Black Garterbelt

The Invisible Handout

The Nabokov The Original of Laura manuscript saga is getting, well, I don't know if you can even call it Nabokovian anymore.  It's just weird.

To review, VN, who took ill suddenly and was unable to do the job himself, asked his wife to burn his final, incomplete novel TOoL.  She never did, and, following her death, only child Dmitri also has demurred, although he has been whetting appetites and provoking outcry by both dangling the manuscript and also threatening to go ahead with the bonfire.

And now:

Dmitri says he reached a decision after an imagined ghostly conversation with his dead father—one in a far different key from Hamlet's talk with his dead dad.

"I have decided...that my father, with a wry and fond smile, might well have contradicted himself upon seeing me in my present situation and said, 'Well, why don't you mix the useful with the pleasurable? That is, say or do what you like but why not make some money on the damn thing?' "

And so the imagined shade of V.N., demonstrating indulgent and affectionate fondness for his son's "present situation" (it's not clear what exactly that means, but it could refer to financial or heath problems or just the worldwide outcry to save Laura), gave him ghostly permission to raise some funds with it.

Odd, but I can relate.  My father gave me ghostly permission to raise some funds by mowing the lawn once.

Falling Into You (Part Two)

Some months ago, in questioning arbitration-type criticism, I asked, rhetorically: [W]hat's the value of the 250-word [album] review when samples of the music are available everywhere, for free?

It is now clear, if it wasn't before, that that type of criticism is officially dead, or at least hopelessly corrupt:

How is it that a magazine can review an entire album--and assign a star rating to it--without actually hearing the album?

Case in point: the “review” of Warpaint--the new album by THE BLACK CROWES--in the March issue of Maxim magazine.  The writer--who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available--wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

Incredulously [sic], the magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating--although neither the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song (the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”).

When approached for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.”  Huh?

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus says, “Maxim's actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership.   When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to 'review’ in their music section--with a star rating, no less--they attempt to explain that it was an 'educated guess.'  In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’” 

It's unclear to what degree Maxim is being disingenuous here.  A likely explanation is that the rating was awarded on the basis of a leaked copy of the album, but no one's admitting that, and so we're left with the official explanation, which perhaps the most casual expression of nihilism I've heard so far today.*

Then, there's this:

RAPPER Nas was shocked when Maxim gave his new album, "N - - - - r," a 21/2-star review - because it isn't even finished yet. "I'm finishing the album now, and it will be out April 22," Nas told Page Six. Maxim has since apologized for the premature review, but Nas doesn't care. "I'd prefer [a review from] Playboy," the rapper said. "That kind of stuff doesn't reach my radar or effect anybody around me. I don't know what a music rating from Maxim is . . . I don't know what it even means really." Maxim also reviewed the Black Crowes' album, "War Paint," without listening to it in its entirety.

Again, it's entirely possible that the reviewer was privy to some leaked working Nas tracks, but this is getting ridiculous.**

Falling Into You (Part One)

Let's talk about Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.

Author Carl Wilson's post at Powells.com probably serves as the best introduction.  Watch him go:

My book is a lab experiment in disguise, in which I was the rat, being exposed to various test conditions or stimuli that might help me understand how millions of people could be fans of Céline Dion while I and nearly everybody I'd ever met couldn't stand her. The test tubes and beakers of the experiment are, of course, tangents. It is a travelogue of sorts, as the subtitle says, "a journey to the end of taste."

It was a weird experience to spend months on end thinking about Céline Dion, but much of the time I wasn't thinking about Dion so much as about the chemical components, the relationships and accidents and outside forces, that go into liking or disliking music in the first place. The book was kind of a far-flung exercise in suspension of judgment, about putting off a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for awhile, and one of the advantages of doing that is that in the interim, you might end up somewhere else than where you bargained for.

Now, I've been looking forward to this entry in the 33 1/3 series, but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed at the finish.  And not because Wilson does a poor job--far from it.  In fact, he's charmingly earnest, intelligent, insightful, engaging--all those lovely things with which the finest jacket blurbs and pull quotes are stitched.

Yet I wanted something more than the Charmin-softness of his conclusion, which belongs to the "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" school of contemporary criticism (or perhaps somewhere between new historicism and reader response, if you like), and perhaps goes even a bit further in urging critics to reconsider voicing negative responses to--in this case--pieces of music.

