A rare political post
The United States is going through some hard times, I know, but lately I've been getting the feeling that it is on the edge of true insanity. I don't really have much to add to the 'debate' but there are a few things I've been reading about that I thought I'd collect in one place, with a few profound yet amusing comments interspersed.
The nicest thing I can say about the tone of the right's opposition to the health care bill is that it has been one of childish anger based on ignorance, and I'm sure you've read about the racist, anti-gay insults shouted at Democratic Congressmen. That's all covered here.
But now I'm reading about multiple death threats against Democrats who voted for the bill. Is this some kind of joke? I can't judge how much this is typical of the mood in the Republican party or among conservatives, or if it truly is a fringe group, but it's certainly out there, even among prominent conservatives. Such as this, from one of the party's rising stars:
A Sarah Palin page on Facebook incorporated gun imagery in urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill but represent districts where the John McCain-Palin ticket won two years ago. Palin's post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross-hairs over the 20 districts.
There are also, of course, threats from your ordinary anti-abortion fuckhead against an anti-abortion Congressman. I don't know which of these is worse. This one:
"I hope you bleed ... [get] cancer and die," one male caller told the congressman between curses.
Or this one:
A fax with the title "Defecating on Stupak" carried a picture of a gallows with "Bart (SS) Stupak" on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, "All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God."
(You can read more here.)
Are people really looking at violence in response to a new law that, while it will eventually make health care moderately more accessible, is business friendly, does not fundamentally change the current system, and completely abandons any pretense of a government-run health care system? As IOZ so eloquently puts it:
I won't spend a lot of time reiterating old arguments, but it does bear repeating that the US House of Representatives just based a bill universally mandating that individuals purchase a private commodity--a commodity, let's be clear, that the same bill goes to great lengths to keep private. A so-called "public plan" is exactly the opposite of what this bill is, and the idea that public insurance will somehow flow naturally from its own nemesis is either crazy, a lie, or a crazy lie.
This is what conservatives are saying is infringing on their freedom. Has the concept of freedom been reduced to the right to do what we want with out money, without obligation, responsibility or concern for the consequences. Have Americans allowed themselves to be reduced from citizens to consumers? There is a saying along the lines of, "I don't mind paying taxes - it buys me civilization." The consequences of failing to do so have never been more frighteningly clear than now, as the United States show signs of moving further and further away from what I could consider "civilized."
(For more criticism of the bill from the left, take a look at this conversation with Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. Or this from Chris Hedges.)
On a slightly less dangerous note, New York City is making significant cuts to its transit system. There is talk of raising the base cost of a ride to (gasp!) $2.50. Well, it's $3 in Toronto, so you still have some catching up to do - and NYC's system is actually efficient! But I saw a quote from Michael Bloomberg that made me wonder how much worse things are going to get there:
At a news conference, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg warned New Yorkers to “save your anger” for the authority’s next set of cuts. “This is just the beginning,” the mayor said. “The next round, I would think, would be much worse.”
There is violent anger against a moderate change in health care while American cities and states make cuts to services like transit, libraries, and schools. Taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize Wall St. banks while essential government services are reduced. Is it just me, or is the anger slightly misplaced? I've never been accused of having too much faith in people's intelligence but there are people in the United States who seem to want some kind of bizarro revolution, in which the people rise up to fight for the rights of the aristocrats.
Update: In fairness, I should point out this article I just saw, which reports that tea party organizers are attempting to distance themselves from some of the less sophisticated opposition to whatever it is they oppose.
