Evidence of the world’s ridiculousness

• I am supposed to be working on an English paper, but instead I’m drawn to my fiction. Which is to say, I would rather write a short story than a critical essay. WHAT! If someone would have told me I’d feel this way now one week ago, I would have laughed. A lot. But now that the plot is vaguely outlined, bringing characters to life is such a pleasurable enterprise. They are living in my head.
• An Iranian-American scholar who was supposed to be teaching at Columbia will likely be in prison for 15 years for doing, well, not much of anything.
• The events of last weekend.
• I’m not reading enough in general.
• I am able to be semi-coherent on so few hours of sleep. So few, even for me.

• Last but not least…(See second item. I found out via … Google Alert.)

Things I learned over the last week-and-a-half: DC edition.

Ah, the ebb and flow of blogging. When nothing happens, there’s nothing to tell. When stuff happens, there’s no time to recount it. (Really, that’s just an excuse for laziness. But who’s counting?)

Anyway. A lot has gone on over the last two weeks, in books news and non-books news. But more important than the narrative itself is the takeaway—so here we go, so that one day I can point to lessons learned between July 30 and August 9.

-Thrillers are good but leave me feeling empty.
Last Friday, my dear friend Laura visited me for lunch near Wall Street. She had just come from a tour of a publisher, and is swimming in books (hm that phrase makes me think of a “swimming book”–name the poem!). Which is good for me, since I get the excess. She came bearing Michael Connelly’s latest thriller, The Scarecrow.

The Scarecrow

I wasn’t sure what to think of it, until I read the jacket copy, which read:

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he’s got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang — a final story that will win the newspaper

Given my exposure to that type of reporting this summer, how could I not read it? So I took a break from my regular reading to devour this piece of whatever it is. It sucked me in immediately, and gripped me so hard I was afraid my hands were glued to it at a point.

(On a related note, The Red and the Black is still going, but slowly. I don’t know why! It’s so good and I love it but I just can’t make a huge dent. And I feel like I’m sinking a lot of time into it. And it doesn’t feel slow. But I just don’t read that much at a time. Well, the font is small…)

-Mayors sometimes wear interesting outfits.
Last Sunday, I was assigned to follow the Mayor in his press van. First to the Ecuador parade in Elmhurst, then to a Q&A at the beginning of the Pakistan parade. I got my question in, but not before multiple chants of “viva Ecuador:”

El Gaucho Alcalde?

-Murderers don’t necessarily live in sketchy-looking homes

On Monday, I was assigned to pay a visit to the Bronx home of the woman convicted of killing a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor. I would talk to her neighbors, landlord, etc. To be honest, I was initially a bit nervous. But that just proves how silly were my preconceived notions of where a convicted murderer would live:

Bronx home on a nice, quiet block.

-Ground Zero is still just that.

Turns out the Freedom Tower plans are delayed, so I went to find out how people were feeling about it.
This is what I saw:

There is obviously a lot of progress here, but it must be painful for many people to see.

-I am not the best at navigating Queens.

Enrollment in CUNY summer school is up, and I was sent to Queensborough Community College to help find out why. Sounds like fun. I like college students. You know. But it took me so long to get there. I only found the campus thanks to the help of Angela, a lovely woman I met on the bus who is working as an exotic dancer to make ends meet (that’s why she’s going back to school). Afterwards, I didn’t get back to the office before my shift ended. Anyway, this is important to know because my town is on the border of Queens … yikes.

-Mozart is awesome.

Okay, so I already knew that. But a trip to Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival (which, fractionally, was not mostly Mozart) caused me to go through all the concertos, sonatas, operas, and symphonies on my iPod. I have fallen in love with the music again, and have a weird desire to see Amadeus.
Thanks Dan!

Eagerly anticipating Mozart.

–Never go Greyhound.

I’m not going into detail here. But I was misguided and will never repeat the error. YIKES!

