What with Daisey and D'Agata in the news, do you think the truth is malleable?
David Sedaris seems to agree, though his stint as a Christmas elf seems to be mostly true.
Meanwhile, Toni Morrison finds the truth boring, which is why she is cancelling her memoir.
Maybe Philip Roth can attest to the same thing as he reaches his 80th birthday.
Though Lee Gutkind would pipe in that the truth is important no matter what.
And even more important, possibly, is saving some words from extinction.
Perhaps the punks could turn their political attention to linguistics as well.
Or maybe even Blade Runner could do some literary saving-the-world.
Though it would be interesting what Stalin would have to say, or perhaps his iTunes.
But that's in the past -- and maybe in the past, everything --including the books people read-- was better.
Prometheus, Ridley Scott's upcoming Alien sorta-prequel, is the only film I care about in 2012. The Avengers? Slag off! The Dark Knight Rises? Only if Marion Cotillard plays Talia al Ghul. OK, so I'll coincidentally be in Tokyo this May for the premiere of Sadako 3D—of Ringu/The Ring fame—but that's neither here nor there.
After a lot of hinting and fanboy-rumoring, Scott unveiled a bonkers Prometheus trailer at WonderCon 2012. Predictably, the blogs facehugged the shit out of it, parsing out each and every detail. Bloody Disgusting, one of my trusted go-to sites for all that is cinematically bloody and/or disgusting, offered a slew of screen-grabs with commentary like “yes, that looks like a Xenomorph to me, too.” (If you're just joining the party, theXenomorph was the primary antagonist of the Alien film series. Quoth Wikipedia,“a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species.”)
I've been intrigued since a Sky News tip that the Space Jockey, that huge-ass desiccated lifeform from the original Alien, will figure significantly inPrometheus. Also: that H.R. Giger, the Swiss biomechanical alchemist responsible for the Alien design itself, is contributing Prometheus set designs. Corridors that resemble jumbo industrial-design ribcages? A fully-functioning Derelict, the junked wishbone-shaped spacecraft containing the long-dead Space Jockey? “Proper” Xenomorphs or not, I am beyond stoked.
A fan already spliced the Prometheus teaser from this past December withclips from Alien, highlighting the films' respective contextual similarities, down to the repeating, distorted Wilhelm screams. Blogging last month about the rumored Blade Runner redo and the perils of cinematic replication, I included Scott's comment that Prometheus shares “strands ofAlien's DNA, so to speak.” More than that: they exist emphatically within the same universe.
This ain't no Men in Black III, that's for damn sure. Like the Greek god himself, Scott brings us mortals a much-needed dose of “hard sci-fi,” perfected by him in Blade Runner and largely poisoned by American cinema subsequently. I was a kid when James Cameron's Aliens came out, which was awesomely entertaining but lacked that deep-space dread of Scott's original. In spite of a few highlights—like David Twohy's genuinely dope Pitch Black (no small thanks to Vin Diesel) and Paul Anderson's Event Horizon for its glorious gore—there hasn't been a Scott-calibre sci-fi thriller since.
“In space, no one can hear you scream,” says that iconic Alien trailer. Guess what: that doesn't apply to theaters. There's gonna be a lot of screaming, and June 8 can't come any quicker.
Image: courtesy Badass Digest
In their Fall 2012 collection, Rodarte designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy used a number of prints drawn from Aboriginal artworks and cultural materials. A representative of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues questioned their ethics—morally and financially—and said she would be “sickened” to see women walking around New York in the clothes. In the rag trade, who owns, has owned, or should own textile and artistic practices? We used to think the cotton plant was a living lamb attached to a stem, who, when it had finished eating all the grass the vicinity of its stalk, would simply perish.
1. "There is a long history of misappropriation of important Aboriginal artworks and cultural material, which has been subsequently used in inappropriate ways…Rodarte did not confirm the licensing of any artwork…until my comments yesterday. Until then, when asked about the inspiration for the collection, they were on the public record as stating that their collection ‘came out of nowhere.’”
–Megan Davis, an indigenous Australian lawyer and representative of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, speaking to Frockwriter last week about fashion label Rodarte’s use of Aboriginal printsin their Fall 2012 collection. The designers have since confirmed that they licensed the work from an artist named Benny Tjangala of the Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd.
2. “…another version of the story was circulated in which the lamb was described…as being a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus suspended above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal to bend downward, and browze on the herbage within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the lamb died. This plant lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favorite food of wolves…”
–Henry Lee, from The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant, To Which is Added a Sketch of the History of Cotton and the Cotton Trade, 1887. The myth he describes came from Western Europeanaccounts of seeing cotton for the first time in Tartary, Scythia, and India.
