Just a few things I noticed while puttering around the Internet on this gloomy, soggy Tuesday.
Jonathan Franzen: The Terence Trent D'Arby of letters?
One of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted: pulled over for expired license plates ...
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She said she didn't like the weather
This reference to the impact of volcanic activity on the birth of Frankenstein got me to do some digging on the "Year Without a Summer," 1816, leading to this fascinating paper, which argues: "The weather in 1816 may even be the single most determining influence upon the novel's creation."
In 1816 everyone talked about the weather. And with justification. The summer never came. The spring was unexceptional, and until mid-June the agricultural cycle proceeded normally. Then came the rains which, a few clear days excepted, lasted the summer ...In the spring, astronomers had sighted mysterious sunspots in their telescopes. During May and June these blemishes became large enough to be visible with the naked eye. People squinted at them through smoked glasses. Superstitious folk, even some less so, concluded that the sun was dying; others thought a chunk of the sun would break off and destroy the world ...On the 17th, hawkers in Paris sold a pamphlet entitled Détails sur la fin du monde. The end was to occur the next day. 'The 18th of July has passed', the Gazette de Lausanne reported laconically on the 23rd, 'and that day, which was supposed to be marked by the most frightening cataclysm, offered no other miracle than the return of good weather.' Unfortunately, the return was short lived. The sun lasted four days before again disappearing.
Assuming we bring upon ourselves the interesting weather described by President Gore in his recent documentary, what sorts of wonderful literature might it inspire in the future? We may not enjoy the same superstitions today, but we certainly have plenty of our own ...
But I also just love the idea of a partially undiscovered world. As the Clubbe article continues:
We easily forget that Frankenstein appeared in a world still very imperfectly charted. In 1816 almost none of the earth's high peaks had been scaled; less than fifty years before, Captain Cook had claimed for England the hardly-known continent of Australia. The arctic regions remained terra incognita and, as Captain Walton's letters remind us, the subject of intense speculation ... Mary Wollstonecraft described primitive customs in Norway, and Byron was among the first Englishmen of the day to have set foot in what is now Albania. Huge tracts of Africa, the American continents, and Asia were unknown to Europeans. Numerous islands remained undiscovered. Contemporary maps indicate the known world surrounded by large uncharted areas where angels blew trumpets and sea-serpents rose out of the waves.
The world of Frankenstein, we remember, lies closer in time to that of Gulliver's Travels than to our own ... In 1816 the eerie creations imagined by Mary Shelley, both creature and novel, seemed all too possible. It needed only the thunder and 'pitchy blackness' of a 'tempest-toss'd' summer to launch them into life.
Every time I go around here
Today I had one of those sobering intimation-of-mortality moments when I realized that I've been going to see Frank Black/Black Francis play music in one incarnation or another for the past 15 years or so.
In fact, I am sort of morally obligated to attend his shows, regardless of ticket cost -- after all, it was me who, in an unfortunate fit of youthful nerves and enthusiasm, squealed, "I'm your biggest fan!" as he put his doughy arm around me (sympathetically, not lasciviously, mind you) while autographing my ticket stub in a rainy alley behind Seattle's Moore Theater way back in 199-oh-crap-I'm-old.
I like to think he doesn't look that much different now than he did in that rainy alley lo-those-many-years-ago. I like to think the same about myself, for that matter, though we each seem to wear less flannel these days. It was an older crowd at his sold-out show in Park Slope on Saturday night, though. Looking out on the sea of beer-themed t-shirts and loose-fitting jeans, the paunches and sensible shoes, the relaxed, slightly faraway expressions of the obviously committed couples comfortably holding hands around the room's fringes (having, of course, shown up plenty early so as to score one of Southpaw's few seats upon which to rest their our weary backsides), my date K declared, "anyone who hooks up here tonight is bound to be married within the year." We decided it might, in fact, be more expedient to simply conduct a mass Frank Black-led wedding ceremony right there on the spot.
