Sophomore year of high school, I was a textbook Northern California nerd, a geek, a sissy. Inside, I was troubled; at home, I was a troublemaker, so my parents sent me off to an all-boys Jesuit college prep as a boarder in the hopes I'd straighten up. (Intepret that as you will.) The school valued academics and athletics, and most students excelled in one, if not both. A sissy, yes, but at least a studious one, I was somewhat in my element. I kept to myself, but when bored I drifted down to the basement to read or watch television. Unfortunately, during the early weeks of school the two sets seemed perpetually tuned to Charlie's Angels or sports--football or baseball.
My father was a baseball fan, a former high-school player who followed the A's and the Giant's on the radio; my younger brothers actually played Little League. I was too restless, too imaginative for the longueurs of baseball. Nevertheless, that fall in the dorm, I wandered down to the basement and stood in the corner watching the odd game over the shoulders of boys who could track the pitch count without trying, remembered who the matchup in the last no-hitter, knew a balk from a ball. New York could have been in China; same with Los Angeles. Yet some, despite Bay Area-SoCal division, stayed loyal to California and pulled for Dodger Blue; others, whether from family tradition, league loyalty, or sheer transcontinental contrariness, pulled for the Bronx Bombers. My decision came easily, if hormonally: Bucky Dent was simply cuter than Steve Garvey.
Whatever my personal motivations for watching, the game began to yield a sense of its mysteries that fall; the New York franchise, a sense of its sportsmanship and history, its notoriety and celebrity. Jackson. Dent. Munson. Through the cheers, jeers, and boos of the other students, the play-by-play of Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson, and growing familiarity with a now-legendary roster, I slowly, by default more than design, became a Yankee fan. And a baseball fan. And a sports fan in general. My Yankee loyalty was tested through the years; as an adult watching with friends in the stands at Candlestick Park or the Oakland Coliseum, I even tried to muster some affection for either of the Bay Area franchises, but I couldn't. The Giants belonged to my brothers, and the A's to Dad. Besides, I'd already surrendered my affections; I couldn't regift them. Fifteen years' residence in the Big Apple and attendance at many, many games later made the , but the lounge in the bottom of O'Donnell Hall remains the crucible where that first link, however uncertain, however odd, was made.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
7.1, 10/17/1989, 5:04 p.m.
It is nearly 5:04 local time, here in Buffalo, and twenty years have passed. I was on the campus of UC Berkeley, and I’d just gotten out of my discussion section for Major British Writers. It was just about five, so I decided on an early dinner before heading back home across the Bay to San Francisco. The campus walks and plazas thronged with students and professors and others, walking, riding bicycles, heading home. At Bancroft Avenue, I was waiting for the light to change, when the girl next to me and I looked at each other. I knew she was thinking the same thing: was the traffic really making the ground shake like that? Nothing major, just an unusually strong vibration underfoot. People looked up. The traffic lights were bobbing, but maybe it was just the wind. An enormous plate glass window across the street suddenly shattered—exploded, really. But nothing else broke, and I remember thinking that it must have been older, weaker glass, not safety glass. The shaking stopped. Having never been outside in an earthquake before, I quickly tucked the experience into my catalog of seismic memories and headed down Telegraph.
I decided to browse Cody’s before dinner and to my surprise the store’s floor was covered with books that had fallen from the shelves. It must have felt stronger inside, I thought. One of the clerks covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to another, “The Bay Bridge is down.” What? No...impossible. I remembered that the burrito place on Durant had a television, and there, seeing the collapsed Cypress Freeway for the first time, realized it had been a serious earthquake, the biggest in years. The destruction was localized, but still. A decade-plus later, on 9/11, there was a similar sense of very tightly confined destruction in New York City, a sense that just miles from major catastrophe, there was milk to be bought, cats to be fed, dogs to be walked.
The bridge was closed, and BART wasn’t running, so I went over to the apartment of some friends and asked if I could stay the night. Of course, they said, and we made a reunion/party of it. As reports trickled in—the location of the epicenter, the interruption and cancellation of the World Series—I tried to track down the various members of my large family, which was tricky because the circuits were jammed. Friends in Santa Cruz couldn’t be reached yet, but I called my roommate and reassured her that I’d be back the next day. Finally I reached my mother and learned she and Dad had been on the freeway (she thought a tire blew) and that my brother Philippe had actually been at Candlestick Park (still tailgating in the parking lot, he later told me). At one point my mother said, “Oh, there’s another aftershock.” “I don’t feel it.” “You probably will in a moment,” she said. Sure enough, like a swell at sea, the earth lifted and fell for a second; from my friends’ apartment we could hear the students in the high-rise dorms screaming like rollercoaster riders.
BART was back up and running the next day, so I thanked my friends and headed home. As the train swung along the curve closest to the Cypress Freeway, a hush fell over the passengers. People craned their necks, but you couldn’t see anything. During the ride through the Trans-Bay tube, there was even more silence and not a little tension. Back in the City, on the street, I noticed cracks in older buildings that hadn’t been there before, but as stated, the damage felt confined to other places. It turned out my apartment building was one of them: the four-story chimney on the east side had sheared away and fallen on the landlord’s chocolate-brown BMW. And my bedroom, which perched out over the backyard, looked like someone had turned it over, once, like a snowglobe. “Mary’s coming up from Santa Cruz,” my roommate said. Since we didn’t have any gas or water, we all went out for sushi. I remember that it felt like a party. The following night, another friend invited us over for a dinner of homemade paté, baguettes, stew, and red wine. It was my first experience of a sense of a community forged through necessity, through crisis. My first experience of the connectivity of human beings, of our need to reach out and ask if we’re okay. And we are.
I decided to browse Cody’s before dinner and to my surprise the store’s floor was covered with books that had fallen from the shelves. It must have felt stronger inside, I thought. One of the clerks covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to another, “The Bay Bridge is down.” What? No...impossible. I remembered that the burrito place on Durant had a television, and there, seeing the collapsed Cypress Freeway for the first time, realized it had been a serious earthquake, the biggest in years. The destruction was localized, but still. A decade-plus later, on 9/11, there was a similar sense of very tightly confined destruction in New York City, a sense that just miles from major catastrophe, there was milk to be bought, cats to be fed, dogs to be walked.
The bridge was closed, and BART wasn’t running, so I went over to the apartment of some friends and asked if I could stay the night. Of course, they said, and we made a reunion/party of it. As reports trickled in—the location of the epicenter, the interruption and cancellation of the World Series—I tried to track down the various members of my large family, which was tricky because the circuits were jammed. Friends in Santa Cruz couldn’t be reached yet, but I called my roommate and reassured her that I’d be back the next day. Finally I reached my mother and learned she and Dad had been on the freeway (she thought a tire blew) and that my brother Philippe had actually been at Candlestick Park (still tailgating in the parking lot, he later told me). At one point my mother said, “Oh, there’s another aftershock.” “I don’t feel it.” “You probably will in a moment,” she said. Sure enough, like a swell at sea, the earth lifted and fell for a second; from my friends’ apartment we could hear the students in the high-rise dorms screaming like rollercoaster riders.
BART was back up and running the next day, so I thanked my friends and headed home. As the train swung along the curve closest to the Cypress Freeway, a hush fell over the passengers. People craned their necks, but you couldn’t see anything. During the ride through the Trans-Bay tube, there was even more silence and not a little tension. Back in the City, on the street, I noticed cracks in older buildings that hadn’t been there before, but as stated, the damage felt confined to other places. It turned out my apartment building was one of them: the four-story chimney on the east side had sheared away and fallen on the landlord’s chocolate-brown BMW. And my bedroom, which perched out over the backyard, looked like someone had turned it over, once, like a snowglobe. “Mary’s coming up from Santa Cruz,” my roommate said. Since we didn’t have any gas or water, we all went out for sushi. I remember that it felt like a party. The following night, another friend invited us over for a dinner of homemade paté, baguettes, stew, and red wine. It was my first experience of a sense of a community forged through necessity, through crisis. My first experience of the connectivity of human beings, of our need to reach out and ask if we’re okay. And we are.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Americans
The Robert Frank show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn't a blockbuster, and that's what's great about it. Frank was a Swiss-born Jew who emigrated to the United States shortly after the end of the Second World War. He made the acquaintance of photography pioneers like Edward Steichen and Walker Evans, and with Evans help received a 1955 Guggenheim Fellowship to travel across America and record what he saw on film. The resulting book had 83 black-and-white images from hundreds of rolls Frank shot all over the country. He turned his lens on both what was hopeful about the United States--the country that defeated variants of nationalistic fascism in Europe and Asia--as well as what was troubling and bleak. He caught the racism that persisted a century after the Civil War; at the first crest of the long, postwar economic boom, he caught the poverty and bleakness in the shallows; and he caught the darkness that the brilliance of that boom obscured.
In the show, the photographs from the book are laid out in sequence; they're framed simply and similarly, with identifying cards making explicit (at times, perhaps too explicit) the subtler visual connections that Frank and his editors carefully worked into the sequence. Frank's original letters and applications to the Guggenheim Foundation are included, along with various drafts and correspondence between Frank and Jack Kerouac, who wrote an introduction to the volume. The images are largely informal, candid, in the vein of Walker Evans's iconic photos for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Others are like Brassai's interior shots; still others are out of focus, askew. Many of the original contact sheets are included, and one can see the broader sense of vision with which the images were cropped.
Frank experienced racism on his road trips, but remained circumspect about it; the incidents, which included jail time and verbal humiliation by officers of the law, can almost be read as part of the subtext Frank was seeking, that he sensed was out there, waiting to be recorded. As others have noticed, the book is in the tradition of the Outsider Gazing at America, like de Tocqueville, Dickens, Frances Trollope in the 19th century. But unlike those, more critical, caustic takes, Frank's book is subtly affectionate, perhaps even optimistic and hopeful.
In the show, the photographs from the book are laid out in sequence; they're framed simply and similarly, with identifying cards making explicit (at times, perhaps too explicit) the subtler visual connections that Frank and his editors carefully worked into the sequence. Frank's original letters and applications to the Guggenheim Foundation are included, along with various drafts and correspondence between Frank and Jack Kerouac, who wrote an introduction to the volume. The images are largely informal, candid, in the vein of Walker Evans's iconic photos for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Others are like Brassai's interior shots; still others are out of focus, askew. Many of the original contact sheets are included, and one can see the broader sense of vision with which the images were cropped.
Frank experienced racism on his road trips, but remained circumspect about it; the incidents, which included jail time and verbal humiliation by officers of the law, can almost be read as part of the subtext Frank was seeking, that he sensed was out there, waiting to be recorded. As others have noticed, the book is in the tradition of the Outsider Gazing at America, like de Tocqueville, Dickens, Frances Trollope in the 19th century. But unlike those, more critical, caustic takes, Frank's book is subtly affectionate, perhaps even optimistic and hopeful.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Buffalo River
The school year is a month underway, and I am drowning in papers and quizzes and exams to grade. I'm teaching the usual Intro to Lit survey at Niagara University, and although there's some comfort in that, there's also the undeniable fact that every class is different, and every student is different. It's nice to back in the smaller room I had the first semester, and I'm very glad that the students are good at contributing to the class discussion. My primary objectives are two-fold--getting the students to enjoy the idea of talking about literature as much as possible in this age of YouTube and Facebook, and teaching to the objectives of the syllabus and the department. We really flew through the fiction unit; I was on the verge of postponing Friday's exam, but I'm glad we kept on track. The first paper assignment is coming up fast, and then we get into poetry, which can be very challenging. As my friend Doug said last night at dinner, teaching is infinitely improvable.