Wilson journeys from loathing Céline Dion to, well, enjoying and appreciating her, if only on a limited basis.  With the scales now fallen from his eyes, he can see the appeal of Dion, and also why some people find critical darlings--such as, say, Pavement--annoying.

Which leads, ultimately, to this:

What would criticism be like if it were not foremost trying to persuade people to find the same things great? If it weren't about making cases for and against things? It wouldn't need to adopt the kind of "objective" (or self-consciously hip) tone that conceals the identity and social location of the author, the better to win you over. It might be more frank about the two-sidedness of the aesthetic encounter, and offer something more like a tour of an aesthetic experience, a travelogue, a memoir. More and more critics, in fact, are incorporating personal narrative into their work. Perhaps this is the benefit of the explosion of cultural judgment on the Internet, where millions of thumbs turn up and down daily: by rendering their traditional job of arbitration obsolete, it frees critics to find other ways of contemplating music.

When I say he reminds me of Heidi Julavits, I'm thinking of this in particular:

[S]nark is a reflexive disorder, whether those who employ it realize it or not; the pointlessness of fiction only comes back to suggest the pointlessness of its commentator. The real question then becomes: If you don’t believe in this, what do you believe in? What do you care about? What is the purpose of this destructive clear-cutting, if you don’t have anything to suggest in its place, save your own career advancement?

But it is rhetorical and useless to ask 'other people' what they believe. Maybe the only questions I have the right to ask is: What do I believe? What do I care about?

These thoughts are central to Wilson's argument, as well, and he goes on at length about cultural and social capital and the relationship between taste and power.  (No surprise to any of us, of course, that a teen punk's embrace of one kind of music or rejection of another is usually about little more than "career advancement"--aka cultural or social capital--or that we typically carry this poison on into adulthood, where it is found in LD-50-type levels in music critics.)

Gimme the flowers while I can still smell 'em

[The Brothers Coen win for Best Adapted Screenplay]

[Joel Coen thanks Cormac McCarthy, who is then shown in attendance with his son]

Me: [pointing] That's Cormac McCarthy.

Mrs.: That's Cormac McCarthy?

Me: Uh huh.

Mrs.: The one who's really reclusive?

Me: Uh. Yes.

[Flash forward to No Country for Old Men winning best picture; McCarthy is standing up and positively beaming and mugging]

[Cue all hell breaking loose]

Talkin' Pinkeye, Coughing Fit, Hand Foot & Mouth Disease Blues

Kids, I have nothing.  Unlike RP, where I felt a post was required every day, BGB operates on the silence, exile, cunning principle, and I use great discretion when I can't compel myself to write about matters literary and quasi-literary. 

In the absence of what's left of my self-control, you would have seen BGB turn slowly into a Daddy Blog over the last few weeks & months.  And I cannot go Steve Almond on you.  Not yet.  Not for free.

So: Your pal the Rake is bone-weary & lazy.

You can help him out by addressing any of the following in the comments: the greatness of Harry Nilsson; Josh Ferris' Then We Came to the End; Carl Wilson's 33 1/3 book on Celine Dion, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste; the new Mountain Goats record (audio!); the latest n+1; and whether or not Dwight Howard's Superman dunk was, in fact, a dunk.

Or ask me about going to see Dave Eggers, but having to settle for briefly hearing his disembodied voice.

Also, if anyone can puzzle out who gets to criticize James Wood, and how to acceptably do so, that would be a great service.  Apparently you're not allowed to be an online nobody with an opinion, and the hysterical realists are too baffled or cowed by Wood's classical gas to do anything.  Any attempts at a close textual reading will be branded character assassination.  I give up.

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

Except for the somewhat unwieldy format, I quite like Bookforum, so it's tough to keep the cynicism in check and not jump to awful conclusions when I hear that it's going to be "revamped."

But when I read this:

"We all felt that in order to really have an increased circulation, we needed to cover current affairs in some way...[w]e're waiting to see how it evolves."

I hear this:

MORE BRITNEY COVERAGE!!!

Perhaps literature is news that stays news, but money is good news, in a voice that rustles.

Your pal here is no MBA, but from the layman's position is hard to see how an increased focus on current events--that is, doing what every other book review outlet is doing--helps differentiate your publication to the point that circulation is substantially boosted.  (Could it be that, whether or not more readers rush to pick up the latest Bookforum, an increase in current events pieces opens up new sources of ad revenue?  I dunno.  Help me out here.)

Developing, as they say.