As for the show itself: OK, I know I'm in the minority on this one, judging by crowd reaction whenever it gets trotted out, but I'd be more than happy to live the rest of my life never hearing "Wave of Mutilation" again. It turned out to be an acoustic set, and though Frank is great at the acoustic thing, I still prefer him with a full band. I suppose a singer can be forgiven for mucking up the lyrics to at least a third of his set, seeing as how they are his lyrics after all and the man has composed like a gazillion brilliant songs.*
That said, hearing him put different spins on the phrasing of many of my favorite songs was a delight, and I thought the acoustic format did better justice to his newest works than that sorta snoozy Nashville-studio-musician thing he has going on right now (o Catholics, where art thou?). In any case, he's an amazing songwriter. His voice, ranging effortlessly from butter-melting baritone to soulful falsetto, is astonishingly good, especially considering the damage he must have wrought with "Tame" et al. back in the day. Oh, and "Cactus" was played -- with much more heart, it seemed to me, than its rendition at the Pixies reunion show.**
But as the night wore on, I noticed my date checking his watch ever more frequently. K was relatively unversed in Frank's post-Pixies oeuvre before this (translation: I dragged him along). "There were some really nice songs and I was really impressed with his voice," he said later. "It's just that after a while, many of his songs tend to run together into one long, middle-aged raga."
And that last comment, dear readers, was just so perfect, I had to compose this rather unhelpful music review simply as an excuse to share it with you. Will I be going to see Frank again when he comes back in October? Of course, even if I have to travel there on a Lark.
*and say what you will about his lyrical abilities, no one can manage to conjure a rhyme like "all he thinks about is how he/looks like Heroes-period Bowie" like Frank.
**yes, I do realize I sound like Comic Book Guy in that last sentence. Interestingly, a Venn diagram of Comic Book Guy/Frank Black fans reveals a great deal of overlap.
Library of the day
Friends and countrymice, I come to you with glad library tidings from the far side of the continent. The new(ish) central branch of the Seattle Public Library has an army of librarians standing by to answer your nagging reference questions, 24/7. Free music downloads for lucky library card-holders. A fearless, outspoken union that passed a resolution calling for President Bush’s impeachment. And – deep breath – its own café, complete with scrumptious-or-at-least-drinkable Seattle coffee you can carry around the library with you.
Then there's the building itself, which is a beaut. It’s probably fortunate that I don’t live there any more since I’d inevitably become obsessed to the point of distraction with taking photos that capture all the neat-o light and lines. Here are some modest attempts.
Fancy book-sorting system that runs along the ceiling on the main floor
Sunshine on a cloudy day
Neon escalators!
A vertiginous view looking down from the 10th floor
Some outdoor perspective (library on right, lumpy public art in foreground)
Of course, there’s spectacular architecture, and then there’s user-friendly design ... Though the architecture critic types have showered the building with praise, I direct you to the amazingly creative Ruby Crowned Kinglette, who has created a lovely tote bag to express her feelings on the matter – really, take a look! Says she:
architecture for architecture's sake is a failure when it is a public building, built with public funds. i am not a big fan of that in the private sector; in the public realm it is just bad design. i have read too many accounts of what a success this building is, how it has put seattle on the map architecturally, how the building itself is a destination, how utterly brilliant mr. koolhaas is. but, i can not believe anyone who thinks it's so great has actually used the building for it's intended purpose. it frustrates me every time i use the place. it frustrates me every time i am there and groups touring the building talk about how spectacular it is. it really frustrated me the day there was a fire alarm while i was doing research on the 9th floor. the entire building emptied via the fire escape that emptied out into the middle of the building that we then had to walk through to get outside????? really? isn't that counter intuitive? shouldn't people exiting a burning building NOT have to walk through that building once they get to the main floor??? - ok, it wasn't burning that day, but still....
For more on libraries and their intended uses, I direct you to some missives from actual (angry!) librarians posted by Maud last week ...
The end of Paine
This excerpt from an upcoming (in the UK, at least) Christopher Hitchens book about Thomas Paine's Rights of Man is worth a look, if only for the great scene of Paine valiantly fending off pushy Bible salesmen on his deathbed:
Dying in ulcerated agony, he was imposed upon by two Presbyterian ministers who pushed past his housekeeper and urged him to avoid damnation by accepting Jesus Christ. "Let me have none of your Popish stuff," Paine responded. "Get away with you, good morning, good morning." The same demand was made of him as his eyes were closing. "Do you wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?" He answered quite distinctly: "I have no wish to believe on that subject." Thus he expired with his reason, and his rights, both still staunchly defended until the very last.
I'll leave the raised intellectual eyebrows about just why the smokin' turncoat has decided to associate himself with Paine these days* to those with, um, more intellectual brows. Really, I only bring this up as an excuse to recommend one of the more satisfying books I've picked up this year, Paul Collins' The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine.
