Present Imperfect

If Simon Callow Wrote It, It Must Be True | April 29, 2003

Oh, wait. I guess I'm not quite done pulling quotes off the Internet for the day. This one is from an review by Simon Callow on a Tom Phillips book called The Postcard Century:

The story of Max Church, for example, author of a series of postcards during and after the Second World War, culminates in what Phillips rightly calls "a message that could be expanded into a novel": "Dear Dad. When you write next time could you include Pierre Braun's name, it will make him feel that my parents have accepted him as he has accepted me."

Burninating the Countryside | April 29, 2003

I read an article on dragons in the New York Times today. It touches on all the usual Jungian-fears-meet-dinosaur-fossils business, but there was a passage I found particularly amusing:

Dragons were clearly a hybrid, part snake, part bird and part bat. In the 17th century, they were explained by the newly popular "spermatick principle," which held that semen formed creatures and that the egg was a mere food source. Sometimes, scholars surmised, sperm from different species could mix and make a monster.

Mr. Lhwyd of the Oxford museum argued that semen from fish and snakes could rise high into the air with evaporation, rain down again and end up in the high aeries of eagles and vultures. In a lucky process called "fermentational putrefaction," the mix could produce a winged snake.

So, there's that.

That Danielle Steele is Good, Too | April 22, 2003

I have been remiss in my blogging activities. Oh well, another journalizing medium, another opportunity to procrastinate.

I'm now nearly finished with Ian McEwan's Atonement, which I put off buying until it was released in paperback a few months ago. It's certainly a lesson in perspective, as each character imposes his or her assumptions upon the occurrences of one evening. And, like all good books, it's about everything: love, war, cruelty, revenge, innocence, class and the family. After this, I guess it's back to Murdoch. I think I'll give The Green Knight a go.

Oh, and something I noticed in A Severed Head was the reference to Herodotus' tale of Candaules and Gyges in the final chapter. She certainly uses it in a more evocative way than Ondaatje does in The English Patient, but it struck me that this particular story seems to crop up a lot, particularly in modern literature. Why? Is it the voyeurism or the sex or the murder or the power of the only woman in the story? Or all of those things?

Then I ran across David Carpenter's essay, Hoovering to Byzantium, generally about literary "borrowing," whether intentional or unintentional, and specifically about A Severed Head, Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Carpenter's own Jokes for the Apocalypse. Well, and Herodotus. It's a great read, both because of the critical light it sheds on the works above and because of the questions it poses about plagiarism and influence. Plus, it made me feel a little better about Branwen, but that's probably a moot point, since I've only written a whopping one page and I'm the laziest person in the world.

Where's My Tempur-Pedic Mattress, Already? | April 15, 2003

I am not really an insomniac. It is not an affliction that plagues me on a regular basis. I sometimes wish it were, however, so that I might be better prepared for days like today.

I think I slept about four hours last night. Between the Lumpiest Pillow in the World and constant nagging thoughts about no less than my entire future and the relative meaning of my life so far, plus Wattson poking me in the eye with his paw all night AND a techno dance party raging in the other half of the duplex, I tossed and turned like, um, a big tossing and turning thing.

Why can't I be haunted by circular logic during the daylight hours?

I think I'm going to buy a Chillow.

Le singe est sur la branche. | April 11, 2003

This morning, I took the Canadian "Skilled Worker Self-Assessment" quiz to see if I have enough points to emigrate to Canada. If only I were slightly more proficient in French (or I had a job offer or relatives in Canada): My score was 69 and I need 75 to qualify. Hello, Vancouver? Do you need a copywriter?

Of course, I don't really want to move to Canada. I really want to move to Britain. And I only missed the paternal grandfather clause by one generation. Why couldn't my great-grandmother have popped out Grandpa Jones in Welshpool, huh? And how is it that all those lobster-faced Britons are able to lounge around sans sunscreen in Santa Monica indefinitely, but I can't get a work visa for more than six months?

Moot point, really, since our two cats would have to languish in quarantine for six months. Mainland Europe doesn't seem to care if your pets have rabies, though. Maybe Denmark needs someone to write about underpants...

In Welsh, It's Always "Y" | April 10, 2003

Well, where can I go after that last sacrilegious post? How about a stab at moral philosophy? I've been on a mission to read every Iris Murdoch novel in print, about 26 in all. I've never really wanted to read an author's entire canon before. I was always of the mind that broad exposure to a number of writers was better than deep exposure to a few. Then again, the ideal scenario is a deep exposure to everything. If I were independently wealthy, I would do nothing but read. Well, not "nothing." I would eat and drink and sleep and read and walk and swim. I would have a dog. I would live in the country, but close to a city. I would take trains. I would travel to places where I could eat and drink and sleep and read and walk and swim surrounded by different scenery.

