"minor parker"-- brief thread

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "LET'S CELEBRATE! DO YOU HAVE ANY PICKLES?" - "monika" (bergman)

two books i finished yesterday: Proust and Signs (deleuze), This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald).

Deleuze-- uh, considering how revelatory Proust is on almost every page, this kind of took all the "fun" out of it. overall, boring, not insightful, and almost a mockery of good literary criticism. on the other hand, deleuze is a smart dude, there aren't any missteps here, just a miscarriage of tone. the Rene Girard discussions of Proust are far superior.

Fitzgerald-- ugh, fuck this book. total "first novel" syndrome to the 10th degree. i don't even really want to talk about it. worst part is his attempt at characterization for the 8 or so minor characters... why bother?

who wants to see The Brink's Job tomorrow?

-- So, I switched over to the Scott-Moncrieff translation for volume 4 of Proust. I have heard some snobs complain about the title "Cities of the Plain" instead of the literal translation "Sodom and Gomorrah," but I dunno, I think "Cities of the Plain" is a beautiful title. Ironically, the Sturrock translation, while getting the title right, is clunky and hard to read. My french is not great, but I think he tried to stick too closely to the idiosyncracies of french (with redundant demonstrative pronouns, for example), and doesn't render the feel of the English language.
-- Also a beautiful title: a tiny subsection of vol. 4, not even a chapter really, is called The intermittencies of the heart.
-- Uh, so I am not a creative person. In NYC, a lot of people are turning commercial or warehouse space into living space, or starting their own businesses, or making films, or music, or are writers, or are doing their own design label, are freelancers of some sort... and I have a lot of respect for that, but it's not me. I will probably always live in a regular apartment in a regular part of town, I'm not a trailblazer/gentrifier. I am already on a "career path" that is long-established and, while maybe my work *within* academia will be interesting and new, the actual chart of my life looks pretty set right now. Which could be boring, I guess. I don't think I'm a boring person, so I'm not very worried, but you know. The other thing is that a main tenet of my beliefs is DIY, but the problem is that I don't "D" much. Maybe when school calms down, I can put out some records, but basically for the next few years I will be reading and writing constantly, probably not much else. On the other hand, that is what I am interested in-- it is largely a personality thing, since I have never been good at art or music, and can't write fiction or poetry. I guess I'm not complaining; I like what I'm good at, and I've enjoyed reading other people's criticism, but sometimes I wish I was more creative with either my life or my productivity.
-- Bad mood: week 4

who wants to see "Time Regained" next week?

-- books finished this week: Jacques Lacan Seminar I: Freud's Papers on Technique, Sir A.C. Doyle A Study in Scarlet, Bruno Schulz Crocodile Street.
-- Dicks and Carbonas were great on Thursday night. Dicks shed a member since I saw them in Austin, so they were a four-piece (as in "the day"), and miraculously had not at all improved on their instruments since 1980. Their ineptitude, however, was somewhat mesmerizing, since it re-created the sound of their records perfectly, and since their not-quite-fast-enough, stomping beat has always been somewhat hypnotizing. Carbonas were too cool by half, but also sounded just like their records, but somehow blew the middle of their set by playing a string of uncatchy numbers and some KBD cover (which was alright but what are you gonna do it's 2006).
-- last night watched The Specialist, which made me realize I need to read Eichmann in Jerusalem really badly, but a few comments: 1) "the banality of evil" is pretty dead-on, but not quite in the way that I thought before I saw the movie; like, "banal" is not really equivalent to "bland" or "mundane" and is the only word that captures Eichmann's obnoxious, insipid, pathetic vibe. 2) also, dude is pissed off for most of the movie, since this is in some ways not a "real" trial and while normally I would sympathize with that sort of self-important indignation, y'know... you can't really, here. 3) best shot in the movie is when Eichmann is doing a typical oh I wasn't in charge of that or well we didn't *call* it 'burying people alive in mass graves', we called it 'deportation,' and the prosecuting attorneys play this tape of something similar he had said previously, and all you see in the camera shot is the bailiff rewinding the tape and on his arm the Camp tattoos. Heady stuff, people.
-- Talya was complaining about "post-Wes Anderson" films as being worse than the genre I was complaining about (the shitty independent films that Landmark and Angelika are always playing). Discussed: Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, You and Me and Everyone We Know, etc. I really liked Squid and the Whale, though, which is definitely "post Wes Anderson". The phenomenon that I was talking about was movies like "Happy Endings" with Tom Arnold, "The Good Girl", "Closer", "the World's Fastest Indian" and any movie where Paul Giamatti is the main character (I'm sure "Cinderella Man" sucked, but it isn't really the same phenomenon). Basically, movies that think they are more steamy/thoughtful than "average Hollywood fare," and are self-absorbed enough to try and make the Festival rounds but need someone to tell them "you aren't arty; you are just boring." This is almost exclusively what they play at the one or two independent theaters in Austin. SUCKS

