Why I Love Neal Stephenson

This excerpt, about a house meeting:

Ike got up and announced he was moving out. He was tired of the plumbing problems, he said, and the weird messages on the answering machine, and Roscommon had come in while he was at work and torn down the Mel King campaign poster on our front balcony... Tess and Laurie, the lesbian carpenters, announced that they liked the kitchen better after we'd untrashed it and cleaned it up, so why not try to keep it that way? I pointed out that I had bought three new badminton birdies before I left for Buffalo and now they were all gone. Should we call this place a "co-op" or a "commune"? How about calling it a "house"? Who had scrubbed the Teflon off the big frying pan? Since Tess had weeded the garden, how many tomatoes did she get? Whose hair predominated in the shower drain-- the women's, since they had more, or the men's, since they were losing more? Was it okay to pour bacon grease down the drains if you ran hot water at the same time? Could bottles with metal rings on the necks be put in the recycling box? Should we buy a cord of firewood? Maple or pine? Did we agree that the people next door were abusing their children? Physically or just psychologically? Was boric acid roach powder a bioaccumulative toxin? Where was the bicycle-tire pump, and was it okay to take it on an overnight trip? Whose turn was it to scrub the green crap out from between the tiles in the bathroom?

I almost want to dye my hair pink and get a pair of Dr. Martens. It's page 157-158, chapter 20 of Zodiac.

Nonproductive Creativity vs. Productive Mediocrity

Perhaps Leonardo's greatest discovery was not the perfectibility of man but its opposite: He found that even the most profound thought combined with the most ferocious application cannot accomplish something absolutely true and beautiful. We cannot touch the face of God. But we can come close, and his work, imperfect as it may be, is one of the major demonstrations of heroic procrastination in Western history: the acceptance of our imperfection — and the refusal to accept anything less than striving for perfection anyway.

Leonardo is just one example of an individual whose meaning has been constructed, in part, to combat the vice of procrastination; namely, the natural desire to pursue what one finds most interesting and enjoyable rather than what one finds boring and repellent, simply because one's life must be at the service of some compelling interest — some established institutional practice — that is never clearly explained, lest it be challenged and rejected.

Interesting look at nonproductive genius, of which the author says there is much in academia, compared to forced production. At The Chronicle.

I know that we often feel the push to capitalize on our talents, to make money just to pay the bills, and people complain about the quality of the resulting product -- mediocre TV, sensational journalism, poorly written genre books, scandalous, attention-getting art. We mostly agree that money isn't the whole point. The point is to share genius, inspired energy, with others. One hopes to also make a living at it, but completing work is not just about money. Leonardo worked on commission, btw, and still didn't complete that much. It was his recognized genius that kept him afloat financially, to the chagrin of other artists who did complete work, Michelangelo, e.g. Genius alone doesn't pay as well as it may once have, so we don't have the option of postponing completion of work if we want to make a career of it. We have to make judgments -- when is something finished? When can it no longer be made better? When is it time to move on anyway? We show ourselves, our level of talent and genius, in what we choose to share, what we label "finished." Maybe Leonardo was never satisfied with his own genius, or maybe he didn't feel the urge to share. Today, creative people must resist the pressure to put half-realized work out there to try to make a buck. In my opinion. I might feel differently if my writing paid for an expensive lifestyle. It's easy to get attached to that.

Schwedenkrimi

I love this word. Although I have not read any of Stieg Larsson's crime books, set in Sweden. The closest I came was The Redbreast, a Norwegian crime novel by Jo Nesbo. I wonder if there is a word for that?

It takes an average of 475 hours to write a novel.

That is #8 on 25 Random Things About Reading.

12. Half of all books sold today are to people over the age of 45.

That kind of makes sense. It doesn't seem terribly lopsided.

15. Women buy 68% of all books sold.

We knew this, although it could be that women still do a disproportionate share of small-goods shopping. (Women probably buy 85% of all milk sold, e.g.)

13. Adults who read literature on a regular basis are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to do volunteer or charity work, and over one-and-a-half times as likely to participate in sporting activities.

Is it because doing good deeds, like literature, is good for us?

It's a fun list. Check it out at www.itzabitza.com.

Tweet Nothings

When the [Twitter] service was introduced in 2006, it was ridiculed as the latest narcissistic way to waste time online.

Last year, minds began to change. Twitterers tapped out tweets during the earthquake in China while the ground was still shaking and live during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. One of the first pictures of the airliner downed in the Hudson River last month, picked up by major newspapers and magazines, was “tweeted” by a 23-year-old tourist with an iPhone who happened to be aboard a ferry sent to the rescue. Suddenly, Twitter has become a venue for “citizen journalism,” a way to learn what’s happening sometimes even before news organizations themselves could find out.

"Citizen journalism" certainly is appealing. At CSMonitor.com.

Absorb Everything

Zen Risotto

First, you must know the True Nature of rice. Ordinarily, rice aspires only to cook up into separate, individual fluffy grains. Risotto requires a rice that will give up its boundaries, one that is willing to merge with the grains all around it, to create One Creamy Whole.

Second, saute the rice in hot oil. All rice is born surrounded by a defensive shell. In order for our cooking liquid to penetrate, we must sear through that outer protective layer. But be careful not to burn the kernels. Excessive heat only toughens.

Third, add some sweet wine. Practicing this recipe is slow and painstaking. A little sweetness, in the pot (and in the cook), helps us stay the course. Begin a practice of continuous stirring. Never stop.