Most scholars agree that Murdoch's books are about goodness. I tell people that her books are about "everything." Does that mean that goodness is everything? It may be. It may be that the driving force behind every life is a quest to be or know what is good.

I'm reading an essay on Murdoch by Joyce Carol Oates. She says "Nothing is so fascinating, so enigmatic, as the nature of the Good, and of Love, and Freedom: yet nothing is so elusive, and brings us to such muddles (to use a word that Murdoch employs often)." And then, this:
"There are even amusing Murdoch characters who realize that they are doomed to happiness and to the mediocrity that seems to imply, since the circumstances of their lives prevent them from continuing the quest for the nature of truth," which is terrifying to me. What if I'm doomed to happiness and mediocrity?

And that brings me to The Mabinogion. I want to retell Branwen because it is about goodness and evil and happiness and misery. Branwen's brothers want her to be doomed to happiness. She seems like the type, after all. So they send her off to Ireland, believing that she will be happy. Bran believes she will be, because he is powerful and noble and what other possible outcome could befall his own beloved sister? Nissyen believes she will be because he is the personification of pure goodness (which cannot actually exist in human form). Evnissyen hopes she will not--not because he hates her, but because he hates Matholuch and because he is Nissyen's twin: the personification of evil. Only Manawyddan knows what will happen. Manawyddan is the closest to being a Murdochian hero: One who is not doomed to happiness, but doomed to a lifelong awareness and devotion to his despair or joy or regret. He is the only one in search of truth and goodness and he is the only one who knows that even if he finds it, he cannot keep it. It does not belong to him. Manawyddan is a druid and a scholar.

And now I'm just talking to myself. Which is fine, I guess.

Earth-Shattering Revelation! | April 10, 2003

Crap! That last message should be dated 4/6. I accidentally deleted it and had to re-post it.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life | April 10, 2003

This morning, I dragged Eric to Bill Viola's Passions at the Getty Center. I had already seen it once, but there were too many people around and I didn't get to see everything I wanted to. Anyway, this time, we saw the hell out of it. We also saw a "making of" video on the exhibit in which Viola says that ideas like the annunciation, the crucifixion and the resurrection aren't "owned" by Christianity; that these ideas are "hardwired into our operating system." He then went on to explain that on the surface, his Emergence piece (in which two women help a young, apparently dead man emerge from a water-filled, tomblike structure) looks like the aftermath of a drowning. (The image of the dead boy is very like the statue on the Shelley memorial at University College, Oxford, in fact.), but to our subconscious, it's actually a birthing scene, as two women (midwives) assist another being into the world.

Now, I don't know if it's just that we're coming up on Easter here or what, but I was thinking about it, and if we're meant to accept that Christ is the embodiment of both God and man on earth, then the only time he is wholly human is during the two days when he's dead. Christ the man, after 33 years on Earth as (allegedly) God, after the crucifixion, is born into the world of man--as a corpse.

Come to think of it, Shelley was sent down from Oxford for distributing his pamphlet on the Necessity of Atheism. Hmmm...

I Read! And Listen to Public Radio! And Watch Old Movies! | April 01, 2003

NPR interviewed Poet Laureate Billy Collins today about the importance of poetry in times of national strife (or something like that). Anyway, Collins said that it was "the vanity of every age" to consider itself unique. The funny thing about this is I was watching "To Sir, With Love" last night and Sidney Poitier says exactly the same thing to his class as he explains that the kids' '60s hairstyles are "200 years old" and that their fashions are "straight out of the '20s."

Now, I realize that this isn't much of a revelation, but when I hear two disparate sources (from two different ages, I might add) say the same thing in the space of 24 hours, the universe may be trying to tell me something.

In a string of recent incidents in which people have been derided for telling the truth (see Michael Moore's Academy Award acceptance speech), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Arnett was fired from NBC for saying the following: "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."

Now, to be fair, Arnett did say this on Iraqi television, which may not have been the wisest idea. But NBC fired him not for revealing tactical information (Geraldo may have done this by drawing a map in the sand, but we all know he's an ass-raving moron), but because American citizens were emailing the network in droves to accuse Arnett of being unpatriotic...for telling the truth. By this line of reasoning, LYING is patriotic. In which case the Bush Administration is right to be waving all those flags.

Anyway, speaking of history repeating itself, now we are revisiting both the Vietnam and the McCarthy eras in my lifetime. Thanks, America! Here I thought I was missing out!