Rake's Progress

TOoL Job

Aleksandar Hemon reviews The Original of Laura and gets, alas, to the sad, corpse-robbing center of it:

...The Original of Laura can't escape the musty air of an estate sale: The trinkets that piled up in the attic; the damp books from the basement; the old man's stained cravat; the lonely figurines that used to be part of a cherished set; the mismatched, overworn clothing—all are brought out in the hope that there might appear a buyer for those sad objects, someone blinded by literary nostalgia and willing to rescue the family possessions from the waste basket.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to blame the deceased for the estate sale. Nabokov was not merely unequivocal in his desire that his notecards be destroyed. He was also adamantly clear in his views on excavating unfinished manuscripts and the drafts preceding final, published versions—as well as on the absolute value of a finished work of art. In the introduction to his translation of Eugene Onegin, he wrote: "An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying cancelled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count."

It is safe to say that what is published as the novel titled The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun) is not a result Nabokov desired or would welcome. Not only does it go against his expressed wishes, it goes against his very aesthetic sensibility, against his entire life as an artist. Too sick to destroy the notecards that contain The Original of Laura, the master is now eternally exposed to a gloating, greedy world of academics, publishers, and all the other card-shuffling mediocrities titillated by the sight of a helpless genius. It is unlikely that dying was that much fun, but it is certain that reading The Original of Laura is crushingly sad.

Not to mention this:

In order to read the text now, one cannot simply order a review copy. One must enter the lobby of the Random House building (currently adorned with promotional cards for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol) and ascend to the 21st floor, where, in an unused office, the only copy shown to outsiders reposes on a table. Once there, one is instructed that one can read it but must not (for several reasons, including a commitment to publish excerpts from the work in Playboy) disclose anything about it that has not previously appeared in print until the Playboy installment is on the stands.

As the kids say: Epic Legacy Fail!

The only thing missing from that absurd tableaux to make it a travesty worthy of Nabokov's worst nightmares is the actual Dan Brown, donning a Nabokov mask and posing for pictures at $29.95 a pop.

When Levi's Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

Is that Walt Whitman in your pants?

In December 2008, Levi's ditched its old ad agency and signed on with Wieden + Kennedy (the talented ad makers responsible for creating many of Nike's epic, stirring, one-minute anthems). The spots that W+K came up with—this new campaign is labeled "Go Forth"—have been running since the summer in movie theaters and, increasingly, on television. From the moment we see that "America" sign half-sunk in inky water, we know we're watching something new. The campaign inhabits a different universe from the one depicted in "Live Unbuttoned."

For one thing, it's a universe in which the ever-present soundtrack is Walt Whitman poetry. This spot uses a wax cylinder recording believed to be audio of Whitman himself reading from his poem "America." The second spot in the campaign employs a recording of an actor reading Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!"

Whitman is an involuntary spokes-celebrity here, and perhaps you deem this ad a desecration of all he stood for. I can't say I blame you. But were you forced to choose a clothing line for our favorite barbaric yawper to rep, you might choose this one. Levi's is the rare American brand that was actually around when Whitman was alive. And there's logic to this match between a quintessentially American poet and a quintessentially American product. Whitman's verse allows Levi's to evoke not only its proud history but a forward-looking present—the pioneering, American mindset that Whitman captured and that Levi's hopes to embody.

(And I'd always wondered what it would look like if stylish music videos were set to classic poetry. Now I know. I eagerly anticipate the MTV poem-video awards. "Yo, Walt, I'm really happy for you—I'ma let you finish, but Philip Larkin had one of the best poem-videos of all time!")

As fascinating as this Whitman business is, I think an actual Philip Larkin poem-video would have me in complete ecstasy. I imagine an alluring but somewhat prim mom in a sweater set smiling & pouring a frosty rope of milk into her kid's bowl of Froot Loops as Larkin recites: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.

Make it happen, YouTube!

Math: Not Even Once

"Pynchon, postmodern author, is commonly said to have a non-linear narrative style. No one seems to have taken seriously the possibility, to be explored in this essay, that his narrative style might in fact be quadratic."

I have no background useful in judging whether this guy's on to something or not. But, frankly, wouldn't you be more surprised if Pynchon wasn't structuring his fiction according to obscure mathematical principles?

(Via MeFi)

Lou for You

YPTR kinda gave up on this week. But that's no reason not to enjoy Lou Reed, skinny, twitchy, and sped up seven ways to Sunday. Enjoy.

Who ever told you that you could work with men?

Today's hilariously out-of-context sentence:

In a feature about Under The Volcano author Malcolm Lowry, included in Criterion’s fine Under The Volcano DVD, the narrator casually mentions that Lowry’s “incredibly tiny penis made him a figure of fun during bathtime” at his British boarding school.

Ah, summer nights.

PSA for Christ

You have ten bucks. Powell's has a hardcover copy of Jujitsu for Christ. Isn't now a great time to join the Butler Gang?

Just sayin'.

Mister, we could use a man like Norman Mailer again

Norman Mailer? Wild counterfactual history? Count me in!

Hey, hey, LBJ...have you considered Norman Mailer for secretary of defense today?

