8.31.2011
1Q84 Excerpt
Based on the nine-page excerpt of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, the English translation of which is (finally!) slated for a 25 October release, there's a lot to look forward to. Definitely reads like vintage Murakami -- relatively straightforward declarative prose, overtones of Japan's twentieth-century political and social history (Tengo's father in Manchuria, Soviet invasion thereof), rock references (Tengo's Jeff Beck t-shirt), surrealism (the town of cats, obviously, not to mention the use of cats to advance the story, as in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore), and an overarching mystery upon which the whole plot turns -- at least in this excerpt. I'm very excited.
Video Game Museum in Berlin
Well this is cool (kind of like everything in Berlin and why I'm dying to move there because it's the best city on earth /endbreathlessrant) -- The Computerspeielemuseum, devoted to computer and video games, reopened recently and is every bit is awesome as you would expect. Check out some of those old consoles! (Via TheRumpus).
8.30.2011
Post-It Note Art
I tweeted this already, but wanted to be able to show the images -- via The Guardian, Parisian office workers are creating pixellated images using post-it notes on windows, doors, cabinets, etc. Takes one back to the early 90s and 8-bit video games.
I think this was my favorite:
Or:
Check out the link for the other ten -- this definitely made my day.
8.28.2011
The Massacre at Old Trafford
I'm in a foul mood following Manchester United's filleting of Arsenal 8-2 at Old Trafford today. Yes, Verhaeven, Frimpong, Gervinho and others were out, severely exposing the inadequacies of our youthful defense and utter incompetence of the depleted midfield. Yet still, Man U's average age of their starting eleven was just slightly higher than the Gunners', and the combination of Rooney, Nani, Park, et al completely eviscerated an Arsenal side that gave up in about the 60th minute. Another lapse in discipline leading to another red card (Jenkinson), and leaving Arsenal dead last in the Premier League in goal differential (-8), one place above relegation status, and dead last in Fair Play.
I'm of mixed feeling on whether to call for Wenger's head or not, but what's glaringly clear is that he has four days until the transfer window closes to add at least three players, a defender, a defensive midfielder, and ideally another striker. The way things are looking, it's going to be a very uphill battle to muscle out Liverpool or Chelsea to even qualify for next year's Champions' League. At least we have two weeks to regroup and an overmatched Swansea City side at the Emirates coming up next. That, one hopes, should end this six-match Premier League winless streak, and hopefully give a (hopefully) retooled side some confidence heading into Champions' League group play, which begins on 13 September at Dortmund.
Addendum: Worth noting that the last time Arsenal ceded eight goals, Victoria was queen. Also the worst defeat in Arsène Wenger's tenure as manager.
Addendum II: BBC Sport reporting that the transfer of striker Park Chu-Young from Monaco is set to complete tonight for between £3m and £5m.
8.27.2011
Finally Renewed My Library Card
And managed to snag the one copy in the entire library system of Teju Cole's debut Open City, which I'm extremely excited to read after reading Claire Messud's excellent review in the New York Review of Books. I'm really interested to compare it to Michael Thomas's Man Gone Down (which won the IMPAC/Dublin Prize two years ago and was an excellent and gripping read). There are some superficial similarities, but I'm curious to see how they contrast.
Stay Safe Everyone
All my friends and acquaintances and everyone in the path of Irene, stay safe, and if you still have time to do so, make sure to stock up on essentials -- it's going to be the flooding and potential power loss that's going to cause the big damage.
8.21.2011
Jan Morris
I had never heard of Jan Morris until about a month ago, when I volunteered to review her novel Hav for Bookslut.com (I'll link to/post it when it's up), and now I can't get enough. Hav itself is one of the most remarkable and luminously written novels I have ever read. In my entire life -- and I read a lot of novels. I just yesterday ordered Travels (1950-2000) -- a selection of her travel essays over that period, and eagerly await its arrival. She is a remarkable figure -- twice-over world traveler, historian, travel writer, memoirist, transgender and trans rights activist, Welsh nationalist. I highly encourage everyone to pick up Hav from the New York Review of Books Classics (pub. date 08.30.11 but available for pre-order through NYRB, your local indie, or amazon) -- it will truly blow you away. I have my one review copy I'm willing send to the first person to get back to me, but unfortunately it's the one copy I have (and it's so good, I humbly ask that you return it when finished). Check it out, guarantee you will have a hard time putting it down.
Light blogging (obviously)
Sorry for but the one post each of the last few days -- I've been live-tweeting the Libyan uprising like a mad man, so check me out @destroy_time, or see my twitter feed on the lower right-hand corner of the main page. I imagine as events unfold, this will continue to be true.
Letter from Kurt Vonnegut
This is incredible: a letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his father after being released from a Nazi work camp, in what would turn into Slaughterhouse Five. Via Letters of Note.
FROM:
Pfo. K. Vonnegut, Jr.,
12102964 U. S. Army.
TO:
Kurt Vonnegut,
Williams Creek,
Indianapolis, Indiana.
Dear people:
I'm told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than "missing in action." Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do -- in precis:
I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.
Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.
Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: -- one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.
On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.
After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.
When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to ('the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border'?). There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P-39's) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me.
Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We've since been flown to Le Havre.
I'm writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I'm being wonderfully well feed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I'll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I'll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and -- get this -- sixty (60) days furlough.
I've too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can't receive mail here so don't write.
May 29, 1945
Love,
Kurt - Jr.
8.20.2011
Impoverished meanies oppress the suffering wealthy
This needs to be said over and over again. Via DailyKos by Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
8.19.2011
Thao & Mirah on Tour -- Illustrated!
