Fall is like my Spring. Or..something. There’s a simile out there that fits but I can’t think of it at the moment. I think it’s because I’ve been in school for so long that the beginning of a new semester represents a chance to start over more than May and the echo of all those years of finals does. Granted its nearly December and the semester is ending soon at most colleges and universities, but you can’t blame me for being a little bit off in my attempt to renew my blogging efforts this year. I’ve been out of the university environment for a little bit over a year now and its a little like waking up from a very long dream. I still feel fuzzy.

That may be partly because I’m still underemployed and still living with my parents.

On second thought, maybe it’s more like a hangover.

I’m reading again. We’ll see how long me actually writing about my reading lasts. But I’m reading again. I made a trip to the bookstore and purchased White Noise and I’m feeling very satisfied with myself if a little terrified at the prospect of not being able to digest a book after my brain took a few months off to read the Economist and Foreign Affairs and still fail me during the FSO application process.

But I’m starting up a blog again. I’ve moved to wordpress because it’s new and shiny and it seems like everyone else has done it and who am I to stay up on the bridge? But mostly I’m starting this again because the people who might read this blog, are people with whom I don’t keep in touch nearly as much as I should.

I want try to cook artichokes but I feel like I need to move out to do it. My father wouldn’t eat them and my mother would scoff at my making something that my father wouldn’t eat. Which is most everything that doesn’t fall into the category of animal flesh or root vegetable. (Seriously though, how do you reason with a man who likes succotash?)

But here I am. Bare bones for now. And only on the first few pages. There is a funny conversation about erotic writing and entering women like lobbies. May I say funny?

I love you all.

“Cova Rasa” é o título do artigo de James Wood sobre Paul Auster, publicado na última New Yorker na esteira do lançamento de Invisible, livro mais recente do escritor.  Considerado por muitos de seus pares o melhor crítico literário de sua geração, Wood é reconhecido pela defesa do realismo literário em detrimento da literatura pós-moderna, e a resenha de Auster concentra grande parte dos argumentos frequentes de Wood em sua cruzada.

O crítico sugere uma fórmula aos “agradáveis, levemente condescendentes” livros do escritor e a toma emprestada para criar o começo de um romance a la Auster na abertura do artigo, dando indício aos leitores de que não será dócil o teor dos parágrafos seguintes.

Há uma longa passagem em que comenta a presença de clichês nas obras de Auster. Ao contrário de Flaubert, em cujos romances as expressões gastas são empregadas com ironia, ou mesmo de Beckett e Nabokov, conscientes do “tomar emprestado” da cultura de massa, Auster “não faz nada com o clichê, a não ser usá-lo”, afirma Wood.

Seus enredos, de forma geral, são caracterizados por Wood como de um realismo pouco convincente e até dotados de certa atmosfera de filme B. As reviravoltas da trama – que, a propósito, Hollywood foi pródiga em consagrar-, fariam de seus romances máximas do surrealismo ou, tomando uma perspectiva otimista, suas histórias traduziriam apenas um realismo diluído, pasteurizado.

E quem esperava do artigo ao menos um final redentor não soube dimensionar o cinismo de seu início.  Aqui, a superficialidade e a futilidade sugeridas pelo título soam como galanteios: Wood traz à tona o conceito da linguagem contemporânea ligada ao vazio, à ausência, apenas para solicitar: mais silêncio, Auster.

Para quem deseja assistir a todos os rounds, o artigo pode ser lido na íntegra na versão digital da New Yorker, que trouxe ainda conto inédito de Don DeLillo.

Mr. O'brien

I’m in the mood for ambitious fiction. Earlier this year I was blessed with a run of incredible reads,  topped off by Yvegeny Zamiatin’s masterpiece, We.

Mr. Zamiatin

Since then I’ve taken on more projects that inevitably have eaten into my reading time, and I am becoming more zealous in my quest for inspired reads. Ambition is the only flavor my literary palate wants to taste right now. I’m hungry for books that make me break out the booksdarts and re-read for pure pleasure. I want prose and plots that cause reactions, page turners that remind me how lucky I am to know how to read.

I’m compiling a list (in no particular order) of ambitiously written books and additions are requested in the comments section! I’d love suggestions for a 2010 reading list…

Mr. Baldwin

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Inferno by Dante

Morvagine by Blaise Cendrars

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Candide by Voltaire

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee

Bowl of Cherries by Milliard Kauffman

The Whapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (as well as many of his shorter works)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Iliad by Homer

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Mr. Abbey

more:

Bluebeard/Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pullman

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’brien

White Noise by Don Delillo

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Watchmen by Alan Moore

More..?

On occasion, The New Yorker gets it right. This time, it’s “Midnight in Dostoevsky,” a story by Don DeLillo. Lots of choice sentences here like this subtle observation of when reading becomes total absorption, how a book can metabolize you,  remake you in its own image:

I placed the book on a table and opened it and then leaned down into the splayed pages, reading and breathing. We seemed to assimilate each other, the characters and I, and when I raised my head I had to tell myself where I was.

DeLillo adroitly captures the way thoughts can churn around inside you, how they can eat you up, feed on you like some worm:

On one of those midnights, just before classes resumed, I got out of bed and went down the hall to the sun parlor. The area was enclosed by a slanted canopy of partitioned glass, and I unlatched a panel and swung it open. My pajamas seemed to evaporate. I felt the cold in my pores, my teeth. I thought my teeth were ringing. I stood and looked, I was always looking. I felt like a child now, responding to a dare. How long could I take it? I peered into the northern sky, the living sky, my breath turning to little bursts of smoke, as if I were separating from my body. I’d come to love the cold, but this was idiotic, and I closed the panel and went back to my room. I paced awhile, swinging my arms across my chest, trying to roil the blood, warm the body, and twenty minutes after I was back in bed, wide awake, the idea came to mind. It came from nowhere, from the night, fully formed, extending in several directions, and when I opened my eyes in the morning it was all around me, filling the room.

And through it all he weaves reflections on meaning, on knowledge:

“Logic ends where the world ends,” he said.

The world, yes. But he seemed to be speaking with his back to the world. Then again the subject was not history or geography. He was instructing us in the principles of pure reason. We listened intently. One remark dissolved into the next. He was an artist, an abstract artist. He asked a series of questions, and we made earnest notes. The questions he asked were unanswerable, at least by us, and he was not expecting answers, in any case. We did not speak in class; no one ever spoke. There were never any questions, student to professor. That steadfast tradition was dead here.

He said, “Facts, pictures, things.”

What did he mean by “things”? We would probably never know. Were we too passive, too accepting of the man? Did we see dysfunction and call it an inspired form of intellect? We didn’t want to like him, only to believe in him. We tendered our deepest trust to the stark nature of his methodology. Of course, there was no methodology. There was only Ilgauskas. He challenged our reason for being, what we thought, how we lived, the truth or falsity of what we believed to be true or false. Isn’t this what great teachers do, the Zen masters and Brahman scholars?

He leaned toward the table and spoke about meanings fixed in advance. We listened hard and tried to understand. But to understand at this point in our study, months along, would have been confusing, even a kind of disillusionment. He said something in Latin, hands pressed flat to the tabletop, and then he did a strange thing. He looked at us, eyes gliding up one row of faces, down the other. We were all there, we were always there, our usual shrouded selves. Finally, he raised his hand and looked at his watch. It didn’t matter what time it was. The gesture itself meant that class was over.