The American Literature survey has proved a little bit of a challenge. There are 36 students in the class, and the demographics are broad. I have seniors as well as home-schooled freshmen. I have older students, and the class is 80% female. This makes for a challenging discussion, but I'm going to keep adjusting my methods until things get a little looser and freer. This past week both classes had exam-fear in their faces.
At Medaille, the class I'm teaching is an intermediate composition class. It's also new to me, and something of a challenge, but I'm beginning to see how the three classes fit together and play off of each other. The students are so young, and the other day when I (for what reason, God only knows) used the phrase "you bet your sweet bippy," I had them (and me) laughing. I realized that explaining "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" to them was utterly beside the point. The sad truth is that most of their parents probably don't remember it. Anyway, we're doing this Learning Community thing throughout the semester, which ties their General Education class on critical thinking in with my class. We're working around the theme of "Life as a River" and on Thursday we did something very cool: we took a canoe trip on the Buffalo River. We took the trip with the help of a team from Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper. One of the things we learned was that the river has a "pulse": it actually "reverses" its flow every three hours or so. This means that contaminants aren't cycled downriver--and of course, thinking that way isn't too smart to begin with. We learned that the storm overflow and the sewage overflow combine when the runoff is sizeable, releasing more contaminants into the river--and the surrounding soil. We learned that a number of plants have overgrown the area, driving out more diverse, appropriate species.
We paddled from the junction of Cayuga Creek and Buffalo Creek downriver to the Ogden Street Bridge, and that's where two of the students tipped over. The Riverkeeper team had only moments prior remarked that there had been no upsets the entire season, when we all heard a shout and a splash as the two were dumped into the river. Impressively, the students kept their cool and didn't panic. It took a long time to get them back in the canoe. The canoe was turned over and "t-ed"--placed crosswise over the gunwales of one of one of the leaders' canoes so that all the water drained out. We all finally made it back to the launching point, and relatively speaking, safe and sound.
The American Literature survey has proved a little bit of a challenge. There are 36 students in the class, and the demographics are broad. I have seniors as well as home-schooled freshmen. I have older students, and the class is 80% female. This makes for a challenging discussion, but I'm going to keep adjusting my methods until things get a little looser and freer. This past week both classes had exam-fear in their faces.
At Medaille, the class I'm teaching is an intermediate composition class. It's also new to me, and something of a challenge, but I'm beginning to see how the three classes fit together and play off of each other. The students are so young, and the other day when I (for what reason, God only knows) used the phrase "you bet your sweet bippy," I had them (and me) laughing. I realized that explaining "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" to them was utterly beside the point. The sad truth is that most of their parents probably don't remember it. Anyway, we're doing this Learning Community thing throughout the semester, which ties their General Education class on critical thinking in with my class. We're working around the theme of "Life as a River" and on Thursday we did something very cool: we took a canoe trip on the Buffalo River. We took the trip with the help of a team from Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper. One of the things we learned was that the river has a "pulse": it actually "reverses" its flow every three hours or so. This means that contaminants aren't cycled downriver--and of course, thinking that way isn't too smart to begin with. We learned that the storm overflow and the sewage overflow combine when the runoff is sizeable, releasing more contaminants into the river--and the surrounding soil. We learned that a number of plants have overgrown the area, driving out more diverse, appropriate species.
We paddled from the junction of Cayuga Creek and Buffalo Creek downriver to the Ogden Street Bridge, and that's where two of the students tipped over. The Riverkeeper team had only moments prior remarked that there had been no upsets the entire season, when we all heard a shout and a splash as the two were dumped into the river. Impressively, the students kept their cool and didn't panic. It took a long time to get them back in the canoe. The canoe was turned over and "t-ed"--placed crosswise over the gunwales of one of one of the leaders' canoes so that all the water drained out. We all finally made it back to the launching point, and relatively speaking, safe and sound.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
+41° 7' 38.42", -72° 17' 3.13"
Two weeks ago, after the memorial gathering with my friends from Columbia, I spent the night in Brooklyn at my friend’s apartment. In the morning Helene, her two kids, Dean, 9, and Paulina, 6, and I drove out to the North Fork of Long Island. Paulina was shy, and very much a girl, but Dean was all boy, and we spent a big part of the drive east discussing horror and disaster movies. We got on the subject because he mentioned wanting to see 2012, Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming apocalypse. (I guess he never runs out of floods and fires and landslides.) Dean wanted to know the plots of as many of the movies I could remember, and when I launched into the Alien series we were set for the better half of the two-hour drive. (Paulina was watching a video...and it wasn't Alien.)
The house Helene and her husband rent was on Peter’s Neck, which juts out between Orient Harbor and Gids Bay. The heat and humidity were ferocious, and so were the mosquitoes. It was the first time all year I couldn’t be outside for long without drenching myself in Off! Read, Jenny, and Lake Blinn, friends from Keene, New Hampshire (Read is also a Columbia alum) were waiting for us. We all tumbled out of the car and got settled with some fried chicken and chips. Another friend from CU, Laura, showed up with her two kids, Declan, 9, and Jaden Li, 5, and soon, doused with bug repellent, all the kids were chasing fiddler crabs through the tidal shallows and grasses. Jodi and her partner Jocelyn showed up, and we got ready to head to the beach. The heat was still intense, so the water was cold and refreshing. We splashed around for a while and explored some of the rocks. The others arrived with Boogie boards and umbrellas and towels. We spent a long while in the water, and I was in the process of dragging Lake around on the Boogie board, when suddenly both of us jumped. “Ouch! Something bit me!” said Lake. “It’s a jellyfish,” I said. “I got stung too.” I’d never been stung by a jellyfish before. The sensation is like pins-and-needles, only coming from outside. Lake got out of the water, and between us someone remembered that peeing on a jellyfish sting relieves the pain. (I didn’t ask anyone to pee on my sting.) Eventually we went home and started cooking up linguine with clams (discovering that the secret is that you can never have too much sauce) along with an impromptu marinara for the kids. Read and his family had to start home for New Hampshire (they had to catch the 7 o’clock ferry to New London, CT), but the rest of us sat and ate and talked into the darkness. Eventually Jodi and Jocelyn had to leave, but the rest of us stayed the night.
The next day those of us who remained had a leisurely morning, and all remained fairly calm until the keys to the Volvo stationwagon got locked inside by yours truly. There was a moment’s panic until we figured out there was nothing to do but divide into two groups, one that stayed home and waited for AAA, another that went back to the beach and waited. The lunch and most of the towels were in the car’s rear compartment, so we had to wait for the roadside assistance to show up at the house, open the car, and then for Helene and her son to come with the food. I decided to take a long, penitential walk on the beach--actually, I just wanted a chance to explore, and Laura was watching the kids. By the time I returned, the others had arrived with the food.
The plan for the remainder of the day included ice cream at Nina’s in Orient Point. Helene extolled their root beer floats, and after a hot day at the beach, a delicious, peppery, vanilla-y, creamy, foamy root beer float sounded delicious. We were waiting for the kids to finish their treats, when a man about my age walked in with an older woman, who was wearing a tank top and shorts with a pair of raspberry-colored Ugg boots, which seemed odd considering that the temperature was in the low nineties. I noticed the boots, then noticed the man who was with her. I had that frisson you get only in the moment of recognizing someone famous, and thought, Well, I guess you can’t have a trip to New York…or the North Fork of Long Island…and not see a celebrity. The man and I nodded at each other--in this case, I felt sure that it was more gaydar than him knowing that I knew who he was, and also felt sure that Helene, who knows more about music than I do, recognized him, but was playing it cool like a true New Yorker. Only when we got out to the sidewalk did I say to Laura, “Did you see who that was? Rufus Wainwright!” “You’re kidding!” both women said. “I thought you saw him and were playing it cool…” I said to Helene. “I wondered why you were being so friendly with him,” said Laura, a twinkle in her eye.
Laura and kids headed back to Brooklyn within the hour, and I hung out with Helene and Dean and Paulina for one more day, enjoying the cool and the quiet and the marvelous beauty of Peter’s Neck. I watched the sun go down over the western end of Long Island, and told myself that the summer had come to an end. I returned to Buffalo reconnected with my friends from Columbia, ready for the new school year.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Only Morningside, excellent and fair...
After an exceptionally busy week in Buffalo that included a party for 60 here at my apartment on Friday night, I flew down to NYC for a couple of days and then ventured out to the North Fork of Long Island. All in all, an embarrassment of reconnections, remembrances, and the riches that are relationships.
I flew into JFK after getting almost no sleep. Cleaning up after the party lasted until one, one-thirty in the morning, then I had to get up early to pack since my clothes were still in the dryer. The flight downstate isn’t long enough for real sleep, but I tried. The biggest drag was the long, complicated subway ride into Manhattan. AirTrain wasn’t so bad, but the E was running local and along the F line on a construction schedule, so I transferred to the D at Rockefeller Center. Instead of getting off at Columbus Circle for an uptown local, I stayed on and ended up having to backtrack along Central Park West on a local A. Two and a half hours after my plane landed, and after turning on the AC as high as it could go, I crashed on the couch of my friend Deanne’s Upper West Side apartment and slept for a while. It was hot and sticky in NYC, the sort of weather that makes you hate the city in August.
I went down to the Village for coffee with my friend Harry, then headed up to Lincoln Center for a free dance performance at Damrosch Park. The two companies were those of Ben Munistieri and Mark Dendy. The work by the former was simple and inoffensive, if unexciting; the single piece by the latter, set to a mix of Tibetan bells and instrumental versions of Metallica (I recognized “Enter Sandman”) was long but thrilling, the kind of modern dance that makes you want to stand and cheer—which we did. The piece had about 24 dancers, and boy, did Dendy know how to use them! After the performance we headed to The Red Cat for dinner, and we were treated to some tempura of green beans and baked fontina. We ordered a variety of entrees, and the management sent out nearly a dozen desserts. It was really humbling to be treated so generously.
The following day I visited with a friend in the morning, then called on another friend who is leaving NYC for Fort Lauderdale. She and I went for a snack at Westville, right on West 10th, in my old neighborhood (1994-2001). Then I headed uptown to change my shirt (not because of the heat, but because of the coffee I spilled!) and grabbed a cab up to the Columbia campus. I hadn’t been on that McKim, Mead, and White-designed Morningside Heights main campus in several years, and unlike other places I’ve been after many years, it didn’t seem smaller; it seemed even larger, just as grand and impressive as the first time I saw it in the fall of 1987—though perhaps the lack of people helped. I met my colleagues from graduate school on the steps leading up to Dodge Hall, and instead of feeling like it had been 14 years, it felt like it had been five minutes since our last class. Yes, some gray here and there; yes, some body mass and wrinkling. But overall, it felt like a time warp. We quickly moved from one conversational knot to another, sometimes in twos, sometimes as an entire group, filling each other in on what we’d been up to. Some of us had seen each other since. Because it was so hot and humid, we quickly took some pictures by the statue of Alma Mater, then adjourned for a nearby Ethiopian restaurant called Awash. The reason for the choice was that we were there not only to reconnect with each other, but to remember our dear friend Andrew (see the post from June 22, 2009). Because Andrew lived in Brooklyn and was a writer and because of other correspondences, some passages from Sophie’s Choice were read; remembrances were offered. Photographs were passed around. Laughs were shared; tears were shed.
Grieving someone is necessarily a process, a work in progress. It goes on. It can’t be forced to closure. Seeing my friends, seeing the campus, made the reunion bittersweet and my sense of the loss of Andrew stronger. Sometimes it was so sharp and painful as I was sitting there that I couldn’t stand it. Sometimes I was comforted by the others’ presence; sometimes I felt saturated by sadness yet was numb to it. I was struck by one individual who insisted on a way of remembering Andrew that in my opinion resisted to admit the truth of how he died. Maybe if you refuse to admit how someone dies when he takes his own life, then you are also refuse to admit how he lived. I don’t know. I was able to offer some of my own thoughts and feelings about suicide, having been so close to it at one very painful moment in my life. I felt that I understood very, very clearly where Andrew had to go to do what he had done.
