¶ Matins: At a blog, new to me, called Reddit, readers were asked to identify “closely held beliefs that our own children and grandchildren will be appalled by.”  Then Phil Dhingra, at Philosophistry, composed a bulletted list of a dozen possibilities. Be sure to check it out.

¶ Lauds: Sad stories: No JVC Jazz Festival this summer, and no more Henry Moore Reclining Figure — forever. The festival may or may not limp back into life under other auspices, but the Moore has been melted down.

¶ Prime: David Segal’s report on the planning of Daniel Boulud’s latest restaurant, DBGB, on the Bowery near Houston Street (it hasn’t opened yet) has a lot of fascinating numbers. 

¶ Tierce: Attorney Kenneth Warner’s attempt to discredit Philip Marshall strikes me as desperately diversionary, but you never know with juries.

¶ Sext: This just in: “The 1985 Plymouth Duster Commercial Is Officially the Most ’80s Thing Ever.”

¶ Nones: The Berlin Wall, poignantly remembered by Christoph Niemann — in strips of orange and black.

¶ Vespers: The other day, I discovered An Open Book, the very agreeable (if less than frequently updated) blog of sometime book dealer Brooks Peters. (via Maud Newton)

¶ Compline: At Outer Life, V X Sterne resurfaces to post an entry about an unhappy moment in his job history. (We’ve been through this before, young ‘uns.)

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

(more…)

¶ Just in case Stanhope can’t speak for himself, his father composes a little dialogue, with which to fend off high-living compatriots abroad. Then, to finish off this parental gift, Chesterfield underlines the worldly sophistication of his dramaturgy.

You will observe, that I have not put into your mouth those good arguments, which upon such an occasion would, I am sure, occur to you; as piety and affection toward me; regard and friendship for Mr Harte; respect for your own moral character, and for all the relative duties of man, son, pupil, and citizen. Such solid arguments would be thrown away upon such shallow puppies. Leave them to their ignorance, and to their dirty, disgraceful vices.

It goes without saying that Lord Chesterfield would not have comprehended the modern-day etiquette of “boundaries.”

¶ In Moby-Dick, a virtual Wikipedia entry on the subject of ambergris. I had never thought much about ambergris, and I suppose that I always thought it was the same thing as whale oil. But no. It is not.

Of course, the Wikipedia entry is imcomparably clearer.

¶ In Don Quixote, the Cockaigne-like largesse of Camacho’s wedding feast brings out Sancho’s material guy.

You’re worth what you have, and what you have is what you’re worth. There are only two lineages in the world, as my grandmother used to say, and that’s the haves and have-nots, though she was on the side of having; nowadays, Señor Don Quixote, wealth is better than wisdom: an ass covered in gold seems better than saddled horse.

¶ In Squillions, Noël Coward turns down the lead in The King and I.

It would have made a lot of money for him; it would have have burnished his image, and been an undoubed hit with that combination of talents — but it would not have been his.

¶ Matins: GOOD announces the winner of its Livable Streets Contest. (All the contestants are here.)

¶ Lauds: The sketch blog of Jillian Tamaki, the artist whose work graced the cover of this week’s Book Review. (via The Best Part)

¶ Prime: Michael Lewis revisits Warren Buffett. (via The Awl)

¶ Tierce: No poop on the poop: testimony about dog droppings on Brooke Astor’s dining room floor was ruled inadmissable yesterday. Justice Bartley: “It would seem to me the transient conditions of the apartment – I would include in that dog feces – would be a problem of the staff.”

¶ Sext: This faux Wes Anderson trailer is an elegant little satire, more loving than harsh, of the filmmaker’s foibles.

¶ Nones: The digital universe, like the “real” one, is expanding at speed. Continue reading for a delicious factoid.

¶ Vespers: John Self writes about White Noise, a book that I’d always felt guilty about not reading until I finally gave it away unread.

¶ Compline: Caleb Cage writes about the future of warfare (“RMA“) at The Rumpus.

