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Kathleen Fitzpatrick
2024-10-14 19:27:15 -04:00
parent e8f8a543de
commit 655ad0ded8
1988 changed files with 47081 additions and 263 deletions
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ELEVENTY_ENV=production
WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN=ugotwct4XSh60GCL81iESA

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README.md
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# eleventy-base-blog v9
A starter repository showing how to build a blog with the [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) site generator (using the [v3.0 release](https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/releases/tag/v3.0.0)).
## Getting Started
* [Want a more generic/detailed getting started guide?](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/getting-started/)
1. Make a directory and navigate to it:
```
mkdir my-blog-name
cd my-blog-name
```
2. Clone this Repository
```
git clone https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog.git .
```
_Optional:_ Review `eleventy.config.js` and `_data/metadata.js` to configure the site’s options and data.
3. Install dependencies
```
npm install
```
4. Run Eleventy
Generate a production-ready build to the `_site` folder:
```
npx @11ty/eleventy
```
Or build and host on a local development server:
```
npx @11ty/eleventy --serve
```
Or you can run [debug mode](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/debugging/) to see all the internals.
## Features
- Using [Eleventy v3](https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/releases/tag/v3.0.0) with zero-JavaScript output.
- Content is exclusively pre-rendered (this is a static site).
- Can easily [deploy to a subfolder without changing any content](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/html-base/)
- All URLs are decoupled from the content’s location on the file system.
- Configure templates via the [Eleventy Data Cascade](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-cascade/)
- **Performance focused**: four-hundos Lighthouse score out of the box!
- _0 Cumulative Layout Shift_
- _0ms Total Blocking Time_
- Local development live reload provided by [Eleventy Dev Server](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/dev-server/).
- Content-driven [navigation menu](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/navigation/)
- Fully automated [Image optimization](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/image/)
- Zero-JavaScript output.
- Support for modern image formats automatically (e.g. AVIF and WebP)
- Processes images on-request during `--serve` for speedy local builds.
- Prefers `<img>` markup if possible (single image format) but switches automatically to `<picture>` for multiple image formats.
- Automated `<picture>` syntax markup with `srcset` and optional `sizes`
- Includes `width`/`height` attributes to avoid [content layout shift](https://web.dev/cls/).
- Includes `loading="lazy"` for native lazy loading without JavaScript.
- Includes [`decoding="async"`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLImageElement/decoding)
- Images can be co-located with blog post files.
- Per page CSS bundles [via `eleventy-plugin-bundle`](https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-plugin-bundle).
- Built-in [syntax highlighter](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/syntaxhighlight/) (zero-JavaScript output).
- Draft content: use `draft: true` to mark any template as a draft. Drafts are **only** included during `--serve`/`--watch` and are excluded from full builds. This is driven by the `addPreprocessor` configuration API in `eleventy.config.js`. Schema validator will show an error if non-boolean value is set in data cascade.
- Blog Posts
- Automated next/previous links
- Accessible deep links to headings
- Generated Pages
- Home, Archive, and About pages.
- [Atom feed included (with easy one-line swap to use RSS or JSON](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/rss/)
- `sitemap.xml`
- Zero-maintenance tag pages ([View on the Demo](https://eleventy-base-blog.netlify.app/tags/))
- Content not found (404) page
## Demos
- [Netlify](https://eleventy-base-blog.netlify.app/)
- [Vercel](https://demo-base-blog.11ty.dev/)
- [Cloudflare Pages](https://eleventy-base-blog-d2a.pages.dev/)
- [Remix on Glitch](https://glitch.com/~11ty-eleventy-base-blog)
- [GitHub Pages](https://11ty.github.io/eleventy-base-blog/)
## Deploy this to your own site
Deploy this Eleventy site in just a few clicks on these services:
- Read more about [Deploying an Eleventy project](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/deployment/) to the web.
- [Deploy this to **Netlify**](https://app.netlify.com/start/deploy?repository=https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog)
- [Deploy this to **Vercel**](https://vercel.com/import/project?template=11ty%2Feleventy-base-blog)
- Look in `.github/workflows/gh-pages.yml.sample` for information on Deploying to **GitHub Pages**.
- [Try it out on **Stackblitz**](https://stackblitz.com/github/11ty/eleventy-base-blog)
### Implementation Notes
- `content/about/index.md` is an example of a content page.
- `content/blog/` has the blog posts but really they can live in any directory. They need only the `posts` tag to be included in the blog posts [collection](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/collections/).
- Use the `eleventyNavigation` key (via the [Eleventy Navigation plugin](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/navigation/)) in your front matter to add a template to the top level site navigation. This is in use on `content/index.njk` and `content/about/index.md`.
- Content can be in _any template format_ (blog posts needn’t exclusively be markdown, for example). Configure your project’s supported templates in `eleventy.config.js` -> `templateFormats`.
- The `public` folder in your input directory will be copied to the output folder (via `addPassthroughCopy` in the `eleventy.config.js` file). This means `./public/css/*` will live at `./_site/css/*` after your build completes.
- This project uses three [Eleventy Layouts](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/layouts/):
- `_includes/layouts/base.njk`: the top level HTML structure
- `_includes/layouts/home.njk`: the home page template (wrapped into `base.njk`)
- `_includes/layouts/post.njk`: the blog post template (wrapped into `base.njk`)
- `_includes/postslist.njk` is a Nunjucks include and is a reusable component used to display a list of all the posts. `content/index.njk` has an example of how to use it.
#### Content Security Policy
If your site enforces a [Content Security Policy](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP) (as public-facing sites should), you have a few choices (pick one):
1. In `base.njk`, remove `<style>{% getBundle "css" %}</style>` and uncomment `<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% getBundleFileUrl "css" %}">`
2. Configure the server with the CSP directive `style-src: 'unsafe-inline'` (less secure).

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{
"lastFetched": "2024-10-14T22:07:30.128Z",
"children": []
}

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_config/filters.js
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@@ -23,6 +23,65 @@ export default function(eleventyConfig) {
return array.slice(0, n);
});
eleventyConfig.addFilter('mentionsForUrl', (webmentions, url) => {
const allowedTypes = ['in-reply-to', 'mention-of']
const allowedHTML = {
allowedTags: ['b', 'i', 'em', 'strong', 'a'],
allowedAttributes: {
a: ['href']
}
}
const clean = (entry) => {
const { html, text } = entry.content
if (html) {
entry.content.value = sanitizeHTML(text, allowedHTML)
};
return entry;
}
// sort webmentions by published timestamp chronologically.
// swap a.published and b.published to reverse order.
const orderByDate = (a, b) => new Date(b.published) - new Date(a.published)
// only allow webmentions that have an author name and a timestamp
const checkRequiredFields = (entry) => {
const { author, published } = entry
return !!author && !!author.name && !!published
}
return webmentions
.filter((entry) => entry['wm-target'] === url)
.filter((entry) => allowedTypes.includes(entry['wm-property']))
.filter(checkRequiredFields)
.sort(orderByDate)
.map(clean)
});
eleventyConfig.addFilter('likesForUrl', (webmentions, url) => {
const allowedTypes = ['like-of']
return webmentions
.filter((entry) => entry['wm-target'] === url)
.filter((entry) => allowedTypes.includes(entry['wm-property']))
});
eleventyConfig.addFilter('repostsForUrl', (webmentions, url) => {
const allowedTypes = ['repost-of']
return webmentions
.filter((entry) => entry['wm-target'] === url)
.filter((entry) => allowedTypes.includes(entry['wm-property']))
});
eleventyConfig.addFilter('size', (mentions) => {
return !mentions ? 0 : mentions.length
});
eleventyConfig.addFilter('webmentionsByType', (mentions, mentionType) => {
return mentions.filter(entry => !!entry['mentionType'])
});
// Return the smallest number argument
eleventyConfig.addFilter("min", (...numbers) => {
return Math.min.apply(null, numbers);

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_data/metadata.js
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export default {
title: "Eleventy Base Blog v9",
url: "https://example.com/",
title: "kfitz",
url: "https://kfitz.info/",
domain: "kfitz.info",
language: "en",
description: "I am writing about my experiences as a naval navel-gazer.",
description: "The long-running and erratically updated blog of Kathleen Fitzpatrick.",
author: {
name: "Your Name Here",
email: "youremailaddress@example.com",
url: "https://example.com/about-me/"
}
name: "Kathleen Fitzpatrick",
email: "kfitz@kfitz.info",
url: "https://kfitz.info"
}
}

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import fs from "fs";
import fetch from "node-fetch";
import unionBy from "lodash-es/unionBy.js";
import domain from "./metadata.js";
// Load .env variables with dotenv
import "dotenv/config.js";
// Configuration Parameters
const CACHE_DIR = '_cache';
const API_ORIGIN = 'https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2';
const TOKEN = process.env.WEBMENTION_IO_TOKEN;
async function fetchWebmentions(since, perPage = 10000) {
// If we don't have a domain name or token, abort
if (!domain || !TOKEN) {
console.warn('>>> unable to fetch webmentions: missing domain or token');
return false;
}
let url = `${API_ORIGIN}?domain=${domain}&token=${TOKEN}&per-page=${perPage}`;
if (since) url += `&since=${since}`; // only fetch new mentions
const response = await fetch(url);
if (response.ok) {
const feed = await response.json();
console.log(`>>> ${feed.children.length} new webmentions fetched from ${API_ORIGIN}`);
return feed;
}
return null;
}
// Merge fresh webmentions with cached entries, unique per id
function mergeWebmentions(a, b) {
return unionBy(a.children, b.children, 'wm-id');
}
// save combined webmentions in cache file
function writeToCache(data) {
const filePath = `${CACHE_DIR}/webmentions.json`;
const fileContent = JSON.stringify(data, null, 2);
// create cache folder if it doesnt exist already
if (!fs.existsSync(CACHE_DIR)) {
fs.mkdirSync(CACHE_DIR);
}
// write data to cache json file
fs.writeFile(filePath, fileContent, err => {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(`>>> webmentions cached to ${filePath}`);
});
}
// get cache contents from json file
function readFromCache() {
const filePath = `${CACHE_DIR}/webmentions.json`;
if (fs.existsSync(filePath)) {
const cacheFile = fs.readFileSync(filePath);
return JSON.parse(cacheFile);
};
// no cache found
return {
lastFetched: null,
children: []
};
}
export default async function() {
console.log('>>> Reading webmentions from cache...');
const cache = readFromCache();
if (cache.children.length) {
console.log(`>>> ${cache.children.length} webmentions loaded from cache`);
};
// Only fetch new mentions in production
if (process.env.ELEVENTY_ENV === 'production') {
console.log('>>> Checking for new webmentions...');
const feed = await fetchWebmentions(cache.lastFetched);
if (feed) {
const webmentions = {
lastFetched: new Date().toISOString(),
children: mergeWebmentions(cache, feed)
}
writeToCache(webmentions);
return webmentions;
}
}
return cache;
}

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<ul reversed>
{% for year, yearPosts in collections.postsByYear %}
<details><summary>{{ year }}</summary>
<ol reversed class="archivelist">
{% for post in yearPosts | reverse %}
<li class="archivelist-item{% if post.url == url %} archivelist-item-active{% endif %}">
<a href="{{ post.url }}" class="archivelist-link">{% if post.data.title %}{{ post.data.title }}{% else %}<code>{{ post.url }}</code>{% endif %}</a><br />
<time class="archivelist-date" datetime="{{ post.date | htmlDateString }}">{{ post.date | readableDate("dd LLLL yyyy") }}</time>
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ol></details>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

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<meta name="description" content="{{ description or metadata.description }}">
<link rel="alternate" href="feed/feed.xml" type="application/atom+xml" title="{{ metadata.title }}">
{#- Hyvor Talk #}
<script async src="https://talk.hyvor.com/embed/embed.js" type="module"></script>
{#- Webmentions #}
<link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/kfitz.info/webmention" />
<link rel="pingback" href="https://webmention.io/kfitz.info/xmlrpc" />
{#- Uncomment this if you’d like folks to know that you used Eleventy to build your site! #}
{#- <meta name="generator" content="{{ eleventy.generator }}"> #}
@@ -53,6 +60,15 @@
</nav>
</header>
<link href="/pagefind/pagefind-ui.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="/pagefind/pagefind-ui.js"></script>
<div id="search"></div>
<script>
window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => {
new PagefindUI({ element: "#search", showSubResults: true });
});
</script>
<main id="skip">
<heading-anchors>
{{ content | safe }}
@@ -60,7 +76,7 @@
</main>
<footer>
<p><em>Built with <a href="https://www.11ty.dev/">{{ eleventy.generator }}</a></em></p>
<p><em>Built with <a href="https://www.11ty.dev/">{{ eleventy.generator }}</a></em>. All content <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en">CC BY 4.0</a> if you're human.</p></p>
</footer>
<!-- This page `{{ page.url | htmlBaseUrl }}` was built on {% currentBuildDate %} -->

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_includes/layouts/home.njk
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---
layout: layouts/base.njk
---
<!-- Delete this block, which will also remove the component CSS from the bundle -->
{%- css %}{% include "public/css/message-box.css" %}{% endcss %}
<div class="message-box">
<ol>
<li>Edit <code>_data/metadata.js</code> with your blog’s information.</li>
<li>(Optional) Edit <code>eleventy.config.js</code> with your <a href="https://www.11ty.dev/docs/config/">configuration preferences</a>.</li>
<li>Delete this message from <code>_includes/layouts/home.njk</code>.</li>
</ol>
<p><em>This is an <a href="https://www.11ty.dev/">Eleventy project</a> created from the <a href="https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog"><code>eleventy-base-blog</code> repo</a>.</em></p>
</div>
<!-- Stop deleting -->
{{ content | safe }}