Wendy MacNaughton illustrates Thao and Mirah on their West Coast tour -- some really amazing work showing the interstices of rock life following two awesome performers. (via @The_Rumpus).
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Everything is ending. But not yet.
(originally published in the May issue of The Rockford Independent Press)
By BENJAMIN TAYLOR
Jennifer Egan has, for the past dozen years or so, proven time and again to be one of the more formally innovative American fiction writers working today. Her 2001 novel Look at Me plays with contemporary conflations of image and identity in telling the story of an emotionally withered model (from Rockford, incidentally) whose facial reconstruction following a horrific accident dramatically alters her experience of Manhattan’s social topography. Her 2007 book The Keep creatively (if unevenly) reimagines the gothic novel to dissect a relationship between two cousins haunted in different ways by their shared and individual pasts.
A Visit From the Goon Squad continues Egan’s exploration of the sedimented nature of identity through formal experimentation. In this instance, Egan subverts the conventions of the “rock novel” to examine the intersecting lives of a number of individuals associated with one Bennie Salazar, founder and CEO of Sow’s Ear Records, and his neurotic kleptomaniac assistant Sasha. It’s thought-provoking in a wistful way, thick with an almost elegiac sense of nostalgia, yet humorous and peppered with enough glimpses of humanity in its most bumbling and earnest sense to avoid draining the reader of any and all vestiges of hope. Just to get the accolades out of the way, A Visit From the Goon Squad was one of the most-decorated books of 2010, winning both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Employing thirteen vignettes rather than a conventionally straightforward narrative, Egan jumps from character to character, shifting narrative perspective as well as chronology. The effect is a bit disorienting in the first few sections, but ultimately edifying. The reader accesses Bennie and Sasha obliquely, viewing snapshots of various moments in their individual lives and (Platonic) relationship, and seeing them through the eyes of various friends, lovers, and family members. These lacunae in the narratives of Bennie and Sasha’s inner lives keep the reader at a distance that accentuates the fragility of the threads that bind Bennie and Sasha to their respective and mutual pasts.
The novel – or collection of linked short stories (three of the thirteen sections were published as stand-alone pieces in The New Yorker) – spans more than 50 years, from the mid-1970s to somewhere in the neighborhood of 2025 (more on that in a bit), and is above all a meditation on the manner in which those threads twist and fray as time passes, dreams evolve or die, and relationships develop or fade.
A Visit From the Goon Squad opens with Sasha at her therapist’s, discussing her kleptomania and recounting a recent date she had with Alex, who reappears as the focus of the final chapter. Two significant thefts occur during the chapter, and Sasha’s world-weary and damaged personality is revealed in its sad entirety. The narrative then shifts to a middle-aged Bennie, driving with the son he struggles to understand en route to meeting with a once-promising sister band. Bennie’s decline from a hotshot record producer to living anachronism is symbolized nicely by the gold flakes he sprinkles in his coffee in accordance with an Aztec myth that maintains the gold promotes virility. Bennie meets up with Sasha at the sisters’ home, ponders the desire he realizes he’s always had for her, but remains resigned to the impossibility of its fulfillment.
The third section, “Ask Me if I Care,” moves back to Bennie’s youth, when he performed as the bassist in a Bay Area punk rock group named the Flaming Dildos. Bennie’s bandmates and female groupies are introduced along with Lou, a famous musician and producer who’s boning one of the Dildos’ groupies (Lou clearly being a stand-in for Lou Reed). The next section, “Safari,” focuses on Lou six years earlier on a safari with Rolph, his eight-year old son, Charlene, his almost-pubescent daughter, and his girlfriend-cum-assistant Mindy. This section, while having no direct bearing on the Benny-Sasha main narrative, shows why Egan is such a penetrating writer. The safari provides the backdrop for a four-way power struggle pitting Lou against Mindy, Lou against Charlene, Charlene against Rolph, and Lou against Rolph. The conflict is mostly tacit, but illuminates the irreducible characteristics of each character’s place in life, the transitoriness of that place, and the inability to communicate one’s inner life to others. Lou and two of the Dildos’ groupies reappear in the next section at Lou’s deathbed, the two girls now in their forties, one a mother of three, one a recovering heroin addict muddling through.
The middle part of the book returns to Bennie and Sasha, beginning with Bennie and his wife Stephanie growing accustomed to their (now) privileged life in Crandale, where they join the Country Club. The reader learns later that the marriage ultimately fails, and Bennie’s growing disillusionment with the manicured opulence surrounding him in contrast to Stephanie’s twice-weekly tennis dates with a Barbie-esque neighbor certainly presages this. A later section, “Out of Body,” returns the narrative to Sasha and provides the most poignantly-written part of the entire book. Written in the second person, “Out of Body” shows young Sasha as a student at NYU through the eyes of her adored best friend Rob. In the course of the chapter, Rob realizes with wrenching clarity that he’s been in love with Sasha the entire time – too late, as Sasha’s developed a strong relationship with her boyfriend (and future husband) Drew. The clarity of Rob’s love for Sasha and his conflicted feelings toward himself (the reader learns he’s returned to NYU after three months recovering from a suicide attempt) and their mutual friends culminate in an extremely moving and tragic conclusion.
