The next great pundit

First?

I was astounded by the readers of Huffman's column who appeared unable to perceive that it is satirical -- one was deeply offended that he would take the Republican party line on health care. I thought it was pretty good through the body of the column, but lacked a strong wrap-up. Zeba Khan knows what she's writing about, or gives a convincing portrayal of knowing, but her prose is dull, dull, dull. And she uses "myself" when she should say "me." And she told us that after working with numbers for a while ("crunching") she was able to come to a numerical conclusion -- or, she could have just told us that she came to a numerical conclusion, which would be fully informative and more verbally efficient.

I like the phrase "their own choosing" in that description of a pundit. This, to me, is key to success. At the end of the last boodle I posted my irritation with pundits who simply regurgitate the meme of the day. And I suggest that one way to avoid this is to present at least some new information.

But, even more basic, is to simply ignore the conventional wisdom and "topic of the day" and write about something different. Something you can't read about fifty different places.

Heck, sometimes I don't care what it is, per se. It could be even something, oh, way out there, like I dunno, cooking beans.

The Rosenthal interview is a follow-up to a Public Editor item by Clark Hoyt that essentially exonerates Maureen Dowd (a Catholic alum of Catholic University) from Know-Nothing nativist anti-Catholicism:

///Dowd said the issues she raised went to what she sees as the pope’s extreme conservatism and his judgment. “Should I blandly express outrage at the church continuing to treat women as second-class citizens?” she asked. Bland is not what Dowd does. I thought she was well within a columnist’s bounds.///

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08pubed.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1258893238-I8Vob6zVp3WEOxo1SwsQGg

The item that the bishop wrote and the Times rejected as an Op/Ed piece is a particularly nasty piece of invective that basically accuses anybody and everybody of bigotry because other groups, both religious and secular, have had pedophile scandals as well.

http://blog.archny.org/?p=42

This from a man of the cloth who seems to have mighty thin skin. What happened to either 'turn the other cheek' or 'go and sin no more'?

Does one have to be a good pundit to recognize a good pundit? Does one have to be a good writer to recognize good writing? Or does one have to read not only Charles Dickens, but read like the dickens?

http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/_helps_choose_National_Book_Award_winner.html

Excerpt:
“I think that the tension between commerce and art exists in any cultural industry,” Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, told the Associated Press. “That tension is a good thing. What you want is a little bit of both; you want attention for artists and awareness of the general public.”

Or is the writing endeavor for politicians simply about becoming a celebrity? Appreciated Douthat's column in the NYT this morning, given that Huckabee will be at the big-box book retailer 6 miles from our home on Nov. 28 promoting his children's Christmas book; Sarah Palin will make a stop at Fort Hood on Dec. 4 for "Going Rogue." I remember the hype surrounding Obama's stop at the Texas Book Festival in 2006, and Sir Harold Evan's comment at the festival on Oct. 31 about how Random House offered Obama only $40,000 for his "Dreams."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23douthat.html?adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1258988670-kcuNFnyru0GhxE5IgkXMiQ

Returning now to our staycation...

I never did much lullaby singing because I was on the morning shift while my wife watched a lot of Ted Koppel waiting for our son to go to sleep. Also, my singing voice is not conducive to putting anything to sleep.

I did used to put him into his wind-up swing and sit on the floor in front of him while reading from The Complete Poems of Allen Ginsberg. As he rocked back and forth, he would cackle and giggle. Good times.

Great pundits need time to grow; even wunderkinder improve with practice, if they don't burn out or blow up. I wonder where the training grounds are for tomorrow's pundits. Blogland? Ezra Klein would seem an example. I hope there's more Eugene Robinsons somewhere in the pipeline.

Deadlines seem to keep the mind and typing fingers focused. Back when Paul Krugman did only occasional columns, I thought he'd be better if he only published half as many. I was wrong. Krugman's output grew, and grew better.

Dave, we don't need any more pundits. Not now, not in the future. Analysts, sure. Humorists, absolutely. Observational "the passing scene" columnists, why not. But gasbags, windbags, bloviators, space-fillers, band-with stuffers, no.

You ask about the training grounds of new pundits. All the good pundits (and many of the bad ones) have spent 10, 15, 20 years learning how to write cogently before assuming the exhaulted mantle.

Approximately 9,838 pundits have already weighed in on the health care business. Why the Wapo asked these two finalists to weigh in on the very same massively over-trodden path is beyong me. They ad their opinions to the other 9,838 opinions I already don't give a hairy rat's patoot about. So that now makes it 9,840.

And why did the WaPo contest feature a "video challenge"? Isn't it good enough just to be able to write well and interestingly? You also have to be telegenic? You realize, of course, that Stephen Hawking would just totally bomb in a video challenge, right? Probably Lincoln, too (tall, gangly, high-pitched voice, ugly as a stump). I know, I know, Joel's gonna tell me this is the HuffPo age.

I'd love to know what H.L. Mencken would think of all this. On second thought, no. I already know what Mencken would say. His newspaper couldn't print it.

Why you shouldn't let your dogs run off hunting roos..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_kangaroo_attack

I already know what Mencken would think of The Age of the Pundit, but I would love to hear him express it. Good Lord, that man could write!

I know...and he'd be lousy on television.

If Jack Germond can be a television pundit, I think Mencken could have done it as well.

A few quotes from the aforementioned H.L. Mencken-

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

yello, Jack Germond is exactly who I had in mind as being highly Menckenesque-- and Germond is generally thought to be awful on TV (which is one of many reasons why I like him). But Germond is not a "success" on TV, he's a failure. Thus proving my point. He refused to make any concessions to being telegenic, slouched, never buttoned his shirt collar or snugged up his tie (because he couldn't), pretty much didn't "play the game," said what he thought...and never went very far on TV (nor did he want to).

Not that I'm comparing myself with Mr. Huffman, but I would suggest that even Blundits (Blogger/Pundits) need editors.

I know I sure as he!! do.

And the better editors I know would have made Mr. Huffman desnark that column by at least half, and tightened what was left up quite a bit. The Ed. would say, "Just because you have a 700-word limit does not mean you have to use all of them."

[Note: Yes, I considered 'Ploggers,' but liked 'Blundits' better.]

bc

Here's an effective publicity shot making use of a cute kid. How can anyone look at it and not like Spike Jonze?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/22/maurice-sendak-wild-things-jonze

In the pundit department, we need the occasional Eugene Robinson. It's like Biblical prophets: only a few good ones.

OK, here's something I don't know what I think about it, but find...interesting. I was watching the National Book Awards show yesterday on BookTV, when they gave out the 2009 awards, and they also gave out a special award. The idea was to take all the previous 70 years of NatBookAward (NBA) winners (there were 84 books; don't ask, and the answer is irrelevant), and ask their general upper tier of membership to vote on which of those 80-some NBA "best books of the year" was the all-time best. A small panel winnowed down the list to six nominees, and sent the ballot to every previous NBA winner, every judge, and every nominee. They said they expected some 2,000 votes to come in but got over 10,000. (So let us postulate that the voters were the creme de la creme of American letters, n'est-pas?)

The six nominees were Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," and the collected stories of Faulkner, Cheever, Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor. Okay, you pick the winner while I hum the Jeopardy music... da de dum de dum dum dum. Okay, time's up. Who did the creme DLC of AmLit pick as the best of the best?

Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor.

And that's what I'm having trouble processing. Arguably the least known of the bunch, would you agree? Arguably the second-smallest body of work (nobody's is smaller than Ellison's, except mine; even Joel's is significantly larger).

Neither the least nor the most "accessible" -- but that is hardly an accessible bunch to begin with. Does anybody in academia still study O'Connor? (CqP? Do you know? I have no clue.)

Quick, off the top of your head, name even ONE of her books. I couldn't -- though when I looked it up I recognized three titles, and said, "Oh, yeah, right. That one... never read it." Even worse, at first I had her confused with Janet Flanner (whom I *have* read -- "Paris Was Yesterday" and some New Yorker pieces -- and like).

Gosh 'mudge. I think you're conflating your own knowledge with general fame. Flannery O'Connor is *huge.* Read in every university Lit. program, by book clubs world wide, etc. Maybe you don't know her as well as Ellison, but she's highly recognized and regarded.

DotC, that's a great interview too. My movie buff friend saw Where the Wild Things Are and loved it.

Gene Robinson had a good critique of the pundits - he went with the other one. It doesn't seem to me that many folks care enough about this to vote. (By which I mean, not many people voted in the past. I can't see how many people have voted so far without voting myself, which I refuse to do.)

Flannery O'Connor? Didn't she write the screenplay for "Casablanca"?

Mudge-- "Everything that rises must converge."

Think about it.

Marcus and Goodman have kid(s). Ivins never married (the love of her life died tragically), Collins is married with no children, and Dowd hasn't married. Does the second shift--and its numerous responsibilities--derail women pundits or are there are other factors that come into play?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12722-2005Mar6.html

http://www.cjr.org/the_water_cooler/susan_estrich_on_gender_missin.php

This just in: AOL is now Aol.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/11/for_spinoff_aol_rebrands_itsel.html?hpid=news-col-blog

And they've supplied some examples of uses for their new logo. I especially like the one at the top right, where it appears to be going down the toilet.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=multimedia_detail&newsId=20091122005034&newsLang=en&contentGroupId=1885445

Another confession: I have never read Flannery O'Connor. I wonder if it's an age thing - her books were not taught when I was in school, or at least not in the schools I attended. I've also never read the other authors nominated, although I have tried to read Invisible Man (once I figured out it was not by H.G.Wells, which I have read) and Faulkner. And I've read a few stories by Eudora Welty.

Seasea, I nearly said, above, that O'Connor is the female Faulkner, but realized how ridiculous that sounds. Still, as far as stature and importance, they are rough equivalents.

Mudge -- Flannery O'Conner is very much part of the American canon, and an important corner of 20th Century Am. literature. She is not longer in the backwater of southern Gothic oddities.

She is very much a part of many theology programs also.

Her letters are astonishing, Mudge. Beautiful but with an edge and so full of observation and self-analysis.
* Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, 1969
* The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, 1979
* The Presence of Grace: and Other Book Reviews, 1983
* Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works, 1988

---
Habit of Being edited by Sally Fitzgerald is one of my desert island books.

OK, Yoki -- my bad. I didn't realize O'Connor was still that well known and regarded. That was kind of my question: is she that well known. So the answer is an emphatic yes. (And so even more interesting--she out-Faulkners Faulkner!) My vote was for Ellison, but I've always had a strong bias toward Invisible Man as one of the best novels of the 20th century.

What is weird is I've been reading some reviews of O'Connor, such as a piece in The Atlantic. And can't find a single one that makes me want to read her. And I'm really trying pretty hard to want to. Just...nothing.

Two quotes;
When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.
Flannery O'Connor

Milledgeville is the Baldwin county, GA home of Fo'C.

She was nuts about birds --chickens, song birds, peacocks/hens...all manner of featured creatures.

Mudge, she is BETTER THAN FAULKNER!!!!!!!!!! Pardon my opinion.

But, she observes and transcribes characters in believable ways. You should read her for technique. Her short story abilities are lessons in themselves.

Please consider starting with my favorite of her short stories:
Good Country People
(Joy becomes Hulda)

Do you like Walker Percy? Do you admire Harper Lee? Fo'C is among these fine writers....Shelby Foote thought she was wonderful.

She's an acquired taste, Mudge-- I don't like all her stuff, probably because she has such a dark psychology of the human soul, but you must read "Everything that Rises Converges" because it's set around the time of the civil rights movement.

