Dear Vanessa --

This Blowhard is taking his Wife on a romantic beach vacation. And since for us oldies, "romantic" equals "no computer," I won't be blogging (or even checking email) for the next week.

Let's see: bathing suits? Check. Flip-flops? Check. Credit cards? Check. Gallon container of SPF 500 sunblock? Wait: where's the sunblock?

Best to all,

Michael

at June 26, 2004 | perma-link | (5) comments

Dear Vanessa --

Don't miss Keith Pleas' visit here to the new Rem Koolhaas Seattle public library. (From pix, the library looks to me like a cyberwarehouse, a camp orgy of translucency, metal grillework, and computer-aided origami -- part Apple Store, part airport, part Edsel.) Keith doesn't seem impressed, to say the least. In one hilarious passage, he's giving some thought to the place's avant-garde signage:

My question is, how readable will any of this signage be with real, live people in front of it? Frankly, I think the design team didn't think beyond how it would look in the photos they're going to have submitted to the architecture and design journals which, naturally, are taken without people messing up the spaces. Oh, and give yourself extra credit if you noticed the shin-high railings along the angled wall and thought "hey, won't people trip on those?"

These aren't the words of someone who's in the thrall of current architectural Theory, that's for sure.

Thanks to David Sucher (here), who pointed Keith's posting out. David himself tours the library today; the blogosphere awaits his verdict. Personally, I'm hoping the NYTimes will fill the architecture-critic position recently vacated by Herbert Muschamp with either David or Keith. The public discussion about architecture -- which seems to me to be in a particularly demented state these days -- could use a heavy dose of David and Keith's brand of intelligent common sense.

Best,

Michael

at June 26, 2004 | perma-link | (2) comments

Dear Vanessa --

This just in from a former Blowharder:

I'm still gnawing away at Modern Art. Not very originally, I would identify at least four major sub-traditions in Modern Art: Social Realism, Formalist Modernism (Post-Impressionism through Abstraction), Symbolism (Symbolists-Surrealism) and Conceptual (Duchamp and his postmodern children.)

The problem is a huge fuzziness about the beginnings of all of these. Social Realism has antecedents going back at least as far as Caravaggio. Formalist Modernism is clearly related in various ways to Neoclassicism and Romantic painting, to say nothing of much older Japanese, African, and other sources. Symbolism is obviously almost undistinguishable from Romanticism. Conceptual art is essentially the use of traditional/historical strategies for communicating meaning in art applied to objects, words, behaviors, etc., rather than to representational visual symbols. In many ways, conceptual art is the 20th century version of history painting -- just without the draftsmanship.

Some of those questions, however, were just motivated by reading a lot of history in a short time and suddenly making what appeared to be obvious connections -- e.g., how is psychoanalysis related to "The Sorrows of Young Werther" or "The Confessions" or "Emile"? (Perhaps more awkwardly, how is psychoanalysis related to Spiritualism and Mesmerism? To European imperialism?) How is landscape painting related to the rise of Deism, Unitarianism and Rational Religion? Where exactly did Romanticism come from, and what's it about, exactly? That is, can it be related to underlying social/economic/religious/scientific trends?

By the way, it also dawned on me that it's not just a matter of "interpreting" art in light of social forces -- I think it can also work the other way around. For example, I was wondering why the French Revolution turned so savagely violent. After all, it came at the end of a century of significant material progress for the French (higher incomes, greater life expectancies, improved roads and infrastructure, etc.) The absolutist monarchy wasn't the nicest institution in the world, but it hadn't visited that kind of violence on Frenchmen in over a century -- really, since the repression of The Fronde. What exactly were they so pissed off about? And why were the French revolutionaries so eager to go to war with virtually all of Europe?

Then I thought of J. L. David, whose paintings are full of quasi-hysterical glorifications of moral harshness (Oath of the Horatii, Brutus) and of dead heroes (Marat, Bara, Lepellitier, etc., etc.). Obviously he was hitting the French where they lived, emotionally. And in David's personal and professional life, all the action came from a dichotomy between a desperate desire to connect with "good" father-figures and furious anger at "bad" fathers -- not surprisingly, as his own father was killed in a duel when he was an infant, thus leaving him orphaned and searching for substitute father figures like his architect uncle (bad), like his cousin Boucher (good), like his neoclassical mentor Vien (mostly bad), like the senior administrators in the Academy (bad), like Marat (very good), like Robespierre (good), like Napoleon (good), etc.

It dawned on me that French society at the time of the revolution makes a lot more sense thought of in David's terms -- i.e., a society-wide search for "good" father figures (even when, or especially when, they demanded sacrifices of their "offspring") and a furious anger at "bad" father figures. It also explains, or at least makes some sense out of, all the latent homosexuality and ultra-male chauvinism of Neoclassicism and of the whole revolutionary ethos.

And it mostly just dawned on me that this type of analysis is pretty much what Liberal Arts education should be about, no? Otherwise, it's just a jumble of novels, plays, books, pictures, etc.

Best,

Michael

at June 25, 2004 | perma-link | (2) comments

Dear Vanessa --

* Alice Bachini blogs again! Only now she's deploying her unique combo of style, voice, merriment, and incisiveness from Texas, here.

* Yahmdallah has some suggestions for summer viewing, here.

* The invaluable Independent Institute takes a look here at Bush-era budget figures and delivers the bad news: since 9/11, federal spending has been increasing at a faster rate than at any time in the last 30 years.

* Finally proven once and for all: being male is bad for your health. Details here. Plus, quel surprise, men are less sensitive to physical pain than women are, here.

* Dutton on Rosen on Modernism, here. Sample quote:

The problem for modernism is that with atonality it reached a point where intelligibility, and therefore pleasure, was stretched beyond the breaking point. The aesthetic effect of music depends in most instances on its ability to incite predictions and then foil them: think of the dramatic modulations of Beethoven, or the sudden, unexpected shifts into major keys in Schubert. Completely unpredictable music can no longer surprise its listeners: if just anything can be expected, nothing can enter experience as unexpected.

And ain't that the truth. I notice that ALD (here) has linked to a Nature piece here about atonality.

* If "secularism" is held to with fanatical zeal, does it become its own kind of religion? Here.

* Terry Teachout looks at the NYTimes' two, wildly-different reviews of Bill Clinton's memoir -- Michiko's pan and Larry's praise -- and makes a lot of sensible and worldly observations about how the book-reviewing trade works, here.

* Have you explored the blog Gene Expression, here? Dicey but fascinating topics we'll all be hearing more about, brainily handled. Now's a good time to check them out: Razib, Godless and the crew are on an especially-energetic roll.

* I got a chance to hang with Steve Sailer for an evening and had a great time. He's the bighearted, calm, and supersmart person his journalism and blogging suggests that he is. I don't follow sports, but I learned a lot anyway from Steve's recent column about the Larry Bird brouhaha, here. (I was about to type "the Larry Bird flap," but for some reason that didn't seem like a good idea.)

* A much-buzzed-about current art show can be read about here. It's by the artist Andrea Fraser, and it consists of a videotape of Fraser having sex with an art collector. That's the artwork. As one critic wrote, "It's about Hobbesian notions of the social contract, the art of the deal, and of course, 20 grand, which is what Fraser got paid."

* I notice that this place here seems to be selling yoga pants and shorts that some male visitors might find acceptable: stretchy enough to suit a yoga class, but long and baggy enough to suit a square straight guy too. Yuppie prices, though.

Best,

Michael

at June 25, 2004 | perma-link | (0) comments

Dear Vanessa --

What a lovely development: the NYTimes' absurd radical propagandist, er, architecture critic Herbert Muschamp is stepping down. Here's a sensationally good NY Observer piece about Muschamp's run at the paper, and why he's leaving.

Those who are curious about how the ego-tecture game is played -- and those still idealistic about bigtime architecture -- are urged to give the piece a read. It's not as if Muschamp's absurdity (and his ego, his tyrannical temperament, and his corruption) was a big secret.

"If the transition is self-motivated," writes Clay Risen, the article's author, "it's also, sources at The Times said, a relief to a new crop of editors unwilling to defend, as their predecessors did, the critic's iconoclasm and obscurantism, his unapologetic dilettantism and his unabashed socializing within the highest social circles of the creative world he judges in print."

Much, much more follows.

Best,

Michael

at June 25, 2004 | perma-link | (1) comments

Dear Vanessa --

I hope I'll be forgiven for promoting a comment I put on your "Two Kinds of Guys" posting to a posting of its own. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when I finished writing it, so I can't resist. I urge visitors to read Vanessa's posting here, and its interesting comment thread as well.

Here goes.

Well, during the few free moments when I'm not fighting off attempts by starlets and ballerinas to force me to accept blowjobs ...

I do feel for American women, fed up with them though I often get. And I'm with Todd about 50% of the way -- it's necessary to laugh at people like Naomi Wolf, who complain about feeling traumatized by Seventeen magazine. Hey, life's tough. (Naomi Wolf needs to be laughed at for lots of reasons.)

But Vanessa's raising an important point, it seems to me. To some extent, in the straight world, men are the audience for women (and women for men). And if you're faced with an unresponsive or uninterested audience, it can drive you nutty.

There's something about America that leads many guys to abandon the whole seeking-the-poetry-in-women thing and to just hunt or fish or watch sports instead, while expecting to have (or hoping to have) a sexy sympathetic woman around to take care of all that woman stuff guys need taken care of.

Where's the appreciation for who and what a woman is? For the gifts, beauties, and talents that she brings with her? For the unique and delightful package of qualities that she is? For, in some cases anyway, her feelings and intuitiveness, as well as her way with emotions, organic and domestic and romantic things? Women (some, anyway) are color, mystery, poetry, changeability; they have access to cool and slippery realms of experience and being, which is great in and of itself, and that most guys can't get to left to their own devices.

If a gal doesn't feel some recognition of all this and some appreciation for it, it doesn't surprise me that she'd feel a little nuts.

To reverse the sex roles: many nice straight guys in NYC are driven nuts by the self-centered, highstrung women here. Why? Because many of these gals are interested only in themselves and their own needs and fantasies -- getting into the right party, landing someone with tons of dough, showing off, being photographed, having tantrums at work, etc. The "guy" in such a life is just another (if necessary) accessory. (There are nice gals around, etc, but the Manhattan media-and-culture world is remarkably full of highstrung self-centered women ....) And this makes many perfectly decent guys feel really blue. Where's the genuine admiration for their good qualities? Where's the fond amusement at their follies, and their humor and energy? Where's the loving appreciation for their generosity and efforts? John O'Hara somewhere or other was writing about these women when he said something like "They aren't lesbians but they don't like men." And many of them don't, they just don't. They see what a man considers good about himself -- typically energy, ideas, resilience -- as something to put up with, or to be scolded into meek submission. And it drives many guys nuts. They don't feel recognized and they don't feel appreciated.

Anyway, a consequence is that many American women often feel frustrated, and seldom feel loved. (I mean, women'll whine and gab and kill you with their needs and chatter even when they're "fulfilled," god knows. But the additional frustration of feeling unloved and unappreciated for who and what they are seems to make many of them frantic or punitive or nuts -- to drive them to politicize it all, or to de-sexualize themselves, or to act out maliciously, or to get depressive and drag others down with them, etc.) But they want a guy anyway, so they find themselves having to play roles that aren't them. Here we've got this big, open, free country, yet we've only got a couple of desirable-woman archetypes: minx, nice girl, Maxim cheerleader, etc. Which is absurd.

