The seven year hitch: Paris edition

To celebrate our wool-and-copper wedding anniversary, traca da broon and I hopped a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris last Friday to see Tom Waits at Le Grand Rex. This is not the Grand Rex, because I couldn't be arsed to take a picture of it, but just some street corner:


Yes, yes, how romantic! The hitch? We both got nasty colds and were sick the whole time. The train was fantastic, though. The steward shoved a tray of desserts in my face and I gratefully accepted it -- before being told I was only supposed to take one. I had bought a French phrase book but we were too sick and tired to read it. We had to get along for three days on bon jour, café au lait, le menu, grande bière, vin blanc, toilette, voila, merci, and bon soir. And of course, Honh honh honh! and Sacre bleu! In non-English mode, we kept speaking Dutch to the tourist-weary French, a language not one person in Paris speaks.

Our pockets bulging with tissues in various degrees of damp, we ambled with snot-pressured heads vaguely toward the river. I inadvertently took a third Loratadine, meaning I was on three times the daily dose of that anti-sniffling drug, with its side effects of "insomnia, nervousness, and anxiety." We stopped for that meal between lunch and dinner, which turned out to be pigeon-harassed stiff pizza from a nearby street vendor because we'd chosen the one cafe whose kitchen wasn't open, and I could only sit at our tiny iron table drooling and watching pigeons strut around me trying to hypnotize me into giving them peanuts. At another cafe the waitresses couldn't understand me, and the Spanish woman at the next table knocked my beer over with her bag, soaking the only pants I had brought. Being sick in Paris is like being castrated at an orgy.


We fought the crowd and achieved our seats for the Glitter and Doom tour, which I had seen announced via the "press conference" on his site. Le Grad Rex is a glorious space made to seem like you are outside, with a ceiling like a starry dusk and props of exotic villa-ruins on either side of the hall. It was hot inside, the seats in front of us were millimeters from our knees, and the slope was so steep we felt that if we let go of our chairs we would tumble forward all the way down to the stage. The well-named Mr. Waits started 45 minutes late, and we remarked how if it wasn't Tom Waits we would be crawling back to bed. After 44 minutes and 58 seconds, I simply had to have some water, and as soon as I had lurched to my feet, causing my neighbors to stand and let me through, the lights fell and Tom Waits strode onto the stage. But I had to have water. When I came back I couldn't find our seats and watched the first number squatting in an aisle.

He was so fantastic he actually captured and held our disease-damaged attention. We weren't really expecting a sloppy, slurring piano-man-clown, but then again, we kind of were. He did have a kind of tramp-on-his-first-interview look, with an old hat he kept taking off and bowing very deeply with. His band sounded absolutely gorgeous. His son Casey was on the drums, and his other son Sullivan, a teenager, sat in on "assistant clarinet and saxophone." The man himself did play a solo piano set of tearjerkers, but mostly he was center stage at the mic, wheezing and howling and quivering like he needed an exorcist, and stamping his feet around on some old boards with chalk in them, so that dust flew up when he wanted, and there was an old bell by his foot which he kicked from time to time.


He stopped one song when the audience started clapping along. "Now, when you're all clapping, and you're a little bit off, it throws me off. No, no, it's okay, I understand. You've never worked together before. But that's why I wear the hat. I'm the conductor. We're gonna start this song again, and this time wait for me to give the signal." Later, when he gave the "karate chop" final note signal to the band at the end of a different song, he shot a scowl at the drummer, his own son, who had let two extra beats slip.

He also told a story: "The last time I was in Paris, I went swimming in a pond. There was a sign there. I don't read French, and it probably said whatever you do don't swim in this pond. I thought it said Welcome to Paris. So a few months later, I had some discomfort, and it turned out I had accidentally swallowed some tadpoles and now had three bullfrogs living in my stomach. The doctor said, 'Of course, it's up to you what to do about it ... it's your choice.' So I kept them. They live right here, over to one side, in their own little world." He played for 2 full hours, and then came back for an encore that included "Way Down in the Hole" (The Wire's opening music), and his dark version of Disney's "Heigh Ho" (scroll down to Disc 3), and my favorite of his songs, "Jockey Full of Bourbon."


Next day we bought Metro day passes and got off somewhere south and west on the map and ate lunch. Lunch is a great opportunity to play the Mock the Foreign Menu's English Game, and we found a winner -- maybe the all-time winner, anywhere: Eventail d'avocat et pamplemousse aux crevettes, which the restaurant had translated into "Range of lawyers and grapefruit to shrimps."



We'd done the tourist bit before and got the idea to try and find the famous "Left Bank," thinking we'd go hang out where all the artistic American ex-pats had hung out and perhaps absorb enough of that coolness to forget our colds, but we had no guidebook and couldn't read the French maps, and when I asked our waiter where it was he shook his head gravely and said, "Never heard of it." We wandered in the heat and finally at an Internet cafe discovered that the term just means the left (south) side of the river. In other words, we'd been walking around the Left Bank trying find it. So more walking. At a perfect people-watching cafe right in the thick of things, on the Seine, we commenced to pound beers to ward off the heat and drown our viruses, laughing at how sick we were, then coughing, then laughing some more, then sniffling and asking each other for tissues.


Finally we unstuck our asses from our seats and wobbled toward a little diagonal street.

"What's that?"
"Some fantastic historical thing we would go into if we weren't sick."
"Oh."

After walking till we had sweated out everything we'd drunk already, we stopped at an absolutely charming little art nouveau cafe tucked in a cobblestone alley next to the crumbling ruins of a church-like building and split a carafe of wine, which turned out to be a mistake. My system was already overloaded, and you can only fake being fine for so long. So we set out again north, vaguely toward our hotel, crossing the Seine at sunset over a wide bridge that was lined on both sides end to end with families and groups of friends who had spread out blankets and brought baskets of bread and cheese and wine and fruit, and we said Ah, so that's what you do, because you would certainly go broke after even a week of eating and drinking at the prices we were seeing. At one point I squinted an 11-euro beer on a bill -- around $18. And it was only a Heineken.

I was like the walking dead, and we finally got irritated with each other when we couldn't find a good path back to the hotel on the last night. There were no good streets, they all went the wrong way at useless angles. We used our Metro cards for the last time, getting off at a stop we knew, but unsure of which direction to go. And did we want to stop and eat one last time, and where, or keep walking? We even ran through the I-don't-care-myself-but-I-hate-it-when-you-don't-care routine. At the hotel, sweat-drenched and collapsing from fatigue, we each took a bath in the small tub. In bed clean, with the curtains blowing warm air on us, we were too tired to read. Determinedly, I managed the superhuman effort of turning my head in what I imagined was seductive fashion toward my bride -- and was greeted with a soft snore. Soon, quite, quite, soon, my own joined hers in chorus.


Waiting by the train station at yet another sidewalk cafe, we ordered beers. The waiter went away and came back and said, "I'm so sorry, but we only have the Brown Pelican." (When we turned the bottle around, we spied the not-while-pregnant warning shown below -- just look at that brazen tramp guzzle!)