A meaning fixed in advance, we thought.

]]> http://nuovayorkoutpost.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/midnight-in-dostoevsky-at-some-point/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:50:58 +0000 Nicola di Bowery http://nuovayorkoutpost.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/midnight-in-dostoevsky-at-some-point/ http://loqasto.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/don-delillo-poemas/ Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:04:44 +0000 loqasto http://loqasto.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/don-delillo-poemas/

.
El misterio en mitad de una vida ordinaria

.

Personajes
MUJER
HOMBRE

.

Un HOMBRE y una MUJER en una habitación.

.

MUJER: Estaba pensando en lo extraño que es esto.

HOMBRE: ¿El qué?

MUJER: Que la gente sea capaz de vivir junta. Días y noches y años. Pasan cinco años.
¿Cómo lo hacen? Diez, once, doce años. Dos personas haciendo una sola vida.
Compartiendo diez mil comidas. Hablándose el uno al otro, cara a cara, a cara descubierta.
Todas esas palabras que llenan la casa. ¿Qué se dice la gente a lo largo de una vida?
Están atrapados en la sintaxis del otro. La misma voz. Esa aburrida repetición tonal.
Te voy a decir algo.

HOMBRE: Me vas decir algo.

MUJER: Aquí mismo tenemos el misterio. Las personas que habitan tras los muros
de la casa marrón de al lado.
¿Qué se dicen y cómo sobreviven? Todo ese dialogo ocioso. La nasalidad. La banalidad.
Estaba pensando en lo extraño que resulta. ¿Cómo lo hacen, noche tras noche, todas esas noches,
esas palabras? ¿Cómo lo hacen los pocos que lo hacen y sobreviven?

HOMBRE: Hacen el amor. Preparan ensaladas.

MUJER: Pero tarde o temprano tienen que hablar. Eso es lo que destruye el mundo.
Quiero decir, ¿no es desgastante sentarse y escuchar a la misma persona todo el tiempo,
sin razón, sin coincidencias? Palabras que se alejan. Las pausas. Las frases.
¿Cuántos miles de veces se puede mirar el mismo rostro cansado y ver como comienza abrirse la boca?
Hasta entonces todo había ido bien. Todo acontece cuando abren sus bocas. Cuando hablan.

[Pausa]

HOMBRE: Aún no me he curado de este catarro.

MUJER: Tómate eso que tomas.

HOMBRE: Las pastillas.

MUJER: Las tabletas.

[Pausa]

HOMBRE: Ha sido un día largo.

MUJER: Un día largo.

HOMBRE: Una buena noche de sueño.

MUJER: Un día largo y lento.

[Se desvanece lentamente la luz]

Telón
.

Don DeLillo
El misterio en mitad de una vida ordinaria
Traducción de Juan J. Fernández Oteno
.

Yes, I make time for it in college. I have learned the complicated system of the library’s numerical code for each book – no idea what it means, and it takes entire minutes to find one book, but it’s worth it. For example, the code of this book is: PS 3554 E4425 W48 and the words inside are beautiful. However, the cover is not. My cover of this book is completely black.

Excerpt #43:
“Where are you living, Murray?”
“In a rooming house. I’m totally captivated and intrigued. It’s a gorgeous old crumbling house near the insane asylum. Seven or eight boarders, more or less permanent except for me. A woman who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. A woman with a past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies that I really respond to.” (10)

I wish I had this cover...for purely superficial reasons.

Excerpt #45
He looked at me, still smiling in a half sneaky way.
“You have to learn how to look. You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern. There is light, there is sound. I ask my students, ‘What more do you want?’ Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. ‘Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.’ The medium practically overflows with sacred formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently and get passed our irritation, weariness and disgust.”
“But your students don’t agree.”
“Worse than junk mail. Television is the death throes of human consciousness, according to them. They’re ashamed of their television past. They want to talk about movies.”
He got up and refilled our cups.
“How do you know so much?” Babette said.
“I’m from New York.” (51)

Excerpt #46:
“Either I’m taking something and I don’t remember or I’m not taking something and I don’t remember. M life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium steps.”
“Sounds like a boring life.”
“I hope it lasts forever,” she said.
Soon the streets were covered with leaves. Leaves came tumbling and scraping down the pitched roofs. There were periods in every day when a stiff wind blew, baring the trees further, and retired men appeared in the backyards, on the small lawns out front, carrying rakes with curved teeth. Black bags were arrayed at the curbstone in lopsided rows.
A series of frightened children appeared at our door for their Halloween treats. (53)

Excerpt #47:
I went to German lessons twice a week, in the late afternoon, darkness crowding in earlier with each succeeding visit. It was Howard Dunlop’s working rule that we sit facing each other during the full length of the lesson. He wanted me to study his tongue positions as he demonstrated the pronunciation of consonants, diphthongs, long and short vowels. He in turn would look closely into my mouth as I attempted to reproduce the unhappy sounds.
His was a mild and quiet face, an oval surface with no hint of distinctiveness until he started his vocal routines. Then the warping began. It was an eerie thing to see, shamefully fascinating, as a seizure might be if witnessed in a controlled environment. He tucked his head in his trunk, narrowed his eyes, made grimacing humanoid faces. When it was time for me to repeat the noises I did likewise, if only to please the teacher, twisting my mouth, shutting my eyes completely, conscious of an overarticulation so tortured it must have sounded like a sudden bending of the natural law, a stone or tree struggling to speak. When I opened my eyes he was only inches from my mouth, leaning in to peer. I used to wonder what he saw in there. (54)

20 November 1936:  American author Don DeLillo was born in the Bronx in New York City.  DeLillo is regarded as one of America’s best living authors and is, perhaps, the most studied late-20th century author.  To get a bit more personal, DeLillo is currently my favorite author and I’ve been lucky enough to read most (unfortunately not all) of his works–even the pseudonymous one.

DeLillo attended Fordham University and after graduating worked for several years in advertising after finding difficulty securing a job in the publishing industry.  Before publishing his first novel, DeLillo quit his job in advertising later saying:

I quit my job just to quit. I didn’t quit my job to write fiction. I just didn’t want to work anymore. (NYT)

Lucky for him, he published his first novel, Americana, in 1971 and hasn’t slowed since then.  He has published sixteen novels (including Amazons under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell and Point Omega which is set for release on 2 Feb. 2010), four plays, a screenplay, and numerous essays and short stories.

Though he has ventured into extraordinary and extreme areas of life, DeLillo’s best fiction centers on the quotidian normality of American life.  White Noise, his most frequently taught work, covers the life of Jack Gladney–a rather ordinary professor of Hitler Studies (a fictional but not implausible area of study) at a rather ordinary liberal arts college–and the way he manages a minor crisis.  His 1988 novel Libra is a fictionalized biography is Lee Harvey Oswald that, for me, is his best accessable piece of fiction and Underworld–published in 1997 attempts to anthologize the weltanschauung of the Cold War in America from its escalation in the 1950s through its effects in the mid 1990s.  His most recent novel, Falling Man, is a surprisingly touching account of one (fictional) man’s experience during and after the attacks of 11 September 2001.  As a native New Yorker, DeLillo takes the issue personally and, with Libra and Underworld, sufficiently deals with every major event in his lifetime.

Yearly, his name is among those who were slighted by the Nobel committee for being American (along with Roth, Pynchon, and Oates), though perhaps that is just wishful thinking.

