“If a same sex marriage bill comes to the desk of Governor Christie, it will be returned to the legislature with a big red veto on it.” New Jersey Governor elect Chris Christie remembering his Hester Prynne in 2009. New Jersey and Washington State legislatures both passed of marriage equality bills on Monday.
“The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.” The court’s opinion inLoving v. Virginia, 1967.
“The gem belongs on the ring, standing proud and broad. The stream belongs among the waves, mingling with the ocean flood...The bear belongs on the heath, old and awesome...The female, the woman, must visit her lover with secret cunning—if she has no wish to prosper among her people so that someone will purchase her with rings.” Anglo Saxon wisdom poem Maxims II.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Photograph of Mildred and Richard Loving by Grey Villet, via Time Magazine
I’m always a touch skeptical when I read writing tips from famous writers. Scrolling through Open Culture’s recent selection, I wondered whom these authors—from George Orwell to William Safire—saw as their intended audience. Beginners, most likely. Students, dabblers. But what about that vast, silent majority that lies between the beginners and the pros?
“Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes," suggests Margaret Atwood. "Pens leak.” I am immune to the kind of privileged bullying going on here, and I won’t stand for Neil Gaiman’s condescending #2: “Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.” I know when I’m being teased. Most of these tips read like your mother telling you to put on a sweater.
At the same time, I find them irresistible. And sometimes it’s a comfort just to see famous authors revealing the dull daily tasks that allow their work to proceed. Sometimes I need to be told to put on a sweater.
Here, then, are some suggestions for those of us who have surpassed the intermediate phase and are now approaching the very real, very dark side of the writer's life.
1. Become a better drinker. If you’re unable to write while drunk, get drunk on the nights reserved for not writing. Devise a hangover method that works consistently. Never edit under the influence.
2. Maintain a cordial relationship with your parents, as they provide useful storage for all the books and manuscripts you refuse to relinquish. You will also, at some point, need to live in their basement.
3. Do not get married. Never have kids. If you have to sleep with someone, do it in a public restroom or over at their place so you can leave easily and get back to work. Never have someone sleep over at your apartment unless you have a separate study with a door that locks. Also, your parents can hear you.
4. Survive by routine. Eat and wear the same things every day. You’re not going to look good; you’re not intended to.
5. Embarrass yourself publicly, as often as possible, in order to build up solid reserves of shame and insolence in your heart. And to convince yourself you don’t live a life of monotony and work, which you do.
Image: vulcanicnews.com
“On Saturday, [Erin] Brockovich’s team was turned away by the school while trying to collect soil samples on the property. However, a doctor treating many of the students is confident that they are suffering not from poisoning, but from mass hysteria…[A]s research has shown, it is also the cheerleaders and not the math-club girls who are likely to spread hysteria.” –Ruth Graham in Slate, on the outbreak of Tourette’s-like symptoms in Genesee County, NY.
“You must have heard of Sálmacis’ pool, whose waves emasculate men who have bathed there; the Ethiopian lake, where anyone drinking the water either goes mad or passes out in a stupefied coma…the Scythian witches are also reported to put on feathers by sprinkling themselves with their poisons” –Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. David Raeburn.
“A small boy tried to throttle his mother ... Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead … Pont-Saint-Esprit speculated that the village idiot had hexed Baker Briand's flour … The disease was called ‘St. Anthony's Fire.’" –September 10, 1951 (yup) Time Magazine article on an outbreak of gangrenousergotism in France.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)"
Image: Quentin Blake for Roald Dahl's The Witches
News of online storage service FileSonic's disablement didn't exactly get this downloading devotee's heart racing. FileSonic…had I ever heard of them? But Megaupload's shutdown left me shattered, considering its ultra-convenience and the realization that Swizz Beatz is CEO! (or is he?) Me, I'll remember Swizz for his bangin' production skills, plus his marrying the most beautiful woman in music.
Though there are myriad music-downloading options—not to mention social media-friendly sharables like Spotify and SoundCloud—that wasn't the case when I was a trainspotting undergrad, circa 2003. Picture it: an impressionable young man caught up in the crackling allure of breakbeats and basslines, dutifully reading BPM-bible URB magazine while marooned in Central Texas.
The massive Tower Records adjacent to campus helped a bit (carrying CDs of both Photek's splintered-rhythm masterpiece Modus Operandi and Autechre's cerebral robo-jam LP5), but it wasn't enough. Most of the artists I read about released their tracks on dubplates: DJ-friendly 12" or 7" vinyl records. Tower Records didn't carry vinyl, nor were these artists releasing “proper” CDs. So I made do with mp3 downloads. I wasn't content with streaming new tracks from the epic Drum & Bass Arena; I wanted to “possess” them, to listen to them whenever and wherever. I had a 2G iPod, but before that—I kid you not—I walked around campus with a Walkman, big-ass headphones and a bag full of burned CD-Rs.