The novel ends with Bennie, Alex, and Scotty, one of his former bandmates, living in a frankly dystopian New York sometime in the middle of the 2020s. Bennie has receded to the margins of the music business, Alex is marginally employed and looking to work for Bennie, and Scotty making baleful music to the accompaniment of his slide guitar. Egan swells quite a bit on her vision of America circa 2025 in this final section, and her vision isn’t exactly optimistic. Yet Egan isn’t pessimistic enough to leave the reader without a grain of hope. The novel ends with two striking images that throw its meditations on time, memory, and identity into sharp relief: a quasi-spontaneous concert given by Scotty that, while technologically mediated and organized, transcends digital distance to celebrate human togetherness; and Bennie and Alex standing before the entrance to what had been Sasha’s apartment long ago, Bennie sighing, “I hope she found a good life. She deserves it.”
Despite its overall excellence, A Visit From the Goon Squad does strike a few false notes. To begin with, there are multiple instances in which, discussing a character toward the end of a section, Egan rips off a few paragraphs telling the reader exactly what would happen to that character in the future. It’s understandable that expanding the novel to include enough vignettes to show these future fates would harm the flow and structure of the finished product, yet these “Many years later…,” “’X’ would go on to…” et cetera feel out of place and seem unnecessary.
The greater problem is Egan’s forced futurism. Some critics – such as the New York Times’ Janet Maslin – found the sections toward the end of the novel that take place in the relatively distant future brave and prescient examinations of future society. And I guess that’s the rub with writing about the future – the world in which we live changes so rapidly that a casual inclusion of “sci-fi” elements seems unconvincing and will inevitably be dated long before the designated year. Egan seemed to try to emphasize that even in that future imperfect, humanity mutually shared still matters in a sense that accelerated technological development can’t quite capture; yet, she spends enough of the final two sections describing the disastrous effects of global warming, advances in mobile technology, fields of solar panels, (even more) ubiquitous government surveillance, and two generations of unnamed and undescribed war that the pathos which galvanized the previous sections of the book fades into the background. Without devoting the energy and page length to flesh out a future world fully – which would, of course, have been impractical in this instance – the jargon, text speak, and glimpses of Dystopia, USA just come across as forced.
All in all, however, A Visit From the Goon Squad is a moving and intelligently written novel justly deserving of its accolades.
A Visit From the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
Anchor, 340 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0-307-47747-7
8.16.2011
All the Single Ladies
I'm struggling with this list published by the New York Observer. Basically, I can't decide if it's an honest celebration of fifty truly remarkable single women, or blatant exploitation of women living in New York and living and looking like a Manhattanite. Not to rail against Manhattan... okay, maybe to rail against Manhattan. As a man, I might not have the best perspective on this, and certainly welcome any of the indoor plumbing folk to correct me. For starters, it's not the list I'd compile, were I that concerned about publicists in New York. I'm not, though I did at least recognize about half of the names on the roster. I would add women like Digby, who is just fucking awesome period, Amanda Marcotte, Amy Goodman, Temple Grandin (okay not technically "in media" but a writer and amazing woman), Rachel Maddow, Tina Fey, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jessa Crispin, Amy Poehler, Kristen Schaal, and many more -- all extremely talented and far more influential and important than many of the young folk on that list. Basically they're all fucking awesome and women who have informed me, inspired me, and made me laugh.
That's why I think it really seems more about a pretty photo shoot looking at that list. The women they picked are certainly beautiful -- I can't deny that. I had no idea Arianna Huffington was 61, because I would have said 45, she looks that good. Consider that last sentence an aside, I just really was surprised by that, and that's fantastic for her. She, though, has accomplished quite a bit, and built a media empire that's in my top five sites most visited and which I check multiple times daily. Sloane Crosley, however, wrote a bestselling if not well-written collection of essays entitled I Was Told There'd Be Cake. She followed it up with last year's much funnier and very better-written How Did You Get This Number? I don't want to knock Sloane, as she clearly has talent and will likely be doing awesome things in the publishing world for quite some time to come. She's only seven years my senior, and I've learned a thing or two about how rough "making it as a writer" can be -- she's made it, I haven't. So I give her her credit and find her very funny and rarely honest for a writer as young as she.
And yet I find it odd that a publication which aspires to seriousness would rank her above Michiko Kakutani, for instance. Again, nothing against Crosley, yet Kakutani is the most feared, admired, hated, respected woman in all of publishing. Writers tremble at the mention of her. She's the name you look for first in the New York Times Book Review. Kakutani can make a career or end it short. I agree with her about 60% of the time, but no one can deny that she functions as the arbiter of literary taste in America. She would be top three on my list. Rachel Maddow is essentially the face of MSNBC and easily the most intelligent political analyst on mainstream cable (I would only compare her with Keith Olbermann, who is easily as intelligent as Maddow, but whose zeal gets in the way of his ranting some times, Stewart, Maher, and Colbert -- the above, obviously, are men). Maddow consistently and eloquently provides the night's most incisive political commentary, and is a frequent guest on Meet the Press. Amy Goodman is simply the best journalist in America. Her program, which she essentially built from scratch, is the most reliable source of news about America and the world, and kept my mind active through a couple of rough years. She writes a column for The Guardian and often contributes to TruthDig, the Huffington Post, and -- I'm sure -- many other sites of which I'm yet unaware. She's an outspoken and active progressive, yet never hyperbolic and always fair to her ideological opponents. Journalism doesn't get better than that.
Just to name those three, as the work of those women in particular occupies a good deal of my day. Yet with the exception of Ms. Huffington, they're not on the list. Yes, I know it's a list of bachelorettes, which is in itself arbitrary. But if you want to talk about powerful women in media, why, aside from showing women like Ms. Crosley (who is, indeed, quite pretty) make the list restricted to just single women? It's such a blatantly sexist ploy on The Observer's part. And you bet it'll get read, mostly because men are as stereotypically fascinated by our junk as any Zach Galifianakis film implies. (I find Z.G. hilarious personally).
