Reading and Writing in The Age of Sand

A blog by Bud Parr 

Adam Kirsch on Derek Walcott's White Egrets

Adam Kirsch writes so elegantly about Derek Walcott's White Egrets that I think I'd rather direct you to his review rather than attempt my own:

Ironically, though, death has triumphed over Walcott's work in another sense -- by moving to the center of his imagination. It could scarcely be otherwise, for a poet entering his ninth decade. The only choice facing a great writer at Walcott's stage of life is whether to approach the end philosophically, by seeking or at least pretending to seek wisdom and composure, or to rage against the dying of the light. It is hard to know which choice demands more of a writer: Apollonian calm requires the overcoming of the spirit's fear, as in the mystic assurance of Eliot's Four Quartets, while Dionysian fury requires a defiance of the body's weakness, as in the savage late poems of Yeats.

 

The poignancy of White Egrets lies in Walcott's continual vacillation between these two poles. At times he will write with apparent resignation, naming his ailments and forgiving them:

…the drumming world that dampens your tired eyes

behind two clouding lenses, sunrise, sunset,

the quiet ravages of diabetes.

Accept it all with level sentences,

with sculpted settlement that sets each stanza,

learn how the bright lawn puts up no defences

against the egret's stabbing questions and the night's answer.

 

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Filed under  //   Poetry  

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Anna Livia Plurabelle

  

 

The story I've heard about this reading is that Joyce was nearly blind by this time and couldn't see the text, so someone else was dictating the text to him while he read. It's a remarkable reading and for me the key to approaching the Wake because the rhythm brings it to life, as with all of Joyce's readings, the music is everything.

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Enjoying Sotère, the Computerless Blogger

The Poetry Foundation has a blogger, Sotère Torregian, who seems to not have a computer. He phones in or records his blog posts and has transcripts of comments printed out and sent to him. Soterre is a poet in his 70s now who helped establish the Afro-American studies program at Stanford in the sixties. He was associated with the "New York School" of poets (think Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch among others), which puts him in some pretty interesting territory, historically and poetically. 

But what's truly interesting is not that he is a part of this massive media machine (that is, the blogging phenomenon) without even having a computer, but it's his blog posts, such as they are. He's very conversational and generous and speaks with an even, confident flow, chatting about life and poetry. Recent topics include why Finnegans Wake is the best thing since Shakespeare, his cat Esmerelda, and Racquel, oh, Racquel. 

Here's the link to Sotère's posts at the Poetry Foundation Website.

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E-book Confusion

Why should I, a reader, have to think about this? While the book industry gnashes about with pricing and "agency models" and such, I sit here dazed with indecision over buying a simple book. I'm up to my gills with physical books and some just seem right for electronic format, but I'm not sure what that means in a practical sense. 

Here's the problem: I want a book. Every vendor wants to sell me their version of the book that's only good on Their reader and I feel limited about whether or not I own it, what I can do with it and how I'm allowed to go about reading it. So, I'm left to have a bunch of different reading devices (or at the least software) and have to store and read my books based upon the store I bought the book from. Absurd and stupid and a non-starter.

While the nostalgia for print books fades away for many, this issue - one that technological early adopters are used to, but not readers - will be a major factor in hobbling growth of e-books. 

So maybe those of you who know more about this world can advise me about how to go about buying a book. I would have thought it'd be more simple. 

p.s. Note to makers of e-book readers: geeks want the ability to swap for their own dictionary because yours is lame. 