The "France" experience for American gals used to be (no idea if it still is) the discovery of a culture where women and women's experiences are considered fascinating per se, and where the appreciation of women (almost like the appreciation of food or wine) for their own distinctive qualities is considered ... I dunno, desirable, fun, transfixing, etc. Really, it's considered an almost religious calling -- a sacred experience, if also a sexy one.

Very common for an American girl to go to France feeling bad about herself and unloved (because she's got a big ass, or a big nose, or is too tall, or whatever), and in France to awake to discover that she's being loved and pursued for exactly those aspects of herself that in the States she felt bad about. It can be a transformative experience for a girl. Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger's gal, was one of many such. In the States she was considered a weirdo -- big nose, small-busted, goofy-temperamented, gangly, too tall. She went to France, and the French (all those 5'5" guys, remember) fell all over themselves loving her. They loved what she'd always felt was her oddness; what had made her a loser was suddenly what was making her a winner. The unsurprising consequence was that she blossomed. She developed confidence and got a chance to move into and inhabit what she in fact is. (Hey, I loved her semi-trashy memoir, Tall Tales, buyable here. Smart, campily funny, sweet and unpretentious -- very likable and down-to-earth.)

Something that's hyper-evident in France, or once was anyway, is that there are many, many different types of women there, and nearly all of them are found desirable. They aren't all striving to be Maxim babes or cheerleaders. Since "woman" per se is considered desirable and mysterious (that's the starting point), each specific woman is considered a fascinating manifestation of that mystery. They're all found fascinating, each in a different way -- and they all get to feel that they're fascinating, and on a fairly-regular basis. Interesting to note that American-style doctrinaire-political hyper-feminism never took hold in France, isn't it? Interesting as well the way women in France flourish in a culture that's really pretty rigid, at least by American standards. They aren't imagining that they'll Become Themselves by being Set Free.

Is it our Puritanism that does it to us? Or is it our individualism? Both? I mean, we're all free to go be ourselves, and we all feel under an urgent obligation to express who we are. But who the hell knows who we are? So we flounder and grasp at straws instead, and hope no one notices, and hope we manage to get laid and land a mate anyway, somehow, god only knows how.

The brains-and-gals thing is interesting, no? It does seem hard for bright, idea-centric guys to find gals they can talk with. Maybe it's a mistake to go looking for a gal who likes to talk ideas -- there just don't seem to be many. Maybe that's not what gals are generally for. In fact, I know a number of bright arty idea guys who married arty women clearly hoping that they'd have great arty-idea conversations together, and who wound up frustrated and feeling blue about it. Their women finally just don't want to do it.

I'm a lucky one -- The Wife has tons of mental horsepower. But even so I have to manhandle her into having idea-conversations. She just isn't drawn to such discussions. Her idea of a conversation is to discuss people, relationships, motives, what someone's up to, pulling people's characters apart, etc. For me to get a bit of what I'm looking for takes labor. I've got to announce loudly that we're about to discuss what's on my mind -- and even then she'll tend to respond by addressing subtext and emotions. So I've got to steer her firmly onto the "let's discuss the actual substance of these ideas" path. Finally, she'll do it -- she's in fact great at it -- but she always gives me those "I'm doing you a favor" looks. Talking ideas is nothing she'd ever choose to do -- I'm meant to understand that I owe her one. By her lights, the "normal" thing is for me to sit there nodding my head and seeming fascinated while she talks for hours about relationships and feelings. Anything else is her really extending herself for my sake. I get the idea-and-art-discussions I crave, but I have to pay for 'em. And I'm one of the lucky ones -- a guy who's got a wife he can actually talk to about what's on his mind. Every now and then, anyway.

I exaggerate, but not by too much.

Anyway: ain't it interesting that stuff like art and poetry and such are in America so often considered "gay" interests? That isn't true in many cultures. How'd it come to be true here? It's not as if we're so all-fired macho. And, come to think of it, macho isn't a synonym for "no poetry, please." Italian guys, for instance, are often supermacho as well as eloquent (and demanding) on aesthetic matters -- food, fabrics, haircuts, opera. It's not a pussy thing to pay attention to such topics for an Italian guy; it'd be a pussier thing not to care about them.

And why doesn't someone do a study of the mating patterns of geek guys? As far as I can tell, they like having a woman, they like having a house, they often like having a family. However much they adore cyberpunk shoot-em-up fantasies, they're often very domestic guys at heart. But since they find the "shopping for a mate" thing an excruciating experience, they often wind up settling down with the first gal who'll have them. Then, what with the woman-and-house thing taken care of, the geek guy goes back to the business of being a geek, only to awaken ten years later to learn, with amazement, that his wife's just left him. She was unfulfilled -- who knew?

Unfair?

Best,

Michael

at June 25, 2004 | perma-link | (25) comments

Dear Michael:

While trolling Romenesko, I clicked on a link by accident and found this useful article which is Chip Scanlan's summer reading list plus a whole bunch of links to other people's summer reading lists; here.

I'm going to attempt to read a whole book this summer: Robert Kurson's "Shadow Divers," about two wreck divers off the coast of New Jersey who found that mysterious U-boat full of Nazi skeletons. It got a big ole slobbery kiss from Janet Maslin in today's New York Times; here.

Yours,
Vanessa

at June 24, 2004 | perma-link | (4) comments

Dear Michael:

So, since you posted your theory about "Two Kinds of Guys" I've been trying to sort my thoughts about it. First, let me say I think you totally nailed it. My immediate reaction was a kind of "Holy Crap!" moment, and then I tried to identify the effects of living in a place--the United States, namely--where 1) men seem to have this attitude that women are merely accessories to their boyish preoccupations; and, 2) this attitude is reinforced by magazines and TV aimed at guys ("The Man Show," Maxim magazine and its heinous spinoffs and copycats, dumb-ass-guy movies, beer commercials). The effect has been, I think, that women have over time internalized its negative message: that, women are interesting as long as they're "hot" and don't get in the way of men enjoying adolescent pursuits. So, the result is women have misgivings about their worth (bagging a man, after all, is one of evolution's time honored mandates) and turn to the media for help. Thus, the awful and essentially misogynistic women's magazine trade; plastic-surgery addiction; eating disorders; "The Swan"; Britney Spears as style icon. Who today gives women permission to be their whole selves? Not TV. Not Hollywood. Not the rap industry. Novels? Perhaps, since in them one is more likely to encounter the woman-as-fascinating-creature rhapsody that you describe (but, who reads anymore?).

You know who's giving women the love they crave? Oprah and Martha Stewart. And, that's why they're gazillionaires.

Now, before all you guys out there start piling on, I don't really think American men are all boorish, juvenile, emotionally stunted, Farrelly-brothers fans (I married one, after all). But the image that the media (Hollywood, TV, mags, etc.) reflects back at us suggests that something is up. It may be a totally false image when it comes to individual male people but it seems to be speaking to a common fantasy life, or something. Which leads me to wonder, Is it different anywhere else? In France, say, the spiritual homeland of the women-are-interesting-warts-and-all line of sexuality? Or, is that a movie-propagated myth, too?

Kissy faces,
Vanessa

at June 24, 2004 | perma-link | (8) comments

Dear Vanessa --

Expert foodie that you are, you're well aware of the Slow Food movement, whose international website is here and whose U.S. website is here. 2Blowhards visitor Dave Lull writes in to point out a couple of other slow-it-down movements and websites that have appeared recently. As we say in the media game, "Three examples and you've got yourself a real trend."

Here's a site devoted to a book by Carl Honore that's about the virtues of slowness generally. Honore isn't advocating anything hippie-ish or unwashed, let alone any form of hide-in-the-woods Luddism either. He's advocating something very civilized instead. "Being 'Slow'," the author writes, "means living better in the hectic modern world by striking a balance between fast and slow." Here are some facts from the book's press material:

Americans spend 40% less time with their children than they did in the 1960s; an American on average spends 72 minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car; a typical business executive now loses 68 hours a year to being put on hold; and American adults currently devote on average a meager half hour per week to making love.

Here's a q&a; with the author; here's the book's Amazon page; here's a Yahoo News visit with Honore. "Living better" -- if art ain't about that, then I just lost interest. I also enjoyed noticing that Honore is a yoga fan.

And here's Dave's other find, the website of the Slow Cities movement, which seems very Jane Jacobs, as well as directly influenced by Slow Food. I'm eager to hear what David Sucher (here), John Massengale (here), James Kunstler (here) and Larry Felton Johnson (here) -- Slow types, all of them -- think of the Slow Cities movement. I notice that Kunstler's June Eyesore of the Month award (here) goes to the very speedy new Rem Koolhaas-designed library in Seattle. Kunstler makes some good jokes at the place's expense. David Sucher tours the library this Saturday and will blog about it soon after. I'm eager to read David's observations and verdict.

How not to root for these Slow developments? Careening through cyberlife while clicking on flashing buttons has its virtues and pleasures; it can leave you feeling frantic and empty too. What's all that workaday speeding-around meant to lead to anyway? Yet more speeding around? Pardon me while I collapse, then take a mood-booster.

It occurs to me that there are two Slow movements I'd like to see someone start up. First: Slow Tennis -- wooden rackets, small racket heads. Enough with the flashy monotony of today's boom-boom, stunt-centric MTV spectacle, and back to the civilized amateur's game tennis was prior to the 1980s. OK, classic tennis could be boring -- but why do we get so hung about Boring? Boredom is a close neighbor of Leisure, after all; I sometimes wonder if the Fear of Being Bored might not be the symptomatic disease of our age. And, y'know, I'll take it over Numbing -- which is what boom-boom tennis too often is -- any day. Embrace the boredom! BTW, I did some Googling and was amazed to discover that no one makes traditional wooden tennis rackets these days.

The other Slow movement I'd cheer on? Slow Lovin', an organization devoted to the savoring of soulful, poetic eroticism in a world overrun by literal-minded, button-smashing sexiness. Oh, wait: I see that there's an Italian Slow Sex website already, here. Trust the Italians, eh? I hope that whoever imports the idea to this country will do so in a damn hurry.

What Slow movements would you like to see someone start up? Let me guess: Slow Desserts. Or maybe something more targeted, like Slow Brownies? I figure that you and I are doing our part already, in any case. 2Blowhards: the home of Slow Blogging.

Many thanks to Dave Lull.

Best,

Michael

UPDATE: Dave reminds me that, in this good recent essay for the Guardian here, the critic Robert Hughes argued that what's most needed in art right now is work that slows us down ...

UPDATE 2: Here's a q&a; with the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini. Here's another.

at June 24, 2004 | perma-link | (10) comments

Dear Vanessa --

My candidate for "Least-Needed Rental Car Feature":

Has anyone ever actually used one of these things to get to where they wanted to go? All I've ever managed to do with one is bruise my knee.

Best,

Michael

at June 24, 2004 | perma-link | (6) comments

Dear Vanessa --

Pacific Title is the name of a company that's been creating titling for Hollywood movies since 1919. They create "opticals" too -- fades, dissolves, etc. "Not long ago, Pac Title's artists still created film titles using paper, pencil and paint; today, it's bits, bytes and computers screens," writes Debra Kaufman. "In 1997, we did 80 percent optical effects and 20 percent digital effects," reports Pacific Title CEO Phil Feiner. "Now it's 98 percent digital and 2 percent optical."

I lifted these facts and this quote from the latest issue of American Cinematographer -- hey, one my favorite magazines. Their website is here.

Best,

Michael

at June 23, 2004 | perma-link | (2) comments

Dear Vanessa --

Currently on the commute-to-work tape-player: an abridged audio version of William Gibson's Neuromancer. (It's buyable here.) I'd tried several of Gibson's books before but was unable to get through them, hence my resort to the audiobook. I'm eager to hear how you've reacted to Gibson's fiction if you've given it a try.