3. “With the introduction of cotton cloth by Arab caravan traders in the nineteenth century, production slowed and eventually faded out, limiting the use of barkcloth to cultural and spiritual functions….The objectives of the safeguarding project are to: train craftspersons, especially young artisans, in making bark cloth; establish sustainable practices of using the Mituba trees; popularize the making and use of bark cloth; ensure legal protection and income generating activities; and promote recognition of and respect for the cultural value of bark cloth. Training activities [are] to be widely publicized in the mass media …”
—“Barkcloth Making in Uganda,” Inscribed on UNESCO’s representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.
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)."
Every so often, people will ask me why I read so many novels. They sneer: Why don’t I want to know about real life?
Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of When I Was a Child I Read Books, writes that she read “to experience that much underrated thing called deracination, the meditative, free appreciation of what ever comes under one’s eye.” Even more fundamentally, she read because she wanted to.
But to fiction skeptics, “Because I want to" usually doesn't cut it. I like nonfiction, sure. James Gleick’s The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood caused me to miss a subway stop. But I don’t care about politics, at least not as much as I should. Or about the biographies of great men and women. Honestly, the Times is all the “real life” I need most days.
Sometimes I read fiction for the sheer beauty of other people’s words. Over winter vacation, I brought along Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. I came across these lines—
"Far from it," said Nick. "No, no—he spoke, as to cheek and chin, of the joy of the matutinal steel." They all laughed contentedly. It was one of Nick’s routines to slip these plums of periphrasis from Henry James’s late works into unsuitable parts of his conversation, and the boys marvelled at them and tried feebly to remember them—really they just wanted Nick to say them, in his brisk but weighty way.
—and quite suddenly, because Hollinghurst’s writing is so baroque and perfectly rendered, I found myself thinking and speaking with those “plums of periphrasis” for the next week. Other people can’t change my tone like that. The world around me can’t change my thoughts like that.
But the best, the most important reason that I bother with the figments of an author’s imagination is to understand other people. Annie Murphy Paul explains that when we read, we interact with the characters as if they were real. “The brain...does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life,” she explains; “in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.”
It’s true: I tend to imagine the characters I’m reading a little too well. I had to stop reading Watchmen when Dr. Osterman was destroyed in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor. And when I read Teju Cole’s Open City, I found myself unable to separate Julius’s view of New York from my own. I never had an invisible friend as a child; it looks like books took care of that for me.
Hence my answer: I can read nonfiction to understand how the world works, but I’d rather read fiction to understand how people work. What about you?
image credit: litfestalberta.org
Taking a cue from Buzzfeed's recent list of internet terms, I decided to take a break from deleting my "turklebaum" and think up some new terms to help describe the current literary atmosphere.
Aspbooker n. an obsessive reader. She was such an aspbooker about Harry Potter, it was embarrassing.
Canned adj. a term used to describe books that are popular with or come out of hispter/DIY culture. The second Werner Herzog read Go The Fuck To Sleep it became like uber-canned.
Chicortle v. the gag reflex resulting from an excess of chick lit. I'll totally chicortle if you recommend Jennifer Weiner one more time.
Libro Luddito, El n. any book or magazine being read in paper form; "Un Luddito" is a person who exclusively reads paper. Can you grab el libro luddito before it falls off the couch? My iPad died.
Movel n. a novel one's mom might recommend. Do you want this movel or should I just donate it?
Polybiblymous n. a person who reads using multiple formats. Look at that polybiblymous checking his messages. We could totally mug him.
Straight Veg n. any novel that is or will be considered a classic and that is actually awesome. Anna Karenina is straight veg, but I just don't have the patience for War and Peace (cf. "War'n'Rainbows") .
War'n'Rainbows adj. a person or book trying too hard to impress others. War'n'rainbows also suggests intellectual weariness. That Adam Levin book The Instructions was just too war'n'rainbows for me, and it gave me scoliosis.
What other new phrases might be useful? What should we call housewives who read porn in plain sight? Or the book that isn't out yet but you've already heard so much about you're no longer interested? Feel free to offer your suggestions below. Or just threadjack the comments.
image: wikiality.eikia.com
Ever since relocating to Austin last summer, I'd kept one eye on the live-music/film-premiere/interactive behemoth South By Southwest. This year was to be my first, and as a veteran of CMJ Music Marathon and a pioneer at Brooklyn's first-ever Northside Festival, I was beyond stoked. But between work trips to NYC and Tokyo, culminating in a three-week sojourn to the Big Apple this past month, time slipped by. On my late-night flight back to Austin last Wednesday, surrounded by skinny blokes with guitar cases and European accents, I realized—Oh snap, South By Southwest!