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_includes/layouts/post.njk
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@@ -24,5 +24,10 @@ layout: layouts/base.njk
{%- if previousPost %}<li class="links-nextprev-prev">← Previous<br> <a href="{{ previousPost.url }}">{{ previousPost.data.title }}</a></li>{% endif %}
{%- if nextPost %}<li class="links-nextprev-next">Next →<br><a href="{{ nextPost.url }}">{{ nextPost.data.title }}</a></li>{% endif %}
</ul>
<hyvor-talk-comments website-id="9100" page-id="{{ permalink }}"></hyvor-talk-comments>
{% include 'webmentionlist.njk' %}
{%- endif %}
{%- endif %}

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{%- set likes = webmentions.children | likesForUrl(absoluteUrl) -%}
{%- set reposts = webmentions.children | repostsForUrl(absoluteUrl) -%}
{% if likes.length > 0 %}
<h4>{{ likes.length }} Like{% if likes.length != 1 %}s{% endif %}</h4>
<div class="webmentions__facepile">
{% for webmention in likes %}
{% if webmention.url != "" %}
<a class="h-card u-url link-u-exempt" href="{{ webmention.url }}" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
{% endif %}
{% if webmention.author.photo %}
<img src="{{ webmention.author.photo }}" alt="{{ webmention.author.name }}" title="{{ webmention.author.name }}" alt="" class="webmentions__face" loading="lazy" />
{% else %}
<img class="webmention__author__photo" src="{{ '/img/default_avatar.png' | url }}" alt="{{ webmention.author.name }}" title="{{ webmention.author.name }}" alt="" class="webmentions__face" />
{% endif %}
{% if webmention.url != "" %}
</a>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
</div>
{% endif %}
{% if reposts.length > 0 %}
<h4>{{ reposts.length }} Repost{% if reposts.length != 1 %}s{% endif %}</h4>
<div class="webmentions__facepile">
{% for webmention in reposts %}
{% if webmention.url != "" %}
<a class="h-card u-url link-u-exempt" href="{{ webmention.url }}" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
{% endif %}
{% if webmention.author.photo %}
<img src="{{ webmention.author.photo }}" alt="{{ webmention.author.name }}" title="{{ webmention.author.name }}" alt="" class="webmentions__face" loading="lazy" />
{% else %}
<img class="webmention__author__photo" src="{{ '/img/default_avatar.png' | url }}" alt="{{ webmention.author.name }}" title="{{ webmention.author.name }}" alt="" class="webmentions__face" />
{% endif %}
{% if webmention.url != "" %}
</a>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
</div>
{% endif %}

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<article class="webmention h-cite" id="webmention-{{ webmention['wm-id'] }}">
<div class="webmention__meta">
{% if webmention.author %}
<a class="webmention__author p-author h-card u-url" href="{{ webmention.url }}" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
{% if webmention.author.photo %}
<img class="webmention__author__photo u-photo" src="{{ webmention.author.photo }}" alt="{{ webmention.author.name }}">
{% else %}
<img class="webmention__author__photo" src="{{ '/img/webmention-avatar-default.svg' | url }}" alt="">
{% endif %}
<strong class="p-name">{{ webmention.author.name }}</strong>
</a>
{% else %}
<span class="webmention__author">
<img class="webmention__author__photo" src="{{ '/img/webmention-avatar-default.svg' | url }}" alt="">
<strong>Anonymous</strong>
</span>
{% endif %}
{% if webmention.published %}
<time class="webmention__pubdate dt-published" datetime="{{ webmention.published }}">{{ webmention.published | dateFromTimestamp | readableDate("dd LLL yyyy - HH:mm") }}</time>
{% endif %}
</div>
<div class="webmention__content p-content">
{{ webmention.content.text | safe }}
</div>
</article>

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{%- set absoluteUrl -%}{{ page.url | url | absoluteUrl(metadata.url) }}{%- endset -%}
{%- set mentions = webmentions.children | mentionsForUrl(absoluteUrl) -%}
<div class="webmentions" id="webmentions">
<h3>Webmentions</h3>
{% if mentions | length %}
<h4>{{ mentions.length }} {% if mentions.length == "1" %}Reply{% else %}Replies{% endif %}</h4>
<ol class="webmentions__list">
{% for webmention in mentions | reverse %}
<li class="webmentions__item">
{% include 'webmention.njk' %}
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ol>
{% else %}
<p>No replies yet.</p>
{% endif %}
{% include 'likes.njk' %}
</div>

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{}

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{
"accentColor": "#ce36d9",
"cssTheme": "Minimal",
"interfaceFontFamily": "Atkinson Hyperlegible",
"textFontFamily": "Atkinson Hyperlegible",
"baseFontSize": 17
}

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[
"obsidian-minimal-settings",
"vscode-editor"
]

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{
"file-explorer": true,
"global-search": true,
"switcher": true,
"graph": true,
"backlink": true,
"canvas": true,
"outgoing-link": true,
"tag-pane": true,
"properties": false,
"page-preview": true,
"daily-notes": true,
"templates": true,
"note-composer": true,
"command-palette": true,
"slash-command": false,
"editor-status": true,
"bookmarks": true,
"markdown-importer": false,
"zk-prefixer": false,
"random-note": false,
"outline": true,
"word-count": true,
"slides": false,
"audio-recorder": false,
"workspaces": false,
"file-recovery": true,
"publish": false,
"sync": false
}

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@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
{
"file-explorer": true,
"global-search": true,
"switcher": true,
"graph": true,
"backlink": true,
"canvas": true,
"outgoing-link": true,
"tag-pane": true,
"properties": false,
"page-preview": true,
"daily-notes": true,
"templates": true,
"note-composer": true,
"command-palette": true,
"slash-command": false,
"editor-status": true,
"bookmarks": true,
"markdown-importer": false,
"zk-prefixer": false,
"random-note": false,
"outline": true,
"word-count": true,
"slides": false,
"audio-recorder": false,
"workspaces": false,
"file-recovery": true,
"publish": false,
"sync": false
}

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@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
{
"lightStyle": "minimal-light",
"darkStyle": "minimal-dark",
"lightScheme": "minimal-default-light",
"darkScheme": "minimal-default-dark",
"editorFont": "",
"lineHeight": 1.7,
"lineWidth": 50,
"lineWidthWide": 60,
"maxWidth": 88,
"textNormal": 17,
"textSmall": 13,
"imgGrid": false,
"imgWidth": "img-default-width",
"tableWidth": "table-default-width",
"iframeWidth": "iframe-default-width",
"mapWidth": "map-default-width",
"chartWidth": "chart-default-width",
"colorfulHeadings": false,
"colorfulFrame": false,
"colorfulActiveStates": false,
"trimNames": true,
"labeledNav": false,
"fullWidthMedia": true,
"bordersToggle": true,
"minimalStatus": true,
"focusMode": false,
"underlineInternal": true,
"underlineExternal": true,
"folding": true,
"lineNumbers": false,
"readableLineLength": true,
"devBlockWidth": false
}

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{
"id": "obsidian-minimal-settings",
"name": "Minimal Theme Settings",
"version": "7.5.0",
"minAppVersion": "1.1.9",
"description": "Change the colors, fonts and features of Minimal Theme.",
"author": "@kepano",
"authorUrl": "https://www.twitter.com/kepano",
"fundingUrl": "https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kepano",
"isDesktopOnly": false
}

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/* Empty */

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# About
# About kfitz
I am a person that writes stuff.
I'm Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and I'm currently Interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. I've been at MSU since August 2017, and up until July 2024 I served as Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English. During that same time period, I was founding director of [Mesh Research](https://meshresearch.commons.msu.edu/), a lab dedicated to developing open-source, interoperable, academy-owned tools for the future of scholarly communication. I've handed off directing the lab to a colleague of mine, though I'm still a member. Key among Mesh's projects is [Knowledge Commons](https://hcommons.org), an open-access network serving more than 40,000 scholars and practitioners across -- and beyond -- the disciplines and around the world.
Knowledge Commons, like much of my work across my career, is focused on facilitating resilient, sustainable scholarly communities and enabling their processes of communication to foreground connection, conversation, and collaboration. We launched Knowledge Commons -- then called Humanities Commons -- in late 2016, during my stint as Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication of the [Modern Language Association](https://mla.org). The network built on lessons we'd learned from our prior work with [MLA Commons](https://mla.hcommons.org), as well as from [MediaCommons](https://mediacommons.org), a network for scholars and students in media studies, which I co-founded with Avi Santo and with enormous support from the Institute for the Future of the Book and the NYU Libraries.
Alongside this network-building work, I write. My newest book, [*Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation*](https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12787/leading-generously), will be published in October 2024. I've published three prior single-authored books -- [*Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University*](https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12108/generous-thinking) (Hopkins Press, 2019); [*Planned Obsolescence:  Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy*](https://nyupress.org/9780814727881/planned-obsolescence/) (NYU Press, 2011); and [*The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television*](https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826515209/the-anxiety-of-obsolescence/) (Vanderbilt Press, 2006) -- and was lead author on the eighth edition of the [*MLA Handbook*](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25916932M/MLA_Handbook_Eighth_Edition). I've also been blogging since 2002, originally at plannedobsolescence.net and more recently at kfitz.info.
 
Since January 2022, I've served as president of the board of directors of the [Educopia Institute](https://educopia.org), and I was a member of the board of directors of the [Council on Library and Information Resources](https://clir.org) from 2013 to 2023, and board chair from 2017 to 2019. I served as president of the [Association for Computers and the Humanities](https://ach.org) from 2020 to 2022.

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# The Anxiety of Obsolescence
<img src="blog/img/Anxiety.png" alt="The Anxiety of Obsolescence book cover">
[*The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television*](https://amzn.to/2qpHVyM) explores the conviction seen throughout the late twentieth century cultural sphere — not least among novelists — that television had killed the audience for serious fiction. This bit of mythology, I argue,
[*The Anxiety of Obsolescence*](https://amzn.to/2qpHVyM) was published by [Vanderbilt University Press](https://www.vanderbilt.edu/university-press/book/9780826515209) in 2006 and was
- Named an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice, Association of College and Research Libraries, January 2008.
- Selected as a “book of the month” by the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, October 2007.
The text of [*The Anxiety of Obsolescence*](https://amzn.to/2qpHVyM) is also available in [commentable form online](http://anxietyofobsolescence.com).

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---
title: "Opening Day"
permalink: /opening-day/
date: '2002-06-18T11:35:00-04:00'
tags:
- blogging
- obsolescence
---
Here’s the main issue: obsolescence. A forum for exploring it, and for producing it. A space in which to think about the intimate interrelationship of new media and old media, and the ways in which newness and oldness are inevitably predicated on one another.
This is — does it even need to be said? — a work in progress. I haven’t a clue where it’s going, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

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---
title: 'True Confessions'
date: '2002-06-19T10:30:03-04:00'
permalink: /true-confessions/
tags:
- obsolescence
- publishing
- research
---
Okay, time to come clean. I’m in (what I most sincerely hope to be) the end stages of writing a book that focuses on this question of obsolescence, particularly the anxieties that literary culture seems to exude any time it considers its relationship to newer media. In this book — and believe me, the ironies of considering the obsolescence of the book in a book are not lost on me — I focus primarily on the novel’s relationship to television, though (as this site may suggest) my interests are slipping toward the relationship between traditional fiction and the new forms of writing developing on the net.
The thing I’m writing about right now, though, in the book’s conclusion, is the [ Franzen/Oprah](http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/10/26/franzen_winfrey/) dust-up. It seems to me everyone’s got an opinion on this — Franzen’s burdened by an overdeveloped sense of his own talent; Oprah’s similarly guilty of overvaluing her culture-making power; Franzen’s a boor; Oprah’s a vacuum — but few seem to have paid much attention to the fundamental conflict at the heart of the matter. Are the novel and television genuinely incompatible forms? Is it impossible to consider oneself simultaneously a literary intellectual and a fan of the weekly set-em-up and knock-em-down sitcom?
I’ll confess: I love television. And I don’t just mean the highbrow [Sopranos](http://www.hbo.com/sopranos) / [Six Feet Under](http://www.hbo.com/sixfeetunder) / {insert other self-consciously experimental program here} stuff, though those programs seem to wind up my favorites.
I mourned the passing of [Homicide](http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/homicide/) much as I would if I knew that David Foster Wallace had stopped writing and instead taken up bond sales. Are those two loves so very incompatible?
One last note, while I’m on the subject: While I’m infinitely grateful to HBO for rescuing Sunday evening from the pit of end-of-weekend depression, I beg that someone, similarly, somewhere, find a way to make Friday nights worthwhile again, for losers like me who are too often home with the machine for company.

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---
title: 'Mining the Backlist'
date: '2002-06-20T10:46:45-04:00'
permalink: /mining-the-backlist/
tags:
- novels
---
I’m one of those folks whose first introduction to Richard Powers was [Galatea 2.2](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0060976926), which I suppose is the place that a lot of people start with him. Like [White Noise](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0140077022) is the place to start reading DeLillo, and [The Crying of Lot 49](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0060931671) is the place to start reading Pynchon. Some might argue that the drawing criterion is the relative brevity of these entry texts, but I think there’s something more to it than just brevity — it’s the entire project in miniature. Once you’ve read *COL49,* you know something about what Pynchon’s up to that makes it possible to take on [Gravity’s Rainbow](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0140188592). Similarly DeLillo: reading *White Noise* makes a later reading of [Underworld](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0684842696) possible.
So with Powers. But there’s this added hitch with *Galatea,* in that the novel purports to recount his publishing history up to that point, following a character named “Richard S. Powers” through his remembrances of the composition of his earlier novels. Does starting with *Galatea* inevitably ruin — or maybe that’s too harsh a word; maybe I just mean “color” — the reading of the previous texts?
I guess I was always afraid that it would, because I first read *Galatea* about four or five years ago, and never read any other Powers. Which is strange for me, as I tend to go on author-binges when I read something I love, and I loved *Galatea.*
So over the last month, I’ve begun making up for lost time, reading the Powers *oeuvre* in chronological sequence. I’ve finished [Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0060975091), which, as an example of a first novel, so intimidated me that I may never make another stab at the form. Also [Prisoner’s Dilemma](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0060977086) (which, while deeply moving, I’m relieved to say is my least favorite so far) and [The Gold Bug Variations](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0060975008). About which I feel unqualified to say anything except wow.
I’m now on [Operation Wandering Soul](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=006097611X), the completion of which will take me back up to my starting point. Do I re-read *Galatea* then? I began this reading of the Powers backlist with a certain kind of “knowledge” about what these novels were up to — but now, with the novels themselves under my belt, will my sense of that prior “knowledge” change? Would that change further readings of the earlier books?
You gotta love a novel sequence with its own built-in recursive loop.