To be continued…
I flew into JFK after getting almost no sleep. Cleaning up after the party lasted until one, one-thirty in the morning, then I had to get up early to pack since my clothes were still in the dryer. The flight downstate isn’t long enough for real sleep, but I tried. The biggest drag was the long, complicated subway ride into Manhattan. AirTrain wasn’t so bad, but the E was running local and along the F line on a construction schedule, so I transferred to the D at Rockefeller Center. Instead of getting off at Columbus Circle for an uptown local, I stayed on and ended up having to backtrack along Central Park West on a local A. Two and a half hours after my plane landed, and after turning on the AC as high as it could go, I crashed on the couch of my friend Deanne’s Upper West Side apartment and slept for a while. It was hot and sticky in NYC, the sort of weather that makes you hate the city in August.
I went down to the Village for coffee with my friend Harry, then headed up to Lincoln Center for a free dance performance at Damrosch Park. The two companies were those of Ben Munistieri and Mark Dendy. The work by the former was simple and inoffensive, if unexciting; the single piece by the latter, set to a mix of Tibetan bells and instrumental versions of Metallica (I recognized “Enter Sandman”) was long but thrilling, the kind of modern dance that makes you want to stand and cheer—which we did. The piece had about 24 dancers, and boy, did Dendy know how to use them! After the performance we headed to The Red Cat for dinner, and we were treated to some tempura of green beans and baked fontina. We ordered a variety of entrees, and the management sent out nearly a dozen desserts. It was really humbling to be treated so generously.
The following day I visited with a friend in the morning, then called on another friend who is leaving NYC for Fort Lauderdale. She and I went for a snack at Westville, right on West 10th, in my old neighborhood (1994-2001). Then I headed uptown to change my shirt (not because of the heat, but because of the coffee I spilled!) and grabbed a cab up to the Columbia campus. I hadn’t been on that McKim, Mead, and White-designed Morningside Heights main campus in several years, and unlike other places I’ve been after many years, it didn’t seem smaller; it seemed even larger, just as grand and impressive as the first time I saw it in the fall of 1987—though perhaps the lack of people helped. I met my colleagues from graduate school on the steps leading up to Dodge Hall, and instead of feeling like it had been 14 years, it felt like it had been five minutes since our last class. Yes, some gray here and there; yes, some body mass and wrinkling. But overall, it felt like a time warp. We quickly moved from one conversational knot to another, sometimes in twos, sometimes as an entire group, filling each other in on what we’d been up to. Some of us had seen each other since. Because it was so hot and humid, we quickly took some pictures by the statue of Alma Mater, then adjourned for a nearby Ethiopian restaurant called Awash. The reason for the choice was that we were there not only to reconnect with each other, but to remember our dear friend Andrew (see the post from June 22, 2009). Because Andrew lived in Brooklyn and was a writer and because of other correspondences, some passages from Sophie’s Choice were read; remembrances were offered. Photographs were passed around. Laughs were shared; tears were shed.
Grieving someone is necessarily a process, a work in progress. It goes on. It can’t be forced to closure. Seeing my friends, seeing the campus, made the reunion bittersweet and my sense of the loss of Andrew stronger. Sometimes it was so sharp and painful as I was sitting there that I couldn’t stand it. Sometimes I was comforted by the others’ presence; sometimes I felt saturated by sadness yet was numb to it. I was struck by one individual who insisted on a way of remembering Andrew that in my opinion resisted to admit the truth of how he died. Maybe if you refuse to admit how someone dies when he takes his own life, then you are also refuse to admit how he lived. I don’t know. I was able to offer some of my own thoughts and feelings about suicide, having been so close to it at one very painful moment in my life. I felt that I understood very, very clearly where Andrew had to go to do what he had done.
To be continued…
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Landmarks
This past couple of weeks I finally ventured to explore some areas in Buffalo I’d long been curious about. One exploration was motivated by the composition class I’ll be teaching this fall at Medaille College, the other by curiosity about a major Old Buffalo landmark.
The comp class is paired with another class in critical thinking (I confess to wondering at times what happened to good old-fashioned college classes) and we will form what is called a Learning Community. The other instructor and I will organize some of our syllabus around a theme, and we will try to link into some aspect of the “story of Buffalo.” Prof. Cullinan and I chose the theme of “life as a river” and the Buffalo River as the linking aspect. I was only vaguely aware of where the river was, and how to get there. Via the Skyway or the 190 south of downtown, I often passed by the old industrial waterfront and the deserted grain mills. But nothing in my two years here ever brought me into that part of the city, so on a recent sunny Saturday, after an errand brought me closer than I’d ever been, I took a left turn and skirted around the HSBC Arena and found myself where I wanted to be. The neighborhood is known as the First Ward, and according to Prof. Cullinan, is largely Irish (like her). I found the river by visuals, driving to the end of Hamburg Street, past McCarthy’s Pub, whose windows were crowded with handwritten community signage (“Benefit for Joey ____”). I thought of stopping, but made a mental note to return when I spotted a man walking a dog. He was in this sort of channel that looked like the remains of an old railroad bridge. When I drove to the dead end, I was at the river. I got out of the car. It was a beautiful summer day (one of the few we’ve had this year) and the grain silos were across the water. I could hear a couple sitting somewhere nearby, talking, and to my left, a solo kayaker was coming downstream. There are rusty old railway trestles, and the water looked as brackish as I expected it to be, but the sun and dry air did a lot to make the scene. Those deserted silos have a Monument Valley-meets-the Industrial Revolution grandeur, forlorn and daunting at the same time. What is going to happen to them? After leaving that spot, I drove around the First Ward some more, and eventually found my way to the mouth of the river. On the western side of the river’s mouth were some small-craft marinas and slips, and the sailboats looked very expensive compared to the mostly-deserted mills on the opposite bank. There were a couple of oil-painters across the river, so I crossed back over to investigate. This brought me to the General Mills plant, where some men on a weekend shift were taking a break at a picnic table. I spoke to the painters for a moment, then got back in my car and went home.
Today, after going to the Science Museum to see the amazing “Body Works” exhibit, I suggested to my friend that we drive in the direction of some of the churches whose steeples are among the highest in the city. We headed for St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church (now known as the King Urban Life Center), which is at the corner of Genesee and Guilford. The church was built in 1891, in the Rhenish Romanesque style, and designed by Adolphus Druiding. It’s a spectacularly tall church, and commands the neighborhood the way a cathedral must have commanded towns in the Middle Ages. Large swaths of this part of the city were among the bleakest and most desolate I’ve seen since I moved here. Although there are empty lots here in Allentown, they seem like English gardens compared to the blocks of blight in this part of Buffalo. My friend and I commented on how bleak it felt, even on a Sunday afternoon in summer.We drove next to St. Stanislaus, which is a substantial complex on Townsend Street three blocks south of St. Mary of Sorrows, and then we drove to the Central Terminal. I’ve seen this building only from the highways and expressways, but seeing it up close was amazing. Hard to believe it was built less than a century ago, and that it was used for only 50 years. There were a lot of cars in the lot, and I found out by going on the terminal’s website that a public tour was going on. Despite that, between the churches and the grain mills and the terminal, it brought some of the harder, harsher reality of Buffalo home in a way I hadn’t experienced yet.
The comp class is paired with another class in critical thinking (I confess to wondering at times what happened to good old-fashioned college classes) and we will form what is called a Learning Community. The other instructor and I will organize some of our syllabus around a theme, and we will try to link into some aspect of the “story of Buffalo.” Prof. Cullinan and I chose the theme of “life as a river” and the Buffalo River as the linking aspect. I was only vaguely aware of where the river was, and how to get there. Via the Skyway or the 190 south of downtown, I often passed by the old industrial waterfront and the deserted grain mills. But nothing in my two years here ever brought me into that part of the city, so on a recent sunny Saturday, after an errand brought me closer than I’d ever been, I took a left turn and skirted around the HSBC Arena and found myself where I wanted to be. The neighborhood is known as the First Ward, and according to Prof. Cullinan, is largely Irish (like her). I found the river by visuals, driving to the end of Hamburg Street, past McCarthy’s Pub, whose windows were crowded with handwritten community signage (“Benefit for Joey ____”). I thought of stopping, but made a mental note to return when I spotted a man walking a dog. He was in this sort of channel that looked like the remains of an old railroad bridge. When I drove to the dead end, I was at the river. I got out of the car. It was a beautiful summer day (one of the few we’ve had this year) and the grain silos were across the water. I could hear a couple sitting somewhere nearby, talking, and to my left, a solo kayaker was coming downstream. There are rusty old railway trestles, and the water looked as brackish as I expected it to be, but the sun and dry air did a lot to make the scene. Those deserted silos have a Monument Valley-meets-the Industrial Revolution grandeur, forlorn and daunting at the same time. What is going to happen to them? After leaving that spot, I drove around the First Ward some more, and eventually found my way to the mouth of the river. On the western side of the river’s mouth were some small-craft marinas and slips, and the sailboats looked very expensive compared to the mostly-deserted mills on the opposite bank. There were a couple of oil-painters across the river, so I crossed back over to investigate. This brought me to the General Mills plant, where some men on a weekend shift were taking a break at a picnic table. I spoke to the painters for a moment, then got back in my car and went home.
Today, after going to the Science Museum to see the amazing “Body Works” exhibit, I suggested to my friend that we drive in the direction of some of the churches whose steeples are among the highest in the city. We headed for St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church (now known as the King Urban Life Center), which is at the corner of Genesee and Guilford. The church was built in 1891, in the Rhenish Romanesque style, and designed by Adolphus Druiding. It’s a spectacularly tall church, and commands the neighborhood the way a cathedral must have commanded towns in the Middle Ages. Large swaths of this part of the city were among the bleakest and most desolate I’ve seen since I moved here. Although there are empty lots here in Allentown, they seem like English gardens compared to the blocks of blight in this part of Buffalo. My friend and I commented on how bleak it felt, even on a Sunday afternoon in summer.We drove next to St. Stanislaus, which is a substantial complex on Townsend Street three blocks south of St. Mary of Sorrows, and then we drove to the Central Terminal. I’ve seen this building only from the highways and expressways, but seeing it up close was amazing. Hard to believe it was built less than a century ago, and that it was used for only 50 years. There were a lot of cars in the lot, and I found out by going on the terminal’s website that a public tour was going on. Despite that, between the churches and the grain mills and the terminal, it brought some of the harder, harsher reality of Buffalo home in a way I hadn’t experienced yet.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Jerome & Julia
As I recently wrote on my other, professionally-related blog (see the link for "Juicy Dish" at the left), my friend and I recently had the good fortune to catch an advance screening of the new movie Julie & Julia. The movie was a lot of fun, and a nice return to form for Nora Ephron, who has made some bummers since the success of Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, which she wrote and produced, but did not direct. It was a showcase for Meryl Streep, natch, but it was also a worthy bio of Julia Child. I reviewed the excellent short bio of her by Laura Shapiro, in the Penguin Lives series, and the movie honors Child’s long, painstaking route to professional success, which for her was very personal, as she and her husband never had children. The setbacks to the writing and publication of that first cookbook were considerable, but Julia never gave up, and that persistence remains a lesson for me. For all of us.