I had to attack this beast badgeless and wristbandless, with a major NYC hangover and little schedule in mind besides what I'd culled fromBrooklynVegan and various Facebook invites. Luckily, Japanese art-punksPeelander-Z were hosting a free day-show of caffeinated awesomeness called “Peelander-Fest.” It featured a solid mix of Japanese acts (like the Motörhead-ish Electric Eel Shock) and yanks, topped by a sweaty Peelander-Z set, in 20-minute bites.
Free show? Cheap booze? Japanese bands? Sign me up!
I bussed to the Grackle, an East Austin dive bar and gravel lot that echoed Jelly NYC's Saturdays @ Rock Yard, except the latter had a slip-n-slide and Williamsburg hipster girls and the Grackle better beer and tattoos.
Lagitagida, self-described as “a super-powered attack instrumental rock band,” played as fast as Brooklyn black-metalheads Liturgy but with way less austerity. At least Lagitagida were having a shit-ton of fun. Next up was bicoastal (i.e. Tokyo/Brooklyn) duo Ken South Rock, who I re-dub KEN the Brotherhood, for beyond Kenichi and Adam's stripped-down sound, these “long-lost brothers” carried that charisma of their country-fried Nashville kin,JEFF the Brotherhood.
I refueled on lengua tacos when local noise-punks Black Cock went on (anybody remember Whale's “Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe”? They're a bit like that), and met the Japanese. Despite the boozy, sun-baked environs, I did that whole two-handed name-card exchange with Lagitagida guitarist Kohhan and bassist Take. New drink buddies for my May trip back to ol' Nippon.
Sendagaya duo Gagakirise are succinctly summed up by their 2009 CD title:Black Long Hair Nice Wah Pedal.
Sets went precisely as scheduled, thanks to Kengo “Peelander-Yellow” Hioki's programming. This is something I noted in Tokyo: bands on and off almost exactly on time, even the ultra-DIY stuff, so I knew how much time I had before elbowing up front for Electric Eel Shock. These cock-rockers brought the house down. Frontman Akihiro may have playfully dissed punk at one point—“We're metal!!!!”—but, considering his flying riffs, bassist Kazuto's mastery of shout-and-response, and drummer Gian's instant denuding (except for a strategic sock), it was all love.
Sunburnt and smashed, thus concluded my first SXSW.
Image: Gagakirise, courtesy the author.
I’m quitting my job today. I’m quitting because of an inappropriate text message my manager sent to me on Valentine’s Day. This is not the first time my manager has conducted himself in an inappropriate manner. This is not even the first time I have left a restaurant job because of a manager conducting him or herself inappropriately.
On Valentine's Day, Gothamist posted a report on gender inequity in the service industry. Reading through it was not a comfort to me. It has been my experience that working at a restaurant entails taking a lot of shit. It is highly conducive to, and rife with, sexual harassment. There is close contact, touching, lewd gestures. Much of this is entirely welcome and fun and a way to release stress. Some of this is unwelcome but innocuous enough to put up with. And then there are the moments when a line is crossed, when taking shit is no longer an option.
The day before Valentine’s Day, Roxane Gay posted a great piece in the Rumpus directed toward women who had tweeted their willingness to be beaten by Chris Brown. The day before that, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta made several highly offensive remarks on the air, regarding the increase in sexual assaults on women in the military. Also on Sunday was the arrest of Marston Hefner for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, PlayboyPlaymate of the Year Claire Sinclair. This has not been a good week.
I worked at a Denny’s when I was in high school. One day one of our bussers pressed his palm against the grill and held it there. He told me later that he did this "porque no me quiero," or, because I didn’t want him. I was seventeen. I was reminded of this incident while reading about a 19th-century Taiwanese custom: suitors would present potential partners with severed heads.
Part of me wants a severed head. There is a part of me that wants to seek out male protection in the form of violent retribution and physical intimidation. I understand that in no way should I have to be the one to quit my job because of someone else’s behavior. But I am choosing to leave.
It is perhaps this decision to leave instead of fighting that is prompting me to write this post. I get to be in control of how I personally deal with this situation, and I find it too stupid for me to make a stink about. I’m drawing the line. That’s what I can do. However, there are too many people taking too much shit. Too many people are taking too much shit every day. What I’ve read this week makes me feel as though there might be a whole lot of people who don’t know where the line is. Please be advised.
Image: blogcatalog.com
There are plenty of fine, virile men in American literature today. Elaine Blair doesn’t think so: in a New York Review of Books article, she easily recognizes Michel Houellebecq’s sucky protagonists because she says contemporary American lit is filled with men who are losers, from Philip Roth’s Alex Portnoy to Sam Lipsyte’s Milo Burke. So where are all the big, strong, literary men?