For Mailer, LBJ was revealed as "a man driven by need, a gambler who fears that once he stops, once he pulls out of the game, his heart will rupture from tension." Johnson, like nearly all Americans, Mailer concluded, was a member of a minority group, defined not in racial or ethnic terms but in terms of "alienat[ion] from the self by a double sense of identity and so at the mercy of a self which demands action and more action to define the most rudimentary borders of identity."

This American drive for self-definition through constant action, through headlong acceleration, even through military escalation, the novelist described, in something of a mixed metaphor, as "the swamps of a plague" in which Americans had been caught and continued to sink. He saw relief of the desperate condition coming only via "the massacre of strange people."

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of Mailer's analysis here, more emotionally "Heart of Darkness" than coolly rational. But that's precisely why I want someone Mailer-esque -- pugnacious, free-swinging, and prophetical, provocative and profane -- advising our president. Right now.

Words fail; I simply must bask in the glow.

Someone wins Nobel Prize in Literature!

You've never heard of her. You should probably read a couple of her books, really, but they're hard to come by on these shores. And the best ones aren't available in translation, anyway. Perhaps you could learn German?

Well, go ahead and put in a order for a few of those books. And for one of them Rosetta Stone language courses while you're at it. While you're waiting for this stuff to arrive, enjoy a few hours of True Blood.

Yeah. A few more. All right. One more. Yeaeaaaaaaah. Fuck yeah.

That chick from Law & Order: CI is totally in it

The AV Club reviews the Brief Interviews With Hideous Men adaptation:

Brief Interviews is first and foremost an actors’ showcase, which means it rises and falls on the strength of the performances. For his filmmaking debut, [John] Krasinski appears to have called in favors from nearly every famous person he’s ever met, but he hasn’t yet developed the authority or command to work their varying styles and skills into seamless cinema. When he has Frankie Faison describing his father’s job as a washroom attendant, the scene is riveting and pertinent, but it clashes with the comic aggression of Will Arnett, the muted zaniness of Will Forte, and the “How did I end up here?” amateurishness of Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.

Ben Gibbard? What, Colin Meloy not available?

There's a bit of blinkered analysis in this review--the brief interviews serve as a vehicle for "Wallace’s complicated and often self-defeating analysis of why male-female relationships are doomed to fail"???--but it seems the second commenter seems to have a better grasp on the book. Here's to you, Chad J.

Treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry

Hey, new George Saunders at the New Yorker:

Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs.

Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned. Where was {special one}? Approaching now, bowing slightly, he exclaimed, How can so much grace be contained in one small package? Oops. Had he said small package? And just stood there? Broad princelike face totally bland of expression? Poor thing! Sorry, no way, down he went, he was definitely not {special one}.

What about this guy, behind Mr. Small Package, standing near the home entertainment center? With a thick neck of farmer integrity yet tender ample lips, who, placing one hand on the small of her back, whispered, Dreadfully sorry you had to endure that bit about the small package just now. Let us go stand on the moon. Or, uh, in the moon. In the moonlight.

The title's for me, by the way, not Mr. Saunders.

For a flaming pie descended from the sky, and Jesus Christ stepped out of it, and He sayeth unto me: Rake, child of God, get a fucking job.

So I dispense resumes instead of reading. Thanks a lot, JC.

Jock Enjambs

Author & Tampa Bay Rays OF Fernando Perez, from Poetry:

I write from Caracas, the murder capital of the world, where I’ve been employed by the Leones to score runs and prevent balls from falling in the outfield. At the ankles of the Ávila Mountain amongst a patch of dusky high-rises, the downtown grounds of el Estadio Universitario packed beyond capacity are ripe for a full-bodied poem. A mere pitching change is an occasion “para rumbiar,” and the purse-lipped riot squad is always on the move with their spanking machetes swinging from their hips. The game isn’t paced necessarily by innings or score. It’s marked by the pulsating bass drums of the samba band that trail bright, scantily-clad, head-dressed goddesses strutting about the mezzanine. The young fireworks crew stand mere feet from flares that don’t always set out vertically, sometimes landing in the outfield still aflame. “The wave” includes heaving drinks into the sky.

Background:

Perez, 26, grew up in New Jersey, the bilingual son of Cuban immigrants. He went to that state's prestigious Peddie School on a partial scholarship before going to Columbia and majoring in American studies with an emphasis on creative writing.

He was going to be a teacher.

The Rays drafted him in 2004.

He runs fast and he switch hits and he was the team's minor league player of the year last year before getting called up to the majors in late August. He hit a home run at Yankee Stadium with his parents watching. He scored the winning run in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series against Boston.

[...]

The people at Poetry came to him. They asked him to contribute. He wrote his piece when he was in Venezuela playing in a winter league. He jotted notes on hotel stationery in Caracas.

The scenes he sees might be wild, but the rhythms of the game, and the life within it, he wrote, provide "the idleness about which — and out of which so many poems are written or sung."

"I see this state of mind," he wrote, "as a blessing."

In describing what he observes, the material picked up along the way, Perez cited a phrase from a poem by Allen Ginsberg called A Supermarket in California.

