Christopher Hitchens, on death (written about 9 months before his actual death):


Discussing mortality, Hitchens and a friend used to muse that there would come a day when the newspapers would come out and they wouldn’t be there to read them. 'And on that day, I’ve realised recently, I’ll probably be in the newspapers, or quite a lot of them. And etiquette being what it is, generally speaking, rather nice things being said about me.’ He shrugs. 'Just typical that will be the edition I miss. But it’s not so much that; it’s more that you’re at the party and you’re tapped on the shoulder and told you have to leave. The party is still going on, but it’s going on without you. And even people who swear to remember you are not really going to do so.
Source: "Godless in Tumourville", The Independent - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8388695/Godless-in-Tumourville-Christopher-Hitchens-interview.html

When the magazine was finally organized, and when George Plimpton was selected as its editor instead of Humes, Humes was disappointed. He refused to leave the cafés to sell advertising or negotiate with French printers. And in the summer of 1952 he did not hestitate to leave Paris with William Styron, accepting an invitation from a French actress, Madame Nénot, to go down to Cap Myrt, near Saint-Tropez, and visit her fifty-room villa that had been designed by her father, a leading architect. The villa had been occupied by the Germans early in the war. And so when Styron and Humes arrived they found holes in its walls, through which they could look out to the sea, and the grass was so high and the trees so thick with grapes that Humes’s little Volkswagen became tangled in the grass.

So they went on foot toward the villa, but suddenly stopped when they saw, rushing past them, a young, half-naked girl, very brown from the sun, wearing only handkerchiefs tied bikini-style, her mouth spilling with grapes. Screaming behind her was a lecherous-looking old French farmer whose grape arbor she obviously had raided.

“Styron,” Humes cried, gleefully, “we have arrived!”

“Yes,” he said, “we are here!”

More nymphets came out of the trees in bikinis later, carrying grapes and also half cantaloupes the size of cart-wheels, and they offered some to Styron and Humes. The next day they all went swimming and fishing and, in the evening, they sat in the bombed-out villa, a breathtaking site of beauty and destruction, drinking wine with the young girls, who seemed to belong only to the beach. It was an electric summer, with the nymphets batting around like moths against the screen. Styron remembers it as a scene out of Ovid, Humes as the high point of his career as an epicurean and scholar.

- Gay Talese, Looking for Hemingway

Some quotes from Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles:

"...a trembling voice that opened the worlds of permanent dusk, where sorrow reigned and the mere sight of a woman's neck caused maddening bouts of desire."

- 'The conductor', page 64

"One builds one's life on consistency; one invests it with the belief, however unsupported by reality, that one has always been what one is now, that even in one's distant past one could recognize the seed from which this doomed flower has bloomed. Now I could not understand the devout thoroughness of my childhood obsessions, the myriad origins of my overactive imagination - I could not quite summon who I used to be."

- 'American Commando', page 155

"When he was young, like me, he said, he used to think that all the great writers knew something he didn't. He thought that if he read their books they would teach him something, make him better; he thought he would acquire what they had: the wisdom, the truth, the wholeness, the real shit. He was burning to write, he wanted to break through to that fancy knowledge, he was hungry for it. But now he knew that that hunger was vainglorious; now he knew that writers knew nothing, really; most of them were just faking it. He knew nothing. There was nothing to know, nothing on the other side. There was no walker, no path, just walking. This was it, whoever you were, wherever you were, whatever it was, and you had to make peace with that fact."

- 'The noble truths of suffering', page 194

"A compact with one woman puts beyond reach what others might give us to enjoy; the soft blondes and the dark, aphrodisiacal women of our imaginations are set aside. Shall we leave life not knowing them? Must we?"

- Saul Bellow, Dangling Man

Bill O'Reilly proves the existence of his god. How humbling.

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/the-colbert-report---january-6-2011/#clip396324

Another great quote to tide you over while I struggle to come up with my own material:

"If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days."

-Dorothy Canfield Fisher

It's possible I may get back to blogging in the near future. It's looking like I may have something to say. But for now, I'll just post this quote:

"There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student, feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain."

- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

While it would be dishonest to say I know much about the history of philosophy, this quote does a pretty good job of summing up my feelings on work.

More from Brodsky:

"In an anthropological respect, let me reiterate, a human being is an aesthetic creature before he is an ethical one. Therefore, it is not that art, particularly literature, is a by-product of our species' development, but just the reverse. If what distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom is speech, then literature - and poetry in particular, being the highest form of locution - is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our species."

- ibid., p. 50

"Nowadays, for example, there exists a rather widely held view, postulating that in his work a writer, in particular a poet, should make use of the language of the street, the language of the crowd. For all its democratic appearance, and its palpable advantages for a writer, this assertion is quite absurd, and represents an attempt to subordinate art, in this case literature, to history. It is only if we have resolved that it is time for Homo sapiens to come to a halt in his development that literature should speak the language of the people. Otherwise it is the people who should speak the language of literature."

