Moar stuff that I think is pretty

From an article about James Agee.

" "One by one, million by million, in the prescience of dawn, every leaf of that part of the world was moved." Why don't our novelists write in Agee's tender high style these days? Either something has gone out of the world, or something has gone out of them. His book reads like a prayer, and attempt to breathe life into the dead through mighty exertions of language. Everything is consecrated. Trees move in their sleep, stars tremble like lanterns, and a butterfly- yes, a butterfly- alights on a coffin.

Now that's writing.

Hi Josh!

Hi Josh! Thanks for visiting!

A quote

Just read this quote, and it struck me for some reason, so I'm putting it up, more as a place to have it, sort of a notebook, than for any other reason.

"Young writers need the courage to be marginal, and to write for posterity, just as much as they need pressure to speak to 'the vital centers.'"

Review of "Mirror Mirror"

Damn, book quotes are misleading. That’s the final thought I had as I finished Mirror Mirror by Mark Pendergrast. The tag that hooked me into it was “Want to save $160,000? Don’t send your son to college; slip him this book instead. It shoehorns an entire liberal arts education into a cultural history of mirrors”. Really? The question I had was, “What school were you planning on sending your son to, anyways?” Mirror Mirror is not a shoehorned liberal arts education. Mirror Mirror is a magazine article. A very long magazine article. A 370-some page magazine article, with all the insight, all the drudgery, all the sameness you’d find in a magazine article.

That’s not to say that it’s a terrible book; it isn’t. There are anecdotes of passing interest; small stories to pull out whenever you’re in need of something to say when conversation lags. Did you know that dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors? Yep. Did you know that humans have been fascinated by reflections since before the dawn of civilization? Yep. If you’re looking for anything deeper than that, though, this might not be the best book.

It’s a lackluster book, alright? Maybe I had the wrong expectations. I think that “natural history of…” books should be equal parts history and anthropology, with a small smattering of both hard and social sciences thrown in. This book is not that.

First, Pendergrast is too pedestrian of a writer to cover what seems to be too large of a subject for him. Here we are in Greece, tooling around with Archimedes. Next page, we’re in China, running with ancient mirror-makers. Flip a few more pages, and we’re in Mesoamerica, where, don’tcha know it, the Aztecs also had mirrors. In fact, it seems as if every civilization has or had mirrors. Wow. Pendergrast tells us this, and seems to expect us to be amazed by this. Guess how each and every civilization used mirrors? For looking at things. Amazing.

The book only picks up, ever so slowly, when Pendergrast (thankfully) gives up on cataloguing the cultural uses of mirrors in favor of ferreting out the scientific uses of them. He’s a science writer, and it shows. Non-scientific sections sag and the pages drag; for an example picked at random, “In England, belief in the supernatural was widespread”. But when he (paradoxically) gives up on mirrors and focuses on their use in astronomy, the writing picks up and the stories seem to spin themselves out easily. Bang! Out comes the story of mad King George III who had a love of stargazing and a willingness to sponsor inventive astronomers. Bang! Out comes tales of “the Leviathan of Parsontown”, a gigantic (just guess) telescope.

This book is not a crash-course in the liberal arts; it’s a roughshod history of astronomy. Correction: a history of Western astronomy, which, we all know, is the only type of astronomy that really matters. So why did Pendergrast keep on trying to slip in these cultural references and other uses of mirrors? They didn’t fit the story he was telling. It was embarrassing whenever the book went from being a general history of science to… something like being stuck talking to a boring relative with a vague grasp of history. The Renaissance, I tell you. It surely was a rebirth, or something. The Victorian age? How stuffy! And the 1920’s, they were roaring. What makes this even worse, even more insufferable, are the dog-scraps thrown to multiculturalism. Islamic civilization plays into this entire story as the keepers of the flame while Europe got its shit together, then disappeared from the story entirely. Middle and South American civilizations had some nice stuff, but vanished from the narrative following contact. Oh yes, the Chinese did some stuff too. So did the Japanese. These two stayed in the narrative the longest, but for some reason, were always attached to the end of a paragraph describing a European discovery. The book is Eurocentric, and the attempts at multiculturalism just reveal in stark contrast how Eurocentric it is.

I would like to have something pithy to say, something tied into mirrors or reflections, but this book gives me no ammunition. The title and the premise were better than the actual work. Upon reflection (haha! Had to work that in), I fear I know about as much as mirrors as I knew when I started reading. That’s about the most damning thing that can be said about this book.

Weezer's Red album

OK, so, another album review. Weezer’s Red album. Song by song, this time without any of that extended metaphor bullshit.

"Troublemaker": The lyrics suck, the music sucks. Since when has Weezer been cockrock? OK, so it is not, viz. Urban Dictionary, “metal buttrock” but is music made by a cock, and it sucks, so it is cockrock.

"The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)": Lyrics= the suck. The overall feeling of this song (and album, sadly) is, “We are Weezer, and we totally rock, and we’re going to tell you”, and the audience will either take that as a witty self-referential joke, or will say, “No Weezer, you do not totally rock”. I’m in that second category.

And there’s a terribly, terribly annoying spoken word part midway through the song. I think I’m going to kick Rivers in the face if I see him. But then, immediately following the spoken word part, a wonderful hymnal based on the insipid line “I’m the greatest man that ever lived”. Stupid things should not be so pretty. So, I’m going to kick Rivers in the face, but not in the throat.

"Pork and Beans": Stupid things should not be so pretty. The video is soooo awesome; the song is, um… not bad. I still like the chorus when backup vocals come in with the rock hallelujah. I still think that might be one of the great moments of rock this year. The rest of the song is, um… not bad.

"Heart Songs": A slow song, pretty, for some reason sonically reminiscent of (and this will get me into trouble) “The Sweater Song”. Again, fucking Weezer, it sounds nice, but the lyrics are so bad.

Everything else on the fucking album: Don’t bother. This is seriously bad shit. I'm not a huge Weezer fan, but it is frustrating to watch a formerly good band make bad music.

The First Curious Incident of October 15

I walked down the street looking at the leaves as they scuttled along the broken pavement. A man, walking the other way, looked up and shouted something loudly before falling down in a bundle in front of me. I ran up to him and asked him if he was alright, but he didn’t move. I bent over him, and shook his shoulder, but he still didn’t move. The wind shook a flap of his coat. I rolled him over onto his back. His eyes, wide and glassy, reflected the clouds racing by. He was dead. I had seen my first death.

The Second Curious Incidence of October 15

You walked down the street watching your feet as they made their steady progress, left foot, right foot, left foot. You saw another pair of feet coming your way and then you heard someone shout in a hoarse man’s voice. You jerked your head up and saw a man’s form fall. You asked a question in a small voice, but you didn’t hear anything in response. You shook the body, but you knew already that it was a dead body. You looked at his face, one you’d maybe seen before. You were alone on a mid-October street with a dead body.

The Third Curious Incident of October 15

Elliot Clarkson walked down the street with his coat turned up against the autumn wind. Duncan McGill, taking his morning constitutional, looked up and saw a man who should have been in the grave. Fifteen years earlier, Duncan and Elliot had dueled, pistols, ten paces, over a small matter of honor. Duncan won, and the act had haunted him ever since. Now, Elliot walked towards him with that shy pace that he had, always looking down at his shoes. Duncan clutched at his chest. A vein popped out of his ashen face as he shouted, before collapsing, “Ah! Forgive me, Elliot!”