It occurs to me -- audio propagandist that I am -- that I've hit on another good way to use books-on-audio. I've blogged before about how audiobooks enabled me to get through books I hated but felt I needed to have read. ("Feeling obliged to finish books I hate": now that's a phase I'm long done with!) It turns out that audio's also a good way to get through books I'm curious about but don't have the reading-willpower to finish.

Because it does take a fair amount of willpower to get through a whole print book, doesn't it? Either that, or the book's got to be delivering a darned rewarding time. (Also, middle-aged eyes give out suprisingly fast. No more read-a-thons for bi-focal'd me.) So what becomes of you-and-a-book if you're merely idly curious about it? What if you haven't got the necessary horsepower to get through the print version, yet you wouldn't mind knowing what the book's like? Solution: let the Walkman take care of the grunt work for you. Click the "play" button, and all you have to do is stay awake.

As if turns out, I'm semi-enjoying my abridged audio Gibson. It's brilliant; what a great job he did of capturing the fantasy life that many geeks seem to share. I'm finding it hard to tell how satirical Gibson is being, though. This is admittedly a pitfall of books on audio, especially abridged ones; it can be hard to be certain of a book's exact tone. It's pretty funny, after all, that so many geeks share such an overblown fantasy life. But is Gibson giggling about this, or is he offering up his perceptions and observations with a straight face? I can't tell. Can anyone illuminate here?

It's also a culturally-significant book, of course. Gibson helped set a style (cyberpunk is its usual name, though videogame-noir is how I think of it) that's proved important and surprisingly long-lasting. So, culturally-curious guy that I am, I'm enjoying learning a little something first-hand about what this "Neuromancer" thing has been all about.

My problem with the novel -- and this isn't a criticism, just a personal reaction -- is that I simply don't share this particular fantasy life. (I'm tempted to use the term "fantasy space" instead of "fantasy life." It sounds so much more ... I dunno, conceptual or technical or something, doesn't it?) How about you? What direction do your own fantasies tend to race off in?

To be honest, I can't imagine getting much pleasure out of the techno-noir fantasy world. I had my share of little-boy, action-comedy fantasy pleasures when I was a child, but I put them aside as a teen when I discovered art, sex, and France. And since eroticism has always been central to my interest in Culture, my own fantasies tend to run off in the general direction of actresses, women, sailboats, beaches, Provence ...

I'd never, ever choose to spend fantasy time in a drizzly, silicon-implanted, cyber-decaying, back-alley Tokyo. This world looks like a nightmare to me, and not an alluring one. It doesn't turn me on and make me want to battle it out with bad guys; instead it makes my brain hurt. It makes me want to leave town for a refreshing weekend in the country -- where, with luck, someone I know will be up to some sexual no-good, preferably by poolside. At first, I'll just sneakily observe, but then I'll get drawn into the shenanigans. Soon I'll be caught up in voyeuristic, malign, and luscious decadence, well over my head. But is it all dream or reality anyway? ...

"Neuromancer" is also a tremendous and vivid reminder of those years when it seemed like geeks were taking over the world. Remember registering what was happening? My first reaction was, "Omigod, who let them snag some power?" And, "Who knew they were such fantasists and bullies?" Prior to those years, I'd never given the inner lives of geeks a moment's thought, had you? What a surprise it was to learn that they had inner lives at all. As far as I knew, geek-guys were simply overweight, sweaty techies on Jolt who had some handy skills, no sense of style, and a bizarre taste for referring to the human body as "meat."

And what a surprise too to learn a bit about what those geek inner lives consist of. As far as I've been able to tell, Gibson nails it once and for all. Geek guys evidently enjoy imagining themselves as studly cyber-cowboys having gritty adventures on the frontiers of consciousness. In their own minds, they're unshaven manly-men performing unrecognized, heroic rescue missions while the rest of us -- in the geek mind, idiots all -- slumber innocently.

Something I've never quite figured out (and that Gibson has some fun with) is the geek love of techno-jargon. All fields have jargon, it's fun for insiders to sling jargon around a bit, etc etc. But doesn't it seem that geeks really, really love their geekjargon? Why is that, do you suppose? Perhaps it enables them to swagger a bit. I get the impression that the geek brain identifies with the computer, don't you? Geeks seem to love inhabiting the machine's insides; the reason the geek feels like a superman (and has such contempt for the rest of us) is that he can control the computer in ways we non-geeks can't. Whoa: the power! So perhaps what their extreme case of jargonlove indicates isn't merely that they're having fun being insiders; perhaps it represents a real desire to be inside ... inside the machine.

I've got less than no interest in interacting with a computer's guts. To me, the computer is a rickety enabling tool in bad need of stabilizing and humanizing. I expect computers to serve my needs and pleasures; the last thing I want to worry about is what the computer's rules are. Come to think of it, I suspect that the main reason I've never been able to get hooked by a videogame is that all the videogames I've tried feel like being trapped inside a computer. That seems to be the thrill of them: the corridors and puzzles you're expected to explore, solve, and race through are metaphors for the software and hardware of the computer itself. Lemme outta here, is my response.

Hey: a half-baked, admittedly not-yet-very-catchily-expressed theory? That there are two classes of grown men: those who really love women, and whose fantasy lives are centered around women; and those who don't, and whose fantasy lives center around guy stuff. Group One: men for whom women are the great adventure. Group Two: men for whom women are at best supporting players in the great adventure.

Something that often surprises me about American men is how many of them belong to Group Two. They may want women around, and they may love how pretty and pleasing women can be. But woman as mystery; as source of life and creation; as poetry; as endlessly-tormented (and occasionally ecstatic) creatures of instinct, emotions, and ideas ... Well, doesn't it seem that remarkably few American men get fascinated by this package?

(FWIW, I've never known a guy who has felt that his emotions were in conflict with his intellect. For a guy, having a little extra brainpower is always and everywhere a straightforwardly and unambiguously Cool Thing. But I've known few bright women who don't experience tensions between the directions their intellects tug them in and the directions their emotions want them to go. Any thoughts about this? I'll betcha that it wasn't a man who invented the word "conflicted," in any case.)

Did you ever read the critic Leslie Fiedler? One of his theses was that much American art is basically juvenile -- boy stuff. "Moby Dick"? "Huckleberry Finn"? Adventure yarns for the pre-pubescent mind. His explanation for this phenomenon -- adult malehood as an extended boyhood -- is that part of what Americans were running away from when they fled the Old World (the ones who fled the Old World, anyway) was adult sexuality. Given half a chance, the typical American guy will sneak away from the gals and head out to the frontier, there to shoot guns and avoid bathing. It seems that the cyber-world is the up-to-date version of Fiedler's American frontier, doesn't it?

This line of thinking helps explain why American movies these days seem so eroticism-free, despite all the glossy pecs and tummies on display. It's bizarre how the foreground of American life features so much aggressive "sexiness," while the general gestalt -- the background texture -- is so exhaustedly un-erotic. American movies these days are generally corporate, cyber, Dolby, and techno. The gizmos and gimmicks are the new frontier, and they seem to be absorbing all the energy. And what's erotic about that? Roger Ebert, interviewed in Rosanna Arquette's silly documentary about movies and actresses, confessed to being surprised by today's young-guy moviegoers. "They aren't interested in sex!" Ebert marveled, more or less. "Back in my day, sexiness and actresses were a big part of why a young guy would go to the movies."

Eager to hear your reflections about whatever the hell it is I've been babbling about ...,

Michael

at June 23, 2004 | perma-link | (21) comments

Dear Michael:

Last week, the Chicago Tribune, my adopted hometown's major daily, published its 50 Best Magazines list, which I think they do every year (but possibly only last year and this year, so far). I think it's a fun survey of the magazines out there and I do enjoy viewing the results of what must have been a deeply psycho-neurotic editorial process to come up with such a list: Doesn't it make us look quirky to have noticed Wooden Boat magazine? We read American Demographics because we're geeky journalists, we can't help ourselves! This one just won a National Magazine award, so that's a safe choice. We're cool because we can admit we read Us Weekly. We like Time better than Newsweek, "Is it better...? Is Coke better than Pepsi?" Well, duuuuh!

Here's the list, cut and pasted because I couldn't figure out how to link to it:

1. Wired. After a wobbly post-boom period, Wired has transformed itself from an insider computer monthly into a slick, smart and playful cultural journal. The reporting is excellent ("The Future of Food," "The New Diamond Age," for instance) and the graphics deliver some of the best short-form journalism in the business. The back-page feature Found" and the upfront section "Start" are consistently strong, and even the "Letters" page crackles with energy. The writing staff is lively yet authoritative, and columnists Lawrence Lessig and Bruce Sterling are smart without being snooty. Even the ads are cool. Finally: We dare you to show us a better magazine Web site (Wired.com).

2. Real Simple. This gem seduces and delivers the goods with teasers such as "A cleaner house in less time: 23 breakthrough tools and tips," "Swimsuits to flatter every figure" and "With a simple box of yellow cake mix, you can make any of these seven sweet desserts." The magazine is a breeze to read, filled with charts, photos, where-to-buy, how-to-order, how-to-make data right there, front and center.

3. The Economist. The no-nonsense font and rigid layout style make it look like a class handout on the first day of an MBA program, but don't be dismayed. This magazine features the most succinct, globe-encompassing wrap-ups of politics and economics on the market. Even often overlooked cultural features such as book reviews glisten with insight.

4. Cook's Illustrated. Our biggest complaint with this always readable mag? That they haven't come out with a gardening version that gives the topic the same thorough, skeptical treatment. We'll say it again: Not taking ads and writing about the actual cooking process so the average home cook can understand gives this magazine an authority that few others in any field enjoy.

5. Esquire. We suspect we're not as good-looking as we think we are. We know we're not clever enough. Esquire is the antidote to our human frailty. Snazzy, gorgeous, well-dressed, smart and that's just the magazine itself. The writing within is consistently great and sometimes beautiful, offering heaping portions of journalism, fiction, essays and helpful advice columns. Even if we doubt we'll ever wrestle with the great trouser-cuffs-and-suspenders debate, we love it that Esquire does.

6. The New Yorker. With Seymour Hersh's series of revelations about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the New Yorker demonstrates yet again how a weekly magazine can still beat the pants off the 24-hour press. And with the presidential election season upon us, look to this book for insight and access into the process and players. Its coverage of pop culture also continues to shine.

7. American Demographics. There are more interesting facts about Americans in one issue of this than in 20 weekly newsmagazines put together. An unparalleled cruncher and analyst of census data, this is the place to learn which ethnic groups buy which products, what counties are the bigger lovers of boats and every detail about how and where we die, among other omnipresent realities.

8. Men's Health. Self-deprecating, funny and jammed with great information. Even those unbearable true-life weight-loss stories are turned into clever contests. Yes, it's full of sex and sultry women with pouty lips, but regular features such as Jimmy the Bartender ("on women, work and other stuff that screws up men's lives") and topical stories make it worthwhile for both sexes.

9. Jane. This fashion and features mag is unapologetically girlie but, surprisingly, is not content-free. For cover stories, celebs such as Kate Winslet and Meg Ryan let down their guard and answer real questions posed by the mag's chatty yet persistent interviewers, and the fashion and beauty advice is actually realistic. Who says a fashion mag has to be glossy, blase and written for stick figures?

10. Consumer Reports. The scolds of the American marketplace, they continue to set themselves apart from an advertising-driven (and, too often, advertising-influenced) media and give the straight dope on everything from dishwashers to insurance. In a world of daily ethical fudging, they're true-blue in giving us cold-blooded assessments of our obsessive consumer culture.