On the train back, two little kids sat behind us. At first they were cute, but as I tried to sleep one of them began a 3-hour shrieking exercise. The other kept reaching through the seats grabbing at me. Then, seeing my silvering hair -- which makes me look distinguished and sophisticated -- he cried, "Opa! Opa!" ("Grandpa! Grandpa!"). Which is just what a 42-year-old wants to hear.

I kept trying to get good photos of both of us. Ah well, next time maybe. A typical one:

Arda Collins wins 2008 Yale Younger Poet Award

As Possum put it in her alert to me, "this is a damn big deal." The award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets is the oldest literary award in the United States. It crowns the best entry among poets under 40 who have not published a book of poetry. Past winners include James Agee, Adrienne Rich, James Wright, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, James Tate, John Hollander, Robert Hass, Carolyn Forche, and famously, not Sylvia Plath. Arda's book, to be published by Yale University press, is called It Is Daylight. Our classmate Arda is an editor at Gut Cult, and her poetry was selected for the prize this year by Louis Glück. Huge congratulations to Arda!

Cristina Henriquez in Atlantic 2008 Fiction Issue

You can read the story "Carmen Elcira: A (Love) Life," but you should go out and buy the issue too. Maybe best of all: You can also listen to her read the story! Well done, Cristina.

Cheesus Christ

Is this a uniquely American genre, I wonder? Repeatedly finding the holy in the banal, the ridiculous, the tasty, fatty, and scrumptious? What a weird, weird type of news item to keep popping up over and over again. Who knew the Almighty worked through Frito-Lay products? The things is, it really does look like a crucifix.

Josh Emmons interview

If you spent much time in Iowa City in certain years immediately straddling the millenium, it's likely you had the good fortune to knock back a few while standing around on someone's porch engaged in a hilarious conversation with with that chill-yet-dashing gadabout, Josh Emmons. The author of The Loss of Leon Meed is out with his second novel, Prescription For a Superior Existence, a thinking person's adventure story of a man ensnared in the machinations of a fictional California suicide cult. The book is a delicious read, an un-put-downable Bay Area philosophical thriller that rockets to its satisfying finish all too quickly. We caught up with Josh on the Internets, and the results are available now for you to savor:

EG: What was the genesis of this character Jack Smith and his story? He is a man of extreme appetites and multiple addictions. Is there something in you that can relate to him?

JE: It's tempting to repeat Flaubert's line about Emma Bovary ("C'est moi") when discussing Jack Smith, so I'll do it. He's me. Or: he's a version of me if I'd continued a druggy through line I began in high school, and if I'd leaned toward business instead of English classes in college. His compulsions toward sex, alcohol, food, work, pills, and television are different from mine in degree but not in kind, which made it easy for me to write him in first-person. As a teenager, for example, I loved getting high and was drunk and stoned for two years solid, until I had a minor breakdown and joined Narcotics Anonymous and thought that I was, as Elvis Costello put it, "living a life that is almost like suicide." Some of the despair of that period shows up in Jack in a stylized, fantastical way.

EG: Is it your sense that the world is careening toward unavoidable disaster, and is this book your way of dealing with conflicting impulses in your own life? Was it hard to write about this feeling that the world is going to hell without ending up sounding cliché or trite? Did you read other end-of-times/cult fiction as research? For example, I wonder if you read The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq?

JE: I'm pretty convinced we're headed toward disaster, and PASE is a product of that (dark, destructive) thinking, which began around the time I had to evacuate from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. A few months ago I diagnosed myself with what some psychiatrists are calling "eco-anxiety," wherein fears about global warming have become all-consuming, so since then I've tried to think about it less. Not because there's less reason to worry, but because besides recycling and taking public transportation and eating/shopping organically/locally, I'm not taking any radical steps like getting off the electricity grid or becoming an activist, and don't think that ringing my hands and rending my garments and whatever are helpful.

While writing PASE, though, I was totally eco-anxious and seized on the idea of weaving the most sensationalistic part of climate change projections—the end-of-the-world scenario—into the religion's doomsday prophecy. Unlike real historical millennial movements, which have used the Book of Revelations and other arbitrary systems for determining the world's end, PASE's environmental forecast was believable to me (and continues to be, sadly), so I was able to write
about it credulously. I'm glad this part of the book doesn't come across as too cliché or trite; I worried that it could with a plot as over-the-top as PASE's. I haven't read Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island (though I love his Elementary Particles) and wasn't reading other apocalyptic cult fiction at the time, but I thought about The Matrix (Jack's possible messianic role is distantly related to Neo's) and A Clockwork Orange and Riddley Walker. And Cat's Cradle was rattling around in the back of my head.

EG: How did you go about creating Montgomery Shoales and his new religion? Did you take any real-life movements as a starting point? Have you ever been involved with a fringe religion?

JE: PASE is basically a Buddhism/Scientology/Christian-Science mashup. One of Buddhism's core philosophies, that desire (or attachment) is the root of all suffering, runs through most religions in some fashion or other and seemed like a good sound baseline for PASE, both because there's an element of truth in it and because the world's in a materialist place right now. Of course human life has always been about getting and retaining things, from food and water to shelter to gaming consoles to stock options, but given the volumes we're working with these days, as Americans' credit problems attest, the situation seems extreme. I thought that a religion like PASE, while unattractive to most people, could find followers in a climate like ours.

I haven't been involved in any fringe religions or cults—my own spiritual journey has been from atheist to agnostic, where it's forever ended—though I'm interested in them. My parents grew up in a conservative Christian sect, the Church of Christ (there are two groups with this name, and they were in the more mainstream one), but had converted to Buddhism (my dad) and a kind of open-air Catholic mysticism (my mom) by the time I was born, so I grew up exposed to a couple of traditions that I found equally attractive and untrue. The idea for PASE came to me one afternoon when I visited the Scientology Center at the corner of Sunset and L. Ron Hubbard Blvds. in Los Angeles. I was given a private showing of an introductory film that was so cult-like and off-putting that by its end I had a moment's panic I wouldn't be allowed to leave. Jack's story gradually developed from there.

EG: It's impressive how you were able to manage to tell Jack's spiritual journey from his point of view, going through so many belief/unbelief flip-flops while maintaining his voice. I mean, he lurches from extreme to extreme fairly rapidly but his voice is somehow the same throughout. Was that hard to do? What inspired you to try that?

JE: I thought that because he's narrating the novel in flashback, it'd be best to keep his voice consistent throughout. He is not the Jack, or Jacks, he was even a week before the book begins, and so describes his former selves and states of mind with a kind of distance and dispassion in order to decide what's ultimately true (he's hoping to will into existence a great clarity of thought). The trick was to make each of his shifts—from doubt about PASE to faith in it to something else, from wariness of Mary to love for her to rejection of her to something else—seem plausible and true while he's presenting it.

EG: There's one scene where a PASE-produced video is being shown. You write:

The screen then sequed into a montage of people representing nearly every race, culture, age, gender, class, and physical condition ... either seated against a solid white backdrop or engaged in charitable activities.A Japanese schoolgirl pushed an elderly Egyptian man in a wheelchair into a PASE station. A Dutch businessman read from The Prescription to barefooted Mayan Indians in a hilltop Guatemalan classroom as an ox stuck his head through the glassless window.

