...at the vet's office and got to thinking how it's all about proportion.
Really. What we think of anything depends on where we're coming from as much as it does on the thing itself. Think about that. In art, would the Mona Lisa appear to be more or less impressive if it were hung in a gallery with wide-striped wallpaper? In life, would the pleasure I take in seeing my dog each evening be as intense if I had to bring her to work every day? Our appreciation of anything is not absolute, but dependent on circumstances.
I was thinking of this while looking at a pet publication that contained an ad that included a drawing of a sphinx, but in the shape of a dachshund. And I thought, what if someone actually went and built something like that? A thousand years ago, in the era of manual labor, it would be a major achievement, something to be contemplated and celebrated and discussed. But nowadays, with so much stuff all around us, would anyone really care? It would be just another distraction to think about for a moment and then be forgotten. And I wonder how much wonder we lose because of this. A hundred years ago, the idea of a manmade flying machine was miraculous, the culmination of centuries of dreaming. Today, when we fly on a plane, forget about wonder: we complain about the food and arriving five minutes late.
In terms of art and my life, the place I see this in close-up fashion is in creating improvised film scores for silent films. Some of these can be three hours long, and if you push too hard too soon with the music, you wind up with nowhere left to go. In real terms, if you ramp it up prematurely, what happens is that you begin to lose track of the detail in the music, and it all becomes mush, and you have nothing left to underscore any really big moments in the film that are bound to come later. It's important to always have something in reserve.
This is news to me because I am not blessed with an innate sense of balance or proportion. In childhood, a frequent criticism was "you don't know when to stop!" That was another way of saying, "Your sense of proportion is either greatly askew or completely missing." Some people have it, some don't. I recall the gravestone inscription of early television pioneer Ernie Kovacs: "Nothing in Moderation."
In terms of music, when I first began listening to classical music on LPs borrowed from the public library in my hometown of Nashua, N.H., I would always gravitate toward the fast and exciting movements of anything I was listening to. Beethoven's 7th? Great finale! Brahms' 1st? What an ending! At the time, I would have been overjoyed to find a symphony made up of four finales—after all, those had the best stuff, so why not stick with what works? (Well, what do you expect of a junior high student?) Later, I had a friend at college who would judge a musical comedy's worth based on its quantity of show-stoppers. By that standard, "Hello Dolly" was a work of genius: "Every tune a show-stopper!" he'd exclaim.
But I now know that slow movements are essential, not just on their own but also as a way to heighten the exciting stuff in other places. And I realize, too, that this is something I actually learned in another way at a very early age, but I'm only now putting the pieces together. I was maybe four years old, and my mother served me a hard-boiled egg standing up in a small egg cup. I tapped the shell and began peeling it off, putting bits of egg into my mouth. Yum! But then my mother shook a little salt on, and the next bite was DOUBLE YUM! So naturally, I figured the more salt you put on an egg, the better it would taste. (This is the same innocently logical part of me that used to say "fiveteen" instead of "fifteen," I'm told.) So I went and dumped half the salt shaker's contents on the egg. Greedily shoving the next spoonful in my mouth, I puckered and spit it out. Awful! And thus I learned, or should have learned, a little something about how the world works, and what role proportion needs to play in place of innocent logic.
The seeds of so much of what we need to know in life are planted in childhood. If we could just maintain a connection to them, we could be so much wiser.
But then I'm compelled to think it out further: if the essence of being human is to be imperfect, then wouldn't the ultimate celebration of our humanity be a work of art that throws this balance out in favor of a unique personal preference that completely disregards any sense of balance or symmetry? Something to think about.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Beyond books
I just came back from a visit to our local library in Bedford, N.H., where they're currently having one of those "sell the books no one wants" sales. The deal? Four hardcover books or six paperbacks for $1. (That's 16.6 cents per paperback. How do they make change?)
Many of the books for sale were large hefty tomes, including important recent works works of fiction by the likes of Tom Wolfe. Copies of "A Man in Full" (1998) and "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (2004) were both up for grabs: big books of hundreds of pages each, handsomely published in hardcover editions that cost $28.95 per copy when released.
And now here they are, just a few years after their debuts, unwanted by an institution whose traditional mission is the propagation of the written word, priced at 25 cents apiece and not selling. And in terms of their unwanted-ness, I include myself. I glanced at each of them, then put them back on the shelf.
Why? Well, I think it relates to good old-fashioned books and how their role in life, or at least in my life, is changing. The Wolfe novels, which should be cultural touchstones of my age, perhaps discussed and celebrated by all literate people, are instead irrelevant. They may contain all kinds of wisdom and truths, but it's all contained in a form that few people care about or respond to anymore.
Not that longish works of writing are obsolete. But they certainly aren't a mass medium anymore. And the Wolfe books got me thinking about how true this is my life, and must be for so many others.
