Article 740 of alt.etext: Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!eff!news.kei.com!ddsw1!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail From: ctporter@mercury.interpath.net (Chris Porter) Newsgroups: alt.etext,alt.zines,rec.arts.books Subject: (news)letter 1:21 Date: 25 Jul 1994 23:27:12 -0400 Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina Lines: 342 Message-ID: <311vqg$aom@mercury.interpath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net Xref: news.cic.net alt.etext:740 alt.zines:4670 rec.arts.books:102507 (news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 21 July 20, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ A belated Happy Birthday to Corey, who yells just like his daddy. Happy Birthday to Jed, a New Hampshire friend. Please send suggestions and submissions. To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to: CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. This being the twenty-fifth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind," I began to read Norman Mailer's account of that Apollo 11 flight, Of a Fire on the Moon. I first became interested in the moon shots after reading Harry Hurt's book For All Mankind, a book I highly recommend. This is an account of the several Apollo missions that reached the moon and the author really invests the astronauts with nobility, puts their achievements in an historical perspective. Mailer's book, or as far as I got into it, took a very cynical look at the Apollo 11 flight, as one might expect from him. I don't necessarily object to that sentiment because I'm sensitive to the argument that there were more humanitarian uses for the money used in the space program; to put the moon walk into some cultural perspective, it was only a month after they walked on the moon for the first time that the astronauts were being wined and dined by Americans, that the Rolling Stones played in a concert at Altamont and hired the Hell's Angels to provide security. Their "security" was so stringent that they beat and murdered a young black man and generally terrorized both the band and the crowd, a tragedy that has been labelled by some as the end of the flower power, idealistic days. These anomalies seem so true to a subtitle of a book that covers the Sixties, "Days of Hope, Days of Rage." I just couldn't finish Mailer's book. I wasn't interested in the day-to-day progression of the mission but more in the cultural impact as found in Hurt's book. But it was so hard just to put the book down. In my university days I became used to completely reading even the books I disliked the most, because they were assigned for a class and I felt personally responsible. It has only been in the last few months that I have even been able to put down a book without making myself finish it (though plenty of books have been relegated so far back on the burner that they'll never be read). Rare is the book that, in the middle, I will decide, "no more." Two books I put down this past week, for very different reasons, Mailer and Richard Price's The Breaks. With Mailer, I recognize that it was a good book and I do want to finish it before I die, but now is not the time. With Price, on the other hand, I had no interest whatsoever, not because it was a "bad" book but because I found my mind wandering throughout the first fifty pages -- I wasn't interested in it. But what if it took a surprise turn in the next couple of pages that I would never find out about? I remember Ken Kesey's Sailor Song, which was somewhat tedious for the first hundred pages or so, then evolved into a wonderful book. I made it through Moby Dick the first time on pure willpower; the second time it was a breeze. Some books you have to wade through even though your mind wanders and there are countless other things to grab the attention. Hass-led Big Time I mentioned in the last issue the author Cormac McCarthy and that he's a "hot writer pushed by everybody it seems." I heard mention that his book The Crossing received a wonderful review in the NY Times Book Review (June 12), so I decided to hunt it down and read what it said. But I don't like reading reviews of books I don't have time to read: I've read my Cormac for the month. Instead I was diverted by a letter to the editor in a later issue written by Donald Kozlosky taking the reviewer of the McCarthy book (Robert Hass) to task for the superlatives which he heaped on the book. The reviewer apparently invoked the memories of a whole range of artists in the article: beginning with Faulkner, Twain, Melville and even Shakespeare, then continuing with Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Cervantes, Beckett and Joseph Conrad to boot. (31) That's quite the company! Kozlosky insists that by raising such comparisons the reviewer instills the novel with a literary weight that the reviewer did not establish in the article. He concludes the letter by insisting that any writer's imagination and accomplishment should be regarded as unique: it seems a clear and continuing hallmark of great writing, be it Faulkner or Shakespeare -- or Jane Austen or Henry James, for that matter -- is that it defies comparison and may even perplex in its deviation from literary precedent. The point seems to be that a reviewer can make an analogy -- "the writer's treatment of theme X is like Faulkner's in that ..." -- but that reviewer should resist empty comparisons that seem to suggest a concrete lineage for the writer's style. But then reviewers of reviews should probably read the review of which they write instead of a letter complaining of said review. Smaller Hass-les And it is one of those coincidences that make my life so interesting that while writing the foregoing paragraph I realized that the original McCarthy reviewer, Robert Hass, has figured in my week in another way. A participant in the internet