I probably downloaded a million Gigs of music through the P2P networkSoulseek. This marvelous application was created by a former Napster programmer and had an enormous underground electronic music userbase. Soulseek featured "wishlists" (shareable stored searches of tracks you want) and chat-rooms with other users. I spent my days in lectures and nights downloading tracks and chatting with new "friends" on both coasts.
So when I "share" a track on Spotify with my friends or post it on Facebook/Twitter, I barely give it a second thought. It's funny that UK distributor STHoldings pulled its 200+ labels from Spotify in mid-November of last year, as many of those labels were my outlets for dope d'n'b back in the day. I can't add Blame's transcendent “Amazon Girl” to a Spotify playlist—yet his Asylum EP is available on iTunes, incredibly. The RIAA recently commented that the closure of P2P sites like Limewire actually lead to digital album sales, as many former users seek legal outlets.
It's not as freeing as last decade's nascent download/share culture, but for us trainspotters, there's always a way.
Image: Black Christian News (slightly photo-chopped by the author)
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees," wrote Pablo Neruda. And with Black Balloon's Valentine Haiku Contest, we wanted to do with haikus what Valentines does to your waistline: expand them. We wanted to expand the limitations of a haiku to include the two key elements of Black Balloon's first release, The Recipe Project: food and music. And what Valentines Day would be complete without those two ingredients?
We asked our loyal Twitter and Facebook followers to write us romantic haikus about food and music, and the results were awe-inspiring. Cilantro, stuffed zucchinis, cannolis, cast-iron frying pans: these were only a few of the poetic elements that our intrepid fans used to evoke the hunger of the holiday. Below are the top five entries, and we hope they expand your hearts just as much as your waistlines.
Thanks to everyone who participated. Winners: enjoy your copies of The Recipe Project, and have a happy Valentines Day!
Ben Marcus is so hot right now. With reviews and interviews in New York Magazine, The New York Times, NPR, Wired, The Millions, Salon,Bookforum, HTMLGiant, and Publisher’s Weekly, it’s hard not to describe the publication of The Flame Alphabet as a very big deal. While many of the reviews remark on how the book's linear narrative is a departure from Marcus’ other, “more difficult” books, the central conflict—that the speech of children is somehow killing off adults—is anything but conventional. And since our theme this month is "Relative Perversions," I’d like to offer up the top five perversions at play that, regardless of "linear" or "difficult," make the book so compelling.
5. Perverse Fear. The lethal-language-of-kids notion is, somehow, very correct. How could the young not be the end of us? Like any good virus, the disease mutates, becomes a more efficient killing machine by transforming all language into a vector of fatal harm. The questions raised by such an attack are both entirely personal and too enormous to digest. What effects do our words have on other people? Is there a way of speaking without causing harm? How could the world function without language?
4. Perverse Perseverance. So. Any and all language is killing your wife and causing your own very rapid deterioration. What’s a father to do? Work. Feverish, futile work. The father’s determination to keep his family together is the force driving the whole novel. Here is the activity of Beckett (“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”) and the activity we all desperately cling to while our lives swarm uncontrollably on. Wait, what? I don’t think I know what I’m saying, but I like thinking about it.
3. The Perversion of Failure. The Flame Alphabet is rich with objects that are somehow both textually vivid and kind of impossible to imagine. As a reader, this is to experience the perverse failure of language first-hand. These objects are alive, resonant...but I somehow can’t manage to see them. This is delightful. This is an effect that causes me to lean further in.
2. The Perversion of Belief. The Flame Alphabet also explores what happens when a man has to reconcile certain fundamental beliefs with an impossible new reality. Our protagonist is assailed by different authorities (scientists, doctors, rabbis) who make him question whether understanding is desirable, if even possible. This is my favorite kind of game. What usefulness does knowledge have? If an idea can be understood, is it lifeless?
1. Perverse Sexy Time. There are some adorable moments of catastrophically awkward sex: "To prove her vigor, Claire cornered me, sexually, made a physical trespass. Seeking, it would seem, someone to leak on." I know not everyone’s into that kind of thing, but I find a certain charm in these descriptions of failed engagement: the private longing, the humiliation.
And hey, even if perversion isn't really your thing, you should probably read The Flame Alphabet in order to advance, sexually, with Columbia students, or to find out how this novel fits in with Marcus' obsession with men trapped in holes. One of the best things a book can do is provide the space and time and the tiny pushes your brain needs in order to proceed with curiosity. The Flame Alphabet does this astoundingly well.
Image: New York Magazine
A friend and I were preparing deviled eggs for a Superbowl party when I insisted on enhancing our deviled egg production with a few choice sentences from Diane Williams’ new story collection, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty. How could I not—with the enthusiasm gathering in us of crushed yolks, globs of mayo, secret relish—pull my friend over to take a look at these sentences, these other small, new bursts of pleasure?