11. Whole Dog Journal. WDJ endorses a distinct, positive and all-natural approach to dog care. There's no advertising, so the monthly doesn't mince words in its product reviews. You can count on no-fluff articles offering relevant tips, and the training and animal behavior pieces are succinct and practical. Passions run high in dogdom; WDJ calmly presents its point of view.

12. Time. Solid, credible reporting, interesting special reports, spot-on political analysis from Joe Klein and generally good writing all around. Is it better than Newsweek? Is Coke better than Pepsi?

13. Reason. In an era of smash-mouth, left vs. right political discourse, the libertarian Reason is a fresh and nuanced antidote, with a frequent a-plague-on-both-their-houses approach. And it kicked butt with a head-turning cover story, meant to underscore the power of database marketing, in which the cover was personalized for each of the 40,000 subscribers with an aerial photograph of the mailing address.

14. People. One of the most influential mags ever, it is America's guilty pleasure. Only the true snoot will deny the allure, especially stuck waiting for a hairdresser, of learning who's sleeping with whom, who's splitsville and who's due when. Yes, there are serious topics, but these folks tapped into our obsession with celebrity and continue to beat the competition to the punch. So who is dating Ben Affleck these days?

15. Business Week. Consistently the best business magazine, more timely than the biweeklies Forbes and Fortune. One strength is international reporting, as in the cover story on India and outsourcing.

16. Fine Homebuilding. If the inside of your head is lined with ceramic tile, then this publication is for you. Amateurs and professionals alike will squint appreciatively at the lavishly detailed photos of distinctive homes. The how-to pieces and the buyers guides to tools and products are written with clarity and thoroughness.

17. The Atlantic Monthly. With a knack for coming up with cover stories that always seem a step ahead of the Next Big Thing in news, this magazine continues at the top of its game. Even the stories that don't make the coveted cover would, in any other magazine, be the spotlight feature.

18. National Review. This right-wing glossy offers smart, certain ideology for these uncertain times. More serious than Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh and less Air Force One-obsessed than the Weekly Standard, the middlebrow NR even manages to squeeze the pretentious arts through its conservative wringer.

19. Conde Nast Traveler. Relentlessly up-scale, yet balanced with fascinating and practical consumer information, this is the magazine for the well-heeled traveler who's not above wearing sensible shoes. Its annual Readers' Choice ranks the best-of-everything in the world of travel -- as long as money isn't an object. But, then, what's a travel magazine for if not to dream?

20. No Depression. For those who crave that tasty trail mix of traditional country, punk, folk and rock that goes under the moniker alt country or Americana, there is no finer or more thorough source for news, reviews and profiles. We adore the long chewy portraits of the genre's big names, and the dispatches from concertland.

21. Cooking Light. Pleasantly attitude-free and rich with all aspects of a healthy lifestyle, including nutrition and fitness. Not only are the recipes simple, tasty and healthy, but each month offers ideas for the "Inspired Vegetarian." Another handy section called "Superfast" provides ideas for meals that can be ready in about 20 minutes.

22. Aperture. Each issue of this recently redesigned photography quarterly is a treasure. The printing quality and paper stock are better than in most photography books. Founded by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and others more than 50 years ago, Aperture thrives as a venue for today's most captivating and diverse fine art photography.

23. Us Weekly. No one does photo captions better. Us hooks us with its amazing image-storytelling, like the narrative arc of a Britney spread in which she looks skinny one day and pudgy the next, coupled with a "story" about her fast-food eating diet. We also continue to love the "Stars: They're Just Like Us" feature, in which we gawk in amazement as Jennifer Aniston ties her own shoe and Ben Affleck drops off laundry. Maybe they really are just like us!

24. Car and Driver. Other car magazines make some attempt to appear grown-up, but not C&D.; From the legendary "Dodge Intrepid vs. U.S.S. Intrepid" comparison to thorough, definitive road tests, C&D; sets the standard. When it arrives in the mailbox, full of readable prose ranging from cranky to hilarious, you see why C&D; rules.

25. Essence. Indispensable to its loyal readership with lively and timely reports on issues that matter to women of color. Whether the topic is obstacles to career advancement, obtaining financial security or fighting for better health in the black community, Essence is on the cutting edge.

26. Science News. You don't need a PhD in science to understand this weekly, and it's far more concise than, say, Science or Nature. Those two may fight for first dibs on the newest research, but SN will report later so a layperson can understand it.

27. Budget Living. Here's a magazine that aims at those of us in slightly lower tax and stock sophistication brackets than, say, Martha Stewart Living, where we are not afraid to ask questions such as: Where can I buy a spring coat for less than $40? What is really the cheapest cell phone plan? And how do I garden if I am still a renter?

28. Sports Illustrated. Cliches are the athlete's foot of sports writing, the scummy, unavoidable residue of the genre. This veteran magazine, however, still manages to come up with surprising, inventive prose about the week's big events in the sporting world. The longer features always sparkle. The photos are often instant classics.

29. Vogue. In a landscape of lookalike, sound-alike women's magazines, Vogue maintains its position above the masses with singular old-fashioned sophistication and a healthy sense of humor. It's first and foremost about fashion, which it covers beautifully (those Irving Penn photos!), so we can forgive the long, personal essays about breast-reduction surgery.

30. Entertainment Weekly. If magazines were candy stores, EW would be a wall of delectable penny candy. With bite-size features, irreverent Q&As; and exclusive photos, EW generates buzz like few magazines can. While their movie preview issues are more fun than an afternoon of watching summer trailers, EW's movie criticism remains as snarky as it is unpredictable.

31. Parenting. These guys know what parents of young kids need and that's commiseration and advice on uncivilized children, endless colds, work-family guilt, sleep deprivation and keeping up with the Joneses. And that's in just one issue. We really like the "All Yours" section where moms can get tips on what to do during their nanosecond of weekly personal time.

32. Gourmet. Ruth Reichl has pulled this periodical from its stodgy rut into a lively but substantial read. As always, the stunning photography offers nourishment enough, but the magazine is also jammed with fabulous travel pieces, stylishly written guides to upscale and down-home entertaining and the terrific back section.

33. Martha Stewart Weddings. Every bride-to-be knows that a wedding magazine's primary function is to be a carrier for ads. Ads for wedding gowns primarily. Ads for beautiful, unattainable, perfectly snug or flowing or draping or plunging wedding gowns. And on this count, Martha's quarterly beats the competition.

34. Dwell. For modernists who worship at the temple of design rather than decor with an emphasis on graceful re-use. It can be a bit grad-schoolish at times ("How an Idea Becomes a Chair"), but that's part of its serious charm. Otherwise, it's supercool, environmentally aware, and never ever mentions chintz. What else do you need to know?

35. The American Scholar. Despite the intimidating moniker and fancy pedigree, this lean publication includes some of the sharpest, most down-to-earth writing around. Incisive articles about current events, such as bioterrorism, rub shoulders with profound personal essays by the likes of Thomas Mallon and Annie Dillard.

36. The New York Review of Books. In an era in which brevity is deemed beautiful, this remains a home for engaging and longer-form literary and political essays by an A-list of the smartest folks around. For sure, lengthy dissections of the oeuvre of German critic Walter Benjamin by South African Nobelist J.M. Coetzee can be a challenge. But you'll find critical dissections that provide their own intellectual oasis amid the jargon-filled clutter about us.

37. Wooden Boat. Don't own a boat? Doesn't matter. This boldly illustrated magazine brings out the hidden mariner in even the most stubborn landlubber. Yes, those who occasionally do get out on the water might be most intrigued, but the adventure stories and recollections of special journeys are captivating.

38. New York. With a recent boost from new ownership and a prestigious editor in chief, this venerable city magazine is reinventing itself yet again. Whether it's improving upon an existing feature (gossip pages shun celebs for media moguls), bringing back respected contributors (Kurt Andersen, Maer Roshan) or getting away from the fluffy style of its past few years, New York seems to be edging toward a neo-golden age.

39. National Journal. Frothy liberal mags obsess over New Economy titans. But when the wonkish National Journal picks a Power 100, it offers profiles of the men and women of . . . the Department of Homeland Security. No nudity, but phone numbers attached. Insights from the only magazine that treats federal bureaucrats like the megawatt stars they are in their own minds can be more useful than you'd expect.

40. Donna Hay Magazine. This lush Aussie glossy about food comes with a bit of a built-in language problem (We still haven't quite figured out what a "bug" as in "grilled bug tails with kaffir lime leaf and basil" is. A small lobster? A big shrimp? An actual insect?). But the art direction and photography are so gorgeous and satisfying you could skip a meal after reading it. It's also loaded with scores of uncomplicated recipes, kitchen tips and party ideas.

41. Texas Monthly. Now, more than ever. After years of mostly supportive pieces on "W," a 6,000-word article in the February issue by writer Paul Burka titled "The Man Who Isn't There" seems to have signaled the end of the honeymoon. But there's much more than politics in this state, as any Texan will tell you, and it is presented in all its glory here.

42. Vanity Fair. VF really knows what it's doing, and we like that. We'll forgive the magazine for its obsession with the very rich and the very famous. We can read about regular people any old time now, on to Cameron Diaz! We especially appreciate the beautiful photographs of beautiful people and the provocative writing of Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott.

43. Chicago. It is impossible for a Chicagoan to read an issue and not come away with useful information. This is its first appearance on the Tempo list since The Tribune Company bought this monthly, but you don't have to take our word it belongs here. It just won a National Magazine Award for general excellence for its mix of probing journalism, clever service stories and darn good restaurant coverage.

44. In Touch. For those who consider People too intellectually cumbersome, In Touch is the ideal way to find out what those crazy celebrities are up to (Keanu Reeves Buys His Sis a House! Britney's Sexy Beach Date). In Touch has lots of pictures, just enough text to qualify as a magazine, and an obvious respect for bringing the truth to light (for instance, Nicole Kidman "is aghast over reports that she almost gagged to death on piece of tempura" at a trendy NYC eatery).

45. Heeb. This smart-alecky upstart calls itself "the New Jew Review." The slick, sometimes sick and often funny quarterly is intelligent, provocative and oh-so Jewish. Heeb especially appeals to readers who have celebrated their bat or bar mitzvah after 1990 and those who wish they had. The magazine's young and hip point of view, its embrace of its audience's inner-dweeb make it an interesting and unexpectedly fun read.

46. Legal Affairs. Law is no longer a remote, esoteric academic topic and we don't just mean the Kobe Bryant trial. We mean the way legal matters seep into everyday life, influencing and being influenced by the culture at large. For lengthy, extraordinarily topical articles about the law's long reach into our living rooms and psyches, this magazine has become a must.

47. ToyFare. Three words: "Twisted ToyFare Theater." Collectible figures do and say things obviously not condoned by their corporate owners in a feature so popular, it's anthologized outside the magazine. Example: Comic book villains play the board game Risk and recount naughty anecdotes of world domination while harassing the pizza boy. Oh, it's also a price guide and irreverent toy industry magazine.

48. Rolling Stone. Sure, it occasionally reads like your dad trying to be cool. But RS can still blindside with probing, offbeat features (example: Neil Strauss holes himself up in a hotel room with a swirling-the-drain Courtney Love) and a solid national affairs section. The record reviews can be predictable, but the front-of-book "Rock & Roll" short takes remain addictive.

49. Seahorse. The official magazine of the UK's Royal Ocean Racing Club has built itself into the definitive source for grand prix sailing. Stories range from giant multihulls conquering round-the-world records to America's Cup happenings to who's building the next megayacht.

