I thought about throwing the towel in on the blog altogether, between the Secretary's merciless dissection of my structure and another regular commentator's cruel verbal imitation of my word tics. But instead, I will rise above it. I will overlook it. And when I get my hands on the secret treasure, certain parties should watch their goddamn backs, is all I'm saying.
So I miss being young, sometimes. Having undergone a super-stereotypical version of the college years for my age and background, I miss it. Not really, you understand. It's actually more fun being my age now and leading my life now. More interesting, more rich and fulfilling, all that stuff.
What I miss is not really knowing that much about the world or myself or anything. What I miss is moving in a pack with a bunch of people that you maybe don't actually like that much, but that you think you might like, given the chance to just have one real, serious, intimate conversation. What I miss is not knowing the odds.
These days, I have friends that I actually like, that I know, that know me. We don't move in a pack. We make plans to do things that we think will be fun. If the plans don't sound fun we change them. Sometimes we make plans because we need to catch up.
In the spring of my sophomore year I shared a room and a phone line with two people. The way I remember Friday nights, which is probably not at all accurate, is a kind of round-robin of phoning, of call-waiting, of running out the battery on the cordless until some kind of consensus was reached. I was so young that I could actually be affronted when one of my roommates went to a party and didn't invite me. That seemed like such a goddamn slight.
A couple times this summer I spent time with people I went to college with. We talked about it, about how you could just go sit on the Sproul steps or the Dwinelle benches and wait for the world to pass you by and then you could attach yourself to some semi-random group and see what happened next. What happened next wasn't really all that fun, but you never knew.
I would say this is just another symptom of me getting old, but I think I pretty much felt nostalgic at the time.
Did I already post exactly this earlier?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Purpose of Teaching
As I've mentioned before, I teach. I'm a professor, so strictly speaking teaching is some kind of official fraction of my job, but as everyone who's ever taught anything knows, teaching takes up a disproportionate amount of one's psychic energy.
When teaching is great, it's great, and when it sucks, it sucks. When it sucks, you sometimes wonder, "What is the purpose of this"? When it sucks, you start to think, you know, the smart students in this room could probably just discuss the text over beers, without me, to the same effect, and the, uh, less smart students aren't going to get anywhere not matter what.
So, what is the purpose of teaching? My university actually has a policy about this. "The purpose of teaching," it says, "is to facilitate learning."
When I read that I heard Butthead's voice in my head, going, "Uhh, OK."
And indeed, if you need to lay something out, this is reasonable.
Lots of stuff happens, though, in classrooms, that makes you not sure if this is the whole story, makes you wonder if maybe there's something else going on -- something, I don't know, a little less cheerfully agnostic.
My students find it almost impossible to sit still and read or write quietly for any length of time. Or to listen attentively for more than a few minutes. And, you know, I don't blame them. I was a disaster at these activities well into adulthood. It's one reason I majored in math.
I can't see any way of getting better at these things except practice. The more you do them the easier they get. Since presumably we "lovers of democracy," or whatever we are, are better off when our citizenry can read and write and listen, I figure it's part of my job to simply force students to do a certain amount of these things.
The students seem to think so, too. They revel in the mythology of the classroom: that I am the stern task-master; that if I am "generous" and "kind" I will push back deadlines a day or two; that as task-master I will not only penalize them with bad grades but will punish them with anger for failing to do what I ask.
So fine; I'm happy to comply. But honestly, this is way more like being an aerobics instructor or a mom than like being a "learning facilitator."
There are also times when even university teaching verges on indoctrination. I teach philosophy. It's part of the framework of what we do, at least in the humanities, that everyone has a voice, not only a right to their own opinion but a certain obligation to have one. To state it. To support it by appeal to considerations others will find worth listening to.
It sounds so basic, but when you teach that way to students not used to it, it seems like its own, weird, non-negotiable demand.
For example, I sometimes teach courses on moral problems -- abortion, animal rights, pornography, etc etc. Sometimes I have students who've been taught all their lives that the only possible approach to these problems is a religious one.
They can see right away that "God said so" is not an appropriate classroom discussion point. I try to explain that since everyone has different views about God, we have to leave that aside to discuss these problems in a way that everyone can share. Your point has to be one that anyone can appreciate the force of, regardless of their religious convictions.
Sometimes when I think about how that seems from the opposite point of view, I feel the force of how radical it is, and how committed we all are to it, and how we in the university treat it as utterly essential to being a complete intellectual and cultural person.