Yes, I vaguely remember reading ABOUT each of them when they were published—how they were regarded as major accomplishments in the Dickensian style of novel, updated for our age. I recall hearing how each novel captured something important and majestic about our times, how each synthesized elements of modern life in a way that laid bare patterns heretofore unseen and told us a lot about ourselves and could perhaps inspire us to reflect on our evolving humanity. Perhaps. I remember reading how Wolfe labored hard to gather material for both books, doing extensive legwork (actually moving to Atlanta, I think, in the case of "A Man in Full") to give them the ring of truth. As a working journalist (as opposed to the other kind, quite common these days), I respected that.
And I remember all this because I actually read an earlier Wolfe novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987), that DID capture something important about the spirit of the mid-1980s in the part of the world I inhabit. And as a young person with literary and creative ambitions, I thought I would eventually get to a place where I would be capable of doing the same thing: creating something that captured my world on a large scale-not only captured it, but wrestled it to the ground and wrung out of it surprising truths and startling insights that might help readers, er, get more out of life.
Well, now it's more than 20 years later, and nothing of that sort has happened with me. And looking at Wolfe's subsequent novels sitting there on the library's "not wanted" shelf, it got me thinking. Never mind changing literary tastes and the pace of modern life and all the other reasons that traditional novels, no matter how amazing or well-crafted, generally aren't big news anymore. (Does anyone really care if Thomas Pynchon has a new book out?) In my case, even if I had been able to marshal my energies and discipline myself into creating something on that scale, it would have probably amounted to coals to Newcastle, which is a phrase I learned as an English major.
That's what occurred to me as I reshelved the Wolfe novels with a sigh and a shrug. Would be nice, but who has the time? I certainly don't-neither to read Wolfe's wonderful and important books, nor to compose anything of my own on such a scale. Does anyone? And so, what value can a book possess if it contains the wisdom of a lifetime, but is just too darned long for anyone to read?
It's not like books are disappearing. Even with the advent of reading devices such as the Kindle (and now the iPad), more actual books are published than ever before. It's just that books are no longer a way to reach a mass audience, unless you're Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, which I am not.
For the rest of us, it's similar to what's happened with television in my lifetime. In the days of three networks, we all watched the same shows, which was a sort of shared cultural experience and creator of comment reference points. (Even if the show was Gilligan's Island.) Now there are so many channels, no one watches the same thing, so the shared experience has been diminished. Increasingly, we define ourselves in terms of groups with interested that are ever narrower, ever more specific. And the media we consume is less and less general, and more and more specific. I'm not sure where this will lead or what the impact of it will be. but it's how things seem to be. And anyway, it's nothing new. It's called entropy.
Well, the point is that Tom Wolfe's unread novels make me think it's time to try something new. Hoping to eventually be ready to create something on a large scale is a strategy that doesn't seem to hold much promise. In terms of books and media and communication, things are changing. And in terms of me, at this point what I might want to say may not work in that kind of environment anyway. Maybe there's a different way.
And books or no books, one thing I know is that for me, the process of writing is often a way to clarify my own thinking. (Not that this is much evidence of that so far.) For some time now, I've resisted putting much energy into all the new online communication tools (blogs, Facebook, whatever) for reasons of privacy, I guess, and also because it's just not a good idea to be too casually personal about anything on the Internet in the age of routine Google searches on job or loan applicants.
But enough. I'm 46, which means at this point if I ever need to go out and get a new job, I'll probably be on outer reaches of any candidate pool anyway, so whatever I post here likely won't be a factor. And also, I recently realized that the age of 46 was significant for three people I admire.
1.) The composer Charles Ives turned 46 in 1920, which was the year when a heart attack and diabetes and ill health finally caused him to essentially stop composing, though he lived until 1954.
2.) The writer Jerome David Salinger turned 46 in 1965, which was the year his final piece of published fiction, "Hapworth 16, 1924" appeared in the New Yorker, though he would lived all the way until January of this year.
3.) The writer Eric Blair, known more widely as George Orwell, was 46 in 1950, the year he ceased being active in a creative sense or any other sense, really, because that's the year he died.
Maybe all of this is a sign that it's time to get busy. Maybe it's finally time for the sap to pour, as William Styron's alter ego "Stingo" phrased it in "Sophie's Choice." (Hey, there's a book I DID read.) But what the hell do you pour sap on, anyway? I guess what he meant was that the sap would be the raw material that would be boiled and boiled to come up with some syrup.
Well, if by sap, he meant coming to terms with stuff that's important enough to actually write out for public consumption, then from the looks of things it's already started running.
Many of the books for sale were large hefty tomes, including important recent works works of fiction by the likes of Tom Wolfe. Copies of "A Man in Full" (1998) and "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (2004) were both up for grabs: big books of hundreds of pages each, handsomely published in hardcover editions that cost $28.95 per copy when released.
And now here they are, just a few years after their debuts, unwanted by an institution whose traditional mission is the propagation of the written word, priced at 25 cents apiece and not selling. And in terms of their unwanted-ness, I include myself. I glanced at each of them, then put them back on the shelf.
