Etta James, RIP

A single song by Etta James reminds us why it's quite possible that a thousand years from now, this country will be best remembered for re-inventing music between 1920 and 1970.

Huck Finn, C'est Moi!

Yesterday my father said: "Sometimes I feel like what I'm going through isn't even my problem—like it's a problem that doesn't actually belong to me. But suddenly it is my problem, and now I've got to deal with it. Even though I don't know where it really came from, or who caused it. But it's got to be fixed, and I guess I'm the one who has to fix it."

Immediately I ran with the idea—I've been running with it since—because it reflects how I often feel about my own life; also, because it reflects my experience as a reader and the connection between literary characters and the world. Huck Finn's problems don't interest us because they're his problems but because he embodies a moment in time—post-Civil War America—and through him we contemplate the process by which we, as a nation, kind of grew up. The problems he negotiates weren't his but ours. It fell to him to try to sort them out, in his life.

So narrating myself into existence I become aware that my problems aren't so much mine but the world's, right now. And, as with Huck, it falls to me to live them out, with everyone else.

Part of the appeal of this idea, I suppose, is that it permits me to transfer the responsibility for the difficulties of my life to the larger world. But that falls in line, for the most part, with my politics and with my understanding of the relationship between myself and society.

Because let's be real: I don't exist. The we is the real I.

Frightening? Not really. Far less frightening than the deluded narcissism and, inevitably, the crushing loneliness of individualism.

TFTD

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be "carried of the spirit into the wilderness," I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

— John Muir, "Letter to Jeanne Carr," 30 August 1867

MItt Romney Cannot Win

Below I've embedded Newt Gingrich's infomercial attacking Mitt Romney, which is running right now in South Carolina.

If Romney's Republican opponents can construct this kind of devastating attack on Romney's career at Bain Capital, one can only imagine what the Obama campaign machine will come up with.

As I see it—I don't think this is just wishful thinking—Romney can't win the presidency, given these stories, his (all-too-familiar) tendency to behave like a sanctimonious prick, and the country's current political and economic climate, wonderfully modified by OWS.

I don't expect much street-dancing this time around, but it looks to me like four more years.

The End of Football

Football is an obscene sport, which is what makes it interesting. Like boxing, like NASCAR, like MMA, football is appealing because it's lethal. Within each of us dwells an assassin: football is that assassin's porn.

So, yes, I'll watch the NFL playoffs this weekend, as I have since adolescence. I'll delight in the violence; also, its violence will make me sad. I guess I enjoy watching football because I enjoy feeling myself at war with myself.

But this superb article explains why football must change or die.

It's one thing for grown men to collaborate in their own destruction. It's quite another for towns across America to cheer on the destruction of their adolescent boys.

Maybe one day—when America is healthier (and me with it)—we'll return to baseball and the elegance of sublimated warfare. Until then: fathers, don't let your babies grow up to be football players.

The English 48B Book Club, Winter 2012

English 48B = American Literature in the Gilded Age, 1865-1914. I intend to use the class to contemplate the birth of various philosophical and political ideas that shaped the country during the 20th century, including environmentalism, pragmatism, feminism, civil rights, and American militarism. We'll also travel with Frank Norris into the life of the American underclass—which looks increasingly like the American middle class.

In no particular order:

McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, by Frank Norris.
My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir.
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane.
Roughing It, by Mark Twain.
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Final Harvest: Poems, by Emily Dickinson.

The English 1A Book Club, Winter 2012

A return to Eros, lethal Eros, this time, in addition to Paz, by way of some contemporary female novelists.

The Double Flame, by Octavio Paz.
Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson.
The Lover, by Marguerite Duras.
Break It Down, by Lydia Davis.
Tokyo Fiancee, by Amélie Nothomb.
The Proof of the Honey, by Salwa Al-Neimi.

A Slow Blink

And the Eye reopens.

I've been locked out for a while, negotiating CNAMEs, A Records, DNSs—all while trying to retain my right to the domain name that points to my writing. A few weeks and a handful of dollars later: I live.

Coming soon (maybe): my thoughts on Breaking Bad and the end of America.

TFTD

If I exorcise my devils,

Well, my angels may leave too.

When they leave

 They're so hard to find.

— Tom Waits, "Please Call Me, Baby"

TFTD

What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone’s consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning, when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.

— Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate