Setting spiders to fight — Reality hunger

I.

Among the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling. When Petavius was employed in his Dogmata Theologica, a work of the most profound and extensive erudition, the great recreation of the learned father was, at the end of every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. After protracted studies Spinosa would mix with the family-party where he lodged, and join in the most trivial conversations, or unbend his mind by setting spiders to fight each other; he observed their combats with so much interest, that he was often seized with immoderate fits of laughter. A continuity of labour deadens the soul, observes Seneca, in closing his treatise on "The Tranquillity of the Soul," and the mind must unbend itself by certain amusements. Socrates did not blush to play with children. Cato, over his bottle, found an alleviation from the fatigues of government; a circumstance, Seneca says in his manner, which rather gives honour to this defect, than the defect dishonours Cato. —Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature (at I've Been Reading Lately)

Ballard was a working writer, first and last; the where of it was not to be disturbed. Fixed routines served him well; so many hours, so many words. Breakfast. Times crossword. Desk overlooking a natural ­garden. Stroll to the shops to observe the erotic rhythms of consumerism. Lunch standing up with The World at One on the radio. Back to the study. Forty-minute constitutional down to the river. TV chill-out meditation: ­Hawaii Five-O and The Rockford Files rather than Kenneth Clark.
—Iain Sinclair, Guardian (via Jenny)

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II.

Feb. 13, 2010. I found a notebook I was looking for (though not the notebook I was looking for), the last entry of which is dated from August and quotes Walker Evans on James Agee: "[I]t did seem that wind, rain, work, and mockery were his tailors." By chance I flipped to a page dated exactly a year ago, Feb. 13, 2009. Here is what was written, scrawled across three and a half pages:

I don't even know if it's a novel anymore—it's basically a collection of lies.

___________

—Wow.
—What?
—How'd you get so fat?
—She keeps baking things and I keep eating them.

___________

—It's not just one book. If I put my mind to it, I could extract two or three solid novels from it, and with a little spit and plaster I could build up a half dozen unpublishable novellas. You know how the novella market is. There are at least twenty full-fledged short stories in there, I'm sure of it.
—But they're all scrambled together, is what you're saying.
He nodded and took a sip of his wine. —To complicate things, it's not pure fiction. There are other parts—many other parts—spoken by various characters, that are thinly veiled versions of my life. And then to complicate things, I appear in the pages, speaking more or less the truth.
I didn't say anything. It sounded like a disaster.
—It wasn't intentional, he continued. I wanted more than anything to write a straightforward story, a novel with good bones, meaty themes, vivid characters, and all the rest.* But I can't do it. Even when I start with the best intentions, things start getting strange around page three, and by page five you have the ostensible narrator falling asleep and meeting someone in his dream who happens to be me, and I then tell the dreamer about my dreams, except it's not clear, by the end of fifteen or fifty pages, whether it's still a dream or not.
—I'd love to read it sometime, I lied. Or half-lied.
—I'd love for you to read it. But I don't know how to present it. It's just this huge series of sequences—some on my computer, some still in my notebooks.
We walked to the balcony.
—Lately for the first time I feel like it's publishable. I mean, I can visualize the form it would need to take. You know Stephen King's Dark Tower books?
—Haven't read ’em, but yeah.
—I haven't read them either, but

[Here the manuscript ends]

_________________
*somewhere around here, written in microscopic blue pen and amended twice in black pen, the following was intended to be inserted: "I'm very good at being clear, normally. I was a stringer for the Times when I was in college, and wrote a lot of articles when I lived in Prague. I don't want to brag, but journalism was a breeze for me—locate the story, talk to people, write it down—and I thought fiction would just require a modest adjustment, like upgrading to a stronger pair of glasses." This is entirely made up (clear, Prague, Times), though oddly enough, I did upgrade to a stronger pair of glasses a few days ago.

Focal points

NYT:

On Friday afternoon a woman taking an adult education class at the museum accidentally fell into “The Actor,” causing the tear. Officials at the museum said that since the damage did not occur “in the focal point of the composition,” they expected that the repair would be “unobtrusive,” according to a statement released on Sunday.

From the Parkives: Fiction about falling into artwork!

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And (via Levi, Thos., James): D&D banned in prison.

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More:

A drawing by Lucian Freud valued at more than $100,000 was accidentally put through a shredder by Sotheby’s in London in 2000. A man tripped over his shoelace on a staircase at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, and managed to shatter three Qing dynasty porcelain vases, as The Guardian reported.

Naive theories of irrigation

"Variations on Original Sin," another chapter of the novel-in-progress known as The Dizzies, is part of L Magazine's fiction extravaganza. First paragraph!:

Marjorie’s father, Poindexter Bantam, was my philosophy professor at Rue University. Set at the edge of a collapsing milltown, Rue was a power in the short-lived Modern American Football League and did not have much of an academic reputation back then. I attended on the G.I. Bill, intending to major in agriculture and minor in economics, but found my naïve theories of irrigation so profoundly challenged that I wound up in the infirmary for a week. My regulation crewcut grew improbably lush, and for minutes at a time I didn’t recognize the face that met me in the mirror. Nurse Nancy diagnosed melancholy and proposed a course of therapeutic massage. I accepted. A few days after I was released I picked about a thousand flowers and manhandled them into a sad bouquet. But the receptionist told me Nancy had gone off to get married that morning, and I never saw her again.