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---
title: 'Hawaii Is Good'
date: '2002-06-21T08:43:27-04:00'
permalink: /hawaii-is-good/
tags:
- travel
---
for many things. For getting up at 4 am since your body can still be fooled into thinking it’s 9.
For catching up on that [reading](/mining-the-backlist/) you meant to do years ago but could never quite get to.
For keeping abreast of the latest wonders of the [Disney world of multiculturalism](http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/liloandstitch/).[^1]
For remembering all the words to “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” not to mention the complete Eagles and Jimmy Buffet songbooks.
For getting a tan, getting in shape, getting back in touch with the joys of rum.
But not so good for writing. Nope, not so good at all.
[^1]: See, the cute little brown girl thinks she’s adopted a dog, but he’s actually an *alien.* An *evil* alien. Get it?

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---
title: "Hey, Where's the Joy of Cooking?"
date: '2002-06-24T11:20:12-04:00'
permalink: /hey-wheres-the-joy-of-cooking/
tags:
- novels
---
In the spirit of two years ago, I’ve recently been directed to this list of [the 100 Most Influential Books of the Century](http://www.bpl.org/research/AdultBooklists/influential.htm). The shift in directive — influence rather than “quality” — from all those other lists that came out in 1999-2000 makes this one a little more interesting. After all, it’s tough to imagine Heidegger, Heisenberg, and Heller coming in immediate sequence on any of those other lists. But the very same premise — as well as some of the selections — leaves me very puzzled about both the criteria and the results. What constitutes “influentialness”? Influential with *whom?*
These questions aside, I’m nonetheless left brimming with observations:
1. There’s a decided pre-1970 bias in this list. A mere 11 books published after this date made the cut.
2. Nothing of influence was published during the 1980s.
3. The only book of influence to be published since 1979 is John Gray’s *Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus* (1992).
4. “Non-fiction” out-influences “fiction” 65-35.[^1]
My favorite part of this list, however, is the ensuing list of “Books that Didn’t Quite Make It.” I think that all canonical lists should now be required to come with also-rans: books that didn’t quite make it onto my syllabus, books that didn’t quite make it onto your exam reading list, books that didn’t quite make it into this summer’s stack of beach reading.
[^1]: Both terms very loosely characterized. Poetry (2) and drama (2) are lumped in under fiction. Autobiographies likewise under non-fiction, regardless of the sanity of their writers. Any errors in categorization are errors of this counter, whose eyes are swimming from staring at the list for so long.

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---
title: 'Dept. of Musical Revisionism'
date: '2002-06-25T10:59:52-04:00'
permalink: /dept-of-musical-revisionism/
tags:
- listening
---
Earlier that day, over lunch:
Me (hearing “Born in the U.S.A.” over the restaurant P.A. system): How on earth did those Republican knuckleheads hear this song and decide it was a patriotic anthem?
He: It makes total sense. Their whole rhetorical m.o. involves not fully understanding what they’re quoting, and then completely revising what the original means when they’re found out.
Okay, fine. It’s the same kind of revisions that are worked by television advertising all the time, when a song like [this](http://www.sgi.net/zeppelin/lyrics/songs/04.rar.html) is used to plug a product like [this](http://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/models/deville/index.html). (The revised meaning of which seems to become — what? — I haven’t had sex in years, so I’m buying a really big car?)
But the impulse toward this kind of lyrical revisionism just became too much that night, on our dinner cruise — and yes, yes, the ironies, given the [reading](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0316925284) I’m doing this week — after a pleasant half-hour standing at the rail, watching Waikiki drift by. As we walked back into the dining room to pay the lovely young man who’d kept us supplied with Mai Tais for the evening, I suddenly felt uneasy, unsettled, nervous, wrong. Took a moment to take stock: no, I have everything I came with; no, I’m not feeling ill; no, there doesn’t appear to be disaster looming just ahead.
It required a few moments to sink in. Literally. First, I noticed the really bad rendition being done by the man at the synthesizer and the woman at the mike. Then, I recognized that this was a bad rendition of a song that I hated in the first place. It’s that whatsername song, gee, you know, the Canadian chick who’s always — yeah, Celine, right. From that movie, you know…
*Titanic.*
I ask you — seriously, tell me if it’s just me — but is this an appropriate song to be playing on board?
Okay, sure, it’s about a love that survives even death, even an icy cold watery death — but see, there’s that whole death part, and the water, and gee, look, we’re on a boat! In the water!
It’s not revisionism. It’s just flat not paying attention.

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---
title: 'Influence, Part II'
date: '2002-06-26T10:38:33-04:00'
permalink: /influence-part-ii/
tags:
- novels
- obsolescence
---
[Previously](/hey_wheres_the_joy_of_cooking/), on Planned Obsolescence: the book list, not as designator of “quality” or “greatness,” but rather of “influence,” which [one intrepid reader](http://www.wombatfile.com) understood to be the fluidity with which a book’s central concept made itself available to cocktail party chatter.
Now, another [list](http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,711682,00.html), this one voted upon by “around 100 of the world’s top authors,” in an attempt to determine the “most meaningful book of all time.” The winner: [Don Quixote](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0IBSHWP639&isbn=0140440100).
I return to the question of the list today because the [Chronicle of Higher Education](http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i42/42a00903.htm) (sorry, subscription required) reported the same story this week, but described the list as that of “the 100 most influential works of fiction.” So I started thinking that perhaps this list might help me understand this business of literary influence a bit better than I presently do. Are “influence” and “meaningfulness” related? Or is the entire list-making hoo-ha (which frankly I thought we’d seen the end of for a while) up to some other goal?
While I ponder, a few observations:
1. Europeans are more influential than Americans, 2 to 1.
2. Men similarly out-influence women, almost 8 to 1.
3. While the Boston Public Library was not apparently particularly influenced by *Invisible Man,* around 100 of the world’s top authors were.
4. Morrison, yes. Pynchon, no.
5. I’ve read an embarrassing 41 of 100.
A final thought: who drew up the list of around 100 of the world’s top authors, who then drew up the list of the 100 most meaningful/influential books? Could it be argued that the creator(s) of *that* list are in fact the most influential of all?

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---
title: "Lessons I Wish I'd Learned Sooner"
date: '2002-06-27T12:35:59-04:00'
permalink: /lessons-i-wish-id-learned-sooner/
tags:
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---
1. Just because you read *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* five years ago doesn’t mean you’ll remember its details during your orals.
2. When told in the early stages of a relationship the excruciating details of your blameless partner’s last miserable breakup, listen closely: you’re getting a snapshot of how it will all end.
3. Your metabolism really does change at 30.
4. A major writing project will always take at least twice as long as you think it will, no matter how you leniently you create the schedule.
5. Cheap sushi is cheap for a reason.

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title: 'Preparing for Re-Entry'
date: '2002-06-28T10:51:45-04:00'
permalink: /preparing-for-re-entry/
tags:
- travel
---
The last day in Hawaii, alas. Packing up the suitcase, hunting for the items lost beneath the bed. Realizing that I only took 8 pictures while I was here, and now this roll of film will languish in my camera until after Christmas, when I’ll finally take it to get developed and will open the envelope of pictures expecting to find only niecelings and nephews in various shades of green and red, only to be abruptly taken back here by the slightly grainy reproduction of the view from my balcony, the sand, the surf, the sunrise on the Royal Hawaiian.
Yes, film. You remember film, right?
Will be back in New Orleans for about a month prior to re-entry stage two — moving back to SoCal — where I’ll have a little less than a month before beginning re-entry stage three — moving back into the classroom. Am hoping that these few Hawaii pictures, and the Puritanesque delayed gratification involved in obtaining them, will provide solace some night, sitting by the light of my little desktop halogen, surrounded by papers on *Native Son* and feeling this sabbatical-won peace to be wholly, completely obsolesced.

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title: 'Rubbed Out'
date: '2002-07-01T06:41:31-04:00'
permalink: /rubbed-out/
tags:
- television
---
[Entertainment Weekly](http://www.ew.com) recently [reported](http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,262643~3|16070~0~,00.html) on the latest shady doings from the world of *la cosa nostra:* Fairuza Balk, who appeared in [The Sopranos](http://www.hbo.com/sopranos)‘ third-season finale as undercover FBI agent Deborah Ciccerone, tasked to approach Drea de Matteo’s Adriana La Cerva for a little girl-talk, has been replaced for season four by Lola Glaudini, formerly of *NYPD Blue.*
Not such big news: the [two Darrins](http://www.bewitched.net) made this kind of TV-switcheroo years ago, and Agent Ciccerone’s hardly as focal as that.
Except that David Chase et al have taken this replacement to Huxleyan lengths, reshooting Balk’s scenes with Glaudini in the role for the upcoming (August 27) season three DVD release.
Reports suggest that Balk has entered the witness protection program. And about that, we’ll say no more.

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title: Smooth
date: '2002-07-02T10:39:59-04:00'
permalink: /smooth/
tags:
- computers
- software
---
Eek! I just downloaded and installed IE 5.2 for OS X, which counts among its improvements “support for the new Quartz text smoothing feature.” And boy, do things look smooth. I’m deeply unsure how I feel about this. For those of you[^1] who don’t/can’t use IE 5.2 (and good for you), here’s a [screenshot](/img/screen.jpg) of the Quartz-ed up site.
What do you think? I’m thinking I may have to sans-serifize things or risk looking too much like a word-processed church newsletter.
[^1]: This assumes, of course, that there is someone out there. Which there is… Right?

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title: "The Times(-Roman), They Are a-Changin'"
date: '2002-07-02T13:52:42-04:00'
permalink: /the-times-roman-they-are-a-changin/
tags:
- tinkering
---
Or, Smooth, part two.
After spending a day with the site, and with other sites, and after some extremely useful [feedback](/smooth/), I’ve made a little design revision. Things are still malleable, though, so I’m open to complaints and suggestions.
Now back to work.

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title: "Them Singin', Dancin' Demons Do It Every Time"
date: '2002-07-03T06:50:11-04:00'
permalink: /them-singin-dancin-demons-do-it-every-time/
tags:
- body
- networks
- television
---
Inspired in part by the wonderful [pulchritude](http://pulchritude.blogspot.com), and in part by my own [overindulgences](/hawaii_is_good/), I’ve undertaken a plan of (somewhat) radical detoxing. The most significant aspect of my pretty much semi-annual attempt to achieve a less chemical existence is giving up caffeine, which has the immediate effect of making me feel as though someone is driving a railroad spike through my temporal lobe. Not good when one is frantically trying to finish up work on a manuscript about which one is decidedly ambivalent anyway.
The good news is that, as of last night, about 7:00 pm CDT, after two days of head-splitting and general depression, the pall lifted. Headache gone. Not thinking entirely clearly yet, but no longer feeling quite the same urge to dash in front of a streetcar, either.
What made the difference? Either the simple passage of time, or last night’s replay of the [Buffy](http://www.buffy.com) musical. You decide.

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title: 'Sounds Familiar'
date: '2002-07-04T05:48:31-04:00'
permalink: /sounds-familiar/
tags:
- novels
---
Continuing the Richard Powers binge, I just yesterday finished reading [Gain](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0312204094), which traces the corporate history of Clare International, a giant conglomerate much akin to the [ill-fated](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0679772677) Beatrice Foods. Remember Beatrice? If not, you’re not alone. The corporation only advertised its existence briefly, during the 1984 Summer Olympics, the resonances of which were particularly alarming considering it turned out that Beatrice was the parent company of *everything.* Then there was that pesky little series of lawsuits, and the conglomerate is no more. (Or at least no more in that form, under that name.)
What struck me last night as I was wrapping up the book, however, was less the Beatrice connection than Powers’ depiction of the Clare response to the onset of the Great Depression:
> By Independence Day, four fifths of the wealth traded on the New York Stock Exchange had vanished into the thinnest of atmospheres. The Jazz Age took a quick refresher course in the imaginary value of equities. Clare’s stock tracked this average drop downward with all the tenacity of a bloodhound puppy. By summer’s end, the worth of the entire, far-flung manufacturing empire was less than the book value of the Illinois factories four years before.
>
> Alone among the corporate brass, William Clare had seen the shape of things to come. The careful financier knew all about bookkeeping by mass hypnotism. Throughout the twenties, he sold off his shares in steady, disciplined lots. By the peak, he’d gotten far more than fair market value for his portion. When all hell broke loose, he dumped the rest of his worthless paper, enjoyed a year of ship-spotting off Nantucket, and returned to business to serve briefly on the board of Gillette just before his happy death as a traitor to his family in 1931.
>
> Douglas \[Clare\] II was less hurt by the plunge in his net worth than by the reception of his monograph, *The Dream of the Romanesque.* Scholars laughed at the work because it was written by a businessman. And businessmen by and large failed to read it because it appeared to be about old stones. Douglas retired from the firm to the Greek island of Soundetos. There, in comfortable if reduced circumstances, he took to financing his own amateur forays into classical archaeology.
>
> Everyone else whom the company bound together went to the cleaners. And the folks in the khaki shirts got cleaned longest and hardest of all. All the sorters and sifters and gauge-tenders and packers and haulers who had been forced into buying company shares at a discount now watched helplessly as their precious nest eggs cracked into the national omelet. Workers who had built their retirements for forty years came up empty-handed, the victims of the distributed pyramiding swindle of capital. (307-308)
Bookkeeping by mass hypnotism, well-timed sell-offs, the pyramiding swindle of capital. But hey, that was then, this is now, right?
Happy Independence Day, all.