If I'm in a good mood, I think I'm instilling, by example and requirement, the best of enlightenment values of freedom of thought and open debate. If I'm in a bad mood, I think I'm indoctrinating the youth.
Either way, it's not really facilitating learning.
When teaching is great, it's great, and when it sucks, it sucks. When it sucks, you sometimes wonder, "What is the purpose of this"? When it sucks, you start to think, you know, the smart students in this room could probably just discuss the text over beers, without me, to the same effect, and the, uh, less smart students aren't going to get anywhere not matter what.
So, what is the purpose of teaching? My university actually has a policy about this. "The purpose of teaching," it says, "is to facilitate learning."
When I read that I heard Butthead's voice in my head, going, "Uhh, OK."
And indeed, if you need to lay something out, this is reasonable.
Lots of stuff happens, though, in classrooms, that makes you not sure if this is the whole story, makes you wonder if maybe there's something else going on -- something, I don't know, a little less cheerfully agnostic.
My students find it almost impossible to sit still and read or write quietly for any length of time. Or to listen attentively for more than a few minutes. And, you know, I don't blame them. I was a disaster at these activities well into adulthood. It's one reason I majored in math.
I can't see any way of getting better at these things except practice. The more you do them the easier they get. Since presumably we "lovers of democracy," or whatever we are, are better off when our citizenry can read and write and listen, I figure it's part of my job to simply force students to do a certain amount of these things.
The students seem to think so, too. They revel in the mythology of the classroom: that I am the stern task-master; that if I am "generous" and "kind" I will push back deadlines a day or two; that as task-master I will not only penalize them with bad grades but will punish them with anger for failing to do what I ask.
So fine; I'm happy to comply. But honestly, this is way more like being an aerobics instructor or a mom than like being a "learning facilitator."
There are also times when even university teaching verges on indoctrination. I teach philosophy. It's part of the framework of what we do, at least in the humanities, that everyone has a voice, not only a right to their own opinion but a certain obligation to have one. To state it. To support it by appeal to considerations others will find worth listening to.
It sounds so basic, but when you teach that way to students not used to it, it seems like its own, weird, non-negotiable demand.
For example, I sometimes teach courses on moral problems -- abortion, animal rights, pornography, etc etc. Sometimes I have students who've been taught all their lives that the only possible approach to these problems is a religious one.
They can see right away that "God said so" is not an appropriate classroom discussion point. I try to explain that since everyone has different views about God, we have to leave that aside to discuss these problems in a way that everyone can share. Your point has to be one that anyone can appreciate the force of, regardless of their religious convictions.
Sometimes when I think about how that seems from the opposite point of view, I feel the force of how radical it is, and how committed we all are to it, and how we in the university treat it as utterly essential to being a complete intellectual and cultural person.
If I'm in a good mood, I think I'm instilling, by example and requirement, the best of enlightenment values of freedom of thought and open debate. If I'm in a bad mood, I think I'm indoctrinating the youth.
Either way, it's not really facilitating learning.
Tidy Not Clean
describes me. And it is a dichotomy I find interesting. People you would would think were neither tidy nor clean turn out to have strong opinions about which (cleanliness or tidiness) is more important for their personal comfort, as do people who, in living-space-descriptive terms, have attained both.
I am tidy and not clean; I hate clutter on surfaces and things left sitting out, but dust does not worry me.
Still, I think it would be suaver (cooler, really, to dig straight to the heart of my seventeen-year-old soul) to be someone clean but not tidy -- someone who rigorously washed and dusted and swept and de-grimed, but could care less about the outward orderliness of it all, someone who left piles of books on the coffee table but each and every one of those books was dust free.
I imagine mid-century fiction identifying that attitude as one of natural aristocracy, an unconcern with outward appearances and a profound concern with inner truth. My identification may be a product of my own insecurities (a friend and I had identical Skipper dolls back in early 1983; I was convinced that hers was better) or a response to some kind of objective truth out there in the world.
Also, perhaps, it seems so much harder to me to be clean than to be tidy, and I assume that to be true for everybody, and so I admire the clean for not taking the easy way out.
I am tidy and not clean; I hate clutter on surfaces and things left sitting out, but dust does not worry me.
Still, I think it would be suaver (cooler, really, to dig straight to the heart of my seventeen-year-old soul) to be someone clean but not tidy -- someone who rigorously washed and dusted and swept and de-grimed, but could care less about the outward orderliness of it all, someone who left piles of books on the coffee table but each and every one of those books was dust free.