Fourth, ladle in warm broth a little at a time. Remember, “Human kind can not bear very much reality.” Don’t overwhelm the rice. Add only what it can easily absorb. But keep the heat fairly high; merely simmering will get you nowhere. Stay focused on your stirring.

Fifth, add your own flavor. I like mushrooms and peas. Some add sex and poetry; others arthritis and old age. The best chef isn’t the one who uses the fanciest ingredients, but the one who best serves up whatever is at hand.

Finally, cook to perfection. Ordinary risotto takes 20 to 25 minutes, but Zen Risotto may need 20 to 25 years before it is truly Ready to Serve. Remember, never stop stirring. Absorb Everything.

Zen Risotto, from Barry Magid of Ordinary Mind Zendo, NYC.

Put Down the Hammer

Amateur talent offers acerbic and increasingly hilarious commentary on faulty products.

Here, a letter to Virgin Airways' Richard Branson about the food on the Mumbai to Heathrow flight. I put this one first because the author was offered a job in Virgin's food services.

Here, a discourse on the (non)virtues of the Chrysler Neon.

Here, a bank, maxi-pad philosophy, police response times.

Yet Another Reader Does Jail Time

Is this any way to encourage kids to read more? It's the second report of its kind I remember in the past few years. Okay, maybe books *are* that valuable, but it's not like she had the only extant copy of anything.

Oh, ha ha -- it *has* been two weeks since I posted something and it *is* another snowy day... Sheeze, be careful what you write.

Anyway, readers who do not wish to risk jail time can check out this site, ReadPrint.com, although you are not likely to find everything you want there.

RIP: John Updike

“From earliest childhood I was charmed by the materials of my craft, by pencils and paper and, later, by the typewriter and the entire apparatus of printing. To condense from one’s memories and fantasies and small discoveries dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over still seems to me, after nearly 30 years concerned with the making of books, a magical act, and a delightful technical process. To distribute oneself thus, as a kind of confetti shower falling upon the heads and shoulders of mankind out of bookstores and the pages of magazines is surely a great privilege and a defiance of the usual earthbound laws whereby human beings make themselves known to one another.” From the NY Times.

Updike newbies start here.

Although I do wish more people knew about his post-apocalyptic novel, Toward the End of Time. The end of civilization in the Connecticut suburbs. Priceless.

Dead Poets Read

This is pretty cool, with decent animation:





To see more, go to Youtube and search for "poetry animations."

I have a CD with an ancient, scratchy recording of Whitman reading "America." Here, he sounds like Ian McKellen. But, it's not always for the best to hear the poet read his/her own work. I once bought a record with Dylan Thomas reading his work and it was so overblown in that old-fashioned style -- it quite deflated my enthusiasm.

Why Being Housebound by Blizzard is Good for You

Because you catch up with incredible online reading, such as: Hamlet, the Facebook edition by Sarah Schmelling. At McSweeney's.

Of course, tomorrow will (I hope) be sunny and the roads will be plowed and I won't blog again for two weeks, but here I am today, blogging about everything.

Jane Austen is also out in Facebook edition.

Facebook is fun, btw. One of my friends calls it "Crackbook."

Is this the future of literature?

Or is it those phone novels written by Japanese teenagers?

The Pull of Retro Cool

And speaking of book pricing, let's not forget cheap, but attractively retro covers and how cool it is to own something that looks old but feels new.

The Abebooks blog on Penguin's marketing genius.

For readers, the pictures are mostly in the mind anyway. Maybe it's harder to get people to buy that way, but for me, I know I keep a lot of old books on my shelves, spines out (you can't see the cover) because just looking at the titles jump starts my memory and imagination. And the memories are of pictures I attached to the words in the first place, and had nothing to do with the cover art. Cover art serves to get a buyer's attention, maybe, but Penguin has subverted this brilliantly with cover artlessness that evokes quality and nostalgia.

"Beverage Entertainment

for a hyperprosperous society in search of emotional soothing" is from the Publishers Weekly description of Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture, by Taylor Clark. It's one of many -- how many? You'd be surprised -- titles about Starbucks, which, it should be noted, is not only keeping us awake long enough to get through all the multiformatted reading we must do in the internet age, but has conveniently located itself everywhere in order to do so, and is now also singlehandedly attempting to revitalize publishing with, er, books about itself. Okay, even if it isn't a direct attempt, it counts.

Somebody has to do it, at least until ebook publishers figure out that they must charge *less* not more for ebooks than for hardcovers. Amazon is already doing this with Kindle, but some old habits just do not want to die. The only books I have read onscreen so far are freebies from online sources, so I am not the target audience for ebooks -- tho I stand accused with the rest of the guilty from the previous blog post on used book buying. To lessen my guilt and otherwise cleanse my book-buying karma, I have bought six full-priced paperbacks and two $25 gift certificates from local bookstores in the last couple of weeks, thus nudging my total of unread books which I already own somewhere into the low hundreds. One of these days I have to start cleansing my book-reading karma.

How We Kill What We Love

Or, how people who buy and sell used books online are the real death of the industry. Bargain Hunting for Books, from the NY Times.

How much do I want to pay, and where do I want that money to go? To my local community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?

In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck.

Apparently, a practice with enormous repercussions. Powell's bookstore in Portland, Or, is asking its employees to take unpaid sabbaticals. There is no longer any bookstore in Berkeley, Calif. Will we regret our "selfish actions" when there are no longer physical bookstores? Sure, we will. How will we learn about books, then? Those of us who find what we want at the local bookstore and then order it online to save maybe $10. But how do they expect us to give up saving $10 on each volume?

We're loving books to death. Somebody think of something.