(more…)

¶ Matins: In the current New Yorker, Steve Coll summarizes the Adminstration’s options in Pakistan. They don’t make for fun reading.

¶ Lauds: Springtime for Hitler: The Producers opens in Berlin.

¶ Prime: Christopher Hitchens on funny women. It’s not only not funny, but it conjures the image of a tar pit for humorists: the harder the writer thrashes about in his bad ideas, the thicker the laugh-prevention fixative becomes.

¶ Tierce:  Wish I’d been there to hear about “this mistress business” myself: Vartan Gregorian testifies that Brooke Astor was already acting up when she was 97, speaking truth to Camilla P-B and dissing Catherine Z-J.

¶ Sext: Why, according to Beth Teitell, newspapers must be saved — even if nobody reads them. (via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: In what looks to be an embarrassing waste of time, Turkey’s “secular elites” have dreamed up an embezzling charge against President Abdullah Gul.

¶ Vespers:Caleb Crain publishes a collection of blog entries, The Wreck of the Henry Clay: Posts & Essays 2003-2009. You can order the book or download the pdf.

¶ Compline: Former Marine (and deputy Secretary of State) Steven Ganyard writes about emergency responsiveness and lays down its golden rule: “All Disasters Are Local”

(more…)

¶ Matins: The President speaks at my alma mater. (via JKM)

¶ Lauds: Mike Johnston writes about Andrea Land and quotes Bill Jay, at The Online Photographer . Mr Jay’s advice to young photographers palpably lends itself to wider application; ie to planning a life.

¶ Prime: The times they are Auto Tune.

¶ Tierce: It’s old news — it’s not news — but it would be remiss to omit a link to the Post’s photograph of “Rapunzel,” Brooke Astor’s last social secretary (Naomi Dunn Packard-Koot, who, it seems, has a nasty chewing-gum habit) striding along while Charlene Marshall dips into the Ladies’.

¶ Sext: Giles Turnbull, of The Morning News, has a blast with the British MP expenses scandal. Did you know —

¶ Nones: Oman, home of Café Muscato (very incidentally), is taxing smugglers. Well, at least the ones who deal in goods bound for Iran, across the Gulf of Oman. (You knew that.)

¶ Vespers: While you were busy following Kindle pricing, Amazon went into the business of publishing actual books. Re-publishing them, actually, under the imprint AmazonEncore.

¶ Compline: What makes us happy — over decades? Or, JFK, “no one’s idea of ‘normal’,” was a member of the sample.

(more…)

This diary entry is being written at great personal cost: I could be reading the further adventures of Eilis in Brooklyn. Correction: Eilis in Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent new novel.

It was a disappointment to find that Sara O, the Irish nurse at the Hospital for Special Surgery’s Infusion Therapy Unit, where I get my (now quarterly) fix of Remicade, was off duty today, because I was hoping to talk about Brooklyn with her. I have no idea if she’s a reader, or interested in novels with Irish themes — God knows I used not to be — but I wanted nonetheless, almost desperately, to converse with someone about Ireland, especially the old Ireland of Mr Tóibín’s novel, which is set four years before his own birth. The Ireland that I suspect Sara fled.

Because it was my fourth day with out-of-the-house business, I very nearly canceled the infusion. Instead, I had the (much) better idea of seeing a movie this evening, thus leaving tomorrow entirely free for work. Glorious work — or at least the glory of getting things done.

I went to see Goodbye Solo. A good friend strongly recommended it to me at lunch the other day, and then repeated the recommendation on the telephone whilst thanking me for picking up the check. I had never heard  of the film, which is a bit strange given the weighage and considerage that goes into my Friday-movie choices. Little did I know what a critics’ darling it is, with a stratospheric Metacritic score of 88. I learned about that later, after scratching my head during the credits. Goodbye Solo is a very powerful film in its way, but it taught me how important production values are to this bourgeois soul of mine.