I imagine mid-century fiction identifying that attitude as one of natural aristocracy, an unconcern with outward appearances and a profound concern with inner truth. My identification may be a product of my own insecurities (a friend and I had identical Skipper dolls back in early 1983; I was convinced that hers was better) or a response to some kind of objective truth out there in the world.
Also, perhaps, it seems so much harder to me to be clean than to be tidy, and I assume that to be true for everybody, and so I admire the clean for not taking the easy way out.
Monday, October 29, 2007
A Post About Dog Shit
I feel a little weird posting about dog shit, but it's only to make a larger point, so I hope you can put up with it. Also, I decided not to post the relevant pictures, although they would help you understand what the hell I'm talking about. There are limits to all things.
You can buy single Black & Milds at any convenience store in my neighborhood, and also when you see something brown on the sidewalk there's not too much doubt about what it is, as picking up your dog has a long way to go around here. But the other day there was something on the ground that resembled dog shit, but wasn't, as far as I could tell, dog shit. It was foamy, for one. Also, I later found some on the hood of somebody's car.
So my first thought is that it's dog shit, and then my second thought is that it's somebody's art installation trying to make some kind of point about dog shit. And it's the second point that caught my attention.
I don't actually think it was that; I didn't very much think it was that at the time. And then later when the foaminess vanished and there was just some brown dirt-like substance on the places where the putative art installation had been it seemed even less likely. I just thought it was funny that that's become my default category for things that confound my expectations of the world -- oh, it's somebody's mode of artistic expression.
I mean, here at the end times we all have points to make and many people make them in creative ways and you have Andre the Giant stickers and stencils, and graffiti, and billboards and all those elaborations of life. Last night I had a dream that a friend was having a party in one of those art communes/living spaces that the L.A. Weekly is always so excited about. Then in my dream it turned out the place was in Bakersfield, which just made it that much more elaborate.
I remember the first time I read a book by Henry James. It was really a conversion experience, because for the first time I felt like somebody was describing the world the way I understood it, with incredible ambiguities and hesitations and conflicting acts of delicacy. But now, a bit later on, I wonder how I would see the world if nobody had ever laid out that incredibly complex version for me. Would those ambiguities still exist in my head, or would I see the world differently and more simply?
You can buy single Black & Milds at any convenience store in my neighborhood, and also when you see something brown on the sidewalk there's not too much doubt about what it is, as picking up your dog has a long way to go around here. But the other day there was something on the ground that resembled dog shit, but wasn't, as far as I could tell, dog shit. It was foamy, for one. Also, I later found some on the hood of somebody's car.
So my first thought is that it's dog shit, and then my second thought is that it's somebody's art installation trying to make some kind of point about dog shit. And it's the second point that caught my attention.
I don't actually think it was that; I didn't very much think it was that at the time. And then later when the foaminess vanished and there was just some brown dirt-like substance on the places where the putative art installation had been it seemed even less likely. I just thought it was funny that that's become my default category for things that confound my expectations of the world -- oh, it's somebody's mode of artistic expression.
I mean, here at the end times we all have points to make and many people make them in creative ways and you have Andre the Giant stickers and stencils, and graffiti, and billboards and all those elaborations of life. Last night I had a dream that a friend was having a party in one of those art communes/living spaces that the L.A. Weekly is always so excited about. Then in my dream it turned out the place was in Bakersfield, which just made it that much more elaborate.
I remember the first time I read a book by Henry James. It was really a conversion experience, because for the first time I felt like somebody was describing the world the way I understood it, with incredible ambiguities and hesitations and conflicting acts of delicacy. But now, a bit later on, I wonder how I would see the world if nobody had ever laid out that incredibly complex version for me. Would those ambiguities still exist in my head, or would I see the world differently and more simply?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
What I Learned At Starbucks
Photo by Flickr user williamhartz, here. Used under Creative Commons license.I spend a lot of time at Starbucks. I have three main Starbucks I go to. There's the one near my home in the "gay village," which is always filled to the brim with flirty gay guys; there's the one near the public library, which is kind of a mix; and there's the one downtown, which is visited mostly by lawyers and business men taking a coffee break.
The one I go to most often is downtown. I work as a professor, and after a day of sitting alone in the library working on some writing, it's refreshing to my spirit to go downtown. I like seeing everyone all dressed up. I like hearing their conversations with deal with concerns so far from my own. I like the bustly energy of "downtown" which is so totally unlike the energy of the university.