newsgroup rec.arts.books suggested reading one of Hass' books, Human Wishes, citing it as a fine contemporary example of Prose Poetry (poetry typeset as prose, or prose with poetic flavor). I enjoy getting recommendations like that; I'll drop what I'm supposed to be reading just to satisfy my curiosity about a new discovery. Human Wishes is part poetry and part prose poetry but it has the feel more of poetry than of prose. One prose poem that I particularly liked was "Paschal Lamb." An activist moves to the foothills of Kentucky to raise sheep after being fired from his job at the university (for refusing to shake Hubert Humphrey's hand). The narrator arrives on a visit and reminisces with his host about the time that a cohort suggested a plan to end the Vietnam War. If each war protestor cut off his or her pinky finger and mailed it to the president then the war would most certainly stop. They predict that a few days after such an action was instigated there would be clinics set up to make the protest immolation as painless as possible, the war would stop in eight days, and years later instant friendships would be formed among those pinky-less, middle-aged strangers who meet on the street. But the image of them sitting around discussing this action concludes the poem: the professors could "cut off our little fingers / right now, take them down to the department secretary, and have her put / them in the mail" (29). There seems something perverse about that, something insincere: if one would take such a drastic action could one then just drop the symbol off for someone else to mail? Politics, 101 Hass' poem might have been spoiled for me because I'm in the middle of reading Bob Woodward's The Agenda, an account of President Clinton's White House and the political machinations that have followed his economic plan. I can't help wondering how much sleep these guys get? As much work as they seem to do -- and always the work was needed yesterday -- it makes me wonder about the staffs these people of power drive. For every advisor to the president there must be five over-worked secretaries walking around with their shoulders all tensed from stress, never seeing their families, much less given a whole weekend to relax. But we don't hear of them. Bob Woodward does admit the worth of his assistant, David Greenberg, in a fine acknowledgement ("Without his resourcefulness and drive, the book would not have been possible"), but I wonder how much of the royalties that assistant receives. I continually rage against the style because it is gossip; as an example of reporting it's good, but fine literature it ain't. I'm enjoying this book because I'm interested in President Clinton and those around him. I want to see him lead the country well. A couple of themes in this book are Clinton's indecision (he hates polarities and is always ready for a compromise option), and the change that came over his team once he won the election and the national power brokers came into camp to take charge. Those around him, during the campaign, figured out how to form compromises that reflected Clinton's stated goals. With the influx of the outsiders, and the advent of a more aggressive, Machiavellian enemy (Congress), the compromises no longer fit Clinton's style and his Arkansas advisors -- those few left who know him best -- are left out of the process. You can read of the same phenomenon in Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, when George McGovern had to cater to the moderate Democrats in order to win the nomination at the convention, thereby alienating his original power base and losing horribly in the election. As much as I didn't think I would like this book, it is fascinating as living history. It has given me a greater appreciation for the Washington way of doing things, and a greater knowledge of those players around Clinton. But the question still remains: what does Bill Clinton stand for? Is he a stymied political genius or someone who should have stayed in his niche as a popular professor, a big fish in a smaller pond? Mad Dogs and English Wreckers Exquisite Corpse is a literary magazine edited by Andrei Codrescu, occasional National Public Radio commentator and poetry anthologist (Up Late). There's a little bit of everything in this journal, reviews of books, essays, graphics and of course poetry. The poems range from the traditional to prose poems to haiku to the most avant-garde creations. Clark Lunberry's critical essay presents an elaborate defense of the "para-poetic," the poetless poem. In these poems the "poets" are beginning students of English as a Second Language, and the worth of their poems comes from the odd groupings of words that they might mistakenly compose. One example comes from Mika Imae: I'm often spoken to a strange person. I think that why? But I'm a strange person that the person see to me. So, the strange person all over the world are strange person everyone. (7) And on and on and on. What's bad English to you can be poetry to another. The strength of a para-poem comes from the divergent images that it conjures in the native audience. It makes me think of creating art by putting a paintbrush in a monkey's hand because it depends on the lack of skill of the artist combined with the refined taste of the audience. My favorite image from the issue comes from a more traditional poem, James Broughton's "Testimonies," a collection of stanzas presenting viewpoints from different characters: Said the window-washer from Dallas, For years I tried to clarify the purpose of smudge and blur. When a glass wall split apart and sent me flying through it my vision of life cleared up. (1) I love the idea that the glass actively decided to do something to the window washer, thereby changing his world view. As if the window was at that moment an agent from God. This is a wonderful little magazine but it's