The whole list features young, slim, and straight pretty women with a few exceptions included to garnish The Observer's pretension to relevance. What's missing are women of color, LGBT women, activists who don't get on Sunday TV shows, women doing amazing things that impact us all far more than barely thirty pretty publicists. I have nothing against barely thirty pretty publicists, mind you. Yet the entire list seems to objectify young and pretty women for the sake of their youth and prettiness while leaving the actual female movers and shakers in media out for the most part. This benefits only those who think exploiting feminine youth and beauty is cool. Again, nothing wrong with being young and pretty -- I'm condemned to being young for a few more years at least, but never have been pretty, though it seems nice. Nothing against any of the women mentioned in that list, but I have all sorts of question for The Observer, none of which are Brett Baier softballs.
That's why I think it really seems more about a pretty photo shoot looking at that list. The women they picked are certainly beautiful -- I can't deny that. I had no idea Arianna Huffington was 61, because I would have said 45, she looks that good. Consider that last sentence an aside, I just really was surprised by that, and that's fantastic for her. She, though, has accomplished quite a bit, and built a media empire that's in my top five sites most visited and which I check multiple times daily. Sloane Crosley, however, wrote a bestselling if not well-written collection of essays entitled I Was Told There'd Be Cake. She followed it up with last year's much funnier and very better-written How Did You Get This Number? I don't want to knock Sloane, as she clearly has talent and will likely be doing awesome things in the publishing world for quite some time to come. She's only seven years my senior, and I've learned a thing or two about how rough "making it as a writer" can be -- she's made it, I haven't. So I give her her credit and find her very funny and rarely honest for a writer as young as she.
And yet I find it odd that a publication which aspires to seriousness would rank her above Michiko Kakutani, for instance. Again, nothing against Crosley, yet Kakutani is the most feared, admired, hated, respected woman in all of publishing. Writers tremble at the mention of her. She's the name you look for first in the New York Times Book Review. Kakutani can make a career or end it short. I agree with her about 60% of the time, but no one can deny that she functions as the arbiter of literary taste in America. She would be top three on my list. Rachel Maddow is essentially the face of MSNBC and easily the most intelligent political analyst on mainstream cable (I would only compare her with Keith Olbermann, who is easily as intelligent as Maddow, but whose zeal gets in the way of his ranting some times, Stewart, Maher, and Colbert -- the above, obviously, are men). Maddow consistently and eloquently provides the night's most incisive political commentary, and is a frequent guest on Meet the Press. Amy Goodman is simply the best journalist in America. Her program, which she essentially built from scratch, is the most reliable source of news about America and the world, and kept my mind active through a couple of rough years. She writes a column for The Guardian and often contributes to TruthDig, the Huffington Post, and -- I'm sure -- many other sites of which I'm yet unaware. She's an outspoken and active progressive, yet never hyperbolic and always fair to her ideological opponents. Journalism doesn't get better than that.
Just to name those three, as the work of those women in particular occupies a good deal of my day. Yet with the exception of Ms. Huffington, they're not on the list. Yes, I know it's a list of bachelorettes, which is in itself arbitrary. But if you want to talk about powerful women in media, why, aside from showing women like Ms. Crosley (who is, indeed, quite pretty) make the list restricted to just single women? It's such a blatantly sexist ploy on The Observer's part. And you bet it'll get read, mostly because men are as stereotypically fascinated by our junk as any Zach Galifianakis film implies. (I find Z.G. hilarious personally).
The whole list features young, slim, and straight pretty women with a few exceptions included to garnish The Observer's pretension to relevance. What's missing are women of color, LGBT women, activists who don't get on Sunday TV shows, women doing amazing things that impact us all far more than barely thirty pretty publicists. I have nothing against barely thirty pretty publicists, mind you. Yet the entire list seems to objectify young and pretty women for the sake of their youth and prettiness while leaving the actual female movers and shakers in media out for the most part. This benefits only those who think exploiting feminine youth and beauty is cool. Again, nothing wrong with being young and pretty -- I'm condemned to being young for a few more years at least, but never have been pretty, though it seems nice. Nothing against any of the women mentioned in that list, but I have all sorts of question for The Observer, none of which are Brett Baier softballs.
Congrats Jim Thome
Jim Thome did this last night: 3-4, 2 HR, 5 RBI in a 9-6 Twins victory over the Tigers at Comerica Field. That second home run, a three-run opposite field shot off Daniel Schlereth that provided the margin for the Twins, just happened to be the 600th of his career. He joins Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays (my favorite player of all time, and who I stood like 5 feet from at my college graduation), A-Rod, Ken Griffey Jr. and Sammy Sosa, who seems like a jokish afterthought now, but his 2001 .328, 64 HR, 160 RBI, 1.174 OPS season (no, I didn't need to look those up), tainted as it was, was insanely exciting to watch. As a Cubs fan, at least. I shelled out for mlb.tv on my comp., and structured my studying around Cubs games, even if I had a paper due the next day. It was magical. Stats for those eight individuals are available at baseball-reference.com; I won't list them, because if I do, I'm going to end up looking up stats for five hours.