A lot of people complain about Starbucks, and I understand being frustrated with the feeling that they are taking over. But in many ways it's a very OK company. In my experience, they're for real about welcoming anyone to hang out there, even for long periods of time. They're respectful of the wandering, the confused, and the homeless. They offer a good selection of healthy snack foods, and they're cheerful and encouraging about putting your coffee in ceramic instead of paper. They offer health insurance to their employees.
Today's narrative happens at the library Starbucks, which, as I said, is a real mix. It's kind of close to the University, so there are students, but it's also close to various museum-y things so there are tourists. It's slightly a "see and be seen" crowd, because there's a Tim Horton's right next door, and in some class-distinction-complexity of Canada that I don't quite get yet, it seems that people who identify as "sensible" are faithful to Tim Horton's, though to the untrained eye the two places just seem to offer completely different sorts of things.
I was working at Starbucks, and I had my laptop open. On the other side of the narrow room, there was a weird guy, maybe about 22 years old. At the table next to him, a young couple - maybe like 17 or 18, very quiet.
Some coffee spilled. I looked over, couldn't get the story. Whose coffee was it? Was it an accident? The older guy's laptop was open on his table but it seemed fine. There were some words exchanged, but quietly. It was calm for 5 minutes.
Then angry, louder words. Some taunting: it seemed like the older guy was taunting the younger guy, trying to get something started, and the younger guy wasn't sure what to do. I'm probably just projecting, but it seemed to me like the younger guy would've been just as happy to leave the place and avoid a confrontation but that he also wanted to stand up for himself in front of his girlfriend.
The tension escalated. Everyone could tell a fight was brewing; everyone was kind of looking at them like, guys, just cool it, it's Starbucks. You can't fight here.
Eventually the younger guy started trying to make peace. "It's fine; let's just forget it, OK? Just let it go," he said.
"Good," I thought.
Then wham. The two guys were up, seriously going at it, knocking into the table with the older guy's laptop, which teetered and almost crashed to the floor. They grabbed one another, started careening around. In about one second they were crashing toward me.
I grabbed my laptop and held it to my chest, evidently having some thought that if they were going to crash into me I could put myself between the computer and the floor. I'm not sure.
Finally the staff came over and shouted and called for back-up and shouted some more and made a huge fuss and finally the young couple left and the staff stood over the old guy glaring at him 'til he packed up his stuff and got out.
I learned:
I do not have the necessary qualities for breaking up fights. It's not just that I'm physically not a fighter (though that is true), and it's not that I'm timid (because I'm not); it's just that I don't care enough. These guys were so mad, they'd have steamrolled right over me.
It's not necessarily because I'm a girl that I don't have these qualities. The staff member who came over and broke it up was a girl and she did an awesome job. Those two piped right down.
I seem to care a lot about my laptop.
Let's Pretend
I just finished cleaning my kitchen floor.
My kitchen floor had reached a state of incredible disgustingness weeks ago, but I did nothing. Today, however, is zero hour, because my mother will be arriving, and since I cannot hope to keep her out of my kitchen, steps had to be taken.
Which takes me back to days gone by and cleaning the house with my mother when visitors were due to arrive and complaining about the hypocrisy of it all. Why, I wanted to know, wasn't our normal state of cleanliness (which was a lot cleaner than the normal state, not to mention the current state, of my apartment) good enough for them? It was, I said dusting the salmon pink tile, a lie to show the visitors a better face than we normally had.
But I am not really trying to deceive my mother as to my standards of cleanliness. She has known me my whole life and she has a pretty accurate sense of where the cleanliness needle stands for me. What I am trying to prove is that I am capable of cleaning up on occasion.
(Whether this is something that I need to prove to my mother is another kind of question.)
It is the same reason you wear a suit to a job interview. Faking for the purposes of showing that you can, showing that you're willing to.
And then also, as I am unwillingly forced to admit, it is nicer staying in an apartment that's not disgusting.
My kitchen floor had reached a state of incredible disgustingness weeks ago, but I did nothing. Today, however, is zero hour, because my mother will be arriving, and since I cannot hope to keep her out of my kitchen, steps had to be taken.
Which takes me back to days gone by and cleaning the house with my mother when visitors were due to arrive and complaining about the hypocrisy of it all. Why, I wanted to know, wasn't our normal state of cleanliness (which was a lot cleaner than the normal state, not to mention the current state, of my apartment) good enough for them? It was, I said dusting the salmon pink tile, a lie to show the visitors a better face than we normally had.