Yes, I've read her for school.

Fo'C corresponded with
Robert Lowell
Bernard Malamude
Walker Percy
Johwn Crowe Ransom
Katherine Anne Porter
Alan Tate

WB -- perhaps time to reread Fo'C? Through a glass darkly, yes, but she aimed much higher than this. Of her writing she said:

"the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil"

Mystery and Manners, a book of critical essays by FO'C pg. 118-119 (Farrar, 1969)

Thanks, CqP. I am guilty of having put her in that very "backwater of southern Gothic" myself, and so was never interested in her. (One Carson McCullers is more than enough.) She's the only one of the six I've never read -- though I also gotta say I don't much care for three of the other five, either (Pynchon and Faulkner; Welty is OK but not my thing).

"Wise Blood" is the title I'm most familiar with. Unfortunately, having just read the Wikipedia summary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Blood), it sounds like a novel I wouldn't want to read if you held a gun to my head. Although I admit as I get older I get even more crotchety than usual about my reading, and pretty much now only read stuff I really *want* to read, not necessarily what I might read becuase it was good for me or part of the canon, like I might have done in my teens and 20s and 30s. Maybe its the impending deadline thing, I dunno. Or maybe its just the fact that my "wanna read/intend to read" stack is already ceiling high already, without stuff I'd have to force myself to read.

I suppose it's no consolation, but I do feel bad about (a) not having read her and (b) not wanting to read her.

Mudge -- understand about so many good books and so little time. However, when you do read her, we will have fireplace time about this Yoki will wing her way down to join us.

Pardon me my seductiveness, but come on, the two of us in a fireside literary fest? What is not to like.

He spent fifteen years on the MacLaughlin Group. In his bio he says that the money from that gig put his grandkids through college. I'd consider that a successful side career.

Mudge, last argument and then I will stop. Read this piece by Alice Walker on FO'C.
http://www.mondowendell.com/walkersw.html

Appeared in Sojourners
1995 Sojourners. December 1994 - January 1995 (Vol. 23, No. 10).

But, taken from a larger set of essays about writing by Alice Walker.

It's worth taking a look at John Huston's "Wise Blood," based on O'Connor's novel. It's not 100% successful, but it's so terrifically warped that it almost comes across as an alternate reality.

My other favorite adaptation of a southern writer is "Intruder in the Dust," from the Faulkner novel. Pretty hard to find, but well worth it.

OK, I'll try those two stories. Have read two Walker Percys, and liked them, but not enough to get addicted. Might try E-thing/Rises, Wilbrod. Thanks. (I certainly don't object to a dark psychology of the human soul, heaven knows. Kinda right down my alley.)

I confess I am concerned about all the apparent religiosity in her work -- again, not exactly my kinda thing. Intellectually, I know better than to be off-put by such things (especially considering the amount of theology I studied in college -- but the kind of stuff I studied has virtually no relationship to the stuff FO'C seems to be writing about. "Grace" and the devil -- not territories I willingly venture into, as a rule.

I am quite willing to believe she's better than Faulkner -- perhaps because I'm not a Faulkner fan either. I always liked the "idea" of Faulkner better than the actual works.

I *want* to like her -- just can't find a way, yet.

CqP, I incline to agree with Alice Walker, although I am surprised she did not list Mark Twain as a southern writer.

I find O'Connor wearying to read in large doses, although her moral illumination is worthwhile reading.

Overall, I'd say I like her style better than Eudora Welty, although Welty's story about "Why I live at the P.O." is quite funny.

I suspect that Mudge can read the best O'Connor story then consider himself content in never reading anything else of hers.

Mudge, actually she has a rather cynical attitude towards knee-jerk religion and tin-plate piety.

Mudge --she shows, not tells. AND she pokes fun a religiosity. So, does that help?

Grahem Greene ends up being preachy with this plot resolutions. FO'C is not preachy. ANd, she is hard on the low-though, intense-feeling fundamentalism that is very hard to like, even hard to respect.

Some of the feeling of FoC I found in the Brother Where Art Thou? movie.

Thanks, rash; I might do that.

Well, CqP, a fireside chat with you and Yoki -- now yer talkin'!

WB -- huzzah on the tin-plate piety. Yours? Quote? Wonderful phrase and I do thankee verra verra much!

Flannery O'Connor, wasn't she the little girl who taught a chicken to walk backwards?

I so totally cheated. I didn't knew she existed 15 minute ago.
And I don't want to read another Catholic writer, French lit is swarming with them. I've been inoculated, I'v had my dose and then some.

Germond spent 15 years on The McLaughlin Group, not Flannery O'Connor. I got caught seriously Boodling Out Of Order.

My US Lit professor at college worshiped O'Connor. But she was the southern librarian looking type.

I don't think it's fair putting individual novels up against short story collections. That makes for a very apples vs. oranges comparison.

YJ -- thanks, because I was confused by your post.

Plus Flannery O'Conner wrote some the greatest southern gothic erotica ever. "A Hard Man Is Good To Find" is a classic in the genre.

It took me two chapters before I realized that Ellison's invisible man could actually be seen. I know it's shallow and elementary, but I am a plot-reader. Symbolism and metaphors (such as I'm actually Black, not Invisible) are often lost on me.

I've read a few O'Connor short stories, but she never did it for me.

That phrase's mine as far as I know, CqP.

SD -- at this PBS site, vied the video or fast-forward to minute 1:39. YOU WILL SEE THE BASSACWARD CHICKIE

SD -- at this PBS site, vied the video or fast-forward to minute 1:39. YOU WILL SEE THE BASSACWARD CHICKIE

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-20-2009/flannery-oconnor/5043/

*sigh*

OK, I read the Alice Walker piece (I like Walker, and respect her opinion). But every single word she wrote argues against me wanting to read O'Connor:

"O'Connor's characters-whose humanity if not their sanity is taken for granted, and who are miserable, ugly, narrow-minded, atheistic, and of intense racial smugness and arrogance, with not a graceful, pretty one anywhere who is not, at the same time, a joke..."

"Her white male characters do not fare any better-all of them misfits, thieves, deformed madmen, idiot children, illiterates, and murderers, and her black characters, male and female, appear equally shallow, demented, and absurd."

"In her life, O'Connor was more casual. In a letter to her friend Robert Fitzgerald in the mid-'50s she wrote, "as the [n-word]say, I have the misery....O'Connor was then certain she was dying, and was in pain; one assumes she made this comment in an attempt at levity. Even so, I do not find it funny." (Me neither.)

"If it can be said to be "about" anything, then it is "about" prophets and prophecy, "about" revelation, and "about" the impact of supernatural grace on human beings who don't have a chance of spiritual growth without it. "

Not a single thing there to attract me as a reader. Nothing. And quite a bit to repulse me. I'm quite will to assert I am at fault, not O'Connor. But I'm just not seein' it. She's really going to have to astonishing as a craftsman to get me over this.

(I wonder if this analogy works: If I described to you all the really neat, cool stunts and special effects and spurting blood and screams in a really awful slasher movie, would you want to go see it? Everything I read about O'Connor says "no." And I feel like it's my fault.)

But some people like Slasher movies, mudge. That you don't, isn't your fault.

Mudge -- tis ok. I'll read for you. But, you miss out on THAT particular fireside chat. We will have others.

WB -- tin pan piety...love it. Will quote you.

Gomer, I will agree with you Inv Man can be a bit difficult to get into. I had to work through the first hundred or so pages myself, even though I revere it as a novel. I re-read five or ten years ago -- and had a bit of impatience with it even then. Kept wanting him to get into the good stuff that I (now) knew was coming.

"Tin plate piety" is a Gogglenope, so Wilbrod owns the trademark. Kinda like Paris Hilton and "That's hott." Or "three-peat" and Pat Riley, despite the fact that he didn't.

I'm a Georgia boy, the son of a woman whose favorite book of all time is "Gone With the Wind." You can bet your butterbeans I've read me some Flannery O'Connor.

Mudge -- Crafts(wo)man nonpareil who was unflinchingly honest about that place, that time, which are woven deep in the fabric that is our culture and history.

And, how about this, Mudge: she is a quintessential writer despite not being main stream or WASPY. She was other -- Southerner, woman, Catholic (in the SOUTH even!),
disabled/ill...

I always cheer when the "other" rises up to teach us something about ourselves.

Well, I understand that, Wilbrod, and I'm sort of OK with that idea about slashers. But what's bothering me is I know at some level I am "supposed" to "get" and appreciate O'Connor (unlike, say a slasher movie, which we can agree is pretty much trash even when we may like them; I like some kinds of trash too, just not slashers). It's like I feel left out of some club or some in-crowd that I wanna belong to -- but I just don't get it and they won't let me in.

(It took me 30 years to acquire a taste for scoth. If I'd have been smart, I'd have stopped trying after six months. But one is supposed to acquire a taste for scotch, right? And so -- quite valiantly -- I did.)

(Of course, now that I've acquired the taste of it, I still don't drink it. But I *can* if I have to. Kind of how I feel about Fauklner and Henry James, I suppose. Is this making sense?)

At the end it really doesn't matter if you don't like her writing, Mudge. It says more about the futility of finding the "best" anything - no one can be the best for everybody. Wasn't there some similar contest a few years back which Toni Morrison won, and people were upset? I love her writing, although not all of her books.

CqP, I will confess: I had to beat myself senseless to get through Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." Hated those grotesques. Hated them. Hated the book. But knew I should read it and "appreciate" it. (But love Sinclair Lewis, Dos Passos, Edgar Lee Masters, etc., possibly to be considered working similar territories? Could the difference be that L, DP and ELM loved the people they wrote about, whereas SA hated them?)

I found exactly one Faulkner I could read-- "As I Lay Dying." I'm comfortable with not reading anything else of his-- trying to read the first 2 sentences of "The Bear" put me off him for good.

The story I recommended to you might be the one "readable" O'Connor for you. It might not be.

There's one sentence in Absalom, Absalom! in particular that I've been warned to avoid.

Interesting, Mudge. I think of Spoon River and Winesburg as very similar in take on the characters. Will think about this.

SeaSea is right. No one King or Queen of books. We have, luckily, a brace of worthies.

After years and years of seeing various writers refer to Flannery O'Connor as an essential influence, a guiding light, a darned good writer, I have decided to take the plunge at last and actually read something written by her.

I understand what you're saying, seasea -- it's just that there is a kind of a "tyranny," a kind of overwhelming peer pressure that comes out of an award like that O'Connor thing" that when a pretty clear concensus of AmLit peeps exhalt someone like O'Connor. And I like to think I am a reasonably intelligent and pretty well-read person -- a "literary person," if you well, and certainly also a writer -- and yet I have never read a single FO'C book and am completely repulsed by every description of her work. It makes me feel somehow that I am in the wrong of it. It wounds my image of myself.

On the subject of dark Southern Gothic, went to see Blanchett in "Streetcar" on Saturday. Wow!! Makes one really understand where there is no substitute for live theater. It's actually the first time either of us has sat through the entire play. Seen bits, pieces and clips (always of Brando hollering to "Stella"), but never the entire production. And the Boodle is where we depend on the kindness of strangers.

Apologies to Joel for the non-kitness of today. But, surely these are worth reading:

tin pan piety (WB)
bet your butterbeans (courtesy of PeachieBoyBS)

Mudge,
In your defense, Flannery O'Connor stories could use a few more highly detailed descriptions of military aircraft. A serious oversight on her part.