So happy birthday Don DeLillo. To celebrate, on lunch I’ll be reading more of Americana, listening to The Airborne Toxic Event, and feeding my healthy fear of death.

To reduce the collective sein und zeit in a pre-apocalyptic here and now, today; we are much more intricately connected than we are individuals, nobody is special:

Das Handy klingelt jetzt schon zum dritten Mal in Folge, ein schriller, fürchterlicher Laut, und endlich gehe ich dran.
- Ja, sage ich missmutig.
Im Fernsehen läuft gerade ein Porträt über Don DeLillo, den großen amerikanischen Schriftsteller, u. a. AMERICANA, WEISSES RAUSCHEN, UNTERWELT und, sein jüngstes Werk, FALLING MAN. Ich mache mir Notizen, habe schon sechs Seiten in meinem neuen Notizbuch vollgeschmiert. Wahnsinn. Don DeLillo war für mich immer schon eine ganz wesentliche, absolute Inspiration. Ich bin richtig high von dem, was er so erzählt. Ich freue mich, am Leben zu sein, und dass ich auch morgen wieder schreiben darf, unabhängig und unzensiert.
Kein Wunder, oder, dass ich nicht unbedingt scharf darauf bin, jetzt ein Telefongespräch zu führen?
- Rob? Wo bist du?
- Wieso?
- Ich bin’s, Vau. Bist du auf dem Weg, oder was?
- Auf dem Weg? Wir sind, sage ich, mit einem Lächeln, das Vau natürlich nicht sehen kann, immer auf dem Weg, alle, ja.
- Wo bist du denn?
Die Stimme klingt jetzt kälter, strenger. Gereizt.
Dabei habe doch wohl eher ICH Grund, gereizt zu sein!
- Wieso? sage ich unwirsch. Was soll denn diese Fragerei? Ich sitze auf meinem Sofa und schaue mir ein TV-Porträt über Don DeLillo an, den großen amerikanischen Schriftsteller, dessen jüngstes Werk, einen Roman über den 9. September 2001, ich in der englischen Original- …
- Verdammt, Rob, WAS? Machst du Witze? Du machst einen Spaß, oder?
- Ich wüsste nicht, sage ich stolz, wo da der Witz versteckt sein sollte, Vau.
- Wir haben hier eine Lesung! Deine Lesung!
- Na, sage ich, ist doch prima. Wie läuft’s denn?
- Na, halt nicht so gut. Weil du nicht da bist, liebe Scheiße!
- Wer liest denn dann?
- Ja, keiner!
- Warum liest denn keiner?
- Weil du nicht da bist! Du sollst hier doch lesen!
- War das denn vorgesehen, dass ich da lese?
- Natürlich! Ist doch groß angekündigt. Ich hab doch Plakate aufgehängt. Die Bude ist gerammelt voll!
- Mein Verlag hat mir nichts gesagt von dem Termin.
- Dein. Vau schnappt nach Luft, irgendwo in Wilhelmsburg. Aber wir haben doch gestern noch E-Mails deswegen gewechselt?
- Ja, aber ich hab mich in dieser Sache voll auf den Verlag verlassen! Tut mir leid, aber da musst du die mal anrufen und fragen, was da schief gelaufen ist! Ich bin jetzt wirklich beschäftigt, Vau.
- Du musst dich sofort in die S-Bahn setzen und …
- Quatsch. Wieso? Das wär doch wohl ein ganz klein wenig übertrieben, oder? Lies doch einfach was aus einer der “du”s, die da bei euch im “Südbalkon” rum liegen. Das sind doch immer wirklich spannende Sachen, die da abgedruckt werden!
- Was? Willst du mich …
- Ich muss jetzt wirklich Schluss machen, Vau! Man sieht sich.
- Rob, wenn du

As this article notes, Don DeLillo once said that all plots end in death. So do chess matches. So, naturally we (rather, the authors) ask: what famous plots would beat other famous plots in a chess match?

The algorithm was a little beyond our understanding – or, more precisely, our desire to understand. But we were somewhat mesmerized, and disheartened, while watching “Huckleberry Finn” lose to “Little Women.”

Play your own simulations, here.

(Via Clusterflock)

[Originally published in Flux]

Things could have turned out a lot differently for The Airborne Toxic Event’s lead singer Mikel Jollett, if three years ago he hadn’t had the worst week of his life. In a single week, while working on his novel, he found out that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer, his girlfriend dumped him and he was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease which left him with Alopecia areata and Vitiligo.

It was at some point during that week, or in the surrounding weeks, that Mikel turned his attention to songwriting for the first time, putting his career as a music journalist and novelist on hiatus.

“I think it sort of gets played up about what happened that week, as if it was some sort of lightning,” Mikel explains. “It was more like I had been playing a little bit of music, and then I kind of started playing a little bit more music and then I kind of started playing a lot of music. It really wasn’t an overnight kind of thing…
“I heard it differently in my head, I can’t explain why. I had spent a long time home recording and playing songs, literally years playing songs alone before I had that ambition [to record an album].”

While the band has already begun preparing songs for their next record, Mikel acknowledges the incredible differences between where they are now and when they were beginning recording on their first album.

“This record, we made over two years ago at our friend’s house and we didn’t have a label, we didn’t have a manager, a producer. We just went to our friend’s living room, like sat on his fireplace recording guitars or whatever. And you can even hear Korean radio in the background. We were just a local band who was playing shows and we recorded the songs that we were doing live. We didn’t have a whole lot of big plans for it.”

But for the band, their success has been almost overnight. By August 2008, they had released their self-titled debut album, and at the start of 2009 Island Records, who primarily sign hip-hop acts, took on the band.

Up until that point, the band had been on the Majordomo label, a small indie imprint label. But not much has changed with the move.

“Well, it was a lot harder to get hookers on an indie label,” he jokes. “With the major labels, every morning when you wake up you got three hookers and blow just waiting for you, so it’s rad, much much better. You get to strangle puppies and kill young children. And also, you think Satan is a dick but when you meet him he’s actually a pretty good guy.”

But being one of the only indie rock bands on a label that boasts names like Jay-Z and Kanye West has been surreal for the group.

“They’re sort of charmed by us, we’re like ‘the little band that could’. It’s like ‘these little indie rock fuckers, what the fuck’. Compared to, like, Beyoncé they’re just like ‘aw how cute they’re playing for 2000 people, how adorable. They just think it’s funny.”

The band take their name from the Don DeLillo novel White Noise, which explores the media saturation and consumerist culture of the mid-to-late twentieth century. It’s fitting then that Mikel is vexed, he says, by the focus of the media on unimportant aspects of musician’s lives.

“As much as people make hay about the Jack White/Meg White [of The White Stripes] relationship, whether they’re brother and sister or husband and wife or, you know, what goes on behind closed doors, and this thing or that thing. Or why The Strokes wear what they wear. So much ink is spilt about all these things which are just bullshit, it doesn’t matter. What matters is honest bands and worthwhile songwriting.”

This time last year, Pitchfork Media delivered a damning review to the band’s debut, awarding it just 1.6 out of 10. The band, Mikel says, don’t give much weight to reviews like this, and prefer to leave it up to the listeners to judge for themselves.

“Most of the press that we’ve gotten has been positive. Up until that point we were given the moniker critic’s darling. No one reads a critic and says ‘hey, that’s what that sounds like’. They go and they listen and they decide for themselves.”