But I am not really trying to deceive my mother as to my standards of cleanliness. She has known me my whole life and she has a pretty accurate sense of where the cleanliness needle stands for me. What I am trying to prove is that I am capable of cleaning up on occasion.
(Whether this is something that I need to prove to my mother is another kind of question.)
It is the same reason you wear a suit to a job interview. Faking for the purposes of showing that you can, showing that you're willing to.
And then also, as I am unwillingly forced to admit, it is nicer staying in an apartment that's not disgusting.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
2 Bizee 2 Rede Teh Classix?
Adam Gopnik has a thing in last week's New Yorker on adding and subtracting stuff from works of art. (It's not online; the "abstract" is here).
The beginning part has to do with literary classics, and it has to do with subtraction. Evidently, some unnamed British company is putting out shortened versions of the classics -- books like Anna Karinina, Vanity Fair, Moby Dick. (Unnamed by me, that is).
Gopnik goes on to say some reasonable things, like part of what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece is its crazier qualities, which just don't come out in a shortened edited version. He gives some examples.
He doesn't mention, though, the total fakery of the premise these guys are offering. The ad copy will make you want to vomit: "The great classics contain passionate romance, thrilling adventure, arresting characters, and unforgettable scenes and situations. But finding time to read them can be a problem."
Uh, hello? Did these guys take a logic class? Obviously if you have time to read a version of Moby Dick that is half as long, you have time to read the whole thing. . . it will just take twice as long.
So obviously there's some shenanigans. And a moment's thought reveals the truth: the target is people who have the time to read but not the patience. I guess it just sounds nicer to say, "I don't have the time." Though I don't know who they're trying not to offend. It's not like Melville's going to be moping around about the comments he gets on his blog or whatever.
But it seems to me they should be more honest and up front about it, because the potential target audience of people who have no patience is truly enormous.
I was at the gym yesterday and I was watching Much Music (which is Canadian MTV; don't get me started). They had a countdown of the greatest videos of all time. I was watching the end. Number three was "Weapon of Choice" with Chistopher Walken. Number two was "Thriller." Number one was Johnny Cash's "Hurt."
The commenters went on and on about Cash's video and how moving and real it was. But they never actually showed it. In fact, they didn't show any videos. They just showed clips, little pieces, interpersed with discussion. I know it's old news that MTV doesn't play any videos, but this was, like, a whole show about videos! With a number one video of all time! And they couldn't show it!
I guess videos, which used to be the symbol of a generation with a short-attention span, are now, you know, "Who has the time? Who has the patience for that?"
The beginning part has to do with literary classics, and it has to do with subtraction. Evidently, some unnamed British company is putting out shortened versions of the classics -- books like Anna Karinina, Vanity Fair, Moby Dick. (Unnamed by me, that is).
Gopnik goes on to say some reasonable things, like part of what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece is its crazier qualities, which just don't come out in a shortened edited version. He gives some examples.
He doesn't mention, though, the total fakery of the premise these guys are offering. The ad copy will make you want to vomit: "The great classics contain passionate romance, thrilling adventure, arresting characters, and unforgettable scenes and situations. But finding time to read them can be a problem."
Uh, hello? Did these guys take a logic class? Obviously if you have time to read a version of Moby Dick that is half as long, you have time to read the whole thing. . . it will just take twice as long.
So obviously there's some shenanigans. And a moment's thought reveals the truth: the target is people who have the time to read but not the patience. I guess it just sounds nicer to say, "I don't have the time." Though I don't know who they're trying not to offend. It's not like Melville's going to be moping around about the comments he gets on his blog or whatever.
But it seems to me they should be more honest and up front about it, because the potential target audience of people who have no patience is truly enormous.
I was at the gym yesterday and I was watching Much Music (which is Canadian MTV; don't get me started). They had a countdown of the greatest videos of all time. I was watching the end. Number three was "Weapon of Choice" with Chistopher Walken. Number two was "Thriller." Number one was Johnny Cash's "Hurt."
The commenters went on and on about Cash's video and how moving and real it was. But they never actually showed it. In fact, they didn't show any videos. They just showed clips, little pieces, interpersed with discussion. I know it's old news that MTV doesn't play any videos, but this was, like, a whole show about videos! With a number one video of all time! And they couldn't show it!
I guess videos, which used to be the symbol of a generation with a short-attention span, are now, you know, "Who has the time? Who has the patience for that?"
A Short Pause For Vituperation Or Adam Gopnik Is A Force For Evil
We have all been warned about the dangers of anonymous rants on the internet, so I will not spend a lot of time discussing the history of my dislike for Adam Gopnik. If you would like further details, email me at this address, and I will be happy to oblige.