Ebbie (reminding me always of the classic Old Ebbit Grill) -- boodle kindness of strangers...yes, I agree.

I woulda guessed the Cheever collection. Huh. "The Swimmer." "The Country Husband." (Isn't that the one where it begins with the guy getting in a plane crash and he comes home and the wife and kids STILL don't want to know how his day was?)

Wilbrod, "As I Lay Dying" is good if you focus on just the funny parts.

Kguy I love the Mencken quotes. Makes me want to try to be a writer. I mean, does that kind of pithy wisdom just show up out of the blue or did he have to sweat and pant and grind it out?

"Tin plate piety." Tin pan piety's yours, CqP.

I despise Cheever as only one who has had to read him for class can despise him.

On-kit:

mobius strip reasoning

Sounds good and invokes a circularity or slide-ramp idea with a surprise turn

Very nice, JA.

I knew a couple long ago with hammered silver mobius strip wedding rings. Very sciencey-cool. Alas, I just googled them and it appears that they are no longer a couple. Not that mobius shaped-rings had anything to do with this.

Mudge, it sounds like Wise Blood (the movie) might not be your cup of tea. The characters are pretty much wall-to-wall grotesques and eccentrics. Do check out Intruders in the Dust, though, if you get a chance.

Thanks much to ebnut, no substitute for live theater. It is so true. Nothing wrong with movies, you understand. However, if something is in film and play form, and you've seen the film, you haven't seen the play.

I continue to remain profoundly uninterested in the pundit contest. These observations do not change my feelings.

Which sentiment, transferred, applies to more of the conversation: it is perfectly okay to not want to read an author. I think it is better to choose not to read them knowing something about them, if you think you wouldn't like them. However, just knowing something about them needn't change your one's mind. There are all kinds of authors I haven't read, and won't, despite their undeniable literary value (at least to somebody). I don't feel bad about it.

Way to mess with my mind: the office cleaning folks came in this weekend and apparently tried real hard on the carpets. I have no complaint. However, I sat down in my chair and it was wrong. Different. Higher, for one thing (we short people notice when our feet don't touch the floor). I fooled with it for awhile. Finally, I realized that it wasn't my chair. My chair was in another office. I am so easily confused.

Oh, come on, 'mudge. There is no more implicit "peer pressure" in awarding such a title to O'Connor than there would to any other worthy. You would have been rather pleased than otherwise if Ellison had been the pick, but he wasn't.

That said, I think it is a futility to try to persuade people to like anything they don't. I don't like eggplant. Live with it.

Cool!

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/23/science/AP-EU-SCI-Big-Bang-Machine.html?_r=1&hp

Kinda of laughing, Wilbrod. I like Cheever a lot (mostly the earlier stuff), and rank "Torch Song" as one of the all-time greatest short stories, ever. Like "The Swimmer" and some others of that era. Liked both Wapshot novels.

I wonder if simply being forced to read something in class is -- all by itself -- the kiss of death? I hate nearly ever single novel I was ever forced to read in school. Am I bristle -- absolutely bristle! -- when some young person tells me how much they loathe and despise "Lord of the Flies" or "Cathcher in the Rye" because they had to read it in school. But I can't tell you how much I loathe and despise Lorna Doone, Silas Marner, Ivanhoe, The Scarlet Letter, and Return of the Native. And you know what they all have in common?

And of course I read -- and loved -- CintRye and LotFlies and read them 3-4 times each, not once being forced to. How can ya hate Lord of the Flies? Jeez. But kids do.

(Thought experiement: if one forced 9th graders to read Penthouse Letters in class, and take quizzes and tests and mid-terms, would they remain chaste and celibate into their 30s? it might be worth trying...)

Surprisingly enough, I could like most authors (if not their works) that I read in school. Maybe I had better teachers.

Nah, I just hated "The Swimmers" because alcoholic delirium tremens isn't my cup of heavily-chlorined water.

Southern lit...I pretty much skipped it. I remember reading Light in August but don't recall a thing about it. Now, All the King's Men is okay, and we've had the discussion about Harper Lee. I only read Look Homeward Angel because my dad knew Thomas Wolfe at Carolina. (Hmm. Must remember to ask my brother if he has the first edition copy that belongs to our father.)

Ebnut, I'm frenvious of your seeing Streetcar. Now that is serious theater, a real classic.

English class ruined Watership Down for my son which I think is a shame.

I loved lots of the books I was exposed to in school. Well, obviously, or I wouldn't have carried on with lit. studies. I guess it might be partly attitude. What 'mudge saw as force I saw as opportunity.

Also, I don't know that reading needs to be a positive pleasure all the time, it just needs to be worth it in some way. For me, style can still carry a narrative that doesn't please me.

Well, what is then stranger, Wilbrod, is that I had GREAT English teachers, every single one, from 7th to 12th grade. Miss, Harting (had a crush), Mrs. Johnson, Miss Giordano (Ming the Merciless), Mr. Alden, Mrs. Little, Mr. Elmy. Every one a major influecnce except Mrs. Johnson (who was pleasant and good, but just not very infuelential). Harting, Little and Elmy in particular. Mrs. Little was also our drama coach (we did Rebel Without a Cause, Ah Wilderness and Caine Mutiny Court Martial). Miss Harting (did I mention she was a doll) made me write my very first piece of fiction, and sent it off to a state contest. Mr. Elmy got me to write my first newspaper column (my very first pieces of punditry, circa 1964; I quoted Edna St. Vincent Millay in the obit for our class president, who drowned a week before the prom; because of his death, it was me who got to lay a wreath on behalf of the school at JFK's grave at Arlington instead of him. My senior year had those two bookends of death upon it, one in November and one in May. And then Vietnam went all to hell).

So: I would assert the quality of teachers had nothing to do with it, at least in my case. But the selections themselves speak for themselves: WTF were we reading nothing but 150-year-old stuff? Not a single modern novel in my entire six years. (Had five Shakespeare plays in 6 yrs., resented having to re-read two of them in college a few years later.)

"The Swimmer" - Neat story, neat, quirky movie. Marvin Hamlisch's first film score, I think.

Here's the story, in case anybody needs/wants to read it:

http://shortstoryclassics.50megs.com/cheeverswimmer.html

I know I'm not anti-southern: love all Tennessee Williams. All Kings Men, Harper Lee. Love love love all T. Wolfe. Love Willie Morris memoirs. For what it may be worth, love James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux mysteries. Love Shelby Foote (can ya have a man-crush on an 80-year-old geezer?).

Yoki, I really don't think force was the issue. Equal "force," per se, was applied to the Shakespeares (I liked four out of five), Milton and Paradise Lost, other hefty chucks of poetry of all, a lot of short stories, plus the Caeser's Gallic Wars and the Aeneid and the Oddyseus we had to read in Latin class, in Latin. I was fine with all of them. I just think they gave us some dreadful stinkers for novels. I think the only thing in all the rest that I disliked was Chaucer. Still can't hack Chaucer, though I've come to appreciate him more now than then. Had to read Spoon River, loved it. First read Owen, Sassoon, Millay, Vachel Lindsey and Sara Teasdale back then. Liked them all from day one.

I really don't think it was force.

I'll miss Carl Kassel doing the newscasts. But he's 75, that's a good run!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112302135.html?hpid=moreheadlines

I'll miss him on "Wait, Wait, Don't tell Me."

I love Carl Kassel. But I think people should retire, too. I suppose because I'd love to retire and still be able to eat and have a roof over my head. Dan Schorr is 93 for pete's sake and still at NPR. I love him, but still. Great piece with him and his son:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120612056

ebtnut, I'm so glad you saw Streetcar. The WaPo had a great review of it. The kindness of strangers indeed!

I agree with you about The Swimmer, Wilbrod. I did end up liking lots of stuff I was forced to read, and disliking lots. I can't make a rule of it.

What was the one about the boy who became a telegram delivery boy and delivered news of war deaths (WWI?)

Carl's going to keep doing Wait Wait. Does he fly to Chicago every week, or is he always there?

I've been trying to remember what I had to read in high school, and I'm not coming up with much beyond Shakespeare. I'm not sure if that's because they were in the midst of changing the curriculum from long-dead white guys, and therefore leaving us on our own, or if I've just blocked it all out.

Carl Kassel is 75? Wow! I do like his voice. Authoritative without being authoritarian. Just the way I like it.

Yoki, you don't like eggplant? I've got a lovely recipe for it, and I even added it to my lentil stew yesterday. Will have some leftover stew tonight and stick the rest in the freezer.

Wilbrod, I think you and I have had this conversation before regarding Faulkner. I tell ya, if he had to be drunk to write it, I have to be drunk to read it! There is not enough dynamite in existence to take care of all that constipated writing. I simply cannot stand him. And I fully understand that there are those out there who really, really like his writing. Bleah!

Ebtnut -- you are so very lucky to have scored tickets to see Cate Blanchett in Streetcar. Frenvious? Hell, I'm delirious with jealousy (friendly, of course)! Happy you guys enjoyed it.

I do have to read more American literature, old and new. I'm almost done with the first of the Millennium Trilogy by Steig Larsson ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in the English version and "Men Who Hate Women" in the Swedish version, which I'm reading). I have fewer than 100 pages to go, and I must say that it's incredibly exciting. And, I'm learning some new Swedish words. Very cool book. Some of my friends over there seem to think that the first book is the best. I'll let you all know. The next one is actually translated correctly ("The Girl Who Played With Fire"). That one just might be next on my totem pole of books.

Ah, Thanksgiving is this week. It has to be my all time favorite holiday, probably because it is for absolutely everybody -- nobody gets left out. Of course, I'm always intrigued and surprised that I'm hungry for breakfast the next morning.

Hey -- the Lions won yesterday! Sorry to be repetitive, but, well, *one* of the teams I sorta back won. . . .

Scarlet Johansson is going to be doing a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" this winter. I told my wife that she owes me for the Craig Daniels/Hugh Jackman play, but I think I'm just going to pass. I'd much rather see Kristen Chenoweth in "Promises, Promises."

And I will also note that I have not yet read last year's National Book Award fiction winner, Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country. It's sitting on my bookshelf, beside the Neal Stephenson trilogy. It's a wonder the shelf hasn't bent from the weight. Love Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, but can't can't through his other books so far.

I just read the interview with Daniel Schorr and his son. Very, very sweet, I thought. Daniel Schorr is indeed a treasure! Thanks for the link, seasea.

I issue a correction. I don't like most eggplant. I do like the tiny little Indian eggplants stewed up whole in tamarind/spice masala. I also like Middle-Eastern-style eggplant spread (whose name escapes me), but that is about it.

Baba ganoush

There are too many good books I'm interested in to keep reading even good ones I'm not interested in. It's not much of an investment of time to read a few of O'Connor's stories if you're curious. I've done a lot of reading in my time but bog down fast if it's the wrong thing. Love Chaucer, but don't digest Shakespeare very well. Love Beckett, don't quite get Joyce. Loved Look Homeward Angel but will never read another Wolfe. Love Dickens and the other Wolfe (Tom), but
don't have time any more. Mostly read for a purpose or to investigate some subject these days. If there is judgment after death I don't expect to be asked if I died as a Truly Educated Man.

Yoki, I like smoked eggplant in tomato-base curry, pulped. It's very velvety and tastes nothing like eggplant.

But then, I like eggplant in general, I never had it growing up-- my parents dislike it.