I'm not sure I can do this book the justice it deserves here -- for a much more thoughtful take, see this February 2006 Bookslut essay.** Collins brings you to Paine's deathbed and then beyond, as he follows the exceedingly strange overseas journey made by the thinker's remains after they've been collected from the ground and passed along through a motley group of fans and countrymen in a culture that boasted a flourishing trade in the bones and other remains of storied personalities. "[O]nce dead, we no longer belong to ourselves," Collins observes. "It is the final loss of control."
As Collins follows the trail of the remains, we get a quirky travelogue, visiting contemporary locations including an Asian restaurant on Manhattan's Curry Hill (former office of 19th century medical theorist E.B. Foote) and a boarded-up Lloyd's Bank "grimly rotting at the end of the Jubilee tube line" (site of a long-departed herb shop whose proprietor in the 1880s owned a dessicated, "hardened chunk" of Paine's brain "the size of an india-rubber eraser" before said chunk went missing again, turning up in ... oh, you'll just have to read it).
Along the way, we're treated to portraits of long-forgotten geniuses, crackpots and other characters on page after page. This reader, at any rate, was introduced to the fascinating Moncure Conway, a 19th-century southern gentleman-turned abolitionist-turned pal of some of the brightest luminaries of his day. This guy befriended Emerson, Whitman and Twain, crossed paths with Poe and Darwin, you name it. I can't think of anyone in our time who comes close in terms of hobnobbing with (and in some cases advancing the careers of) Big Names of His Day, not even Ahmet Ertegun. If that's not enough, you'll find a wealth of fun facts about phrenology, Victorian toilets, 18th century gin vending machines, and the wonderfully named Muggletonians, a long-lasting yet obscure British religious sect Collins deems "the world's laziest cult." Oh, and some delightfully complicated game involving the London tube system, too.
One caveat: Collins' writing style in this book ... well, um, it can be a little distracting, like listening to This American Life on a really staticky NPR station. Or, OK, like reading certain blogs, perhaps even this one.*** I only bring this up because I suspect that those who aren't true Believers might dismiss the book's authorial voice, with its italicized asides, pregnant pauses, and two-word paragraphs, as precious, while those who consider themselves hard-core historians might be put off by its non-linear approach. But get past all that and the narrative is truly captivating. It transcends any kind of genre, particularly when Collins goes off on one of his from-the-heart tangents that reveal the passion behind his project:
We forget all the time. We forget very nearly every single impression that passes through our minds. What we ate for lunch: who our roommate was ten years ago: what we paid for a soda in 1982: what we just came from the living room to the kitchen for. It is constant and vital, and we only notice it if everyday useful things go missing. Every moment gets thrown out like so much garbage -- which, in a sense, is what the past is. Memory is a toxin, and its overretention -- the constant replaying of the past -- is the hallmark of stress disorders and clinical depression. The elimination of memory is a bodily function, like the elimination of urine. Stop urinating and you have renal failure: stop forgetting and you go mad. And so it is that the details of nearly every single day that we have lived, nearly every single moment of each day, nearly every person that we have met and spoken to, the exact wording of the paragraph that you have just read ...Gone.
Oh, and yes, you do learn, along the way, about why Thomas Paine should be remembered, too -- not a bad deal if your primary school education was as terrible as mine.
*To wit: Amazon UK's review refers to Hitch as Paine's "natural heir."
**Allow me to digress long enough to register a small complaint: I can't get enough of the entertaining, informative Bookslut. That is, I can't get enough because its racy URL is frowned upon by my workplace Web servers. I dream of a nonsexy mirror -- Bookwife? Bookpal? Bookdomesticpartner? -- that would allow me to delve into this site at my leisure, my Web-reading leisure time mainly being that which takes place during "work" hours. Am I the only one with this problem?
***Oddly enough, though, not Collins' own blog, which is quite straightforward in style and way cool, and full of links to his great reviews and articles like this must-read on Sponsie, the Victorian sex-ed monkey.
Goofy talking Tom borrowed from the Clinton Avenue School's very educational 4th grade American History pages (caution: gratuitous patriotic music!).
... And the less said about Nicolas Cage, the better
I have a little west coast travelogue in the works for you, dear reader, but for now I just had to jump in and note the delicious absurdity of this story about the re-make of the classic pagan horror flick* The Wicker Man.
I might not be reading carefully enough, but I didn't notice any comment about the weirdness of a Mormon taking on this project.
*Yes, I know, this description doesn't do it justice at all. If you haven't already, go rent the original before they edit Britt Ekland out and replace her with some bulimic teenager ...