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title: "Technologies We'd Like to See Become Obsolete"
date: '2002-07-05T18:09:49-04:00'
permalink: /technologies-wed-like-to-see-become-obsolete/
tags:
- networks
---
And the wonderful folks helping steer them that way: [Click To Add Title.](http://clicktoaddtitle.com) Genuinely sublime.

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title: 'July 9, 1982'
date: '2002-07-08T05:27:37-04:00'
permalink: /july-9-1982/
tags:
- life
- reading
---
Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the crash of Pan Am 759, which fell victim to a wind shear during takeoff from New Orleans International, plowing into a nearby Kenner neighborhood, killing eight people on the ground and all 146 aboard.
I know this now because the top story in the Sunday [Times-Picayune](http://nola.com/frontpage/t-p/index.ssf) was a remembrance of the crash, with a focus on the changes that it effected both in the aviation industry and in the town. The aviation industry learned from this tragedy, investing heavily in research toward the development of advanced technologies for the detection of wind-shears and microbursts. Kenner has had a more difficult, more emotional recovery; many people who live there still can’t talk about that day.
I was in high school in 1982, only 70 miles up the road in Baton Rouge, but the distance — both that between the crash and my perceptions of it, and between 1982 and now — is more significant than it is substantive. Just a few days ago, driving past the airport, I remembered the crash, but in a hazy enough way that I wondered for a moment if I had it confused with some other crash in some other city, or even if I’d dreamed some part of the memory.
Sunday’s paper explains to me, though, the chill I get every time I drive past what is now Louis Armstrong International Airport. One of the runways is visible from the interstate, and when planes land on that strip they pass over the cars below by a bare couple of hundred feet. Chilling enough, particularly in these post-9/11 days. But that bit of nervousness has always seemed to have some non-present origin, one that I could never, before yesterday, fully locate.

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title: "Here's a Question"
date: '2002-07-09T06:42:17-04:00'
permalink: /heres-a-question/
tags:
- novels
---
So, I’m nearing the conclusion of the conclusion of the book I’ve been working on for the last umpteen years. Which of course doesn’t mean I’m done — there’s still the introduction to be written, and the first chapter to be polished up a bit.
But it does mean that this is the moment at which I’m supposed to be thinking the really Big Thoughts, the what-does-it-all-mean thoughts, the concluding-type thoughts. And I’m totally mired in the shallows, unable to come up with an adequate reason why the argument I’ve spent the last 260 pages making is so bloody important that the future of civilization depends on it.
My argument, in case you’re interested: despite the perpetual hue and cry to the contrary (in which an article every six months or so proclaims the novel a dead form, and the novel itself repeatedly contemplates that death between its own covers), the novel is in fact not obsolete, but rather uses the notion of its obsolescence as a means of creating a kind of cultural wildlife preserve, a protected space within which it can continue to flourish. But the question, to be wrestled with here in the last pages, is the relationship of these claims of the novel’s obsolescence to more general cultural cycles of the birth and death of genres, of styles, and of media.
So let me ask what *you* think: why would it matter if the novel were obsolete? Personally, I’d be crushed if no more of them were made, don’t get me wrong. But is there some particular reason that the novel’s potential obsolescence should trouble us more than, say, the death of the vinyl LP? Or the death of radio drama? Or the death of epic poetry? Is there something special about the novel — not necessarily something that makes it more valuable, but something that makes its (supposed) passing different from that of other cultural forms of expression?
(Any helpful thoughts would be much appreciated, and duly acknowledged.)

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title: Silence
date: '2002-07-10T09:33:46-04:00'
permalink: /silence/
tags:
- novels
---
Well, I managed to conclude the conclusion in a temporarily satisfactory way, despite the deafening roar of absolute silence on your end. Okay, point taken. I’ll do my own work. Sigh.
Having done so, and not being quite ready to begin the introduction last night, I instead took some time to poke around this web thing a bit, and stumbled upon a reader review of David Foster Wallace’s [Up, Simba!](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005B5EO/qid=1026310317/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-8063349-6775963) that just tickled me to no end. Go read it. It’s the first review.
Oh, heck, I’ll even give you the part that tickled me:
> He teaches at Disneyland, is what I last heard, which may be why I likened his genius to the size of one of those parks.
I’ve decided that it is in the vital interest of the academy’s future to take over the spaces of defunct amusement parks. Classes could be tailored to their environs: poststructuralist theory to be taught on the rollercoaster; the first half of the American lit survey on the log ride; senior seminars in the spinning teacups. And, of course, all creative writing classes will be held in the funhouse.

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title: 'Hmmm...'
date: '2002-07-11T06:00:19-04:00'
permalink: /hmmm/
tags:
- networks
---
I spent a chunk of this past weekend hanging out in my apartment, not wanting to think about either the quantity of work I have to do in the next two weeks or the fact that somehow all of my belongings in this apartment need to transport themselves back to California at the end of that same two week period. When I don’t want to think about the things directly in front of me, where else should I turn but the magic of digital cable.
I finally managed to catch Sofia Coppola’s rendition of *The Virgin Suicides,* based on the Jeffrey Eugenides novel, which I haven’t read. (Eugenides, incidentally, is numbered among the [“New White Guys,”](http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/01/28/books-bonca.php) a putative “group” of writers that includes David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen. I’m suspicious of this groupness, however; DFW was quoted in a *Time* article \[which I can’t link for you as our good friends at AOL-Time Warner charge for access to their archives\] as dismissing the idea by saying “Well, we’re all white males between 30 and 40, at least as far as I know.” None of this is particularly to the point of this entry; I’ve been looking into it for the famous conclusion and I just found it interesting.) The film is odd: oddly paced, oddly structured, eerie in its prettiness.
But the main events of the weekend were the pay-per-viewings of *The Others* and *Vanilla Sky*. And, for benefit of those who haven’t seen them, I’m just going to say Hmmm… on the correspondences. Very intriguing. Very revealing. If you’ve seen them both, follow me into the comments — I’m dying to talk about them. If not, well, hurry up and watch them so we can chat.

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title: 'Not Bloody Likely'
date: '2002-07-12T06:38:04-04:00'
permalink: /not-bloody-likely/
tags:
- grousing
---
Um, hi. I’m trying to get an estimate on a small move.
— *Where from?*
— New Orleans.
— *And to?*
— Southern California.
— *How small a move?*
— I’m in a small one-bedroom, but it’s really sparsely furnished. So not much stuff at all. Like I’m not even taking my bed, right.
— *So…*
— I’ve used some online inventories and they estimate that my stuff would come in at around 1500 pounds.
— *Let’s say 1700, to be safe.*
— Okay…
— *So, if that’s 1700 pounds… and roughly 1800 miles… let’s say 1850 to be safe… and if we add the origin…* \[inaudible mumbling, backed up by the sound of an adding machine\]*… and destination… and* \[inaudible, followed by much production from the adding machine\]*… it comes to right about $1700.*
— Okay, 1700. That’s based on the weight, right? So what if my stuff actually weighs more, or less?
— *Oh. No. This is a binding estimate.*
— Based on…? I mean, you haven’t seen my stuff.
— *Yeah, but I’m giving you the TPG rate. I could give you the 400N, sure, and then we could deal with the actual weight, but then I wouldn’t really be free to discount the price.*
— Mm-hm. And in terms of insurance…?
— *The price includes a valuation of 70 cents per pound per article. You can buy more if you want more, up to $2.50 per pound per article. Or you can get replacement coverage, up to $10,000, for $264 for no deductible, or $60 for a $500 deductible.*
— And what are your windows like for pickup and dropoff?
— *We’ve got a three-day pickup spread. And then there’s a five-day transit time. So counting the actual day of pickup as day 1, the dropoff window begins on day 6 and extends to day 18.*
— Uh-huh. Great. That’s what I needed to know.
— *Call us back when you’re ready to get this started.*

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title: 'Academic Obsolescence, Indeed'
date: '2002-07-15T06:11:00-04:00'
permalink: /academic-obsolescence-indeed/
tags:
- novels
- obsolescence
---
Mail is taking a while to catch up with me these days, given that it’s got to go through the postal service, campus mail, my department, campus mail, and the postal service again before it gets to me. So needless to say, I’m a little behind on some things. But I last week received this <a href="">letter</a> \[*Edited to remove link, as target is now long gone. Suffice it to say that this was a link to the Greenblatt letter. –KF*\], which was apparently sent to all members of the MLA.
Having just completed (yay!) a first full-length scholarly manuscript (known in various stages of its composition as My Stupid Book, and at others demarked by other adjectives), I’m uncertain whether to be relieved by the import of this letter — whew! perhaps this manuscript getting accepted or not won’t be the turn of fate that drives my tenure decision — or deeply chilled. Have I spent the last six years on a project that will never see print?
When I’m able to escape my own self-involvement, however, I can see that there are some deeper issues to be pondered here. Is academic publishing obsolete? Aside from those of us still trying to get tenure, will anyone miss it if it is? And if it’s not, how can it escape the fiscal crisis in which it’s mired? Certain refereed journals on the web have begun to make inroads into that avenue of academic publishing, such that having an article in [Postmodern Culture](http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/), say, has the something of the same clout as having an article in [Representations](http://www.jstor.org/journals/07346018.html) would. Can the same be done for the monograph? Will anyone stand — er, sit — for reading a monograph on the web? Or is the scholarly monograph all but dead?

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title: Yikes
date: '2002-07-18T06:33:01-04:00'
permalink: /yikes/
tags:
- novels
---
Should a reviewer of contemporary fiction actually be required to, say, like contemporary fiction?
The question is raised for me by Dale Peck’s [review](http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020701&s=peck070102&c=1) of Rick Moody’s [The Black Veil](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0316578991), steered my way by faithful reader [BT](http://www.wombatfile.com). The review is not so much a review as a skewering, and not so much a skewering as an explosion of bile and vitriol. From the very first line:
> Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation.
And a bit further on:
> When I finished *The Black Veil* I scrawled “Lies! Lies! All lies!” on the cover and considered my job done.
If, however, the strongest conclusion that I drew from this review was that Dale Peck really, really, really doesn’t like Rick Moody, I’d say hey, to each his own, whatever. I read [The Ice Storm](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0316706000) (granted, after having seen the movie), and enjoyed and appreciated much about it — for instance, I did not find the novel, as Peck does, to have “a troubling fascination with adolescent sexual organs” so much as a concern with the ways that adolescents’ preoccupation with their own sexual organs is driven by the simultaneously prurient and passionless obsessions of the grownups who are ostensibly raising them — but that’s a matter of interpretation and taste. Peck doesn’t like Moody. Whatever.
But then there’s this, when Peck attempts to figure out how American literary culture can have gone so wrong as to lionize such a pathetic figure as Moody:
> In my view, the wrong turn starts around the time Stephen Dedalus goes to college in *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* and echoes all the way through Don DeLillo’s ponderously self-important rendering of Bobby Thompson’s shot heard round the world in the opening chapter of *Underworld.*
In fact, the article, by its conclusion, comes to damn contemporary writers by association the entire lineage of twentieth-century fiction dating back to Joyce:
> All I’m suggesting is that these writers (and their editors) see themselves as the heirs to a bankrupt tradition. A tradition that began with the diarrheic flow of words that is *Ulysses;* continued on through the incomprehensible ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of Nabokov; and then burst into full, foul life in the ridiculous dithering of Barth and Hawkes and Gaddis, and the reductive cardboard constructions of Barthelme, and the word-by-word wasting of a talent as formidable as Pynchon’s; and finally broke apart like a cracked sidewalk beneath the weight of the stupid — just plain stupid — tomes of DeLillo.
Peck’s not wholly off base, I think, in his assessment of postmodernism as a “white man’s ivory tower,” or in his suggestion that the dominance of this select group of writers has skewed the contemporary high-literary scene toward sterile experimentation devoid of affect and compassion. But one nonetheless wonders how useful this kind of judgment is in a piece that arguably supposed to tell whether to buy Moody’s latest or not.
So again, the question: should a reviewer of contemporary fiction actually be required to like contemporary fiction?

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title: 'Return of the Depressed'
date: '2002-07-23T07:51:49-04:00'
permalink: /return-of-the-depressed/
tags:
- 'general whining'
---
Okay, I’m not really *depressed* so much as crushed under the weight of the belongings I’ve got to get sorted out and into boxes in the next 24 hours. I’d hoped that, returning from NOLA to SoCal, the long division of my stuff would end. My last move, a year ago, was a sorting into three piles: this stuff goes into storage in Friend A’s extra room; this stuff goes into Friend B’s apartment, where he’ll make use of it for the year; this stuff goes to New Orleans, where I’ll need it. Complex enough, and one would think that this return would be a coalescence, a gathering together of this dispersed flotsam into one centralized pile of flotsam. Particularly given that I am moving into the apartment that Friend B just vacated, and thus 1/3 of my stuff is already there.
Except that the building that said apartment is in is not inhabitable, as it’s in the midst of a construction zone. So I’m going to be housesitting for Friend A for the month of August. So I’ll have access to the A stuff, but no access to the B stuff.
The problem is the NOLA stuff, which is being moved directly into the B apartment, where I will then lose access to it for a few weeks. So I’m having to sort the NOLA stuff into the absolutely crucial, which comes with me in the car (cats; cat supplies; a subset of clothing; other personal items); the crucial, but not for the next week, which will be shipped to the A apartment (computer, printer, a few books); and the rest, which will disappear into the moving truck and apartment B.
Needless to say, the calculus of this move has absorbed all of my available brain space, and is looking to rent out more. So I’m off to pack, and may be out of touch for a bit. I’ll leave you with one brief thought:
[Perdition](http://www.roadtoperdition.com)? Where the hell is that?