50. Chicago Wilderness. OK, the tone is a bit boosterish, but what other journal concerns itself with the migrations of the painted lady butterfly or the symphony of flowers busting through our beleaguered prairies? Celebrating the region's natural heritage, this lavishly illustrated quarterly focuses on the inspiring people who protect and heal the local landscape.

Of the magazines I subscribe to, I find that I only really read (i.e. have time to read) The New Yorker and the NY Times magazine. I recently tried reading a few of the "stories" in the new issue of Martha Stewart Living and was amused to see that I had the right instinct in ignoring them for all these years: there's no content there, just deep captioning for the luscious photo spreads. But, they do a great job of making me feel like I somehow participated in making that decoupage lampshade without lifting a finger. I heart Martha. I hope her jail time doesn't cause her empire to crumble.

Love,
Vanessa

at June 21, 2004 | perma-link | (22) comments

Dear Vanessa --

How are you set for cable out in Chicago? Ever since I upgraded to digital cable (obligatory if you want a digital video recorder), I've mainly been exploring the program lineups at Ovation and History International. By the way, do we refer to these as "networks"? "Channels"? "Stations"?

Both outfits seem to own no more than a hundred hours of programming, which they shuffle and repeat month after month. Ovation calls itself "the arts network," and its offerings are generally much peppier than PBS's. I got a lot of pleasure out of two different Howard Goodall music-history series. One, called Big Bangs, focused on turning points in Western music history -- the invention of the piano, of notation, of equal temperament, etc. The other was Choir Works, a series about choirs around the world. For these shows, Goodall visits a boys' choir in Oxford, a gospel choir in Nashville, an a capella choir competition in South Africa, etc.

Goodall himself is a flip and deliberately-outrageous presenter in a style that may amuse the Brits but that seems bizarre to us. (He came up as part of the Richard Curtis/Rowan Atkinson generation, and seems to have crafted a successful career for himself as musician, composer and media personality.) But he's clear and intelligent; his explanation of equal temperament -- not an easy thing to make sense of -- was the best I've ever run across. He's enthusiastic and respectful too, and seems to know when to get out of the way of the music.

I see that Ovation will be broadcasting Goodall's "Choir Works" series the week beginning July 11th. Part one will show on Monday the 12th at 10:30 a.m. EST; part two on Tuesday at the same time; part three on Wednesday; and part four on Thursday. Ovation is showing part one of "Big Bangs" on Thursday, July 8th at 11 p.m., and on Friday, July 9th at 3 a.m.

I can recommend another Ovation standard in perpetual heavy rotation too -- a quietly brilliant hour-long documentary called Bare. It's about minimalism as a living style. Who's it meant for? What's it like to live with -- Zen bliss or utter madness? The show, directed by a British woman whose name I wrote down then lost, doesn't try to be comprehensive. Instead, the filmmakers pay low-key visits to a half a dozen owners and designers, and let what they find speak for itself. A gay couple adores their gleaming pristine cube of a house -- but keeps it tidily austere only by cramming nearly all their possessions into one basement room. A straight couple enjoys the feeling of chic and style, but decides to move into a traditional space once they have kids. Etc, etc -- fascinating stuff that just happens to provide gratifying confirmation of your worst suspicions about style nazis.

I see that Ovation will be showing "Bare" several times this week: at 8 p.m. EST Tuesday, and then later that evening at midnight; at 9 p.m. Thursday; and at 1 a.m. Friday.

Oops, gotta run. More about History International later. What are you watching these days? I'm always grateful for TV recommendations.

Best,

Michael

at June 21, 2004 | perma-link | (7) comments

Dear Vanessa --

I was flipping through a bin of DVDs, all of them sporting stickers reading "DVDs for Dad!" -- evidently a special Father's Day promotion -- when I ran across the worst idea for a Father's Day present I've seen this year: a bargain-priced copy of "Blame It on Rio."

If you don't know what makes this movie such a bad one to give to Dad, Amazon's page on it here will enlighten.

Best,

Michael

at June 20, 2004 | perma-link | (4) comments

Dear Vanessa --

* Madonna may be on the verge of converting to Judaism, here.

* In a report on the success of Hanky Panky's 4811 thong (not online), the WSJ reports that "Thongs are the biggest thing to hit underwear in the last 20 years. They accounted for one-quarter of the entire $2.6 billion panty market last year." Let's see: subtract all over-60 women as unlikely to be wearing thongs; take into account the likely fact that many women between 40 and 60 don't wear them except on special occasions ... Hmm, that would seem to mean that every American woman younger than 30 is wearing a thong at this very instant.

* Home-sex videos by two foreign public figures have turned up on the web. One video (read about it here) shows an Englishwoman wonderfully named Abi Titmuss -- hard to tell what kind of celeb she is -- frolicking with an as-yet-unidentified woman; the other (watch some footage here) shows a Croation pop star having torrid porn-type sex with a man. Question: has the scandalous and accidental release of a home-sex video become a required step in the gotta-be-a-celeb game?

* Nicole Kidman takes a bath with a 10 year old boy in her latest film; authorities glower, here.

* Prices have just been cut at this not-to-be-missed educational site here.

* "Harvard Man," James Toback's last film, featured swinging FBI agents and a philosophy prof with a Betty Boop voice. For his new one, When Will I Be Loved?, Toback has persuaded Neve Campbell to take part in some "unconventional" love scenes. I'm a huge Toback fan. Although I'd never suggest anyone actually watch a Toback movie -- as a filmmaker, he doesn't deliver much beyond exuberant fantasy and inspired casting -- Toback himself is one of the most entertaining people I've ever met. When I had a chance to spend a little time in his circle some years ago, I often found myself thinking, "Wow, someone should follow this guy around with a camera. Now that would be a great movie!" I'm glad to see someone has had the sense to do just that. You can read about the Neve project and the Toback documentary here.

* Another documentary I'm eager to see is this new one here, about the very eccentric Japanese erotic photographer Noboyushi Araki.

I wonder how many of these links I obtained thanks to Daze Reader, here ...

Best,

Michael

at June 18, 2004 | perma-link | (3) comments

Dear Vanessa --

One goes through life ... One observes tons of things ... One tries to account for a few of them ... One wonders about so many others ...

Basic yoga sociology, for instance. For starters: it's not a secret that a lot more women than men show up for yoga classes. This fact doesn't seem like a hard one to explain.

• Yoga classes are, after all, classes and, as many visitors here have noted, women seem to like getting their exercise in a class setting a lot more than men do.

• The spiritual thing is v. hard for many men to take. Chanting, "om"-ing, talking about world peace, getting blissed-out -- well, why don't you just snip my balls off now?

• You're not supposed to plow through yoga; you're encouraged to experience yoga internally instead. Find your freedom inside the posture, connect there with something larger than yourself, etc. Dare I observe that experiencing things internally may come a whole lot easier to many women than it does to most men?

• And -- a big and underrecognized element here -- there's the whole yoga-clothes question. In a yoga class, you do a lot of stretching, bending, flopping over, etc, and you need clothes that don't get too much in the way. What's a fella to do? Sweat clothes are too thick and too hot. Regular gym shorts have no give in the groin, and regular t-shirts fall off when you're upside down.

  Gals have it much easier -- clingy stretch clothes! Women seem to like the feel of them (I have theories about why); women seem to enjoy parading around in them; and there's a big industry catering to the stretch-clothes-for-gals market.

  The occasional guy does show up in class wearing Lycra-ish shorts. When this happens, my mid-American background kicks into gear, and loudly. I look at this guy and think, "Dude! No!" Guys in stretch clothes? Rightly or wrongly -- and I can't seem to help this -- I leap to the conclusion that they're either 1) gay, or 2) from a Mediterranean background.

  What to do? I haven't solved the problem yet. When I blabbed about this conundrum to a woman yoga teacher, she laughed and told me that there really does seem to be no good yoga-clothing solution for us Real Guys.

So explaining why yoga classes nearly always have more women than men in them isn't a toughie. I wonder sometimes if the gal/guy ratio varies depending on yoga styles and schools. I notice, for instance, that more men show up for Bikram (hot) yoga classes than for a more-typical class.

This doesn't seem like much of a mystery either. Bikram classes are super-sweaty affairs -- and guys seem to like sweating more than gals do. (I know some women who despise sweating, but I don't think I've ever known a guy who has felt this way.) Bikram classes have no "spiritual" guff at all. Instead, they consist of getting ordered vigorously around, grunting your way into contortions, doing a lot of pulling and yanking, and fighting constantly against fainting and nausea. It's yoga for dumb and crude people, at least from this point of view, and probably like a bad day of military basic training. But many guys seem to crave this sort of workout. I certainly get a lot out of it.

Here's a Bikram mystery that I do have a hard time explaining, though. I've been in very few Bikram classes where there weren't a surprising number of Asian women. Come to think of it, I've never seen an Asian guy in a Bikram class. But Asian women -- and I've seen this in both NYC and on the West Coast -- just keep showing up for Bikram, often bringing along Asian-woman friends. I'm at a complete loss to explain why so many Asian women would be drawn to Bikram yoga. Any thoughts here?

Fun to take note of the various yoga types too, which seem studio-dependent to a large degree. One hippie-dippie-ish yoga place in the West Village, for instance, attracts overweight, middle-aged, frizzy-haired therapist-esque women; they generally have a hard time not talking and look like they've never exercised before in their lives. A high-pressure, scene-y studio near the Public Theater is full of willowy gals with sharp cheekbones and modeling careers. In many classes, "the boyfriend" shows up -- the sheepish-looking guy who's been dragged along by his woman, and who will never take a second yoga class.

One of my favorite yoga types is the "look at me/don't look at me" woman. One showed up in class the other day. These gals specialize in making themselves impossible to ignore and then making themselves scarce. This one was wearing rolled-down, lowslung, 10%-transparent white leotards and a scooped-out bra top. So she'd done a good job of putting the goodies on display: cleavage and arms; a long stretch of curvy tummy; a hint of buttcrack topped off with a bottom-of-the-spine tatoo. A flirty but clear hint of dark thong beneath the white leotard completed the look.

Why do I suspect she was a performer? (How canny can I be, eh?) She was pretty and slim, and she had the swiveling, protruding searchlight eyes so many born performer-women have. Before class, she made quite the production number out of gathering up props, spreading out her mat, doing some stretching, etc. She might have been the fragile, neurotic, helplessly-oversexed heroine of a Tenessee Williams play. She darted about; gave off little gasps; flushed; and made repeated public points out of keeping her feelings to herself. She made it impossible, in other words, not to register what a yummy (and vain) thing she was. But once class started? It was off to the corner for her, where she could no longer be observed. She was behaving like a star who, having made a dazzling entrance, then vanishes beneath scarf and sunglasses.

I asked The Wife for enlightenment: Where do these look-at-me/don't-look-at-me women come from? And what are they really up to? But all I got was some Wifely muttering about "mother-daughter issues" and one of those Wifely looks that I've learned signify "You're a guy, you'll never understand."

And I probably never will, but it's always fun to try. Any insights into these pressing questions?

Hey, did I ever mention that I once met the actress Ashley Judd at a party? We chatted for all of about 30 seconds, and she was friendly and downhome. Earlier that day, though, before she'd settled down, she showed off some pretty impressive "look at me/don't look at me" chops of her own.

Best,

Michael

at June 17, 2004 | perma-link | (19) comments

Dear Vanessa --

When my favorite downtown artchick, Turbokitty, told me the other day that she loved Jim Jarmusch's new Coffee and Cigarettes, I instantly set to work badgering her to write up some thoughts about the film.