I first tried eggplant parmesean in a school cafeteria and liked it-- and that cafeteria had terrible food overall, so I figured that it had to be even better elsewhere. (Alas, the Olive garden disabused me of that notion.)

There is a nice curry with rice, eggplant, pickles, etc. that I learned to cook and did a lot (I always smoked the eggplant slightly over gas-- cooks it faster.)

I'm not that fond of that mideast eggplant spread, surprisingly enough. The Indian preparations are better.

Ah, yes. Thanks, CP.

yellojkt,
"A View From the Bridge" made a good opera recently. I got to see Portland Opera's scaled-down version of the Met production. I wonder whether the Opera surpasses the play.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401467.html

English teachers, amazing how influential they are. I was fortunate to have fabulous English professors; that's why I didn't transfer from UNC Charlotte to UNC Chapel Hill my junior year, I was having too much fun and learning too much to bother.

One of my favorites I had for intro to ancient lit my first semester as a freshman, and then I took everything she taught. Her specialty was Shakespeare so of course I loved everything we read in that class. She and my advisor teamed up to write a freshman composition textbook and asked me to write an essay on Juliet's Nurse for it. I treasure my copy of that book, because she autographed it and mailed it back to me the day before she died of a brain tumor.

I suppose the reason I didn't get into American lit was that the prof was a dried up old man who made everything seem that way.

That is a wonderful story, slyness.

Grammar editor needed at the NYT?
Check out the last line of this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/business/energy-environment/24drywall.html?hp

According to Lindsey Czarniak (local NBC sports gal), Ladell Betts (Redskins running back) and I have something in common: we both have torn MCLs (he also has a torn ACL; mine's weak but OK). He's out for the season, but likely will play next year; me, probably not.

Isn't it, Yoki? I appreciated it, even at 22. And the book is a darned good intro to comp, even if I do say so myself. (Another one of the student essays was on American Graffiti.)

Mental Floss on kit, in an article on Alfred Nobel and his prizes:

According to Dr. Donald W. Goodwin’s book Alcohol and the Writer, half the Americans who won the Nobel Prize for Literature were most likely alcoholics. The drunks: Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. The nondrunks: Pearl Buck, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison.

And this is news how?

slyness, did the book say which writers (if any) wrote while drunk? Because I don't think most of them did. (Though even if I'm right I'm not quite sure what that means, or doesn't mean.)

Does he assert some sort of connection? I wonder how it relates to the other observations about many writersand their mental states. Anybody know?

We recently hashed through the Nobel Literature Committee's disdain of American writers here in the Boodle. Besides, nowadays all the really interesting writers do coke.

That's an interesting correlation slyness. It suggests several possibilities. It could mean that drinking makes you write better. Or, that writing well makes you drink. Or, that being a famous writer makes you drink. Or, that there is some environmental or genetic factor that makes one both a great writer and a drunk. Or that there is some other third variable of which we are ignorant.

Data analysis is not for the weak of heart.

(in my best CowTown voice)

this *stinks*

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/business/energy-environment/24drywall.html?hp

The iron is that our balance of trade is so out of whack with China, that safety takes a back seat. IIRC, the taking point is that there is too much stuff being imported and not enough inspectors to check it out. I'd volunteer that the committee that oversees the Chinese industrial complex knows exactly what they are doing, and using dangerous fillers/chemicals in the manufacture of countless products in order to maximise profit. It really bothers me that we continue to import from these folks, even after our citizens suffer the ill effects of our trade practices. grrrrrr

scc: irony. jeez.

Indeed, RD_P.

I'm sorry, I should have provided the link, here it is:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/cheatsheets/alfred-nobel/

There was a time in my life, when I was very young, that my ambition was to be the next Great American Novelist. Then I looked at great American novelists and decided I didn't want to drink that much, or be that unhappy all my life. I was a perfectly competent and happy fire department planner, instead. Most of the time.

Being a writer tracks with depression. Having depression tracks with alcoholism.

From this web page: "However, alcohol problems and depression commonly occur together. It is more accurate to say that alcohol contributes to the development of depression.

"Up to 40 per cent of people who drink heavily have symptoms that resemble a depressive illness. About 5 to 10 per cent of people with a depressive illness also have symptoms of an alcohol problem.

"Depressed people often turn to alcohol in the belief that it has the ability to ease their symptoms."

http://www.depression-guide.com/alcohol-and-depression.htm

I want to suggest that in writers, the depression comes first, not the alcoholism.

Anybody know if there is a genetic component or genetic disposition to any of this?

That seems plausible Mudge. You always gotta look at those third variables. I mean, I sure wouldn't want prospective writers to believe that knocking back a bottle o' Jack each night is a prudent career move.

I don't think one has to be an alcoholic to be a great American novelist, slyness. All one has to be is depressed. The drinking is optional, it would appear.

Ah, I actually know something of this (though can't now track the bookmarks to the good studies). What a wonder. In general, artists are inclined toward depression, and self-medication. But, and this is the important thing, very few of them actually *produce* while drunk (or stoned, or...) And if they do, and are good, they throw that carp away.

But yes, there is a correlation (but not necessarily cause-effect) of mental-illness with creativity.

I think it was Faulkner who was famous for being drunk, but never writing anything he kept in that state.

Gotcha, Mudge. At this point, I'd say it's too late for me, but I'm okay with that. I could never attain Joel's genius with words, and I'd rather not make an a$$ of myself at this late date. At least not in front of the whole world.

Padouk, I have read quite a bit about the lives of writers, and I don't immediately recall very many that believe either drugs or alcohol improves their work. There are a few that rationalize that it doesn't hurt it. The ones I don't know about are Hunter Thompson and Ken Kesey. I know about their behaviors; what I don't know is their views about how their recreational habits do or don't affect their work, in their opinion. Anybody know?

I think the whole gamut of what might be useful about alcohol in writing probably occurs within the first three drinks and after those, forget about it. And even then any perceived good effect would wear off soon and the normal muddle of alcohol would return and taint the rest of the workday. A certain loquacious mood might be useful, but that is at around drink three. Anyone familiar with a pool table knows that one drink may grease the creaky joints and quash a fret or a doubt about a difficult shot. After that, well, I don't think so. And a chess player and imbiber would probably agree that my rough analysis that one drink equals (losing) one pawn.

There I was, reading the kit and boodle, thinking I've never read Flannery O'Connor either, wondering if I should get a Kindle and if I would read more if I did but maybe the money would be better put into a 5-foot Octabox because they make people my age look good, and then ...

Yoki doesn't like eggplant??

But, but, but, ... I have this Yoki recipe for Ratatouille with Tofu that includes, "1 medium to large eggplant, cut into 3/4 inch cubes."

Who knew?

Oh crap, we're back to square one with the Goodwin book. Here's a pretty good review of it in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/07/books/books-of-the-times-odd-angles-on-alcoholism-and-american-writers.html

But there are at least two problems with it that I see. First, extremely small sample size. Second, Goodwin isn't much interested in their work habits, just their drinking. Here's two grafs from the review:

"Dr. Goodwin does have a theory, finally. The key for him lies at some nexus in the human makeup where writing, schizophrenia and alcoholism meet. To put it oversimply: He proposes that writers are loners, especially writers in America, where individualism is highly prized. ''Creative writing requires a rich fantasy life; loners have rich fantasy lives -the ultimate loner is the schizophrenic who lives in a prison of fantasy. Alcohol promotes fantasy.'' Therefore alcohol helps writing, being alone and having a multiple personality.

"So it isn't that writing causes drinking or even that drinking causes writing. It is rather that the two activities have a cause in common, be it genetic endowment or whatever connects creativity with insanity. This is not a systematic theory, nor does it lend itself to verification. But in Dr. Goodwin's able hands, it shows us a good deal about American writers, and something about American drinkers, too."

But this is where I think Goodwin is wrong. Somehow he's on the scent of schizophrenia, which I think is wrong. He ought to be on the trail of depression instead.

I very much agree with yOKI'S 8:06: writers write despite the drinking, not because of it, and they don't "use" it to help their work. They drink after the work is done.

(It's like tracking sex and and smoking a cigarette. Just because the one follows the other doesn't mean they have anything in common.)

I will refrain from indulging my rant about depression and the creative arts. Suffice it to say that I don't believe the state of depression actually helped any artist be better. I don't care what they think. The sensitivity or sensibility, in the Austen sense (assuming it exists) which may lead to depression (if you think of it as more than chemical imbalance) may lend itself to creativity. The state of depression doesn't make the product better. Sorry, that got a little ranty after all.

ftb, I loved The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I have the second book but am saving it to savor.

I am eating baba ganoush right now!!! Along with a baguette, locally produced skirt steak, fruit, and Spanish wine. Eclectic.

But I don't think that is what Padouk said.

IIRC I think I read once that Hemingway wrote early in the morning each day standing up at the mantle. I think his drinking was during periods of research.

I'm also reading a Russian mystery novel.

My experience of schizophrenia is admittedly limited and tends to the professional - meaning action of the disease results in violent crime - but I'd quibble with the categorization of "fantasy". As best I can tell the last thing a schizophrenic believes she is living is fantasy; the worlds they tend to inhabit do not, in my limited experience, lend themselves either to fiction or successful production of coherent creative works.

Hi, Fifty! Hi, woofin!

Oh, that is the other exception. In Ratatouille. Mediterranean sunshine any day.

My deepest apologies, Fifty. So nice to see you here.

One of the first things they teach you in data school is that two things being correlated doesn't necessarily mean a direct causal relationship.

I mean, there is a famous study that shows that in a German fishing village stork population is well correlated to human births. But this doesn't mean one causes the other. It means there could be a third variable. Like, in this case, the amount of offshore fish.

So the fundamental cause of the correlations between drinking, depression, writing, comedy, or whatever, might not be immediately obvious.

Hi fifty. Are you delurking or did I miss your name/handle, etc?

I know this about alcohol reliance -- not moderate conviviality that is a piece of community and feasting: no

book
painting
play
musical composition
jazz improvisation
building
choreography
dance
aria

etc.

owes it's existence to alcohol. Art happens despite alcohol. Creative people seem to be
depressed
introverted
inhibited
socially-isolated
anxious

more than other people. Alcohol holds out the siren song of temporary relief of these inhibitions. But, like steroids, exact a mid and long term price for this fleeting release.

I am not a tee-totaler. However, I have watched many who I love deeply stumble when they "serve" alcohol. She is not a muse; she can be a cruel and exacting mistress, weaving all the while the illusion of art and productivity.

Well said, CqP.

It was a fun dish to make, Yoki. Looking at the date on it, I'm astonished that more than 2 1/2 years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Also, Goodwin is quite right that writers are loners -- but then he jumps completely off the rails. Writers are loners because they are watchers, observers. They are always the "other," outside of their given society but always watching it, recording it, and interacting with it, but interacting meaning they have a relationship with it but are not "in" it. So they are chroniclers, tale-tellers, reporters. If one is busy recording what is going on around you (and even what is in your own head) you can't also be a "free" participant in it. There is always that part of you that is watching, recording, observing, working. That is who you are, and what you do. You are a writer.

Perhaps this "distance" between the self and society is what causes the depression: the knowledge at some level that one is not a part of the general biosphere but only an observer of it, an "other." But for some reason I think the depression goes even deeper than that.

Hmm. Curious: this train of thought suggests some sort of dissociation...which is somewhat schizophrenic, yes?

I come down more on Bacchus' side. People who give in to the Siren-song-as-muse are, truly, glamoured. As the sirens do and did. It is witchy. They pay, sooner or later. Most often sooner.

