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Happy Monday. Was going to write about a serious political essay, but it is usually best for me to stay out of politics. One friend  online asked what I think the most controversial issue is, but I don’t want to speak of it now.

So will comment on a pop song from the 1980s that I like. It is “Words” by Missing Persons. I recently said to an online social-media contact that pop lyrics can be just as profound as poetry studied  in universities. One of my grad school professors taught a whole course on rock music. Of course Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature, even though I don’t care for his music.

“What are words for? When no one listens anymore.” It is the refrain of the Missing Persons song. There is a kind of odd video for the song with the very pretty singer/songwriter in a weird  New Wave outfit and hair dye on YouTube.  Anyway, it is profound to me because apparently a lot of people don’t listen to you or want to acknowledge what you say when  they don’t want to hear what happened or can do nothing to rectify. The world can be cruel.

On a column about abstraction by Eugenia Cheng of The Wall Street Journal and Mass:

“The dreams of pure mathematics end up having a profound effect on our daily lives. Abstract concepts and real life are not so far apart after all—which is why both the spirit of Christmas and Santa Claus get credit for the delights of the holiday season.”

I have written on this blog before about the difference between abstraction and empathy in art. I don’t know math well at all, But I think I know the dichotomy well in art. This is based on a German writer from the early 20th century. Basically abstraction is better in a time of pain or failure, while empathy is better at a time that may also be of pain but also success.

It  also Christmas time now, as the column mentions. It brings to mind The Catcher in the Rye, which deals famously with a young adolescent man at Christmas time in a big city. Holidays can be depressing; Salinger was right about that.

On another matter, the pastor today spoke about the Luke gospel and the evil possible with tax collectors and soldiers. Even if you are not religious, the pastor also made the point from the writings of St. Paul that there are “some things beyond your understanding.” I think we all have to be humble about how much we know.

On starting a novel

It can be hard to jump into fiction as a writer, but  I guess it is like long-distance running or swimming: once you get past a certain point of resistance, doing it is easier, but not always a “runner’s high.” Here is the first paragraph from Tana French’s recent novel The Searcher;

“When Cal comes out of the house, the rooks have got hold of something. Six of them are clustered on a back lawn, amid long, wet grass and yellow-flowered weeds, jabbing and hopping. Whatever the thing is, it is on the small side and still moving.”

Some thoughts. I have not read the whole novel yet but want to. It seems like an ambiguous start, slightly gentle about nature and slightly violent apparently. I said in a previous web post that my favorite first page of a novel is probably in The End of the Affair  but deleted it because I referred to someone (not by name or identity} who broke up with me.

I have just started to try to write my first novel. It will be first person, even though Henry James said first person is in bad taste in long stories. I have about three sentences as of today. One of my grad school professors had a course that focused on “narrative middles,” which is an interesting idea. But I find starts more interesting. It can be difficult to get started on a project or tale.

On a book and a TV show

From The Wall Street Journal (there tend to be a lot of book-review collections at the end of the calendar year):

“If sci-fi mirrors the present instead of imagining the future, then 2021 should have seen a wave of pandemic stories. It didn’t happen, perhaps because authors are so aware of all their many predecessors, back to Jack London and his “The Scarlet Plague,” in 1912. How to find a new angle?

Was going to write textual analysis, but had a lot of errands to do today

Opened a new checking account in my new city because my current one has little presence in this state now, and I have some resentment for them because they treated me badly in an attempted mortgage refinance a few years back.

The bank agent was polite, smart, and asked relevant questions about my finances and work.

The thing that struck me though was that after our meeting, while I was waiting for a Lyft driver in the bank’s lobby just outside her cubicle, she had a long chat with a colleague about her family life. I think a lot of jobs are mainly about passing time (but then something important happens, and employees have to react}. That is okay often. I have a novel idea for it. The bank did its job anyway.

On body weight

I am not proud to have chatted so much online the past few years with women socially, actually slightly ashamed. But I think I have learned some things from them.

One who was a bit a heavy called herself “fat and ugly”; she was not. Another was very attractively voluptuous but called herself “fat.” They call this “body dysmorphic disorder” in medical science, when you think there is something wrong with your body when there is really not.