Aside from being hilarious, it really captures the banal, absurdly PC essence of so many religious propaganda efforts. I'm thinking of pamphlet illustrations I once saw, of lions and lambs and attractive children holding apples and learning from wise, smiling leaders. It's always on hills, like the default Windows XP background.

JE: Yeah, for a second I was going to say that new religions, unlike old ones, have to keep going and growing in order to establish their legitimacy in front of a skeptical world, and so try to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. I was thinking of the mandatory mission year that Mormons go on. And the fact that Judaism doesn't lift a finger to attract new followers. But Christianity, a fairly old religion, still wants to convert everyone, so I don't know. Maybe we should remember Tracy Flick's observation in Election that "Coca-Cola is the number one soft drink in the world, and it spends more money on advertising than anyone."

EG: When I got to the end of the book, I could almost see it as a movie. Have you licensed the film rights? Any thoughts about how you'd like the film to be made if it is made? Or would Scientology sense it was hitting a little close to home and use its grip on Hollywood prevent its production?

JE: I have a film agent for PASE, but so far no one has optioned the rights. I suspect this is because its prose is less commercial (or friendly or whatever) than its plot, though it could be because of PASE's resemblance to Scientology, a sensitive subject in Hollywood. Not sure. I'd love Charlie Kaufman to turn it into a film if he were in an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind mood (as opposed to an Adaptation mood), and would only really be disappointed if it became a boilerplate thriller (though it's hard to imagine anyone bothering to do this).

EG: How was writing your second novel different from writing your first? Did you have a two-book deal?

JE: The first book is all about regular people tentatively working out their problems, and I wrote it quickly, a completed draft in a year, whereas the second is more concerned with ideas than characters and required more research and time, about two years to finish, even though it's a hundred pages shorter. They're so different that I can't say one was more enjoyable or satisfying than the other, though The Loss of Leon Meed appears to be more broadly appealing to people. I had a one-book deal for Leon with an editor who then moved from Scribner to Riverhead, so PASE went to another editor at Scribner, the great Nan Graham (who edits Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx and others).

EG: Have you read anything recently that knocked your socks off?

The last few books that blew me away were Stendhal's The Red and the Black (I'd read it in college and found it boring, whereas really it's one of the ten best novels ever), Alan Weisman's The World Without Us (though it aids and abets eco-anxiety), and Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji (damn this is good). Something I'd never heard of but greatly enjoyed recently is John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra.

EG: What are you doing nowadays besides writing? You went to Iowa recently to teach a summer course, but the flooding canceled that.

JE: I'm not doing enough. My Iowa class was canceled due to the flood, but in May I taught a two-week class at Northern Michigan University, where the lovely Rebecca Johns-Trissler works. Right now I'm at Yaddo until the end of August. When I go back to Philadelphia, I'm going to try to get a job at Greenpeace, though I doubt it'll be possible.

EG: What's next on your to-write list?

JE: I'm in the middle of a novel called Ambleside, about a couple that have been married long enough to wonder which is more flawed, them or the institution. At the moment it's a closely contained drama about relationships in the Revolutionary Road and Scenes from a Marriage vein, though it might open up to include more about the town where the couple is staying. I've also started writing a romantic-comedy screenplay that's shamelessly (shamefully?) commercial.

Cartoon

The Onion on Cheever

Do I remember correctly Frank telling a story about playing the piano like a monkey for a drunken Cheever? Possibly not. In any event, this is great. Also: check out Richard Ford reading "Reunion" on The New Yorker's podcast thing.

Lawful Good Meet Chaotic Evil

What am I more excited about? The Batpod? Ledger's joker- a psychopathic misfits fan with Chicago accenting his voice from behind his nose? Or that Chicago-cum-Gotham itself-- the boyhood home of the Nolan boys, a city they apparently see, as I do, to be our nation's most achingly poetic? It's an unanswerable question. Whatever the case, I can't wait for the 12:15 matinee.

Still, perhaps two years after it was first released, the above image still defines my expectations for this movie. Nothing in the trailers I've seen or previews I've read contradicts it tonally- in fact, those original inferences have mostly just been deepened and refined. And that's a good thing.

UPDATE: Yeah, it was great. Ledger was very good- didn't change my life or anything, but I guess if he wins an oscar he'll deserve it more than most. He was a good actor.

I spent the last third of the movie naggingly distracted by something I read this morning in Dana Stephens's review- a too-clever-by-half comparison of Batman to George W. Bush.

Fallacious parallels between reality in fiction are sort of the problem with that guy in the first place, aren't they? In other words, our president's problem isn't so much that he's like Batman, it's that he thinks he's like Batman and that this supposed similarity justifies his decisions. But an important part of the point of a character like batman is that he is wholly fictional-- a psychologic totem, an ethic manifest-- not only not a real person, but not of a real world. Batman's world exists for one and one purpose only: to test him so that he may overcome and so be more his true batman self. I don't envy our president the choices he's had to make but that doesn't make it any less clear that he's made them the wrong way-- something Batman is incapable of doing in any meaningful sense.

I, for one, welcome our new Poet Overlord

We have a new Poet Laureate of the United States: Kay Ryan. Bay Area resident, openly gay, writes "accessible" poetry. Anyone read her stuff? Is this a good thing? Do poets laureate matter?

Lost Sounds, Volume 1

As a new feature of Earthgoat, I bring you "El Gordo De Amore's Lost Sounds." I've been trolling the few remaining record stores and pawnshops of this great nation to bring you the best in lost music. Today, I give you: MeeMee and Maia's "It was a Dog that Peed on My Baby."

As far as I can tell, MeeMee and Maia released only one record during their short lifetime, Honestly, Move Over, a collection of lo fi, droney songs in the tradition of the Velvets. MeeMee, 23, and Maia, 26, were "Siamese twins" joined at the hips, the result of an explosion in the glue factory they worked at in Nova Scotia. This accident left them connected until they died in a freak heli-skiing accident in 1995. "It was a Dog that Peed on My Baby" has all the classic pieces of a MeeMee and Maia tune, including rudimentary drums, rudimentary guitar, and somthing they called "The Lander," a space-noise generator that appears on every single one of their songs.

MeeMee and Maia -- It Was A Dog That Peed on My Baby


Fun Fact: MeeMee's real name was "Tony."

Highest Chart Position: None.

Submit to The New Anonymous

There's a new literary mag afoot called The New Anonymous. It's just what it sounds like. No name on your submission, the readers never see names, the editors are anonymous. Here's how to submit your stuff there:

1. All submissions should be e-mailed directly to The Mediator. It is The Mediator’s responsibility to a) protect the identity of the writer throughout the editorial and publication process and b) assure that all work is forwarded to the editorial board anonymously.

2. Attach your submission as a single word file (.doc format). This applies to poets too, i.e., if you are sending six poems, put them all in one document.

3. Do not include your name anywhere in the document. Time permitting, The Mediator will relieve your submission of your name; otherwise, it will simply be rejected.

4. In the body of your e-mail please include only your contact info.

5. In the subject of your e-mail, please write

a. For fiction/prose: “Title of Submission”
b. For poetry: “Poems”

Your submissions, which will be processed solely by The Mediator, should be e-mailed to:

TheNewAnonMediator@gmail.com

We want to keep this process as pure possible, so if you want to submit using a pseudonymous e-mail address, that's okay with us.