I'll be reading from this or something else tomorrow—Thurs., July 31—at KGB—7 p.m.!—85 East 4th Street...

Truth! Fiction! Stranger!

This blog started as an offshoot of my novel-in-progress, The Dizzies...set in a Canadian vestibularium, a towering edifice with rotating floors, and a shape that none of the patients could agree on...

Like this?!



Reminder: Tomorrow, 6/26 — I'll be reading in Brooklyn!

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 27, 2008

I. Oughtables:

Scott: "A few weeks ago Laura has The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin checked out of the library, and I keep thinking the front cover reads The Early Diary of An Assassin."

Yesterday, reading The Week, I thought I read (in a Rauschenberg obit): "But by switching to his left hand, and with the help of assassins, he kept working." (He actually had assistants.)

II. Over at TPF, Mike Atkinson on Philip Schultz. (Who? Exactly.)

III. Ouroboros alert! The L.A. Times review of Personal Days got recycled for the Chicago Tribune's online edition. Under the "Layoffs and Downsizing" tag, you can see that the photo being used is...the one that appeared on The Dizzies!



(Shouldn't "Arlo Ogg" get a photo credit?)

IV. A letter to the Times from 1986: "The Sun Was Eclipsed by Fields of Ice"

V. What did Levi leave in New York?

Then there's the question of where I checked said mysterious object. The ticket bears no writing aside from that red "28," and gives no clue to its origins. I suppose the next time I'm in New York I could retrace my steps, presenting this claim check at every bar and restaurant I visited this time around, enduring blank stare after blank stare until, finally, someone takes the ticket with a brisk nod, spins on a heel and disappears into the back room to return moments later with . . . what?

At 3:AM...

I contribute, once again, my top 5 songs! Or rather the songs I was listening to a week and a half ago. Am shamelessly plugging the Psychic Envelopes. Am eager to read 3:AM London, New York, Paris (which has an excerpt of The Dizzies).

None of these descriptions sound like anything that happens in my story!

A pseudo-religious epiphany in South London. The Simpsons in New York. Men are stabbed on the Boulevard de Sébastopol. A transmogrification in Hackney. William cruises around the East Village in a 1972 Mercedes 220. Voluptuous neo-Post Structuralists decipher the works of Beigbeder. Wasted sons of politicians and minor royalty agonise over Ibiza while in South Kensington. Infidelity and invitations to Le Carre adaptations on Tottenham Court Road. The hookers of Les Halles. Buying ketamin from Colombians in Vauxhall at 4am. A couple lose themselves in Epping Forest. Avian adventures on the Essex Road. Un soir, un train on the Central Line. Men's magazines and those transvestite nightclub leaflets in Harlem. A literary tour of Bloomsbury becomes a diplomatic incident. A callow youth is ignored by an Indian girl for his lack of knowledge of Dave Eggers. A jazz player's existential moment in Soho. Civil disobedience is called for in NYC. Small talk in bikinis on Paris plage. A taxi driver ignores Tameny on Lexington Avenue. The literary establishment of New York is brought to its knees. A film club in Islington leads to death. A man plays Shoot the Freak on Coney Island.

Reading — reviewing — powering up

Just a reminder that I'll be reading tonight at Tompkins Square Park (no relation), with Lore Segal and Lynne Tillman. More info here and here. It's for BOMB again.

I'm planning to read another bit of The Dizzies, but the day's still young—maybe I'll read something else?

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My review of Taylor Antrim's debut novel, The Headmaster Ritual, is up today at Salon.

Speaking of reviews, "The Crisis in American Book Reviewing," a panel at this year's BEA, featured Believer Heidi. You can listen to it here.

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From audio to video—Dizzyhead Brent sends us "Scenes From an Idiot's Marriage":

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Gotta go address Powerful Goodness now—see you tonight?!

Summer reading

You can read more of my novel in progress, The Dizzies, in the summer issue of BOMB (not available online) and—right now!—at The Fanzine, where bits of my artwork are also viewable.

"I've always thought film festivals were vacations."
"Not when they're in Bosnia they're not."
"You were in Bosnia?"
"I only stayed for two days,” I admitted. "The projectors were in poor shape. Mostly we watched unsubtitled videos in someone’s basement, with an old ex-diplomat or possibly chauffeur giving an approximate narration. Lots of scenes with the wind blowing briskly through fields. I'm just saying. These film festivals aren't all fun and games."

(Thanks to Brian, Ben, and Casey.)

Contractual obligation

The dizzies...

By the way—tomorrow I'll be reading at the LIT magazine launch party...and I think I'll be reading yet another section of that novel-in-progress, The Dizzies...