Black Garterbelt

Oreo or madeleine?

Q: How is David Foster Wallace like Proust?

A: He isn't.

Although not everyone agrees with me on this.  Here's our old pal Eggers on DFW and Proust in his infamous flip-floppity introduction to Infinite Jest:

...Wallace is a different sort of madman, one in full control of his tools, one who instead of teetering on the edge of this precipace or that, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, seems to be heading ever-inward, into the depths of memory and the relentless conjuring of a certain time and place in a way that evokes — it seems so wrong to type this name but then again, so right! — Marcel Proust.

Forget "so right!" His first impulse was correct.

Heaven, I Need a Hug

Your pal the Rake likes old school Ice Cube as much as the next person, even as I shudder at his recent choices.  An "inspirational sports drama" with Fred Durst attached, anyone?

Still, that's not to say that Ice Cube never had horrible ideas, even at the peak of his powers.  Here's one from "Wicked":

Don't say nuttin, just listen/
Got me a plan to break Tyson outta prison

Terrible, terrible idea.

But--changing gears somewhat--still not as stupid as those who argue that Michael "Ron Mexico" Vick will be blackballed from professional football for dogfighting.   Aside from the fact that there's no precedent for an entire league turning its collective back on a man who still possesses elite athletic talent, you have to see, as you've seen it a thousand times before, that Vick is simply mired in the unglamorous stretch of the Rise-Fall-Redemption arc. 

We eat this shit up with a spoon, and, in fact, require it from anyone remotely famous, to the point that we'll accept invented reasons for a fall.  It's just that, in Vick's case, his abject lack of judgment has forestalled the need to scare up some villainy with which to knock him to earth.  (His lack of accuracy as a passer isn't much of a brickbat, so we'll let that one go.)

And he's playing his remorse perfectly:

What can Humbert Humbert tell us about No Child Left Behind?

There's really no point in trying to shame Bush fils when he starts dropping literary references; just stand back and enjoy the comedy as it unfolds.

Whether he's voraciously devouring Camus and three Shakespeares or completely misappropriating Graham Greene, the man leaves you breathless.  Shock and awe, indeed.

The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism -- and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.

In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?" A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: "It's difficult to imagine," he said, "how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: "Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life."

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.

But the same token, perhaps the problem with Lennie Small is not that he failed in hugging Curley's wife, but rather that he let go too soon.

Hooked on Dildonics

He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often, that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.

***

Sweet Christ, the LongPen is back.  Thought I was still asleep.  Thought, mad as I am, that this thing would be revealed as the sad hoax it longs to be.

In case you have forgotten:

Author Margaret Atwood's unlikely invention, the LongPen, is moving into a record store and several bookstores in Canada, the United States and England for a trial run that could bring fans and their idols closer together.

Its makers are courting notables in the world of music, sports and film to start using the remote-controlled pen, which allows people to sign autographs from anywhere in the world and chat with others via videoconferencing.

Spokesperson Bruce Walsh says shops with a LongPen kiosk could soon become hubs for celebrity sightings of a new kind.

"You could potentially see the talent in their dressing room, somewhere, and they could actually sign into a bookstore," says Walsh.

"It doesn't really matter, if there's a kiosk set up, you can sign all kinds of different kinds of talent into wherever the kiosk happens to be."

Kiosks will be set up at the World's Biggest Bookstore and HMV's flagship record store in Toronto, Barnes & Noble in New York and Waterstone's in London beginning after Labour Day, and could expand elsewhere if successful, Walsh says.

The device -- built by Atwood's Toronto-based company Unotchit -- comprises a video screen and digital writing pad at one location and a video screen and automated pen at another.

Until now it has only been used by authors trying to reduce the rigours of book tours.

In recent days, authors Norman Mailer and Alice Munro used it to appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland, while staying on this side of the Atlantic.

Neither would have been able to appear at the festival had it not been for the LongPen, says Walsh.

This thing haunts me in my sleep.  Why?  Perhaps because it combines the thrill of an Alice Munro appearance with the excitement of a kiosk?

Now, honestly, is this meant to benefit the reader in any way?  I see where it benefits Norman Mailer, because he doesn't even have to put on his pajama bottoms to be adored.  I see where it benefits his publisher, because they don't have to spring for air travel or send over some poor erstwhile Communications major to try to cajole Mailer into his goddamn pajama bottoms.

For the reader (or fan, as they would have it)? I rather think it exploits a mild tendency towards starfucking, then rubs the reader's face in it as the dumb point glides across the leaf.  If you're not hearing the death rattle of either yourself or Literature as this transpires, you're not paying enough attention. 

Hyperbolic?  Ah, friends, watch this video and gaze upon Alice Munro--bless her heart--and then tell me that to my face.

Social network marketing!

Patrick Bateman salivates over the LongPen.  I pray this isn't really happening.

***

What is it they want from the man that they didn't get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left when he's done with his work, what's any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around?  (Gaddis)

White Shoes, Black Socks: Dispatches from the Bleeding Edge

Long has your pal the Rake lived in blissful ignorance of Paper Cuts, the blog. Until someone, ahem, sent me a link. 

Now, I recognize that tilting against corporate blogs is foolish, but I thought holding up the following little gem against the sunlight would be instructive.  (Note, especially, that our man Garner holds up a particularly brainless passage to make his point):

Nick Hornby, in his new "Stuff I've Been Reading" column in The Believer - his is surely the weirdest, most diverting and least pretentious books column in the Western world - gets around to talking about Michael Ondaatje's novel "Coming Through Slaughter" and writes:

"Here is the best definition of a good novel I have come across yet - indeed, I suspect that it might be the only definition of a good novel worth a damn. A good novel is one that sends you scurrying to the computer to look at pictures of prostitutes on the Internet. And as Michael Ondaatje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' is the only novel I have ever read that has made me do this, I can confidently assert that 'Coming Through Slaughter' is, ipso facto, the best novel I have ever read."

Somehow he makes you believe him.

Forget the wit of the staircase; Hornby's discovered the wit of the mirror.

As for Paper Cuts Dwight, he should be told that touting Humble Q. Bloke is the critical equivalent of tucking your shirt into your underwear.

Re: Pale Fire

Nabokov (as John Shade in Pale Fire) wrote of "...making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities."  My love of, and belief in, that passage of PF is great, indeed.

For example, by letting the iTunes run, I've learned today that My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeeta" makes the perfect companion piece to My Bloody Valentine's  "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)."

Untold possibilities. Small accidents. Useful ornaments. Simple pleasures.

Yes.

Sven's Snake Pit (or, Feel My My My Serpentine)

Instead of doing the usual pale Dan Green imitation, I'm leaving the likes of Sven Birkerts to Dan Green (and others).

That said, is it me, or do others find the following hilariously purple and melodramatic?

...[I]t is alarmingly easy to slide into a slipstream, or, better, go rollicking in a snake-bed of sites and posts, where each twist of text catches hold of another's tail, the whole progress and regress morphing into a no-exit situation that has to be something new under the sun.

Apparently, we're to believe that many apple-cheeked innocents are logging on in hopes of finding some information for their kid's report on dinosaurs and unwittingly ending up as pitiable Beckett characters, trapped & dragging lame legs and busted bicycles through the comments section at Perez Hilton.  The poor bastards.

The most sublime visual evocation of this slippery slope can be found here.