Why? Well, I think it relates to good old-fashioned books and how their role in life, or at least in my life, is changing. The Wolfe novels, which should be cultural touchstones of my age, perhaps discussed and celebrated by all literate people, are instead irrelevant. They may contain all kinds of wisdom and truths, but it's all contained in a form that few people care about or respond to anymore.
Not that longish works of writing are obsolete. But they certainly aren't a mass medium anymore. And the Wolfe books got me thinking about how true this is my life, and must be for so many others.
Yes, I vaguely remember reading ABOUT each of them when they were published—how they were regarded as major accomplishments in the Dickensian style of novel, updated for our age. I recall hearing how each novel captured something important and majestic about our times, how each synthesized elements of modern life in a way that laid bare patterns heretofore unseen and told us a lot about ourselves and could perhaps inspire us to reflect on our evolving humanity. Perhaps. I remember reading how Wolfe labored hard to gather material for both books, doing extensive legwork (actually moving to Atlanta, I think, in the case of "A Man in Full") to give them the ring of truth. As a working journalist (as opposed to the other kind, quite common these days), I respected that.
And I remember all this because I actually read an earlier Wolfe novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987), that DID capture something important about the spirit of the mid-1980s in the part of the world I inhabit. And as a young person with literary and creative ambitions, I thought I would eventually get to a place where I would be capable of doing the same thing: creating something that captured my world on a large scale-not only captured it, but wrestled it to the ground and wrung out of it surprising truths and startling insights that might help readers, er, get more out of life.
Well, now it's more than 20 years later, and nothing of that sort has happened with me. And looking at Wolfe's subsequent novels sitting there on the library's "not wanted" shelf, it got me thinking. Never mind changing literary tastes and the pace of modern life and all the other reasons that traditional novels, no matter how amazing or well-crafted, generally aren't big news anymore. (Does anyone really care if Thomas Pynchon has a new book out?) In my case, even if I had been able to marshal my energies and discipline myself into creating something on that scale, it would have probably amounted to coals to Newcastle, which is a phrase I learned as an English major.
That's what occurred to me as I reshelved the Wolfe novels with a sigh and a shrug. Would be nice, but who has the time? I certainly don't-neither to read Wolfe's wonderful and important books, nor to compose anything of my own on such a scale. Does anyone? And so, what value can a book possess if it contains the wisdom of a lifetime, but is just too darned long for anyone to read?
It's not like books are disappearing. Even with the advent of reading devices such as the Kindle (and now the iPad), more actual books are published than ever before. It's just that books are no longer a way to reach a mass audience, unless you're Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, which I am not.
For the rest of us, it's similar to what's happened with television in my lifetime. In the days of three networks, we all watched the same shows, which was a sort of shared cultural experience and creator of comment reference points. (Even if the show was Gilligan's Island.) Now there are so many channels, no one watches the same thing, so the shared experience has been diminished. Increasingly, we define ourselves in terms of groups with interested that are ever narrower, ever more specific. And the media we consume is less and less general, and more and more specific. I'm not sure where this will lead or what the impact of it will be. but it's how things seem to be. And anyway, it's nothing new. It's called entropy.
Well, the point is that Tom Wolfe's unread novels make me think it's time to try something new. Hoping to eventually be ready to create something on a large scale is a strategy that doesn't seem to hold much promise. In terms of books and media and communication, things are changing. And in terms of me, at this point what I might want to say may not work in that kind of environment anyway. Maybe there's a different way.
And books or no books, one thing I know is that for me, the process of writing is often a way to clarify my own thinking. (Not that this is much evidence of that so far.) For some time now, I've resisted putting much energy into all the new online communication tools (blogs, Facebook, whatever) for reasons of privacy, I guess, and also because it's just not a good idea to be too casually personal about anything on the Internet in the age of routine Google searches on job or loan applicants.
But enough. I'm 46, which means at this point if I ever need to go out and get a new job, I'll probably be on outer reaches of any candidate pool anyway, so whatever I post here likely won't be a factor. And also, I recently realized that the age of 46 was significant for three people I admire.
1.) The composer Charles Ives turned 46 in 1920, which was the year when a heart attack and diabetes and ill health finally caused him to essentially stop composing, though he lived until 1954.
2.) The writer Jerome David Salinger turned 46 in 1965, which was the year his final piece of published fiction, "Hapworth 16, 1924" appeared in the New Yorker, though he would lived all the way until January of this year.
3.) The writer Eric Blair, known more widely as George Orwell, was 46 in 1950, the year he ceased being active in a creative sense or any other sense, really, because that's the year he died.
Maybe all of this is a sign that it's time to get busy. Maybe it's finally time for the sap to pour, as William Styron's alter ego "Stingo" phrased it in "Sophie's Choice." (Hey, there's a book I DID read.) But what the hell do you pour sap on, anyway? I guess what he meant was that the sap would be the raw material that would be boiled and boiled to come up with some syrup.
Well, if by sap, he meant coming to terms with stuff that's important enough to actually write out for public consumption, then from the looks of things it's already started running.
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