I always believed this dislike to be a personal prejudice, perhaps arising from envy over his years in France, his range of knowledge, his status as man of letters. I have changed my mind.
In the most recent New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has an essay about abridged versions of books and the extras in DVDs, and what these things have to teach us about the nature of art. I didn't get it.
(I would also like to state for the record that having a special issue of the New Yorker about "the arts" strikes me as idiotic, and that I noticed a distinct anti-Trilling slant in their article about Jacques Barzun.)
But the course of saying what he has to say brings him to the movie Hollywoodland, which is one of those movies about Old Hollywood which I didn't want to see because it looked dull.
This is what Adam Gopnik has to say about it: "The tale of how the guy who played Superman on a cheap, forgotten TV series shot himself lacks the grip of tragedy, even pop tragedy, which demands, after all, that the hero once counted. (Joe Orton's life can be made ugly and tragic because the scale of his gift implies both conditions; but George Reeve's death is merely sad and a little sordid.)"
I've been thinking about writing about it for a while, and during that time I wondered if my initial outrage was excessive and then I typed in that quote. I am now perfectly satisfied with my initial outrage.
Adam Gopnik thinks that the unhappy extinction of human life can only become ugly and tragic if the life extinguished possessed the gifts to make it so. George Reeve (Superman!) doesn't make the grade; I don't know about the rest of us.
Now, a more charitable interpretation is that Adam Gopnik just doesn't feel like the movie in question made us believe in the importance of George Reeve. This would be wrong.
"The enormous care lavished on material that would never be worthy of the effort is more moving than the film."
I don't think of myself as given to moral outrage. I do believe that all of our lives contain at least some material worthy of enormous care, rising to the level of ugly and tragic. Or at least that there's no dividing line between the more gifted and the less so, making their sorrows are ugly and tragic, and ours are sad and a little sordid.
Human life is not well-designed for human beings. The tragedy of that is free-ranging and always tragedy. Except, of course, when it's comedy, which is an entirely different matter.
I always believed this dislike to be a personal prejudice, perhaps arising from envy over his years in France, his range of knowledge, his status as man of letters. I have changed my mind.
In the most recent New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has an essay about abridged versions of books and the extras in DVDs, and what these things have to teach us about the nature of art. I didn't get it.
(I would also like to state for the record that having a special issue of the New Yorker about "the arts" strikes me as idiotic, and that I noticed a distinct anti-Trilling slant in their article about Jacques Barzun.)
But the course of saying what he has to say brings him to the movie Hollywoodland, which is one of those movies about Old Hollywood which I didn't want to see because it looked dull.
This is what Adam Gopnik has to say about it: "The tale of how the guy who played Superman on a cheap, forgotten TV series shot himself lacks the grip of tragedy, even pop tragedy, which demands, after all, that the hero once counted. (Joe Orton's life can be made ugly and tragic because the scale of his gift implies both conditions; but George Reeve's death is merely sad and a little sordid.)"
I've been thinking about writing about it for a while, and during that time I wondered if my initial outrage was excessive and then I typed in that quote. I am now perfectly satisfied with my initial outrage.
Adam Gopnik thinks that the unhappy extinction of human life can only become ugly and tragic if the life extinguished possessed the gifts to make it so. George Reeve (Superman!) doesn't make the grade; I don't know about the rest of us.
Now, a more charitable interpretation is that Adam Gopnik just doesn't feel like the movie in question made us believe in the importance of George Reeve. This would be wrong.
"The enormous care lavished on material that would never be worthy of the effort is more moving than the film."
I don't think of myself as given to moral outrage. I do believe that all of our lives contain at least some material worthy of enormous care, rising to the level of ugly and tragic. Or at least that there's no dividing line between the more gifted and the less so, making their sorrows are ugly and tragic, and ours are sad and a little sordid.
Human life is not well-designed for human beings. The tragedy of that is free-ranging and always tragedy. Except, of course, when it's comedy, which is an entirely different matter.
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Unquiet Conscience
Louis Althusser told us all about the vague guilt we feel when made aware that a policeman is walking behind us. Then, later, he strangled his wife in his sleep.
There is a lesson in that.
I got a note the other day from the Glendale Public Library telling me that I had an overdue book. The odds were in the Glendale Library's favor; I have a psychological block about returning library books on time. But I was pretty sure I had returned that particular book. Library workers sometimes fail to scan books in properly. I know this, because I was once a library worker myself.