I clerked for a psychiatrist in college. He made the point that even psychiatrists have trouble diagnosing their own psychological problems, even though they can diagnose others. I agree. It is hard to be objective about yourself.

Just another pop song (will return to textual analysis soon)

It is Tuesday today, and a popular rock band when I was a teenager was called ‘Til Tuesday. Some of my college buddies said Tuesday is the most difficult day of the week because you are days away from the last weekend and still far from the next one.

The lead singer was a pretty, kind of post-punkish blonde. Her most famous song was called “Voices Carry,” and I think it is about the dangers of gossip and slander. It is a real issue in the US, even if you are not using curse words. You can get tortured for saying things people don’t agree with.

From an The Irish Times interview with George Clooney, whom I consider one of the more irritating people in real life even though a pretty good movie actor.

“Unruffled as the silver hair on his head, Clooney leans forward, as if he is about to confide in me. “Well, yeah. I was offered $35 million for one day’s work for an airline commercial, but I talked to Amal” – Clooney, the human-rights lawyer he married in 2014 – “about it and we decided it’s not worth it. It was [associated with] a country that, although it’s an ally, is questionable at times, and so I thought, ‘Well, if it takes a minute’s sleep away from me, it’s not worth it.’”

No one deserves more than $1 million for advertising, and he was wrong to even mentioned he was offered so much money.

On another matter, just a word. It is the word “cool” as a metaphor. I have an online friend who uses it a lot as slang. It has a literal sense because you need to keep your body temperature moderate to be healthy. But of course it also means staying calm. I swore about a decade ago to stop use it as a metaphor because I was getting too old but have changed my mind.

More on  Z and another female character

From page 161 of the text of the novel about Zelda Fitzgerald told in the first person:

“During that week of crossing the Atlantic, I encouraged Scott to spend his time doing whatever he liked. “Go socialize,” I told him over a lunch of poached salmon and boiled potatoes.”

A few thoughts. This line implies the couple may have had a slightly open marriage. I don’t think Scott was entirely decadent. He was a very productive writer and basically a moralist, but I think most of his fiction is based on his social experiences. Also, I think it very difficult to write a historical novel like this. How could you ever know you are accurate about someone else’s life?

On another matter, for a month or two last year I tried to redevelop a childhood hobby of reading comic books. One I picked up was about “Red Sonja,” a voluptuous woman who fights aliens (there was a “B” movie made about the character in the 1980s). But I have basically stopped again now.

I think some graphic novels have literary merit for adults, but some of the shorter works just seem silly or even like animated pornography. Animated porn is a genre in Japan called hentai. But with Hollywood having made so many so many successful films based on comic-book characters in the past few decades, comic books have become a modern mythology.

 

 

On Guyland and some comment

I have commented a few times on this book on this blog, but I find it really good. Here is a slightly long excerpt:

“‘I know it is different at other schools,’ Trey tried to patiently explain to me. ‘I mean, at other schools, people date. You know, a guy asks a girl out, and they go out to a movie or something. You know, like dating? But here at Cornell, nobody dates. We go out in groups to local bars. We go to parties. And then after we’re good and drunk, we hook up. Everyone just hooks up.’

‘Does that mean you have sex?’ I ask.

‘Hmm,’ he says, with a half-smile on his face. ‘Maybe, maybe not. That’s the sort of beauty of it, you know? Nobody can really be sure.’

…

The only point Troy is really wrong about is his assumption is that traditional dating is going on anywhere else. Dating, at least in college, seems to be goner good.”

(An aside: Cornell seems to be the only Ivy League college that was not originally religious, even though all the others dropped their religious identities at some point. I went to mainly Catholic schools, but we had similar issues.)

Just a few thoughts. This may seem misogynistic, but I think in some ways US feminism created some social problems. Of course, women should be able to vote, have workplace equality, and equal pay for equal work. But there was something called “rape culture” when I was a teenager. I think it was really “hang-out culture” because people were not going on formal dates maybe because feminists thought dating was too patriarchal. I went to a few dances with women in high school but not on dates. College was a desert.