Leaving that aside, BF does have James Wolcott on Donald Barthelme available online, and it's worth the time.  Particularly here, where Wolcott is dead on the money:

Today, I would hazard (I’ve always wanted to hazard), the track marks of Barthelme's suave, subversive cunning are to be found less in postmod fiction—although David Foster Wallace’s dense foliage of footnotes suggests a Barthelmean undergrowth and George Saunders’s arcade surrealism has a runaway-nephew quality—than in the conscientiously oddball, studiedly offhand, hiply recherché, mock-anachronistic formalism of McSweeney’s, The Believer, The Crier, and related organs of articulate mumblecore.

Yep.  And all those outlets, whatever their various charms, stand as cautionary tales for those who would try to ape their heroes too closely.

The re-publication of Not-Knowing gets short shrift from Wolcott here, but I picked up a not-really-used copy of the first edition in Missoula years ago for $4, and I've found it valuable, if variable in quality.  The title essay is quite good, not to mention hilarious on the subject of postmodernism, and the interviews can be mined for aphorisms, for those inclined.  (Padgett Powell, I found, leans heavily on Don B. quotes as pedagogical tools, and he's not wrong.)  The transcript of a symposium between Barthelme, Gass, Paley, and Walker Percy is also here, and interesting.

But I'd be content to just pick around for the humor, as there are a clutch of lighter pieces, pulled from The New Yorker and elsewhere, that deploy the delightful Pop mix found in any Barthelme short with perhaps a more down-to-earth sensibility.

McSweeney's fans should see Barthelme's review of Superman III, "Earth Angel," in particular.  Barthelme borrows the mock Q&A format of one of my favorite stories--"Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel"--and kills the movie softly by taking it seriously, and then again not-at-all seriously at the same time:

Q. Do we really need Superman III?
A. Clearly not.
Q. Yet it's here. Must be a response to something, some kind of need....
A. Financial exegencies undiscussable on the plane of the cultural slash aesthetic.
Q. To which we will stalwartly adhere. Would you like to be able to fly?
A. I've always wanted to fly.  In the air.
Q. A basic human yearn. To fly.
A. A conquering of dailyness. Whoosh!

It's true that this sort of thing has been done many times over since, and also that its practitioners have come in for some sanctimonious tsk-tsking for wasting their talents on snark.

But let's be serious.  Superman III exists for no reason other than simple pleasure, a cheap and brief conquering of "dailyness."  Who's to say that that simple pleasure can't be found in some wit snapping Supe's too-tight underpants?

"And what’s this Rake guy’s deal? I picture him living in the mountains with a couple years growth of beard."

Sometimes, the internets make for an interesting mirror.

Sing along with the common people, sing along and it might just get you through

I pledged (at least to myself) to stop being Blog Quixote when it comes to print-based haterism, but here my pledge ends, as a kind, if mischievous, fellow has directed me to this article.  You say it has vague, unoriginal talking points about blogs courtesy of James Wood?  Fine, I'll play the fool again.

Here we go.

The internet, far from stepping in where print no longer publishes, has proved no boon, in terms of blogging. "It licenses first thoughts, vituperation," [Wood] says. "I don't go on much to those sort of blogs because there are better things to do with my life."

First of all, I love the use of the word "licenses" here.  It's the sort of thing one should say as one fastidiously buffs the dust off one's monocle with the slightly stiffened corner of a silk handkerchief.

But I digress.

There's nothing inherently vituperative about the blog form; the degree of vituperation varies according to each blogger's conscience.  That most people online have very little conscience says more about what people tend to do in the dark than it does about this particular vehicle of expression.  (It should also be noted that literary bloggers tend to be relatively well-mannered, despite what the pearl-clutchers would have you believe.  On the vituperation scale, at highest pitch, most rate below a slightly perturbed high school football coach.)

And do blogs license first thoughts?  Short answer: Yes, and so what?  Long answer: It varies according to the blogger's conscience.  But we certainly hope that what a blog lacks in polish it makes up in spontaneity, humor, tonal and cultural range, voice, and so on.

As it happens, there is a proud historical and literary precedent for like the kind of blog I'd love to preside over:

A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories:" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his.

And:

Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it . . .The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. . . . The era of the commonplace book reached its peak in the late Renaissance, although commonplacing as a practice probably began in the twelfth century and remained widespread among the Victorians. It disappeared long before the advent of the sound bite.

Certainly a man carrying a torch for the living tradition of criticism that predates English studies has heard of this sort of thing.  I'd love to hear what he'd make of the connection, if he saw fit to dedicate some original thought to the matter.