(The curious thing about the “production values” thing is that I’m just the opposite about opera. All I ask of an opera production is that the singers stand center stage, directly over the orchestra, and belt. I loathe complicated sets and crowds of extras. In fact I’ve come to prefer concert performances, simply because they avoid the production-values problem altogether. But if opera is about hearing, movies are about looking. If I don’t want visual clutter to interfere with the auditory pleasure of opera, I’m also unhappy with home-movie aesthetics that deprive my eyes of a feast.) 

(And who is Red West? A bit player who has been given an extraordinary break, that’s who. Vivat!)

Just for the record, I read Kathleen to sleep with the following passages from Brooklyn: the Bartocci “Famous Nylon Sale,” the visit to the law-book store on West Twenty-Third Street, and, at full length, the scene in which Eilis’ landlady pre-emptively awards her the best room in the house. “You are the only one of them with any manners.”

Blogging has taught me that old dogs can indeed learn new tricks. Arf! But it’s odd nonetheless to feel that I’m being made to feel proud, by these books of Colm Tóibín‘s, of being Irish.

¶ Matins: A word from venture capitalist Peter Rip:

Corporate America, its public boards, and now, the United States government would be well served to take a few pages on governance from America’s venture capital-backed companies.

¶ Lauds: Queen Nefertiti’s bust a fake? What fun! I love fakes! (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Now I know what to get for my grandchildren (when & if): littleBits. “PLUS magnets are FUN.” (via kottke.org)

¶ Tierce: More excluded testimony at the Marshall Trial yesterday — and everybody but the jury heard proposed testimony by the late Mrs Astor’s social secretary. The Post, the Daily News.

¶ Sext: Last night, I asked about the “backlash” to Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece about the full-court press. Voilà! Tom Scocca buttonholes Choire Sicha at The Awl. (via Brainiac)

¶ Nones: Mark Landler reads the tea-leaves of Iran’s release of Roxana Saberi (who by the way is gawjus!): Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reverses course to improve his re-election bid.

¶ Vespers: Rebecca Dalzell bids adieu to the Times’s City section, soon to be cut from the Sunday paper.

¶ Compline: Built on a former French military base (hence its having been named after Louis XIV’s fortress engineer), the Freiburg suburb of Vauban could not have accommodated civilian auto traffic anyway. You are allowed to own a car if you live in the upscale development, but you can’t park it at your house.

(more…)

¶ Matins: Uh-oh. This weekend, both Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich sang what sounded like swan songs. Rehearsals for swan songs, anyway. An appeal to the SpOck in Obama; 2009 as the new 1500.

¶ Lauds: In Istanbul, a shiny new mosque has opened, the first to be designed by a woman, Zeynef FadıllıoÄŸlu. It’s a knockout. (via  Good)

¶ Prime: Here’s a New York story that has been widely retailed around the Blogosphere, from The Morning News to An Aesthete’s Lament: Drew University senior Maximilian Sinsteden is already an accomplished, sought-after interior designer.

¶ Tierce: We start off the week’s news (there’s only one story) with John Eligon’s wry portrait of Justice A Kirke Bartley Jr.

So, a lawyer, while questioning a witness, tells the judge, Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr., that he has a request pertaining to a diamond-encrusted gold necklace worth tens of thousands of dollars that is in evidence.

Justice Bartley’s response (this is the punch line): “I won’t be wearing it, no.”

This is the lighter side of the trial of Brooke Astor’s son and one of Mrs. Astor’s lawyers.

¶ Sext: If you’re going to be serious about the l-a-t-e-s-t episode of Star Trek, it’s probably best to start at The House Next Door, where Matt Maul confesses (I can think of no other word) to having been a fan for “thirty-five years.”

¶ Nones: On opposite stories of the Atlantic, dueling Chinese heroines. Here, now living in Queens, it’s Geng He, the wife of an insistent dissident who made a daring escape. There, it’s Nina Wang, “Asia’s richest woman,” who has the comparative disadvantage of being dead.

¶ Vespers: John Self considers Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, at Asylum.

¶ Compline: Aside from being a brisk account of clinical depression that reads like one woman’s serious problem, and not the disease of the week, Daphne Merkin’s Times Magazine piece, “A Journey Through Darkness,” dwells on the bleakness of treatment facilities.