This just in from downtown:

I've seen all of Jim Jarmusch's movies. He's the ultimate independent film director. I've grown up with him. I find him so much cooler than some of the standard-issue Great Filmmakers. Or maybe he just speaks to me more directly. I sort of love to hate Altman and Kubrick, for instance. I see lots of both of their films -- they do get under my skin. But they strike me as old-fashioned. Jarmusch is not old-fashioned in that way. He's New Wave in the '80s sense, not in the '60s sense. He's cool New York.

His new film, "Coffee and Cigarettes," doesn't have a storyline, It's a movie that nothing really happens in. Instead, you have these moments in conversation that pull you through the movie. There's a loose structure in the way he puts the vignetttes together. It's in black and white, and it's all people in cafes making small talk. Jarmusch is also analyzing coffee and smoking. It's a kind of refrain in them movie: people saying "No, I don't drink coffee anymore, it's not good for me."

I read that he shot this film over 15 years. They'd rehearse a vignette for a day, and then he'd shoot the vignette the next day. And it had to be set up that way: a day for rehearsal, a day for shooting. He got his material in one day or not at all. So it's very immediate.

Doing photography, you can do the same thing. You can set yourself little rules. For example, you might walk in and say, I'm giving myself an hour, what am I going to get done in an hour? That's when magic happens. You get totally crazy and something happens and you have no control over what's going on.

I do that with my photography. I'll be in the passenger seat of a car, especially when I was in California, and I'll say, I'm going to shoot from the passenger seat for an hour. I'd take loads of stuff. Then I'd edit it. And I might get five amazing photographs from the hour. You can do that kind of thing with drawing too, because it's quick -- you can get it down. I don't think it'd work with oil painting or collage, let alone sculpture. It's gotta be a quick process, so really photography is the best.

I love the process of getting out there and doing something. And I love quick results. I just made a painting that took me a month, and I thought I was going to kill myself.

I wonder how many people Jarmusch shot that didn't get into the movie. Probably quite a few. The first one he did was with Roberto Benigni. It's the first vignette in the film. It's really cute, like a miniature Laurel and Hardy sketch.

My favorite vignette involved Iggy Pop and Tom Waits. They meet at a spot where Tom hangs out -- an L.A. dive, a seedy place with great jukeboxes and rundown booths. It's like a ghost town but you're inside. Iggy and Tom have a hysterical conversation quitting smoking. Meanwhile they keep picking up cigarettes left by the previous person.

What I especially loved were the expressions on Iggy's face. No one can make a face like Iggy. In the sketch, they're both jerks, but Iggy is the lesser of the two jerks. At one moment he comes out with an asshole remark, and Waits takes offense, and decides to be a prick but in a polite way. And Iggy gives him this look -- it's hysterical. But it's so deadpan too. But the whole vignette is completely deadpan. I read somewhere that Tom Waits at some point went to Jarmusch with the script and said, "Is this supposed to be funny? If so, would you circle the jokes for me?"

You can tell, watching a few of the vignettes, that time has passed. Spike Lee's brother and sister are in it, for example, and you knew they couldn't look like that today, because they look like they're 25.

There are a couple of moments of a retro style too that looked like the late '80s or early '90s. No one these days would take that 1960s trailer-trash beehive look; that was In in a retro sense in the early '90s. And directors and photographers are finished with that. It doesn't look lame and shabby, just dated and slightly boring. Hair, nails, eyes -- very John Waters, and very over.

I love Jarmusch's attitude towards performance. Jarmusch gives actors some space. He throws the ball out there and says, pass it around, and do what you want you do. He gets off on it, which in turn makes his actors love him. He's fun. Well, he's probably a nightmare in post-production, or maybe at home. But he seems like he must be loads of fun on the set. Jarmusch seems to love working with actors who have a certain angle and who can take their characters someplace. He's constantly waiting; he's seeing who's going to surprise him. Surprising him is the actors' job. They get to do something he doesn't expect. That's an exciting space for him -- and then he gets to edit.

I get a lot of inspiration from those moments. He's capturing unusual sides of actors, or aspects of people who don't normally act. Other directors wouldn't give these people the time of day, but Jarmusch is willing to get out there and grab it. He might be the biggest asshole in the world, but as a filmmaker he seems to open the door to collaboration. He seems like he's studying things, studying little moments. Like he's thinking, Hmm, maybe I can tie this into my movies ...

There are maybe ten or 11 vignettes in all. It's structured like a V, with a vignette that stars Cate Blanchett in two roles at the middle of it. And there's some dialog that matches up, beginning to end. That gives the film some sense of structure too.

Cate Blanchett was outstanding. She has a lot of range. In the vignette, she was having coffee with her cousin, played by her too. So it's like "Bewitched"; it's like Sabrina visiting her cousin Samantha the witch.

Cate's cousin is a rocker girl with no money and Converse hightops, and Cate's also playing herself, a movie star. They have chitchat talk trying to catch up. Cate the star is trying to be modest, but you also see that she doesn't care if the cousin's there or not. I read somewhere that Cate had to wear a little earpiece and sit with an extra so she could seem to be acting with herself. Apparently it took two days to make this vignette. It's the one vignette that took more than a day to film. Cate was fantastic as both women, by the way. As the rocker cousin, she was completely in Australian grunge-grrl mode, perfect.

The funniest of the vignettes involves Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina. I saw the film twice and both times the audience was roaring. Molina's a sweet guy who's just trying to have a conversation with Coogan, who's being a British asshole. I've been around a lot of British people -- my boyfriend's British -- when they run into each other. At first they sigh in relief to be with each other; then they start taking the piss out of each other. But at first they're relieved.

In the vignette, Molina's a nice guy who's obsessed with genealogy and thinks the two of them might be related. And Coogan has no time for him at all until Molina gets on the phone and it turns out he's got Hollywood connections. The audience loved the vignette, and believe me it also rang true about Brits.

Jarmusch's movies appeal to me visually and conceptually. Conceptually he seems interested in time. He's interested in how a moment can change your whole life, and suddenly you're on a whole different journey that's a little more grand.

He's developed as a filmmaker. The things he's doing now aren't what he was doing at first. He has matured in his filmmaking. He's moved towards the emotional a lot. Early films like "Night on Earth" and "Strangers in Paradise" weren't emotional. He's just doing that short-story, short-time-frame thing of his. But more recent movies like "Ghost Dog" and "Dead Man" were both beautiful and emotional. Of course, a lot of people don't like "Ghost Dog." But I loved "Ghost Dog." It was so weird. It wasn't deadpan, it was very serious.

Visually, he uses a lot of classic film noir shots. He does them well, and he makes you feel comfortable about it. That combination of conceptual plus film noir is pure, cool downtown New York. That's one thing he's never changed, just like he's never changed his haircut in 25 years.

As far as cinematography goes, I'll always be interested in cinematography. Scorsese, for instance, works with people who get in there and move the camera around to make you feel the moment. He's not too jazzy, but there's lots of camera tricks happening.

Jarmusch interests me in a more classic way. The way he frames everything and the way he shoots his films -- he's borrowing the classic look. When you look at his shots, you might see "Double Indemnity." He must have loved some of the great kinds of cinematography that a lot of us love, and he's bringing that in. He's not original, but he doesn't need to be. He's making it visually pleasing; he's artfully framing everything.

I'm not into storytelling, which makes me and Jarmusch a good match. He's into short stories that he brings together and crisscrosses over each other. He's very ingenious in the way he does that. Me, I love games and I love visuals. When everyone was into the dialog and the plot of "Fargo," for instance, I couldn't stop looking at the set design. My focus was on the cool clock on the wall behind the characters. I couldn't help it.

I love Jarmusch's droll running gags too. If there's any spin on the story, or if a joke needs to come across, or a silence needs to happen, he'll make sure the actors do that. I think he probably watches a lot of old silent films and studies the way they use space and body language and facial expressions.

I've seen all his movies, and I've liked all his movies. He can bore people when he just lets the camera roll. And there are parts in "Strangers in Paradise," for instance, when I was bored. There's a lot of empty space. Or he'll just focus on a hand picking up a cigarette. That can come across as boring to some people.

But, still, it's nothing like the boring films visual artists make. I could kill myself watching some of those. The sculptor Richard Serra has made some, and Dan Graham. They're interesting films, and you learn from watching them. But you also feel like you're going to die from watching them. These Serra and Graham films are visual studies. Richard Serra stood in the middle of a bridge turning 360 degrees. That was the film. Dan Graham held a camera between 2 people and formed a figure 8, over and over again. I mean, they are good film studies. They are minimalist beauties. But they are also long, boring and in real time. And art followers go mad over these films, like they are the second coming of Christ.

Jarmusch, though, is like the ultimate cool art school teacher. He's someone I've looked up to; he's a role model. I'd never go out with him. I might want to, but he also has that older-brother quality, and I wouldn't be able to get past that. But he is cute. Well, not cute, but strangely good-looking -- the downtown guy in black who lives on Canal Street and has always been grungy. I love that.

When I moved to New York from L.A., I saw him on the street several times. I was never impressed when I saw stars in Hollywood. But when I saw Jim Jarmusch on the street I went gaga. I nearly bumped into him one month after moving here, and I had huge, huge stars in my eyes. I'm someone who doesn't care about Hollywood crap. As an L.A. girl, I was basically holed up in my downtown loft thinking, "There's someplace so much cooler than L.A., and I've gotta find it." I've wanted to move to NYC since I was eight years old. And Jim Jarmusch embodied it what was cool about New York.

The first time I saw "Coffee and Cigarettes," the audience was full, and the second time it was pretty full. Both audiences enjoyed it. I was with a friend one time who never likes movies, but even he had a good time. Come to think of it, I haven't met anyone who didn't like the movie. There are moments when you're like, Dammit, nothing's happening -- yet you still love it.

I love re-seeing his movies. For me, seeing Jarmusch movies over and over is like playing your favorite Who album or Johnny Cash album over and over. It becomes something you love to be around. In the case of this one, you can't wait for Bill Murray to come on, for example. You know the line he's going to say, and you don't care, and it's great.

Jarmusch makes me want to continue as an artist. He makes me appreciate going your own way, and following your vision.

Many thanks to Turbokitty.

Hey, I notice that George Hunka enjoyed the movie too, here.

Best,

Michael

at June 17, 2004 | perma-link | (5) comments

Dear Vanessa --

* Will Elder helped set the tone and visual style of Mad magazine back in the '50s, then went on to draw 25 years' worth of Little Annie Fannie comic strips for Playboy. I think he's one of the great American satirists, so it's pleasing to see that R. Crumb, Terry Gilliam and Jerry Garcia were and are among Elder's fans. A new coffee table book devoted to Elder and edited by the comics artist Daniel Clowes is now available at Amazon, here. The book's own website is here. Here's a good All About Comics biography of Elder.

* Congratulations to Cowtown Pattie, who celebrated the big 5-0 -- youngster! -- with a trip up a mountain in Big Bend National Park. She blogs about the big day here, and includes some beautiful, dusty photos in her posting.

* Do you read the columnist Michelle Malkin? (You can find her column here.) She's willing to take on tough subjects; she seems to do so honestly and clear-headedly. She often strikes me as fearless and smart, in other words, and anything but an ideologue. I notice that she has started a blog here, and has so far been a much more generous blogger than many pro writers are.

* What is American conservatism? What kind of a conservative was Ronald Reagan? John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge make a little sense of these questions in the WSJ here.

* The brilliant poet and essayist Frederick Turner writes about how his opinion of Reagan has changed over the years, here. Turner even manages to get in a slap at deconstruction -- way to go!

