Black Garterbelt

This is Not a Post About Rick Moody

From a review of Rick Moody's latest, said, presumably, with a sigh:

We can view the writing of an age from two perspectives. We can treat best-sellers and mainstream books as indicative of the views and concerns of our time, or we can consider "high art" the index of our values.

This, however, is problematic. What happens is that works which in fact are least representative of an era end up being viewed by posterity as the norm. We hold up Shakespeare as the quintessential English Renaissance writer when in fact no one else wrote like him. The plays of Marlowe, Kyd, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster and Ford more represent the culture of Renaissance England, just as our blockbuster movies more represent our America than do "art" films. If someone a hundred years from now wanted to know our times, he'd be better served watching Sleepless in Seattle than Eraserhead.

When I read sentences like that last sentence, I feel like Shatner in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

Let us begin (once again) by pointing out another flirtation with our dangerous pal, the either/or fallacy.

Second (and once again) I'm going to try to fend off accusations of snobbery by noting that I watch and have watched sappy, formulaic romantic comedies, and that I've seen Sleepless in Seattle--more than once--and have probably been made to listen to the soundtrack a hundred times or more.

OK?  OK.

Now: Sleepless in Fucking Seattle is going to be more representative of our times in one hundred years than Eraserhead?  That can't possibly be true.  Does anyone honestly believe this?

The Anti-Editpus

Speaking as a semi-professional editor, I see the value of quality editing.  The wise, eagle-eyed, ink-stained editing wretch is a valuable person, indeed.

What I don't see is what point Gary Kamiya is attempting to make here:

...[E]ditors and editing will be more important than ever as the Internet age rockets forward. The online world is not just about millions of newborn writers exulting in their powers. It's also about millions of readers who need to sort through this endless universe and figure out which writers are worth reading. Who is going to sort out the exceptional ones? Editors, of some type. Some smart group of people is going to have to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the more refined that separation process is, the more talent -- and perhaps more training -- will be required.

We already use other readers to sort things out for us: My bookmarks are mostly referrals from writers I've learned to trust. Some utopians may dream that an anarcho-Wikipedia model will prevail, that a vast self-correcting democracy of amateurs will end up pointing readers to the most worthwhile pieces. But that is only "editing" in its crudest, most general form -- it's really sorting. In the chaotic new online universe, the old-fashioned, elitist, non-democratic system of sorting information will become increasingly important, if only because it enforces a salutary reduction of the sheer mind-swamping number of options available. The real problem is glut, and it's only going to get worse.

In any case, real editing is something different. It takes place before a piece ever sees the light of day -- and it's this kind of painstaking, word-by-word editing that so much online writing needs. If learning how to be edited is a form of growing up, much of the blogosphere still seems to be in adolescence, loudly affirming its identity and raging against authority. But teenagers eventually realize that authority is not as tyrannical and unhip as they once thought. It's edited prose, with its points sharpened by another, that will ultimately stand the test of time. There is a place for mayfly commentary, which buzzes about and dies in a day. But we don't want to get to the point where the mayflies and mosquitoes are so thick that we can't breathe or think.

The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It's about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It's a handmade art, a craft. You don't learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers.

If I'm reading this correctly, the thinking goes: Editors are good, because they help imbue writing with meaning and coherence.  Blogs, by virtue of their sheer number and amateur provenance, are full of non-meaning and incoherence and could use some pruning.  But not editing, exactly, because editing is something finer.  OK, I give up.  We should have more good things, which are good, and fewer bad things, which are bad.  And all this will be possible through the magic of editors!

Harry Potter was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me

I've never read a Harry Potter book.

But I'm not operating under the illusion/delusion that I won't be reading them to and with my child in a few years.  I'm sure I will.  And I'm sure that they have their delights.  Hundreds of millions of people probably aren't wrong, although there's pretty solid evidence that untold thousands of them are a little hysterical about this.

(And, no, the "social phenomenon" aspect of Potter doesn't really interested me either.  Grown-up boreds, discontents, non-conformists, and misfits taking refuge in costume-wearing & child-like whimsy?  As Madge used to say: You're soaking in it, all day, every day.  Especially in the late summer, when college football gears up.)

Still, I'm not here to slag off Potter or creepily seduce doe-eyed undergraduates.  That's Harold Bloom's job.

I'm here to point to this:

This, it seems to me, might be a moment of opportunity for a literary critic. A chance for someone with the requisite chops to publish in the popular press an article that said something about the Potter books as literature, something smart and insightful that made me think "hey, this guy has smart things to say about books!" Something that would situate the books in some kind of context vis-a-vis the much larger cultural sweep of the novel. Something that might get an intelligence person who enjoyed the Potter books interested in some larger, more highbrow segment of the literary enterprise. Instead, the publication of each Potter book seems to herald the publication of a bunch of stuff like Ron Charles whine in The Washington Post which, to me, makes Charles -- and through his role as a stand-in for the larger enterprise, all the literati -- look like sneering losers who've decided to elevate their idiosyncratic hobby above everyone else's in order to look on the rest of us.

Not that the literary world is unique in this regard, but it's a weird impulse. If someone expressed an interest in some niche product that I enjoy I would, I dunno, try to convey some of my enthusiasm about the subject. Try to share some wisdom. Try to build further enthusiasm. Make recommendations. Anything other than act bitter and petulant.

And, later, from the same fellow:

Needless to say, it's not anybody's responsibility to get me interested in literature. But insofar as people who are interested in literature make themselves come across as horribly unpleasant people whom one would never want to meet or speak to, and whose primary interest in books is as an adjunct to the vicious hatred of human beings, then I think it's natural that lots of people won't develop an interest in literature.