John Galt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
For an unhealthy dose of American exceptionalism, there’s nobody better to read about than John Galt, the ultimate anti-loser and the Atlas who decides to just shrug off the world:
"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in the whole of human history...the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind.”
The Judge from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
One of Cormac McCarthy’s most hair-raising creations, the judge stalks the long flat terrain of America and preaches a violent form of justice, without regard to femininity of any sort.
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
From his rapturous descriptions of music albums and finely tailored suits to his soulless ravages of New York’s restaurants and women, Patrick Bateman might be stretching the envelope for being "human," but nobody would dare call him a loser.
“I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.”
Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.
The two men at the center of the novel and the movie have no interest whatsoever in slacking off, and the result is Tylder Durden's speech, easily one of the most bizarre and fascinating manifestos of masculinity in recent times.
“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering...our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
Mike Schwartz from Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding.
Baseball novels are full of beefy sluggers, but this one has grandiloquence to match his skills at coaching:
“Me, I hearken back to a simpler time.” Schwartz patted his thick, sturdy midriff. “A time when a hairy back meant something...Warmth. Survival. Evolutionary advantage. Back then, a man’s wife and children would burrow into his back hair and wait out the winter. Nypmhs would braid it and praise it in song. God’s wrath waxed hot against the hairless tribes. Now that’s all forgotten. But I’ll tell you one thing: when the next ice age comes, the Schwartzes will be sitting pretty. Real pretty.”
Gender typecasting be damned! There are plenty of strong men—and women, too!—in the contemporary American novel out there. The French can keep Michel Houellebecq to themselves; we’ve got Pynchon and Palahniuk and Wells Tower leading the way for our All-American macho men.
image credit: guardian.co.uk
Will you participate in the March Madness that is the Tournament of Books?
You could even ask your best brogrammers to help you trick out your bracket.
Just don't underestimate the power of erotic housewife novels, especially if they're Twilight-centric.
Then again, erotic sci-fi is also giving it a run for its money.
Whatever erotica strikes your fancy, you can bet that the Brooklyn Public library will print it out on demand.
But make sure you're reading those books at the same rate you're churning them out.
And if you're writing rather than reading, make sure you're citing your Tweets in MLA format.
In fact, make sure your entire online curatorial style is completely up to date.
Then test it out by trying to spot all the references in this insanely intricate Cartier commerical.
What do New York twentysomethings talk about while sipping glasses of wine and sharing bites of compost cookie? Grocery shopping, of course.
"I mean, I love how it says something about you if you shop at Trader Joe's," I said.
"Like, you want to be cool, you want to be fun, you want to wait in line for twenty minutes?"
"But I get the peanut butter cups. That totally cancels out the line."
"I'll toast to that." And we clinked glasses for the fourth or fifth time.
"What about Whole Foods, though?" she asked. "You know there's going to be a new Whole Foods in Brooklyn."
"Hmm. It's a way to say, I care about my food being organic, I care about it being classy, and I don't care how overpriced it is."
"You don't shop there, do you?"
We both cracked up.
"Okay, I’m not sure about this. Whole Foods is almost too perfect for Brooklyn. There's nothing ironic there."
"But it’s honest! And it’s natural and organic and pure.”
“Trader Joe’s is like David Foster Wallace. It’s big and crazy and disjointed and human. And the footnotes are great.”
“Coming soon! Based on the book! And the movie! And the video game! And the fast-food-chain kiddie-meal toys! Infinite Jest: The Grocery Store!”
“Isn’t that exactly right, though?”
“Hmm, yeah, you’re pretty spot-on.”
“So then what’s the book version of Whole Foods?”
“Huh, a Whole Book..." We took long sips of wine.
“Everything in there is very beautiful. Carefully presented. If it’s there, it’s there to be appreciated and savored.”
“Ann Patchett?”
“Oh, I liked Bel Canto, but that’s not it.”
"Okay, fine, not music. But she's good. She pulls together everything into a tight little book."
“We've got to think bigger. Whole Foods isn’t Jonathan Franzen, is it?”
“No, I don't think so. Well, I haven’t read Freedom yet. But yeah, something all-encompassing.”
Time to pour more wine.
“Wait." She took a swig and looked at me. "I've got it. Jhumpa Lahiri.”
“Unaccustomed Earth! That's it! Whole Foods is virtuous and organic and beautiful, and so is Jhumpa Lahiri!”
“She’s amazing.” My friend pulled her e-reader out of her purse. “Listen to this: ‘He still had the power to stagger her at times—simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born.’”
“God, that’s gorgeous.”
“Yep, we’ve got it.”
She poured the last of the wine into both glasses.
“Now what about Gristedes and D’Agostino’s?”
image credit: washingtontimes.com
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