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title: 'Peck, Peck, Peck'
date: '2002-07-24T08:08:34-04:00'
permalink: /peck-peck-peck/
tags:
- novels
---
A quick update to last week’s [comment](/yikes/) on Dale Peck’s cranky outburst occasioned by his review of Rick Moody’s *The Black Veil*. [Bill](http://www.wombatfile.com) has continued the discussion on his site, usefully reminding us of [B.R. Myers’](http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/myers.htm) similar Summer 2001 screed published in the *Atlantic,* and directing us to [Jonathan Yardley’s](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57255-2002Jul11.html) rather dull attempt at same.
Today, [Salon](http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/07/24/peck/index.html) gets into the action, with a Heather Caldwell article exploring a number of writers’ responses to the Peck piece and considering what makes for good literary criticism.
Sadly, we are nowhere mentioned.
Happily, the article includes the following quote, from a critic who “trounced Moody’s memoir in another publication” but who feels that the wholesale absence of credit given to the merits of such fiction render Peck’s critique meaningless:
> “You have to reserve some language for Sept. 11, Adolf Hitler or, if you’re discussing art, Albert Speer,” says \[Andrew\] Solomon. “There can be a crisis in literature that warrants this urgency, but this isn’t it. Turning such frantic invective on writing that even in Peck’s view is nothing worse than banal and self-important is extremely irresponsible. I think Peck’s review tends to make literary discourse laughable rather than powerful, ridiculous rather than urgent.”
One salient question raised by this article is what Peck *does* like about literature, and why he feels he must so passionately defend it — a seemingly vital issue to which his anger permits him to give no time. The beauty of the screed is its use of the attack in the service of a higher value; here, there is no higher value espoused. Is Peck then guilty of a variant on the vacuity of which he accuses Moody, Eugenides, et al? Does that emptiness, as the *Salon* article hints, reveal the hidden motives of professional jealousy and infighting?

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title: "That, I Didn't Expect"
date: '2002-08-08T09:12:28-04:00'
permalink: /that-i-didnt-expect/
tags:
- grousing
---
Hi. You guys are moving me, and I’m trying to get some information about where my stuff is.
— *Okay.*
— Today’s the last day of my delivery window. And I got a call yesterday telling me that the driver would be showing up with my stuff this morning, between 9 and 12.
— *Okay.*
— It’s now 2:00.
— *Okay.* \[Faintly disguised annoyance, accompanied by much clicking in the background.\] *Your delivery is complete.*
— What?
— *It says here that your delivery has been made.*
— That’s not possible. I’m standing here in my apartment, where I’ve been since 8 this morning, and my stuff is not here. There has been no delivery.
— *Yes, there has. Your stuff was delivered to* \[name deleted\] *Van and Storage.*
— No. It wasn’t supposed to go there. It was supposed to come here.
— *Well, you need to take that up with the broker. They sent it to* \[name deleted\] *Van and Storage.*
— No. I told them and I told you the address here.
— *Yes, well, it was delivered to* \[name deleted\] *Van and Storage, at* \[address deleted\].
— But that’s my address.
— *What?*
— That is the address of my apartment, where I am currently standing, and where my stuff is not.
— \[Annoyed and befuddled silence.\] *Let me call you back.*
— Okay.
\[A long period of waiting, accompanied by heart palpitations and the serious urge to drink heavily.\]
— Hello?
— *Hi. It’s* \[name deleted\]. *Your driver is on the way. He’s just stuck in traffic.*
— So my stuff hasn’t been delivered after all.
— *No. There was a change of driver, so they marked the stuff as delivered for some reason.*
— A change of driver?
— *Well, yes.* \[Embarrassed pause.\] *The first driver sort of quit.*
— Quit?
— *Yeah. And they had to send another driver out to recover the truck in Vegas. But he’ll be there soon. I promise.*

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title: 'Summer Reading'
date: '2002-08-12T08:54:26-04:00'
permalink: /summer-reading/
tags:
- novels
---
Having gotten myself and my stuff by various paths back to Southern California (though I am at a loss to say we all arrived in one piece, as said stuff has yet to be unpacked, and cannot be unpacked until a date by which the promise of moving-company reimbursement will no doubt have passed), and having dealt with the year’s worth of nonsense mail that piled up in the office, and having passed on the manuscript of my Stupid Book to a couple of friendly readers, and having done what organizational tasks can actually be accomplished at this point —
— having done all that, I recognized this weekend that I exist in the blissful and much too rare state of having Nothing in Particular to Do. And thus, I spent the weekend lying around reading summer novels and watching summer DVD releases.
I read one [book](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0316666343) that has topped the bestseller lists for some weeks, which I found moving and fluid, and wildly inappropriate as a birthday gift for the aunt to whom I’d sent it last month.
I read [another](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0375412824), recommended to me by the highest of [authorities](http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/gma020613_ReadThis_Packer.html) (authorities whom, it may interest you to know, have now moved on to the [book](http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA02087LovelyBones.html) above) but, while the book was a fast-paced, congenial read, it has nonetheless caused a significant revision in my list of the top-ten fictional characters I’d most like to slap around.
I also watched two movies recently released on DVD, [one](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0211915) of which I found thoroughly charming, if perhaps not quite worthy of an entire companion DVD of “special features,” and the [other](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0246578) of which left me with a bad taste in my mouth, the acrid after-effects of a very very High Concept that simply doesn’t pay off (despite a brilliant performance by a former Dancer, of the Dirty variety).
The end result of all of which is more reading, catching up on some [things](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=66UQJ18C6P&isbn=0375724834) I meant to read two years ago, and anxiously anticipating the release of some other [things](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374277826/ref=pd_nfy_nr_b_5/102-2663923-5374522) yet to come.

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title: 'Coming Soon...'
date: '2002-08-20T15:24:42-04:00'
permalink: /coming-soon/
tags:
- blogging
---
I’ve been running hither and yon (mostly yon) these last weeks, and dealing with the complexities of life-in-a-suitcase, and thus failing to resume anything like my normal programming schedule. But I promise, I’ll be back with new things soon.
Like: thoughts about Helen DeWitt’s [The Last Samurai](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0EUEFVAQL7&isbn=0786887001) (which bears no connection to the forthcoming [Cruise vehicle](http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,9574,00.html)), which was pressed upon me by a colleague and which I’ve spent my few available writing hours instead devouring.
And: twelve reasons why I hate Neil LaBute, none of which so aptly or calmly put as [Bill’s](http://www.wombatfile.com/archives/000585.html).
And: an ode to my new [Titanium](http://www.apple.com/powerbook/).
And: a notable absence of whining about the intricacies of my move, which is at last due to complete this Saturday.
All this, and more, in the next few days.

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title: 'The Perils of Genius'
date: '2002-08-22T09:37:20-04:00'
permalink: /the-perils-of-genius/
tags:
- novels
---
No, not my own.
As promised, some thoughts about Helen DeWitt’s [The Last Samurai](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0EUEFVAQL7&isbn=0786887001), from the cover of which one would be hard-pressed to tell that the novel is set in late twentieth-century London.
The novel revolves around Ludo, a prodigious genius cultivated by his brilliant, eccentric single mother, Sybilla. Ludo’s insatiable appetite for knowledge leads him to acquire every new language and new subject that he comes across. He learns to read at 2. He reads the *Odyssey* at 4 — oh, yes, in Greek. He absorbs information on Lagrangian mechanics, number theory, and aerodynamics with seemingly little effort. But the one piece of information he most wants — the identity of his father — is the one that eludes him.
Most commentators on the novel have concentrated upon Ludo’s quest for a suitable father figure, and indeed, the novel seems to foster such a focus, as Sybilla, whose voice begins the novel, gradually recedes into the text’s background (frustratingly, for one [reviewer](http://partners.nytimes.com/books/00/10/15/reviews/001015.15goldbet.html), who dismisses the novel as evidence of a first-timer’s over-ambition). Ludo’s search draws upon the film referenced by the novel’s title, Kurosawa’s *Seven Samurai,* as he constructs a series of tests for each of the potential father-figures he approaches. As both film and novel remind us, however, “a good samurai will parry the blow,” and thus a worthy figure for Ludo’s attentions will foil his schemes.
The title’s focus on the *last* samurai, however, suggests that the quest is not as simple as “a young boy’s search for a father” might make it seem. While each of the men Ludo tests (not counting his actual, biological father, who is of mediocre intellect and even lesser talent) can offer him the kind of intellectual support that can be extended from one genius to another, each has also been irretrievably damaged by his own genius, becoming filled with anger, or ambition, or despair, or madness. In Ludo’s encounter with the last potential samurai, the purpose of this quest for a father resolves into something unexpected: not a search for a male role-model who can lead him into new fields of knowledge and adventure, but rather a search for someone who has faced the perils of genius and found a way to survive. Someone who can give not Ludo but Sibylla the wherewithal to go on.
The novel seems to me, then, in its final chapters, not to relegate Sibylla to the fading background, but rather to investigate precisely, if in a way that can never be wholly satisfied, the nature of her fading, and what can be done to save her. One of the perils of genius, in a world of marketing copy and quickie reviews, is its very evanescence, its etherealness, its tendency to evade the grasping hand like smoke. Like any good samurai, however, the last one can parry the blow.

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title: 'Twelve Reasons I Hate Neil LaBute'
date: '2002-08-23T06:26:00-04:00'
permalink: /twelve-reasons-i-hate-neil-labute/
tags:
- 'random thoughts'
---
1\. For his conviction that he had the right temperament to succeed in his adaptation of *Possession,* a brilliant novel now stinking up a Multiplex near you: “I loved the parallel stories … really all the things that were in the book interested me. I was in academia. I’ve been an anglophile for a long time. I have always written about relationships and here were two relationships that were very different. So all the elements spoke to me, it just seemed like a natural fit.” (From the [IndieWire interview](http://www.indiewire.com/film/interviews/int_LaBute_Neil_020814.html).)
2\. *In the Company of Men*.
3\. *Your Friends and Neighbors*. (Need I elaborate?)
4\. For saying the following about *Your Friends and Neighbors*: “I think of the movie as a comedy in many ways. I think there are quite a few laughs in the movie. As you’re sitting there watching it, you may think about something beyond that, and feel that it’s got some teeth to it, but I do think it has some bite. But it’s still a comedy.” (From the [Onion A/V Club](http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3404/bonusfeature13404.html) interview.)
5\. For making it impossible for me ever to like Ben Stiller again.
6\. For joking, with regard to *In the Company of Men*, that “I was trying to make a feel-good summer hit (laughs).” (From the [first Salon interview](http://www.salon.com/aug97/entertainment/labute970801.html).)
7\. For single-handedly creating the career of [Aaron Eckhart](http://us.imdb.com/Name?Eckhart,+Aaron).
8\. For my sneaking sense that he would enjoy the fact that I hate these movies so much.
9\. For being a real bonehead about the reaction to his movies: “At \[*In the Company of Men*‘s\] Sundance debut, an audience already on edge over the uncomfortable ending threw its first question at the writer/director: Why is the movie’s victim a deaf woman? ‘And I just, kinda offhanded, said, “Because I always thought deaf people were funny,”‘ recalls LaBute, who, of course, instantly acquired a rep for insensitivity. ‘For a long time, that label stuck — the film’s still called misogynist.'” (From the [Dallas Observer](http://www.dallasobserver.com/extra/labute-1.html).)
10\. For having an insufficient number of [rotten tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/p/NeilLaBute-1125185/) hurled at him.
11\. For this assessment of the horrors of 9/11: “I wrote about a sort of flash point I had, where I was standing in line, four days later, in Union Station in Chicago, lugging my bags around trying to get on this train and half-hoping there was a first-class line that I could get in to, and sort of realizing, you know, that we’re back to basics, everybody was just sort of fighting for space. And I had this moment of thinking, ugh, I really don’t like this, it’s really inconvenient what happened. It’s really sad, of course. But it’s rather inconvenient today. ” (From the [second Salon interview](http://dir.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2001/11/26/labute/index.html).)
12\. For the thought, the very *thought*, that he might be involved in the film version of [Angels in America](http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/377228).

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title: 'I Need a 404 Page'
date: '2002-08-26T08:12:30-04:00'
permalink: /i-need-a-404-page/
tags:
- networks
---
like [this](http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/404.html).

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title: "Because You Didn't Ask"
date: '2002-08-29T08:57:09-04:00'
permalink: /because-you-didnt-ask/
tags:
- novels
---
The Top Five[^1] Fictional Characters I’d Like to Slap Around:
1\. Lily Bart, *The House of Mirth.* First, last, and always. How can she not see the mistakes she’s making? I just want to shake her awake, tell her to snap out of it.
2\. Laurence Selden, *The House of Mirth.* ‘I love her; I don’t love her. I wish I could save her, but what could I do?’ Confirmed bachelor, my Aunt Fannie. Come out of the closet already, Larry.
3\. Carrie Bell, *The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.* The character that [spawned](/summer_reading/) this version of the list. Annoying both in her selfishness and in her inability to stand up for the things she wants, or even to believe that the things she wants might be important. Weak enough to be pushed around by everyone. And crappy taste in men, to boot.
4\. Newland Archer, *The Age of Innocence.*[^2] ‘I love her, but gosh, society frowns upon our love.’ Worse yet: ‘Society once frowned upon our love, but even though no one would mind our relationship now, it would just hurt too much to see her again.’ Please.
5\. Isabel Archer, *Portrait of a Lady.* Okay, the courage of your convictions is one thing. Standing by your commitments, sure. But not getting yourself out of an abusive relationship just because you said I do and a lady keeps her word is just moronic.
[^1]:I am both dissatisfied with the five-ness of this list, when I began with the intent of creating a list of ten, and with the list itself. Contributions, please. How should I fill out the list, and who on the list needs replacing?
[^2]:NB: Archer should perhaps be higher in the rankings because of the multiplication of my desire to inflict violence upon him by Daniel Day Lewis’s portrayal of said character in the Scorsese film.