But, to be easy and happy, convivial, every now and then? And most often without ill-effect?

Hi Fifty!

I'm of two minds on Kindles. The Luddite part says no way will I ever want to read books on screens. The early adopter says, cool, a way to take many books without weight or bother! Once you sink the cost into the hardware, are the books cheaper? That would be the only way to hook me, but I still want my nice, well-bound copies of Austen at hand to enjoy.

Oy, vey!

Yoki -- conviviality is a gift of the community to each other. I think food is essential and alcohol a fine component but not necessary.

Tis a mystery who will struggle with alcohol and who will not. So, we should all take care.

But, I think that community holds a key: drink in the open;
drink as an adjuvent to celebration not the reason;
be deliberate about food, timing, driving, and how to end responsibly.

Yoki -- you know and live this. Forgive my preachey mode. Am guiding some youngens. And, these youngens descend from some alcohol addled/hampered/diminished peeps.

Yes! And, of course, have conversation, visiting, good touch to each other. Sometimes hilarious falling about. When a body goes secretive, then worry.

Jeez, have I just stumbled upon the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Art? That one can either participate, or one can observe, but one cannot be both, just like one can record an object's speed, or its position, but not both?

I would heartily agree with Ivansmom that depression does not make one a "better" writer...but only that it tends to make one "be" a writer. Or perhaps I should say one becomes a writer in spite of the depression, just as one writes despite the alcoholism, not because of it.

The problem is they all track. So one needs to figure out the correlations and the mechanisms. But they track, that's what needs explaining somehow.

(Anyone want to make the argument that we should not bother trying to figure out what makes an artist tick at this subterranean level? I confess to being ambivalent about it.)

My beloved CollegeQuaParkian. Never preachy. *Careful.* We agree.

Mudge -- Kay Redfield Jamieson writes about creativity and bipolar discorder. Here is a place to start:
http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2005/09/30/kay-redfield-jamison-explores-link-between-madness-and-creativity/

This is hardly scientific, 'Mudge, but, FWIW, my family is living proof that there is a genetic predisposition for developing the very maladies you mentioned. There is considerable debate about this in the scientific literature. Thus, for your reading pleasure, a link to a primary source, in which the researchers discuss the discovery of a genetic marker in people with a history of depression:

http://www.library.nhs.uk/geneticconditions/viewresource.aspx?resID=122524

...and this heavily referenced secondary source that concludes that the evidence for a biological basis for depression isn't conclusive:

http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/behavior/depressn_5/

Hi everyone! CqP, I haven't written in a long time. I live in the SF Bay Area, do computer stuff for a living, don't really know much else, sadly.

Slyness, I'd never have considered a Kindle for all the same reasons. But I've seen them in person and they look nice. I've become accustomed to reading online so I might be able to stand it. Getting a book with only a minute or two delay appeals, too.

On the other hand, they're known to be fragile, there's always a better one next year, and would I really use it? I've seen too many piles of discarded computer gear that was once highly valued but is now utter garbage. Meanwhile, a 20 year old book is as good as one bought today.

So I hold off buying one.

Fifty, are you Pacifica? The mandatory log-in messes me up about knowing who is who.

Well, I will.

I write.

I have been published, but very rarely.

I write better when I am well, and less well when I am not. But, writing (and wrighting - craft) is hard. It just is. So I do believe that an introspective bent inclines us to plumb our own minds. It may work, or it may not. Mostly not, in my experience, when we believe we are most profound. But to be original means we are word-wrights. And then we throw the product away, because it sucks.

I can't really figure this out. I believe it is absolutely necessary to care about the product, but not the motivation. I think. I hope. I trust. Only the end-thing matters, and we should be hard on ourselves, critical.

I am much inclined toward the genetic answer myself, Jack, but don't know much about it, other than reports such as yours about strong links.

I will read the Jamieson, CqP, thank you.

I know a few things about the muse. She is a b1tch, though she pretends otherwise. Yes, she makes you pay, as Yoki says. And I know that we often love those who are not particularly "good" for us, but the heart wants what it wants. The muse is such a person. She isn't really interested in you; she's only interested in the Art, whichever one it may be. So she uses you to get what she wants. And she has no conscience, and she's ruthless. And she's fickle, and untrustworthy.

And one loves what one can't have.

"I believe it is absolutely necessary to care about the product, but not the motivation. I think. I hope. I trust. Only the end-thing matters, and we should be hard on ourselves, critical."

Concur absolutely, without reservation.

I'll go with "despite", Mudge. I firmly refuse to believe that depression aids anything good.

My boss has a Kindle and loves it. He's not a technology kinda guy, but he extols the ability to take a lot of books along on long road trips without, well, taking a lot of books along on road trips.

Yes, Curmudgeon. And we pay and pay, for our devotion.

But, we can be well. We can heal ourselves.

CpQ, no, Pacifica must be someone else. I've always written here as "Fifty," which is an increasingly inaccurate reference to my age.

Lightweight access to many books sounds attractive. Fortunately I don't have to travel much for work in these cost-conscious times.

"an increasingly inaccurate reference to my age."

*Snort*

I dunno, Yoki. The first thought that popped into my head was that I'm not much interesting in healing. I'm not even sure what that means, or why I say it. But that's what popped into my head.

I think at some level I believe that if I am "healed" I will no longer be able to do my work (which is to say, write). Perhaps we are back to the muse again. I don't think I want to be "well," insofar as I understand what we're talking about. I think I can either be well, or I can write, but I can't be both. And I know that if I am well I will be unhappy. Does that make sense?

I once had a fairly bitter exchange with my wife. She asked me if I was "happy." I said that happiness was not something I think about, one way or the other. It wasn't on my list of things to do. I have a whole s---load of things I "want," but being happy isn't one of them. never was.

I have no idea what that signifies, if anything. But there it is.

This has certainly been a therapeutic evening. People pay big bucks for this.

See, I disagree, 'mudge. I think we do our best work (whatever that is) when we are, well, not happy, but clear. It has taken me a long time to get clear.

I don't seek happiness. I know (as I have written about on the Boodle) that happiness is only a very a small moment, grasped.

But, and but and but. I aspire to be clear and open. To know what it is to be in a place that is so transparent, and honest, that I know who I am in that particular, what? moment, and expressive, too. So that I can tell.

That's all.

I think, because I am a talker and a writer, that I wish, my prime directive is, to be expressive, not hidden.

I'm gonna need Cliff Notes for the Boodle.

I might wait for the movie. I know who's playing Mudge. :-)

I do know that "happy" is getting lost in good work. Managing a family can be that work, or writing well, or washing the dog. I have noticed it takes extra effort to find happiness while housepainting. But this is as likely a place to successfully confront demons of restlessness and boredom as any other.

My own opinion is that writers may be depressed because in the main, they are surrounded by legions of idiots.

On a different note, Yoki's eggplant comment and others' led me to Google Lebanese recipes. I have never had it. I now want it.

This discussion has been far too fascinating not to want to add my two cents, even though most of the participants are far better read than me. I don't think that depression and creativity necessarily track. It seems to me that the correlation is more between depression, IQ, and particular personality types. There are plenty of writers out there having a good life, and writing very popular, very creative work -- that nobody is going to remember in 50 years. The stuff that ends up taught in college classes (and debated on blogs), comes from writers who have the smarts to actually say something of value.

That something-of-value is convincing observations of people and the "human condition." A writer who can create truly real, meaningful characters ain't no dummy, and likely has a somewhat jaundiced view of human nature -- unless (s)he has is unusually noble and generous person. The problem is that those noble and generous personalitiy types aren't usually the ones who enjoy spending hours on end sitting alone in front of a (regressing temporally) computer/typewriter/pen and paper putting together something that is publishable. I think there is also some research showing a correlation between IQ and depression. Which leaves us with bright loners, even misanthropes, who have a tendency towards depression and its consequent self-medication with alcohol.

The problem with that, of course, is that alcohol is a depressant, regardless of its immediate sense of euphoria. I suspect that libraries worth of books went unwritten because talented creators had creative block traceable to depression, or put first drafts in a drawer thinking that they "weren't good enough" to make it work. Or spent a few years drinking away the royalties from successful work.

By the way Yoki, there is a Thai dish, usually called "country curry" that is made with those little green eggplants used in some Indian dishes. Yummy stuff, but it's frequently very spicy.

Happiness has always seemed to me to be a byproduct of having a satisfactory life, of having positive intimate relations with friends and family, of accomplishing something worth doing, etc. Regardless of what the Declaration of Independence says, pursuing happiness won't get it for you.

For me, there is much contentment. I like the connotations of the French: Je suis contente.

That's all the thoughts I have for tonight. Sweet dreams, everybody.

Bipolar disorder and depression does track with creativity-- but nobody creates in the depressed state that much.

Depression is so common and frequent as part of the human temperament that we must ask if it may have some function in itself which goes awry in some people.

This article suggests that a mildly depressive state may be necessary to the kind of critical self-evaluation and obsession necessary to handle a major project.

http://www.library.nhs.uk/geneticconditions/viewresource.aspx?resID=122524

Of course, mindful writing itself can be good therapy for depression, so maybe writers write from the need to put that mindset to a productive use.

Sorry that should have been:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary&page=3

This is reading like a therapy session. I equate happiness with childhood. We develop the schemes that reflect, not necessarily in this order, the way we deal with anger, prejudices, self destructive habits, and the way we deal with relationships, from those that are closest to us, our parents and sibs. As these schemes develop and are accommodated to context, mainly from the peer relationships we develop in school, tempered by further accommodation from our parents and sibs, the less happy we get. Then comes transescence, and the hope of normalcy at the other end, through the fog of hormones, first loves, rejection, middle school, high school, college, and finally the big show. Happiness would seem to give way to passion, in the realm of employment and *settling down*. From my own experience, I can't think of many strings of years when I've been happy. Rolling with the punches, sprinkled with some extended time in the ditch is a fair characterisation. It is only recently, after a tick over a half century that I can say, as Yoki did so succinctly, that I have a modicum of clarity. I dare say that this has made me happy.

Mudge-- "the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality." -- Alice Miller.

(Thanks for the book recommend on "The Drama of the Gifted Child", ftb. I found it interesting. BTW-- if I got the boodle handle wrong, I'm sorry.)

I thought that article was incomplete because not all depression comes from complex social causes-- some is just genetic and a lot of depression can be due to underlying illnesses.

I think we like to do stuff that we enjoy. For some people, writing is one of the few things they can enjoy-- especially at times of illness or great upheaval, where they lack the usual social ties or the mobility or money to maintain them.

Certainly a lot of people write even when struggling with chronic illness... Jane Austen did it, so did many other writers including Flannery O'Connor. Illness is also very isolating psychologically.

Yes, writing is healing in that one can think through a complex problem and be done with that particular issue-- or return to that theme over and over, with new perspectives.

dbG, if you say "Mickey Rooney," I just may have to drive up there and beat the crap out of you.

Even though that's the right answer. But I'd rather have Ed Asner.

I can't comment one way or the other on your interesting 10:23, Rash, because I know virtually nothing whatsoever about writers and their IQs. Couldn't even remotely guess who was high and who wasn't. Don't believe in all my reading I have ever seen a reference to so-and-so being especially smart or bright or whatever. A couple of cases of precociousness, maybe. Clearly, a lot were in some sense "brilliant" -- Updike, for example, strikes me as somebody that was clearly high IQ. But I don't get that at all from, say, Hemingway, do you? A lot of writers seem to be accessing feelings and emotions and the subconscious -- doesn't seem that a high IQ especially plays into that, and almost the opposite, in a way.