(more…)

¶ What Lord Chesterfield has to say about courts —

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good-breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence; and dissimulation introduced the habit of politeness, which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman. In the former case the strongest body would prevail; in the latter, the strongest mind.

— ought to be said more often about executive suites.

¶ Melville devotes the entirety of a brief chapter to a gloss on Bracton, the Thirteenth-Century legist: De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam. Whether or not you can understand that sterling principle of English law doesn’t really matter. The mystery is how a book as awful as Moby-Dick attained a reputation for greatness. I can only think that some anxious literary gents, worried about the creeping feminization of culture at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, decided that the canon needed the pong of dirty socks.

¶ Don Quixote translator Edith Grossman tells us that what makes the sword fight between the licentiate and the bachelor (Chapter XIX) so funny is the latter’s adherence to the prescriptions of one of the many elaborate books about fencing that were current in Cervantes’s day. The curious thing is that the book-learner wins the match.

Sancho Panza, who has already wearied of whatever the Second Part has in store for him, upchucks a verbal salad of proverbs.

“God will find the cure,” said Sancho, “for God gives the malady and also the remedy; nobody knows the future: there’s a lot of hours until tomorrow, and in one of them, and even in a moment, the house can fall; I’ve seen it rain at the same time the sun is shining; a man goes to bed healthy and can’t move the next day. And tell me, is there anybody who can boast that he’s driven a nail into Fortune’s wheel? No, of course not, and I wouldn’t dare put the point of a pin between a woman’s yes and no, because it wouldn’t fit.”

¶ A new low is reached in Squillions, as a chapter about the travails of rehearsing and producing Quadrille passes without the slightest description of the plot. Barry Day, who often appears to be addressing his remarks to a tea-shop-ful of Coward queens, is far more interested in documenting the chill that developed between Coward and the Lunts (for whom he wrote Quadrille — I did learn that much). As Coward and the Lunts were far too intelligent and self-controlled to commit indiscretions to paper, the chill must be found between the lines. Since we don’t know anything about the play that they’re squabbling 0ver, the search hardly seems to be worth the effort.

¶ Matins: Same-sex marriage will soon be on the books in Maine — barring a wingnut referendum. The governor, previously opposed to the idea although he is a Democrat, had a change of heart. Meanwhile, it’s now up to the governor of New Hampshire to sign a similar bill that has just cleared the Concord legislature.

¶ Lauds: Hey, you’ve been to San Francisco. You love it! What a great city to walk around! Would it surprise you to learn that local architects deplore the lack of “singular iconic buildings”? Would it surprise you to learn that architects from everywhere else are just as fond of San Francisco as you are?

¶ Prime: Marc Fitten, an Atlantan from New York City, has a new book coming out this month, Valeria’s Last Stand. In the course of promoting it, the author will be touring 100 of the nation’s independent bookstores — and blogging about it. (via Maud Newton.)

¶ Tierce: The Marshall-Morrissey defense won two important motions today. As a result, prosecution may look a bit more gratuitously nasty than it have done if jurors had heard the excluded testimony.

¶ Sext: A neat WaPo video on robotic bike parking in Tokyo. Not a joke! (via Infrastructurist)

¶ Nones: Now hear this: foreign nationals will not be permitted to “live off their ill-gotten gains in the US.”

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton reprints “an open letter from a local librarian.”

We are here working for you, New York City. Come in and use the library, check out books, get on the computers, tell everyone how great it is and how much you love the institution, but make sure you tell your politicians that this is an important issue for you — and excuse us if our smiles are a little bit tight.  

¶ Compline: I didn’t even know that the concept had a name until today, but, boy, I’m all for it: Seasteading. You know, camping out on a big oil rig and declaring yourself to be the sovereign state of Wingnutzembourg.