As I stood in line at the candy counter before the screening, I was thinking about the fact that I actually waited on Julia Child back in the late Nineites. This was at Gotham Bar and Grill in New York City. How lucky I feel to have had that opportunity! I’ve waited on a lot of famous (and infamous) people over the years, but Child was and remains a true global and American icon. Here’s what I wrote on the other blog:
“She and the chef sat with a large party at Table 45, the round table in the center of the dining room. Julia was dressed in her trademark, no-nonsense matron francaise mode. After Champagne was poured and amuses-bouche of silken Goat Cheese Ravioli with Cremini Mushrooms and Parmesan had been delivered and devoured, Julia turned to the chef and said in her sing-song, plummy voice, "Now, what shall we eat?" Alfred, who I still greatly admire and respect, seemed at a loss for words, but Julia opened the menu and said, "Now, this sound delicious...Pheasant and Foie Gras Terrine..." I left them to discuss the strategy for ordering, and everyone else at the table wanted to know what Julia and Alfred were having before they ordered..."
In the very brief, professional context of my encounter with Julia Child, I was reminded of another formidable grande dame, one who was an even greater influence on me and, most importantly, on my cooking. Diana Trilling had very similar qualities--she had a similar voice, a similar way of dress, a similar way of finding amusement in things. Whenever I shop or cook, I hear Diana's voice saying, "Smaller. Find a canteloupe that's smaller...that's cooking too quickly, I can tell by the sound..." More than anything else, I hear her saying, "Did you add salt?" Or, "Did you add enough salt?" As I would have learned from Julia Child had I the chance, I learned to taste what I was cooking throughout the process, and to pay attention to what I was doing as I was doing, not just think about the results. A good lesson for cooking. A good lesson for life.
As I stood in line at the candy counter before the screening, I was thinking about the fact that I actually waited on Julia Child back in the late Nineites. This was at Gotham Bar and Grill in New York City. How lucky I feel to have had that opportunity! I’ve waited on a lot of famous (and infamous) people over the years, but Child was and remains a true global and American icon. Here’s what I wrote on the other blog:
“She and the chef sat with a large party at Table 45, the round table in the center of the dining room. Julia was dressed in her trademark, no-nonsense matron francaise mode. After Champagne was poured and amuses-bouche of silken Goat Cheese Ravioli with Cremini Mushrooms and Parmesan had been delivered and devoured, Julia turned to the chef and said in her sing-song, plummy voice, "Now, what shall we eat?" Alfred, who I still greatly admire and respect, seemed at a loss for words, but Julia opened the menu and said, "Now, this sound delicious...Pheasant and Foie Gras Terrine..." I left them to discuss the strategy for ordering, and everyone else at the table wanted to know what Julia and Alfred were having before they ordered..."
In the very brief, professional context of my encounter with Julia Child, I was reminded of another formidable grande dame, one who was an even greater influence on me and, most importantly, on my cooking. Diana Trilling had very similar qualities--she had a similar voice, a similar way of dress, a similar way of finding amusement in things. Whenever I shop or cook, I hear Diana's voice saying, "Smaller. Find a canteloupe that's smaller...that's cooking too quickly, I can tell by the sound..." More than anything else, I hear her saying, "Did you add salt?" Or, "Did you add enough salt?" As I would have learned from Julia Child had I the chance, I learned to taste what I was cooking throughout the process, and to pay attention to what I was doing as I was doing, not just think about the results. A good lesson for cooking. A good lesson for life.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Once In a Lifetime...
In 2006, the New York Times book editor, Sam Tanenhaus, polled 125 “prominent writers” on their choice of the “best work of fiction of the last 25 years”. Like the Oscars, a debate over the results ensued that was arguably more interesting than the final tally. I’d read quite a few, including the poll’s winner, Beloved. But of the top five, Morrison’s novel was the only one I’d actually read. I pledged to tackle the remaining four at some point, but didn’t get around to even starting this in earnest until this summer. With a mere eight weeks to go to the start of the semester, here’s where things stand: I finished American Pastoral a few weeks ago; took a half-hearted swipe at Blood Meridian, but set it aside; continue to keep putting off the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy; and am halfway through DeLillo’s Underworld, which I find slow going but intriguing, especially the post-9/11 resonances.
Reading Underworld takes me back to NYC in more ways than one. When the paperback came out, I often saw ambitious readers taking on the 800-plus pages. In my mind’s eye I can see them even now, perched on the hard orange seats of the subways, the thick Vintage book propped on laps, purses, backpacks, and briefcases. The deep-focus cover photograph by Kertesz of the Twin Towers in the fog behind the steeple of Judson Memorial Church announced the fact that they were reading The Book of The Moment. And because it was The Book of The Moment, I set the chin of my ego, dug in the heels of my resistance, and, self-conscious to more than one fault, refused to read it until the buzz died down.
What turns a book into an event? I’m not talking about books that appear and gradually or even suddenly evolve into cultural happenings. The Lovely Bones. Don’t Let’s Go the Dogs Tonight. The Liar’s Club. Even Running with Scissors. I’m not talking about events related to books where publication and other events merge into something historical. Portnoy’s Complaint. The Satanic Verses. The Corrections.I’m not talking about prizes, either, although prizes do make a book an event. I have a friend who despises the Booker---excuse me, the Man Booker prizewinners just because they’ve won it. In America we have so many prizes to choose from that they dilute the event-dom that the award might bestow. “Sure,” I shrug, “Olive Kittredge won the Pulitzer, but Tree of Smoke won the NBA…” The Nobel Prize guarantees that an author’s subsequent titles become events regardless of size—Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a mere 160 pages, but the publication hosannas, deserved or not, suggested a book ten times the length. After the critical success of Everything Was Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer’s second book was bound to be an event; its use of 9/11 within what felt like months of the attacks inevitably turned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close into a Big Book Event. Length or ambition seem like tangible factors, as evidenced by Tree of Smoke; a gimmick like serial publication in this age of non-subscribers will work—-pace Tom Wolfe. And the finality of death makes the voice-from-beyond impact of posthumous publication a surefire event, Roberto Bolano’s 2666 being a recent example.
I may live in an age of noise and speed and size and buzz, but it still gives me a great deal of pleasure to walk into a quiet, independent bookstore and turn over the new, unfamiliar volumes lying face up on the front tables. There is a gratification that is like meeting a stranger that no one you know has met, of taking a risk, a chance. Of taking all that unfamiliarity home, of having that intimate experience with the book one-on-one, completely free of the sights and sounds and other sensations that are necessary for any activity to become something beyond mere experience.
Reading Underworld takes me back to NYC in more ways than one. When the paperback came out, I often saw ambitious readers taking on the 800-plus pages. In my mind’s eye I can see them even now, perched on the hard orange seats of the subways, the thick Vintage book propped on laps, purses, backpacks, and briefcases. The deep-focus cover photograph by Kertesz of the Twin Towers in the fog behind the steeple of Judson Memorial Church announced the fact that they were reading The Book of The Moment. And because it was The Book of The Moment, I set the chin of my ego, dug in the heels of my resistance, and, self-conscious to more than one fault, refused to read it until the buzz died down.
What turns a book into an event? I’m not talking about books that appear and gradually or even suddenly evolve into cultural happenings. The Lovely Bones. Don’t Let’s Go the Dogs Tonight. The Liar’s Club. Even Running with Scissors. I’m not talking about events related to books where publication and other events merge into something historical. Portnoy’s Complaint. The Satanic Verses. The Corrections.I’m not talking about prizes, either, although prizes do make a book an event. I have a friend who despises the Booker---excuse me, the Man Booker prizewinners just because they’ve won it. In America we have so many prizes to choose from that they dilute the event-dom that the award might bestow. “Sure,” I shrug, “Olive Kittredge won the Pulitzer, but Tree of Smoke won the NBA…” The Nobel Prize guarantees that an author’s subsequent titles become events regardless of size—Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a mere 160 pages, but the publication hosannas, deserved or not, suggested a book ten times the length. After the critical success of Everything Was Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer’s second book was bound to be an event; its use of 9/11 within what felt like months of the attacks inevitably turned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close into a Big Book Event. Length or ambition seem like tangible factors, as evidenced by Tree of Smoke; a gimmick like serial publication in this age of non-subscribers will work—-pace Tom Wolfe. And the finality of death makes the voice-from-beyond impact of posthumous publication a surefire event, Roberto Bolano’s 2666 being a recent example.
I may live in an age of noise and speed and size and buzz, but it still gives me a great deal of pleasure to walk into a quiet, independent bookstore and turn over the new, unfamiliar volumes lying face up on the front tables. There is a gratification that is like meeting a stranger that no one you know has met, of taking a risk, a chance. Of taking all that unfamiliarity home, of having that intimate experience with the book one-on-one, completely free of the sights and sounds and other sensations that are necessary for any activity to become something beyond mere experience.
Monday, June 29, 2009
10 S N E 1?
Driving to the tennis courts in Delaware Park last Saturday to play for the first time in about five years, I was whisked back some thirty years and a couple thousand miles.
My parents, who were the same age I am now, received matching tennis rackets at Christmas 1974. They were wooden and top-of-the-line, but they sat untouched in their vinyl covers with a couple of other assorted rackets and things like the slide projector and wrapping paper and ribbons in a back closet until one dinnertime the following June. As we were finishing dinner, Mom announced that she felt like playing a little tennis. We all gaped. Mom? Tennis? No way! We left the dishes as they were; my dad and my brothers and I grabbed the rackets and the few cans of balls. Where the balls came from, I have no idea, and at least one of the rackets still had its old-fashioned wooden press.
We drove to the local high school, and once we got a free court, took turns rallying in mixed-doubles. We kids got a particular kick out of Mom, doing something we never imagined her doing—being athletic. I wasn’t known as an athlete either, but enjoyed banging the ball furiously against the backboard.
I never saw my mother play tennis again, but I discovered that an old childhood friend played, and for the rest of that and several summers running, tennis became my game. It was the period when wooden racquets were rapidly giving way to metal ones. The Wilson T2000 that Jimmy Connors used had a crazy wire wrapping. Head came out with its composite racket with the elongated oval face. I envied the new equipment in the hands of other players, but did my best to keep up until my parents gave me a metal racket for my 15th birthday.
I started following tennis on television. Borg was my favorite player, and not just because of his long blond hair and blue eyes. I liked his cool. His Nordic cool. It’s what I admired about Edberg and Sampras, and what I like about Federer. I couldn’t stand the theatrics of a Jimmy Connors or a John McEnroe. I’ve come to respect the games of players whose playing style I don’t necessarily like, just as I came to like baseball even when the Yankees aren’t involved. I’ve been to the U.S. Open several times, but I hadn’t played here in Buffalo until last week.
It was wonderful to be out there on the court at seven-thirty in the evening with the sun still up and out. The heat and dryness of the air, the smell of the grass, the shouts of the kids on the soccer field behind the courts. When I was a teenager, the courts at the local high school didn’t have lights for nighttime play, but that wouldn’t stop us, especially if the score was close. Penn, Dunlop, and Wilson all manufactured balls that were Day-Glo Orange, and even made some balls that were half-yellow, half-orange. I was happy to see that my backhand remained as strong as ever, but my forehand always needs work. But mostly what needs some work is me. I winded quickly, and couldn’t last more than an hour. And I kept trying to move my feet, but they refused to move quickly, as if protesting, “Take it easy! We can’t throw all that weight around as easily as we could when you were thirty years younger and half the size.” I’m going try to do what I can to relieve them of some of their burden.
My parents, who were the same age I am now, received matching tennis rackets at Christmas 1974. They were wooden and top-of-the-line, but they sat untouched in their vinyl covers with a couple of other assorted rackets and things like the slide projector and wrapping paper and ribbons in a back closet until one dinnertime the following June. As we were finishing dinner, Mom announced that she felt like playing a little tennis. We all gaped. Mom? Tennis? No way! We left the dishes as they were; my dad and my brothers and I grabbed the rackets and the few cans of balls. Where the balls came from, I have no idea, and at least one of the rackets still had its old-fashioned wooden press.