The band have attracted fans such as U2’s Adam Clayton, who selected their single Sometime Around Midnight as one of his favourite of 2008. And Jollett is full of mutual praise for the Irish, but not so much for the English – or at least the English press culture.

“Irish people are more like Americans than English people,” Jollett declares. “In English culture, you can like change a keyboard or a guitar sound 3% and someone will write like a 10,000 word essay on why you made that decision and how it relates to the fall of you know, the British empire in India or some bullshit. It’s just like incestuous masturbatory press culture in England.

In Ireland, people want to hear fuckin’ rock ‘n’ roll shows, and if you play a show, they want to hear it and they want to be part of it. I shouldn’t say that about all English people, but I mean English press are just fuckin’ stupid. Saying that is probably a good way to curry favour with Irish journalists, but I think everybody knows it.”

The band play Dublin’s The Academy on November 11, part of their international tour. Following the tour and the new album, or indeed at some distant point in the future, Mikel also hopes to complete his novel, which is “about halfway done” and has sat unfinished since the inception of the band in 2006.

“I really want to sit alone in a cabin and finish this novel. It’s up there in things I want do in my life like plant a tree, father a child, that kind of thing. I just haven’t been able to ‘cos we’ve been touring. I feel like I’ve been caught up in this whirlwind, a vortex just came and like picked me up and then like took me away, and my life suddenly is doing all this other stuff, you know.”

It’s been a busy year for the band in all respects, and like any new indie band, they have drawn comparisons to other similar bands at every turn. They are conscious, however, not to get bigheaded. Jollett, at least, holds bands like The Arcade Fire and The White Stripes on a pedestal, and considers any comparisons a major compliment.

“I don’t think we deserve to be in that bracket, at least not yet. Maybe we will some day, but it’s sort of like if you play like the lead in the school play when you’re nine years old and you’re playing the carrot. And you do a really good job playing a carrot, and someone says, ‘You’re going to win an Oscar!’ I mean, you might, but between playing the carrot when you’re nine years old and winning an Oscar there’s years and years of creativity, dedication and hard work required. We’re just a new band on our first record so I think it’s premature.”

A aterrorizante imagem de um homem em queda da torre norte do World Trade Center após os ataques de 11 de Setembro dá nome a este livro do premiado romancista Don DeLillo, vencedor do National Book Award (EUA). Em “Homem em Queda” (Companhia das Letras, 2007) DeLillo recupera a história dos ataques que mudaram a história dos Estados Unidos através do advogado Keith, um sobrevivente que reavalia e reconstrói sua vida. Logo após os ataques, ainda coberto de poeira e sangue, e carregando a pasta de um estranho, Keith decide não voltar para casa. Ao invés disso, bate à porta de sua ex-mulher, Lianne, com quem tem um filho pequeno. Ao narrar a jornada de Keith, Lianne e de um punhado de personagens nova-iorquinos, DeLillo oferece uma poderosa observação sobre as reações humanas aos ataques terroristas e o estado mental dos americanos após o ataque. A ferida aberta transforma a vida de todos: há o fim de toda e qualquer rotina; a instauração de uma nova realidade de angústia e incerteza; o surgimento do ódio contra tudo o que é islâmico; a paranóia de enxergar em todas as coisas possíveis sinais de um novo ataque.

Dados técnicos

Título: Homem em queda
Autor: Don Delillo
Editora: Companhia das letras
Número de páginas: 264

Preço: 20 reais

OBS: Frete único de 5 reais para todo o Brasil

Para entender como adquirir o livro, clique aqui!

Pasolini disse che il calcio è l’ultima rappresentazione sacra del nostro tempo. Questa esatta conclusione può estendersi anche ad altre latitudini e dunque ad altri sport, quali il baseball. Non a caso Underworld inizia con il racconto di un decisivo match di baseball. Il fuoricampo che decide la partita è un momento poetico. La pallina che schizza in alto, tra il pubblico assiepato sugli spalti, fuori dal diamante, è pura poesia per un paese di milioni di abitanti. Questa poesia, espressione del suo tempo come ogni poesia, passerà di mano in mano, finirà per essere un cimelio quasi dimenticato. Simbolo di un universo umano, di una cultura, di una vita vissuta coralmente, questa pallina è una cosa che parla. Una cosa che collega vite e storie private, è legame, è continuità. Siamo nel 1951 e tutti i simboli della società dei consumi rappresentano soltanto una possibilità di scelta:

In un paese che ha fretta di creare il futuro, i nomi legati ai prodotti costituiscono una durevole rassicurazione. Johnson & Johnson, e Quaker State, e Rca Victor, e Burlington Mills, e Bristol Myers, e General Motors. Questi sono i venerati emblemi di un’economia fiorente, più facili da identificare dei nomi di battaglie o di presidenti morti.

Quarant’anni dopo, l’Epilogo:

Il capitale elimina le sfumature di una cultura. Investimenti esteri, mercati globali, acquisizioni societarie, il flusso di informazioni dei media transnazionali, l’influenza attenuante del denaro elettronico e del sesso virtuale, denaro mai passato di mano e sesso sicuro al computer, la convergenza del desiderio dei consumatori – non che la gente voglia le stesse cose, necessariamente, ma vuole la stessa gamma di possibilità di scelta.

Qualcuno proverà a recuperare quella sfumatura perduta, la pallina, ridotta a cimelio dimenticato, priva ormai di riconoscimento, di sacralità. Proverà con essa a recuperare una dimensione, una religiosità, la memoria.

Underworld racchiude quarant’anni di “americanità”, qualcosa di ineguagliato nella letteratura mondiale. Un’epopea a stelle e strisce, l’epopea dell’uomo moderno. Un intreccio di vite, di destini. Un paese che cambia, città che cambiano, persone che cambiano. Destini individuali e collettivi, l’America a cavallo tra passato, presente e futuro. Uno spaccato di una società in evoluzione, che parla attraverso le vite dei suoi protagonisti, attraverso i suoi prodotti, il consumo dei suoi prodotti, lo smaltimento dei suoi prodotti. Attraverso il suo futuro, il Futuro che assume i connotati merceologici di un prodotto: si pensa, si pianifica, si produce, si vende, si consuma. Si impone.

Ma la spazzatura ordinaria dovrebbe essere piazzata nelle città che la producono. Esponete la spazzatura, fatela conoscere. Lasciate che la gente la veda e la rispetti. Non nascondete le vostre strutture. Create un’architettura fatta d’immondizia. Progettate fantastiche costruzioni per riciclare i rifiuti e invitate la gente a raccogliere la propria spazzatura e a portarla alle presse e ai convogliatori. Così imparerà a conoscere la propria spazzatura. Il materiale a rischio, i rifiuti chimici, le scorie nucleari, tutto questo diventerà un remoto paesaggio all’insegna della nostalgia. Gite in autobus e cartoline, posso garantirlo. [...] Porto i miei studenti alle discariche di immondizia e li aiuto a capire la civiltà in cui vivono. Consuma o muori. Questo è il dettato della cultura. E finisce tutto nella pattumiera.

La spazzatura è oro, il Futuro è spazzatura. Noi siamo il Futuro. Underworld si conclude con una sola parola, isolata, definitiva, che tronca all’improvviso tutte le centinaia di pagine che precedono: «Pace». Come disse qualcuno, faranno un deserto e lo chiameranno così.