-Washington D.C. is a city replete with pretty streets and nice people

I went to DC this weekend to chill with pals and pols. After hopping off the Greyhound on Thursday, I arrived at my lovely friend (and generous three-night host) Leora’s gorgeous apartment. Over the weekend, I met her friends, who have awesome, exciting jobs in all sorts of governmental and non-governmental offices. So there is life outside New York … hrmmmm.

Also, the Metro is a lot cleaner. And a view like this is within walking distance:

It was all prettiness.

(Also, it’s fun to be wandering aimlessly and end up here:)

Love from Josh and Toby. Yes, I went there.

-Agriculture is alive and well in our capital.

So much so, in fact, that the Department of Agriculture has a farmers market! I found this out because the Metro stop for the Smithsonian, which I visited with Betsy on Friday, dumps you in front of the Dept. of Agriculture building. (Also, I didn’t hear the barista clearly when she asked if I wanted the libido-enhanced coffee, so it took an explanation of “it will increase blood pressure for you and your partner” before I declined.)

But outside of the Dept of A itself, we stumbled onto the National Botanic Garden. It was beautiful, and I never would have thought to pay it a visit had I not walked straight into it. I think this fine establishment is what makes this part of the mall so pretty:

Flowers!

-Hunger strikes don’t only happen at Columbia

This display of solidarity for Iran made me feel at home:

Striking for Iran.

-Not all art museums are created equal.

I found the Smithsonian’s Renwick, the American art museum, and was disappointed by the collection. I’m not an art snob, but I’m used to the Met. I was in and out of there in half an hour. At least it was free. Here is what I found interesting:

Hmmm.

So then I found my way to the Corcoran Gallery, a collection that outgrew the Renwick (and costs $8.00 for students). There was more to look at, a nice photo exhibit, and some cool sculptures:

legit gauchos this time.

So I learned a lot. All this learning is making me tired, so I should probably sleep now. I have to be at work an hour early tomorrow.

Oh, and of course, I am redder than ever.

Can anything improve on the book?

Absolutely not.

But that Kindle article did have a few good things to say about iPhone reading, which led me to discover this beaut: Eucalyptus is an application that gives you unfettered access to books that are publicly available via the Guttenberg Project. It is lovely. I left my books at home, and on the train today, started F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories Flappers and Philosophers. I was able to read the first one between two subway rides. The tale was absolutely charming, and the language, of course, amazing.

More importantly, the experience of reading on the iPhone was pleasurable. The brilliance lies in its simplicity: instead of having a fancy technology to imitate the way letters fall out on a page, it simply uses scans of pages. So it really looks like a book. And the tiny pages have numbers, and you can actually turn them by swiping your finger across the screen n a motion that causes the effects of a normal page turn. I’m really happy with this. Obviously, nothing is better than ink and paper, but as for reading off a screen, this experience is great. (But it means I’m in the middle of one more book and thus progressing at a 1/4 slower speed. But I’m sticking to my guns anyway–slow reading is better reading).

Whew. I am so exhausted after today’s fast. And I was exhausted to begin with from a long, rainy work day yesterday, trying to figure out what happened to the poor engineer who was hit by a huge branch in Central park. It’s simply tragic. Today, the News reported that his mother said he’s improving slowly, so that’s good. My best wishes to Sasha and his family.

And how old do I look?

For the record, I’m 20.

But in a single day of reporting on a Bronx church’s street carnival, I can think of six people off the top of my head who said something like, “you’re too young to be doing this” (and I responded likewise to a 77-year-old about his vocation). Today was not the first day I’d heard this, but it was the day I received the highest frequency of variations of the comment so far. Who inquired? A carnival organizer; a cop sergeant; a parent; a ferris wheel mechanic (who guessed I was 16!); a parishioner—just to name a few.

I’m more curious than annoyed by this, but it’s getting a bit old. I don’t like having to explain myself away. I try to make the best of it by making a joke that lightens up sources and makes them comfortable. But it gets awkward! Like: you’re too young to be reporting. What are you doing here? Why are you here? Who are you, even? Go back to school.

And I don’t think actually being young is necessarily a bad thing (aside from having less experience, of course). Though the perceptions that youth carries can be exhausting on the job.