We drove to the local high school, and once we got a free court, took turns rallying in mixed-doubles. We kids got a particular kick out of Mom, doing something we never imagined her doing—being athletic. I wasn’t known as an athlete either, but enjoyed banging the ball furiously against the backboard.
I never saw my mother play tennis again, but I discovered that an old childhood friend played, and for the rest of that and several summers running, tennis became my game. It was the period when wooden racquets were rapidly giving way to metal ones. The Wilson T2000 that Jimmy Connors used had a crazy wire wrapping. Head came out with its composite racket with the elongated oval face. I envied the new equipment in the hands of other players, but did my best to keep up until my parents gave me a metal racket for my 15th birthday.
I started following tennis on television. Borg was my favorite player, and not just because of his long blond hair and blue eyes. I liked his cool. His Nordic cool. It’s what I admired about Edberg and Sampras, and what I like about Federer. I couldn’t stand the theatrics of a Jimmy Connors or a John McEnroe. I’ve come to respect the games of players whose playing style I don’t necessarily like, just as I came to like baseball even when the Yankees aren’t involved. I’ve been to the U.S. Open several times, but I hadn’t played here in Buffalo until last week.
It was wonderful to be out there on the court at seven-thirty in the evening with the sun still up and out. The heat and dryness of the air, the smell of the grass, the shouts of the kids on the soccer field behind the courts. When I was a teenager, the courts at the local high school didn’t have lights for nighttime play, but that wouldn’t stop us, especially if the score was close. Penn, Dunlop, and Wilson all manufactured balls that were Day-Glo Orange, and even made some balls that were half-yellow, half-orange. I was happy to see that my backhand remained as strong as ever, but my forehand always needs work. But mostly what needs some work is me. I winded quickly, and couldn’t last more than an hour. And I kept trying to move my feet, but they refused to move quickly, as if protesting, “Take it easy! We can’t throw all that weight around as easily as we could when you were thirty years younger and half the size.” I’m going try to do what I can to relieve them of some of their burden.
Monday, June 22, 2009
In Memoriam: Andrew King
This past Wednesday, I heard some sad news.
Andrew Rivan King was a colleague from my time in the M.F.A. program at Columbia. He was an enthusiastic writer who was working on a book about his experiences in Africa. This was the early Nineties: Mandela had been released, but apartheid was still in the process of being dismantled. The Battle of Mogadishu was news in the literal sense. The Rwandan genocide had not yet happened. Just about the only Africa memoir we could reference was Out of Africa and we all thought Andrew had a good thing going. Andrew’s pieces in the workshops were peppered with Kiswahili. Jambo (“Hello”). Mzuri (“I’m fine.”). Mzee (“Older man”).
Andrew, like me, was a part of large and unusually supportive group in the Nonfiction concentration at Columbia. There wasn’t a lot of competition between us or, if there was, it was kept far offstage. Most of us were writing memoirs and, as with Africa, this was relatively uncharted territory. We looked back to This Boy’s Life and The Woman Warrior. The Liar’s Club hadn’t been published yet. The Internet was new. So was Amazon.
We both finished at Columbia in 1995. He continued to write, like I did, as other colleagues from Columbia drifted away from writing and started families or had their first books published or both. He moved from his Morningside Heights apartment to Brooklyn, and then out to Bay Ridge. I hadn’t heard from him in a few years; the last time I saw him was sometime around 2002-2003. He was still writing and still working to break through.
Wednesday I received an e-mail from a Columbia colleague I hadn’t heard from in a while, and her note warned of unpleasant news. When I called, she told me that Andrew took his own life in the second week in May. The news was just filtering out. In our conversation, Catherine told me that Andrew had long suffered from mood swings and depression, which he seldom discussed. The moment she said it, I felt like I understood Andrew’s persistent positivity. I don’t suffer from chemical or other kinds of depression, but have experienced the havoc that a thyroid disorder can wreak with physical and emotional energy and stability. I have also experienced the despair that results from other kinds of untreated disease. There was a long period in my own life when I contacted people only when things were going well, or when I felt I could “sell” them (and myself) on the positive aspects of my life. In Andrew’s slow but progressive geographical dislocation from a place where he was happy (Columbia/Morningside Heights) to a place where I suspect he could hide his despair, I recognized a strategy I’d tried. Its futility became apparent to me as it would have become to Andrew, and that must have been painful for him—to have to admit that his efforts to stave off his despair were in vain. The despair would have been its own kind of pain and sorrow; the failed efforts to combat it another. Andrew must have also been discouraged by his failure as a writer, but I feel that I want to distinguish between his efforts and his expectations. Every minute of every day there is a person somewhere striving to fulfill his plans, his dreams, his ambitions, and necessarily doing so in isolation. We don’t see those efforts, but that doesn’t make them failures.
Kwaheri, mzee. Amani.
Andrew Rivan King was a colleague from my time in the M.F.A. program at Columbia. He was an enthusiastic writer who was working on a book about his experiences in Africa. This was the early Nineties: Mandela had been released, but apartheid was still in the process of being dismantled. The Battle of Mogadishu was news in the literal sense. The Rwandan genocide had not yet happened. Just about the only Africa memoir we could reference was Out of Africa and we all thought Andrew had a good thing going. Andrew’s pieces in the workshops were peppered with Kiswahili. Jambo (“Hello”). Mzuri (“I’m fine.”). Mzee (“Older man”).
Andrew, like me, was a part of large and unusually supportive group in the Nonfiction concentration at Columbia. There wasn’t a lot of competition between us or, if there was, it was kept far offstage. Most of us were writing memoirs and, as with Africa, this was relatively uncharted territory. We looked back to This Boy’s Life and The Woman Warrior. The Liar’s Club hadn’t been published yet. The Internet was new. So was Amazon.
We both finished at Columbia in 1995. He continued to write, like I did, as other colleagues from Columbia drifted away from writing and started families or had their first books published or both. He moved from his Morningside Heights apartment to Brooklyn, and then out to Bay Ridge. I hadn’t heard from him in a few years; the last time I saw him was sometime around 2002-2003. He was still writing and still working to break through.
Wednesday I received an e-mail from a Columbia colleague I hadn’t heard from in a while, and her note warned of unpleasant news. When I called, she told me that Andrew took his own life in the second week in May. The news was just filtering out. In our conversation, Catherine told me that Andrew had long suffered from mood swings and depression, which he seldom discussed. The moment she said it, I felt like I understood Andrew’s persistent positivity. I don’t suffer from chemical or other kinds of depression, but have experienced the havoc that a thyroid disorder can wreak with physical and emotional energy and stability. I have also experienced the despair that results from other kinds of untreated disease. There was a long period in my own life when I contacted people only when things were going well, or when I felt I could “sell” them (and myself) on the positive aspects of my life. In Andrew’s slow but progressive geographical dislocation from a place where he was happy (Columbia/Morningside Heights) to a place where I suspect he could hide his despair, I recognized a strategy I’d tried. Its futility became apparent to me as it would have become to Andrew, and that must have been painful for him—to have to admit that his efforts to stave off his despair were in vain. The despair would have been its own kind of pain and sorrow; the failed efforts to combat it another. Andrew must have also been discouraged by his failure as a writer, but I feel that I want to distinguish between his efforts and his expectations. Every minute of every day there is a person somewhere striving to fulfill his plans, his dreams, his ambitions, and necessarily doing so in isolation. We don’t see those efforts, but that doesn’t make them failures.
Kwaheri, mzee. Amani.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Apple Time
I was in New York City for a recent week-long visit, and though I enjoyed seeing friends and sights and shows, I was reminded more than ever that I now live here. I think there are always going to be moments when I want to live there, but the city is so incredibly expensive and the pace and energy and stress of it all so exhausting. Spending $15-20 dollars on breakfast isn’t something I do here. I don’t even spend that much on dinner, most of the time. At one point I was walking down a Midtown sidewalk and was deliberately pushed by someone. Though I stopped and yelled at the person and asked what was wrong with them, it made me feel like I no longer have the thickness of skin needed for a place as crowded and frenetic as Manhattan.
I saw three shows, a baseball game, and a number of gallery and museum shows. I was looking forward to the Yankees for a couple of weeks running, and though I wasn’t able to find tickets online before I left Buffalo, I planned to try the stadium window on Friday night. The World Champs were in town from Philly, and so was the fleet. I’ve never gone to a baseball game by myself, and plunked down fifty for a seat on the Terrace behind left field. Pretty high up, and unfortunately I had the one seat between two large men. A friend refers to the physical overspill from one seat to another “thigh seepage”. Double thigh seepage. I had a feeling that if I actually made it to the Stadium the Yankees would lose, which they did. The fans around me were hooting and hollering about the fourth-string catcher, Kevin Cash, and complaining about Joe Girardi. I understand reaction, and wanting to win all the time, but sports aren’t separate from life, or separate from any kind of work. Some days you aren’t going to win. Some days are going to be dull. Some days you are going to lose. And maybe some days you have to let someone play who lacks what other have. Perhaps I just was looking for the silver lining between the pinstripes.
I saw “Exit the King” on Saturday with Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandon, Lauren Ambrose and Andrea Martin. I don’t know the play, but it’s being by Ionesco gave me a faint idea of what might be in store. So I was really blown away by how great this play and this production were. The play, about a dying king, is a meditation on life, death, mortality, power, madness, relationships, and more. The cast was mostly brilliant. Andrea Martin stole almost every moment she had onstage, dialogue or none. Lauren Ambrose was always brilliant in “Six Feet Under” and I’d missed seeing her in “Hamlet” and “Awake and Sing!” so the chance to see her here was worthwhile. Geoffrey Rush was astonishing, and so were Brian Hutchinson and William Sadler. The curiosity (and another selling point) of the casting was Susan Sarandon. She played the role of the elder wife of King Berenger with a remote, lofty cool, very much the Sarandon persona in many of her movie roles. Between bits, she didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; I wanted a sense of her character even when she was just sitting down. Thiough her performance clicked in the queen’s long monologue that closes the play, I could help feeling that Stockard Channing or Sigourney Weaver would have known how to convey a sense of the character just sitting there without pulling focus, the way the other actors were, and still been able to convey the messages in that important last scene.
Real daring in art is something to experience, and “Next to Normal” is a daring, brave musical. It’s about a family breakdown and the breakdown of members of that family, but it is wise and funny and sad. And provocative. Alice Ripley is perfect in the pivotal role of the mother, and so is Jennifer Diamiano as her daughter. Aaron Tveit, the actor playing the son, is also very strong. But the twists in the musical aren’t simply the subject matter; the book reveals a critical piece of information slyly and slowly, and when you realize the full situation, what was until that point an unusually captivating musical about mental breakdown becomes something deeper. The lyrics weren’t always as surprising as the material, but so much about this musical is, that it balances out in the end. Very, very unexpected.
Sunday afternoon: the “Hair” revival Sunday afternoon. The iconic “American tribal love-rock musical” is definitely an artifact of its time. Much of the music sounds like Strauss waltzes compared to the amplified power chords in shows like “Rent” or “Spring Awakening.” The energy in the revival is infectious, and boy, did some of those bodies in the cast trigger some old (and not so old!) remembrances of desires past (and not so past!).