Don DeLillo, Underworld, traduzione di Delfina Vezzoli, Einaudi, 2005

It’s amazing how a single bullet, a magic bullet if you will, can change the course of history. It can turn the kids into the adults and vice versa. As Trudy Campbell said, “I don’t care what your politics are, this is America, and you can’t just shoot the President!” If only that were true, Trudy. But adults can say a lot of things when they’re living their lives in front of the TV, either in the office, in the living room at home, or in the hotel room after your nooner, and last night’s episode of Mad Men, “The Grown-Ups” showed that better than anything. So let’s go back, and to the left, as we talk about the birth and death of marriages and the day that the 60s really began…

August Bravo: Dia de los Mad Men! And the whole country’s drinking…

Marco Sparks: I loved the beginning of this episode, the first image there of Pete curled up on his office couch, squeezed tightly into a fetal position, waiting for a woman to bring him warm nourishment. Only that hot cocoa was instant, made with water instead of milk!

August: Watching last night’s episode really made me like Trudy. She’s certainly a trophy wife, yes, but she’s always by Pete’s side.

Marco: On this show, she’s the definition of “devotion.” I mean, she was this close to sleeping with an old paramour to help Pete get a short story published in… what was it? Highlights For Children? Fitting.

August: It’s probably women like her that made that decade what it was, for better and for worse. Am I envious of Pete here, just a little? I sure am.

Marco: I have to say it’s a joy to watch Alison Brie, who plays Trudy, on Community.

August: And now we go back to Pete. We all knew he wouldn’t get that job, right? We all wanted him to not get that job. At least I didn’t want to.

Marco: Because you’re the vice president, treasurer, and refreshments organizer of Team Cosgrove, aren’t you?

August: I think Ken really did deserve it. Maybe.

Marco: We really have no idea since we never actually saw him doing his job. He was mostly just showing up to ask him people to go get a drink with him or riding lawn mowers into the office.

August: He never really stressed about it. He was just Cool Hand Luke about it, like, all of the time.

Marco: Poor Pete. People saw him working, so they assumed he was working. They saw Cosgrove chillaxing with that stupid grin and “that haircut,” they just assumed he had everything under control.

I wonder if this is the last time we’ll see Duck, abandoning his sexual conquest of Peggy temporarily (I love her roommate asking why she was with him if he’s not married) to call his kids.

August: Time to get down to business…

Marco: And Jackie turned to Jack Jack and said, “Mr. President, You can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you…”

August: We all knew it would happen this season…

Marco: Weiner said he wasn’t sure we’d see it this year, or how in depth it’d be covered, and yet, this was the defining moment of this season, and the moment so strongly hinted and foreshadowed this whole year, with Roger’s daughter’s wedding date and the constant references to Dallas.

August: Yeah, we all knew it would happen. Maybe in next week’s episode, I think some of us were thinking, but we knew it was going to happen. Hell, it already did happen. Kennedy is dead.

Marco: I love the constant use of news footage, of the characters literally trapped in those moments, time brought to a standstill as they can hear the beats of their own fucked up, broken hearts. And especially poignant with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite in the past few months, too.

August: And Lee Harvey Oswald is dead too.

Marco: Who cares about justice when you can just hand the situation over to the mafia.

August: I love the moment that everyone finds out about it, the way the phone calls are ringing off the hook throughout the entire building, going unanswered, and then, all of a sudden, they stop. Silence everywhere. It’s both what you’d least expect and exactly what you expect.

Marco: And in strolls Don Draper, just a few seconds late to a scene, as he seems to be in every scene in this episode, asking, “What the hell’s going on?”

Actually, the scene with Harry Crane and Pete is what I loved about the actual finding out of what happened in Texas. The TV’s on in the background, broadcasting a special bulletin and they’re whining about their jobs. Pete’s complaining like a sad little kid and Harry’s trying to sound like a mature adult. And then the hilariously ironic line: “I’m going to die at this desk unnoticed.”

August: Man, Roger is just so unhappy. His kid of a wife can’t control herself. And neither can Roger. Calling Joan while his wife number whatever is passed out drunk next to him. That takes guts. And I don’t think Roger even cares anymore.

Marco: What a long, strange journey it’s been since the party in “My Old Kentucky Home,” both of which were thrown by Roger, both of which involved Betty having an encounter of sorts with Henry Francis from the Governor’s office, and both ending with Jane passing out from “not eating enough” with her booze.

Did you notice that Jane constantly reiterates that she’s “a good person?”

Except now this is a world where a President has been killed and Roger can’t find the jokes in the face of this true, uncertain horror. At the end of last season it was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the end of the world. This is worst. This is what happens after. This is the real world and it’s time to be grown ups.

But, man, Joan is the saving grace of this show always. If next season involves the Brits having sold Sterling Cooper to Duck’s company, I can only hope they get Joan back. Also, I think it’s fair to point out that in Roger’s life, to take Pryce’s words as metaphor, Jane is Ken Cosgrove and Joan is Pete Campbell.

August: Oh?

Marco: Don’t start writing Roger/Pete slash fiction just yet. I just mean that Jane made Roger feel young, like he was invincible, and everything was easy and there was no work required to achieve his needs. And it’s because the women he wanted wanted someone else. But Roger would have to work to be worthy of Joan and he knows it. And it means he’d have to acknowledge that there’s something he desires so passionately in this world.

We can only hope for good things when Dr. McRapist gets his legs blown off in ‘Nam, all Born On The Fourth Of July-style.

August: Man, this whole episode. No one cares about their own lives. Not unless they’re on the TV. In fact, for the first time the only person who does care is Don. Everyone’s focused on the President, or lack thereof, the wedding, their promotion/de facto demotion, a certain busty redhead, or a Governor’s aide. Everyone’s mind wanders. Their wants and needs. Everything just means nothing anymore.

Marco: The things you thought were important? Turns out they weren’t, not really.

August: Watching Betty kiss that guy made me die just a little inside. It really did.

Marco: I liked the little bits leading up to that. No, Don, while it may be good for the family, a family drive isn’t going to fix things. Not when they’re determined to be broken.

But the actual shot of Betty’s car joining Henry’s in the middle of the nowhere? Interesting. Added with that music, it felt like a very Hitchcock-ian thing for a few moments there. That said, I don’t know that Betty would be all that great as one of Hitchcock’s famous icy blondes. Well, maybe.

August: I was watching that scene and I kept thinking, “Hey, asshole, that’s Don’s wife!” You can’t do that. And she can’t do that! But the lies are finally starting to get to her.

Marco: Sneaky of them last week to think that maybe she had been won over by Don taking the mask off to reveal the inner Dick Whitman hidden beneath. But now he can never put that mask back on.

I really can only see Henry Francis as a plot device rather than as a character. Mostly because that’s what he is, a shade of something, an element to draw out parts of Betty, to wake her up.  But do you think that, by this point in the story now, he and Betty have slept together? I mean, he’s proposing marriage to this not so happily married mother of three, so wouldn’t they have to have? Silly little religious aspects aside, how realistic  is entering a marriage/serious relationship with no time in the lab testing sexual chemistry?

August: Ah, I don’t know. Mostly, I don’t think she’ll leave Don. I don’t see it as realistic. I think this goes back to how they toy with our expectations and our grasp on the dramatic tension. We think she will, but she won’t.

And WTF was that faux proposal? Betty could not have taken it seriously. I really hope not. If you’re tired of being shackled by your husbands lies, then another man is not going to necessarily be the answer. I guess that was just the best available 1960s pick up line.

