remember when newspapers used to have book sections?  that was awesome.  remember when they started going away?  that was not.  remember when newspaper book sections made a triumphant return and the world rejoiced?  me neither.  but i’m still holding out hope for that one.  in the meantime, i’ve got the new printers row from the chicago tribune.  and i have no idea what the fuck to do with it.

in theory, it sounds like a good idea maybe.  it’s got all the things i used to love about the books section: reviews, recommendations, essays, interviews, fun little Q&A’s with book-loving peoples, best-seller lists, a calendar of literary events, all that good shit.  it’s even got a column from rick kogan, the best storyteller/old school newspaperman our town’s got since dear studs passed away.  but here’s the thing: the newspapers had all that before, and got rid of it.  probably because of economic inefficiencies, or economies of scale, or sliding scales, or because the terrorists finally won.  so, obviously, they had to do something different this time.  and what they decided to do was charge for it.

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“What I am particularly interested in exploring is the border zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, between then and now, between self and other and self as other.  The border is not a fixed site but a movable one where exchanges occur, where encounters happen (between people, between imagination and language), where some material doesn’t get through and what does get through flows out in the odd dream logic of condensation and ongoing deferral.”      –Thomas Heise, The Missouri Review (Vol. 34:111).

Gabrielle Giffords, the Congresswoman from Arizona, is thankfully recovering from the point-blank gun-shot wound that she sustained to her head.  Forensic analysis showed how the bullet entered her skull and exited after passing through the area of the brain associated with speech, and if it hadn’t passed through, the energy from the trauma would have been too much.  The victim would not have survived.

As of last week, of course, we see that Giffords has done considerably more than survive and suffer the comatose or vegetative conditions associated with the aftermath of such horrific events.   She has cast votes in Congress.   She has done interviews.   And most recently she has resigned from her post in the House of Representative and will now be devoting herself full-time to recovery, which may involve a trip to the African continent with her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly.   It may also involve a sojourn to the “border zone” that Heise describes above.

I find myself irresistibly drawn to this story for a variety of reasons:  the relationship between Giffords and her spouse is simply beautiful to behold and I can only imagine the way their private conversations also manifest all that’s good about marriage and the way it’s supposed to work.   I also might point out how Giffords actually stood for very controversial things, gun control among them, and that in Arizona, where the wild, wild west is a point of nostalgic pride, that’s a courageous stand to take.   But most of all, what strikes me about this amazing person’s progress involves the tears associated with her overwhelming drive to communicate, and to communicate in ways that may prove instructive for those interested in semiotics and how language becomes tethered to the rawest right-hemisphere processing of the brain.

Giffords weeps and weeps most often as she attempts to retrieve words and form sentences, things that are now much more difficult than they used to be.  Regarding the violent act which precipitated her injuries as well as the death of others — including a federal judge who appeared with her in the Safeway parking lot … including a nine-year-old girl who idolized her — she is now painfully aware.   That is, she grasps the tragic loss of life, and that she miraculously survived.   She comprehends the psycho-path’s premeditated act, perhaps his warped world-view.  But the visual imagery associated with the actual firing of the weapon is blissfully blacked out… cryptically erased… redacted by the powers of the soul (or the hard-wiring of the brain, which may be inextricably intertwined)…

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This is what our move will look like, except our building is taller, pinker, and 1960s-er

There’s nothing like signing a binding contract in a language you don’t know. We got a “translation” of our lease in English, but it isn’t really a translation of the document we signed. It’s what is called a “Convenient Translation,” though we don’t know yet for whom it is designed to be most convenient.

The objective of this document is to let foreigners know the basics of what might be found in the German lease being signed, but of course we don’t know what is actually lurking between “Schlüsselversicherung angeraten” and “Grundstückflächen abgestellt.”

What we do know is that the Convenient Translation requires us to air out the rooms of our new apartment every day “by opening them completely (for at least ten minutes, three times a day)” all while maintaining the temperature in the apartment at 17° Celsius. Read more »

Someone wise & judgmental once said to me, "imagine if you were in their shoes."

If I open a new tab with my internet, I’m shown a display of my most-visited websites. Handy. Convenient. And potentially embarrassing. A friend recently used my computer and when my most-visited results popped up he turned to me and asked “seriously?”

Two of them were celebrity gossip sites.

It was like he’d opened my nightstand goodie drawer,  I suddenly felt ashamed. I wanted to deny everything like the time I took a huge shit in the single-stall bathroom at work and opened the door to a waiting coworker Hey, Gary, it was like that when I got here. Read more »

1. The essayist will take pride in neuroses. He will go on an on about the joy of scratching his ear with a pencil or brag about how long he hasn’t driven a car.

2. Everyday outings, such as going to the grocery store, will become overwhelming adventures. Huge adventures, like swimming with whale sharks off the coast of the Yucatan, will sound like everyday activities.

3. You will never know where she is. She will insist on trying a diverse range of activities, from accordion lessons to firing a machine gun, claiming it is research for a “Never Have I Ever” column.

4. You will realize that your world is more bizarre than a postmodern short story. You will start anecdotes with, “You can’t make this stuff up!”