I went back to the Glendale Public Library yesterday; I had other (overdue) books to return. At the front desk I registered my protest about the allegedly overdue book. Also, I checked the shelves. It was there, exactly where it should have been, and I brought it up to the front desk, where they checked it in.
Then I asked if I had any fines and I did and I asked if any of them were for the book in question and they were, so the nice library worker removed those fines and I paid for the actually overdue books and went home.
Here's the point:
Having foreseen exactly this course of events, I felt tremendously unquiet. There was no way for any grudging or suspicious authority to satisfy itself that I had not checked this book out, failed to return it, and then by virtue of claiming to have returned it earlier, gotten out of paying the fine.
Let me be clear. I had not done that. Nor did anyone accuse me of having done that. But because I could not prove I had not done that, I felt guilty.
A couple weeks ago I found myself wandering through Rite Aid with a full bag of Doritos that I had purchased at that same Rite Aid a couple of weeks earlier, and that same vague sense of guilt overcame me. Guilt, I guess, for having put myself into a position susceptible to sinister interpretations.
If, one day, one of the obligations of citizenship is not to put oneself in equivocal situations that could give rise to (ultimately unfounded) suspicions, life will be unbearable.
There is a lesson in that.
I got a note the other day from the Glendale Public Library telling me that I had an overdue book. The odds were in the Glendale Library's favor; I have a psychological block about returning library books on time. But I was pretty sure I had returned that particular book. Library workers sometimes fail to scan books in properly. I know this, because I was once a library worker myself.
I went back to the Glendale Public Library yesterday; I had other (overdue) books to return. At the front desk I registered my protest about the allegedly overdue book. Also, I checked the shelves. It was there, exactly where it should have been, and I brought it up to the front desk, where they checked it in.
Then I asked if I had any fines and I did and I asked if any of them were for the book in question and they were, so the nice library worker removed those fines and I paid for the actually overdue books and went home.
Here's the point:
Having foreseen exactly this course of events, I felt tremendously unquiet. There was no way for any grudging or suspicious authority to satisfy itself that I had not checked this book out, failed to return it, and then by virtue of claiming to have returned it earlier, gotten out of paying the fine.
Let me be clear. I had not done that. Nor did anyone accuse me of having done that. But because I could not prove I had not done that, I felt guilty.
A couple weeks ago I found myself wandering through Rite Aid with a full bag of Doritos that I had purchased at that same Rite Aid a couple of weeks earlier, and that same vague sense of guilt overcame me. Guilt, I guess, for having put myself into a position susceptible to sinister interpretations.
If, one day, one of the obligations of citizenship is not to put oneself in equivocal situations that could give rise to (ultimately unfounded) suspicions, life will be unbearable.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Marc Jacobs' Mid-Life Crisis Is An Inspiration
As I seem to mention all the time these days, I am 40 years old. This seems to me just about the paradigm age for being "middle-aged."
In way, you could say I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis, in the classic sense: I fret about my age; I feel bad that I've accomplished so little; I'm seized by stupid fantasies of life improvement. I know, I'll buy a Corvette! I'll adopt a greyhound! I'll get liposuction!
Last week Jezebel had a story about fashion designer/icon/guru Marc Jacobs and his midlife crisis. The basic elements: Marc Jacbobs has gotten into weird jewelry; Marc Jacobs has one tattoo of an M+M on his arm and another of the girl from "Poltergeist" on his back; Marc Jacobs has been to the gym and wants to pose for you, topless, ballarina-style, showing off his sexy physique. Marc Jacobs wants to say goofy things like "The new concept is to have no concept. Ha!"
Now, this is a midlife crisis. The Jezebel comments were sort of along the lines of "Ugh. What happened to him?" but I think it's way cool. The man is showing us how it's done. I, for one, am paying attention.
One of the things often said about midlife is that it's the time in life when one's thoughts start to turn toward death. This doesn't apply to me, though, because, as I mentioned before, I have always been a freak about death.
I think about the finitude of life all the time, and it never seems to me anything less than a shocking, unbelievable tragedy. I mean unbelievable in the literal sense: I almost cannot believe that this is part of the organization scheme we've got going on here. It's just too shocking.
As far as I'm ccncerned, death is the perfect dilemma for not enjoying life. When you're unhappy, it seems outrageous that, you know, life's a bitch and then you die. No second chance to work it out right the next time. When you're happy, it seems equally outrageous in a different way: what, you mean I'm just getting this all figured out and then it's going to end?? You can't be serious.