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title: Orientation
date: '2002-09-03T07:16:29-04:00'
permalink: /orientation/
tags:
- novels
---
Classes begin today, my friends, thus ending the long orientation process that precedes every fall semester. The bulk of our students showed up on campus this weekend. Some had been here longer, of course: a very few were here all summer; another group arrived two weeks ago to prepare for orientation; the Class of 2006 arrived a week ago. But for the most part Saturday, August 31, was the day of influx. Wandering around campus prior to meeting with my advisees, I watched students unpacking computers and stereo systems nicer than any I may ever own, and watched parents rolling stacks of boxes balanced on ergonomic desk chairs across uneven sidewalks toward ranks of newly renovated dorm rooms. And, in watching, could not help but think of the following, which is in all but a few respects wholly applicable here:
> The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags — onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum Dum pops, the Mystic mints. \[Don DeLillo, *White Noise*.\]
This is, of course, the day of the station wagons at the College on the Hill. Here, at the College Just South of the Hill, things are recognizably similar. The technologies have advanced, naturally, replacing albums and cassettes with CDs and DVDs and their immaterial hard-drive equivalents. The saddles are instead represented by mountain bikes, the skis by skateboards, the rafts by roller blades. The most immediately notable transformation, however, is in the day itself; there are no station wagons. Saturday was instead, here, the day of the SUVs.
So, with GPS in hand, or dashboard, or integrated overhead display, our students have gathered their bearings, oriented themselves to the new year. Today we commence.

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title: 'Violence and the Novel, Part Two'
date: '2002-09-09T16:52:57-04:00'
permalink: /violence-and-the-novel-part-two/
tags:
- novels
---
I’m rereading *The House of Mirth* for class right now, and I’m taking under advisement mariah’s [suggestion](/because_you_didnt_ask/) that I remove Laurence Selden from my list of characters I’d like to smack around. Perhaps she’s right: it seems logical that I make allowances for the novel’s ostensible perspective on its characters, distinguishing between those the reader is meant to like but who are nonetheless so annoying as to drive one to violence (e.g., Dick Diver) and those the reader is meant to view skeptically from the get-go. Like Laurence Selden. A good point.
And yet. Selden’s flaw — his most literal weakness — is his inability to commit to any depth of feeling. Poor boy, wants to live free in the republic of the spirit, and all that. The problem, for me at least, is that he seems to think that he is being brave in this desire for freedom, rather than shrinking in cowardly fashion from human contact. Complete self-deception, in other words. And the cost of that self-deception, for Lily, is high indeed. Take this early moment: having happened upon Lily in a train station, he is drawn to her “as a spectator,” and yet cannot resist getting involved:
> “What luck!” she repeated. “How nice of you to come to my rescue!”
>
> He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked what form the rescue was to take.
That combination of attraction and hesitation, making her — even in jest — his “mission in life” and then demanding to know the particulars of what she needs, presages everything that is wrong with Selden. His ultimate, genuine failure to come to Lily’s rescue when she most needs it is perhaps explicable; he is weak, after all, and it would take a kind of courage that he does not possess to save her. But it’s finally his utter lack of self-knowledge, his determination to understand his cowardice as bravery — epitomized by the novel’s penultimate lines — that carries him beyond the pale for me:
> He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he *had* loved her — had been willing to stake his future on his faith in her — and if the moment had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
Fated? Willing to stake his future? I doubt both of these conditions highly — had Selden found her alive and well at novel’s end, I can only assume that some other new reservation would have interposed itself between him and committing to her.
All this to say that perhaps it’s not — or not only — the novel’s perspective on its characters that might determine whether or not they’re worthy of being throttled, but — or but also — the characters’ own self-regard. There are those — and Dick Diver and Selden both fall into this category — who seem to consider themselves more sinned against than sinning, when the rest of the text seems rife with evidence to the contrary.

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title: 'Today, Of Course'
date: '2002-09-10T23:00:46-04:00'
permalink: /today-of-course/
tags:
- watching
---
Night before last (meaning Monday night, the 9th), I watched Showtime’s airing of [Reflections from Ground Zero](http://www.sho.com/movies/movies_product.cfm?titleid=116902), a series of nine short films produced by graduate students from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. I’m not sure whether it was any of the films themselves, or rather the generally haunting remembrances, or my past life at NYU, or my more personal and present requirement to address the date in a suitably professorial manner (at a faculty-student luncheon at which I’m to appear on an official panel) — whatever the cause, night before last (meaning, as I write pre-sleep, last night) I dreamed of the World Trade Center, over and over.
Dreamed of watching it come down, powerless on the wrong side of the country and on the wrong side of the television screen. Dreamed of searching for a way off of the 104th floor. Dreamed of debris, and panic, and evacuations.
Today is a day I’d rather not acknowledge — rather not, in fact, experience. Rather ignore from a safe spot, with the covers pulled securely over my head. I don’t suppose, though, that any of us have that luxury any more, and that the luxury of covers-over-head is part of what got us into this mess in the first place.
I don’t have anything suitably professorial to greet the day with, no guidance for my students, or even, at a much baser level, for myself.
What I do have is a need to reach out. A quick message, then, for the friends I left in New York, now a shocking four years ago: I miss you more today than ever.

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title: "Me & Charlie Kurault"
date: '2002-09-18T08:41:33-04:00'
permalink: /me-charlie-kurault/
tags:
- blogging
---
Planned Obsolescence has been on the road these last five days, and has had only the most tenuous of connections to the Internet. Please forgive our absence; we’ll be back with further ruminations in a day or two.

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title: 'The Role of the Book'
date: '2002-09-19T08:36:14-04:00'
permalink: /the-role-of-the-book/
tags:
- novels
---
I have spent much of the last six days cooling my heels through various plane flights (and the inevitably attendant airport delays), dawdling in various hotel rooms, and generally seeking ways to pass the time. My strategies for time-passage have nearly always revolved around books; I tend, for that reason, to travel with an average of more than 200% of my actual per-journey reading capacity, sort of a reading version of the eyes-bigger-than-stomach buffet dilemma.
This week, I managed to make it through most of what I carried, some of which was required class-reading (finishing *The House of Mirth*; starting *A Lost Lady*). My brain has gotten hung up, however, in Neal Stephenson’s *The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer*. There are a number of worthy reasons for this absorption: Stephenson’s voice is simultaneously riotous and accurate, rendering with deadly precision the details of the near-future merger of consumer choice and individual identity and the balkanization of both consumer preferences and residential communities (his invention in *Snow Crash* of the FOQNE — or franchise-owned quasi-national entity — and the “burb-clave” being grand examples). This kind of detail, at once funny and pointed, pushes Stephenson’s work beyond the standard — if you’ll pardon the characterization — adolescent male fantasies of most cyberpunk. If you’ve never read any Stephenson, go get *Snow Crash*. Right now. I’ll wait here.
*The Diamond Age*, however, adds something more to Stephenson’s previous critique of contemporary U.S. culture. Where *Snow Crash* could conceivably be accused of using its hero’s ethnicity in the same Orientalizing manner seen in Gibson’s *Neuromancer* and Ridley Scott’s *Blade Runner*, *The Diamond Age* attempts to interrogate the imperialist relationship between east and west through its representations of 21st century Shanghai, at once inescapably diverse and radically segregated. Moreover, where *Snow Crash*‘s tough teenage heroine, Y.T., could be interpreted as a Buffy-ized version of the ass-kicking, leather-clad objects of male pleasure and terror that pop up throughout cyberpunk (Gibson’s Molly being the ultimate case in point), *The Diamond Age* suggests, both through the detailed development of its heroine, Nell, and through the overwhelming force of the Mouse Army (composed of orphaned girls), an advanced critique of gender relations from the Victorian period forward.
What’s really got my brain hung up on the novel, though, is the role played within it by the eponymous *Primer*. Of the multiple possibilities I’ve encountered for the book’s future, possibilities imagined by writers, scholars, and technocrats alike, the *Primer* is without question my favorite. However much I may have coveted Y.T.’s skateboard, I covet this book more. “Printed” on smart paper, with a high-end rod logic processing system and a deeply interactive structure growing out of a foundation in traditional narrative, the *Primer* entertains, instructs, and nurtures its reader, teaching her not only facts and figures but also how to learn in the first place. The *Primer* guides Nell as she grows, growing with her, responding to the changing circumstances of her life, expanding its genre from traditional fairy tales to embrace a new kind of self-reflexivity in order to teach her the fundamentals of its own programming, and developing an increasingly complex and even porous relationship with the outside world. Stephenson makes an overwhelming case for the power of this book in its heroine’s development, a case that makes me wonder, given the confluence of my own current reading material: could Lily Bart have been saved, like the similarly motherless Nell, if she’d had access to the *Primer*?
Or, acknowledging the uncrossable barrier presented by the technology involved, were there any books, of the old print-on-paper variety, that could have saved Lily Bart?

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title: 'Back to School'
date: '2002-09-25T12:55:51-04:00'
permalink: /back-to-school/
tags:
- networks
---
The new season has at last begun, and eager students are buckling down all over campus, absorbing new materials, debating new ideas, and anticipating developments to come.
I’m referring, of course, to the new television season.
I’ve only caught one [new](http://www.upn.com/shows/haunted "Haunted") series thus far this season, and don’t yet have anything worthwhile to say about it. I’m intrigued, however, by the fact that two otherwise very dissimilar [returning](http://www.hbo.com/sopranos "The Sopranos") [series](http://www.buffy.com "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") focus in their early episodes on back-to-school anxieties. Of course, there’s a difference between being depressed and directionless and being a sitting duck for whatever’s coming out of the hellmouth next, but nonetheless: school is apparently, this year, a scary place.
So what new shows are *you* watching?

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title: "Where There's Smoke..."
date: '2002-09-30T05:27:31-04:00'
permalink: /where-theres-smoke/
tags:
- life
---
Just a few miles north of here — how few can be attested by the near-constant whirring of engines overhead and the overwhelmingly acrid air — the mountains are on fire, and have been for a week. Air quality has deteriorated to the extent that all non-essential outdoor activities on campus have been canceled for the duration. And once again this morning, I’ve awakened to find my apartment filled with the smell of smoke.
Few of you will be faced with neighborhood wildfires, but perhaps you might understand why I’ve recently become obsessed with this [site](http://geomac.usgs.gov "GEOMAC") of late. We’re the Williams Fire, if you want to get the lowdown on our situation.

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title: 'A Farewell to Ernest'
date: '2002-10-03T17:24:21-04:00'
permalink: /a-farewell-to-ernest/
tags:
- novels
---
Then in the late summer of that year there was reading, much reading of many books, and many of them were fine books. Some of the books we read were to be written about, and some of the books were just for fun, and some of the books were to be taught. The books were stacked in piles around the house and the office, on the tables and chairs and on the desks, and their pages were dry and white and papery and fine. Many of the books were fine.
The books were rich with ideas; they spoke of women who got in trouble and died, and women who just got lost, and they spoke too of smart, tough girls who saved many lives, some of them their own. But some of the books were not so kind to the women they spoke of, and some of the books were a pain to read, for that reason.
And then in the early fall of that year, as the fire raged in the hills and a dry sooty ash slipped in around the windows and settled over the piles of books, and as the fire began to be brought under control, it came time for us to read a [book](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0CP0HTKD8F&isbn=0684801469 "A Farewell to Arms") that was not so fine, at least not in our reading of it, and that produced a dreadful loneliness and despair, and we soothed the despair with a fine cold gin martini. Because there are some books to which a reader must bring much intelligence, and if people bring so much intelligence to these books the books have to kill them to break them, so of course they kill them. These books break every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break they kill. They kill the very good and the very gentle and the very smart impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure they will kill you too but they will be in no special hurry.
It was only too late when we realized that we controlled the syllabus. That book is over for us now. We are through. We wish the others all the luck, the good ones, and the brave ones, and the calm ones and the smart ones. But it is not our book anymore. Goodbye to the book.

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title: "What's Next? 'Postmodernism! The Musical'?"
date: '2002-10-08T14:20:43-04:00'
permalink: /whats-next-postmodernism-the-musical/
tags:
- networks
---
This is apparently the season of the improbable stage production here in SoCal. Two much-acclaimed works of cultural criticism (each with ties to the journalistic tradition, but with very different results) have been set loose upon the stage in L.A. this fall. I saw [one](http://www.marktaperforum.com/taper/current_show.asp?showid=181 "Nickel and Dimed") this weekend, which sadly maintains the self-congratulatory analysis-free (and solution-free) sensitivity to the plight of the oppressed of its originary text. (This production has also led me to the conclusion that the revolving set is the worst catastrophe ever to be visited upon the legitimate theater.) The [other](http://chili.arts.ucla.edu/Default.asp?dTbID=659&page=view "Lipstick Traces"), which originated in New York last year, I haven’t seen, but am somewhat curious about. At least there’s something inherently theatrical about the original text, having performance as its subject, but nonetheless — can the critical import of the analysis of a performance be fed back into performance?
There’s something in this new trend, I think, that bodes well for the future of scholarship. No longer content with the mythical crossover book, which extends beyond its academic audience to reach a general readership, the scholarly author can now have as a grail the sale of stage (or, perhaps, even film) rights to her newest monograph. In fact, I am thinking of taking on as a new project the stage and/or film adaptation of other works of criticism. Any suggestions?