* Robert Detman writes about what it was like to be in architecture school during the headiest of the deconstruction days, here. Robert offers an insight into Theory's appeal that I agree with wholeheartedly: "Deconstruction was sexy," he writes. That's not to approve of deconstruction -- anything but that. But it does strike me as a good starting-point for a discussion about the appeal of movements like deconstruction. Robert has written a really fab posting. Where's the resourceful publisher with the sense to spot a potential book in it?

* I couldn't find it online, but the WSJ recently carried a bad-news report (from Harvard and via Nature magazine, not that this helped my Googling efforts) about how genes in the brain have now been seen to begin to deteriorate as early as the age of 40. Given the state of my 50-year-old memory, I can well believe it. What can we do to forstall some of the damage? Boring: get some exercise; take regular steps to relieve stress; eat sensibly; and drink a lot of green tea. UPDATE: Thanks to S.Y. Affolee (here), who found the abstract of the Harvard paper here.

* I love the idea of super-short movies, so I was thrilled to learn about this site here. I wish I enjoyed more of the movies on offer, though. Curious to learn how others react to them.

* Lynn Sislo (here) once again demonstrates that she ought to be put in charge of some major record company's classical-music marketing department. Her posting raises a good Larger Question, too. Given that your typical American is raised on a diet of all-popular-culture 24/7 ... Given that some Americans might, if given the chance, respond happily to beyond-pop Larger Culture (blues, fine art, classical music, art films, etc) ... Given that your typical American is a little suspicious and clueless ... Well, how to give these people the chance to discover the wider world of the arts? What I find discouraging is that many of today's kids often seem to have no interest whatsoever in anything that isn't electronic-media pop culture. Even granted that electronic-media pop culture is a broader, more inclusive thing than it used to be, it's still a very restricted mental universe for a mind to inhabit. Yet nearly all the young people I encounter these days seem completely content there. What to make of this?

* The Architecture Hate Page seems to me to get it pretty right, here.

* Speaking of architecture, would any visitors want to live near, work in, or even pass regularly by this new Toronto building here?

* There seem to be a few people (here, for instance) who aren't wild about Seattle's much-touted new Rem Koolhaas public library. Link thanks to David Sucher, here.

* James Kunstler sees the end coming here, and it ain't pretty.

* Wildass role-playing madman Alan Kellogg (here) wrote in to point out this fascinating blog posting by Bruce Baugh about postmodernism and computer gaming, here.

* A study by Harvard's George Borjas has concluded that current immigration policy results in the average American worker losing around $1700 a year in wages, with black and Hispanic workers being hit worst. A summary of the report can be read here.

* Another fun immigration fact: did you know that 9% of all living Mexican-born people now reside in the U.S.? Read more here.

* And yet another fun immigration fact: nearly 30% of all new jobs being created in the U.S. are going to non-citizens. The LATimes has a report about this remarkable development here. UPDATE: Randall Parker comments here. "It is easy to see," writes Randall, "that the employers of the low salaried workers are getting labor subsidized by taxpayers."

* Thanks to Maureen (here), who pointed out this 1925 John Peale Bishop essay about movies and sex appeal, here. Yet more proof that, right from the outset, movies have been discussed in the same breath as sex. Something that puzzles me these days is how sexless the new media-conglomerate/digitally-enhanced blockbusters are. There are plenty of cute starlets on display, sure. But where's the actual eroticism? Hey, you don't think it's been chewed up (and exhausted) by the shiney new technology, do you?

* If there was one movie that made me a movielover, it was Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." Amazing to think that Altman, who was 46 when he made "McCabe," turns 80 next year. It's also amazing that -- however on and off his magic touch has been over the years -- he still sometimes manages to cast a spell, although I do realize that I was almost alone in the world in being enjoyably hypnotized by his recent movie "The Company," which I notice is now out on DVD. Here's a good, if typical, interview with Altman from the Independent. Here's an interesting Chicago Trib chat with Altman from back in February. Do you go for for his brand of California-Zen artist-baloney? I'm a sucker for it myself.

Best,

Michael

at June 17, 2004 | perma-link | (14) comments

Dear Vanessa --

Sarah Susanka, the architect and author who's best-known for "The Not-So-Big House," has just published another lovely and helpful book, Home By Design. Like "The Not-So-Big House," it's a beautifully-produced, practical, and visual guide to how to make a house a home. Susanka's titles refer to the idea that it can worth spending a little extra money and care on somewhat fewer square feet than Americans often do. She's urging us to buy quality, not quantity, in other words, and she's showing us how to do it wisely.

Susanka -- and her designer and photographers, as well as the architects and builders whose work she features -- steers a middle ground that I suspect many homeowners will find helpful. Her books have real substance; they aren't mere lifestyle-and-trimmings extravaganzas. Instead, she discusses such questions as: Why do so many buildings and spaces these days feel barren? Why do so many houses fail to turn into homes? What's the difference between square-footage-surrounded-by-walls and a room you love? Her books are intellectually engaging, yet they're fun and easily-browsable catalogs of ideas too.

These are user's guides, in other words, the contempo equivalent of the "pattern books" used by the local builders in the 19th century who created many of our best-loved houses and neighborhoods. Susanka boils Christopher Alexander's "patterns" down to a manageable number, discusses general principles as well as specifics, and gives lots of (superbly-photographed and laid-out) examples of how to put them to use.

She isn't trying to bury you in theory, or to lock you into some absurd all-or-nothing system; she digs the fact that it's your project, and your life. Interesting, no? Hmmm, so architecture as an art form doesn't have to be about a solo ego showing off; it can instead be about helping people get more of what they want out of their buildings and neighbhorhoods.

Susanka's own designs tend towards a modernism-meets-Arts-and-Crafts thing that isn't much to my taste. But so what. She isn't trying to impose her vision; she's offering general patterns that can be adapted to personal taste. She's here to serve, not to impose. When I talked to her once some years back, I found her modest and enthusiastic, firm in her convictions, and eager to acknowledge Chrisotpher Alexander as a giant.

In fact, people intrigued by the Alexander approach will probably enjoy exploring Susanka's books, as they'd enjoy exploring Jacobson, Silverstein and Winslow's recent Patterns of Home, buyable here. (Two of this book's three authors collaborated with Alexander on "A Pattern Language.") No coincidence, by the way, that all these books are published by the excellent Taunton Press -- I blogged about Taunton here.

Eyeballing books like these, you get some idea of what Alexander's ideas look like when put into practice by talented designers and builders. Although images can never replace on-the-spot, in-person experience, you can also begin to sense what these structures feel like too. Which is really the important thing, because the central goal of this approach isn't to create projects that look good when reproduced on the printed page; it's to generate buildings and neighborhoods that are thoughtful and rewarding to live with. Odd how such an idea -- that the main thing about buildings and urban spaces shouldn't be how they look but what they're like to live in and around -- seems outlandish to the architecture establishment, no?

If anyone wants to get started with Susanka, I'd suggest either this new book (buyable here) or her first, "The Not-So-Big House" (buyable here). She's published four books, and the middle two, while terrific, are really supplements to the first and the fourth.

I find it hard to believe that anyone who's planning or even fantasizing about a renovation or building project wouldn't find these books an immense help. More comfiness, more satisfaction, more beauty, and more delight than your project would deliver otherwise -- guaranteed.

An example: I passed copies of Susanka's first two books along to a friend who was having a house designed and built from scratch. He and his designer-builder gave the books a thorough workout, and were both delighted with the results; my friend now lives in a more cozy, livable, homey, and interesting brand-new house than he otherwise would have wound up with. His new house has a variety of welcoming spaces and humane touches; it's got as much lovable character as the best old houses, without being remotely Disneyish. Isn't that really the kind of thing many people are looking for when they think of turning to an architect for help?

Here's Susanka's website, a generous one where she hands out a lot of tips and advice for free. Here's a short Newsweek article about her.

Best,

Michael

at June 16, 2004 | perma-link | (1) comments

Dear Vanessa --

* Is it unjust to bitch about how ingrown current American lit-writing can be? Those who think so might want to take a look at this amusing piece here for the Guardian by Katharine Viner, who was one of the judges for this year's Orange Prize. Like the other judges, Viner read 46 candidate books in six weeks -- heavens! Where's the discussion about how that kind of pressure might affect one's reading pleasure, let alone one's judgment about which books are best?

Anyway, what did Viner find the low points of her read-a-thon to be?

One was when I had a run of books about nothing. These were usually by authors from the US, who have attended prestigious creative writing courses, often at the University of Iowa. They are books with 500 pages discussing a subtle but allegedly profound shift within a relationship. They are books where intricate descriptions of a man taking a glass out of the dishwasher, taking a tea-towel off a rail, opening out the tea-towel, then delicately drying the glass with the tea-towel, before pouring a drink into the glass, signify that he has just been through a divorce.

In other words: quit trying to impress your writing-workshop buddies with your exquisite sentence-making, and get on with the story, please.

* Many thanks to Doug Sundseth, who passed along a link to this funny Tedi Trindle piece entitled "How to Write A Literary Novel," here.

* A few years ago, having gotten it into my head that I might enjoy composing short verbal things that rhymed, I signed up for an intro-to-poetry-writing class. What a surprise it turned out to be. I'd expected to be given a down-to-earth introduction to poetry writing, and I was looking forward to being drilled in simple poetic forms. First we'd master limericks, then we'd take on the sonnet! Instead, we were given a small set of tricks, er, tools and then hustled into taking part in a truly bizarre activity: concocting prose poems and arranging them in ways that made them look like poetry. (I'm told that this is what the standard-issue intro-to-poetry-writing course has become in this country.) I had the strong impression that I was far from alone in being horrified by the unhelpful nonsense we were being sold.

I and my fellow malcontents would probably have been happier attending the West Chester Poetry Writing conference, which was organized ten years ago by the poet (and current NEA head) Dana Gioa and a fine-press printer named Michael Piech. The program is devoted to poetry in its form-and-narrative aspects, and this year's edition just wrapped. Here's the conference's website. Here's Mike Snider's preliminary report from the Conference. Some time back, I did an interview with Mike, who's a terrific poet and blogger; part one can be read here, and part two is here. Here's a good Christian Science Monitor blog posting about how horribly poets often treat each other.

* The brilliant Donald Westlake has posted five sci-fi stories that he wrote in the 1980s for Playboy here.

* It's been the dream of many: to install book-printing-and-binding machines right inside bookstores. The idea is that such machines would extend the bookstore's offerings to infinity, by printing from electronic files accessed online or taken off a customer's personal CD-ROM. A few efforts have been made in this direction, and the print-on-demand business has become semi-established in the last six or seven years. When will printing-and-binding machines actually start appearing in everyday bookstores, though? In the NYTimes, Eric Taub writes about a new in-store printing effort here.

* In my recent posting about how books may be changing, I mentioned Richard Lanham, whose "The Electronic Word" I've found stimulating and helpful. I just turned up a few online Lanham resources that the curious may enjoy. Here's his own website; if you follow pointers to his lectures and articles, you'll run into two especially good ones, "The Economics of Attention" and "Digital Literacy." Here's a good q&a; with Lanham.

Best,

Michael

at June 16, 2004 | perma-link | (5) comments

Dear Michael:

Your post about theater reminded me that I wanted to tell you about the impressions I've gathered about the differences between Chicago and New York since I moved here more than a year ago.