Marco: Also, had to love her response to him asking why the kids were being allowed to watch the Kennedy assassination coverage: “What am I supposed to do, Don? Am I supposed to keep it from them?” It took me a moment to really feel how subtle but powerful Betty’s weapons were in that scene.

But I think she wants to feel something other than helpless, or maybe just something in general. And that moment as she was watching Oswald get shot, it was almost like she herself had been shot. I think people complain about January Jones’ acting ability, like when her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher advises her to give up the craft, but I think she’s perfect as Betty.

August: And then there’s Don, trying to be a better guy? A better husband? Maybe. I think Don’s trying to work it out in a way. And maybe that scares Betty a little? All the staying home, the taking care of baby Gene in the middle of the night, the trying to care.

Marco: If this is Don’s reaction to having to finally lay all his cards out on the table, Betty can only be wondering what he was really up to all those times he was supposed to be working.

August: Is Betty going to become the new Don Draper? After all, if Don Draper can be someone else, why can’t she?

Marco: Ooh, I’d watch that show. Part of me is starting to think that if these two were to actually grow up… well, it may not be together.

And I liked Sally’s continued role as watcher in this episode, first glued to the television as things that she may not yet understand in the country, but then taking the both boiling and freezing cold temperature in the kitchen and living rooms, the atmospheric changes between her parents.

August: “I kissed you yesterday and I didn’t feel a thing.” This has to be affecting someone other than just me. Hearing lines like that, which I have before, just makes one cringe. It cuts into the heart of you. And Don. Just sitting there. In confinement. In the dark. What does he do? What can he do? His own wife doesn’t love him and the words don’t come to him so that he can fix it.

Marco: Again, I think for everyone who’s complained that this season has gone by slowly and just dragged, I would point out A) how much character developments/moments we witnessed within this episode, and not just with a few characters, but spread across the spectrum of the cast. Everyone shined. And B) again, I would use this as a yardstick compared to “My Old Kentucky Home.” Everyone’s changed. Everything’s different now.

August: And there goes Trudy again. Was that a motivational speech? Trying to get him up and go? Who does that? Only trophy wives. Only Trudy.

Marco: Trudy is a trophy prize that Pete has never quite earned. But again, look at the differences and the things that are the same about them from then til now. In “My Old Kentucky Home,” they were the power couple, working together, trying to impress their elders, putting on the dance and show. And now, they’re unified together on that couch, stronger together. The most telling moment is when Trudy, so beautiful in her blue dress, takes off her dancing shoes and sits back on the couch with her husband, the man stuck in the fetal position at the start  of the episode and who is now finally starting to sound like an adult.

August: And then there’s the refuge of an empty office. Except for Peggy, the woman hard at work.

Marco: Perhaps because Don and Peggy are essentially the same? And I think they both realize that that Aqua Net ad is just fucked now in the face of Kennedy’s death.

August: I thought this episode would be a lot more. I mean, it was everything it was supposed to be. And so much more. I just envisioned something entirely different.

Marco: And maybe that’s why it was so good?

August: Maybe. And seriously, they can’t give me a good preview for next week’s episode?

Marco: Oh, that preview is genius. Just clips from over the course of this season. Mad Men is a show drifting up the river of history that’s already gone by and sometimes you can only look back at what you’ve already seen and done and just guess what’s next. What happens next could be anything. And whatever you think it is, it’ll be something else, but you’ve got to be prepared. Sitting in the dark while you wait for the dawn to come is just part of being a grown up.

Dr. Kristiaan Versluys, a professor of English at the University of Ghent, takes a close look at a handful of 9/11-themed works of fiction in his new book, Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it prompted me to rethink my reactions to the novels he discusses—I may never be a great admirer of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, but the book reveals how carefully DeLillo worked to mimic the ways that traumatic events unsettle our ability to tell stories. Dr. Versluys does much the same for the other books he covers in-depth, including Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir In the Shadow of No Towers, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World. Out of the Blue is an academic book, but it’s low on jargon, and provides some useful context for the debates about 9/11 fiction that are bound to emerge in the future.

Dr. Versluys answered questions about Out of the Blue via e-mail.

Much of Out of the Blue discusses 9/11 fiction in relation to trauma studies. Did you have an interest in the relationship between trauma and literature before writing the essays in this book? What led you to look at trauma as one of the main prisms you use to study this literature—as opposed to, say, through the prism of politics?

When I spent a sabbatical year at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in 2004-5, the idea was to write a book on recent New York fiction. I have taught many courses on that topic both at Ghent University, my home university in Belgium, and as a guest professor in the Columbia summer school program. The way I had planned it, the last chapter would be devoted to 9/11 fiction. For reasons too intricate to explain I started with the last chapter, only to realize that in the short time since the terrorist attacks had taken place, a body of work had come out that was substantial enough to be the subject of a separate book.

The first text I studied in depth was Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers. Spiegelman looks upon the events of September 11 through the conceptual screen of the Holocaust. That led me to take a closer look at trauma studies in general and Holocaust-studies in particular. I have always treated post-structuralist approaches to literature with a great deal of skepticism. But especially the writings of Dominick LaCapra (rather than the canonical Cathy Caruth) made me aware of the fact that in trauma studies post-structuralism – so often abstract and theoretical in its orientation – touches ground and provides a tool to talk with respect and deference about things that remain essentially unsayable. Nonetheless, I feel that, at bottom, I remain an old-fashioned humanist. I prefer to read novels in the grain, rather than against the grain. And while I am indebted to post-structuralism for its attention to language and though I take into account that language introduces fissures and ruptures, I also perceive it to be an instrument of healing and restoration.

You write that the 9/11-themed works you discuss “testify to the shattering of certainties and the laborious recovery of balance.” I imagine that novelists writing on subjects such as war, or totalitarianism, or even domestic abuse, might feel they’re doing the same kind of testifying. What, if anything, distinguishes 9/11 novels from fiction about those other kinds of traumatic experiences?

As a traumatic event, September 11 is comparable to other traumatic events. Paradoxically, though, one of the characteristics it shares with similar events, is that it is singular and irreducible. In the first place this is the case, of course, for the victims, their families and friends. No analogy is capable of capturing what it means to be trapped in a burning tower or to lose one’s parent, spouse or close friend.

In addition, 9/11 is arguably the first instance of what one could call global trauma. It was witnessed not only by the people in the direct vicinity of the WTC-towers on that bright Tuesday morning. It was also witnessed by millions and presumably hundreds of millions on TV, either live or in the many repetitions of the iconic images that everybody remembers. It is possible that in order to talk about this new kind of trauma, we will need a new vocabulary, a new or at least a modified conceptual framework. We know a lot already about indirect witnessing and secondary trauma, esp. with regard to second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors. We also know that a whole culture can undergo a sense of shock so severe that its collective assumptions are profoundly disrupted and that a catastophe can “create ‘problems of identity’ for individuals and communities well beyond its circumference of material destruction” (Gray and Oliver). So there is a lot of theory to go on already. Yet it seems to me we are dealing here with something that is different from what preceded. Notions such as those of authenticy or inauthenticity, the traumatic sublime, postmemory, trauma transference, empty empathy etc. – all notions that are current in trauma theory – may have to be adapted or revised to fit the new category of global trauma. Televised indirect experience raises new questions as to what is genuine and what is hype and it establishes new conditions for making memorializing into an act of approximation and not an act of appropriation.

