot of His Contemplative Thought.
Our culture is in a rush to destroy environments conducive to contemplative thought.
Socially networked reading: Tab it - latimes.com
Socially networked reading: Tab it - latimes.com:
"Or maybe when you get to that passage, with the swipe of a finger you highlight it and email it to your dad, adding a thanks for his gift. Or you click to add your thoughts to a chorus of readers who found that same passage interesting; or you check to see if there's a link to a video clip; or you find an annotation from the author; or you post it to Twitter or Facebook or Google+, where others can comment on it too.
That's called "social reading," and it's coming to an e-reading app or device near you."
That's called "social reading," and it's coming to an e-reading app or device near you."
We are losing the art of brooding, contemplation, silence. We see more and more "group think" being heralded with terms like "social networking." Thoreau's "majority of one" becomes an alien idea. And then there's:
"All humanity's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room," - Blaise Pascal.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Marissa Gaeta And Citlalic Snell, U.S. Naval Petty Officers, Share First Same-Sex Kiss At Ship's Return
Marissa Gaeta And Citlalic Snell, U.S. Naval Petty Officers, Share First Same-Sex Kiss At Ship's Return:
"VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them."
Very cool! Especially the crowd cheering.
"VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.
Very cool! Especially the crowd cheering.
Finding a book
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Study: As teams like the Ducks win more games, grades drop |
Study: As teams like the Ducks win more games, grades drop | Local & Regional | KATU.com - Portland News, Sports, Traffic Weather and Breaking News
""They drink more when the team wins, they party more than the teams wins, and they study less when the team wins," said professor Jason Lindo, who is one of three co-authors and says the study is the first of its kind."
Duh.
""They drink more when the team wins, they party more than the teams wins, and they study less when the team wins," said professor Jason Lindo, who is one of three co-authors and says the study is the first of its kind."
Duh.
A story about art and the artist
At the end of the documentary Tales from the Script, screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, who won an Oscar for Ghost, tells the story of being crucified by critics for My Life, which he also directed. The response was unmerciful and threw him into a state of deep depression. Could the film really be this bad?
Some time later he was at a party. A woman cornered him to tell him a story -- and thank him for My Life. Her husband had died of cancer, and their son was never able to deal with it. Now she had cancer. She and her son saw My Life together, which allowed them to talk about cancer afterwards, and about the boy losing his father, and now his mother sick -- the film brought mother and son together as nothing else could.
Rubin realized that he had written the film not for the critics but for this woman. She was his audience. And it was enough.
This is one of the more important and true stories about the meaning of making art that I know.
Rubin realized that he had written the film not for the critics but for this woman. She was his audience. And it was enough.
This is one of the more important and true stories about the meaning of making art that I know.
A first rate biography
Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair
His public position was that he had created a “beautiful Utopia,” no mean achievement. He had “lived in the future.” When he moved with Meta and David into a New Jersey summer beach cottage, back into the “single-family mode of life,” he thought it was “like leaving modern civilization” and retreating to the dark ages.
When American Outpost finally appeared, in 1932, Upton Sinclair was fifty-four years old. He had written one epochal novel, The Jungle, and two others of considerable merit, Oil! and Boston, plus half a dozen works of nonfiction that, taken together, constituted an impressive critique of American institutions as a collective “dead hand.” The moment was right for a summing-up, if not a valedictory—and for a corrective reshaping of the impression that Floyd Dell had left with his 1927 biography. Dell’s Freudian interpretation of Sinclair’s life was admiring and sympathetic, but too narrowly grounded in the notion that Sinclair was a puritan and a neurotic.
Sinclair turned sixty in September 1938. One month later, after nearly four years in search of a proper subject, and at an age when most men retire, he began his new career as a historical novelist. Before that career ended, in 1953, the first year of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, he would write eleven novels about a charming spy named Lanny Budd— a heroic saga admirable both for its achievement and for the unique combination of qualities it required of its irrepressible creator.
Despite the encomiums of Shaw and Mann, among many others, Sinclair’s books were dismissed by the academy as too popular, too old-fashioned, and too resistant to the tools of literary criticism to be considered as works of art. These objections are valid, but they are overstated and they miss the point. They are overstated because they focus on the poorer examples of Sinclair’s writing instead of the better ones, as this book has tried to do. And they are beside the point because they ignore Sinclair’s effort to reach out to an audience of less well-educated readers without talking down to them, an effort in which he was remarkably successful.
His public position was that he had created a “beautiful Utopia,” no mean achievement. He had “lived in the future.” When he moved with Meta and David into a New Jersey summer beach cottage, back into the “single-family mode of life,” he thought it was “like leaving modern civilization” and retreating to the dark ages.
When American Outpost finally appeared, in 1932, Upton Sinclair was fifty-four years old. He had written one epochal novel, The Jungle, and two others of considerable merit, Oil! and Boston, plus half a dozen works of nonfiction that, taken together, constituted an impressive critique of American institutions as a collective “dead hand.” The moment was right for a summing-up, if not a valedictory—and for a corrective reshaping of the impression that Floyd Dell had left with his 1927 biography. Dell’s Freudian interpretation of Sinclair’s life was admiring and sympathetic, but too narrowly grounded in the notion that Sinclair was a puritan and a neurotic.
Sinclair turned sixty in September 1938. One month later, after nearly four years in search of a proper subject, and at an age when most men retire, he began his new career as a historical novelist. Before that career ended, in 1953, the first year of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, he would write eleven novels about a charming spy named Lanny Budd— a heroic saga admirable both for its achievement and for the unique combination of qualities it required of its irrepressible creator.
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