(more…)

¶ Matins: The Justice Department has decided, provisionally, that the Bush Administration lawyers who okayed torture, while “serious lapses of judgment,” ought not to be prosecuted. Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens explores the unnecessary folly of those lapses. (via  The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: The first “Madoff” art sale? The co-founder of Nine West, Jerome Fisher, one of the fraudster’s investors, has consigned one of  Picasso’s “Mousquetaire” paintings to Christie’s. (via  Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: If you liked that article with the spaghetti on the back page of the Book Review, there’s more, at Psycho Gourmet.

¶ Tierce: Geriatrician Howard M Fillit testified yesterday that, without her ample support staff, Brooke Astor would have been tagged with Alzheimer’s at least three years earlier.

¶ Sext: First the good news: “China cigarette order up in smoke.” Now the good news:

The authorities in Gong’an county had told civil servants and teachers to smoke 230,000 packs of the locally-made Hubei brand each year.

Those who did not smoke enough or used brands from other provinces or overseas faced being fined or even fired.

¶ Nones: The truly interesting detail in Carlotta Gall’s Times story about the impending government assault on Taliban forces in the Swat valley of Pakistan is the absence of two words: “civil war.”

¶ Vespers: DG Myers has written up an Orthodox and (culturally) conservative reading of Zoë Heller’s The Believers that all serious readers of the novel, I expect, will have to consider.

¶ Compline: Making the New Yorker Summit rounds yesterday was Jason Kottke’s appreciation of Milton Glaser’s Rule #3 (“Some People Are Toxic Avoid Them“)

(more…)

Just for the record — this record of reading New Yorker stories, something that I’ve either done or not done over the past fifty years, but either way with great passion; something that I should like, belatedly, document — I have nothing to say about “The Autobiography of JGB,” JG Ballard’s posthumous contribution to the current issue.

Having nothing to say about it, I will say of it that it is not (even) written in a language that I do not understand; on the contrary, I fear that I understand it all too well. But it is written in a language that I do not find engaging. The only way to “square” it is to read it as a dream, and I find the discussion of dreams to be the last word in loathsome talk. All dreams become nightmares when they are shared: to be the only person who signifies (as one always is in dreams) is to be a passive monstrosity. And to be, as Ballard’s alter ego seems to be, content to find that one is the only person left alive on earth, and thereby quite actually to be the only signifier — that is simply contemptible. The want of outgoing interest evident in Ballard’s “autobiography” would have stopped me from keeping a diary, much less publishing fiction.

I may have been born alone, and I will probably die alone, but in between there has been and there will be no being alone.

I do love Jean-François Martin’s illustration, though. A lot. Has he worked his name into the hoardings, d’you think?

¶ Matins: Of the 1929 crash, veteran Al Gordon (who died the other day at 107) once said, “Young men thought they could do anything.” Things haven’t changed, as an autopsy of Lehman Bros’ real-estate operations shows.

¶ Lauds: RISD prof Anthony Acciavatti teaches an “advanced studio” that has spawned Friends of the Future, a traveling exhibition that, on the side, will distribute 36,000 postcards at popular stops: gas stations and McDonald’s. (via Art Fag City)

¶ Prime: Is Daily News gossip columnist Joanna Molloy writing the juiciest items about the Marshall trial? Or is the Post’s Andrea Peyser more your style (who knew that Louis Auchincloss grew up in Five Towns?)

¶ Tierce: On the front page of today’s Times, an old story — one that I’ve been reading since 9/11 at the latest: “Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy.” What the madrasas really fill is poor little boys’ stomachs. Instead of spending billions on ineffective warfare, why can’t we?

¶ Sext: Patricia Storms discovers Struwwelpeter. Here’s hoping that the Toronto artist will conceive an update.

¶ Nones: The more I think about NATO, the less sense it makes, and the more it looks like a club with which minutemen want to beat up Russia, while shouting, “You lost the Cold War! You lost the Cold War!” John Vinocur reports on Georgia (from Brussels).

¶ Vespers: Marie Mockett on girls, ghosts, Genji, and her own forthcoming novel, Picking Bones from Ash, at Maud Newton.