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title: 'Fall Break'
date: '2002-10-18T20:27:04-04:00'
permalink: /fall-break/
tags:
- reading
- watching
---
Ahhh. A few blissful days to regroup, kick off one’s shoes, sip a warm beverage, grade two stacks of papers, read three books, plan two committee meetings, fly to Albuquerque for a conference, finish the revisions on the manuscript, meet with the architects on the building renovation, and otherwise enjoy a few days of… um… calm.
There’s been very little posting here of late (by me, I mean, not by my faithful commenters), which makes me very sad. The falloff has less to do with the fact that I haven’t had time to write than with the fact that I haven’t had time to get interested enough in anything to consider it worth writing about. And that’s just darned sad. So a moment to follow up on a couple of topics raised by earlier comments:
– Mom was in town this past week, and on Wednesday, we caught an episode of *The West Wing*, the first I’ve seen in just about a year, and can I just say, yawn. Aaron, my friend, you’ve let me down. Where is the pop and fizz of *Sports Night*, both in the dialogue and in the characters? Where is the obsessive treatment of governmental arcana so fascinating in the first years of TWW’s run? Once upon a time, your show managed to be the foremost public outlet for serious political discourse without being preachy or self-righteous; what has caused this vast decline? Is it simply the never-ending campaign trail? Has the Jeb Bartlett I once wanted to be my president gone the way of Al Gore, self-parodying, bombastic, and impotent?
– Having been taken to task for my gripes with Barbara Ehrenreich’s *Nickel and Dimed*, and in preparation for a student reading group of same (itself in preparation for a lecture by author of same, here at the College Just South of the No-Longer Flaming Hill), I’m delving into the book again, this time with a new appreciation (thanks to CSA and BT) for the ways that Ehrenreich herself actually does describe the limitations of both her project and its potential for inspiring social change. You’re absolutely right, CSA, that the book is a wake-up call, and you, BT, are similarly dead-on in suggesting that this wake-up call is aimed at those sitting the ideological fence, closing their eyes to the difficulties of the working poor and persuading themselves that the American dream works, because it’s convenient. Ehrenreich never really makes any bones about the fact that the book is journalism, not scholarship, and as such, I think I ask too much of it to ask for solutions. Part of my earlier aggravation, which was really transformed into high dudgeon by the play — which is in effect an extended monologue by “Barbara Ehrenreich,” supported by a cast of amusing and pitiful workers — has to do with the centrality of Ehrenreich’s voice in the book, the ways that the narrative becomes all about her. But then, this is a larger problem with journalism today, I think: the story, as a friend once observed, now transforms with light-speed into the story of the story, and in *that* story, the journalist is hero.
I think there’s a connection between these two things, but I’m too tired to be able to figure it out right now. Perhaps after a little bit of the “rest” I’m sure to get during my fall “break,” and after a little input from some friends, I’ll take another stab at it.

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title: Arrgh.
date: '2002-10-24T15:49:40-04:00'
permalink: /arrgh/
tags:
- networks
---
I’ve been gnashing my teeth over a stupid [browser](http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp "Netscape, that is") problem, and bemoaning said browser’s total lack of online support, particularly of the discussion group sort, and thinking to myself that gee, I wish I had someone I could ask this question, or some forum in which I could ask it.
Okay, so I’m slow.
Anyway, here’s the issue, and I’m mostly aiming at you multi-browser Mac OS X types. See the link over on the right that reads [Academic Belatedness](http://pages.pomona.edu/~kfitzpatrick/ "Oh, heck, I'll reproduce it here.")? Follow that link, first in IE5. Things should look pretty familiar to you; I’m using a more-or-less identical CSS on that server to that I’m using here. Fine.
Now follow that link in Netscape/Mozilla.
You see what I mean? For some reason, Netscape can’t find the CSS. It’s not as though it can’t *read* it; it reads it fine on this server, and even when I open the Academic Belatedness page from my hard drive, where it sits in precisely the same relation to the CSS as it does on the server, it reads fine there. It just simply can’t (or won’t — perhaps it’s an act of will, designed to make me batty) find it on the server.
Any ideas? As you might guess, I’m clueless, and annoyed.

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title: 'The News Just Keeps Getting Worse'
date: '2002-10-25T10:42:22-04:00'
permalink: /the-news-just-keeps-getting-worse/
tags:
- networks
---
One day after [Shauny](http://www.shauny.org/pussycat/2002_10.php#002215 "What's New, Pussycat?")‘s outcry against the ongoing horrors of the morning news, there is [this](http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/25/plane.crash.minn/index.html): the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, his daughter, three staffers, and two crew members in a plane crash in Minnesota.
It’s too awful even to comment upon.

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title: 'None of the Above'
date: '2002-11-05T08:02:05-05:00'
permalink: /none-of-the-above/
tags:
- politics
---
Have just come from completing civic duty, which is increasingly difficult to imagine has any beneficial effect in the world, given the awful [lesser](http://www.graydavis.com/ "Lesser.")-of-two-[evils](http://www.billsimon.com/ "Evil.") choice before us here today. Thank goodness for the phone calls this weekend from [my favorite president](http://www.nbc.com/The_West_Wing/index.html "Fictional.") advising me in the casting of this vote.
The most important race on the ballot, however, is not this year’s gubernatorial election, but that of 2006, the primary for which is being held today. Proposition 49 — aimed at creating after-school programs for “at-risk” kids (good), but funded in a loaves-and-fishes style, in which no new taxes are raised and no existing programs are cut (puzzling at best) — is the brainchild of [this candidate](http://www.joinarnold.com/ "Lesser, Evil, or Fictional? You Decide."), who everyone openly acknowledges is testing the waters for a gubernatorial run.
And I thought the Gipper was frightening.

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title: Deconstruction
date: '2002-11-11T17:23:10-05:00'
permalink: /deconstruction-2/
tags:
- networks
---
An odd weekend: I made the mistake of reaching for a hairbrush on Saturday morning — I should know better — and was rewarded with a muscle spasm between left shoulderblade and spine. The initial sensation — think cattle prod — was bad enough, but worse was the knowledge (from too many previous experiences) that the next couple of hours would present a gradual stiffening into total immobility and an increasing sense that any movement would cause the ripping of muscle from bone. I tried the hot shower thing, which everyone recommends but which never ever works, and being failed by that, hopped in the car for a quick visit to the good folks at the Urgent Care division of my doctor’s office. I was briefly poked, presumably examined for the signs of jonesing, and given a big prescription for big muscle relaxers, with the express instructions to (a) take them on a full stomach, (b) only take 1/2 of one during the day, and (c) prepare the day’s food in advance of taking the first one.
Well.
Being me, I had plans that could not be disrupted. I did, responsibly, get someone else to drive. And I did warn my colleagues about my newly developed combination of stiffness and stonitude. But I went out nonetheless.
To see [Derrida](http://www.derridathemovie.com "I kid you not.").
Oh, sure, those of you on the right coast have had this odd little biopic for weeks, but this far from the Yale English department, things take their time. So here I am, with a row of folks from my department and a host of other academics and intellectuals and people with very funky glasses frames, watching a documentary about a theorist that becomes a theory of the documentary impulse and of the relationship between documentation and theory. It’s not perfect — at moments, it’s downright annoying — but it’s nonetheless fascinating. Maybe it was the drugs, but I was spellbound. And maybe it was the muscle spasm, but I could not turn away.
In any event, I have a new piece of slang I’d like to promote:
> [**skelaxin**](http://www.elan.com/Products/Skelaxin/ "Skelaxin") (skuh-LAK-sin) *pres. part. of vi* **skelax** 1. chillin, esp. in the company of scholastic acquaintances. *Despite the intensity of the film’s discourse, I was pretty much —.*

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title: 'Um... Is This Thing On?'
date: '2002-11-25T16:38:24-05:00'
permalink: /um-is-this-thing-on/
tags:
- networks
---
Remember me? I used to write stuff here, and periodically even had something to say. Alas, in the last few weeks I’ve been transformed into a committee drone, and have been mucking about in a paperwork swamp. Really. If paper could ooze, I’d be covered in it up to my elbows.
In short, once again — and I recognize that this is getting a bit tiresome and repetitive — apologies for the absence. I’ll be back soon. Promise.

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title: 'A Passage to Mordor, by E. M. Forster'
date: '2002-12-30T18:39:05-05:00'
permalink: /a-passage-to-mordor-by-e-m-forster/
tags:
- networks
---
Or perhaps *Hunt for the Ring*, by Tom Clancy. Can’t decide which is my [favorite](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=e3006016c005b05fefec1bf6f73d4afa&threadid=138905&perpage=50&pagenumber=1).

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title: 'On Fleeing Times Square'
date: '2002-12-30T12:04:16-05:00'
permalink: /on-fleeing-times-square/
tags:
- conferences
- travel
---
A brief return to the blogsphere, with the promise of more shortly.
Have spent the last four days in the town part of me still considers [home](http://www.nyc.gov "The town so nice, you need a minimum six figures a year to live there."). The cab ride from the airport, in fact, had all the emotional groundtone of the return after long tiresome journey, with heightened urgency due to the five-year duration of said journey. This sense of homecoming was rendered surreal, however, by the fact that the cab took me to an enormous hotel smack in the middle of Times Square.
I’m now really on the way home, post-holidays, post-[Anxiety Fest](http://www.mla.org "the MLA, that is"), and am happily anticipating [blue skies and 70 degrees](http://www.weather.com/weather/local/91711?lswe=91711&lwsa=WeatherLocalUndeclared "Just you don't think I'm making it up."). The [Entertainment Capital of the World](http://www.timessquare.com "Times Square, of course") left me a bit exhausted. The Christmas carols blaring from giant speakers mounted on every corner were only the most literal manifestation of the place’s too-muchness, its utter disconnect from the city I still love, but they nonetheless bade me a fond farewell, wishing for [frozen precipitation](http://guitar.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geocities.com/etheltheaardvark/letitsnowchords.txt "Let It Snow") as my cab inched away.

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title: 'Farewell to the Palindrome'
date: '2003-01-01T09:13:56-05:00'
permalink: /farewell-to-the-palindrome/
tags:
- travel
---
2002 ended with a lurch: My flight back west was hung up in Houston for 3 hours due to storms, and so arrived at 1:15 am on December 31, rather than 10:15 pm, Dec. 30. Waited for suitcase, grabbed cab, gave directions to difficult-to-find residence. Which was suspiciously dark. The short of it: construction work necessitating the turning-off of electrical power, which I’d assured would be done no later than 4 pm, Dec. 30, was not done. I was powerless.
So: it was late, I was exhausted, and the best option seemed to feel one’s way bedward and collapse therein, and sort out the pieces by the light of the too-soon rising sun.
Except: the smoke detector above that bed, disconcerted by the lack of power running to it, was beeping. Loudly. Once a minute. Loudly and invisibly, and neck-breakingly overhead.
So: plan B. Feel one’s way downstairs, rifle through one’s suitcase for toiletry kit and pajamas, and drive to hotel for night.
Except: the car remained in a parking lot on the south end of campus, whence I drove to meet the airport shuttle at 4 am, Dec. 18.
So: 2 am, Dec. 31, walk across deserted campus to car, drive to hotel, check in and get blissful night’s sleep.
Except: hotel’s computer system was down, necessitating a 15 to 30 minute wait in the lobby for a room, and the use of one’s full faculties to avoid bursting into exhausted and defeated tears.
So: finally got room, presented hotel bill to maintenance on return to campus, was gratified to find power was finally restored, spent very subdued New Year’s Eve over great Thai dinner, cheap champagne, and Dick Clark, before returning home to collapse exhaustedly into one’s own silent bed.
Except: power outage resulted somehow in shut-down of hot water heater.
I give. Here’s wishing everyone a peaceful, silent, well-lit, and warm 2003.

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title: 'I Never Was a Technical Guy, and Never Will Be[^1]'
date: '2003-01-07T13:50:43-05:00'
permalink: /i-never-was-a-technical-guy-and-never-will-be/
tags:
- networks
---
William Gibson has a [blog](http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp "Seriously.").
[^1]: Salza, Giuseppe. [“Interview with William Gibson.”](http://www.eff.org/Publications/William_Gibson/salza.interview "Courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation")

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title: "I'm Gonna Take You on a Surfin'... Oh, You Know"
date: '2003-01-08T09:45:34-05:00'
permalink: /im-gonna-take-you-on-a-surfin-oh-you-know/
tags:
- networks
---
Am happily running the public beta of Apple’s very own browser, [Safari](http://www.apple.com/safari "Safari"). It’s got that groovy brushed-metal iInterface that grace all the hippest iApps, even despite its absence of iNess. It’s light-years faster than IE5, which was released for the Mac approximately a decade ago. And — as open-source supportive as I am — it’s far less clunky than Mozilla. Plus, did I mention its brushed-metal interface?
I am, however, reserving judgment on Apple’s release of Keynote, the presentation software announced, in a head-spinning display of self-reflexivity, in Steve Jobs’s MacWorld keynote yesterday. On the one hand, if one must do presentations accompanied by what we used to call “visual aids,” how much better to create them in an environment not engineered by the Dark Side. On the other hand, what the world needs now is not a happily Apple-y PowerPoint, but *less* PowerPoint. Somebody, please, persuade me that Keynote will be a force for good in this world.

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title: 'The Wasp Factory'
date: '2003-01-10T14:33:09-05:00'
permalink: /the-wasp-factory/
tags:
- novels
---
I have in the last few days finished reading Iain Banks’s [The Wasp Factory](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=53GEEMNHSE&isbn=0684853159&itm=1 "The Wasp Factory"), and find myself itching to talk about it. This deeply demented little novel was published nearly 20 years ago, but just fell into my path recently. I need advice from Banks fans — where to from here?
I’m also sort of wondering whether I’m a complete idiot for not having seen the ending coming. I mean, I knew something was up — it was all just a little too pointedly odd — but I didn’t know what. And once I read the end, it all seemed so obvious that I was stunned I hadn’t been painfully aware of the truth about Frank all along.
For those of you who haven’t read the novel, I’m working really hard here on not giving it away. But go read it, quick, and come back and talk to me. I’ll be waiting.