Back to Thome. I've always had a lot of respect of Jim Thome, even when he played for the hated White Sox. I've always thought he has one of the most recognizable home run stances in baseball history, and as a fellow Illinoisan (he's from Peoria and grew up a Cubs fan), always sort of felt a connection with him. For most the two decades he's played, he's sort of been in the shadows of players (at the time) considered greater, players like Griffey, Bonds, McGwire, A-Rod. Speaking of Griffey (still easily the most electric player of the past twenty years in his prime), I always associated him and Thome, at least since I've been old enough to think about the game. Both down-to-earth men who wreaked havoc on opposing pitchers from Bret Saberhagen to Rick Porcello. Griffey would have been on par with Ty Cobb, Ruth, and Mays as one of the all-time greats had injuries during his time with the Reds not cost him many games and slowed him down. Thome was never going to be on that list. But, as his teammates will tell you, he's one of the hardest workers in the game, a team player, the exact opposite of Carlos Zambrano or a sulking Bonds.
His numbers will tell you the same thing (okay, these I did have to look up):
Career: .277, 600 HR, 1662 RBI, .403 OBP (seriously), .961 OPS, only one season after 1993 with an OPS under .847 (and that in an injury-shortened 2005 season in Philadelphia in which he played only 59 games and had only 193 ABs). Last year, he was quietly one of most dangerous hitters in the entire league, quietly putting up a .283/25/59 line with an OPS of 1.039 and an OPS+ of 177, which would have been good for second in the AL behind only Miguel Cabrera's 183 had he had more than 276 at-bats. Extend that line out to 500 ABs, and it turns into .283, 45, 109 line. That's an MVP candidate year. Yeah Thome's only hitting .254 this year, but with a .359 OBP and an .856 OPS, he's still clearly a formidable hitter, and has helped shore up a Twins lineup that's been without Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau for most of the year, and neither one has been 100% clearly. When Michael Cuddyer (nothing against him or any of the piranhas by the way) is your offensive leader with a .295/18/61 line and a .360/.845 OBP/OPS... wait hold on... that would seem to suggest that Jim Thome is the best hitter in the Twins' lineup this year. Identical OBP practically, slightly better OPS. Difference being Cuddyer's 421 ABs to Thome's 185.
Get this man more at-bats! He might not be an everyday player anymore, but c'mon Twins -- this is clearly not your year. At 53-67 you've probably overachieved given Mauer and Morneau's troubles and a fairly weak staff -- Liriano isn't ever going to be who he was before Tommy John, no-hitter aside. The fans love Thome, you have that beautiful new park (which I haven't been to yet, but believe me, it's on my to-do list), and a first-ballot Hall of Famer who seems to have a decent amount left in the tank. I almost never criticize the Twins, as their management and manager do more with less than any other club outside of Tampa Bay, but let him play!
Update: Forget to mention, a lot of what I wrote about Thome, aside from numbers of course, was based on an excellent Tim Kurkjian column on ESPN summarizing Thome's career. I'm not usually a Kurkjian fan, but he clearly has a lot of respect for Thome. It's a very good, insightful, and revealing column well worth reading.
Back to Thome. I've always had a lot of respect of Jim Thome, even when he played for the hated White Sox. I've always thought he has one of the most recognizable home run stances in baseball history, and as a fellow Illinoisan (he's from Peoria and grew up a Cubs fan), always sort of felt a connection with him. For most the two decades he's played, he's sort of been in the shadows of players (at the time) considered greater, players like Griffey, Bonds, McGwire, A-Rod. Speaking of Griffey (still easily the most electric player of the past twenty years in his prime), I always associated him and Thome, at least since I've been old enough to think about the game. Both down-to-earth men who wreaked havoc on opposing pitchers from Bret Saberhagen to Rick Porcello. Griffey would have been on par with Ty Cobb, Ruth, and Mays as one of the all-time greats had injuries during his time with the Reds not cost him many games and slowed him down. Thome was never going to be on that list. But, as his teammates will tell you, he's one of the hardest workers in the game, a team player, the exact opposite of Carlos Zambrano or a sulking Bonds.
His numbers will tell you the same thing (okay, these I did have to look up):
Career: .277, 600 HR, 1662 RBI, .403 OBP (seriously), .961 OPS, only one season after 1993 with an OPS under .847 (and that in an injury-shortened 2005 season in Philadelphia in which he played only 59 games and had only 193 ABs). Last year, he was quietly one of most dangerous hitters in the entire league, quietly putting up a .283/25/59 line with an OPS of 1.039 and an OPS+ of 177, which would have been good for second in the AL behind only Miguel Cabrera's 183 had he had more than 276 at-bats. Extend that line out to 500 ABs, and it turns into .283, 45, 109 line. That's an MVP candidate year. Yeah Thome's only hitting .254 this year, but with a .359 OBP and an .856 OPS, he's still clearly a formidable hitter, and has helped shore up a Twins lineup that's been without Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau for most of the year, and neither one has been 100% clearly. When Michael Cuddyer (nothing against him or any of the piranhas by the way) is your offensive leader with a .295/18/61 line and a .360/.845 OBP/OPS... wait hold on... that would seem to suggest that Jim Thome is the best hitter in the Twins' lineup this year. Identical OBP practically, slightly better OPS. Difference being Cuddyer's 421 ABs to Thome's 185.
Get this man more at-bats! He might not be an everyday player anymore, but c'mon Twins -- this is clearly not your year. At 53-67 you've probably overachieved given Mauer and Morneau's troubles and a fairly weak staff -- Liriano isn't ever going to be who he was before Tommy John, no-hitter aside. The fans love Thome, you have that beautiful new park (which I haven't been to yet, but believe me, it's on my to-do list), and a first-ballot Hall of Famer who seems to have a decent amount left in the tank. I almost never criticize the Twins, as their management and manager do more with less than any other club outside of Tampa Bay, but let him play!
