E.C. Walsh Blogsphere

On technology and business

I am not good at tech, hardly use my smartphone but read an interesting article today in The Wall Street Journal about the way younger people have been using social media like FB and YouTube to make money on financial markets and advise investing. Here it is: The Social-Media Stars Who Move Markets – WSJ

I suppose the main concern is these people have no editors or bosses vetting their advice and could even be con  people. You can certainly be hurt by unqualified or dishonest  people in your personal life; it could happen financially too.

I had an idea for a brief new poem today, but it seemed too angry. My Dad told me lately that I need to be more careful of what I say. Yes, being physically brutalized for opinions and jokes is not usually worth it: I prefer music, work from for home now, and a bit of TV and some books and media.

More on The Institute and systemic abuse

I think Stephen King made a wise choice in turning to non-supernatural horror in his later years. There is real horror in life, and it should be spoken of whether in fiction or real reporting. He  has admitted he had a serious cocaine problem when writing his more fantastic stuff when younger. My understanding is cocaine can help you perform short-term but will eventually kill you.

On the idea of systemic abuse, I am beginning to agree with African-Americans about the idea of “systemic racism” even though I opposed the idea at first, thinking then that racism is mainly a personal choice. But systems and communities can abuse you whatever your race or gender is.

On a German fiction writer from part of an article in The Irish Times recently:

“WG Sebald would surely have hated being likened to Nick Hornby and Helen Fielding, but hear me out. Hornby and Fielding are talented writers who, through a combination of timing, judgment and luck, popularised new genres: ladlit and chicklit respectively. With Sebald, whom Carole Angier in the first major biography calls “the most revered 20th-century German writer in the world”, the genre was the genre-defying prose work, that combination of essay, memoir, history, literature – and photographs – that is now de rigueur in non-fiction. The genre-slippage is summed up in the three editions of his book The Rings of Saturn I own, which are categorised on the back first as Fiction/Travel/History, then Memoir/Travel/History, and most recently Fiction/Memoir/Travel. Nobody knows anything.

Let’s settle on “essayistic semi-fiction”, as Sebald’s friend and fellow writer Michael Hamburger put it. And it’s just how semi- the fiction is that Angier spends a good deal of her book trying to work out. After all, the chances of this being a full-blooded biography, based on the testimony of the people who knew him best, are slim, as we find out in the preface when she notes that Sebald’s widow, his closest friend and his last UK publisher all refused to speak to her. The subtitle of the book is telling: it echoes Ian Hamilton’s In Search of JD Salinger, a book about the failure to write a biography of a famously private author. “I knew Sebald wouldn’t want me,” Angier writes. The question is, do we?”

The reference to Salinger is telling. I think many fiction writers use the raw material of their personal life and make minor imaginative adjustments to avoid embarrassment. It appears to be what Salinger did, but he was very good at it, in my opinion.  I am considering to do it myself soon. What is the point of fiction, if it has no correspondence to real life?

On new book and Keats’ influence on FSF

Just a brief aside: if you want to buy my new book, and if you do G– help you, it is listed under the author name of E.C. Walsh on Amazon even though the cover shows my full first name of Edmund.

Also read an in interesting book review today from The Wall Street Journal about a new book analyzing the influence of early 19th-century romantic poet John Keats on F.S. Fitzgerald, who titled his last full novel off of a line from a Keats poem, Tender is the Night. The book is called Bright Star, Green Light and appears to quote the famous Keats line, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” (My joke as a teenager was “A thing of beauty is a toy forever”). But seriously the Keats line hints at Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy in The Great Gatsby.

One of my grad school classmates was irritated by the focus of literary critics on “influence”. But it matters. Even the famously independent Emily Dickinson was somewhat influenced by Keats. One of my professors, pointing out Keats died in his mid-20s, argued what you leave behind is what matters. Quality before quantity.

 

On aging and more about Guyland

Just turned 51 today. The body has broken down a bit recently. It isn’t cancer or heart problems, I think. It is mainly nerve damage caused in part from repeated police brutality last winter, but my own behavior hasn’t always been healthy. I admit it. According to my neurologist, I was also born with a deformation in part of my brain and now have essential tremors.

In my opinion I have been abused by relatives as a child (not my immediate family; I love them a lot) and more recently by police. It made me think of the book Guyland that I bought last year. It deals with the issue of male maturity, and I think my physical and emotional abusers were basically trying to enforce maturity on me.

The book begins with this poem “The After Hours Crowd” that begins with this stanza:

American boys walk in packs/ playing dress up/ in small towns, boulevard/ walking along panels/ illuminated of glass

I think I know what the author, Michael Kimmel, is speaking of. It does feel good to hang out with friends. And they say women are more attractive to men in groups. Haha. We just have to be careful about speech and behavior.

More on Niall Ferguson’s Doom

An excerpt from page 313:

“Another policy failure has gone largely unremarked. In Asia, as we have seen, the countries that have dealt most successfully with Covid-19 made use of smartphone technology to operate sophisticated systems of contract tracking.”

Smart phones interest me. I own one and subscribe to the service but hardly ever use it. Mainly a flip-phone now. As you get older, tech gets more difficult to deal with. When diagnosed with severe cancer, a reporter asked Christopher Hitchens how it felt to know he was dying, He replied, “We are all dying.”

More on The Institute

Stephen King’s recent novel contains the following excerpt:

“Is he okay?” Tim asked keeping his voice low.

“He’s dehydrated, and he’s hungry, hasn’t had much to eat in quite awhile, but otherwise he seems fine to me. Kids his age bounce back from worse. … He’s hiding something. Maybe a lot.”

“Okay.”

The novel seems to be about systemic child abuse. The boy in the book is only 12, but systemic abuse can happen to older people too, “elder abuse” and all. Authorities always seem to think what they are doing is morally correct, but how does anyone really know that? Whether it is doctors, police, judges, or even just parents. Life is complicated.

Just about a pop song today

I have been listening to The Doors a lot lately. I think Morrison was interesting even if personally tragic.

I had an idea when young that there is an important difference between the simple and the simplistic. I consider Morrison’s lyrics simple but not simplistic. He seemed to have been very smart but confused by women, fame, booze, and drugs.

Have already blogged about Morrison’s two anti-war songs, “The Unknown Soldier” and “The End.” I also like “L.A. Woman.” I think it has to do with the idea that young people rely on Hollywood movies and frankly sometimes Southern California porn to get by. “L.A. woman’s going to have to do.” Whether she is I  guess most of men have to decide.

On proselytizing

Just got a pamphlet about The Bible on my new apartment door together with a phony $5 bill. The pastor distributing these should go back to theology school.

I didn’t agree with Christopher Hitchens about a lot of things, but at least he was learned, sincere, and serious.

Just thinking of a new book today.

It would be called Natural Light and be another collection of miscellany, a collection of brief essays, poems, and jokes like that last one taken mainly from my blog. It would probably be briefer than the last; I know we all have distractions now.

The idea of natural light versus electrical light is interesting. I have an idea for a novel mentioned in a recent blog post but am at too difficult a time in life now to concentrate to write it now.