You note that there are about 30 literary novels available currently about 9/11. Were there other 9/11 books that you considered writing about at length? I suspect you’ve already heard from people wondering why the book doesn’t mention, say, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland or Ken Kalfus’ A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.

In order to keep the study manageable, I made the decision early on to deal only with novels in which 9/11 is not just a background event, but in which it plays an essential role in the plot development. Apart from the two novels you mention, there are more novels of merit in which 9/11 is part of the background: Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children and Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, to mention only a few. I deal with two such novels (Anita Shreve’s A Wedding in December and Ian McEwan’s Saturday) in the epilogue to indicate that, as time goes by and the first shock wears off, 9/11 is bound to become “spectralized.” Its presence will become less and less visible, but for that reason all the more haunting. The direct treatment of the events on September 11 is bound to be replaced in the collective imagination by the indirect treatment. To study that phenomenon requires another book.

Your chapter on Falling Man ends with a provocative statement: Because the novel “allows for no proper mourning or working through,” you write, there’s a danger that “it can serve as a prelude to, or be used as an excuse for, wholesale, reactionary and even totalitarian movements of redress and moral restoration.” Can you elaborate on how these movements might manifest themselves?

I borrow this idea from Dominick LaCapra. The point he makes is that a condition of collective grief that is considered irredeemable might be the breeding ground for a revanchist logic. If the nation does not learn to deal with loss, it might be tempted to restore normalcy “through the elimination or victimization of those to whom blame is imputed” (LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 65). This line of reasoning is related to the distinction between true and false witnessing, made by the psycho-analysist R.J. Lifton. False witnessing, according to Lifton, occurs when death anxiety is converted directly into killing. The example he cites is the massacre at My Lai. But it could easily be applied to the way the Bush administration reacted to September 11 and in fact to the ultra-conservative backlash that lasted till the election of President Obama. The novels I discuss argue for an ethics of responsibility, in which the complexity of the situation is fully presented and the simple binary logic of “us versus them” – so cleverly exploited by the Bush administration – is avoided.

Critics have been largely (though not uniformly) unkind to the books you discuss, and you elaborate on some of the reasons why. Writing about Falling Man, you note that “the characters are so thin that their whole existence boils down to mere nomenclature” and that “no narrative momentum is allowed to develop.” You note the “flatness” of Grandpa’s character in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the “soppy happy ending” of Terrorist. But you also point out many rewarding characteristics of these novels that you believe critics missed. Do you feel the negative critical reaction to these books is related more to their unconventional structures and approaches, or more to the way they are, as you write, “subversive of nationalistic imperatives”?

Let’s be clear about one point: the great September 11 novel has not been written yet and maybe it never will. To a point, the negative critical reactions are justified and understandable. No writer has yet been able to capture the magnitude of the event or the shock it produced. The unsayable remains unsaid. The negative critical reactions might, therefore, be understood as the result of disappointment. Here is an event that cries out for a definitive reading and it is not forthcoming. Nonetheless, there is much more to these books than some reviewers have spotted. My study is a tribute to the few writers who have been courageous enough to tackle an impossible topic. Even though they succeeded only partially, there is much insight to be gained from their efforts.

You note that nearly all the books under discussion have been written by white American men, and write that it’s an open question whether future 9/11 fiction will be “marked by more gender and ethic diversity or acquire a more outspoken international dimension.” What do think has made 9/11 the province of such a singular kind of writer thus far?

The answer to this question can only be pure guess work. Minority writers might have no need to deal with 9/11, as long as they are dealing with the traumas in their collective pasts. As to women, Anita Shreve and Claire Messud have been prominent in recording the dispersion of 9/11 in the culture at large as a spectral presence, a vestige, palpable but invisible.

The PEN American Center hosted a night with writers – Ishmael Beah, Eve Ensler, Don DeLillo – reading correspondence from Gitmo detainees. Here’s Jonathan Ames. It’s pretty chilling to hear, and Ames’ leisurely cadence renders the letter’s most frequently used word – “Censored” – strangely normal.

(Via The Rumpus)

Writing is hard – for most of us. I remember reading a biography of the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge. Whenever he went on holiday he would take a huge pile of books with him to review. Most days he would get through one of these substantial works and dash off an article of two or three thousand words without notes or pause for thought.

At the other end of the scale is Don DeLillo, one of my favourite novelists. He is so meticulous in the process of writing that he gives every paragraph its own sheet of paper, as if to say: You are important; I’m going to take you seriously; I’m going to give you space to breathe. I’ve always wanted to try it…

I mention all this because I’ve just come across Hugh Trevor-Roper’s ‘Ten Commandments of Good Writing’, a summary of some of the advice the renowned historian would give to his young students to foster their clarity of expression. I’m not sure if it is in copyright or not – the printed copy I have says that it had formerly been circulated only in samizdat. You can see the whole version online here. Here are the first four commandments – and the ones I need to remember most often:

(1) Thou shalt know thine own argument and cleave fast to it, and shalt not digress nor deviate from it without the knowledge and consent of the reader, whom at all times thou shalt lead at a pace which he can follow and by a route which is made clear to him as he goeth.

(2) Thou shalt respect the autonomy of the paragraph, as commanded by the authority and example of the prophet Edward Gibbon, for it is the essential unit in the chain of argument. Therefore thou shalt keep it pure and self-contained, each paragraph having within it a single central point to which all other observations in it shall be exactly subordinated by the proper use of the particles and inflections given to us for this purpose.

(3) Thou shalt aim always at clarity of exposition, to which all other literary aims shall be subordinated, remembering the words of the prophet commandant Black, “clarté prime, longueur secondaire.” To this end thou shalt strive that no sentence be syntactically capable of any unintended meaning, and that no reader be obliged to read any sentence twice to be sure of its true meaning. To this end also thou shalt not fear to repeat thyself, if clarity require it, nor to state facts which thou thinkest as well known to others as to thyself, for it is better to remind the learned than to leave the unlearned in perplexity.

(4) Thou shalt keep the structure of thy sentences clear, preferring short sentences to long and simple structures to complex, lest the reader lose his way in a labyrinth of subordinate clauses; and, in particular, thou shalt not enclose one relative clause in another, for this both betrays crudity of expression and is a fertile source of ambiguity.

And the last one can’t be left out:

(10) Thou shalt carefully expunge from thy writing all consciously written purple passages, lest they rise up to shame thee in thine old age.

foto di R. Mapplethorp

Il rumore bianco è un particolare tipo di rumore caratterizzato dall’assenza di periodicità e da ampiezza costante su tutto lo spettro di frequenze. Il rumore bianco, simile a un continuo fruscio o soffio, è considerato distensivo. Alcuni generatori di rumore bianco acustico sono impiegati per coprire il rumore di fondo in ambienti interni o per favorire il rilassamento.

Rumore bianco è anche il titolo di un romanzo dello scrittore americano Don Delillo; il libro è stato vincitore del National Book Award. Il brillante traduttore del romanzo, Mario Biondi, afferma che Rumore bianco ci parla di “ storia contemporanea americana”. Ci parla del fatto che vivere nella torre di avorio di un ambiente privilegiato non ci salva dai veri problemi della società, destinati a toccarci comunque. Della paura della morte che ci insegue e ci inseguirà ovunque, travestita da eleganza, indifferenza, nevrosi, maniacalità, salutismo, riti – quello che più tardi nella storia diventerà la base per la cultura/ incultura della “new age”.