I saw three shows, a baseball game, and a number of gallery and museum shows. I was looking forward to the Yankees for a couple of weeks running, and though I wasn’t able to find tickets online before I left Buffalo, I planned to try the stadium window on Friday night. The World Champs were in town from Philly, and so was the fleet. I’ve never gone to a baseball game by myself, and plunked down fifty for a seat on the Terrace behind left field. Pretty high up, and unfortunately I had the one seat between two large men. A friend refers to the physical overspill from one seat to another “thigh seepage”. Double thigh seepage. I had a feeling that if I actually made it to the Stadium the Yankees would lose, which they did. The fans around me were hooting and hollering about the fourth-string catcher, Kevin Cash, and complaining about Joe Girardi. I understand reaction, and wanting to win all the time, but sports aren’t separate from life, or separate from any kind of work. Some days you aren’t going to win. Some days are going to be dull. Some days you are going to lose. And maybe some days you have to let someone play who lacks what other have. Perhaps I just was looking for the silver lining between the pinstripes.
I saw “Exit the King” on Saturday with Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandon, Lauren Ambrose and Andrea Martin. I don’t know the play, but it’s being by Ionesco gave me a faint idea of what might be in store. So I was really blown away by how great this play and this production were. The play, about a dying king, is a meditation on life, death, mortality, power, madness, relationships, and more. The cast was mostly brilliant. Andrea Martin stole almost every moment she had onstage, dialogue or none. Lauren Ambrose was always brilliant in “Six Feet Under” and I’d missed seeing her in “Hamlet” and “Awake and Sing!” so the chance to see her here was worthwhile. Geoffrey Rush was astonishing, and so were Brian Hutchinson and William Sadler. The curiosity (and another selling point) of the casting was Susan Sarandon. She played the role of the elder wife of King Berenger with a remote, lofty cool, very much the Sarandon persona in many of her movie roles. Between bits, she didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; I wanted a sense of her character even when she was just sitting down. Thiough her performance clicked in the queen’s long monologue that closes the play, I could help feeling that Stockard Channing or Sigourney Weaver would have known how to convey a sense of the character just sitting there without pulling focus, the way the other actors were, and still been able to convey the messages in that important last scene.
Real daring in art is something to experience, and “Next to Normal” is a daring, brave musical. It’s about a family breakdown and the breakdown of members of that family, but it is wise and funny and sad. And provocative. Alice Ripley is perfect in the pivotal role of the mother, and so is Jennifer Diamiano as her daughter. Aaron Tveit, the actor playing the son, is also very strong. But the twists in the musical aren’t simply the subject matter; the book reveals a critical piece of information slyly and slowly, and when you realize the full situation, what was until that point an unusually captivating musical about mental breakdown becomes something deeper. The lyrics weren’t always as surprising as the material, but so much about this musical is, that it balances out in the end. Very, very unexpected.
Sunday afternoon: the “Hair” revival Sunday afternoon. The iconic “American tribal love-rock musical” is definitely an artifact of its time. Much of the music sounds like Strauss waltzes compared to the amplified power chords in shows like “Rent” or “Spring Awakening.” The energy in the revival is infectious, and boy, did some of those bodies in the cast trigger some old (and not so old!) remembrances of desires past (and not so past!).
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Jottings
After two years of working very hard with and for my brother and his ballet organization, I have decided it is time to move on. His organization is at a moment where there are major decisions to be made, actions to be taken, and choices to determine, but it is time for him to do that on his own. I am very proud of the work I did there, but to continue to do so would interfere with our relationship as brothers, and more importantly, with my own personal and professional path.
We are coming to the end of the semester at Niagara University, and I for one am very glad. It is not only the end of the semester; it is the end of a year of incredible change in my own life. A year ago today we were on the cusp of the benefit for my brother’s company; a year later, and the funds we raised have already been spent—invested, to a degree—in the production and production elements for Midsummer. In a couple of weeks it will be exactly two years since I moved to Western New York.
The amount of rain we have had this April has been a little depressing. There were a few sunny days and a really hot one on Monday, but I’m ready for genuine spring. For blue skies and drier air and daffodils and the color green. I noticed the other day that the grass in Delaware Park is now that vivid, after-rain green, so maybe there are some benefits to all that precipitation.
A couple of friends and I went out to dinner the other night for Dine Out For Life. We went to a restaurant called Left Bank, which is only a short walk from here, on Rhode Island Street. It was a noisy but adorable American bistro, and reminded me a lot of The Red Cat and The Harrison in New York City, where I used to work. The food was comfort food of the bistro kind with American, “homespun”touches. It’s the sort of place that serves an Angus strip steak on top of a piece of grilled bread and then tops the whole thing with bitter greens and parmesan and flashes it under the broiler. A real bistro would just serve the steak plain, but I didn’t mind the layering. I had enough for lunch the next day. The house salad has crispy slivers of what I think were fried wonton wrappers, sort of a skinnier version of those “crisps” you get at Chinese restaurants with a dish of duck sauce. I still don’t quite get the point of that and how all that started, but maybe the history of Chinese food in America I’m reading will have the reason. We skipped dessert; the portions were enormous.
Tonight I am going to see the Niagara Theatre department production of The Threepenny Opera. A friend who teaches in the Theatre Department there is the director, and he got us tickets. I will have to settle into final grading for the semester tomorrow, but that’s another day.
We are coming to the end of the semester at Niagara University, and I for one am very glad. It is not only the end of the semester; it is the end of a year of incredible change in my own life. A year ago today we were on the cusp of the benefit for my brother’s company; a year later, and the funds we raised have already been spent—invested, to a degree—in the production and production elements for Midsummer. In a couple of weeks it will be exactly two years since I moved to Western New York.
The amount of rain we have had this April has been a little depressing. There were a few sunny days and a really hot one on Monday, but I’m ready for genuine spring. For blue skies and drier air and daffodils and the color green. I noticed the other day that the grass in Delaware Park is now that vivid, after-rain green, so maybe there are some benefits to all that precipitation.
A couple of friends and I went out to dinner the other night for Dine Out For Life. We went to a restaurant called Left Bank, which is only a short walk from here, on Rhode Island Street. It was a noisy but adorable American bistro, and reminded me a lot of The Red Cat and The Harrison in New York City, where I used to work. The food was comfort food of the bistro kind with American, “homespun”touches. It’s the sort of place that serves an Angus strip steak on top of a piece of grilled bread and then tops the whole thing with bitter greens and parmesan and flashes it under the broiler. A real bistro would just serve the steak plain, but I didn’t mind the layering. I had enough for lunch the next day. The house salad has crispy slivers of what I think were fried wonton wrappers, sort of a skinnier version of those “crisps” you get at Chinese restaurants with a dish of duck sauce. I still don’t quite get the point of that and how all that started, but maybe the history of Chinese food in America I’m reading will have the reason. We skipped dessert; the portions were enormous.
Tonight I am going to see the Niagara Theatre department production of The Threepenny Opera. A friend who teaches in the Theatre Department there is the director, and he got us tickets. I will have to settle into final grading for the semester tomorrow, but that’s another day.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"A poem is an empty suitcase..."
I’ve started a new residency as part of my teaching artist work with the Just Buffalo Literary Center. I’m at a school on the East Side of Buffalo, which is primarily African-American. The culture of some of these schools is challenging. I hear more yelling in the classrooms than I did at my elementary schools, and I definitely feel like the kids hear more yelling than they need to. Someone said to me yesterday that if you lower your voice, kids have to force themselves to listen. It makes sense: adults tune out loud people. Wouldn’t kids logically do the same? My first grade teacher Mrs. Ehrlich was a yeller, and was known as a yeller. It was not an enjoyable experience, that yelling, and I can’t imagine that these kids enjoy it either. What they do enjoy, and what I enjoy, is working with each of them one on one during the writing sessions. I like crouching down beside their desk and looking at each of them in the eye, and talking to them and listening to them and helping them work through a little problem in their poem. I like seeing them with two front teeth missing. I like trying to reach out to the kids who seem to have the most “issues”. That’s part of the fun of creative writing—your “issues” can be turned to power. The theme of this particular residency is “identity” and I’ve been trying to push the kids to write away from the subjects and ideas that are typical of this age and demographic—sports, video games, money, food. But sometimes I’d rather have them write period, and writing about what they know (or think they know) is the best way to get them to write at all.
On Thursday evening I am doing an event with the Tuscarora Indian School and Niagara Wheatfield High School. I was tracked down on the Internet by a high school English teacher who wanted an American Indian poet to conduct a poetry performance workshop and then appear as the featured reader. I was a little surprised by this, and have been thinking about what in the world it means to be recognized as an American Indian and a poet to boot when I still have no idea what those things mean to me. And having never conducted a poetry performance workshop before, I had no idea what to do, but I came up with a lesson plan and was really helped by the recent residencies I did in conjunction with Arts In Education. Those residencies involved how to connect creative writing to the processes of Afrorican jazz, and I had to work with a music teacher. She is also an actor, and having the chance to co-teach really gave me confidence about doing the Wheatfield performance workshop. The workshop was a lot of fun. It’s so inspiring to see kids using their minds, both the creative side and the thinking side. I had them blindly pull objects out of a box at one point and use them in a recitation of their team poems. One kid had “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and he pulled a basket out of the box. He laid down on the floor of the gym and held his arm up with the basket inverted on his fist. When we asked him what that was supposed to be, he said, “The lamp next to my bed,” and I just thought that was so wonderful and imaginative. Kay Ryan, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, says in the current Paris Review that "a poem is an empty suitacse you can never quit emptying." She means that it's a like a clown suitcase, or Mary Poppins' magical carpetbag. You can keep pulling things out of a poem. I can’t wait to hear the students own poems, which I haven’t heard yet, and discover what they've packed into them.
On Thursday evening I am doing an event with the Tuscarora Indian School and Niagara Wheatfield High School. I was tracked down on the Internet by a high school English teacher who wanted an American Indian poet to conduct a poetry performance workshop and then appear as the featured reader. I was a little surprised by this, and have been thinking about what in the world it means to be recognized as an American Indian and a poet to boot when I still have no idea what those things mean to me. And having never conducted a poetry performance workshop before, I had no idea what to do, but I came up with a lesson plan and was really helped by the recent residencies I did in conjunction with Arts In Education. Those residencies involved how to connect creative writing to the processes of Afrorican jazz, and I had to work with a music teacher. She is also an actor, and having the chance to co-teach really gave me confidence about doing the Wheatfield performance workshop. The workshop was a lot of fun. It’s so inspiring to see kids using their minds, both the creative side and the thinking side. I had them blindly pull objects out of a box at one point and use them in a recitation of their team poems. One kid had “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and he pulled a basket out of the box. He laid down on the floor of the gym and held his arm up with the basket inverted on his fist. When we asked him what that was supposed to be, he said, “The lamp next to my bed,” and I just thought that was so wonderful and imaginative. Kay Ryan, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, says in the current Paris Review that "a poem is an empty suitacse you can never quit emptying." She means that it's a like a clown suitcase, or Mary Poppins' magical carpetbag. You can keep pulling things out of a poem. I can’t wait to hear the students own poems, which I haven’t heard yet, and discover what they've packed into them.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Midsummer in Winter
A year ago this week, I dropped 225 invitations in the mail for an event that was an new sort of undertaking for my brother’s ballet organization. The event was the first fundraising benefit his organization had ever attempted. There was nickel-and-dime level fundraising and grant applications that often went nowhere. But in the course of my first Nutcracker season, one of the volunteers said, in passing, that it would be nice to do something more adult one of these days. I told her I was thinking the same thing. And as I became more aware of my brother’s ambitions and my sister-in-law’s more modest goals, I thought we should try it. We should try a serious, grownup, fundraiser, along the lines of being the organization my brother envisioned. In the parlance of another strand of development, we should “act ‘as if’…”
The benefit was a smashing success, as I’ve written here before, and yesterday, a little earlier than I might have expected, my brother and sister-in-law premiered their production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at UB Center for the Arts. I was not involved in the production much; I did, however, offer to organize a reception to celebrate the premiere, and with the help of Tracey Martin, the friend who was so involved in the Spencer business, we put on a nice, grownup cocktail party. Tracey was instrumental in getting a number of donations, and a couple whose daughters dance at the school offered to sponsor the primary costs. That was a pleasant part of the evening, but the real highlight was to come.