I just dunno.

A Clear Midnight

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.

Walt Whitman

Mudge, I agree. Some writers have a high EQ, some not so much.

Isaac Asimov was very smart, but he was the first to say it was a specialized intelligence-- he had a ton of facts in his head, but he seemed so absent-minded that he didn't always "put it together" as to what he should do in real life.

Samuel Clemens was never considered a particularly bright child by his teachers nor his townfolk, but he got knocked around by life and learned a lot they never did, and he wrote brilliant humor. Go figure.

I do think the smartest writers won't necessarily intimidate their audience with their intelligence, unless it's what the writing calls for.

What a perfect quote CqP. Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving break?

Wilbrod, very, very few writers describe writing as "enjoyable"; almost to a man (or woman), they describe it as agony, suffering, a battle, yadda yadda. I can't think of a single writer who describes it as pleasant. There's the famous quote that writing consists of sitting down at the typewriter and opening a vein.

(Whether we need take them at their word is an open question. But the evidence is overwhelming: they nearly all claim to hate it.)

However, I *have* read of a fair number who do admit they like (or love) the research, and some describe that as a problem, because they can get lost in it, when they know they should stop researching and start writing. So in some cases the love of research is used as a way to put off doing the hard, miserable part (the writing).

Just reporting what I've read. (Though I concur.)

I thought it was a younger Robert Redford. Or a less hirsute Wilford Brimley.

Brimley. Hmmm. I like Brimley, but I think he's a little too western for me. Plus he's always got a bread or at least a mustache. Me, never.

Sure, Redford is the *obvious* choice, on a purely aesthetic and look-alike level, but kind of unimaginative casting, don't you think? I'm not sure Redford captures the essential inner angst, the existential me. Maybe a middle-period William Frawley or Bill Bendix. Lionel Barrymore, but without the boyish charm.

SCC: bread? beard.

Mudge: I probably shouldn't have used the term "IQ." I meant that in a more generic sense, as in "smart guy." I wouldn't necessarily assume that Hemingway would have aced a standardized test, but I also don't think that anyone who met him would have walked away without thinking "that's a smart guy." "Accessing feelings and emotions and the subconscious" is something that I associate with intelligence, certainly in terms of being able to put it into words that communicate to others, but it's obviously not tested for in high school.

Asner I can see. I'd have to hear you say "I hate spunk."

Trouble is, I kinda like spunk. But then, so did Lou Grant (yes, he lied).

A couple of observations -- a lot of great writing seems to me to come from people who are battling inner demons of some sort.

The internal friction of forces in opposition may release a type of energy that could manifest itself in lots of ways. One way could be bursts of creativity (if one can manage to find enough clarity in the chaos to be productive), other ways could be bouts of self-destructive behavior or descent into depressive melancholy. Of course, everyone's different.

For some, I think some degree of internal friction may be necessary to generate the internal energy to be creatively productive. And there may be chemical dampeners some rely on to control that energy -- or at least the noise.

But I'm not an expert or a psychologist. I'm just tellin' ya what it looks like from here.

bc

Let me offer an alternative theory as to why a writer might tend to drink as an unintentional aid to writing.

One of the things that really struck me, when my kids were little, was how weirdly they see the world. Children are intelligent little critters, but they lack the experience to form a completely rational picture of the world. As a result, they try out theories and concepts of the world that do not yet seem silly to them. This was all extremely valuable to me as a storyteller, in addition to being extremely sweet and endearing. As a rational adult and scientist, I am blinkered from the weird ways the world *could* be understood. The children's demented understanding provided a spark of creativity to which I could apply my adult mind to form a coherent story.

I suspect that some writers who drink may be looking for the same thing. They are intelligent, rational people who know how to construct a narrative out of limited information. The problem is that their information is no longer sufficiently limited to allow latitude for creativity. Drunkenness provides that skewed perspective, slowing down thinking until data can arrive faster than it can be organized. Odds are, nothing worthwhile will come directly from the drunken stupor, but it may serve to remind the writer of how to be confused and how to make alternative narratives.

I posit that there are safer and more-productive ways to have the same experience, like participating in conversation with 4-year-olds. Nevertheless, the bottle may fulfill that need for a window on weirdness for some writers.

Just waiting around to see who is gonna win the Titans/Houston game. Both sides seem to be trying hard to lose it.

Maybe the word "perceptive" is the one I'm looking for, which I find largely synonymous with "intelligence."

Mudge, I know that feeling, too.

Work is hard, especially when you have to bring your emotions to the table.

Some writing moments can be quite awful indeed. That doesn't mean writing's not enjoyable when it goes well, and that's what addicts people to it.

How do YOU feel about writing?

Wow, deep discussion tonight but very interesting as usual. I'm too tired to add much on happiness except to say as Yoki did that I get "clearer" with age and have experienced quite enough in life to know what makes me content.

Working from home this week--great except for the cold and snow and darkness. :-)

SciTim: Something to that. It's sort of like taking a jigsaw puzzle, throwing the pieces in the air, and expecting them to come down in a rational picture. But every once in a while a couple of pieces might come down in a way that you'd never have thought of putting together rationally, but still looks kind of interesting. Sort of like talking to a four-year-old.

great jam. Equally great take on I Know You Rider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USCJr_9RGR0

I don't think the writing is enjoyable at all, Wilbrod. It is the "having written" that sometimes feels pretty good. Although most of the time I dislike what I've written, or even if I seem to like it I have lots of doubts and insecurity.

I find that if I know what I have to write, I usually don't like it -- unless something happens and I surprise myself somehow. When it goes according to plan, it's not much good. When lightning strikes -- then it can be OK.

I love writing dialogue, but know I over-write, so then I have to go back and reduce and cut, which is painful as hell. I hate to cut, even when I know it's the right thing to do. Cutting my own prose is like chopping off my own fingers.

Writing exposition and transitions is just plain miserable. It's a chore, grunt work. Hate it. Am not good at it. Will write dialogue and use other bad habit tricks to avoid it.

In the days of the typewriter, I despised re-writing, because you had to re-type the entire page just to fix a few words here or there, or a sentence, or a graf. Now, in the era of word-processing all that has disappeared. Now I use re-writing and editing endlessly as a form of procrastination, to avoid doing the hard stuff, which is putting new stuff down on the page.

And I am undiscplined, and somewhat lazy. As bc says, lots and lots of demons.

Then there are all the uncertainties. Complete lack of feedback. You never know how you're doing, because you ahve learned you can't trust your own judgement. So is it crap or not? You don't know. Insecurities. Anxieties. Maybe it's good -- bit is it quite good enough? Maybe I don't quite have it. Maybe I'm only 98 percent good enough, but fail because I'm not 100 percent good enough.

more

2

I read some writers and know I am ten times better than they are. And then I read others, and know I am 20 times worse, couldn't touch them with a 40-foot pole. I revere Updike -- and know I am nowhere near remotely good enough to carry his golf clubs, let alone write like him.

I worry because I don't write like anybody else, which makes me insecure and makes me wonder if I am wandering down some ultimately blind alley, if I am doing something wrong. I knowingly break some rules, and wonder if that's good or bad. I never worry about ambition, or vision, or getting ideas, because I have all that, probably in excess. I mainly worry I'm just not quite good enough.

For the 27 years I've been married, I have always put my family first and my writing second. Many of you would applaud that. I don't. There's lots of days I think maybe that was a mistake, that I should have been more selfish, fought more for my work and just said no to the endless honey-dos. I worry that I don't have much time left. I have a list of 18 books to write -- and know that I won't live long enough to accomplish that. So I am in a constant state of self-triage.

I have always been a "deadline writer," somebody who does better the closer it gets to the deadline, because of the adrenaline rush. I am an adrenaline junkie. But novel-writing is open-ended, and there is no deadline. Excep the end of one's life. which in my case is on the distant but visible horizon. I worry that I am on deadline right now, this very minute. And I've got to get at least this one book done first.

So yeah, Wilbrod, I am a mass of perfectly wonderful, useful neuroses and psychoses. just like a real writer ought to be.

Oh, and then there's the 35 years of intermittent depression, the visits from the black dog. But I don't like to talk about him. But I view the depression as a pretty positive sign, yanno, like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. He and I kind of reached a truce a long time ago: he doesn't bother me too much, and I don't kick him or beat him. He just comes into the room once in a while when I'm working, makes himself comfortable on the rug, growls, farts in his sleep, and goes away after a couple days. Live and let live, yanno?

"Poor writing is... a symptom of inhibition and nervousness. Better English is the language spoken and written by someone who feels at ease."

-- Rudolf Flesch.

If you laugh compulsively at that and think he's a crackpot, you do need to read "Write Now!" by Elizabeth Irvin Ross to help put that ease in your writing life.

(It worked for me, by the way.)

You write a lot on the boodle, no pressure, and it seems to me that you have no problem generating gems along with bilge.

For the revision angle, I really recommend "Revising Fiction" by David Madden-- it has 185 revision techniques, examples of first and final drafts by famous writers (and some of those first drafts were stupefyingly bad crap) and it gives you questions that you can use to ask yourself "is this stuff good or not?"

Farting in my sleep
Tends to wake up upset gnomes
Ah, midnight walks-- nice!

-Wilbrodog-

Mudge-- I read you. I virtually never read Updike. So Updike can go shove his brilliance up his dike.

You have an unique voice that mixes coarse slang and dialect with polished English. You have many years' experience with history and writing/editing itself that is part of your writing style and how you think about life. You also have helluva guts when it comes to stating what you think even when it's not popular.

Also, you're a lot funnier than Updike.

In short, you have a lot to say on life.

And the winner is:
http://views.washingtonpost.com/pundits/?hpid=opinionsbox1

Just what the world needs: another Conservative blowhard. Wonderful. Just effing wonderful.

Hola, Boodleros!

Spring temperatures finally reach Santiago!!!!

Less than a month left to presidential elections in Chile. The official campaign season is one month. Candidates get free and equal time on TV.

Businesses or individuals may donate money to a candidate or political party--BUT:

Donor donates via the Elections Commission which in turn launders the money via the State Bank. Candidate receives the money but has no clue where it comes from.

In practice, this has allowed an independent candidate, Marco Enriquez Ominami, to run on equal terms against political heavy weights.

There isn't much at stake, even Arrate, a Communist is a centrist.

Polls indicate that a second round will be needed. Pundits predict Pinera (center right) VS Frey (Chirstian Democrat) will slug it out.

I have the feeling that Ex President Frey will be bested by Ominami

Brag

I wrote a lot "for the drawer" -- or the packing box -- when I was younger, and having done so has aided me immeasurably in my current work. But there is a quality I don't have, which has the great name "copia," given by some Roman rhetorician (Cicero?). I can sit at a keyboard for hours and write my a$$ off, but the supply of real ideas and effects just isn't there. I gloomily came to the conclusion that my true brother is some guy who sat in his attic for 30 years writing an unreadable epic about Leif Ericson. I didn't want to be that guy, and accepted the skills that I gained as a lucky gift.

About writing and depression and alcoholism. I can't believe that anyone accomplishes anything when either depressed or drunk. My occasional bouts of grief and painful conflict have only given me the grateful knowledge that I don't, in fact, appear to be subject to the Real Thing, the Black Dog. From what I have read, real depression is a profoundly disorganizing phenomenon and a saboteur of everything.