If you have questions concerning your submission status or the journal in general, please use the following e-mail (not the one above):

TheNewAnon@gmail.com

Upon receiving your submission, The Mediator will send you a document—tendered by our attorney—which ensures that your submission will be, henceforth, relieved of its authorship. Your submission will then be sent, via e-mail, to the editors.

You may submit as many submissions as you wish. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please inform us if your piece is accepted elsewhere. We embrace previously published work as well.

We are open to a range of fictions, prose and poetry. We accept anything from experimental fiction to cultural critique, from the uber-elliptical to heroic verse. Of course, the idea of Anonymous translations of Anonymous work appeals to us as well.

No more than 1 piece of fiction/prose per e-mail submission.

No more than 7 poems per e-mail submission.

Untruth to Power

On the New Yorker cover (to which I'd rather not link):

I won't do the offended two-step here, because I'm no good at it. But really, what's most obnoxious about this image isn't in the image itself but in the vibe of superiority. "We," the sophisticates reading the NYer, are so much better than "them," the trogs still reading email fwds at all (let alone ones so coarse as to include sublimated racism!) that our mockery of their ignorance will go right over their heads. That they will miss the point will only validate what we knew all along: we are so great! Too great for them to ever understand! Persuasion would be pointless! When they use this cover as further "evidence" supportive of their hatefulness, well, at least we'll be able to smugly sneer over it! Once again, our superiority will be affirmed! In fact, that sneering is an end unto itself, is it not? It keeps us warm at night and nourishes our children, body and soul!

Satire, particularly political satire, works best from a position of morality, not pointed amorality. Not self-absorbed and thoughtless arrogance. That's the real issue here. Thoughtless irony isn't irony- its just an excuse to say what you don't have the courage to say straight. Truth via untruth is a legitimate tool of artistic expression, but the danger is the way it slides so seductively into self-congratulation. A good satirist polices himself first. He holds himself to a higher standard than this--or at least his editors usually do.

Was This a Good Idea, New Yorker?

Or maybe not so much. In defense of the cover, Remnick, the editor, says that readers will get the joke. I don't doubt that. But will readers appreciate the joke as satire (it's not the most sophisticated image) and will certain nefarious non-readers use the cover against Obama?

My feeling is that good satire always has a place, but this is lazy and sensationalistic, and if this does anything, it will be bad for Obama. Anyone else?

Have you read Akpan's book?

If any of you goats have read (or bought and intend to read, like, now) Uwem Akpan's story collection Say You Are One of Them, and would be interested in maybe writing a review for an African magazine, email the Sheriff at earthgoat at gmail dot com for the 411.

Delta Force

Obama, confronted this week with a FISA bill spinnable as a GWOT "security" issue, voted for strength. Progressives (his most important base?) are gutted. But many pundits and realists say he's stronger as a general election candidate if he's not "on the fringe of his party." After this week, has anybody's opinion changed about how progressive Obama will be if he wins office?

Watching this put me in mind of the dramas over "security" coming this fall to a Denver near you.

No! Cookie Monster!

As I watch the saccharine meanderings of Calliou on Children's Television, I hark back to the really weird and wonderful thing that was Sesame Street when we were little.

Above, Stevie Wonder, Sesame Street, 1973.

Supposedly, the DVD releases of the first few seasons of Sesame Street came with a warning to parents that it was much grittier than what we watch today.

No kidding. The above looks like Saturday Night Light circa 1977.

I think one of the kids in the background is smoking.

No puppets.

But, as a side note, Jimmy and Mary Frances absolutely adore dancing to this song as I cook dinner.

With the death of adventure playgrounds, the rise of bike helmets, and the disappearance of lawn darts, I worry for the next generation. The world is a much richer, deeper, scarier, and even darker place than Barney would lead you to believe.

Plus, the above is simply the coolest thing I've ever seen from the Children's Television Workshop.

Some Good Books

I've been reading a lot. Here are some good ones. I'm looking for more good ones if people have suggestions:

(Gotta go to work, can't make the links. Sorry, you'll have to use the google. I'm too lazy to be a blogger anymore).


Good Ones:

A Drink Before the War (Lehane)
Darkness, Take My Hand (Lehane)
Postman (Lennon)
Technopoly (Postman)
The Technics of Time (Mumford)
Our Story Begins (Wolff- reviewed for TOC- the section's second ever six star review)
The Soul Thief (Baxter- I'm not so sold on the ending but its baroque cleverness was perfectly appropriate)


Some I've picked up but not read yet:

The Torrents of Spring (Turgenev, not that American guy)
The Lost World (Doyle)


Some I read less recently but have not sufficiently praised in these particular environs:

You Remind Me of Me (Chaon-having replaced "The Count of Monte Cristo" as my favorite ever)
The Tesseract (Garland)


Some books I didn't love so much but finished anyway:

Bright Lights, Big City (Mcininininininery)
The Sun Also Rises (That American guy-A good friend practically took this personally. I hope no one here does).

Judge orders YouTube to hand over pretty much everything ever to Viacom, including who you are and what you have watched

Whoa. This cannot stand. Can it? (You legal types have an opinion?)

Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger

I was surprised and, it must be admitted, titillated when I received an email a few years ago from a publisher offering to send me a book to review here on Earth Goat. Once I took down the balloons and said farewell to the clowns and dancing horses, though, and actually sat down to read the book, I decided against doing the review. The book just wasn't good. This happened again and again, and each time the book I received was just not worth the time or effort. And as for books by us or other Workshoppers, reviews here would be suspicious, of course, which is why we interview Iowa people here instead of review their books. Well, I’ve finally been sent a book that is causing me to break both rules at once: Undiscovered Country by Lin Engler.

Lin Enger teaches writing at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, and is an Iowa Writers’ workshop graduate, but I had never heard of him before. He has updated a classic tragedy while admirably avoiding the problems that could accompany such an endeavor. Undiscovered Country is Hamlet meets Fargo. Like A Thousand Acres, the novel sets the basic frame of a Shakespeare play in contemporary America, this time in Northern Minnesota. The narrator Jesse is writing the book both to confess to his younger brother and set himself straight about a terrible series of events that occurred during his teen years: While hunting with his father, Jesse discovers the old man with the top of his head blown off. Harold’s death is ruled a suicide, but his ghost appears to Jesse and tells a different story. You see, Jesse’s paternal uncle had designs on Jesse’s mom, and….

At first I thought this sounded like a good idea, and then I decided it would be too hard to pull off and began the book skeptically. During the first 20 pages or so I wondered how my interest was going to be sustained, since I knew the basic plot already. Turned out, as is proper, it was the characters that drew me in and kept me going. Jesse is a thoughtful kid who, like Hamlet, is justifiably confused about whom he’s supposed to believe and what he’s supposed to do. His mother (Genevieve) is a distant, ambiguous figure in his life. The scenes with her are really creepy and uncomfortable. Ditto the scenes with the uncle (Clay), a jealous younger loser-type brother who never measured up to Harold, mayor of the town. As you would hope, Harold’s ghost keeps coming back to urge Jesse to action, each time more decayed and ragged and disgusting.