Update: Forget to mention, a lot of what I wrote about Thome, aside from numbers of course, was based on an excellent Tim Kurkjian column on ESPN summarizing Thome's career. I'm not usually a Kurkjian fan, but he clearly has a lot of respect for Thome. It's a very good, insightful, and revealing column well worth reading.
8.14.2011
Europe's right-wing populist problem and American parallels
I've spent my morning and early afternoon reading all sorts of cheerful things about the rise of the right in Europe, as if the rise of the right here weren't cheerful enough. Specifically, I've read Ian Buruma's article in the forthcoming issue of The Nation three times now, and find it very disturbing. I've also relistened to the July 27th broadcast of Democracy Now! which featured two fantastic interviews that will make you think hard about the populist right in Europe and make you want whiskey. The first was the always fantastic Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, C Street, and the new Sweet Heaven When I Die. Sharlet actually read the entirety of Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto -- Breivik, of course, is the extreme right-wing Christian terrorist arrested for the deaths of 77 Norwegians. The second interview was with Eva Gabrielsson, longtime partner of the late Stieg Larsson, known best for his bestselling Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), but who devoted his tragically short life to combating right-wing extremism in Scandinavia through his relentless journalism in the Trotskyist Fjärde internationalen, Britain's Searchlight, and the journal he founded (on which Millennium was based) Expo.
I lived in Berlin for three months when in college, and in Frankfurt for nearly a year after I graduated, and read as much German journalism as I could. I'm still a regular reader of Die Zeit and the Süddeutsche Zeitung -- both excellent publications, which, if you're down with German dependent clauses, are well worth reading. Far better journalism than we usually get here, on par with The New York Times at its best and The Guardian. Had my first encounters with Europe's New Right in those pages, specifically a piece in Die Zeit about the rising right in Hungary (which, if you haven't read about yet, please do -- Fidesz and its leader and current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are truly terrifying). In Germany, at least, the contemporary right has its home in the NDP (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), reviled among the mainstream political parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, Die Grünen, Die Linke) and completely ineffectual nationally. And yet. The NDP has successfully put members in the regional legislatures of two of the sixteen German states, with 14 members total in those two. The NDP is a Neo-Nazi party, extremely hostile to the large Turkish immigrant population in Germany, and to Islam in general.
The above is an important point both Buruma and Sharlet make. Buruma:
And then 9/11 happened, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the bombings in Madrid and London—all these atrocities perpetrated by terrorists acting in the name of a violent Islamist revolution. This finally gave right-wing populists a cause with which to crash into the center of European politics.
European civilization, frightened citizens were being told, had to be defended against “Islamization,” against fanatical aliens who breed so fast that white Europeans will soon be outnumbered. And the promoters of this cause were not nostalgic old SS men dreaming of the good old days, or neo-Fascists pining for black shirts and military marches, or skinheads itching for a brawl. Quite the opposite: Europe’s new populists are smartly dressed modern men and women who claim to be defending our freedoms. And they are persuasive because people are afraid and resentful, blaming economic and social anxieties on “liberal elites.” But if the fears are vague and various, the focal point is Islam.
Sharlet:
Breivik took a kind of logical next step from that rhetoric. And that’s part of why I think it’s troubling when people sort of attempt to dismiss him as a madman and not deal with the politics that are very much a part of our, unfortunately, mainstream political discourse, that walk right up to the edge of violence.
Or, you know, in the case of U.S. war in the Middle East—you know, I’ve reported on this in the past, and we talked about this on the show here before—a number of senior American officers, Lieutenant General Bruce Fister, described the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as "a spiritual war of the greatest magnitude." There was video of the top American Army chaplain in Afghanistan saying that we’re there fighting in Afghanistan for Christianity.
Buruma's article is extraordinarily relevant, as he discusses the rise of the right across Europe, from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Francesco Speroni in Italy. It's truly shocking to read how widespread this still-somewhat-underground movement has become. With the increasing economic turmoil across Europe -- UK, Greece, Spain, and Italy have already erupted into protest, and the demise of the Euro seems ever more likely -- it's worth remembering that the hyperinflation of 1923 and the economic despair of the '20s in general were key contributing factors to the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany. When people get desperate, they'll turn to any ideology that ameliorates their despair and promises better days. This poses an interesting question for the Left -- essentially how do we convince despairing and angry folk here and elsewhere that we have the solutions to wide-scale social breakdown?
This brings us to the United States. The crucial distinction to make here, I think, is between the largely youth-oriented and economy-focused activism/rioting in Europe, and the largely middle-aged and culturally-predicated activism here, courtesy of the Tea Party. The United States is in a Second Great Depression, none of this Great Recession stuff. When one-sixth of the populace is dependent on food stamps just to eat, when U6 unemployment is around 20%, when unemployment among minority populations reach as high as 40%, when young people graduate college with $25,000 in debt and no chance at a well-paying job, it's a depression. Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West on 08.09's Democracy Now! and Barbara Ehrenreich on the 08.08 broadcast go into much further depth and much more eloquently about how poverty is getting worse daily in the United States. The economic reality here, as in Europe, is dire for most people, and I predict it won't be long before the rage prevalent on the extreme Right about their mythologized version of America extends to economic issues beyond the Tea Party's Randian aversion to taxation or community of any kind. Worth pointing out as well that a great deal of the cultural aggression among Tea Partiers is explicitly directed at Muslims, from Herman Cain stating that he would never hire a Muslim for his cabinet to completely absurd anti-Shariah laws passed in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
It's a frightening global moment, ripe for anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic scapegoating, riper still for extreme political upheaval. So far, the Right, here and in Europe, is positioning itself far better than the Left, despite the Right's complete economic and social fantasies. Both in the United States and in Europe, the growing movements on the Right are predicated on a nativist meme that's been around for centuries hearkening back to a hypothetical "pure" state in which "liberty" means doing whatever you'd like and the brown people are ruthless savages intent on infiltrating and undermining our societies. This fear of "The Other" surfaces when times are tough and white Westerners need a scapegoat. The Right has egged on this attitude since the Crusades (yes, I know politics are a bit different now), and is currently doing so to demonize Islam, the LGBT community, minority communities, the poor, and basically anyone who isn't relatively well-off all in the name of "purifying" societies in the United States and Europe.