saturday= coffee and talya

-- books I finished in the past week: Foucault History of Sexuality, Bowie Freud, Proust and Lacan, Proust The Guermantes Way, Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Raymond Williams Marxism and Literature.
-- i'm crossing my fingers that saturday brunch will happen; skrewdrivers! pancakes!
-- "panini?"=my new favorite punchline
-- check out bob dylan in his most hippy-jew period (including some kind of head-rag) playing the most ignorant, jammed out, slide-guitar, alternate-melody version of "shelter from the storm"
-- how embarassed would you be to be, like, a registered Democrat? i think in a way they have the "guy who has been dating the same girl for a while" syndrome-- they start wearing sweatpants, don't shave, come to class with bed-head, etc.-- because they know their base has nowhere to go, but C'MON, have some dignity.
-- I'm going to watch the Eichmann trial documentary ("The Specialist") this weekend or monday, or wednesday after my French mid-term; anyone interested? we can use your VCR
-- suggest someone to cut my hair; I can't really pull off the Greg Ginn.
-- UGH!!! i just remembered I had the looongest dream about espresso; like, revolving around that I don't know how much coffee to use in an espresso machine. Fuck that! where are the Sarah Michelle Gellar dreams?
-- but, to explain the espresso dream, clearly it has to do with the obnoxious businessman yesterday who was asking too many questions about the espresso beans at Fairway, BUT WHAT IT'S REALLY ABOUT is that i have a crush on the concession girl at Film Forum (you know the one) and that they don't serve coffee there, only espresso drinks.

the inevitable "fat kid" comparison

-- someone in my french class today coined the phrase "not to pull a Ben" to preface making a snarky and pedantic comment about semantics/conceits/mixed metaphors. THANKS GUY. i haven't even started the program yet, and already my name is synonymous with asking time-consuming, off-topic questions.
-- i know you guys think that we hang out because we enjoy each other's company, and that's all well and good, but from now on an extra dimension will be in playing the game: Did I Just Flirt with That Person and its counterpart Were You Just Flirting with that Person?
-- what is behind my undissuadable tendency to make analogies about "the fat kid" and his analogous tribulations? perhaps, that i am thinking like a book. and this book is prone to homeric similes like WHAT. (cf: Milton, Proust, Tolstoy, Homer, who are to analogies what Gary Larson is to fat kids)
-- please enjoy this brief lull between my reading The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain (née Sodom and Gomorrah). i will still reference Proust, but more in a general, relative way than in my patented I-wasn't-even-listening-to-you-because-I-was-thinking-about-Marcel way.
-- today, because my mouth was already open (yeah, when isn't it?, har har) talking to Talya, this girl walked out of the public library and mid-sentence I just gawped "WHAAAT?" while she was like a yard away, because she was wearing lime green hotpants and a tank-top and pretty much nothing else. If I had not been talking at the time, I imagine this would have been solely mental. Talya suggested I could find her again at any MisShapes party.
-- the stupid village voice has such a crush on MisShapes and Brooklyn lofts, it is so embarassing. i mean, the voice is usually embarassing, but they should change their address to myspace.com/soooolastyear
-- girls: why do they make them so TALL? (the answer may involve hotpants)
-- the new Fucked Up is really good, i hope you guys all got it
-- and, also related to Fucked Up, I'm sure I'm the last person to know about Henry Darger, but if you haven't, please do!

More on Proust:
Although probably the *least* cinematic of writers, in that it would be impossible to film 50 pages of him reflecting on tea, the beach, bedtime, etc., there is an incredible moment in The Guermantes Way where he has been at this party for like 80 pages, and is listening to the aristocrats talking about lineages (going back to Joan of Arc, natch), and then he kind of "lowers the volume" of the conversation going on around him, and his voice "comes on" and starts reflecting on the evening, but over the conversation, as it were--- as if, what precisely it isn't at anywhere else, the novel were unfolding in real time, and so any reflection has to be superimposed over the scene we are "watching".

