Consternatio

I wonder why it is that people look to the new year with optimism. There's no reason to think the new year will be any better than the old (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, subprime mortgage crisis, sinking dollar, health insurance crisis, Bush administration, etc.), yet we never fail to hope -- no, not hope, believe -- that relief, even bliss, is right around the corner. It's a little like the way everyone thinks they're going to heaven.

I've learned that new years are just that. New. And new isn't necessarily better. However, a new year is full of new days, and if you can grab a piece of bliss through the course of each day you'll likely be all right.

Et alia

You know you've turned the corner where aging is concerned when the annual lists of Best Music/CD/Performer/Band of the Year come out and you are unfamiliar with any of it. This is where I sit. Oh, sure, I used to keep up with the Cool Stuff, back when the B-52s were thought of as cutting edge, but somewhere along the way I just surrendered. I abandoned the hunt for the new.

Yesterday I received a CD from Amazon, though, and I was very excited. Go! by Dexter Gordon. It was recorded in 1962 or so.

Good stuff, and it will never grow stale.

Consternatio

For me, as a struggling novelist (what other kind is there?), two items in the recent NY Times “Year In Ideas” feature caught my eye. One said that hopelessness might be better than hope, when it comes to well-being. Apparently, for example, prison inmates who were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole fare better than those who are always thinking that the liberating phone call is right around the corner. Makes sense, really. The other said that perseverance might be bad for you. People who kept trying to achieve a difficult or impossible goal, in this study, had elevated levels of C-reactive protein (bad) compared with those who bailed out on the goal.

Persevering with hopefulness in the face of unbelievably bad odds pretty much describes what I do. Oy.

Opinatio

Somewhere I read, in the past few days, that having too many choices dampens quality of life. This is something I agree with. I've always thought that it would be much simpler if we all dressed in crisp coveralls with our names embroidered over the pocket. We could have a closet full of them, and getting ready for work in the morning would be a snap.

On the other hand, there are too many things in this society in which we have no choice at all. I won't name them. It's easy to think of quite a few.

Alas.

Observatio

I noticed that the five novels in the New York Times' list of the Ten Best Books of 2007 are all written by men. This is veddy veddy interesting because, as we all know, women are the primary book buyers in the U.S., and for the most part fiction is geared toward them. Am I wrong? Maybe you have not heard of Oprah?

I haven't read any of these five books yet, but I think there is an unspoken guideline being practiced in our culture. Male authors are the literary lions, female authors are the big sellers. Don't point to Grisham and King and Patterson and that lot to shoot my theory down; I'm talking generally. With some exceptions, men get the artistics kudos and women get the sales. That makes it hard for writers of both sexes if you think about it. If you're a man writing literary material (like me), the slots available for high art are few because those books don't do very well. If you're a woman writing the same, it's very tough to be taken seriously. If you're a man writing commercial novels, you're probably stuck with thrillers, suspense, or military because the gals have relationship stories covered. Chick lit changed everything.

I think the Times was making a statement, but I have to ask, why are men and women so different when it comes to what they read and write? Food for thought.

Et alia

Here's something upbeat and useful for a change. (I know my tone's been skewing cantankerous lately). Turns out that if you subscribe to Harper's Magazine, you have access to its entire history -- 1850 to 2007 -- on the web. All you do is register, provide some kind of code from your latest copy's mailing label, and you're in.

Whatever your special area of interest, you'll find a wealth of material from any era of American history after Harper's was founded: writing by Mark Twain, Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, and thousands of others. This stuff can be used for research or entertainment, and you can even download .pdf files of the articles and keep them in your hot little memory stick forever.

Right now I'm especially interested in the American labor movement, so I'm trolling through the early years of the 20th century looking for Big Bill Hayward et al.

Kill some time; feed your mind.

Observatio

Howcome everyone is shocked -- shocked! -- that the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogators torturing a human being?* It's the CIA, man. They toppled the governments of Iran and Guatemala (how soon we forget), they tried to kill Castro with sploding seegars and poisoned wetsuits, and they mined the harbors of Nicaragua, flouting international law.

It's the CIA.

*See also "Ends justify means."

Opinatio

I was just leafing through a neighbor’s copy of the New Yorker (never subscribe to the New Yorker -- let a neighbor do it and take his copies when he’s done not reading them) and saw an ad for something called the Moth Storytelling Performances. Many things bug me (no pun intended) about the idea of Storytelling Performances. For one, the ad copy refers to them as “literary.” This seems inaccurate.

If you look the word up in an etymology dictionary, you’ll find that it was built to refer to “alphabet letters,” i.e., writing. In the 18th century it was nailed down to apply specifically to literature, but to my mind that means, again, writing. Books. Especially novels, poetry, and scholarly works. Not a kind of pretentious stand-up comedy. Every time I happen upon a storytelling event (usually a story on TV about storytelling), I see a man or woman of any race gesticulating wildly and overdramatizing their own autobiographies. It’s a derivative of the old monology fad of the nineties, which died even before Spalding Gray did. It isn’t literature.

As with what passes for “poetry” in the American mind nowadays (it comes to us in Slams, not slim volumes), “storytelling” is performance. It’s narcissistic, outlandish, self-indulgent, loud, artless, and ultimately boring. Where, in the past, a writer could guide you through the experience of her story like an orchestra conductor, the storyteller now hurls it at you like Gallagher and his watermelons. You need to be entertained, and what’s a storyteller to do if all he knows how to do is tell stories? There are fewer and fewer outlets for the written story, so he has to assume a persona and take to the stage, which is something called “acting.” He also has to compete with other storytellers in American Idol fashion and turn his art, if that’s what it is, into a shtick so he’ll stand out.

Why is every goddamn thing in ths country a goddamn competition?

I don’t know. This saddens me for some reason, and I can’t decide if it’s ironic or not that the sponsor of the Moth program in the New Yorker was Lunesta -- a sleeping pill.

Consternatio

If Iran suspended its nuclear development in 2003, as has been reported today, can we stop threatening to "take out" its nuclear sites? I for one would like to spend this Christmas season free of anxiety that WWIII is coming upon a midnight clear.

If we persist, it would have to be on the basis of Iran's hypothetical interference in Iraq (training tarists, importing IEDs, fomenting hatred of Americans -- as if Iraqis needed help on that front). I don't think that'll fly in the absence of the dreaded Nuclear Threat.

Then again, UN inspectors were on the ground in Iraq just before the war started. They were trying to tell us that there were no WMDs.

In these times, anything's possible.

Et alia

I used to be inclined to write about the political scene much more than I am now. It struck me, as I followed things with a zealot's intensity, that the more voices there were raising the volume of outrage, the better off our cause would be. Turns out, no. Too many voices make noise, and who needs more of that? These days I pay close attention but understand that my e-pamphlets (would Thomas Paine have a blog today?) are for my own venting -- for good health -- and persuade nobody. Which is fine.

I'm leaving much more room in my head for the appreciation of things like ideas (rather than their bastard child, politics) and music. Case in point. Not long ago I bought a tube-driven amplifier, which has made my CD collection sound utterly new. Listening to everything from Haydn to Elvis Costello on it reveals surprising details and nuances I'd never heard before, and this is good. Music is uplifting and doesn't disappoint. Democratic congressmen disappoint.

By the way, the titles here at Disce Pati will always be among four: Opinatio (opinions), Consternatio (confusions), Observatio (observations), and Et alia (all the rest). That'll make it much easier for me. I'm all about simplifying.

Now to some music on a Sunday afternoon...