As you may have guessed from that title, I don't mind City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.
Last time I went there I remember feeling intimidated, probably because of all the highbrow arts-PhD-style literature. And the impenetrable beatnik thing which, despite repeated tries, I just can't seem to crack.
But this time, I found an entire subterranean floor of nonfiction. And it was good.
Whatever section you choose to pore over, multiple takes—multiple titles—on that subject are offered. So you can compare before you buy, and find something that really piques your specific interest, rather than making do with something you'll be bored with by page 15. Forget ordering in: it's all here.*
Having written that, I can't believe I just wrote that.
I live near what is supposedly the most "cultural" and "intellectual" city in a first-world country, yet the nonfiction sections in most of the bookstore comprise bestsellers and a few not-actually-bestsellers-but-still-wildly-popular nonfiction titles only. Slim pickings.
Good nonfiction lights the lights of curiosity, and fuels the fires of learning. I posit that Melbourne needs a bookshop that sells nonfiction exclusively. Too much to ask?
*For the record, today's nonfiction purchases included this and this. Excited? Me too!
Monday, March 19, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Not entertainment: torture
Watching The Slap just four months after reading The Corrections was a mistake.
Both stories concern themselves with suburban familial problems, and in both the plotlines are tortuous and slow. Spending, in the first case, hours, and in the second, months, striving to silence an inner voice that constantly wails, "But who cares?" is a challenge even for the strongest entertainment devotee.
But therein lies the problem: these stories are not entertainment. They're torture.
Why? I think it's the characters. Compare The Slap and The Corrections with other family dramas like The Sopranos. The reason we care about the Soprano family is that we can see something of ourselves in them, and this is amazing, because they're mobsters. We look at Tony or Carmella and think, "These guys are freakin' crazy!" At the same time, we're touched by Tony's almost self-abasing willingness to give basically everyone in his family a break—even those we'd happily counsel him to kill.
Tony's a monster who's more human than we are. By comparison, Breaking Bad's Walt White is a human who's more monster than we are. This kind of character composition makes for intrigue; it sets us up to be moved.
The Slap and The Corrections have "complex" characters, but only within the narrow kaleidoscope of neurosis, self-loathing, self-absorbtion, and apathy. They're monodimensionally complex. All their intricacies lead down the same interminable path: you know nothing interesting can happen by page (or minute) five, because by then each character's utterly uncreative personality has been so clearly laid out. No one's going to do anything noble, or daring, or even halfway self-respecting. Their whole purpose is to exemplify pathetic self-entrapment in myriad repetitive ways, and far too many installments.
Even that makes this genre (if indeed we should call it that) sound more intriguing than it is: these stories simply gild brain-dead, educated, middle-class suburban boredom into "relatable" media products. At best, they are good things to show your children, eyes pinned open, Clockwork Orange-style, with the words, "For Christ's sakes, if you do nothing else, think more creatively about life than these morons."
For modern dramas, they're both appallingly neatly wrapped up in their dying moments, too. Burned bridges are rebuilt, the selfish become more charitable—but always for the goal of self-preservation though the protection of some conservative, idealised status quo.
That status quo sees morbidly dysfunctional families stay together, toxic friendships mindlessly perpetuated, and humans, in general, bowing to convention, obligation, and societal expectation rather than intelligently thinking about what they might need or like, and at least setting out to try and achieve it. Moreover, both stories present their protagonists' actions as strength rather than cowardice and/or outright stupidity.
The capacity for creative thought about life is exactly what I value in my contemporaries—people who are the antithesis of the characters in The Slap and The Corrections. To which end I can't understand why I'd want to see or even contemplate how that other, boring half live. I know it's boring. End of story.
Both stories concern themselves with suburban familial problems, and in both the plotlines are tortuous and slow. Spending, in the first case, hours, and in the second, months, striving to silence an inner voice that constantly wails, "But who cares?" is a challenge even for the strongest entertainment devotee.
But therein lies the problem: these stories are not entertainment. They're torture.