Like I said at the beginning, I don't have a big conclusion or philosophical statement to put out there, so I'm going to have to end without a flourish, if that's OK.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Below is a comment from amazon.com. I read this after purchasing The Complete Monty Python's 16 Ton Megaset: Flying Circus. Its profundity is worth sharing:
Dumb, dumb, dumb "comedy" for lemmings, | By | J. Michael (Now Born) - See all my reviews |
Seriously- how much of a troglodyte do you have to be to actually find Monty Python funny? There is absolutely nothing funny or intelligent about coupling idiotic dialogue with incongruous and surrealistic images. You want to know what kind of people claim to think that a Spanish man singing fallacious facts about llamas is somehow funny? The same kind of ninnies who think that a canvas splattered with paint and elephant dung is a work of genius...basically insecure college-indoctrinated pseudo intellectuals who are desperate to be thought of as smarter than people who like Adam Sandler, so they ape the tastes of other college-indoctrinated lemmings. However, Monty Python is a lot like Marxism or lesbianism...a university affectation which is usually abandoned once the poseur graduates and notices that the in-crowd doesn't really notice him anymore. He may keep a few tapes in the closet for when the old frat brothers visit, but no person in their right mind actually sits by them self watching Monty Python, let alone laughing at it. Maybe it's a drug thing, and Python is genuinely funny when you're blasted. I wouldn't know, but I do believe it would be a good idea to base voter eligibility on whether one finds Monty Python funny, with the Python fans being immediately ejected from the voting rolls. In such a nation, George Bush couldn't get elected dog catcher and Congress would resemble the School of Athens rather than a flying circus.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Writing about writing about writing
In the past few days the Guardian's list of Ten Rules for Writing Fiction has been quoted and referenced all over the book-related blogosphere (what I think should be called the bookosphere). It was also discussed on Slate's Cultural Gabfest and has been imitated by other newspapers like the Globe and Mail, who invited a few Canadian writers to make their own contributions. As a self-proclaimed "person who tries to write sometimes", and a fan of literature in general, I was excited when I first saw the list of rules. It's entertaining and even instructive to see what such a wide variety of prominent (some more than others) writers advise. But after a few days I've started to grow tired of seeing references to it, if nothing else than because seeing the same few rules quoted by several people has given me a worrying sense of a lack of independence of thought amongst readers of the Guardian's books page. Being intellectually superior to any adherent of such popular phenomena, I have, of course, chosen to stay aloof of the entire discussion.
And yet, I now find myself being dragged down into the muck of this literary conversation. Regardless of the fact that it is now well-covered ground, the rules have occupied my mind for the past few days (most likely because I keep seeing references to them). And so, as part of my continued effort to actually do more writing - thus developing my own skill with the English language while also enriching the world by sharing my wisdom with it - I have decided to throw my hat in the ring* and add my own comments on these same Rules for Writing Fiction.
With a few dozen writers contributing to it, much of the advice is predictably contradictory, and often not at all helpful; much like the Bible, it is not the place to look for rules on how to live your life. However, some of the rules did stand out more than others for me, such as the unfortunately-named Michael Moorcock's:
Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
While you can of course learn quite a bit from creative writing courses or other, more formal instruction, I think there's something to be said for imitating the masters. As you can see by my own writing, this is not a rule I would apply to myself (not successfully, at least). But the writers I enjoy reading the most are those who are conscious of the history of literature, and their place in it, and in whose works I see signs of having learned from great artists of the past. I'd include Philip Roth as an exceptionally successful example of this type of writer because of the way his writing combines pleasure-inducing elements like character development and plot with an attention to form and style that, on its own, would make his work worth admiring.
But that's just my opinion as a reader. The rules were directed towards writers, and while there was some nonsense and a lot of contradiction (read, don't read, eat, don't eat, etc.), there was one very simple rule, given by A.L. Kennedy (whose work I'm not familiar with), that would be impossible to ignore for anyone who aspires to writing fiction:
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.
That's it. If you want to be a writer, just take some words, put them down and, like E.I. Lonoff, re-work them until they sound the way you want them to. You may not be happy with the result, or maybe you will be the only person who is, but that's what writing is. It doesn't matter if you have a laptop or a pen and paper - just get the words down and you've done it. Being unfortunately acquainted with a person who has opted for the 'publicly obnoxious' approach, I found a great deal of joy in reading Ms. Kennedy's advice.
Before getting to the writing, of course, it's necessary that you spend some time reading books to see for yourself what fiction actually is. This is something I spend much of time doing and thinking about, and it's something I think is important, so I was pleased to see that several writers recommend reading widely and deeply as a prerequisite to writing. While not part of the original 'rules' I think Will Self put it best:
Stop reading fiction – it's all lies anyway, and it doesn't have anything to tell you that you don't know already (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).
I don't agree that a writer shouldn't read while working on a novel or story, but the second part of that statement is pure gold as far as I'm concerned. If you don't read fiction - in fact, if you don't love reading fiction - then how can you possibly expect to write your own? Or, really, why would you want to? I once had a conversation with someone (see "publicly obnoxious," above) who describes himself as a "real writer", but I had to press him to come up with the name of one writer he likes. He claims to read a lot - or, more accurately, he owns a lot of books - and yet has nothing to say about anything he's ever read. Needless to say, this doesn't do much to pique my interest about whatever it is he's writing.