Also, guess who showed up at the carnival?

It's Archbishop Dolan! A celebrity for the parishioners.

New York’s newest Vatican celeb visited a church’s street festival to lift their spirits after a roller coaster car was derailed on Saturday night, and 11 ended up hospitalized with minor injuries.

More importantly, it may be possible that Andy Borowitz is the most brilliant man to walk the earth. This Shouts and Murmers parody of Britney’s conversion diary is hilarious. The laugh out loud guffaw type of hilarious.

Also, I have a confession to make: I am sort of addicted to True Blood. And in tonight’s episode, I found myself deciphering plot points based on Euripides, which I learned in my first-year English course. From the Bacchae to True Blood—that is full circle.

Anyway. Still in the middle of The Red and the Black; in the beginning of Hamlet in Purgatory; and, as of yesterday, started Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. If only I had an entire summer slated for just reading. A girl can dream.

Today I went bananas.

I doodle a lot: on napkins, envelopes, notepads, hands, paper table cloths—anything. Usually I draw mindlessly.

Here’s what I did during a few free minutes today:

Guess who?

(Forgive me, pretty bad phone photo of it, but what can ya do?)

After work, I was supposed to go to a creative writing class in Bryant Park with Ray, but the rain got in our way. Instead, we played hangman, and drew on bananas:

A bad joke on a banana peel

I miss this kind of stuff!

You know that feeling…

when you have something you urgently need to do, but you just stall and stall and stall? Not because the task itself is so hard, but because you’ve stalled a bit because of laziness—and after that first bit, you’re done. Fallen off the cliff of procrastination. Because from here, the edge, this thing to do looms so large overhead that it feels far more daunting than it should be. There is nothing wrong, or overly taxing about this task. But you’ve pushed it off and it suddenly seems impossible. Then you push it off some more. It still needs to be done. But. You just can’t get going. Sitting with a computer, you keep doing other things and avoid opening the document–at all costs. Because after a certain point, that discomfort of having pushed something off (perhaps that stems from the notion that, hey, why would I push something off if it were not bad to begin with?) seems like a failure in itself. So what’s the point?

Anyway. That’s where I am right now.

Wowzers

It’s been less than five minutes since my last post but: I just started the prologue, and Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory is already amazing. I. am. so. excited.

End geek rant.

Oh wait: that’s this entire blog ;-).

On Beauty and interiority?

Today I finished On Beauty. I’m not quite sure how to feel about it: the book read well, smoothly, quickly. The characters are rich and real. Plus, Smith built them with individual ticking time bombs. She explodes them each deliciously, one bang at a time, with bursts of incendiary dialogue. And, from a personal perspective, I enjoyed the university setting. Debates over free speech, culture, and long faculty meetings are the stuff of the Spectator. I enjoyed reading about a lecture from the tenure hopeful’s perspective. So the topic, broadly speaking, was familiar to me. Moreover, certain passages are undeniably beautiful, witty, and provocative. Her grip on language—unbelievable:

And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.

Brilliant. I wish I had thought of that. And:

A sprawling North London parkland … that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in the autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions …

However: On Beauty is an incredibly apt title, since the book is only that: on beauty. Beneath the beauty of well-crafted prose, humor, structure, and character development—which glow divinely under Smith’s deft hand—the book seems to have no soul. I’m not sure why I feel this, because I think that any art that aims to teach a single lesson is definitively bad art. (Singularity is a copout to many important principles, and rules out humanity. etc etc blather blather). But this work needs something more central, an anchor. I get that the book is about culture wars, but that seems tangential to a family disintegration/soap opera-ish plot that is masked by a deep university setting. I think this project would have worked better as clearly demarcated vignettes that showcase the writing and character. But the way it is, subplots seem to circle into a meaningful pot of nothing muchness.

Disclaimer: I have not read Forster’s Howard’s End, on whose structure Smith based On Beauty, and am thus missing an important analytical perspective. Maybe I’d find the soul if I read it as an adaptation as a familiar classic—but I shouldn’t have to. So overall, the book is mediocre, though entirely impressive from a 25-year-old! 25! To think, I’m turning that age in five years. Way to make me feel inadequate, Zadie.