To the point, right-wing extremism is ascendant at the moment, and we on the Left need to do everything we can to combat scapegoating and to press what democracy we have to pass a jobs program. Otherwise, this'll be America before we can blink.
http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/pictures/000076934.jpg
Maybe that wouldn't even be a bad thing, as long as we can get the masses on our side.
(Cross-posted at dailykos.com)
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
This'll be rambling and frankly semi-coherent, but it intrigued me. Woke up about half an hour ago from a dream in which my longtime ex's parents (in the dream confused with another ex's parents, but such is the nature of dreams) went through her books and literally tossed into a trash bag her copies of Henry Miller, Melville (? right?), Kerouac, Whitman, Cheever, Lowell, and Pynchon, many of which (in the dream, at least -- though I am known to gift books, an arrogant if sincere trait of mine) I had given her. They were corrupting her mind, of course (Henry Miller has gone a long way in corrupting mine, so I won't exactly question that one at least). In the dream I was my typical blustering and relatively disrespectful self, openly questioning why in the living hell they were doing that, what censorship of any kind can accomplish, and why it's better to shield oneself from uncomfortable ideas than to actively engage them.
I have absolutely no idea what brought this dream on. I've written about the ex in question lately, so perhaps that explains her appearance, but the book censorship thing I can't think of a trigger for. Of course, that's what I love about dreams. To be completely honest, I've had more short stories develop out of things I dreamed about seemingly randomly than I've had develop out of purposefully thinking of ideas. As an aside, I think that's true of writers far more talented than I -- I always think of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men": "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams / In death's dream kingdom" and frankly that scares the shit out of me. I borrowed the title for this post from "Hamlet" and "The Tempest"'s summary by Prospero in IV:1 is stunningly good as well: "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep." Or perhaps as Descartes wrote, "I am accustomed to sleep and my dreams to imagine the same things lunatics imagine when they are awake."
And one more quote I love, and moving toward relevance, from the Talmud: "A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read." This particular dream stuck out to me because removing access to books is one of the few unforgivable offenses I can think of on the behalf of a parent -- and granted, I'm not yet a parent and may never be, so my perspective might be a bit skewed. Still, though, I can't imagine limiting a child's access to something they want to read (children! reading!) based on my objections to the content. It seems far more the responsible thing to do to explain to the child my grounds for objecting to the content and inviting her or him to think their own thoughts but take my perspective into consideration. As with everyone, I've been through some shit with my parents, and I've forgiven everything I've felt they did wrong (I do hope the same applies) with just one niggling exception -- the one time they returned to the library a book I was reading because my mother opened it up (I was like 11) to a sex scene. Horror upon horrors, eh? (I won't mention what the book in question was, because frankly, it's embarrassing). The very concept of censoring or banning books is as offensive to me as illegal wiretapping.
One of the coolest and most memorable memorials I've ever been to is the Bebelplatz in Berlin, which is a testament to the Nazi book-burning shortly after the Ausnahmezustand went into effect (which took place in the Bebelplatz). It consists of a single glass pane underneath your feet -- right on Unter den Linden and essentially on the campus of the Humboldt Universität. You look down and see rows and rows of empty bookshelves with an engraved line from Heine reading: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" (There, where books are burned, will also ultimately see men burned"). How's that for an impactful line? And yet I think Heine is right -- the philosophical implications of purposefully restricting knowledge of whatever sort aside -- the political act of banning or worse, burning, books is a frontal assault on the democracy of the mind, without which any other form of democracy is impossible. To ban any form of intellectual content, be it visual art, music, film, literature, etc., goes against the very grain of every fucking thing the Enlightenment accomplished for us, its relatively ungrateful heirs. I'll even go far as to say that anyone who suggests a ban on any creative content is a cryptofascist. Freedom to create is on par with the freedom to love whom you love, to do what you love, to create yourself endlessly, and that freedom is what defines modernity itself.
This list of authors who have had books banned in the United States reads like a who's who of the greatest writers of all time (or this list from the ALA), without whose work I know for sure I would never have developed into the person I am.
Anyway, to summarize sloppily, this particular dream really affected me and reminded me how important the freedom to think and dream whatever comes your way really is essential to growing up, and a freedom that should never be abrogated under any circumstances.
8.13.2011
Really, Iowa?