When I talk about Diane Williams, author of seven excellent short story collections and founding editor of the literary annual NOON, I tend to talk about her sentences more than I talk about her stories. Her sentences contain an awful lot, and when put together into a whole story, the entirety gives me too much to say in one sitting. Too much to say, and a fear of ruining the pleasurable effect the story’s just had by putting too many other words around it.
The other main thing as to why I talk about her sentences, is that her sentences are brilliant. Her sentences can be plucked from their stories and stand alone devastating people.
So, in order to say a little, but not too much, and as an excuse to publish a list of some of my very favorite sentences from Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, I’d like to suggest a few methods by which pleasure can come about. First, the sentences:
“Another one of my boyfriends said helpfully there is a great difference between love, hatred, and desire, but nothing compels us to maintain these differences.”
From "Mood Which Gripped Me"
“The mother experiences her losses with positivity. She even frames the notion of her own charm as she heads into her normal amount of it.”
From "Chicken Winchell"
“Her fate was being rigged for the rough surface.”
From "Mrs. Keable’s Brothers"
“The suspense in that moment had drawn me in and I was fascinated to hear my answer to her that was delivered in a weepy form.”
From "Arm Under the Soil"
“I seriously did not think I was in the state I describe as reserved for me.”
From "Expectant Motherhood"
My friend, who was helping with the deviled eggs, and who is well on her way to becoming a doctor, confessed to feelings of inadequacy with regard to talking about very smart literary fiction. I say put the fear aside. The point of reading is not always to then get a hold of something, as if the story is some riddle. Allow for the simple, intense pleasure in the sound of the words. Let the sentence make you think in a way you had not before, with a logic to the syntax that is surprising and fresh, somehow both very true at the same time that it is utterly unfamiliar. Permit yourself to remain in a state of uncertainty and wonder.
Image: mcsweeneys.net
Chekhov was a doctor. What other non-writing day jobs are great for writers?
Could being an infamous Cuban leader be one of them?
But if you happen to live in book-hating Turkey, that above option may not be feasible.
Or you could always go ahead and write that long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner.
Afterall, science fiction and other genre fiction tops many of the literary elite's favorites lists.
Though, you can never go wrong with copious amounts of Tolstoy and Nabokov.
Just take it from Henry Miller and "Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand."
Whatever you do, keep writing. You know how fast time flies.
The day I showed up in a moving truck with ten of my similar-looking friends, a woman on my building’s stoop commented not so quietly into her phone, “All these white people got the wrong building.” No wonder: according to a recent New York Times article, the number of people like me in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has grown 15 percent over the last decade, driving up rent prices 36 percent in 2011 alone. Naturally, as we flood in, others head out.
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Faulkner was a mailman. Charlotte Brontë was a governess. And you? Whether you're fresh out of school or staring down yet another career change, here are five jobs that can give you a steady paycheck and an unfettered mind for your scribblings!
Banking. T. S. Eliot repeatedly turned down editorial opportunities to keep working as a banker and wrote several of his best poems during that time. “I am absorbed during the daytime by the balance sheets of foreign banks. It is a peaceful, but very interesting pursuit,” he declared in a letter. And much of the force of The Waste Land comes from his depictions of the “Unreal City,” filled with equally bland businessmen. Banking just might be the perfect job for writers who think in iambic pentameter.
Actuarial. With clockwork habits and a monotonous wardrobe, Wallace Stevens stayed at the Hartford insurance company all his adult life. He composed his poems on his way to and from work, and pulled out his calculator as soon as he entered the office. Much like banking, the industry is dominated by numbers and statistics. Surprisingly, though, actuaries have a high level of satisfaction with their jobs. It’s not as exciting as test-driving roller coasters, but it’s much more reliable and stress-free. Detail-oriented writers encouraged to apply.
Law. Franz Kafka worked in Legal, and usually finished with his day’s work by about two in the afternoon. Reading and writing legal documents doesn’t allow much daydreaming, but the often juicy subject matter at hand has turned out such writers as John Grisham and Stephen L. Carter. A crime, a detective, a criminal, and a punishment—what setup could be simpler or more alluring? This is the ideal job for a mystery writer: all the facts are there, but the devil’s in the details.
Medicine. It was a trend even before Chekhov declared that “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress,” and poets and novelists alike—from John Keats and William Carlos Williams to W. Somerset Maugham and Khaled Hosseini—have followed in that doctor’s footsteps. Maybe it’s the rigor of med school that forces these authors to attend to patients and words with equal discipline. Maybe it’s their immense fascination with the human body. Character-driven novelists should start studying for their MCATs.
Library Science. Okay, so nowadays the job requires a hefty graduate degree, but if the children’s book author Avi and bestselling novelist Jayne Ann Krentz have both spent time behind the checkout desk, so can you. Once you’re in the door, you’re almost working in a bookstore. The biggest advantage? Your coworkers might actually read your novel when it comes out.
Keep in mind that, for the first time in forever, unemployment rates are on the decline. And getting away from your laptop will do your brain good. Your novel will thank you, so make like Bubba and get Back to Work!
Image credit: fotolog.com
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