¶ Compline: Silvio Berlusconi not only refuses to reconcile with his wife, but he demands an apology as well! Now, that’s a spicy meatball!

(more…)

¶ Matins: Why conservatives ought to promote transit alternatives to cars — and why they don’t; all spelled out in a lucid essay by David Schaengold, of the Witherspoon Institute (in, but not of, Princeton). “Public transit and walkable neighborhoods are necessary for the creation of a country where families and communities can flourish.”

¶ Lauds: This is the only movie that I want to see right now: Julie & Julia. The trailer is as good as a soufflé.

¶ Prime: Father Tony interviews Andrew Holleran. Imagine that!

¶ Tierce: What a lot of colorful business news there is this morning! Kenneth Lewis is no longer  chief at Bank of America. AIG — now AIU, actually — continues to look for a nicer name. Clear Channel Communications, the media hog, faces “mounting debt payments.” (Yay!) Starbucks isn’t losing money — yet (but can that be a suit and tie that Howard Schultz is wearing?). And, as for Chrysler…

¶ Sext: “What does this thing do?” Danny Gregory’s guide for the perplexed SkyMall visitor.

¶ Nones: Now, here’s a peace initiative to watch: “Kenyan women hit men with sex ban.”

¶ Vespers: Christopher Buckley’s memoir of his parents, Losing Mum and Pup, sounds like just the thing to read in St Croix at Thanksgiving. Something to look forward to.

¶ Compline: Would you be influenced by a “livability index” in deciding where to settle down? If you think you’re too old for that decision, when did that happen? And would you advise the young ‘uns in your life to “choose wisely”?

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

(more…)

¶ Lord Chesterfield sends his son a miscellany of rules for good conduct, all of which touch, in one way or another, upon the matter of impulse control.

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt.

***A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity, without excluding with and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves. A constant smirk upon the face, and a whiffling activity of the body, are among the indications of futility. Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things.

¶ In Squillions, Noël Coward endures a string of duds but finds paradise in Jamaica, where neighbors include Ivor Novello. A bit of dish:

Ivor, with typical Welsh cunning, has almost achieved the impossible, which is to find in Jamaica a house with no view at all. It is a suburban villa with several tiled bathrooms (but a scarcity of water) furnished in flowered chintz and mock mahogany. You can see the sea, which is three miles away, by standing on the dining-room table. Any mountain vista is successfully obscured bfy a high hedge beloning to the people next door.

¶ It must come from reading the books out of order, but the following extract from Moby-Dick sounds rather more like Coward than Melville.

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly accompaniesd by all the solace and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not much more than one third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarily entitled to en bon point.

¶ Matins: The only thing that’s missing from this Observer story about a houseguest from hell is the atmosphere that Quatorze would exhale if he were reading it.

¶ Lauds: Here’s a story that ought to be curdling my innards, but the innards in question were curdled so long ago that there’s nothing left. The Times may sell WQXR, according to the kind of rumors that have been panning out lately.

¶ Prime: Even though I have NO ROOM, I must confess to being beguiled by Mike Johnston’s Online Photographer entry about starting a camera collection.

¶ Tierce: Olympia Snowe’s envoi to Arlen Specter manages to make Ronald Reagan, of all people, sound like a moderate Republican. The Pennsylvania senator’s defection to the Democrats may also lubricate his former party’s easing-up on opposition to same-sex marriage.

¶ Sext: And, speaking of marriage, The Morning News assembles a Panel of Experts, comprising a handful of youngsters who are engaged to be married, “The Rules of Engagement.”

¶ Nones: First, the good news: things are looking up (a little) in Myanmar, a nation so devastated by Cyclone Nargis, last year, that its repressive junta loosened up a bit.

¶ Vespers: Finally: a book by Colson Whitehead that I’d like to read. None of that postmodern bricolage, just a straightforward summer novel: Sag Harbor. Marie Mockett inverviews the author at Maud Newton.

¶ Compline: One of the most egotistical, testosterone-driven, and commercially senseless mergers in corporate history is about to be undone, as TimeWarner and America Online approach the dissolution of their relationship.