My brother has had some of these students their entire dancing lives. Several of them are straining at their small-city tethers, dreaming of dancing in New York City or elsewhere. Several of them are well on their way to professional careers. Many of the students are going to be able to do something with dance or theater. Whatever they do, I hope they remember this production. Considering that these are largely not professional students, the quality of the performance and the production was spectacular. Yes, I do have some bias, but I’m also capable of standing back and viewing with as much perspective as possible. I overhead many of the parents commenting afterwards that the leap forward from the last dress rehearsal was considerable. I had a brief glimpse of part of the rehearsal myself, and can attest to the fact that the finished performance was about as good as I’ve ever seen from these kids. They did themselves proud, and my brother and sister did as well. I know that they were still sewing butterfly wings on costumes an hour before curtain; I know that they did not sell out the house. I know that many parents were wondering why they were doing another production so soon after Nutcracker. I only wish that more of the community could see the results. I hope that they will.
The benefit was a smashing success, as I’ve written here before, and yesterday, a little earlier than I might have expected, my brother and sister-in-law premiered their production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at UB Center for the Arts. I was not involved in the production much; I did, however, offer to organize a reception to celebrate the premiere, and with the help of Tracey Martin, the friend who was so involved in the Spencer business, we put on a nice, grownup cocktail party. Tracey was instrumental in getting a number of donations, and a couple whose daughters dance at the school offered to sponsor the primary costs. That was a pleasant part of the evening, but the real highlight was to come.
My brother has had some of these students their entire dancing lives. Several of them are straining at their small-city tethers, dreaming of dancing in New York City or elsewhere. Several of them are well on their way to professional careers. Many of the students are going to be able to do something with dance or theater. Whatever they do, I hope they remember this production. Considering that these are largely not professional students, the quality of the performance and the production was spectacular. Yes, I do have some bias, but I’m also capable of standing back and viewing with as much perspective as possible. I overhead many of the parents commenting afterwards that the leap forward from the last dress rehearsal was considerable. I had a brief glimpse of part of the rehearsal myself, and can attest to the fact that the finished performance was about as good as I’ve ever seen from these kids. They did themselves proud, and my brother and sister did as well. I know that they were still sewing butterfly wings on costumes an hour before curtain; I know that they did not sell out the house. I know that many parents were wondering why they were doing another production so soon after Nutcracker. I only wish that more of the community could see the results. I hope that they will.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Late Winter (and not a moment too soon)
The weather here in Western New York has finally begun to turn. I’m sure that we will have more snow before spring temperatures arrive for good, but it’s such a relief to feel that warmth will be here after a long and monotonous winter. My first winter here wasn’t so bad; the snow didn’t start in Buffalo until the first week in January, and though it stayed until March, it was an experience. But this winter started in early/mid-November. Yes, it started snowing then, and it seemed to snow steadily until the end of January. January itself was a long run of whiteness and grayness. And because I was in transition back out of Chautauqua, and anxious to get back here, and because that car crash on the 8th of the month was such an unwelcome if fortunately-only-temporary turn of events, the first month of 2009 went on and on and on. And on... I am looking forward to the sight of the first leaf buds, which will be the real sign that spring is here.
A week ago I picked up a book by an author I’ve never read. The novel was Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel laureate, and it is an astonishing book. The cliché “I couldn’t put it down” applied. The story and the means in which it is told are simple, but as I was reading it felt like a great deal about Africa, South Africa, race, post-colonialism, history, and mankind were distilled into spareness. I don’t know how much Disgrace resembles Coetzee’s other books, and I mean to pick up something else by him again as soon as I can. I think it was the awarding of the Booker to Life and Times of Michael K. that I first heard of that particular prize. I intend to get to it soon. But I’m also trying to work my way through those titles I’ve never read on the New York Times list of “best American novels of the last twenty-five years”. I’ve read a number of them, but of the top five I’d only read Beloved. If I had to defend myself against the charge of neglecting greatness, I don’t have a defense handy. I was simply reading other things. I can say that at the time the hoopla accompanying literary events like the publication of DeLillo’s Underworld turned me off. It’s like the advance buzz that comes with a certain kind of movie; when I feel myself being bullied into going, I’m likely to go the other way out of sheer contrariness. But I’ve realized that if I don’t get cracking with some of these novels, there are a lot of them I’m going to miss out on, and that might be worse. Besides, the hoopla with most of them has subsided. Now I’m only have to face down the fearsome reputations of some of the books. Perhaps it will be easier to read about Rabbit now that Updike is gone. R.I.P.
I’ve read a lot of Philip Roth, and there is no question in my mind that he is one of our country’s greatest writers ever, but the stature of American Pastoral intimidated me. It was one of those books where I felt, “What if I don’t like it?” But I’ve been going through it at a pretty brisk pace, and it reminds me in superficial ways of Joan Didion’s Democracy. Didion’s compression in that novel now strikes me, compared to Coetzee’s in Disgrace, and compared to Roth's take in American Pastoral, as a kind of signature neurotic mannerism. I say that with great respect for the style's strength and power in her essays, reportage, and memoir. Another parallel: her Hemingwayesque style in her fiction, and its compression as compared with the extravagant prose of some post-war American male novelists like Mailer or Wolfe or Pynchon (I've read some of each but not all of them), reminds me of the most superficial as well as some of the deeper, essential differences between Dickinson’s poetry and Whitman’s. It is inarguable that Didion was trying to get at what happened in this country in the Sixties and early Seventies in her novel, although Roth clearly dug much deeper into the subject. Whether I decide to take on Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies remains to be seen. I rather doubt it. Rabbit awaits.
A week ago I picked up a book by an author I’ve never read. The novel was Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel laureate, and it is an astonishing book. The cliché “I couldn’t put it down” applied. The story and the means in which it is told are simple, but as I was reading it felt like a great deal about Africa, South Africa, race, post-colonialism, history, and mankind were distilled into spareness. I don’t know how much Disgrace resembles Coetzee’s other books, and I mean to pick up something else by him again as soon as I can. I think it was the awarding of the Booker to Life and Times of Michael K. that I first heard of that particular prize. I intend to get to it soon. But I’m also trying to work my way through those titles I’ve never read on the New York Times list of “best American novels of the last twenty-five years”. I’ve read a number of them, but of the top five I’d only read Beloved. If I had to defend myself against the charge of neglecting greatness, I don’t have a defense handy. I was simply reading other things. I can say that at the time the hoopla accompanying literary events like the publication of DeLillo’s Underworld turned me off. It’s like the advance buzz that comes with a certain kind of movie; when I feel myself being bullied into going, I’m likely to go the other way out of sheer contrariness. But I’ve realized that if I don’t get cracking with some of these novels, there are a lot of them I’m going to miss out on, and that might be worse. Besides, the hoopla with most of them has subsided. Now I’m only have to face down the fearsome reputations of some of the books. Perhaps it will be easier to read about Rabbit now that Updike is gone. R.I.P.
I’ve read a lot of Philip Roth, and there is no question in my mind that he is one of our country’s greatest writers ever, but the stature of American Pastoral intimidated me. It was one of those books where I felt, “What if I don’t like it?” But I’ve been going through it at a pretty brisk pace, and it reminds me in superficial ways of Joan Didion’s Democracy. Didion’s compression in that novel now strikes me, compared to Coetzee’s in Disgrace, and compared to Roth's take in American Pastoral, as a kind of signature neurotic mannerism. I say that with great respect for the style's strength and power in her essays, reportage, and memoir. Another parallel: her Hemingwayesque style in her fiction, and its compression as compared with the extravagant prose of some post-war American male novelists like Mailer or Wolfe or Pynchon (I've read some of each but not all of them), reminds me of the most superficial as well as some of the deeper, essential differences between Dickinson’s poetry and Whitman’s. It is inarguable that Didion was trying to get at what happened in this country in the Sixties and early Seventies in her novel, although Roth clearly dug much deeper into the subject. Whether I decide to take on Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies remains to be seen. I rather doubt it. Rabbit awaits.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A Better History Lesson
With fear and hope in equal amounts and an oil-water mix, I just electronically sent off the manuscript for my book to an agent I’ve been in contact with since 2001. I’m nervous because I see some areas that surely could benefit from some work, but I am more afraid that I would have procrastinated to the point of paralysis and perpetual incompletion. Ultimately I thought, what the hell? I know the MS is substantially better. In fact, it is a completely different book from the one I was working on back in 2001. I wish it had a different title, but the title is so good I have never let it go. And it’s so good that I have always been afraid the book wouldn’t live up to the title (thereby creating yet another vicious hamster-wheel for my fears and hopes to run, chasing after each other in perpetuity).
That manuscript experience from 2001: I was living in Queens and working as a waiter at Babbo, the famous restaurant in Greenwich Village. I was drinking and drugging too much, and was aware that I had a serious drug and alcohol problem, but I was also trying to fight back by writing. Because I wasn’t clear about myself and a number of other things, I was writing from the wrong place and for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, when I wasn’t hungover or sleeping off another binge, I was finishing a messed-up collage of a manuscript that was dishonest and ambitious.
In an incredibly irresponsible move, I quit my job at Babbo before I could get fired. It was the second-to-last week of August. I was living in northwest Queens, and it was hot as only the outer boroughs in August can be. Being someone who lived hand-to-mouth, I was nearly broke, and it took the last cash in my account to print out a copy of that manuscript and deliver it by hand to the literary agency office on Union Square. I didn’t believe in the book; I didn’t really believe what I’d written. Nevertheless, I had a shard of a prayer in my heart that by some miracle a publisher would see that, somewhere behind the words, there was a writer with a story, and would have pity on me and my efforts. I remember that day: it was one of those humid, rainy days in late summer. The manuscript box got wet. I must have looked like a million other writers with a dream rooted more in despair than in discipline. And because of that, I was doomed to fail. I deserved nothing more.
The agent said that the manuscript was acceptable, but something about the communication conveyed the idea that it was marginally acceptable. I was told that the submissions to publishers would go on the week after Labor Day. Probably on Tuesday, September 11. With that glimmer of hope in my heart, I decided to make an effort at getting my act together. On Monday, September 10, I registered with a temp agency, and got a work assignment with one of the municipal election campaigns. The next day was Tuesday, Primary Day, and I was told to report to an office out by JFK by 7 a.m.
Somewhere during that next terrible day I had the utterly selfish realization that I’d already been given the answer about my manuscript. More importantly, the little hope I’d had was gone. The world had been altered in a morning and my manuscript, already an insignificant thing, was rendered even more so by the scale of what had happened. I accepted that on some level, but it would take another kind of change, and an earthshaking one, before I could start to write again. And before I could write the story of my family the way I wanted to. I haven’t included any of this in the book itself, but maybe that is the story I was trying to tell. If it’s supposed to be in there, I hope the agent will tell me so.
That manuscript experience from 2001: I was living in Queens and working as a waiter at Babbo, the famous restaurant in Greenwich Village. I was drinking and drugging too much, and was aware that I had a serious drug and alcohol problem, but I was also trying to fight back by writing. Because I wasn’t clear about myself and a number of other things, I was writing from the wrong place and for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, when I wasn’t hungover or sleeping off another binge, I was finishing a messed-up collage of a manuscript that was dishonest and ambitious.