Now, slow down.

It's Not What Junot, It's Who Junot

The urge to use that title was simply overwhelming.

But, certainly, the appearance of Mr. Díaz's novel must mean that the long-awaited Rake novel (Code Name: EPB) is due to drop at any moment.  Say, right around the time Chinese Democracy finally shows up.

Great/Grate

The following statement, pulled from a commenter on an AV Club post at the Onion, gave me pause:

(The post it's attached to asks whether it's right & good to be angry and in despair about soul-killing movies a la Daddy Day Care and Epic Movie--emphasis added.)

I loved this post. We shouldn't celebrate mediocrity, and we shouldn't bother to acknowledge these blatant cash-grabs: they're high-concept pitches and sequels with no reason to exist. Too much quality exists for Daddy Day Camp to merit a review. It's why I like to read The Believer: they celebrate greatness.

Uh, no.

As anyone who has read more than two of my posts knows, I have mixed feelings about the Believer.  There are few things at which "they" excel; celebrating greatness is not one of them, however.

I'd characterize their general stance as a celebration of the idiosyncratic,  with an emphasis on positivity. 

In fact, therein lies YPTR's beef(s): everything, from the random illustrations to the non sequitur issue titles (Oubliette, Neckfire!, Spoonbread, etc.) to the content of the articles and interviews is a nod to idiosyncrasy (or mild incoherence, in some cases). 

When it comes to the articles, this is often a winning stance: the reader's curiosity is piqued and then rewarded.  The other stuff (cute, weird illustrations; strange titles; one-page paeans to power tools) is so mannered to death at this point that to take any pleasure or joy in it is impossible.  You can't hold yourself up as a cool, freshfaced alternative when the incidental features of your magazine are mirthless and mired in the same stagnancy that characterizes, for example, the New Yorker's cartoons and poetry.

Also, the relentless positivity (i.e., the staunch refusal to acknowledge that houses publish books that suck) is annoying.

And this is to say nothing about Hornby's column, which is the sad result of stale lager and threadbare populism finding a willing host.

I used to be "with it," but then they changed what "it" was.

When I desire deep thinking on the state of modern culture, I go directly to Tom Wolfe.  After all, it takes a man of uncommonly level perspective to liken his "pimped" Cadillac to a 16th-century cathedral.

Here's our man TW on blogs.  Happy birthday, blogs.  Hope you like GET OFF MY LAWN:

One by one, Marshall McLuhan's wackiest-seeming predictions come true. Forty years ago, he said that modern communications technology would turn the young into tribal primitives who pay attention not to objective "news" reports but only to what the drums say, i.e., rumors.

And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that way.

I have a rumor for you, in fact, my dear fellow.  I hear that you disappeared up your own ass in 1985, thereby forming the densest white dwarf ever recorded by science.

Not that it matters, but the architects of this travesty went on to ask TW about his favorite blog(s):

Mr. Wolfe, "weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless 'information,' " says he no longer reads blogs.

No, he gets quite enough of that sort of thing standing in front of the mirror, talking to his reflection.

Only Built 4 Cheap Linx #1

Martin Amis for Apple Jacks f/t Hitchens.

Jens Lekman does "Black Cab," my favorite song by Jens Lekman, live.

The Ruler's Back.

Where the Experts Aren't: A Shaggy Dog of Sorts

Your pal here has about the same musical taste as the Believer crew, so I enjoy their yearly music issue, without too much reservation.

(Which is to say that part of my listening tastes overlap with what they hold up as good and interesting music.  Their comp CDs definitely skew toward indie and/or precious, and may necessitate a strong chaser of Sly Stone, Fela Kuti, or, I dunno, Li'l Wayne (yo, audio!), if one indulges in too many spins.  This would be avoidable if they'd be more catholic in their choices, but that's a matter for another post.)

Thanks to the latest issue, and my eagle-eyed pal BOC, I've been clued in and listening to Bill Fox's albums Shelter from the Smoke & Transit Byzantium.  They're pretty wonderful, I think, especially the latter. I might not go so far as to call Fox a lost genius, but he seems to have a healthy respect for the Great American Songbook and knows his craft, which makes for great pop music (that unfortunately isn't popular at all, but could or should be).

If I were a hack music critic, this is where I might describe Bill Fox as Bob-Dylan-meets-Elliott Smith.  Because sometimes he sounds like Dylan, and sometimes like the late Mr. Smith.  You can insert your artists of choice in this hack critic's template, and you'd be no more right or wrong than I.

The Gas Face #2

The summer heats up as hitmaker James Patterson delivers a spine-tingling courtroom thriller that's simply electric!

Despite what they'd have you believe, Patterson doesn't write these books. 

Also, there are no such things as "Beach Reads."  These are simply books--grouped in the most insulting, desultory manner possible (i.e., under a happy sun and umbrella graphic)--that if you read you would have read anyway, as there's nothing about the beach that necessarily makes one fall into the sweaty coconut madness, which chases the intelligent sunblinkered soul from away from Zizek into the arms of Daddy's Girls. 

Otherwise, you just hate reading and want a prop that, unlike an eyepatch or dookie rope, doesn't give you unfortunate tan lines.

So Chelsea Handler gets the gas face, yeah.

Love Hurts

Analyzing bad listmaking is like analyzing bad lovemaking; better we just bleach the sheets & forget this ever happened.

That said, in "100 Blogs We Love," the near-absence of blogs related to books, music, sports, booze, and pornography leads me to the conclusion that the editors of PC World aren't the type of people your pal the Rake would be proud to call Jim. Quoting Nabokov.  Whom they have clearly no use for.

(Via "Fast" Eddie Chizzamp)