5. You will not know whom you’re with at any moment: the character, the narrator, the persona, or the person. You will begin to wonder if you are a character or a person and sometimes narrate the recent past as if a memory from childhood. He will hear you and violate your POV.
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if you’re anything like me (a reasonably well-read person who gets visibly excited when the president of the united states addresses the public), then you probably also tuned in to the state of the union and heard the president of the united states say on tuesday night that “anyone who tells you that america is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”  and then you immediately thought to yourself, “wtf.”

president obama is well known/regarded/maligned for his excellent oratorical skills.  so where the hell that line came from, i don’t know—but i sure as fuck hope he has polling data to show that voters in pennsylvania would respond well to that sort of playground bluster.  and the thing is, he probably does.

in any case, that odd/juvenile bit of phrasing got me wondering about what sort of political rhetoric appeals to me vs. my fellow americans, as well as the sort of things i like to read vs. my fellow americans’ taste in literature.  for example: i completely geek out about delillo; lots of my countrymen & women work themselves into a lather over dan brown & teenage wizards wearing color-coordinated scarves.  so i did some quick google searches to dig up speech transcripts from a few of the leading presidential candidates in 2012, then i plugged them into i write like to see if there were any interesting outcomes i could hastily assemble into a blog post, if not an actual voter’s guide (since you’ll likely learn as much here as you will from any televised debate sponsored by the likes of facebook).  here are my results:

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Maybe Nuremberg Needs One of These?

Der Klügere gibt nach.  (The cleverer give in.)
–A German Saying

A retired German man was walking in a German city not long ago. He saw a group of people trying to cross the street at a dangerous intersection. The cars wouldn’t stop so some women created a human chain as a barrier to help the others cross. An Audi drove up to the woman-made-chain and pushed their bodies out of the way with his car. The women were shocked; their hands dropped, chain broke, and they didn’t know what to say.

The retired man went over to the Audi and told the driver to stop pushing people around with his car. The man in the Audi opened his car door, got out, and yelled at this thin man who must be in his late sixties. The thin older man pushed the driver back into his Audi and shut the car door. The driver opened the door, got back out of the car, and towered over the old-ish man, yelling some more before driving away. Read more »

Alan Shepard with his Redstone rocket. Photo by Ralph Morse, one of his favorites

My thesis adviser sometimes tells me to “write like you wrote before you cared what other people thought.”

Most writers remember a time before workshop critiques or literary journal rejections, when they wrote simply because it was thrilling. Maybe it wasn’t the “best developed” method of writing, but it allowed for a degree of freedom and joy. I often think back to when I was 14 and wrote a romance novel. Though the story was embarrassingly horrible, my love for writing will never again be that pure.

I thought of this recently when I read an article in Smithsonian’s Air & Space Magazine, by Tony Reichhardt, about the engineers who worked on Project Mercury.
These were the engineers who were on the ground helping Ham the Chimpanzee and Alan Shepard enter orbit.

The world of space travel was so new the engineers didn’t even have call signs; they just used their first names. By today’s standards, the environment was shockingly lax. There was little documentation or paperwork. There were no consultants or technical contractors.  If something needed to be done, the engineers did it themselves. Read more »

I had never heard of this brand until recently.

About a week ago, I spent a Saturday evening drinking scotch, telling stories and having some laughs with a small group of people who all happen to be smarter than I am. Our hosts had some music on in the background, and I recognized a particular piece. In my typical self-deprecating manner, I pointed out how I loved the piece (Ravel’s String Quartet in F major), but my primary association with it was that it signified the title sequence of The Royal Tenenbaums. So as opposed to, you know, being a genuinely cultured person and knowing specific compositions by name, I only recognized the piece because of a movie. I didn’t have to make that connection out loud for everyone– as I said, they’re smart people– so our host, being a good natured person, smiled at my idiocy and proceeded to tell us a bit about Ravel’s history, alluding to some criticism he’d received as a composer and telling us that he’d died a virgin. Which was cool– I love that she knows stuff like that.

When I think about the evening, I think about it in two ways. First, as I said, it was lovely, and I went home glad I’d chosen to go. It was warm and cozy, the conversation was good, I laughed a lot, and I got to know one of the people a little better. But now that I’m writing about it, it’s changed. That’s what happens, right? We make decisions about how to convey scenes. As I’m thinking about the night through the filter of the music conversation, I can point to the various moments that exemplify my opening comment about the others being more intelligent than me. Two people were bantering in Russian, someone alluded to their time teaching at an Ivy League school, someone quoted an obscure passage from a Vonnegut novel I’ve never read, so on and so forth. Now, that doesn’t mean there weren’t penis jokes– even classy people like those– but as I drove home, the moment of noticing the music, and particularly noticing why I noticed the music, caused my mind to travel down a little rabbit hole and land in a room where all I could think about was why I like the art and pop culture that I do.

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She's one lucky gal.

Last week, I got sucked into reading one of those articles that I hate to read. I’m sure you know the article: it’s the type that bashes MFA programs/workshops and thus the young writers who enter them. Last week, the article was one of the ho-hum arguments that such programs are nothing more than expensive group therapy sessions. As always, creative nonfiction received a heavy blow. Sigh.

Perhaps you read last week’s set of complaints, too, this time in the Huffington Post. Here’s a clip if you missed it:

“Creative writing is not literary writing as has been understood for all of the history of writing. Creative writing is a subset of therapy, with the same essential modalities — except, like everything else in our culture, it comes in a stripped, dumbed down version that partakes little of the rigors of psychotherapy.”
Read the full argument here.

I thought about responding with all of the merits of a creative writing program: a short immersion experience with a set of creative peers, a temporarily captive and enthusiastic audience, time to learn how to give and receive constructive criticism, experience teaching and/or publishing, tons of opportunities for success/failure/growth, participation in a sometimes bitter, in-fighting field, etc. etc. all of which are valuable experiences for any field. Maybe literary geniuses of the past didn’t need a creative writing program or workshop experience. I’m sure that their educational systems were much better than what’s currently offered in America.

But while I was making notes, I got distracted by beautiful, creative things. Specifically, Toilet Paper Magazine, which is responsible for the image above and the video below:

The surreal, the grotesque, the infectiously happy. I was moved. It was like therapy. Read more »