First, I told a friend of mine the other evening that the thing about New York is that the folks there remain obsessed with their work lives, for their entire lives. This is of course a gross generalization but the difference in work culture is palpable. Here, everyone knocks off at 6 pm, goes home, kicks off their shoes, and doesn't give the office a second thought as they drift off into family affairs or heavy drinking. In New York, it seemed to me, people would bodily leave the office but remained neurotically obsessed about the stuff they just did, the stuff that was pending, and what everyone else at work thought about the stuff they just did. I certainly felt that heavy air hanging about me when I was working in New York. This difference is compounded on the social scene: in New York, people really sum you up by the job you keep. In Chicago, others are curious, genuinely so, it seems to me, and not just for the sake of score keeping, in the "does she have a job that's better than mine" sense or the "what can this person can do for me now or in the future" sense. Am I horribly skewed because I worked in New York media? Perhaps. But life here, in that regard, is quite a relief.

Second, Chicago theater seems hidebound to me but I suppose you could see it as a good thing. You talked about Chicago's reputation for having "anti-glitz, anti-intellectual, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-into-it" theater, and, yes, it does. In spades. Almost, I sometimes think, to the point of parodic redundancy. The town has never shed its dependence on the Mamet-ian template for its theater art though there are interesting troupes around town doing fun stuff. The Hubster and I, for example, caught a show on Saturday called "The Rocket Man," which describes itself as being loosely based on a bunch of Ray Bradbury short stories, put on by an ensemble of twentysomethings called the House Theater of Chicago. It had a classic hokey sci-fi plot (boy is rocket jockey, boy meets girl in dreams, girl is Martian, boy gets girl, boy and girl burn up in the sun after system failure) and it was produced with hip ironic lo-fi stage effects (big plastic spheres for helmets, crazy straws as antennae on a Martian doctor, actors depict a rocket launch by running with a toy rocket overhead, 3D glasses). The thing that struck me was that the whole production's sense of hipster commentary (skewering homage to classic tropes) was very similar to stuff I've seen done in New York, specifically the Adobe Theater company's mid-career productions. But, the vibe was entirely different. Whereas Adobe/NY seemed to be clubbish and exclusive, the House/Chicago show was friendly and welcoming. Nothing specific I can report, just a feeling, really. Adobe shows were smart but cynical; the House stuff is smart too, but way more earnest. "Dare to love!" (That's my idea for the House's next tagline.)

Third, a little free association: New York, ruthless. Chicago, nuturing. New York, churn. Chicago, stasis. New York, great fucking restaurants. Chicago, restos that are not as good as everyone thinks they are. New York, stinky. Chicago, alleys for garbage. New York, bombastic. Chicago, modest. New York, defense mode. Chicago, eye contact and smiles. New York, pretentious. Chicago, serious. New York, a racetrack for ambition. Chicago, a place to settle down and play the long game. New York, pizza. Chicago, hot dogs. New York, Yankees. Chicago, Cubs. New York, Prada. Chicago, Marshall Field's. New York, subway. Chicago, SUV. New York, vodka. Chicago, beer. New York, the Atlantic. Chicago, Lake Michigan. New York, junior four. Chicago, 4BR, 4.5 BA, double-wide lot.

Love and kisses,
Vanessa

at June 15, 2004 | perma-link | (17) comments

Dear Vanessa --

I notice that this year's Book Expo took place in Chicago a few weekends ago. Did you attend? If so, I'm curious to hear how it struck you.

For those who haven't encountered it, Book Expo America is the trade-book industry's annual convention. It's quite a show; two or three thousand exhibitors display their wares to 25,000ish attendees. When it first began, the convention's purpose was to enable publishers to show off upcoming lines of books to retailers, who at the time were mostly local bookstores. What with changes in the business (the big bookselling chains, the absorption of much of the publishing industry into media conglomerates, etc), that original rationale has semi-evaporated. The show has become more of a general bazaar, as well as an excuse for people in the industry to mingle with each other, swap business cards, and size up the competition.

During the years I semi-professionally followed book publishing, I attended 17 of these get-togethers. Fun and exhausting, all of them. But educational, too: I learned far more about the culture of books -- which is, like it or not, the matrix from which all trade books (including that tiny subset known as "literature") emerge -- from attending Book Expos than I did from anything I ever read by a prof or a critic. It's been wonderfully enlightening.

In fact, I've had exasperated "if I were God" moments when I've decided that all authors should be required to attend a Book Expo. It's amazing how naive writers (and would-be writers) can be about the industry they're hoping to find a place in, and their dreaminess has at times driven me batty. At other times, though, I wonder. Some writers, I've found, get some of their energy from their naivete. And is learning the simple truth guaranteed to do anyone any good anyway? The other day, for instance, I heard about a published novelist who attended her first Book Expo and was so traumatized by the experience that she wasn't able to write again for another year. Then again, was the world any worse off?

In any case, I enjoyed the Book Babes' wrapup of this year's BEA, here.

As the years have passed since I gave up following publishing, my brain has gone on sifting and sorting what I observed and experienced. The picture keeps getting simpler and simpler. For instance, if someone a couple of years ago had asked me, "If you had to say which three new lit-fiction books from your years in the biz were the best, which would you choose?", I wouldn't have been able to answer. I'd read too many really good new lit-fiction-books -- how to choose from among them? Today, though? Not a problem: Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera; Josef Skvorecky's Dvorak in Love; and Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies. In memory -- though I'm not entirely sure why -- these three really stand out.

Another hyper-general retrospective observation ... Many people who go into the writing-and-publishing game quickly get shell-shocked: "Omigod, it's nothing like what my English or creative-writing teachers led to me expect!!!" Those who stick it out seem to my current self to divide into two groups. On the one hand are those people who say, "OK then!! Let's see what it's actually like!!!" These are people who learn to find the activity of creating and selling books rewarding in itself. On the other hand are those people who somehow manage to function in the publishing world despite continuing to cling to Eng-lit standards and attitudes. For them, the existence of the publishing biz is justified only by the "literature" that -- despite the biz -- somehow manages to get produced.

You'll be shocked, schocked to learn that I got along far better with people from the first group. It seemed to me that their interest in books was deeper as well as more trustworthy, while second-group people often seeemed to prefer their idea of what literature can be to the reality of what books really are. (No coincindence that it's often desperately important to these ego-addled people to be seen as those who define what "literature" is.) On the one hand, three-dimensional people who are able to adapt, and who are willing to work with what life brings; on the other, people who want to argue about ideals, to be celebrated for their standards, and to be seen as triumphing despite enormous odds.

Hey, an even-more-general question: are martyr-like superego-wannabe types especially drawn to certain fields? If so, which ones? It seems to me that the arts and the media -- with their glamour, and their soft requirements and qualifications -- must be especially attractive to such people. What percentage of the general population would you guess consists of superego-wannabes? 2%? What prcentage of people in the arts and the media might qualify? 30%? God, they're annoying. I suppose I should be more tolerant of them, although at the moment I can't imagine why.

Still in looking-back mode, it seems to me that the public discussion of books doesn't touch often enough on a couple of important topics. The conglomerization of book publishing was at least taken decent notice of. Trendlets and newsiness -- advances, fads, etc -- are often covered to death and beyond. But two big topics don't get anything like their share of the discussion. IMHO, of course.

• The impact of electronics on publishing. Amazon, databases, copyright, distribution: all these developments have affected not just the business of books, they have affected the way books are conceived of, accessed, thought about, and experienced. Electronics have even had a dramatic impact on the writing itself. Before anyone jumps on me for making too much of this, let me pass along the titles of a couple of good books by supersmart guys who've done a lot of substantial thinking on the topic: Jay David Bolter's Writing Space (buyable here) and Richard Lanham's The Electronic Word (buyable here). (There are other books on this topic too, I know, but these are the two I liked best.) Bolter and Lanham both argue -- to my mind convincingly -- that electronics have changed the very nature of writing. An example: where text was once thought of as the form where ideas went to become permanent, these days electronic text is an often-modified and easily-updated thing. In such a world, what becomes of writing for the ages?

• The changing nature of books themselves. A not-unrelated topic, as you might imagine. Thanks in large part to advances in computer and printing technology, the standard book these days is no longer a long prose narrative meant to be read straight through. Instead, it's more like a zippy-looking database, or a website.

  For examples of what I'm talking about, I've scanned in spreads from two books I happen to be reading. First up: Stephen Toulmin's intellectual history about how Western thought went wrong in the 17th century, Cosmopolis.

  

  And here's a spread from John Bowker's God: A Brief History:

  

  Both are good, substantial books by serious profs. But they certainly look dramatically different. They work differently too. The Toulmin is all black-and-white, all-prose, and has a voice-and-idea flow that moves through many successive pages. The Bowker (published by the wonderful Dorling Kindersley) has color on every page, and is composed of text blocks, images, highlight boxes, heads and subheads. And, instead of foregrounding a single voice talking on and on, the Bowker is made up of chunks. Each spread, for example, features -- along with a sack of graphic goodies -- a self-contained, theme-driven essay.

  As we move ever more in the direction of this kind of book -- and I'm pretty certain that we aren't witnessing a minor trend but instead a tectonic change -- what's going to become of the long-linear-argument end of things? Will we be postmodern and leave it behind with no regrets? Even if we do, people are likely to want some kind of coherence from a book. What ways of giving these books coherence have developed? (Themes and topics, largely.) What ways of giving these books coherence are likely to develop?

  Another question to enjoy fretting over in this context: what's likely to become of what we arty types love to think of as "the author's voice"? Book purchasers have for a couple of centuries bought many books hoping for a personal-seeming connection with the author behind the book. These new-style books, though, are put together more like TV shows or small movies than they are like traditional books. The moving force behind them usually isn't an author; usually, it's an editor, agent, or packager. These projects also can't by any stretch be considered the product of one hand; they demand intensive collaboration between -- at a minimum -- writer, editer, artist/photographer, and designer. And, like TV and movies, they tend to be expensive to produce. So ,will the bookbuyer of the future simply have less of an appetite for the direct-personal-connection-to-the-author thing? Or will she learn to get it otherwise, as we've learned to take some movies and TV shows as being "by" a solitary author-figure? In that case, why should the person who supplied the words be considered the author of the work ? Perhaps the editor will be instead.

  And how will the proliferation of these mixed-media books affect future reading-and-writing habits and expectations anyway?

FWIW, one reason I usually hold back from conversations about what's a great book and what's not is that all the candidates usually proposed are long prose narratives written to be read straight through. And, also FWIW, I'm not convinced that 80 years hence many people will be spending much time with such books. I can't imagine why they would be. (By the way, I'm not talking about whether I approve of this or disapprove; I'm an enthusiastic raised-on-books book-reader myself. I'm trying instead to make a plausible forecast.) Based on current developments, it seems to me likely that, in a few decades, the reading of long-prose-narratives-meant-to-be-gone-straight-through will have become a special and rare taste.

How could it be otherwise? Computers and the Web will be far better than they currently are; we'll have portable devices capable of storing and displaying tons of audiovisual material; and even books and magazines will largely be design-heavy, mostly-visual things. In such a media world, what chance will long prose narratives stand? Especially once we generations who grew up on acres of prose have died off.

Though I wonder if the long-prose-narrative thing might be kept half-alive ... It's such a low-budget (and physically easy-to-produce) medium. Perhaps it'll make sense for the media business to sponsor long prose narratives as a way of trying certain projects out before committing big money to them.

How do you interact with these chunked-up visual books anyway? I tend to flip around inside them, put them on a shelf, and then pull them down occasionally to use as reference books. And when I do look closely at a spread or a section, I'll skim it first, eyeballing art and boxes before selectively diving into the prose -- an approach more akin to surfing the Web than to reading a traditional book. Do you ever read one of these books straight through? I'm trying to do so with the Bowker, but I'm finding it rather unnatural.

Best

Michael

UPDATE: Mallarme at The Greater Nomadic Council comments here.

at June 15, 2004 | perma-link | (9) comments