(more…)

“The Slows,” Gail Hareven’s story in this week’s New Yorker (translated from the Hebrew by Yaacov Jeffrey Green) is not the sort of thing that I have much to say about. Although perfectly well-executed, the story is a science-fiction parable, and therefore not about anybody you or I know. Take the narrator, for example. The narrator has had a very unusual childhood — no childhood at all, really. Thanks to a growth hormone that is now routinely administered to most human newborns, he reached adulthood in the space of a few weeks after birth. While interesting in a back-of-the-envelope way, Ms Hareven’s construct presumes that recognizable human beings — recognizable to us — could reach maturity without the prolonged post-partum gestation that stocks a growing mind with twelve years of passive experience. I don’t buy it for a minute.

The Slows, of course, are dissident human beings who have resisted the hormone. They’ve been increasingly marginalized, and now they are about to be eliminated altogether. No one will die, posssibly; but no one will retain the right to allow an infant to take its time growing up. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, we can’t of course say, but in the meantime we can discern parallels to the oppression/extinction of Native Americans (on both New World continents), and we can wonder if the author wants us to think about Palestinians.

In my book, to the extent that a story is “thought-provoking” — and “The Slows” is certainly that — it cannot be good adult fiction. Only last week, The New Yorker published a story, “Vast Hell,” of incomparably deeper political significance, but the significance is rich because it cannot be reduced to a political decision. In “Vast Hell,” townsmen discover some graves of “the disappeared,” victims of a very bad spell in Argentinian history. The story is about the townsmen, however, and not about the desaparecidos. Guillermo Martínez’s fiction does not teach the reader anything; rather, it kindles a host of synesthetic responses in the mind that recreate, to the extent that the reader is attentive and imaginative, the complexity of making a ghastly discovery that one had been dead set on not making.

“The Slows” is an excellent story for younger readers who are beginning to learn not to read literally: it will kindle outrage. I mean that in earnest and without snark of any kind. There is nothing concealed in my conviction that science fiction has no place in The New Yorker — or in any magazine that I read regularly.

As Mondays go, it was a good day. I never left the building, but that’s to be expected when I’ve had a busy weekend. I meant to plant the flats of pansies and geraniums that I bought at Nicky’s last week, but then I meant to do a lot of householdy things. It’s easy to plan dutiful afternoons in the morning. The difficulty comes at lunchtime, which is invariably spent over a book. Usually, I can close the book and get back to work, but not today. Today, I just changed places, from the upright seat at the writing table in the bedroom, where I ate lunch, to the reading chair just opposite. I simply didn’t want to put Vestal McIntyre’s Lake Overturn down.

I read a lot of good books. Even though I’m probably working a smallish corner of the contemporary literary-novel scene, the books that I like have little in common with each other. Let me pluck a few titles from the air: The Corrections, Telex From Cuba, Then We Came to the End, Netherland, The Great Man, Breakable You (these two latter titles do have something in common, actually). Let’s not forget the stupidly underrated Lulu in Marrakech. (Must write that one up!) Now, Lake Overturn.

I loved Mr McIntyre’s collection of eight magnificent stories, You Are Not The One. I’ll admit that I liked the New York stories a bit more than the Idaho stories, but that’s because I’m a hick. When I heard that the author’s first novel would be set in his native state, I pouted. I really did! A bit of personal history that was published in an issue of Open City last year, although very well done, threw me into a state of verdinemia, the malady caused by a shortage of greenery. (Southern Idaho is very dry.) But Lake Overturn is so rich in human complication that I never had a moment to register the rebarbative environment, which, in any case, the locals seemed to be perfectly happy with.

Sometimes novels make me want to visit places that weren’t on my list. Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games — a title that I ought to have mentioned earlier — made me want to visit Mumbai, which is the last thing that I’d have expected. Lake Overturn has not kindled a desire to visit the greater Boise metroplex, where the novel is set, but Mr McIntyre’s prose has ignited a passionate indignation. All that terrific praise for Updike, Roth & al that I’ve been reading for decades and that I have always found overheated: it’s true of this young writer’s work. The only writer of my age who seems comparably gifted is Richard Ford.