How can Jesse determine Clay’s guilt or innocence? His satisfying schemes are exactly what a kid would come up with. The awkwardness and horror of dealing with such stuff at such a tender age, of accusing your uncle of killing your father, is correctly milked for all it’s worth in the book. The action builds quietly while the reader squirms in the proximity of such a close, almost stifling small-town family drama (one unforgettable scene between Jesse and his mother takes place in a sauna). There are some pitfalls Engler could have fallen into. One would be pretending that the story wasn’t Hamlet, as if Hamlet didn’t exist in the world of the story. What Engler does instead is nifty: He makes Jesse grow up to be an English teacher and he directly addresses the Hamlet parallels. Yet he doesn’t go overboard with it -- he mentions it a few times and moves on.

The tension isn’t resolved until the very end, and the ending, I’ll just say, is gratifying as hell. It reminded me a bit of Antoine Wilson’s The Interloper. Both books are suspenseful and hard to put down, written in deceptively plain and simple prose, depict awkward family struggles with steadily mounting intensity, and sport a vein of disturbing darkness running through them. Recommended summer reading if you like a sort of innocent creepiness that becomes very addictive.

America, America

A very positive review of Ethan's new book appears in the Washington Post.

It's a girl

Brando and TLB have good news!

Atlantic article on the Googlizing of our brains

Continuing with this summer's theme of how the Internet is ruining reading and writing and publishing and everything we all liked about the good old days of yesteryear, Nicholas Carr has an interesting piece, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" that updates the age-old story about how tools shape the user of the tool -- in this case, it's the Googlization of the brain and the end of the ability to read books. I liked the article, though it promises more than it delivers, biting into a compelling subject and then swiftly choking it down instead of chewing it the proper 33 times. Maybe that was part of the point. Then again, it seems like it might be part of -- irony alert -- a book.

After relating anecdotes from friends and colleagues who find their ability to read books or even long blog posts rapidly deteriorating, Carr asks why this is happening. And it's because our brains are becoming more machine-like. Here's a sample passage:

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web -— the more links we click and pages we view -— the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link —- the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Books and the Innertubes have two different purposes: the book is for leisure, it disconnects you from everything -- a book becomes its own Google, the only God-damned Google you need, and it balloons into everything else besides, holding the universe including, most importantly, you the reader, in its generous mind hug. Google, on the other hand, offers a chintzy path to every sparkling sidetrack detail about every single thing you could think of and a great deal you never would have thought to think of, all the while carefully placing billboards alongside you on your journey to, as it usually turns out, noplace in particular.

Yesterday I Googled "cutting dog whiskers" (because our dog groomer did this to our dog and I was worried) and ten minutes later I was reading about the French president's wife. You may surf the Web, but you Scuba dive a book. Cranial Googlizing is about getting you to trade in your air tank and flippers for bleached bangs and a boogieboard (all due respect to the actual sport of surfing).

Also:

The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

Well ... deep reading is possible because somebody else did the deep thinking for you and set it down so you could follow. Which is wonderful -- probably the most wonderful thing humans ever did, as far as I'm concerned. What I worry about is, yes, okay, the Internet may be mutating our minds to become easily distracted and unable to focus on one thing for long -- but what about the other end of it? What about writing? Yes, yes, "It's great for research!" Face it, though. Research is for details. In most cases, research is that perfect doorknob. It ain't the house.

Charles Dickens did not spend hours a day chuckling at Youtube clips or sailing off on an Andrew Sullivan link. Instead, he sat in his attic and wrote. With pen and paper. His children would come upstairs to tell him it was time for dinner and catch him acting out his characters' dialog in front of a mirror. I just think the kind of material that comes from such meditation and isolation is probably gone forever. I mean, there's no denying I spend more time dicking around on the Internets than I do writing my book (see this post). The totally tubular Tubes may be lobotomizing readers, but it's also surely chipping away at the ability to create the things readers can't seem to read anymore anyway.

P.S. You can cut a dog's whiskers, but not a cat's.

Russia 3, Netherlands 1

It sure was a heartbreaker. No score in the first half, but Russia was clearly outhustling Holland. In the second half, the Russkies struck first, and there followed some truly agonizing dozens of minutes until with a mere 4 minutes left, van Nistelrooy nodded in a goal that brought sweet relief and ushered in an overtime situation. It was nice to be able to breathe again, and to hear screaming.

Then Russia just plain kicked Holland's ass, including a goal that sailed right between Van der Sar's knees. ("He didn't deserve that," someone said.) Watch that kid Andrei Arshavin in the Russia-Spain match on Thursday. Holy God what a rosy-cheeked scrapper! He was everywhere. The only consolation for the Dutch seemed to be pride in the legendary Guus Hiddink, the Dutch mastermind coach who is now coaching for Russia. Hiddink took a nobody South Korean team to the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup, and then Australia to the knock-out round in 2006. "He is smiling because of the ten million euros in his bank account," said a bystander. "After Russia, if Uganda says 'we will pay you 10 million euros,' then he will take Uganda to the 2014 World Cup Final."

Not sure whom to root for now. I was way impressed by Russia, by their tenacity and spirit (it's better to be beaten than to lose, if you know what I mean), and they have that Dutch coach... I'd love to see Turkey go all the way, as they've been the most exciting, and incredibly lucky, pulling from behind in every match so far, and there are so many Turks here struggling for money and respect, and they serve me so many kebabs, it would be fun to see them on top of anything for once. Spain... I guess I speak a little Spanish. Germany... I really like their beer. I suppose I'm rooting for Russia and Turkey to make it to the finals. And then I'll root for both.

Paper Trail

If the flood efforts were any reflection of cultural priorities, the locals here proclaimed a tie between byte-based and paper-based knowledge: thousands simultaneously bulwarked the university's electronic brain in the Lindquest Center and fire-brigaded books from the UI Main Library's basement. (Good show, IC!)

It seems like forever that I've been hearing the bound, printed book is sure to die and be surpassed by e-books and blogs and other electronic media. The reasons offered are legion: Ease of delivery, business margins, print-on-demand savings, democracy of publishing, environmental concerns. . . . . So, why hasn't it happened yet? I used to think that the world of book buyers and bibliophiles - despite loving the feel of a book in the hands - were just waiting for the right delivery device. Now, some say the wait is over with the Kindle. So, again, the drum of doom begins to beat.

Does this changing of the guard have to happen? There was a fascinating article on Slate recently about the mechanics and efficiencies of online reading. It cited two types of reading: a kind of salience-only, short-attention-span reading that skims and selectively reads a website, a news story, or white paper for the usable information; and then "pleasure reading," which scientists call "ludic reading," isolationist, self-detaching, and spellcast (i.e., relatively effortless). At the end of the article, when the author is being his most ludic, he adds:

We'll do more and more reading on screens, but they won't replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind. It's contained, offline, tactile. William Powers writes about this elegantly in his essay "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal." He describes the white stuff as "a still point, an anchor for the consciousness."

I recommend the Powers' essay. It's long, but quick, and heartening, and balanced in key ways that, say, McLuhan never was. Wouldn't it be nice to think that books may actually stick around?