I've always had a good deal of respect for my fellow corn-loving flatlanders to the immediate west, but Iowa Republicans are really insane enough to pick Michelle Bachmann as their preliminary favorite for the Iowa Caucuses? As Barney Frank said, I hope I've led a good enough life to receive that as a reward, but still, I find it highly disturbing that someone with such regressive and reactionary views can attain such traction in contemporary American conservative politics. Yes, I'll be the first to joke about Bachmann's lunacy and fringe beliefs, but the right-wing retrenchment and anti-Enlightenment hysteria currently en vogue is a troubling thing to witness, and ultimately, will not bode well for our democracy, what's left of it. I've touched on most of these subjects in various ways, but in 2011 when one of the two major political parties views a right-of-center president as a dangerous communist intent on destroying their mythologized view of America, when what's become the mainstream of that party fervently believes that women should have no control over their bodies, that LGBT people should remain second-class citizens because we have the temerity to not fit into their misread ancient history of what love and marriage mean, when that party's mainstream denies science, and relapses into a grotesquely and ill-understood postmodernist denial of the possibility of objective fact and the concurrent sincere belief that facts are essentially irrelevant, well -- this is a problem. Bachmann epitomizes all the worst of the Know-Nothingism prevalent on the right today, and the fact that Obama has so flubbed his presidency actually (and I can't believe I'm saying this sincerely) has opened up a space for her or Rick Perry -- who's equally extreme in his views and a better and more opportunistic politician -- to become the leader of the free world. I really can't believe I'm saying this, but they both make George W. Bush look moderate.
8.12.2011
Why Stephen Colbert is the Most Important Individual on Television
Now, some of you may know this about me, but I am a diligent and very-tough-to-please media critic. I spend more time than I should watching TV news on all three cable networks as well as Stewart and Colbert nightly. I would watch Olbermann (and do watch the clips CurrentTV makes available) were he available on Comcast in Northern Illinois. That there are a lot of hacks on TV news is something it took all of five minutes to learn. Won't even mention Fox, as the entire network makes the Insane Clown Posse look sane and unlike clowns. That takes effort. CNN's Don Lemon is quite good, but the rest of that network is a complete farce. Wolf Blitzer might just be the most worthless person on all of television, outpacing even Kim Kardashian and Snooki. Yes, Snooki. Piers Morgan peaked when giving Susan Boyle a "yes" on Britain's Got Talent. He's since conducted a bevy of painful-to-watch puff interviews and is implicated as a former News of the World editor in the growing Murdoch scandal. MSNBC has Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow -- meeting both of whom is a life ambition of mine. Both are brilliant and outspoken progressives who eloquently make progressive points. Lawrence's rants are righteous, and Rachel is perhaps the most rational journalist on TV, diligently sourcing every story she reports and basing her editorializations on facts. She even admits her mistakes, which isn't something I could ever see Chris Matthews doing. Martin Bashir is highly underrated. Dylan Ratigan is overrated, and dropping Cenk Uygur was a tragic mistake.
And yet.
Even MSNBC is quite flawed, and Phil Griffin is clearly more attuned to the bottom line than to actual reporting and honest editorializing. Most intelligent people know that Comedy Central, in an irony that's been running for almost a decade now, is the most reliable news network on widely-available air. Digby and I had a short conversation a while ago about this, and I credit her with the inspiration for what I'm writing (and for just being a brilliant writer and flat-out badass).
Jon Stewart is reliably funny, clearly a student of contemporary media, the best eviscerator of Fox News out there, and plainly brilliant. I credit him as well with standing up vocally for the 9/11 first responders and helping them gain health coverage from Congress. Stewart is always must-see, and always puts a funny and incisive spin on the day's news. His interviews are always intelligent and insightful.
Yet, as Digby said, Stewart plays more to his audience than to actual truth-telling. That's not necessarily a criticism of him -- as he's said on multiple occasions, he's a comedian, not Walter Cronkite. Colbert, however, succeeds in ways Stewart doesn't when it comes to showing the right as the insane idiots they are. Largely, this is due to extremely deft use of satire -- by posing as a right-wing know-nothing, Colbert can show just how know-nothing the actual right is. By playing up his Hannity-inspired persona as bombastically as he can manage, he completely devastates Hannity and anyone of his ilk.
Now, Lawrence O'Donnell last night had some harsh words about Colbert and his new Super-PAC project. I had to watch it a few times to be sure if he was glib or serious, but it seems he was serious. And I have to say, if so, O'Donnell completely misunderstands Colbert. The Super-PAC project is not about Colbert trying to trick people out of their money. (I'm amazed so many have donated, absolutely). What he's doing is portraying the insanity of campaign finance in America. First as tragedy, then as farce, no? This is Colbert demonstrating brilliantly how insane running for president is in the contemporary USA, and how broken our media is that it would run Colbert's ad. (And the "Cornographic" ad)
Colbert's entire act rips to shreds any claim anyone on the Right can claim to seriousness. In portraying a homophobic, anti-tax, science-denying militarist, Colbert shows how radically absurd those actual ideas are. That character allows him to do things Stewart can't, and Colbert is both brilliant and funny enough to pull it off nightly. Yes, some of his set pieces can be ridiculous, but such is the career of a gifted satirist. Enough are perfectly cutting.
When he breaks character, he does admirable things as well. His testimony before Congress on behalf of undocumented immigrants was incredibly admirable. His solidarity with soldiers in Iraq similarly so. His "It Gets Better" video is genuinely touching. All in all, he seems like a pretty remarkable guy and easily the wittiest and most important person on television today.
(originally posted at DailyKos.com)
Doug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy
Really great article by Spencer Kornhaber writing at The Atlantic -- his point is that Nicktoons (which is now, somehow, 20 years old) really changed the face of animated entertainment aimed at children and young people. Posted this comment on the page and stand by it, because Ren & Stimpy was groundbreaking in a way neither Doug nor Rugrats managed:
Doug was brilliant, but I think the author gives short shrift to Ren & Stimpy. R&S was simply one of the most subversive shows in television history. Even in 2011, rewatching some of those episodes is just shocking. There's no way that would ever be allowed on the air today, and I'm a better person for having watched it while young.
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