But as for the methodology of writing itself, I will conclude by sticking with Will Self, who concludes his list with simple advice on how to make writing feel like the working world that the majority of writers - indeed, the majority of people - are most familiar with:
Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.
*This not being a contest per se, I'm not sure this is the right metaphor to use here. Feel free to suggest any substitutes.
In the past few days the Guardian's list of Ten Rules for Writing Fiction has been quoted and referenced all over the book-related blogosphere (what I think should be called the bookosphere). It was also discussed on Slate's Cultural Gabfest and has been imitated by other newspapers like the Globe and Mail, who invited a few Canadian writers to make their own contributions. As a self-proclaimed "person who tries to write sometimes", and a fan of literature in general, I was excited when I first saw the list of rules. It's entertaining and even instructive to see what such a wide variety of prominent (some more than others) writers advise. But after a few days I've started to grow tired of seeing references to it, if nothing else than because seeing the same few rules quoted by several people has given me a worrying sense of a lack of independence of thought amongst readers of the Guardian's books page. Being intellectually superior to any adherent of such popular phenomena, I have, of course, chosen to stay aloof of the entire discussion.
And yet, I now find myself being dragged down into the muck of this literary conversation. Regardless of the fact that it is now well-covered ground, the rules have occupied my mind for the past few days (most likely because I keep seeing references to them). And so, as part of my continued effort to actually do more writing - thus developing my own skill with the English language while also enriching the world by sharing my wisdom with it - I have decided to throw my hat in the ring* and add my own comments on these same Rules for Writing Fiction.
With a few dozen writers contributing to it, much of the advice is predictably contradictory, and often not at all helpful; much like the Bible, it is not the place to look for rules on how to live your life. However, some of the rules did stand out more than others for me, such as the unfortunately-named Michael Moorcock's:
Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
While you can of course learn quite a bit from creative writing courses or other, more formal instruction, I think there's something to be said for imitating the masters. As you can see by my own writing, this is not a rule I would apply to myself (not successfully, at least). But the writers I enjoy reading the most are those who are conscious of the history of literature, and their place in it, and in whose works I see signs of having learned from great artists of the past. I'd include Philip Roth as an exceptionally successful example of this type of writer because of the way his writing combines pleasure-inducing elements like character development and plot with an attention to form and style that, on its own, would make his work worth admiring.
But that's just my opinion as a reader. The rules were directed towards writers, and while there was some nonsense and a lot of contradiction (read, don't read, eat, don't eat, etc.), there was one very simple rule, given by A.L. Kennedy (whose work I'm not familiar with), that would be impossible to ignore for anyone who aspires to writing fiction:
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.
That's it. If you want to be a writer, just take some words, put them down and, like E.I. Lonoff, re-work them until they sound the way you want them to. You may not be happy with the result, or maybe you will be the only person who is, but that's what writing is. It doesn't matter if you have a laptop or a pen and paper - just get the words down and you've done it. Being unfortunately acquainted with a person who has opted for the 'publicly obnoxious' approach, I found a great deal of joy in reading Ms. Kennedy's advice.
Before getting to the writing, of course, it's necessary that you spend some time reading books to see for yourself what fiction actually is. This is something I spend much of time doing and thinking about, and it's something I think is important, so I was pleased to see that several writers recommend reading widely and deeply as a prerequisite to writing. While not part of the original 'rules' I think Will Self put it best:
Stop reading fiction – it's all lies anyway, and it doesn't have anything to tell you that you don't know already (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).
I don't agree that a writer shouldn't read while working on a novel or story, but the second part of that statement is pure gold as far as I'm concerned. If you don't read fiction - in fact, if you don't love reading fiction - then how can you possibly expect to write your own? Or, really, why would you want to? I once had a conversation with someone (see "publicly obnoxious," above) who describes himself as a "real writer", but I had to press him to come up with the name of one writer he likes. He claims to read a lot - or, more accurately, he owns a lot of books - and yet has nothing to say about anything he's ever read. Needless to say, this doesn't do much to pique my interest about whatever it is he's writing.
But as for the methodology of writing itself, I will conclude by sticking with Will Self, who concludes his list with simple advice on how to make writing feel like the working world that the majority of writers - indeed, the majority of people - are most familiar with:
Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.
*This not being a contest per se, I'm not sure this is the right metaphor to use here. Feel free to suggest any substitutes.
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