In an incredibly irresponsible move, I quit my job at Babbo before I could get fired. It was the second-to-last week of August. I was living in northwest Queens, and it was hot as only the outer boroughs in August can be. Being someone who lived hand-to-mouth, I was nearly broke, and it took the last cash in my account to print out a copy of that manuscript and deliver it by hand to the literary agency office on Union Square. I didn’t believe in the book; I didn’t really believe what I’d written. Nevertheless, I had a shard of a prayer in my heart that by some miracle a publisher would see that, somewhere behind the words, there was a writer with a story, and would have pity on me and my efforts. I remember that day: it was one of those humid, rainy days in late summer. The manuscript box got wet. I must have looked like a million other writers with a dream rooted more in despair than in discipline. And because of that, I was doomed to fail. I deserved nothing more.
The agent said that the manuscript was acceptable, but something about the communication conveyed the idea that it was marginally acceptable. I was told that the submissions to publishers would go on the week after Labor Day. Probably on Tuesday, September 11. With that glimmer of hope in my heart, I decided to make an effort at getting my act together. On Monday, September 10, I registered with a temp agency, and got a work assignment with one of the municipal election campaigns. The next day was Tuesday, Primary Day, and I was told to report to an office out by JFK by 7 a.m.
Somewhere during that next terrible day I had the utterly selfish realization that I’d already been given the answer about my manuscript. More importantly, the little hope I’d had was gone. The world had been altered in a morning and my manuscript, already an insignificant thing, was rendered even more so by the scale of what had happened. I accepted that on some level, but it would take another kind of change, and an earthshaking one, before I could start to write again. And before I could write the story of my family the way I wanted to. I haven’t included any of this in the book itself, but maybe that is the story I was trying to tell. If it’s supposed to be in there, I hope the agent will tell me so.
Friday, February 20, 2009
History Lesson
The National Society of Film Critics picks their “best of” in early January, after the major critics’ groups and media outlets have announced their picks. It’s always intriguing to see what they choose. They make their choices in obvious reaction to the choices other groups make, and they often champion something that has been overlooked, like a foreign film or an indie production that hasn’t a chance of getting attention on a grander scale. Sometimes they just seem utterly contrary, but they tend to value risk and daring more than other groups. They’ve picked movies like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive; Goodfellas and The Pianist and Pan’s Labyrinth. This year they picked Waltz with Bashir, which has finally opened in Buffalo this weekend.
It feels like a groundbreaking picture: an animated documentary about one man’s experiences and faulty memories related to the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the west side of Beirut. The filmmaker, Ari Folman, had a memory block about his experiences of events of that autumn, and interviewed various men who were part of his regiment or fought elsewhere in Lebanon that September. Gradually a clearer but not entirely full picture of the massacre—and Folman’s memories—emerges. He goes so far as to cut to actual footage shot for a few minutes at the very end of the film. His decision to do this feels very personal, and at the very least a kind of unequivocal demonstration that whatever the flaws of memory or recreated memory, the horrors of those three days were undeniably real, actual. The power of what comes beforehand is so substantial that it makes you question whether Folman’s decision was the right choice or not.
I've become a big fan of animated films in recent years, which still sort of surprises me. A friend of mine credits (blames?) this on my generation, but I think it's because animated films are being made with great care and affection. Waltz with Bashir is no exception. The quality of the animation is similar to that in those commercials for Charles Schwab (Richard Linklater used the same technique in Waking Life), but it’s less fluid, more stop-motion. The colors are bilious—-sickly yellows, grays, and greens—-and the camera work during the combat scenes feels like the latest Nintendo game, which is disturbing and interesting at the same time. In fact, during the scenes of the most abject wartime horror, the movie has the same hallucinatory, magical, even spiritual power of the dreamtime sequences in the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. So I’m arguing with myself a little about those last few minutes. I am thinking that because we’ve become so accustomed to the presence of digital film in this age of the Blackberry and other handheld devices, we’ve seen more and more of the kind of footage that Folman clips onto the end of his movie. The tension between the distancing effects of animation and the urgency of Folman’s quest strikes me as one source, maybe even the source, of the film’s power. It’s like coming across the comic book version of the 9/11 Commission report—you know what the images from that day looked like, but you get to see it, and experience it, in a new way through graphics.
In any case, it’s a remarkable film.
It feels like a groundbreaking picture: an animated documentary about one man’s experiences and faulty memories related to the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the west side of Beirut. The filmmaker, Ari Folman, had a memory block about his experiences of events of that autumn, and interviewed various men who were part of his regiment or fought elsewhere in Lebanon that September. Gradually a clearer but not entirely full picture of the massacre—and Folman’s memories—emerges. He goes so far as to cut to actual footage shot for a few minutes at the very end of the film. His decision to do this feels very personal, and at the very least a kind of unequivocal demonstration that whatever the flaws of memory or recreated memory, the horrors of those three days were undeniably real, actual. The power of what comes beforehand is so substantial that it makes you question whether Folman’s decision was the right choice or not.
I've become a big fan of animated films in recent years, which still sort of surprises me. A friend of mine credits (blames?) this on my generation, but I think it's because animated films are being made with great care and affection. Waltz with Bashir is no exception. The quality of the animation is similar to that in those commercials for Charles Schwab (Richard Linklater used the same technique in Waking Life), but it’s less fluid, more stop-motion. The colors are bilious—-sickly yellows, grays, and greens—-and the camera work during the combat scenes feels like the latest Nintendo game, which is disturbing and interesting at the same time. In fact, during the scenes of the most abject wartime horror, the movie has the same hallucinatory, magical, even spiritual power of the dreamtime sequences in the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. So I’m arguing with myself a little about those last few minutes. I am thinking that because we’ve become so accustomed to the presence of digital film in this age of the Blackberry and other handheld devices, we’ve seen more and more of the kind of footage that Folman clips onto the end of his movie. The tension between the distancing effects of animation and the urgency of Folman’s quest strikes me as one source, maybe even the source, of the film’s power. It’s like coming across the comic book version of the 9/11 Commission report—you know what the images from that day looked like, but you get to see it, and experience it, in a new way through graphics.
In any case, it’s a remarkable film.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Golden, Pt. 1
It is 8:04 p.m. on the last day of 2008, and I am at a computer kiosk in the B concourse of Chicago O’Hare waiting for my flight to Buffalo. It is scheduled to depart at 9:41 p.m. CST, which means I will not get home until “next” year. The B concourse on this side is very quiet, although not as quiet as I’ve seen some airports. I once got stuck overnight in the Cincinatti airport, one of the more depressing experiences of my life.
I’m on my way home after a week in California with my immediate and extended family. I arrived on Christmas Eve after a long day of travel which included four hours in this very same airport on the way out West. There had been several days of snow here and elsewhere in the United States, and I think I was lucky to have made it in and out of Chicago at all. When I arrived in Sacramento I still had a three hour car trip to Arnold, the small mountain hamlet where my parents, in their mid-seventies, have lived for nearly two decades. My father picked me up at the airport and as we drove home he droned on in his usual way about his and my mother’s recent cruise through Mediterranean ports-of-call. I love my father, but he can really be a bore. He has a habit of talking without taking stock of his listener and his listener’s stance. He has a habit of connecting subjects with the phrase, “Anyway…” and one can hear the ellipses in his voice. I suppose he falls into that habit with people he’s known as long as he and I have known each other, but I also noticed that he (and to an extent, my mother) are both like that.
My mother had injured her left leg earlier that afternoon, and was relatively immobilized for the next several days. I was also surprised to find that her older sister from St. Louis, my aunt Marguerite, was at the house in Arnold. Within the last year Marguerite lost both one of her (grown, married) sons and her husband of many years within months of each other, and as she is getting on, my mother had invited her out to spend the holidays. It has been many years since I saw her; she is hearing impaired, and the sound of her voice—expressive but affected in its particular and peculiar if understandable way by her handicap—is one that takes me back through the years very quickly, since I only heard it when she was visiting from the Midwest. My brother John and his wife Lori had already arrived, and there was a good foot and more of fresh snow on the ground. My sister Julie and her husband Dave arrived late, and I forced myself to fight back travel fatigue to stay up with them as long as I could.
Being a little more familiar with the particular ways that my mother likes things done, and aware that physical incapacitation is something she accepts with extreme reluctance, I was able to help her throughout the next several days, getting the dinner ready on Christmas Eve (informal and buffet-style) and making breakfast and dinner the next day. My mother made a bit much of my help, and my brother and sister started ribbing me about it, saying that I was the “golden” child. I smiled and laughed along with them, but if there is anything I think I deserve credit for, it’s simply knowing how to handle my parents with with love, tact, and concern. I notice that my grown brother and sister have a habit of engaging my parents—together and separately—in exactly the sort of way (conversational subject, action, random comment) that provokes an archetypical response. Then they wonder why my mother and father respond in the same ways they’ve done for decades. I, on the other hand, quietly managed to sidle out of the room and into another part of the house whenever the allegedly fair-and-balanced coverage of current events on Fox News got under my skin. “The O’Reilly Factor” comes on much earlier in California, which is unfortunate; I had to escape to the computer terminal upstairs and concentrate on answering e-mails for the duration of the broadcast.
(to be continued...)
I’m on my way home after a week in California with my immediate and extended family. I arrived on Christmas Eve after a long day of travel which included four hours in this very same airport on the way out West. There had been several days of snow here and elsewhere in the United States, and I think I was lucky to have made it in and out of Chicago at all. When I arrived in Sacramento I still had a three hour car trip to Arnold, the small mountain hamlet where my parents, in their mid-seventies, have lived for nearly two decades. My father picked me up at the airport and as we drove home he droned on in his usual way about his and my mother’s recent cruise through Mediterranean ports-of-call. I love my father, but he can really be a bore. He has a habit of talking without taking stock of his listener and his listener’s stance. He has a habit of connecting subjects with the phrase, “Anyway…” and one can hear the ellipses in his voice. I suppose he falls into that habit with people he’s known as long as he and I have known each other, but I also noticed that he (and to an extent, my mother) are both like that.
My mother had injured her left leg earlier that afternoon, and was relatively immobilized for the next several days. I was also surprised to find that her older sister from St. Louis, my aunt Marguerite, was at the house in Arnold. Within the last year Marguerite lost both one of her (grown, married) sons and her husband of many years within months of each other, and as she is getting on, my mother had invited her out to spend the holidays. It has been many years since I saw her; she is hearing impaired, and the sound of her voice—expressive but affected in its particular and peculiar if understandable way by her handicap—is one that takes me back through the years very quickly, since I only heard it when she was visiting from the Midwest. My brother John and his wife Lori had already arrived, and there was a good foot and more of fresh snow on the ground. My sister Julie and her husband Dave arrived late, and I forced myself to fight back travel fatigue to stay up with them as long as I could.
Being a little more familiar with the particular ways that my mother likes things done, and aware that physical incapacitation is something she accepts with extreme reluctance, I was able to help her throughout the next several days, getting the dinner ready on Christmas Eve (informal and buffet-style) and making breakfast and dinner the next day. My mother made a bit much of my help, and my brother and sister started ribbing me about it, saying that I was the “golden” child. I smiled and laughed along with them, but if there is anything I think I deserve credit for, it’s simply knowing how to handle my parents with with love, tact, and concern. I notice that my grown brother and sister have a habit of engaging my parents—together and separately—in exactly the sort of way (conversational subject, action, random comment) that provokes an archetypical response. Then they wonder why my mother and father respond in the same ways they’ve done for decades. I, on the other hand, quietly managed to sidle out of the room and into another part of the house whenever the allegedly fair-and-balanced coverage of current events on Fox News got under my skin. “The O’Reilly Factor” comes on much earlier in California, which is unfortunate; I had to escape to the computer terminal upstairs and concentrate on answering e-mails for the duration of the broadcast.
(to be continued...)
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