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le Carré Backstory

When The Tailer of Panama was released in 1996, le Carré came to the States and told this story at a talk at the 92nd St. Y about how he created the character Alec Leamas:

I was sitting at the bar of the departure lounge in London airport — flights were delayed — when an Englishman of about 40 with a drained, travelled face appeared beside me and ordered himself a large Scotch, neat, no ice. Spotty fawn raincoat, scuffed suede shoes, a bronzed, beat-up face, dog-tired, dark Celtic eyes. Officer-class, as we used to say in those days, and a soldier’s back despite the hunched shoulders. It wasn’t till he came to pay for his Scotch that I knew I’d found him. He dug a hand in his raincoat pocket, slammed a bunch of loose change on the counter, and barked “help yourself” like a challenge at the barman. The coins were in half-a-dozen different European currencies: French francs, Deutschmarks, Lire, whatever. Far too many. The barman thought of quarrelling, then changed his mind, in my opinion wisely, and instead set to work quietly sorting his way through the coins until he had what he needed. By the time he’d finished, my sharer had drunk off his Scotch in a couple of gulps and without a word swung away, leaving the change on the counter. And for all I shall ever know, he was just a weary travelling salesman down on his luck. But for me he was Alec Leamas, a burnt-out British Intelligence agent who had just seen the last of his East German spies shot down at the newly erected Berlin Wall.  

It's a great story and as great stories go, it's still getting worked. I was fairly well unimpressed with The Tailer of Panama, but according to an article mentioned in Wikipedia, le Carré says that was one of his best. What do I know. I'm saving the old Cold War books for my kids though. My personal favorites are The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Looking Glass War, and A Small Town in Germany, all published in the sixties. le Carré says that The Looking Glass War is the most realistic he's written about the intelligence world. Although my memory is freshest of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, probably because of the film, I seem to recall these books being particularly downcast and gritty instead of sensationalist and heroic, firmly setting themselves in the era as part of it's history at its height.

There's more backstory from le Carré at the Times and as well as another great story about a Russian mafia boss.

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The Jazz Loft Project

From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith's work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history.
The exhibition evokes the jazz loft through more than 200 images, several hours of audio, and 16mm film footage of Smith working in the loft. Setting the scene are Smith’s gritty photographs of the loft and his pictures of the flower district below his fourth-floor loft window. Viewed alongside his master prints, Smith’s 5x7-inch work prints further indicate the breadth and depth of the loft story. Listening stations give access to remastered selections from Smith’s reel-to-reel tapes, which caught everything from rousing jam sessions to historic radio and TV broadcasts, loft conversations, and street noise. Concerts and other programming will supplement the exhibition experience.

Posting this as much a reminder to myself as anything, this is an exhibit at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts through May, 22nd, then traveling.

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Filed under  //   jazz   music   NYC  

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A day in the life of New York City, in miniature

I'm on my way... This video is too great not to share. It's all real. The guy who who made it said it's entirely shot with a still camera, thousands of shots.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

A day in the life of New York City, in miniature.

Original Music: composed by Human, co-written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong.

Please view in HD and full screen for best effect. For a description of the shoot, camera, lenses and workflow, please see here: http://bit.ly/aFmaPZ

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Filed under  //   New York City  

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History is the blood...

This quote rings true... "History is the blood running through the river while life goes on on the banks."  

I've been reading -- at the rate of about 10 pages per day -- Hugh Thomas's The Spanish Civil War, a book I've had since I began reading on the war either thematically or as a subject about five years ago. I hadn't ventured into it because it's thick and dense; about 950 pages of history, it's not my usual reading. But I realized when recently reading Bolaño's Monsieur Pain that there were still huge gaps in my understanding of the Spanish Civil War (in that particular instance it was something about the Falangists that piqued my interest) . 

I've only gotten into the period prior to the war so far, a large swath covering the last quarter of the 19th Century and early 20th, but one would gather that in this time there was nothing going on but violence and murder, riots, anarchy. I don't doubt that it was like that  -- look at parts of modern Mexico or Colombia for but two examples-- but in light of the discussion going on around David Sheilds' Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (which I haven't read, but have been following the discussions) about the move to "nonfiction" I'd say that the true story, the "truer than" true story that is well written and well imagined fiction, is what happens on the banks and that's where we get understanding.