Why? I think it's the characters. Compare The Slap and The Corrections with other family dramas like The Sopranos. The reason we care about the Soprano family is that we can see something of ourselves in them, and this is amazing, because they're mobsters. We look at Tony or Carmella and think, "These guys are freakin' crazy!" At the same time, we're touched by Tony's almost self-abasing willingness to give basically everyone in his family a break—even those we'd happily counsel him to kill.
Tony's a monster who's more human than we are. By comparison, Breaking Bad's Walt White is a human who's more monster than we are. This kind of character composition makes for intrigue; it sets us up to be moved.
The Slap and The Corrections have "complex" characters, but only within the narrow kaleidoscope of neurosis, self-loathing, self-absorbtion, and apathy. They're monodimensionally complex. All their intricacies lead down the same interminable path: you know nothing interesting can happen by page (or minute) five, because by then each character's utterly uncreative personality has been so clearly laid out. No one's going to do anything noble, or daring, or even halfway self-respecting. Their whole purpose is to exemplify pathetic self-entrapment in myriad repetitive ways, and far too many installments.
Even that makes this genre (if indeed we should call it that) sound more intriguing than it is: these stories simply gild brain-dead, educated, middle-class suburban boredom into "relatable" media products. At best, they are good things to show your children, eyes pinned open, Clockwork Orange-style, with the words, "For Christ's sakes, if you do nothing else, think more creatively about life than these morons."
For modern dramas, they're both appallingly neatly wrapped up in their dying moments, too. Burned bridges are rebuilt, the selfish become more charitable—but always for the goal of self-preservation though the protection of some conservative, idealised status quo.
That status quo sees morbidly dysfunctional families stay together, toxic friendships mindlessly perpetuated, and humans, in general, bowing to convention, obligation, and societal expectation rather than intelligently thinking about what they might need or like, and at least setting out to try and achieve it. Moreover, both stories present their protagonists' actions as strength rather than cowardice and/or outright stupidity.
The capacity for creative thought about life is exactly what I value in my contemporaries—people who are the antithesis of the characters in The Slap and The Corrections. To which end I can't understand why I'd want to see or even contemplate how that other, boring half live. I know it's boring. End of story.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
[this one's mine]
[This one's mine:
sweet secret;
tomorrow's time.
Found an easy way to leave
and a better way to fight.
Emptied out the space
(though full felt right)
and cleaned the slate
(though it seemed too light).
Now is this good news?
Is this what it's like?]
sweet secret;
tomorrow's time.
Found an easy way to leave
and a better way to fight.
Emptied out the space
(though full felt right)
and cleaned the slate
(though it seemed too light).
Now is this good news?
Is this what it's like?]
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Plane preparation
The Prij and I have been speaking of Plane Trauma, the overemotional state that she and I both fall into on planes. I'm dreading the please-don't-tell-me-how-many-hour flight to San Francisco later this week for that very reason.
Dreading.
So I'm making a list of all the things I'll do to distract myself from the fact that for a stupid, literally unconscionable number of hours all through what should be a night, I'll be trapped in an aeroplane seat unable to sleep and slipping swiftly into an ever-more-ludicrous spiral of lunacy. So far that list contains:
Dreading.
So I'm making a list of all the things I'll do to distract myself from the fact that for a stupid, literally unconscionable number of hours all through what should be a night, I'll be trapped in an aeroplane seat unable to sleep and slipping swiftly into an ever-more-ludicrous spiral of lunacy. So far that list contains:
- Watch all episodes of The Slap back to back on in-flight entertainment.
- Watch The Ides of March.
- Watch Volver.
- Watch Boy.
- Read The Greatest Show on Earth and experience an epoch-like rainbow of emotions viz.: hours 1-2.5: amusement; hours 2.5-4: inexplicable rage; hours 4-4.5: staring mindlessly at the colour plates over and over; hours 4.5-5: barely contained Dawky-loathing; hour 5 onwards: reading the copious footnotes in an effort to piece them together into some kind of meaningful hidden message.
- Wish to God I'd brought something—anything—other than Dawkins to read.
- Wish to God I'd brought Capote.
- Wish to God I'd brought Capote.
- Listen to everything on the inflight radio. Even the classical Japanese channel.