There can be plenty of ongoing unhappiness from dedication to any difficult activity that is insufficiently nurtured.

Morning all, hey Cassandra!

Great discussion overnight.

Okay, we'll get an early start on the holiday. Pumpkin scones with clotted cream on the ready room table, with appropriate beverages.

Onward into the preparations for Thanksgiving!

"Plus he's always got a bread or at least a mustache. Me, never."

That's kinda what 'less hirsute' means. Because I can totally see you pitching oatmeal or diabetic supplies. Or swimming naked in the senior center pool.

And nobody on their death bed wished they had spent more time fixing the trim. Unless it was a broken shutter that fell on their head and put them in the hospital in the first place.

I can also totally see you on Oprah explaining all the demons you overcame to publish your novel about a poor Mississippi child who overcame poverty and hardship to become the best dang sous chef in Wyoming.

Getting back to the kit (hah!): "The simple fact is that no one in this town is willing to tell voters that they can't have everything they want."

A few years ago, Meg Greenfield in her memoir talked about how journalists interact with proposed federal legislation, using as an example a hypothetical new program called FEFEADL: Free Everything for Everybody All Day Long. That always gives me a laugh when I remember it.

We'll see how this Huffman guy does. Because heaven knows the op-ed page needs a Fox News-watching white male to add some balance and diversity.

Perhaps I missed something, but I certainly did not get the impression that Huffman was pushing a conservative viewpoint.

Speaking as someone who had an Exit sign fall on his head (fortunately, and inappropriately, I was wearing a hard-hat at the time), I am in favor of *someone* spending more time on the trim.

Good morning boodle! Thanks to all who stayed up late adding to the literary discussion- a good tonic for this morning. Am headed back north unexpectedly for a duo of funerals-the youngish man who worked part time for Our Fair City died over the weekend, as did the aged father of a high school classmate (she was the caboose of a large family, truth be told I thought he died long ago).

As I spend 8 hours driving today and tomorrow I'll think about happiness. Do I have it, do I even want it? Thanks Mudge, something to fall back on when public radio fails.

Regarding writers and intelligence, I believe "intelligence" is a handful of different mental skills which sometimes come bundled, sometimes not. Memory, pattern recognition, quickness, focus, other things too.

But having said all that, Tim's 11:36 is intelligent.

yello, if you see me as ever being on Oprah talking about my demons, OR ever pushing oatmeal, you have reeeelllly got the wrong guy. Diabetic supplies, perhaps, but not on TV. No TV, not ever.

Instead of thinking about happiness during your 8-hour drive, Frosty, just pop some Springsteen in the tape deck. I recommend the "Live in Dublin" album featuring the Seeger Sessions band and tunes.

Or Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell." My top "driving" music. You'll never nod off an drift into a ditch when "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is cranked up to about 90 decibels.

Hmmmmm... always interesting when a WaPo ad is blocked by the office 'Net filter. What IS the marketing department up to these days?

Obviously last night was not the best of nights to forego the Boodle in order to dive into Thanksgiving prep. Be that as it may, I've written (although not all that creatively) and I've dealt with the black dog. The two have correlated, certainly -- These days the dog's far afield and my writing has tailed off, but then again my current job doesn't require "writing" in the classical sense.

And RD_P, "correlation does not equal causation" should be enshrined in every basic science (AND journalism) class... *SIGHHHH*

*just-a-few-more-hours-until-another-lovely-highway-holiday Grover waves* :-)

God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ.

Good morning, friends. Dynamite discussions on this kit. Kguy, loved the quotes, and Yoki, being clear, and beautifully written, is the way to go. And Slyness, I agree heartily with your assessment. Happiness is elusive, and I know that's a standard quote, but it is. For me, it is my faith, the fact that God and His Son, Jesus loves me, and not just me. I've also found it to be in those things that we rarely pay attention to, the small things. You know the answers a child might give to a question or a coloring project just for grandma, and even watching Spongebob, minus the laugh.

Sorry I haven't been around, but have to check in when I can. We're still together, and trying to get the Thanksgiving meal together. Dad's doing okay, but seems to be getting a little depressed because it is taking so long. His sister will be here for the holiday and he's going to join her for the meal. My sister and our families will eat together.

I do hope everyone has a really nice Thanksgiving with family and friends. And don't eat too much.

Slyness, did you get my mail? Please excuse the sloppy handwriting, it was quick and done during a spare moment.I don't have too many of those.

I have a headache this morning, but I'm also washing and heading to my favorite haunt, the laundry room. I feel a book in there somewhere. Maybe I could join Sarah Palin on tour. Me talking about the virtues of the laundry room, her talking about the virtues of Ronald Reagan, both of us talking about cleaning. I'm talking about clothes, and she's talking about cleaning out the population if it doesn't meet her standards. Billy Graham never met a Republican he didn't like.

One of the ministers that help with the radio outreach ministry has died. He passed late yesterday. He was an associate pastor at the church dad and I attend, so it's a little sad this morning. Pray for us.

One question, but I have so many more, is ABC that desperate for ratings? I know Oprah is leaving, but, isn't there another way? I didn't see the show, but it's all over the news. Some expressions should remain in the bedroom, not on national television, of course, if the point was to be the focus of Monday morning quarterbacking, it was a success, don't you think?

Have a great day, folks, and an even better holiday. Be careful, and enjoy your families. Prayers and good thoughts for all.

Cassandra!! Very very nice to hear from you!!! *HUGSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS* :-)

C'mon, Scotty, no more time for hugging. According to the WaPo, nukes are the hot, new, trendy power source of tomorrow, so you better get back to work. The Post sez: "the start of what many are calling "a new nuclear age" is unfolding with only muted opposition -- nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the green movement in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s."

Seems even the top Greenpeace anti-nuke protestor in Jolly Old England is now the leading pro-nuker. Whoda thunk?

*valiantly (but ultimately vainly) attempting to reply to 'Mudge* :-)

I love writing. I can, and have, easily lost days just spewing words. Things like dreadful short stories, incomprehensible novels, and pedantic expositions. As a purely recreational activity it is hard to beat.

Mudge -that turn around from the old "split wood not atoms" mindset always reminds me of this bit from Woody Allen's "Sleeper:"

Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?"

Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."

mudge,
Are you telling us you have a face for radio? And I think you and Oprah would make a cute couple. She might even let a hunk like you jump on her couch, if you know what I mean.

And if you do publish the Great American Tale Of Flatulence, don't pull a Franzen and callblock Harpo Productions. You may never be heard from again. There are some forces in this world you don't mess with.

Mudge, I can get you a face-to-face with the son of Harpo's laundry service. I know people.

Oh, wait, you don't really mean Harpo, do you?

I don't even have a voice for radio, much less a face.

Warning. Writing is an incurable desease.

Brag

Yes, Cassandra, I sure did get your sweet notes. I haven't sent the one onward but will do that today. Thanks for the reminder! I hope the boodle has been helpful to you.

Let's find some Huffman quotes:

"As I struggled to get up to speed on the subject matter, I was relieved to find some bedrock conservative philosophies anchoring the debate so I could get my moorings."

"If you want to know the dry, objective version of what happened, you can already get that on Fox News. (or maybe the newspaper)."

"I read and enjoy a really wide range of writers: Kathleen Parker, Michael Gerson, David Brooks; EJ Dionne, Gail Collins. Andrew Sullivan and William Saletan. And two of my favorites, now deceased, with totally disparate perspectives - Michael Kelly and Molly Ivins."

"But when the economic hole is sufficiently deep, you can't just throw a jobs program at the problem. You need to help create a framework in which entrepreneurialism and (the good kind of) risk-taking can start again."

I report. You decide.

Speaking of great books, today is the day for atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, infidels, heathens and pastafarians to celebrate. It's the sesquicentennial of the publication of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species."

This blogger has a list of books to help one celebrate. Also, the NYT has an interesting feature story this morning about the evolution of snails. No mention anywhere about how the White House will mark the date---focus seems to be on tonight's state dinner.

http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-in-celebration-of-150th.html

A description about the centennial five decades ago at the University of Chicago.

http://www1.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/DarwinCentennial/

Ruh-roh!

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5AN24220091124

Slyness, the boodle is always helpful to me even when you guys don't hear from me. I know that I have friends in this world, and many times that is such a boost when dealing with life. God is good, he knows our needs and he answers them with good people and good friends. Thanks so much for just being friends and so much more.

Scotty, back at you. Mudge, Yoki, Martooni, Lindaloo, and all, may God bless and keep you, and His marvelous shine on you and your families. You, too, Slyness.

I used to have a mix-CD for long drives called "Rock Out Loud" that had Springsteen, Meat Loaf, The Who, Billy Joel, Eagles, etc. on it. My wife figured out that the 'loud' part of the title pertained to me since these were all sing-along anthems of mine. The CD disappeared soon afterwards. Now with iPod playlists, the point is moot, but I am not.

I just backboodled, and wowie-zowie, what an interesting discussion about writing . . .

IMHO, I think the issue with alcoholism and depression (most times, inexorably linked) and writing is that writing is very, very revealing -- the whole concept of revealing oneself is, perhaps by definition, cause for extreme anxiety, typically dampened by alcohol, etc.

And, Wilbrod, 'twere I who recommended "The Drama of the Gifted Child".

Ivansmom -- I'm almost done with the first book, and past most, if not all, of "stuff" -- and I gotta tell ya that I was one step ahead of it the entire way! I "had a feeling" about all of this. The book is very well written, I must say. And I'm learning some new Swedish words along the way.

Gotta get into a conference call -- will be back atcha later.

The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted.

:-)

I think the "Origin" gave Darwin enough income to live quite comfortably with his family. He kept revising it.

I suppose Alfred Russel Wallace got a decent income from his books, too. I've read his "Island Life", but not Darwin's "Origin".

Randy Bresnik, the astronaut who just became a dad while aboard the space shuttle (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/11/23/VI2009112301631.html?hpid=multimedia1&hpv=national) has a very long association with NAS Pax River, and was down there when I was. He was part of my regular "beat" areas. I wrote a story about him when he got selected to NASA in 2004. Nice guy, staggeringly smart guy, staggeringly good pilot, bordering on the supernatural. Won all the test pilot school academic awards.

Excerpts from his NASA biography relating to Pax River [with my annotations in brackets]:

Marine Corps, Lt. Col.

Bresnik was selected for U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS) at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, and began the course in January 1999. After graduation in December 1999, he was assigned as a[n] F/A-18 Test Pilot/Project Officer at the Naval Strike Aircraft Test Squadron (NSATS). While at Strike [the name of that squadron], Bresnik flew the F/A-18 A-D [the four types of F-18 fighters] and F/A-18 E/F [the "electronics/countermeasuures variants] in all manners of flight test. In January 2001, he returned to the USNTPS as a Fixed-Wing and Systems Flight Instructor, where he instructed in the F/A-18, T-38, and T-2. Bresnik returned to NSATS in January 2002 to continue flight test on the F/A-18 A-F as the Platform/Project Coordinator.

[He won these test pilot school awards:]
The Outstanding Student Award, U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Empire Test Pilot School Award, U.S. Naval Test Pilot School [the top academic award prize given by the Empire test pilot school in Britain, kind of the "exchange" test pilot school in Europe]. Stephen A. Hazelrigg Memorial Award for Best Test Pilot/Engineer Team, Naval Strike Aircraft Test Squadron.