Beekeeping, anyone?

If you happen to be a keeper of bees or know someone who is, please give a shout. I need an expert to review a manuscript. (earthgoat at gmail dot com)

Bedankt.

Also, "hup, Oranje," for all you followers of the Euro 2008 tournament.

Iowa City Flooding Update

People have been seriously sandbagging since last Thursday. The latest predictions are for levels above 1993. The spillway will be topped as soon as tonight, with the reservoir and river levels expected to keep rising despite the overflow. More rain is forecast. The arts campus (Hancher, the old art building, the museum) has got a fight on its hands. Riverside Shakespeare, after conducting rehearsals with water to the park drive and a loud chorus of bullfrogs drowning "A Comedy of Errors,' has had to retreat to City High. The lowest-lying areas are evacuated, and the next floor up, such as Mosquito Flats and the animal shelter, could be in for several weeks of canoeing. The water supply is said to be safe.

Somehow this has snuck up on everyone, and some peope are asking why, with high snowfall and strong spring rains, the reservoir run-off wasn't better managed. The answer (to prevent flooding way downstream along the Mississippi) won't be much consolation to those hit hard.

Good Growth or NIMBY?

Coralville's new project, the successor to the ill-conceived and ill-proposed earth park. [Disclaimer: I was on the steering committee to get this new project through the "vision" stage.] If you get a chance to look through the dreaded (as my second favorite blog calls it) pdf of the vision book, it would be great to hear your thoughts. This is a big-ticket item, and the stakeholders want (and need) feedback.

Netherlands 2, Romania 0

There's not much to say about this game. It started slow, the Dutch fielded their B team, and yet the magic roused itself in the second half, and the Dutch carried themselves to victory yet again. The match literally didn't matter to the Dutch, who had won the group already and earned the right to advance. But it was do or die for the Romanians. The day before the match, some Romanian journalists showed up at the Dutch training camp holding signs that said, "Please let us win!" Fielding the second string was as nice a gesture toward that as you could make, but alas the team from Dracula's country still fell short.

Netherlands 4 France 1
It took a mere 8 minutes for the Dutch to strike again, and they never looked back, with four different players contributing to the lopsided domination. Another brilliant victory for the Orange Onslaught, who now look to be the tournament favorites playing on a different level than anyone else.

"The days of total football are back," proclaimed our friend Piet, who explained he is too young to remember the last time the Dutch dominated like this, which was the 1970s. He left briefly to call his father in Dubai. "My father's thing is, like, criticism and skepticism. His most famous attitude is 'eighty percent of the world is fucking retarded.' That sounds even harsher in Dutch. If we win a match 2-0, he'll spend the night explaining to my brother and me what they did wrong. Anyway, he's ecstatic."

My favorite moment was when the Dutch keeper -- the towering six-and-a-half-foot Edwin Van der Sar, who in his professional life keeps balls out of Manchester United's nets and inspires his own songs by his play -- batted away a would-be French goal as a bear might swat an annoying bee. The match was on a Friday, which meant the partying was much more intense, with cheesy songs bellowing from every open doorway and the streets wild with careening revellers. People are supremely confident now. "The whole country thinks we've already won the tournament," said a bystander. The win assures that Holland advances to the quarterfinals. Next up: Romania on Tuesday.

Netherlands 3, Italy 0


Lucius Van Pelt moves the ball just as Carlo Brownolio attempts to kick it

(This post has been transported back in time to give preference to the flooding issue.) If you're like me, you couldn't give a flying rat's ass about soccer -- or any spectator sport for that matter. The main gripe about soccer is that it's slow. A typical match might produce one goal, or three, or none, yet a "nil-nil" match might well be described to you, by a true fan with a straight face, as "exciting." Let's go to Kent Brockman in the skybox:

Halfback passes to the center.  Back to the wing.
Back to the center. Center holds it.  Holds it.
Holds it. Holds it...

And there is only one ad break during the entire 90 minutes, which is the real reason it will never catch on in America. That's right, Taco Bell and AT&T, you're welcome to put up a small sign in the stadium, but otherwise keep your multimillions to yourselves.

However, if you live in Europe, there's just no way around it -- you have to deal with futbol one way or another. Whether it's dodging kids' street games while trying to ride your bike or simply sticking to the surface of the earth during a professional or international match, you cannot avoid the fact that the game is everywhere, all the time. On the other hand, it's really the only popular sport, which is a mercy. (Unless you're into rugby, cricket, or Gaelic football, in which case you need to seriously give me a break.)

The more matches you are forced to watch because there's nothing else to do, though, the more the game grows on you. You start admiring the beauty of passes, for example, or the shocking distance a man can send a ball with his head, or the latent theatrical talent that can turn a slight brush against a player's leg into something that apparently felt like amputation with a rusty saw. Perhaps the greatest things about soccer are the events on its periphery -- mainly the colorful pub commentary ("Fuck off, ya TWAT!" or "Christ's sake, GET ON WITH IT, WANKERS!"), and the admiring disbelief with which the game's followers regard transactions such as Ronaldo's $200 million transfer from Manchester United to Madrid -- and, of course, the senseless violence on the part of the drunken public. On Sunday, for instance, 157 people were arrested for brawling after the Germany-Poland match. What the Germans and Poles have to be so sore about I guess I'll never understand.

At any rate, it's European Championship time, the every-four-years tournament that leap frogs with the World Cup. For the next couple weeks, the great and not-so-great teams will battle for bragging rights. The Dutch squad, from what I gather, is rather middling in talent and success, and in the first round they drew the absolute worst possible opponents for their first two matches: Italy, winner of the last World Cup, and France, whom Italy barely defeated in that World Cup thanks to penalty kicks, the lamest method of breaking a tie game that has ever been conceived.

Last night was the Holland-Italy match. In preparation, the entire country spent the day and indeed the preceding weekend dressing in the most flagrant orange, hanging banners over anything and everything, and driving around recklessly on $8 a gallon gas honking and flapping little flags from their cars and scooters. This in defiance of the certain knowledge they were going to lose and lose badly. I watched the contest in our living room, by which I mean the Irish pub down the street, which due to its strategic location was nearly surrounded by riot police (who came in and ordered Cokes). Traca was on her way back from a family visit in Ireland and was trying to get there before the kickoff, having landed a half hour before and dragged her suitcase through the eerily empty luggage-rattling cobblestone streets, with the only indications of human habitation being the roars emitted periodically by the orange-festooned houses. The pub was teeming with brave folks ready to grit their teeth, swill beer to ease the pain, and go home disappointed as always, fact being Holland had not defeated Italy in 30 years. About five seconds into the match, someone looked up from his paper and cried out, "Has Italy won yet?"


A neighbor's house

Then suddenly Holland scored, and cries of exuberance jiggled orange rooftop tiles all across the nation. Then they scored again, and a prolonged cheer went up to heaven, swelling the air with the pure energy of simple joy. Italy could do nothing right. Holland could do nothing wrong. In the second half they scored yet again and ended up handing Italy not only their asses on a plate, but their worst tournament defeat in 38 years. (Highlight clips.) There followed plenty of jubilation as expected, but as far as I know the riot police went home disappointed, without bloodstains. It was only the first of three scheduled matches for Holland. And Italians haven't invaded this country since the Roman Empire. And after all, we're talking about the sober and practical Dutch people on a Monday night.