- Attempt to rework the novella I wrote for Nanowrimo and have since been toying with. Then irreparably delete all chapters in a single turbulence-induced finger-slip.
- Panic about the practical teaching placement I must face almost immediately upon returning to Australian shores; wonder why the fuck I ever imagine I can enjoy studying anything at all; entertain lurid fantasies of vanishing into Mexico or Cuba. Probably Mexico.
- Spend an inordinate amount of time making up names for the goats and roosters I dream of having if and when my life ever again even vaguely approaches anything resembling anything I'd ever hoped for, ever, even in my most modest fantasies. Create a list that will most definitely include Mexico, Francisco and Enid. And probably Cuba.
If you're thinking, "Where's the 'Getting completely annihilated on free scotch in the flight's first fifteen minutes' bullet point? Man, that's what I'd do, wa-hey!" then friend, I can see we have a lot of ground to cover before we can claim a true meeting of the minds here. For now, let me just say that "wa-hey" is not terminology to associate with either passenger airline flights or scotch.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Coolio and other unmentionables
Recently I've had published a couple of articles I wrote on writing, to promote a little ebook I turned out earlier this year.
The first piece that was published, on GoinsWriter, was about attending to language all the time (and I meant all the time), and in it I made this suggestion:
"Maybe in confirming that you’ll meet a friend after work, you’d ordinarily text, “Sure, see you then.” Maybe today you’ll try something different: an “Of course” or an “Excellent! I look forward to it,” or (my personal favorite) “Coolio.”"
Readers loved coolio. People mentioned it in the comments. People used it to tweet the article. People were going around the place—their place, all their places, wherever they may be or have been—telling each other "coolio."* Ad nauseam, I hope and trust.
Coolio, happy days man. Right? Well, but wait! Jeff, the site owner, graciously and charmingly edited that piece. Originally, that line said:
"Maybe today you’ll try something different: an “Of course” or an “Excellent! I look forward to it,” or (my personal favorite) “Coolio, sweetcheeks.”"
Like the time I tried to sneak "perspicacious" into a client brand description, I'm determined that "sweetcheeks" will one day make the big time, the bright lights, and a readership larger than one of my text messages or this blog. After all, who doesn't want to be called, or be calling, "sweetcheeks"? Who? One day, I will prevail. Oh yes, I promise.
In the meantime, though, I'm pretty happy with this brief resurgence of "coolio" in perhaps unexpected circles. How would it be to change the world, one "coolio" at a time?
Good. Very good indeed.
*All except this reader, whose plight verily rocked me. If my friends would unfriend me on Bookface for saying "coolio", why, I'd be unable to stop myself. Who could resist?
The first piece that was published, on GoinsWriter, was about attending to language all the time (and I meant all the time), and in it I made this suggestion:
"Maybe in confirming that you’ll meet a friend after work, you’d ordinarily text, “Sure, see you then.” Maybe today you’ll try something different: an “Of course” or an “Excellent! I look forward to it,” or (my personal favorite) “Coolio.”"
Readers loved coolio. People mentioned it in the comments. People used it to tweet the article. People were going around the place—their place, all their places, wherever they may be or have been—telling each other "coolio."* Ad nauseam, I hope and trust.
Coolio, happy days man. Right? Well, but wait! Jeff, the site owner, graciously and charmingly edited that piece. Originally, that line said:
"Maybe today you’ll try something different: an “Of course” or an “Excellent! I look forward to it,” or (my personal favorite) “Coolio, sweetcheeks.”"
Like the time I tried to sneak "perspicacious" into a client brand description, I'm determined that "sweetcheeks" will one day make the big time, the bright lights, and a readership larger than one of my text messages or this blog. After all, who doesn't want to be called, or be calling, "sweetcheeks"? Who? One day, I will prevail. Oh yes, I promise.
In the meantime, though, I'm pretty happy with this brief resurgence of "coolio" in perhaps unexpected circles. How would it be to change the world, one "coolio" at a time?
Good. Very good indeed.
*All except this reader, whose plight verily rocked me. If my friends would unfriend me on Bookface for saying "coolio", why, I'd be unable to stop myself. Who could resist?
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Extraordinarily shit advertising
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