"Shopping for images."

"I'm steeped in this," he said.

He walked down the tunnel to the dugout, and up the steps, and onto the field.

According to his piece, Perez's favorite poet is Robert Creeley. Wow. We're like the same guy, except one of us is a talented athlete with a future in the arts. (Via)

What is Literature?

Well, that settles it.

Isis (2002-2009)

If you'll permit me a moment of indulgence, the House of Rake is in mourning today with the loss of Isis. The only things that make me maudlin are lost youth and dogs, and, as this is a bit of both, I've been caught in a perpetual tearjerker the last few weeks.

Any day would have been too soon, but this was far too soon.

Good girl, Isis. Rest well.

Unfrozen Caveman Jackass

Shorter Klosterman: Who are these The Beatles of whom you speak? ;) LOLz! Heh. No, seriously, I've never heard...tee hee. *wink* Hey! *WINK WINK!!!* Wait, I'm not done...*snicker* Har de har! Get it?! Oh damn...wait...no wait...let me catch my breath....ahhhhh...haaa...haaa...haaaaaaaa!!!!!!1!1!!

(Seriously, who does this guy have pictures of? I mean, compared to this--perhaps the most pig-headed, pseudo-contrarian, inane piece of pop culture criticism I've read from a non-rightwinger--the Beatles "review" is just a lame premise stretched too far. But what's the AV Club doing paying for hyper-clever dross when it's available all over teh net for free?)

I Know Where Laird Hunt Lives*

I might just tweet-fisk The Believer again this month, but until then, here's a sample of said publication, wherein Laird Hunt reviews I Am Not Sidney Poitier:

In his latest marvel of a novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, [Percival] Everett has again created a protagonist who lives a kind of double life: on the one hand, he is “Not Sidney Poitier,” a kid with a weird name and buckets of money trying, with some measure of success, not to avoid taking the lead role in his own life; on the other hand, he is indeed Sidney Poitier, the glittering (if dated) embodiment of what, according to the invidious grotesqueries of cultural assumption and inertia, blackness can and should be. [...]

Not Sidney is aided and abetted in his journeys through the minefields of American expectation, ugliness, and absurdity by a cadre of beautifully sketched characters, including Turner and a rotund professor of “Nonsense Philosophy” named Percival Everett (not quite to be confused with the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier). This latter, a charming trickster figure of the first order, provides both mortar and pestle to Not Sidney’s already softening belief in the world as a comprehensible entity:

“What does this have to do with nonsense?” I asked, grasping the levels of my question as I asked it.

“Precisely,” [Everett] said. Then he looked at his watch. “It shouldn’t matter where you are, the cat’s in the kitchen, the dog’s in the car. There’s an elephant singing plinkidee czar, and the old man is strumming the same old guitar.”

Although it is frequently, gut-grabbingly hilarious, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, like Erasure, is more serious meditation on the exigencies of the self than comic send-up of an America gone wildly off the rails.

(*See also.)

Just Call Me Angel of the Mourning, Angel

Just re-read Babel's "The Sin of Jesus" last night (in an old Norton anthology whose translation I like slightly better than the one shown and linked, although that judgment is wholly independent/ignorant of its accuracy or the translator's methodology).

Extract:

 

If you don't know this story, you should. Makes Nathanael West look like Pollyanna.

It's Midnight and I Don't Have Any Groupies Yet

Our Man Milofsky writes about the future of the litblog. Turns out, the future is...original content?! Wha?

According to Mark Athitakis, whose American Fiction Notes is one of the most intelligent spots in the blogosphere, "Litblogs are being forced to change, but I don't think it's because they anticipate paywalls. There's simply less material out there. Arts sections have been hit hard as newspapers cut costs, so more and more litbloggers are writing their own reviews and conducting more interviews.

"But five years from now, no sensible person will argue that there's a lack of commentary or reporting about books online; the real question is, who will have the same authority and reach that newspapers have long enjoyed, and who will adhere to the standards that the best newspapers have established? If more paywalls get built and more newspapers close, that's not the death knell for book reviewing — but it is a challenge to those who take litblogging seriously to start filling in those gaps."

Sarah Weinman (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind) has a somewhat different take. "The litblog as we once knew it is dead, dead, dead," she wrote in an e-mail. "And what's emerged in its wake are sites that veer more toward producing original content than outright linking. So now is the time to be an entrepreneur, to figure out if there's money to be made from our respective websites and what form that will take..."

But lookee here, shiny jumpsuit-clad bloggers from the not-so-distant future: I just linked that and provided no orginal content or value-add whatsoever.  I'm an OG litblogga with shoutout from the Guardian and an audience in the dozens, son!

BOO-YA!

This Be The 'Tube

If you like your poetry to be Philip Larkin, and your YouTube videos charmingly British, well, today's your day, kid.

A Few Fools for Sister Sarah

The Sarah Hall roundtable is happening at Ed's place. YPTR makes an appearance, such as it is, in a couple of days, most likely.

Sad little sensitive unappreciative Pisces Jesus avatar

I've been locked inside your heart-shaped Xbox for weeks!