- Joseph Brodsky, "Uncommon Visage," in On Grief and Reason, p. 48-9

Digital romances

I just read this article about the 75th anniversary of Penguin, and as it discussed new technologies like e-readers, comparing industry of books to that of CDs, it got me thinking. With music becoming digital, CDs have largely disappeared (or are in the process of doing so), and a large part of the emotional attachment to owning a physical CD has been abandoned in favour of the greater convenience of being able to download (legally or not) an individual song. The ability to purchase individual songs for $0.99 can be preferable to shelling out $15 or more for an entire CD just for the sake of one or two songs. The effect on the music itself is debatable, as it most likely helps smaller, lesser-known artists make their music just as accessible, and in the same format, as any bigger starts. But is has fundamentally changed the way fans purchase or access music, even if it hasn't changed the fundamental experience of listening to it.

Even with the growth of e-readers and e-books, I don't see the same think happening to paper books. For one, the experience of reading a physical book is different to reading on an e-reader. While digital ink may recreate the look and comfort of the text, there is a difference to holding a book vs. holding a plastic, metal and glass digital device. Also, a book's artwork and design can be appreciated by a reader while in the process of reading it, and that is one aspect of reading that is lost with digital books. Of course, CDs have artwork too, but because the case does not need to be held while listening to the music, it's not as integral a part of the experience as is the design, look and feel of a book (both inside and out). In other words, whereas music is an aural experience that can be re-created with digital files, reading is more tactile and visual and so more difficult to imitate with electronic books.

I'm still very emotionally and nostalgically attached to books, though, and I think this is where the biggest difference between the digitization of the two media comes in. Whereas people may be emotionally attached to compact discs, CDs have not been around for long enough to have the same mythic appeal of books. Until the 1980s LPs were dominant, and before the 20th century, the idea of storing music at home (excepting musical scores, of course) would have seemed absurd. So the format of purchased music, as well as the very concept of even purchasing music, has been a recent - and fluid - phenomenon.

Books, on the other hand, have existed, in one form or another, for a few thousand years. 'Bound' books, I think, date to roughly the early middle ages/end of antiquity. Before the 19th century books themselves were rare and expensive, and only the wealthy would have any kind of personal library or collection. Earlier than this, when literacy was relatively rare, books took on a mythic role in society, with knowledge of a mysterious code required to unlock the knowledge and wisdom they contained within. I think the adoration of holy books like the Bible or Koran are leftovers from a time when the written word was not something most people could interpret without some kind of educated and seemingly-powerful intermediary. And while with literacy pretty much universal (in North America and Europe, at least) this is no longer the case, I do think that several hundred generations of books, paper and written text are going to be able to hold out against digital convenience much better than 30 years of compact discs have. E-readers may continue to improve and their sales may even rival books (hardcover, at least, according to Amazon - though I'm skeptical of the claim) - I may even get an e-reader myself at some point - but I don't see a digital dominance of reading and publishing happening anytime soon.*

(There are other aspects of paper books that I think make them superior to e-books, such as their durability, accessibility, the fact that there's no need for the initial investment in an expensive electronic device just to access them, but I think this post is already long enough and I really don't feel like getting into that right now. Besides, I'm sure it's been covered sufficiently elsewhere so I wouldn't really have anything new to offer on the topic. I also didn't mention my own preference for reading news online, or the obvious superiority of reference and research materials being electronic, but considering my focus was on culture and experience I didn't feel the need to cover every topic on the digital vs. paper question.)

Incidentally, while writing this post, I spilled coffee on my desk, so if anyone has any ideas for coming up with a digital coffee, I'm all ears.

*Of course, there is always the possibility that this is wishful thinking on my part. Also, younger people who grow up accustomed to getting all of their entertainment from a screen may see a text-only experience as less-compelling and pointless, so perhaps my opinions would only apply to people born before, say, 1990. But that'll require some more thought. And research. And waiting and seeing. But for now, I think it's safe to say that people still like books. A lot.

This week in religion: "We are against the internet"

Some happy news to remind us all of the wisdom and moral guidance that can be found in religious belief.

From Israel:
"There is a set of rules (in the ultra-Orthodox community). We don't want televisions in the home, there are rules of modesty, we are against the internet," Mr Litzman was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

"I don't want my daughter to be educated with a girl who has a TV at home."

And this from Toronto, where a teenager died for her right to wear jeans and t-shirts. Her father's reason for killing her:

“My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

Yeah, I'd say she deserved to die for that. At least now her father will find a special place in heaven, right? Is that how this works?