So much for the blah-blah-blah part of my criticism of Lake Overturn. Now I’ve got to hunker down and find a few substantive things to say about it. Mr McIntyre has done his share of the hard work; now it’s my turn.

Let me just say that I’ve already forgiven Kate Christensen for her blurbatorial comparison of Lake Overturn to Middlemarch. It’s a lot smarter, as these comparisons go, than the one between Netherland and The Great Gatsby. Whereas I have no interest in conjecturing Fitzgerald’s response to Joseph O’Neill’s (even more that Fitzgerald’s) understated masterpiece, I am fairly certain that George Eliot would have turned the pages of Lake Overturn with as much interest as I did.

¶ Matins: Robert Pear’s story about the latest squabble in health care reform is well worth thinking about. “Doctor Shortage Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals” is the title of his story, but I’m afraid that the editor who came up with it was having a senior moment, even if he’s only twenty-six.

¶ Lauds: Norman Lebrecht inveighs against artists who collaborate with nasty regimes — creative types who go along to get along. I couldn’t disagree more with his conclusion, but I recognize that he has, by far, the easier argument.

¶ Prime: Manfred Ertel’s Spiegel story about the recknoning in Reykjavik will make deeply satisfying reading to anyone who, like me, believes that the past fifteen years’ free market follies betray a pre-adolescent want of perspicuity. Having the gals take over so that they can fix things seems only right. But what about the reaction?

¶ Tierce: For some reason, I thought that Texas could subdivide into six entities, not five — but I do remember (from my Houstonian captivity) that subdivision was a standard plank in gubernatorial platforms until 1920.  

¶ Sext: In his search for bizarre LP album covers, Muscato unearths the even more bizarre optimism of LP consumers back in the days when new technologies promised to deliver information not only more palatably but more effectively than conventional media (ie books).

¶ Nones: Two stories about Hungary at risk in the ongoing slump. First, and very predicatable, violence aimed at Roma (gypsies). Second, and more impressionistic, Budapest’s fragile prosperity, considered by someone just old enough to remember the city in 1989.

¶ Vespers: A faux-anxious story, nominally about Kazuo Ishiguro’s having only so many more book projects in his quiver, alerts us to the impending arrival (in the UK, anyway) of a new book — not a novel.

¶ Compline: Erik Hare’s essay on seizing opportunity, on being ready to take advantage of favorable winds when they blow — and on the tendency of liberals to dismiss such a skill as “opportunism” — makes for thought-provoking reading. “Eyes on the Prize,” at Barataria.

(more…)

¶ In Don Quixote, the three chapters comprising our hero’s gracious encounter with Don Diego de Miranda (whom Quixote regards as The Knight of the Green Coat) seem to be written in a new and different tone; I could not beat down the sensation that Don Diego was my contemporary, not Quixote’s, and that the episode, which culminates in a very agreeable and comfortable visit to Don Diego’s manor, was taking place in modern Texas. Quixote’s encouragement to Don Lorenzo, his host’s son, to persevere in his pursuit of poetry reads something like a blog entry offering career advice. It must be something I ate.

And then there is the adventure of the lazy lion, which reads like a Monty Python skit.

Then the lion keeper, in great detail and with many pauses, recounted the outcome of the contest, exaggerating to the best of his ability and skill the valor of Don Quixote, the sight of whom made a coward of the lion, and refused and did not dare to leave his cage, although he had kept the door open for some time; and only because he had told the knight that it was tempting God to provoke the lion and force him come out, which is what he wanted him to do, and despite the knight’s wishes and against his will, he had allowed the door to be closed again.

“What do you think of that, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “Are there any enchantments that can prevail against true courage? Enchanters only deprive me of good fortune, but of spirit and courage, never!”

In this second part of the epic, Cervantes certainly treats enchantment as a blank check on which to draw from a vast bank account.