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title: 'Life Among the Pre-Rich'
date: '2003-01-15T12:57:58-05:00'
permalink: /life-among-the-pre-rich/
tags:
- politics
---
Or, [why](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/12BROO.html "NY Times") the Democrats keep shifting rightward in defiance of Marxist theory. With pointed analysis from “the sociologist Jennifer Lopez.” (Via [Arts & Letters Daily](http://www.aldaily.com "Arts & Letters Daily").)

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title: "You Haven't Read My Book, Have You?"
date: '2003-01-15T23:23:48-05:00'
permalink: /you-havent-read-my-book-have-you/
tags:
- internets
---
Why doesn’t [Booknotes](http://www.booknotes.org/home/index.asp "Booknotes") sound more like [this](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1390395.stm "On the Beeb")? (Via [Bookslut](http://www.bookslut.com/blog.html "Bookslut").)
\[UPDATE: Crap. And here I thought I was asking a [question](http://www.bookslut.com/2003_01_01_archive.html#87495852) that was snarky but at least original. Note to self: read all the way to end of blog entry before blogging in.\]

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title: 'Advance Reading'
date: '2003-01-21T15:53:35-05:00'
permalink: /advance-reading/
tags:
- novels
---
It’s the first day of classes here at the College Just South of the Hill, and we’re all settling down with piles of books and crisp new notebooks. I’m hoping, this semester, to get some mileage out of those classes here in the land of Obsolescence; you can keep up with the readings yourself by checking out the Academic Belatedness link over there on the right.
So the good news is that we’ve got a clean slate, a new semester, and we’re all pretty caffeinated and rarin’ to go. The downside, however, is that for the foreseeable future, all the reading I’m going to be doing will be re-reading. Honestly, when folks hear I teach contemporary fiction, they inevitably ask me whether I’ve read something I invariably haven’t, because they just don’t realize that I spend the bulk of my career reading the same 50 books over and over and over. (And over.)
This re-reading feels like a particular loss right now, as I’ve spent the last couple of months both catching up on some things that came out last year and even reading a few things that have yet to be released. [One](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0374277826 "The Time of Our Singing") will hit the shelves tomorrow, as it turns out. [One](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0399149864 "Pattern Recognition") will be released next month. [One](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0743244249 "Cosmopolis") not until April. I’ve resisted writing about them to this point, being uncertain about the possible reviewerly embargoes on the texts. For the moment, however, I’ll bid my new reading adieu by making these few (ever-so-veiled) comments:
Each is in differing respects a departure from the novelist’s earlier work.
One brings to fruition two strains visible in the background of much of that earlier work, resulting in a novel of a scope and a sensitivity and a lyricism that one might be tempted to call transcendent.
One shows its author leaving aside the whiz-bang concerns of the past — or the future — in favor of a real engagement with the present.
One recapitulates the process of its author’s career, redeploying many of his earlier work’s set pieces and tropes, but does so with the effect of dismantling that earlier work, suggesting the very different world we live in now.

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title: 'Do Androids Dream of the Key to the Executive Washroom?'
date: '2003-01-26T14:07:12-05:00'
permalink: /do-androids-dream-of-the-key-to-the-executive-washroom/
tags:
- novels
---
Spent much of yesterday re-reading [Philip K. Dick](http://www.philipkdick.com/ "'Not associated with the estate of Philip K. Dick.'")‘s [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0345404475 "Do Androids...?") — though I was re-reading it in [this](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0345350472 "Really, do they?") groovy mass-market edition with the fabulous movie tie-in cover art, which is so thoroughly tied into the movie that the title has in fact been changed to *Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick)*. Love those parentheses.
There’s been all kinds of analysis done on the film’s melding of past and future — a post-apocalyptic L.A. dressed up in 1940s clothing, a sort of noir-punk aesthetic. But the passage of time has done something weirdly similar to the book, I think, which is set in what is now our too-near future (2021, to be exact) but deeply trapped in the ethos of the 1950s. Much of this time-disjuncture revolves around the workings of the offices of the future. One can hardly fault Dick for having failed to imagine the ways that the computer would transform the workplace of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but for a moment so filled with revolutionary possibilities as the late 1960s were, Dick betrays a surprising lack of imagination about the office politics of the future. Sure, Deckard getting his predecessor’s notes on the andys he’s hunting on “carbon flimsies” surprised me for a moment, but I was even more taken aback to rediscover that the San Francisco police department’s second-string bounty hunter has his own secretary. Who’s an incorrigible gossip. Who refers to him as “Mr. Deckard.” Who places his vidphone calls for him. I kept half-expecting him to take a client out for a three-martini lunch and then phone to let the wife know he’d be bringing the chief home for dinner.
The whole weird office-politics thing began to make a little more sense for me, though, when I found [this](http://www.twbookmark.com/books/35/1570420521/ "Time-Warner Audiobooks") audiobook version, read by Matthew Modine and Calista Flockhart. What makes that make sense, I’m not sure. But a universe that contains both Dick and Ally McBeal seems at least internally coherent.

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title: 'Information Security Begins With You!'
date: '2003-01-29T14:39:56-05:00'
permalink: /information-security-begins-with-you/
tags:
- networks
---
The [Propaganda Remix Project](http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html "Propaganda Remix"). Some of these are fantastic.

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title: 'Unplanned Absence'
date: '2003-02-19T18:32:44-05:00'
permalink: /unplanned-absence-2/
tags:
- networks
---
Sorry for the protracted radio silence; we’ve been in the home stretch of a search here, and I’ve been spending an astonishing amount of time going to job talks, conducting interviews, and generally glad-handing about. Then, in the interstices, there’s been that little teaching thing, and sometime late at night, occasionally, preparation for said teaching. So all my grand plans about regularity-in-posting were very quickly abandoned.
As of today, however, the search is complete, and I can get back to something approaching something like a regularly insane schedule. Expect more scintillating book-talk soon.
In the meantime, however, I’ll share with you this tidbit: yesterday in class, we wrapped up our discussion of Bruce Sterling’s [Schismatrix](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0441003702 "Schismatrix") (which is pronounced with a short /a/, instead of like a split-personality version of the Keanu Reeves [movie](http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?EAN=85392456628 "The Matrix, of course"), as Sterling rather pissily points out in the introduction to our edition), and I was very proud not to have to be the one to point out that the end state of the character Kitsune puts one a bit too much in mind of a giant vagina planet.

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---
title: 'Worst. Novel. Ever.'
date: '2003-02-24T11:26:28-05:00'
permalink: /worst-novel-ever/
tags:
- novels
---
Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post believes himself to have found “the worst novel ever published in the English language.” Moreover, he has gotten an [interview](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57528-2003Feb11.html "Washington Post") with Robert Burrows, the author of said opus, [The Great American Parade](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0972357505 "Not available at a Barnes & Noble near you"). It’s a shame, quite frankly, because the idea of the parade itself, in the hands of David Foster Wallace, say, or William Gaddis would be a set-piece of beauty. One quickly understands from the interview, however, that it simply was not to be.

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---
title: 'Back from the Undead'
date: '2003-02-27T16:14:18-05:00'
permalink: /back-from-the-undead/
tags:
- networks
---
Well, almost.
Oprah’s back, that is; she announced today that the book club will soon be [back](http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2301008 "Reuters") from the dead. Interestingly, Oprah’s Book Club, Take Two will focus on the much-maligned Dead White Men of the world of “literary classics.” Says Oprah, she “cannot imagine a world where the great works of literature are not read.”
Is it a coincidence that a mere 24 hours earlier, another cultural phenomenon announced the imminent [death](http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2302077 "Reuters") of its undead realm?

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---
title: 'Whether You Like It Or Not'
date: '2003-03-06T20:06:56-05:00'
permalink: /whether-you-like-it-or-not/
tags:
- networks
---
The following exchange is available for your further perusal in the most recent issue of [Harpers](http://www.harpers.org "Harpers").
> TOTO RECALL?
>
> From an October email exchange between Holger Turck and EMI Music in Germany. Translated from the German by Ben Ewing.
>
> \*\*\*
>
> Dear Sir or Madam,
>
> Yesterday I purchased the copy-protected TOTO CD “Through the Looking Glass.” The reverse side reads: “It is designed to be compatible with audioplayers, DVD players and PC-OS, MS Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or higher.” This statement is definitely false.
>
> – In reality, only tracks 1-8 are playable in my DVD player. I don’t own an ordinary CD player anymore, making this CD worthless.
>
> – In reality, my Macintosh plays only tracks 1-7. Result: the CD is worthless.
>
> – In reality, my PC would play the CD only if I were to use the software found on the CD itself. I am very careful when selecting the software that I install on my computer, and I refuse to be coerced into using proprietary software. As a result, this CD is worthless.
>
> This is all the more regrettable, as I am a dedicated fan of the group TOTO and own–among other items–all of their albums. It’s a pity that YOU have prevented me from being able to add their most recent work to my collection.
>
> You altogether ignore the simple fact that every purchaser is–by law–allowed to make a copy of his purchased CD. Your behavior is altogether illegal. As a result, I will not purchase another CD that is outfitted with copy-protection from your firm or from any other.
>
> How do you plan to win me back as a customer in the future?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Holger Turck
>
> \*\*\*
>
> Dear Mr. Turck,
>
> We will spare ourselves the trouble of addressing those observations in your email which are obviously uninformed. Simply realize: more than 250 million blank, recordable discs and tapes were sold and used this year, in comparison to 213 million prerecorded albums. Even without formal study in economics, it should be clear to anyone reading this that the music industry cannot continue to exist if the trend holds. The widespread copying of prerecorded audio material via the burning of CD-Rs can only be countered one way: namely, copy protection. We fear, however, that all these facts will not interest you in the slightest, as these measures will herald the end of free music, which surely won’t please you at all.
>
> Should you legitimately have a playback problem with the CD that you complained about, we would ask that you specify the exact CD player model for us. The scenario you put forth–multiple players failing to play the CD–can only be the stuff of fairy tales, given our experiences.
>
> In the event that you plan to protest future releases of copy-protected CDs, we can assure you that it is only a matter of months until more or less every CD released worldwide will include copy protection. To that end, we will do everything in our power, whether you like it or not.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Your EMI Team
Had this been online, I’d have linked instead of reprinting. I had a brief attack of scruples over this potential violation of copyright, blah blah blah, but it occurs to me that such anxieties about what amounts to fair use (moreover, in this case involving a magazine clearly in opposition to the alarmingly Germanic tactics of EMI) is precisely why fair use has eroded so disastrously in this country. So fight the power, man. Happily, this came to me today via e-mail, so I’m already redistributing a redistribution.
To top it off, I’d be thrilled to get a cease and desist letter — it would mean someone was still reading.

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---
title: 'Meetings: None of Us Is as Dumb as All of Us'
date: '2003-03-11T20:55:20-05:00'
permalink: /meetings-none-of-us-is-as-dumb-as-all-of-us/
tags:
- networks
---
> Perhaps you’re a wholly reasonable person, with the potential to become an irrational fool? Perhaps you’re a team player, with a potentially argumentative loner lurking about inside you? Or perhaps you’re a dreamer, within whom lives a potentially disillusioned grouse, simply waiting to take flight on the wings of bitterness?
If so, [this](http://www.despair.com/demotivators/indem.html "Despair, Inc.") is the company for you.

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---
title: 'Big Readers'
date: '2003-03-12T07:30:46-05:00'
permalink: /big-readers/
tags:
- novels
---
[Book Magazine](http://www.bookmagazine.com "Book Magazine") has released this [list](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml "Book Magazine's list") of “America’s Biggest Readers” (via [Arts & Letters Daily](http://www.aldaily.com/ "Arts & Letters Daily")). Each member of this list of folks consumes up to 20 books a week, with a diet ranging from romances through mysteries to the classics.
Something about this article completely freaks me out. Is it the sense one gets of a kind of impending textual obesity in these folks from the relentless reading-is-like-eating rhetoric (which I’ve of course reproduced above)? Is it the embarrassingly American celebration of quantity over quality? Is it that the nominees for [Biggest Reading Writer](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml#Writer "Biggest Reading Writer") and [Biggest Reader in the White House](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml#WhiteHouse "Biggest Reader in the White House") are themselves such horrifying spokespersons for the literary impulse in this country?

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---
title: 'Who Was That Masked Literary Researcher?'
date: '2003-03-13T21:59:33-05:00'
permalink: /who-was-that-masked-literary-researcher/
tags:
- novels
---
According to [The Memory Hole](http://www.thememoryhole.org/lit/pynchon-boeing.htm "The Memory Hole"), Thomas Pynchon’s lost-ish writings for Boeing, dating between early 1960 and mid-1962, may in fact resurface. These technical articles, circulated internally among Boeing employees and clients, ran without attribution. They still exist in the Boeing archives, however, and according to Michael J. Lombardi, Boeing’s historian (about which, who knew they had one), copies of these publications have recently been given to “a literary researcher” who hoped to divine which were products of the Pynchon pen.
In a particularly Pynchonesque twist, Lombardi cannot remember who the researcher was (or at least “no longer has that information”), but claims that “\[t\]he researcher was going to write a book — so you might want to keep watch for that.”
I am now imagining corporate plot, or mysterious auction, or author in disguise, capering away with the goods. Is there any doubt among Pynchon readers that the true locus of the Boeing apocrypha, like the will of Pierce Inverarity, will never be wholly known? (Via [The Morning News](http://www.themorningnews.org "The Morning News").)

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