But this is all done without any cues, any cinematic directions; in-fucking-credible.

Proust:
-- Although I have probably spent more time with Proust (days on end) than 90% of my friends, I'm not really sure that I would want to "hang out" with Proust, or even that I "like" him.
-- Although I think Proust is undoubtedly the greatest writer of the century, I am in *constant* fear that he will write about something embarassing or make a really bone-headed analogy. Like, I have zero confidence in him.

Language:
-- Talya's old roommates had a Fugazi poster in their kitchen, and at the bottom was one line of lyrics from each song on the album (ex:"I'm not your reason to crack and divide," "Sugar made it easy, ice made it cold," "I'm not waiting around for the kiss-off.") Every line was totally embarassing, because essentially they were all in this emo-lyric speech that I recently noticed had been transported to myspace, only now more thugged-out. It's basically the same, but with all these vague threats and "bitches" scattered throughout. This girl I knew in high school changed her email to "breakingheartsbreakingnecks@____.com" and besides being unacceptably clumsy as a working email address, this is a perfect example of this maddening vibe people have found as the new ideal.
-- There is an equally obnoxious (but less violent) twee version of this language, too.
-- The best example of any of this is any lyrics inciting or discussing "dancing."

Like:
"candle wax and dried up flowers; everyone was dancing" (goth; this is an actual lyric)
"dance dance dance dance to the radio" (post-punk; this is an actual lyric)
"dance dance dance we're falling apart to half time" (pop-punk; this is an actual lyric)
"dance to the sound of america's best-dressed fakeout" (screamo; this is an actual lyric)

or:
(these are ALL song titles by a band called Panic! At the Disco) (disco=dancing? get it?)

"nails for breakfast, tacks for snacks" (tough!)
"lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off" (misogyny! tough!)
"time to dance" (hahahaha)

I guess the easiest solution is not to wear the Che hat or a white belt, and instantly you will feel the desire to 'dance' (or to sing about it) slipping away; maybe I'm too widely read to feel that the trope of "dance dance revolution" is still fresh, but I am frankly surprised at everyone's tolerance and continued ecstatic embrace of such stale tropes. I guess my point is just, "why are people so lame?", but gosh...why ARE they?

Like...ugh!

internet vs. "real life"

Last night, Mike was telling me that some e-observers have been wondering aloud whether the blog is "the death of the novel." A topic about which I have some thoughts.

--It seems the novel is fated to die many deaths, like God. I am of course only pretending not to understand the above statement, because Proust, by ushering in the era of the autobiographical memoir-novel, may have confused the lines between the two in a way not helped by Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, etc. While I can fully imagine Henry Miller having a blog, can you imagine the Proust blog (madeleine.blogspot.net)? Of course not, except to imagine the hilarious (for me) absurdity of it. Because novels thankfully are NOT just streams of observations about Stephin Merritt [sic] and WMDs-- do you think a blog would have gotten in the way of Finnegan's Wake or The Fall? No, because that's not how things work. Sure, people will continue to confuse the parade of anecdotes of their own life as some parade of insights, and to misunderstand the novel as a catalog of such, but really, I wouldn't be worried, on two accounts. 1) People with the ambition of a grand construction will still write novels. 2) Wouldn't Tropic of Cancer be *just* as good if it were a blog?

--When I was working at Book People, which is this giant indy bookstore in Austin, there were book signings nearly every night. And, except for Jane Fonda, John McCain, and other Baby Boomer idols, the authors had a universally poor draw. Two authors who were supposed to be a big deal had had the following ideas: "I'll write a novel about blogging," and "I'll write a novel about myspace." Now, the girl who wrote the novel about blogging is really cute, but bless her heart, writing about political-blog romances in Washington, DC (let's dub this genre the "punditroman") is at best an exercise in post-Trollopean ignorance, and at worst a cutesy mishap which suggests that blogs will be the birth of many a shitty novel. The book about myspace also involved blogging, and was misguided in its belief that people would want to read about "other people's lives" on the internet VIA this crappy novel. Like, dude, that's what the internet is FOR.