However, the match against France is on a Friday. Next Friday. France who tied Romania yesterday in a riveting match . . . 0-0.

Bonus: the words to "Hup Holland," a popular voetbal song, translated a tad too literally into English:

Go Holland Go
Don’t let yourself be stripped of your vest
Go Holland Go
Don’t put slippers on the beast
Go Holland Go
Stay undaunted
Because a lion on football boots
Can beat the whole world

Nam syndrome

Man, Nam Le's book The Boat is getting a heck of a lot of attention. Now it's the lead review in the NYTBR. Hari Kunzru's review itself is both positive and critical, ruminating on the perils of "ethnic lit" and concluding: "Le is starting to grapple with the subtleties of authenticity, but one comes away feeling that it’s not really his subject, that he has a future as a very different kind of writer." Anyone here read it? By the way, way to go Nam.

Oliver Stone Rules!

This is the teaser poster for his new W. biopic. Granted, his track record has its lowpoints, but I can't wait to see this. When I was in law school, he came to speak (why, I'm not entirely sure), and I must say, it was one of the more inspiring talks I ever saw (the gist -- grow a spine, and don't take guff from anyone). At least it was until the RTF nerds started tossing scripts at him.

Get your Friday started proper

I've been to the beach, and here are some shells I found.





Antoine put up this one a little while ago:





traca pciked this one up outside a drive-thru:


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Speculation: Vice

Now that the primary season is winding down, I invite you all to speculate as to the VP picks for Obama and McCain.

In your comments, please speculate about the following scenarios and any others you wish to consider:

1. VP picks in an ideal world (whatever that means to you)
2. Most likely actual VP picks (and why)
3. Who the VP picks would be if everyone involved went insane
4. VP picks so crazy that they might just be brilliant

Reasons for the Internet (Besides porn and lolcats)

This is a website that turns novels and whatnot into Powerpoint presentations, so you can act like you're doing something useful at work while you read them. The particularly cool part is that they actually insert graphs and stock photos to add to the realism. Check it out.

Genius.

Ready... aim...

This story of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe being photographed is fascinating. But traca and I were talking last night about the fact that in the first round of media stories, most (not the one linked there) didn't mention the glaring facts that 1) the plane likely scared the living bejesus out of these people, and 2) they are aiming their weapons at the photographer. "It must have been like their War of the Worlds," T said.

There are more isolated tribes in the world than I would have thought, including the Sentinelese in the Indian Ocean, who have killed people who were trying to contact them and were once left a pig to see if they would eat it -- they shot and buried it instead. They also buried a doll that was left for them. The Indian government has decided to leave them alone.

Amazing public space animation

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

New stuff at plz

A bunch of great new content (again including some goaty varietals) over at please-dont.com along with our new design.

Find us on facebook if you want to be cool!

go poets!

Jon Thirkield wins big! Go team! Go poets!

Here's the link.

(i think), and here's what that link says, among other things:

Born and raised in New York City, Jonathan Thirkield graduated from Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop where he was a Truman Capote Fellow.

In 2008, his collection The Waker's Corridor was selected by Linda Bierds for the Walt Whitman Award, presented by the Academy of American Poets.

His poems have appeared in WebConjunctions, New American Writing, Colorado Review, 1913: a journal of forms, American Letters & Commentary, Verse, and other journals.

So, congrats Jon, on winning the Whitman award!

Adjuncts Policing the Gates?

Just in time for all those end-of-the-semester grade disputes, a pseudonymous intro comp/lit adjunct assesses the state of adult education. Too many people are too unprepared to get a college degree:

Our textbook boils effective writing down to a series of steps. It devotes pages and pages to the composition of a compare-and-contrast essay, with lots of examples and tips and checklists. “Develop a plan of organization and stick to it,” the text chirrups not so helpfully. Of course any student who can, does, and does so automatically, without the textbook’s directive. For others, this seems an impossible task. Over the course of 15 weeks, some of my best writers improve a little. Sometimes my worst writers improve too, though they rarely, if ever, approach base-level competence.

How I envy professors in other disciplines! How appealing seems the straightforwardness of their task! These are the properties of a cell membrane, kid. Memorize ’em, and be ready to spit ’em back at me. The biology teacher also enjoys the psychic ease of grading multiple-choice tests. Answers are right or wrong. The grades cannot be questioned. Quantifying the value of a piece of writing, however, is intensely subjective, and English teachers are burdened with discretion. (My students seem to believe that my discretion is limitless. Some of them come to me at the conclusion of a course and matter-of-factly ask that I change a failing grade because they need to graduate this semester or because they worked really hard in the class or because they need to pass in order to receive tuition reimbursement from their employer.)

. . .

There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.

. . .

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

The essay is good and any former or current college comp instructor will be entertained. Someone feels their pain. Professor X diagnoses the problem but steers things neatly away from offering any solutions: admit fewer students or better prepare them? Both? More vocational colleges? How do we de-romanticize the very American notion that everyone should get a 4-year liberal arts degree? Should we? Is Professor X the problem, is he just not good enough at his job?

Thoughts? End-of-term grading complaints? Anybody tell you that you've ruined his or her life? That's always fun.

In Defense of Rabbit

Maybe I'm wrong or exaggerating or misremembering, but I recall Updike having a bad reputation around the halls of the Dey House. Not from the older crowd. Frank admired him more than once. Ethan, too, methinks. But I remember, specifically, complaints about Updike's ubiquitous and forgettable appearances in the New Yorker. Those I won't defend. Really, I'm not interested in defending anything but the Rabbit tetralogy, which I recently finished.

I say this despite many, many annoyances: some the protagonists's fault and some the author's fault and some indistinguishable. I'm thinking of the casual misogyny, the tiresome wife-swapping, the indulgent exposition, etc. Furthermore, none of Rabbit's worlds--in his twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties--are mine. Still, the guy can write. Sentence by sentence, scene by scene, he's both in control and surprising. His use of the third person present tense is a worthwhile study. The four novels blend together a bit, though not in a bad way. The second, Rabbit Redux, strikes me as a singularly brilliant novel. I'd recommend it to anyone. It manages to be introspective without being condescending or boring, socially conscious without being trite or placating. Buy it for a penny on Amazon marketplace.

I'm curious what others think of the series, if not necessarily Updike.

I'm going to bed

But if you've ever driven through Gary I think you'll agree that it's a poignant place for an election to come down. From the highway, my eye is always drawn to this old, Federalist dome. Maybe it's city hall, I don't know. It just peaks up above the side of the ramped highway--right up against the road--and it's caked in solidified exhaust. Whatever purpose and glory it once had, continues to have, is now secondary to the Skyway. But it's a beautiful building seen from an improbable angle.

In case you were thinking about buying me a gift:

As some of you know, I got a drumset for this Christmas. This is what I would like for next year (I especially like the production value of this ad -- you'd think this guy could afford to look even partially professional -- but he has more cymbals than Neal Peart, which the camera drifts away to show you). I also like that this is his way of "giving back to the community" -- in today's slumping economy, endless war, and batshit real estate market, we need "The Nookie" now more than ever.