I just wish people would abandon religion in favour of serious science in an attempt to understand the world.

One of these days I'll put up a real post, once I've got something to say. But for now I'm going to contend myself with sharing quotes and articles I don't want to forget.

"If a philosopher is not a man," he wrote, "he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man."
- Miguel de Unamuno

I wasn't sure if I should file this one under Science or Right to Privacy.

Wildlife documentaries infringe animals' privacy, says report

"We have an assumption that humans have some right to privacy, so why do we not assume that for other species, particularly when they are engaging in behaviour that suggests they don't want to be seen?"

[Quite frankly, with all the monkey porn I've bee watching lately, I'm not so sure animals do mind if we watch them having sex.]

This week in Science:

Iranian cleric 'blames quakes on promiscuous women'

Now, I'm no geologist, but this seems to me like a reasonable way to prevent earthquakes:

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes," he said.

Now where did I put that hijab?

A poem by evolutionary geneticist JBS Haldane, about his experience with rectal cancer.

Cancer’s a Funny Thing

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.

Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills,
It can be killed before it kills
Upon a scientific basis
In nineteen out of twenty cases.

I noticed I was passing blood
(Only a few drops, not a flood).
So pausing on my homeward way
From Tallahassee to Bombay
I asked a doctor, now my friend,
To peer into my hinder end,
To prove or to disprove the rumour
That I had a malignant tumour.
They pumped in BaS04.
Till I could really stand no more,
And, when sufficient had been pressed in,
They photographed my large intestine,
In order to decide the issue
They next scraped out some bits of tissue.
(Before they did so, some good pal
Had knocked me out with pentothal,
Whose action is extremely quick,
And does not leave me feeling sick.)
The microscope returned the answer
That I had certainly got cancer,
So I was wheeled into the theatre
Where holes were made to make me better.
One set is in my perineurn
Where I can feel, but can’t yet see ‘em.
Another made me like a kipper
Or female prey of Jack the Ripper,
Through this incision, I don’t doubt,
The neoplasm was taken out,
Along with colon, and lymph nodes
Where cancer cells might find abodes.
A third much smaller hole is meant
To function as a ventral vent:
So now I am like two-faced Janus
The only* god who sees his anus.

*In India there are several more
With extra faces, up to four,
But both in Brahma and in Shiva
I own myself an unbeliever.

I’ll swear, without the risk of perjury,
It was a snappy bit of surgery.
My rectum is a serious loss to me,
But I’ve a very neat colostomy,
And hope, as soon as I am able,
To make it keep a fixed time-table.
So do not wait for aches and pains
To have a surgeon mend your drains;
If he says “cancer” you’re a dunce
Unless you have it out at once,
For if you wait it’s sure to swell,
And may have progeny as well.
My final word, before I’m done,
Is “Cancer can be rather fun”.
Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan
The NHS is quite like heaven
Provided one confronts the tumour
With a sufficient sense of humour.
I know that cancer often kills,
But so do cars and sleeping pills;
And it can hurt one till one sweats,
So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.
A spot of laughter, I am sure,
Often accelerates one’s cure;
So let us patients do our bit
To help the surgeons make us fit.

J. B. S. Haldane (1964)

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.

Poetry

"Let's move up and down, like strippers' booties do."

- Song lyric heard from a passing car.

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, October 23, 2007

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.

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.

I had an amusing realization about myself the other day. I'm prone to bad moods - not quite depression but rather, as my friend J. might put it, a case of "the blues." This generally entails an unusually negative look at my life, where it's headed, what I've done, coupled with memories of stupid arguments I've had with people over the years that get me fired up for a new fight of some kind. Either or both of these do, of course, inevitably lead to a firm conviction in the meaningless of life, in all of the varieties this conviction can take. The fact that this happens does bother me sometimes, especially when I don't have anything real to be worrying or upset about (having everything I need and much of what I want in life), but on the whole I don't think it's a terrible thing because it does always pass. When I get in these moods I also turn very self-reflective, as I start questioning and thinking about every aspect of my life – for better or worse. And this self-reflection has allowed me to put a positive spin on my bad moods by explaining them away as nothing more than the unfortunate product of having the superior mind of an intellectual who is exceptionally aware of the world's ills.

But I had a rather humbling moment when I realized these moods are not the product of a uniquely perceptive mind, but the simple fact that I get crabby when I'm tired. The same physiological condition that makes babies cry when they're awoken from a nap, or that makes my dog snap at me when she hasn't had enough sleep, is what leads to moments of pseudo-intellectualism and a feeling of detachment from the world. I find this funny, but the more I think about it, it does also make sense - it's probably better that sleep deprivation leads to introspection instead of either crying or trying to bite people. I rarely do either of those.