Anyway. Starting Hamlet in Purgatory, plodding along in the astounding The Red and the Black. Work sent me to an amusing press conference today. My failure to teach myself web design is sort of depressing. There are many things I need to do but am not doing. This is summer, and I don’t want it to end.

Quick White House reading: malaise, Bo

This summer has been a sad one for my stomach. Today is the second day I’ve had to take off of work because of its feelings. I hate missing work. But, then again, ouch.

This piece on the 30th anniversary of Carter’s malaise speech is worth a read. It’s by Hendrik Hertzberg, who, of course, was in the White House at the time.

A bit that my American presidency professor missed when he recounted the episode last year:

1. Carter himself never mentioned the word “malaise.” 2. The speech itself was an enormous popular success. It generated a record amount of positive mail to the White House, and Carter’s approval rating in the polls zoomed up by eleven points literally overnight. 3. The sudden political damage came not from the speech but from the Cabinet firings a few days later. 4. Although Carter has been flayed for blaming others, the first third of the speech is devoted to the most excoriating self-criticism ever heard from any American President. As these details suggest, the “malaise” episode has become encrusted in myth.

Also:

Almost as soon as we got back to Washington, it was announced that Carter would address the nation on July 5th. Actually, Carter had not agreed to deliver a speech, only to look at a draft and then decide. But the premature announcement put him in a corner.

These are excerpts from an essay in Hertzberg’s book, written years ago. Now, he adds some interesting bits on how a Broadway director’s coaching resulted in Carter’s best TV delivery. He finishes with the hope that Carter will tour Christian college, to show that “there’s more to Christianity than gay-bashing and an obsession with embryos as opposed to all other manifestations of human life.”

Watch the speech:

Also, Ben Greenman’s (also of TNY) New York Times op-ed submission made me laugh out loud. But it’s really a manifesto by this guy:

Bo, courtesy of the NYT Caucus blog

Greenman writes about the first 100 days of Bo’s administration. He does it brilliantly, because if Barack Obama were a dog, he would doubtless say things like:

My time in the White House thus far has had one driving theme: we all share the same world. There have been those who have criticized my willingness to sniff in an exploratory manner around hostile breeds from foreign lands. But remember, we are all one species, from the tiniest Chihuahua to the mightiest mastiff. I have tried to practice this openness closer to home as well, by spending more time with Joe Biden’s German shepherd puppy, despite our considerable difference in temperament and bite force.

Also, maybe I’m the latest one to come to this realization, but I am obsessed with the new Safari, which I just downloaded:

look at pretty shininess!

And that’s the way it was

Last week was long, important, and fun. It included petonque, councilmen, Miss New York, Zip cars, editors, Harry Potter, Stendhal, Borders, birthdays, and poetry at Bryant Park.

But, more importantly: Walter Cronkite died on Friday night. He was 92. A huge loss, still. I had the privilege of seeing him in person when he spoke at Columbia’s J-School during my first year at Barnard.

I remember this clearly not only because of Cronkite himself, but because it was it was the first time I asked a professor to make a Spec exception for me. Cronkite was a formidable, self-deprecating man, who, unsurprisingly, attracted a huge crowd. I remember my mother flipping out with excitement when I told her about the assignment. Cronkite—this is a real man. He took to the podium, and, between sips of water—he apologized, as he usually drinks “not water” but he just recovered from surgery—and slapped the media on its behind for its screwy management.

Then he said:

“The young people I see entering the field of journalism today are no less intelligent or dedicated than in my generation. … They are indeed … brave to be entering a profession with far less job security and far greater economic uncertainty … out of a deep sense of commitment to public service.”

What an inspiration, to see a hero laud my choices, despite admitting to their drawbacks.

But as the Times notes, he’s leaving us in a world where “the television news business long ago lost that kind of prestige and importance; the audience for evening newscasts has so dwindled that this year there were more viewers on an average night for “American Idol” than for the programs on CBS, NBC and ABC combined.”