Another one I didn't make up

From IvyGate:

The D reported yesterday on lecturer Priya Venkatesan (also undergrad '90 and a Med School researcher) who, in a series of strangely passive-aggressive group emails, announced a plan to sue her students for workplace harassment based on "intolerance of ideas." The emails—reported first in Dartlog and forwarded to a zillion email lists within seconds—also contain info on Venkatesan's upcoming Academy X rip-off where she plans to "name names." Venkatesan tapped into the email list from her Winter 2008 Writing 5 class:


Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35
From: Priya Venkatesan
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will "name names" so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day.

The phrase "anti-federal discrimination laws" made me think she was emailing drunk; follow-up messages and press statements indicate that Venkatesan is, in fact, serious.

Few of Venkatesan's students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to the D,

cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism


Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.

"I was horrified," Venkatesan said. "My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line ... I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression." ...She canceled class because the incident caused her "intellectual and emotional distress," she said.

Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning.

Possibly awesome turn of logic: If the students' crime was "intolerance of ideas," and the idea in question was post-modernism, does that mean post-modernism is Venkatesan's religion? In which case academia has finally curled so far inward as to truly out-po-mo itself. "Where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain," indeed!


After the jump: More emails from Venkatesan and Dartmouth authorities, and a sample of Venkatesan's evaluations.


The objects of Ventakesan's suit received two more emails, both of which were also sent to "editor@dartmoth.com," probably a mixed-up attempt to get a hold of the D, whose editors occupy "editor@thedartmouth.com." It is still unknown how Venkatesan chose these students; student evaluations are, in theory, anonymous.

From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action Suit

Dear Student:
As a courtesy, you are being notified that you are being named in a potential class action suit that is being brought against Dartmouth College, which is being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws. Please do not respond to this email because it will be potentially used against you in a court of law.

Priya Venkatesan, PhD

From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action Suit

Dear Student:

Please disregard the previous email sent by Priya Venkatesan. This is to officially inform you that you are being accused of violating Title VII pertaining to federal anti-discrimination laws, by the plaintiff, Priya Venkatesan. You are being specifically accused of, but not limited to, harassment. Please do not respond to this email as it will be used against you in a court of law.

Priya Venkatesan, PhD

Shortly thereafter, members of Venkatesan's writing course received support from freshmen dean Gail Zimmerman:


Dear Students,

It has come to my attention that many of you have been receiving emails from Prof. Priya Venkatesan as a former student in one of her Writ 5 courses. I understand that these emails have been rather distressing for you.

So that you can be informed of how the College is proceeding in response to these and to understand your own concerns, I and Tom Cormen, Director of the Writing Program, will meet with you today, Sunday, April 27 at 12:30 p.m. in Parkhurst Hall, Room 9B (located in the basement of Parkhurst). Robert Donin from legal counsel will also be joining us.

If you are unable to make this meeting, I am happy to meet with you at a later time.

Regards,
Dean Zimmerman
**********************
Gail M. Zimmerman, Ed. D.
Dean of First-Year Students
Dartmouth College


The content of the above meeting is as yet unknown, though we assume it went something like this: "Don't worry, kids. Though the word 'class' is in both 'class-action' and 'class list,' your teacher can't actually sue you for being smarter than she is. We'll just sic that well-oiled machine of right-wing Dartian blowhards on her, and this whole thing will resolve itself."

Speaking of right-wing Dartians, Venkatesan wrote in to Dartlog to explain she is "not bitter at all about teaching evaluations," because she is not a teacher at all, but a research-minded lab rat now employed at some "undisclosed" institution that is even better than Dartmouth, so she doesn't even need you guys anyway, so there! Let us pray to the gods of tabloid fodder that this "undisclosed" employer doesn't actually exist, and Venkatesan is in truth living in a Super 8 Motel outside of Hanover, biding her time until this book deal comes through. Which would probably make the deal even sweeter, as fake memoirs from delusional paranoiacs are all the rage of late.

Was she really so bad? Let's shake the tip jar and see what falls out...

Venkatesan taught two sections of Writing 5, a course mandatory for all Dartmouth students who don't make some cutoff point on the SATs. Her Writing 5 course was apparently offered in two terms - Fall and Winter - and was something to do with science. My friend in the Fall07 course told me she was a ridiculous teacher - she assigned a bunch of readings about postmodernism, but three weeks into the term, nobody in the class could explain what postmodernism was.

Yeah, but who can explain what postmodernism is? Casualty of the field, really.

Last we checked, Venkatesan's course had fourteen reviews on the Dartmouth Student Assembly's student evaluations website, under the following titles:

Worst teacher I have ever had - Written by a 2011

Interesting - Written by a 2011

WORST PROFESSOR EVER DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS - Written by a 2011

save yourself now - Written by a 2011

a tad ridiculous - Written by a 2011

Interesting Material but Prof. is hard to follow - Written by a 2011

Terrible class, terrible prof - Written by a 2011

Interesting Material, Bad Prof. - Written by a 2011

If she teaches here... - Written by a 2011

WORST CLASS EVER - Written by a 2011

interesting topic, boring prof - Written by a 2011

Do NOT take this course - Written by a 2011

HORRIBLE - Written by a 2011

insecurity, ego, and more - Written by a 2011
Excerpts from the above evals:

Professor Venkatesan refuses to answer questions, does not respond to questions, and lectures by reading off her notes in front of her. She did not make me a better writer, she did not explain the concepts well, but she did manage to make my life a living hell.

She offered no help in class or in office hours for papers. When handed a hard copy she read the paper, said it was great, but then gave terrible grades to many students. Later on she began refusing to grade papers and gave the reason that judging by our peer editing abilities we didn't need her help on papers. She missed/cancelled 5 or 6 classes and as a result the syllabus was squished into 3 weeks and she changed the final project about 4 times. A TERRIBLE CLASS.

In terms of who will be most damaged by this ordeal, Venkatesan's students are mostly out of the question, since wisecracking a flustered professor isn't illegal, nor are negative course evals. (Though, yeah, it must suck to have a profession that requires listening to our gripes, and we extend honest apologies to every teacher who has been forced to deal with us.) No, the real race-to-the-bottom will be between Venkatesan and Dartmouth's writing program: Is she the villain, for dealing with her inability to teach by sending smugly gloating emails about "naming names" and civil law? Or is Dartmouth, for hiring this litigious trainwreck in the first place, and inflicting her on innocent freshmen?

Of Reverend Wright and Bosnian Bullets

Allen Gurganus on "Housekeeping"

A blog post in today's New York Times online.

When the Book Review asked writers and editors to name the greatest novel of our last quarter century, I felt flummoxed proposing one book that good. Which of Philip Roth’s novels might we call his best? Hadn’t Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor been dead too long to qualify? Then I thought of “Housekeeping.”

I had read this slender volume more times than any other work by a still-living writer. For me, just reading the first chapter was like taking a strong multivitamin. It reminded me why I am a slow writer myself, why I care so immensely about craft and all that a single page of human work can offer.