While waiting, on Nov 1., for Doug Brinkley to show up at the signing tent at the Texas Book Festival, I had the opportunity to chat briefly with former San Antonio Express-News reporter and author Bill Minutaglio. We talked about his earlier book about Alberto Gonzales and his most recent biography about pundit Molly Ivins, who was no stranger to the bottle and fought alcoholism.

I mention this because Minutaglio will talk about his Ivins books Dec. 3 here in town at the converted, huge historic Pearl Brewery (where our independent bookstore has moved in the last several weeks--since I heard the presentation about the book "Literary El Paso").

NatGeo at work, finding and describing a stern wheeler from the days of the Canadian Gold Rush:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-sternwheeler24-2009nov24,0,3733461.story

Howdy y'all.

Cassandra, I'm sorry about your pastor's death. I do like your idea for a joint tour with you and Palin. That would be something else.

Sorry also to frostbitten for your funeral duties.

ftb, Girl With Dragon Tattoo is so interesting and well written that I enjoyed it even staying a step ahead.

I also liked the discussion about writing, and happiness. I'd note that we're all working on deadline, every day. We just don't know what it is.

Yellojkt, regarding your 9:07: Sat. Tire. Go back and look at the rest of his material and see who ends up looking stupid in his bland endorsement of their wisdom. I concur with Gene Robinson that the column was kind of muddled and did not ultimately come to an unambiguous conclusion (in the manner of the grand-daddy of them all "A Modest Proposal"). Nevertheless, the target of the satire is pretty clear.

Good morning everyone, after a busy couple of days - I have been somewhat under the weather last couple of days, read the interesting discussions that have gone on but had little of value to add.

To follow up on the great unknown Canadian music, sadly I give you Jacksoul, whose lead singer Haydain Neale passed away on the 22nd. Great song,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Stv9K3ojd4

ftb, glad to know I attributed the recommend to you most properly.

A short, interesting book that explains much about people I've met.

It also made me think of Jane Eyre (the book) and how Jane managed to navigate her way emotionally through life and her complete need for attachment-- what, 120 years before the study on baby monkeys showed the harm done by not providing a mother figure of any sort?

Sometimes a good novelist with a keen eye for detail and memory for experience can write not just decades, but centuries ahead of the scientific research.

Oh Cassandra! I love the idea you have for your book tour.

You're a sneaky satirist sometimes.

You could ask Sarah if she believes in separating whites from blacks... (pause)... "in the laundry, I mean?"

If you are a comics-reader, like me, then you may have been following the Census of Marine Life in "Sherman's Lagoon." If you are clueless, also like me, then you may not have been aware that the Census of Marine Life is a real project, with a web site possessing photographs of some truly weird creatures: http://www.coml.org/

This site is not quite so odd as the Museum of Animal Perspectives, but the photography is breathtakingly beautiful.

yellojkt - I seem to recall that resistance to Tamiflu is generally developed pretty quickly by influenza strains because flu is a wildly mutating kinda bug. By last January, virtually all of the Type A (H1N1) influenza circulating was Tamiflu-resistant in many places around the world.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/H1N1webupdate20090318%20ed_ns.pdf

*Tim, thanks for sharing your opinion on Huffman. I ain't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I read it as satire, too.

I didn't think it was all that great, and rather pro-forma. Shrugworthy.

I imagine that some folks will realize that he's been yanking their chains and jump all over the guy, denouncing him as a Liberal in the grass.

Wait 'till he delivers a column about how the legalization of marijuana neatly fits the conservative agenda with regards to business and economic policy, reducing our dependence on foreign trade by moving those jobs from overseas back here to the US, as well as being a source of taxable revenue mostly paid for by folks of a liberal bent (who might forget to contribute during the next election cycle).

Then you'll know.

bc

SciTim,
Part of Huffman's problem is that he is too clever by three-quarters (to steal a phrase). He was attacking the Republicans for opposing cost-effectiveness testing just because the Administration (who I suspect are mostly non-partisan pointy-headed bureaucrats) came out with the proposal. He was feigning confusion because he, as a True Conservative, could find nothing wrong with the idea.

Ridiculing Republicans for eschewing their principles in exchange for quick partisan points does not make him a liberal. He's no Ben Domenech (remember that fiasco?) but his mindset and tenor is coming from a right-of-center perspective.

His list of influential writers is 6-3 conservative with some obscure ones in there, but those tend to be on the less doctrinaire side.

He does have a sense of humor and a fairly deep affiliation with pop culture, which may be masking his deeper inclinations.

I'm not sure how much RINO is in his DNA (being involved with the education-industrial complex at any level tends to drift your sensibilities leftward), but he has a free-market bent to his thoughts.

In an earlier comment, I mentioned that he hasn't drunk the Kool-Ade yet. He's a funny guy and has an independent streak, but there are dog whistle notes to be heard in his writing to date. If you don't hear it, I can't blame you, but they're there. If he were a real pundit, his intramural digs at would be beaten down real quickly and he would end up toeing the party line.

I am especially fascinated with this story, about people thought to be in long-term vegetative states or comas, but who are actually NOT vegetative. This story postulated 4 out of 10 might actually be conscious.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/doctors-find-vegetative-paralyzed-man-awake-23-years/story?id=9159555&hpid=moreheadlines

Just one thing re: Canadian music, before I pack the 'puter for the hike north. Canuckistanis can be forgiven a million Celines, and her pubescent pop tart spawn, for they gave us Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.

Hi Cassandra!

s'nuke-two MN state senators announced just this morning their bipartisan effort to repeal MN's moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction.

Later gators, if I don't see you till the big day be careful in your Thanksgiving prep, travels, etc...

I am especially *facepalmed* but not particularly surprised by this article:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/11/president-lou-dobbs-ex-cnner-s.html

*shaking my head*

Mudge, that one's a bit creepy, eh? Kinda hard to imagine how you could endure years of that without going absolutely batty.

The film mentioned in connection with "locked in syndrome" is "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and it is very much worth seeing. The flick, which won several awards and got multi Oscar noms, is based on a book by a guy with LIS who dictated it by blinking and is told from his POV. Keep your hankies handy. He died two days after the book was released and never got to see the movie.

Bob, imagine what it must be like to be married to a person who is in a long-term coma-like state, and not really knowing if the person is really still "in there" or is basically vegetative. Imagine what kind of life the spouse must have. How do you live your life in such a marriage? Do you remain "faithful" to that person, even though one has clearly lost all forms of phsyical, emotional and sexual relationship? Or do you remain essentially celibate (i.e. faithful to your spouse) for years or decades? Do you continue to care for and visit the spouse, but do you also go "off" somewhere and eventually start up a new relationship with someone else? What are the ethical and moral boundaries of that problem?

In the modern vernacular, how do you live under "Plan B" when Plan A goes awry like that?

I am personally familiar with two such cases like that. My friend Glen Tremaine (deceased in 1986 at age 94) married his childhood sweetheart, who later had a stroke when she was about 23 years old, in about 1921. She remained alive but completely paralyzed for seven years, until she finally died. Tremaine designed and had built a special house for them in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, that had seven levels in it -- but each level was only one step higher than the adjacent, and had ramps, so his wife could be wheeled from level to level in her wheelchair. (Tremaine was the chief naval architect of the Elco Company, about which I am writing the four-volume history. I got all my extensive Elco memorabilia from Tremaine when he was in retirement in Clearwater, Fla., in 1982-86, including 40 hours of oral history.)

more

2

Second, my own brother-in-law and sister-in-law. My SIL was a wife and mother of two small daughters when at age 30 she suddenly developed a brain disease so rare it is one of what they call an orphan disease. Within a few months, she degenerated into the condition of a severely brain-damaged five-year-old child who could barely mumble or move. She was institutionalized in a nursing home, where she remains to this day, about age 67 or so, 37 years later. During that time, my BIL, an engineer with Calif. DOT, raised the two girls the best he could as a single parent. He remained married to his wife all that time (he died only a few years ago), visited her faithfully in the nursing home all the time, etc. (The girls didn't turn out very well, but it wasn't his fault' he did the best he could. One has finally straightened up a bit, but the other is essentially "lost" somewhere in California -- drugs, booze, god knows what.

Over the years, I have asked myself what kind of life my BIL had all those years. Did he have some relationship on the side? I never asked him things like that, of course, but I have often wondered. (I hope like hell he did. I hope like hell he tried to be happy and find somebody. Nobody in the family seems to know if he ever did or not.)

Tremaine and my BIL are heroes, of a sort, albeit very quiet, unsung, unnoticed ones. Nobody knows what they've done, or had to go through.

So how do you find/create a Plan B when Plan A goes so horribly wrong? I am fascinated with this question. In a way, it is similar to what happens to any young war widow or widower, or even a young non-war widow or widower. But in those case -- and there were millions of such cases in WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. -- when the spouse dies, the survivor mourns, and many, many times remarries a few years later. This goes to the question of grieving, "closure" (hate that word), and "moving on" with one's life.

But if the spouse remains alive, is still "present" in one's life, but the relationship is effectively terminated not by choice, what do you do?

This is the Alzheimer's conundrum- except that with Alzheimer's one of you is slipping away slowly rather all at once, and she\he knows it but cannot stop the slide.

Major BOOO, given the serious topic, but I just have to point out the great coinage that someone came up with on Tom Shales' chat, looking for "schadenfreude": "schnarfigrade." The poster acknowledged confusion about the spelling. I love it. I think we should all start using it.

If Alzheimer's starts to get me, I plan to take up hang-gliding or sky-diving before it gets too bad. Then, I will have a ready-made accident waiting to happen at a time of my choosing -- or, perhaps, my family's choosing. However, for now, I'm sticking to Plan A: die at 97 in a spectacular lack of foresight and wisdom. Preferably with a hefty dash of shameful (or shameless) immorality.

The issues that Mudge raises are the kind that are commonly described as "unthinkable" but are really just "unspeakable." But if we don't speak them, then we have to wrestle with our fears and uncertainties alone.

Despite our best efforts, I don't think it should be possible to live life according to Plan A or any capital-P plan. Plans are worthless, but planning is essential. Improvise. Play that jazz, man.

True, kguy. But generally in Alzheimer's cases the couple have usually been married many, many years 9although not necessarily). And there are a few cases of very young Alzheimer's; a good friend of one of my best friends died of Alzheimers, age about 40, leaving a husband and two kids.

But I think there is still a substantial difference between asking how does one live/coninue on at age 75, say, versus hiow does one live/coninue on when you are 25 or 30. In the case of the older ones, one can assume both the patient and the spouse have already had a long life, have loved, have had relationships, children and grandchildren. When one is 25, none of those may have applied. The war widow can re-marry. Glen Tremaine and my BIL could not.

And now for something completely different. Words to live by-

http://www.bathroomsprayers.com/

And while I'm at it, here's my nominee for next pundit-

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/like_hell_im_going_to_let_some

kguy--

I read that as "bathroom prayers."

LOL

Bathroom Sprayers is blocked by my office's prudery filter. And people complain about my links.

Uh, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"

And what was happening at Bradford on Avon on Nov. 24, 2008?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3hSPDV17y0

The official movie trailer for the film Creation is here, showing cast members husband-and-wife duo Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connolly, along with Toby Jones and Jeremy Northam:

http://www.daemonsmovies.com/2009/06/15/movie-trailer-creation-with-paul-bettany-jennifer-connelly/

Oh. I thought I was going to read some good "bathrooms prayers".

I see I wasn't alone.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

Please do not stand next to me when you are working on that form of cleanliness.

New Kit!