In my previous post I mentioned my apprehensiveness about reading The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, since it's a story about a man who can barely move. As I explained, there, though, I needn't have worried: the book is about a strange sort of life, not about death.
No, the book I should have been frightened to read is Philip Roth's Everyman. I just read it this week. Not only is it about death, and about dying, but it's about death and dying in a way that make them seem completely unbearable. Having come to think of Roth as one who makes the unbearable bearable, I felt the absurd emotion of betrayal on top of my ordinary unhappiness.
The "theme" of the book seems to be something like, "Everyone is going to get old and die, and it sucks so so bad. When you start getting older and closer to death it sucks even more. Way more than you expected."
Do I need this? The narrator of the book experiences a certain surprise at finding it so awful to be sick and alone at the end of his life, but is there anyone who isn't aware of the awfulness of geting older, and sicker, and finally dying?
As far as I'm can see, there is only one rational way to deal with the fact that one is going to die, and that is total denial. At least, it's the only way for me. If I think about it, I am paralyzed. If I don't, I am OK. My life is organized around finding ways to not think about it for extended periods of time.
That's why I like Marc Jacobs' mid-life crisis. This guy is having a good time, and he is obviously not thinking about death. He is doing it at no one's expense, really: there's no violence, no belittling of other people, no crabbiness.
He's just having a good time. He's an inspiration to us all. Just as a fashion guru should be. Thanks Marc!
Now if you'll excuse me I gotta go work on my abs.
In way, you could say I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis, in the classic sense: I fret about my age; I feel bad that I've accomplished so little; I'm seized by stupid fantasies of life improvement. I know, I'll buy a Corvette! I'll adopt a greyhound! I'll get liposuction!
Last week Jezebel had a story about fashion designer/icon/guru Marc Jacobs and his midlife crisis. The basic elements: Marc Jacbobs has gotten into weird jewelry; Marc Jacobs has one tattoo of an M+M on his arm and another of the girl from "Poltergeist" on his back; Marc Jacobs has been to the gym and wants to pose for you, topless, ballarina-style, showing off his sexy physique. Marc Jacobs wants to say goofy things like "The new concept is to have no concept. Ha!"
Now, this is a midlife crisis. The Jezebel comments were sort of along the lines of "Ugh. What happened to him?" but I think it's way cool. The man is showing us how it's done. I, for one, am paying attention.
One of the things often said about midlife is that it's the time in life when one's thoughts start to turn toward death. This doesn't apply to me, though, because, as I mentioned before, I have always been a freak about death.
I think about the finitude of life all the time, and it never seems to me anything less than a shocking, unbelievable tragedy. I mean unbelievable in the literal sense: I almost cannot believe that this is part of the organization scheme we've got going on here. It's just too shocking.
As far as I'm ccncerned, death is the perfect dilemma for not enjoying life. When you're unhappy, it seems outrageous that, you know, life's a bitch and then you die. No second chance to work it out right the next time. When you're happy, it seems equally outrageous in a different way: what, you mean I'm just getting this all figured out and then it's going to end?? You can't be serious.
In my previous post I mentioned my apprehensiveness about reading The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, since it's a story about a man who can barely move. As I explained, there, though, I needn't have worried: the book is about a strange sort of life, not about death.
No, the book I should have been frightened to read is Philip Roth's Everyman. I just read it this week. Not only is it about death, and about dying, but it's about death and dying in a way that make them seem completely unbearable. Having come to think of Roth as one who makes the unbearable bearable, I felt the absurd emotion of betrayal on top of my ordinary unhappiness.
The "theme" of the book seems to be something like, "Everyone is going to get old and die, and it sucks so so bad. When you start getting older and closer to death it sucks even more. Way more than you expected."
Do I need this? The narrator of the book experiences a certain surprise at finding it so awful to be sick and alone at the end of his life, but is there anyone who isn't aware of the awfulness of geting older, and sicker, and finally dying?
As far as I'm can see, there is only one rational way to deal with the fact that one is going to die, and that is total denial. At least, it's the only way for me. If I think about it, I am paralyzed. If I don't, I am OK. My life is organized around finding ways to not think about it for extended periods of time.
That's why I like Marc Jacobs' mid-life crisis. This guy is having a good time, and he is obviously not thinking about death. He is doing it at no one's expense, really: there's no violence, no belittling of other people, no crabbiness.
He's just having a good time. He's an inspiration to us all. Just as a fashion guru should be. Thanks Marc!
Now if you'll excuse me I gotta go work on my abs.
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