not for everybody -- if you like a fresh outlook on writing and the arts, you might pick it up and give it a try. Client Hell I just went to see the movie The Client, another one of John Grisham's thrillers brought to the big screen. A child is somewhere he's not supposed to be, hears a secret that puts him in danger from the mob, and, with the help of a small-time lawyer (Susan Sarandon), outwits the Fed heavyweights and escapes the Mafia hitmen sent to murder him, and unravels the case; at the end the kid and his family fly into the sunset, ready to begin a new, quieter life. I used to really enjoy reading thrillers -- Clive Cussler's hero Dirk Pitt was my favorite. I'll never forget the thought that stuck in my head one day years ago that turned me against them: the heroes and heroines are not human, I realized, because they never lose. Dirk Pitt would get beat up every once in a while but that was never a set back, only a minor deviation in an inevitable progression from Problem to Solution. More people enjoy the formula fiction than enjoy the highbrow fiction probably because they don't want to see losers, they want clearly delineated good and evil or something like that. I don't know what John Grisham's fiction is like, but The Client on film is formula (the little guys besting the big guys), but does anybody expect any different? This is an opiate and sometimes that's a fun way to kill an afternoon. But I'm sure you can find something more constructive to do. Fool's Mate Granta is a literary magazine that has a unique flavor. The current issue, titled "Losers," has a priceless cover: it features a hand-colored photograph probably from the turn of the century, showing a young girl sporting an elaborate paper dunce cap. She sits, head bowed in a pout, hands in her lap, while four other children behind a gate in the adjoining room seem to mock her. "Losers" indeed. Neil Steinberg in "The Spelling Bee" focuses on the young loser, those who try to win the national spelling title. Of the nine million contestants nationally, "8,999,999 will lose, and they will lose in a public and humiliating fashion" (53). I can just imagine the author, a big- city reporter, working the participants, interviewing parents and ferreting out information in the various stages of the tournaments, trying to find the effect losing has on these kids. In the end Steinberg wonders about the wisdom of a spelling bee, a place with its trade secrets and scheming which reminds me of the young beauty pageant contestants and their coaches. Good spelling is a handy skill, but ninety-nine per cent of good spelling is knowing when to use a dictionary. If I am a little shaky on the second vowel in 'separate', as I am from time to time, I don't squint my eyes and try to dredge the proper spelling out of some inner core. I look it up. (72) But that's the way we are, isn't it? In our lust for a new Michael Jordan we don't mind making scapegoats of those who fail. One article that I really enjoyed was written by Julian Barnes, about a chess meeting between England's Nigel Short and the Russian World Champion Gary Kasparov. Short has little chance to win but pretends that he has that glimmer of hope and ends up accomplishing something, a loser who takes glory away from the winner. The title of Barnes' piece, which I censor as "Trap. Dominate. F*#&," refers to the attitudes of the cutthroat chessmen: they strive not merely to defeat an opponent but to humiliate as well. I've been in the chess mentality several times in my life, and though I'm just a duffer who even hesitates to play a stranger in a coffee shop, I can confirm that chess -- and power on the board -- quickly becomes addictive and you begin to look at life as if it were a big chess board. Once I was in the chess frame of mind very heavily, playing my friend Dude at least once a day. It was the beginning of the semester and I went to one of my new classes. Usually I took a seat next to the windows, as far away from the door as I could but the class was very small and for some reason the professor wanted us all to get in closer. He asked me to move to a seat at a forty five degree angle from where I chose to sit. I could have taken two ways: just step over a couple of seats and be there, or go the long way around and move with the rows and around the seats. But at that moment the whole series of desks became a basic chess board for me, I could see it so clearly, and what I did was to move down the row a couple of desks, do a ninety degree turn on my heel as if I were marching, then push the other desks out of the way, thereby clearing a path for myself at a right angle to the row. I had become a specific chess piece. There was a very attractive young lady sitting near and she and I made eye contact, and I gave a little chuckle and said to her, "I'm a rook." She didn't find humor in it and to this day she probably thinks that I am a complete loser. Quote of the Week In his account of the Apollo 11 flight, Mailer writes of the period just before the launch, when he found that the horde of hungry and thirsty reporters had the option of only a couple of vending machines: It was pure American lunacy. Shoddy technology, the worst kind of American shoddy, was replacing men with machines which did not do the work as well as the men. This crowd of a hundred thirsty reporters could have been handled in three minutes by a couple of countermen at a refreshment stand in a ball park. (86) Therein is the real accomplishment of corporate America, Mailer insists. Not the shiny Apollo rocket on the launchpad that will go to the moon and back, but machines that can't provide the service real people could but that we are supposed to get used to. You remember those soda machines that would drop the cup, then the ice, the syrup, then the water? Can you imagine being fiftieth in line for one of those?