I'd go as far as saying that reading history is incomplete without reading the fiction, if it exists, around a period or events. It's well known that Tolstoy's War & Peace is itself a history and while that novel may be an exception for its reading as an historical text it supports the idea that the sensitivity of a novelist who brings facts to life might be more valuable than the historian for the purposes that history serves, that is, not repeating our mistakes or inferring a better way to act.

However, the facts, which we know evolve over time, at least many of them, are merely guideposts or backdrop in my view. If you've ever been in a catastrophe reported in the news you know that the experience for most is far from the reality reported in the press. I recently read a blog post from a woman in Chile during the earthquake. Her report was more mundane than the press reports, but more human in my view and probably good fodder for a story (please understand that I'm only talking about story telling here and not trying to be unsympathetic to those lives affected by the tragedy). 

But back to Spain. 
While I'm not naive enough to think that life in Spain was just like Trueba's romantic conception in the movie "Belle Epoque," it's shocking how the political upheaval in the Spain of that period permeated this otherwise cute film (in particular the priest's suicide on the couple's wedding day). I suppose that may have been the director's intent. History is served through art. The thesis behind Javier Marías's novel Your Face Tomorrow is that we don't really know people we think we know. We can't see what they will be like in the future, which is why the thread of the Spanish Civil War is so important to that book. A civil war is a war of betrayal and no where does that become more apparent or real than in a story, which in this case is a fictionalized remembrance of actual events. 

For what it's worth, my Spanish Civil War reading list is a mix of fiction and nonfiction. These are books that I've read, am reading, or intend to read, but far from comprehensive and not necessarily meant to be as it's just one of those things that has taken up its own life in my reading. 

Here's the list. While I'm probably not interested in adding any more history books to this list because I think Thomas's is particularly comprehensive, I'd love to hear any other reading suggestions you might have.

Hugh Thomas: The Spanish Civil War
Javier Cercas: The Soldiers of Salamis
Roberto BolañoMonsieur Pain (this is on tangentially about the SCW)
Javier MaríasYour Face Tomorrow, Vols 1, 2 and 3
Camilo Jose Cela: San Camilo, 1936
Bernardo Atxaga: The Accordianist's Son
Ian Gibson: The Death of Lorca
George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia
Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway: The Fifth Column... (not sure about this one because I can't find it now)
Stephen Koch: The Breaking Point - Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles
Russell Martin: Picasso's War: The Extraordinary Story of an Artist, an Atrocity and a Painting That Shook the World
Various poetry from the period.

I've seen mention of Raymond Carr's The Spanish Tragedy and I'd be interested to know if you've read it. 

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Filed under  //   Art vs...   Javier Marias   Spanish Civil War  

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My Trip from Moscow to Vladivostok

This is great. Watch the Russian countryside go by from your desk while you listen to Gogol's Dead Souls read in Russian. I of course don't speak any Russian, but I listened to this for a while last night and somehow really enjoyed the evocativeness of it all. If you don't want to listen to a book (they also have War and Peace) you can merely listen to the "rumble of wheels." Here's the description from Google:

The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route. Let's go!

Moscow-Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google Maps

 

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Loose [Tools of] Change #toccon

I didn't make it the Tools of Change conference, but I went to an after-party and watched videos from the conference online. I likened this to going to a museum's shop without going to the museum. You get the gist, but it's not quite like being there. 

Among the videos I enjoyed Peter Collingridge's most. His Enhanced Editions are mobile version of books with lots of extra features like integrated video and audio that reads along with the text and some other features that he highlights in the video below. While some of those features may cheapen the text (and will be sure to be used by some to compel readers when the text is, uh, lacking), I also think that there are opportunities there in the future, particularly for making difficult texts more accessible, and if I'm certain of anything it's that what we're seeing here is just the beginning. 

I also like some of what Peter talks about regarding the traditional publishing model vs what I think is being called the disintermediation model.
See all the videos at the OreillyMedia Youtube Channel and be sure to check out some of the TOC iGNiTe vids and my amigo Richard Nash who is never without an interesting take on the future of publishing.

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Filed under  //   e-reading   publishing   toccon  

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