«In White Noise ho cercato uno squarcio di luce nel quotidiano. A volte, è una luce quasi spaventosa. Altre volte, può diventare quasi sacra… Il nostro sentimento di paura, lo evitiamo perché lo avvertiamo a un livello molto profondo, e ciò provoca un conflitto intenso… credo che sia una cosa che avvertiamo tutti, ma di cui non parliamo mai, una cosa che c’è e non c’è. Ho cercato, in White Noise, di collegarla a un altro sentimento, quel sentimento di trascendenza che resta appena al di fuori della nostra portata. Questo straordinario miracolo della realtà è in un certo senso connesso al timore straordinario che è la paura della morte, che tentiamo di mantenere al di sotto della superficie delle nostre percezioni.» D. Delillo

Jag har en massa böcker ståendes på nattduksbordet. Vaknade i morse av att några av dem rasade in i ansiktet på mig. Måste stött till dem på något sätt, eller så valde böckerna bakom att trycka till dem. De kanske blivit trötta på att inte få något uppmärksamhet. Kanske är de rädda för att jag glömt dem. De vill antagligen bli lästa snart. De är ju böcker, för bövelen.

Det blir alltid så. Jag köper böcker snabbare än jag läser. Vissa läser jag direkt, andra får vänta. Och då hamnar de på nattduksbordet på obestämd tid.

Just nu läser jag Pesten av Albert Camus. Köpte den på en loppis för kanske ett och ett halvt år sedan och den har stått där sedan dess. Tills i förrgår. Nu flyttas den runt i lägenheten. Det blir så när jag läser. Jag bär med mig böckerna, lägger dem på bra ställen så jag snabbt kan plocka upp dem när det blir läsläge. (Jag tror en sån som Camus gillar det, att flyttas runt lite.)

Jag brukar försöka variera min läsning. Har jag läst en roman tar jag gärna en biografi efter den. Och kanske nåt facklitterärt efter det. Annars kan det gå illa. Gav mig på Kerstin Ekmans Händelser vid Vatten direkt efter att ha plöjt hela Millennietrilogin. Det var som att gå från 250 km/h på autobahn till en skogspromenad i rullator. Orättvist mot Kerstin, med andra ord.

Hur som helst, här kommer en liten redogörelse över böckerna står just nu i väntans tider på mitt nattduksbord:

• Vitt Brus av Don DeLillo

Inköpt för ca ett år sedan. Översatt av min gamla svensklärare Thomas Preis. Började på den då men det tog sig inte riktigt. Lät den stå kvar i väntan på nytt försök, mycket tack vare Falling Man av samme författare, som jag läste i våras: En ensam man vandrar dammtäckt ut ur förödelsen efter 9/11 med en portfölj i handen som inte är hans. En grandios inledning på en gripande berättelse om det stora amerikanska traumat. Rekommenderas.

• Amberville av Tim Davys

Fick den upptryckt i ansiktet av min deckarentusiastiska mor. En noir-berättelserna där alla karaktärerna är mjukisdjur(!) skriven under pseudonym av än så länge okänd svensk. Liggtid: ca ett år. Lär troligtvis ta minst lika lång tid innan jag läser den.

• Min far hade en dröm av Barack Obama

Påbörjades för ett halvår sedan, kom enligt hundörat till kapitel 13 (sid 267), men lades därefter till hanlingarna på obestämd tid. En av de böckerna på senare tid som jag glömt att fortsätta på. Tappade intresset helt enkelt. Nog för att han är spännande både som person och fenomen, men det är inte jätteintressant att läsa om varenda enskild person han träffat i sitt arbete som lokalpolitiker i Chicago. För pratig helt enkelt. Kan dock få en chans till.

• Strandmannen av Peter Kihlgård

Utläst. Har av olika skäl ej hamnat i bokhyllan än. Åtgärdas snarast.

• Älskad, saknad av Joyce Carol Oates

Inköpt för två år sedan. Har varit “nästa bok” vid flera tillfällen men varje gång blivit omkörd strax innan mållinjen. Är det en ständig tvåa?

• Och solen har sin gång och Den gamle och havet av Ernest Hemingway

Inlånade från Frölunda Bibiotek igår och även de böcker som hamnade på min näsa imorse. Ligger högst på läslistan efter Camus, och det är inte enbart på grund av återlämningstiden. Känner på mig att jag har en lång Hemingwaypriod framför mig. Riktigt lång.

• The Border Trilogy av Cormac McCarthy

Läste de två första nyligen – All The Pretty Horses och The Crossing – och ska inom kort ge mig på den avslutande delen – Cities of the Plain. För er som inte läst McCarthy – jag avundas er! Ni har fantastiska läsupplevelser framför er.

• The Road av Cormac McCarthy

Lästes för ca ett år sedan. Ligger sedan dess på ständig lut att bli omläst. Kanske den starkaste roman jag läst. Nej, det ÄR den starkaste! Separat inlägg lär komma under rubriken Anders Tipsar. Var så säker.

• Fyrväktaren av Jeanette Winterson

Inlånad av granne och även påbörjad men lagd på jäsning tills vidare. Verkar ha stor potential men vill invänta dess rätta läge. En roman har alltid ett läge, sen är det olika hur mycket man väljer att ge dem möjlighet att visa sig i sin bästa skrud. Det känns som att Fyrväktaren är värd SITT läge.

• Låttexter av Bob Dylan

No explanation needed. His Bobness is da shit!

• Krönikor av Göran Tunström

Samling med de krönikor Tunström skrev i Metallarbetaren och Dagens Arbete på 90-talet. Alltid läsvärd. Alltid rolig. Alltid djupt mänsklig.

Avslutningsvis – heter det nattduksbord eller nattygsbord? En snabb sökning på Språknämndens hemsida ger detta svar:

“Den helt dominerande formen är nattduksbord. Men båda används och måste godkännas. Båda formerna återfinns också i ordböckerna. Man kan förstås också säga sängbord.Nattduksbord är det ursprungliga ordet, från slutet av 1600-talet, som då snarast betydde ’toalettbord’. Sina toalettsaker hade dåtidens dam av värld nämligen i en nattduk.

Under 1700-talet uppstod så nattygsbord genom association till ordet nattyg, som betydde saker som ’nattdräkt’, ’nattmössa’. Tyg förr kunde betyda ’saker’, ’don’, jfr verktyg.”

Så vet ni det.

Translated in French by Marianne Véron

Don DeLillo is an American author whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

There are great books, good books, interesting books, boring books… For me, this one is not a great one, but it’s a not a bad one either. It’s just a book I don’t like. Usually, I like Don DeLillo. I read The Names and Underworld with a lot a pleasure. But reading Falling Man took me forever! Perhaps, it’s because of the topic – I don’t remember how many books I have read on 9/11- , perhaps, it’s because of the characters - I wasn’t interested by them -…  After reading this book, I read some French critics on it. Everything that I’ve read seems pretty good. So even if, according to me, Falling Man is not the best book on 9/11, it seems to be very emotional and pretty strong for lots of people.

Jag har hamnat i ett jobbigt läge med läsningen. Tycker inget är bra helt enkelt. Har påbörjat jag-vet-inte-hur-många böcker på sista tiden men kommer inte in i någon. Tröttnar. Glömmer av att läsa. Vill inte.

Hade en period för ett tag sedan då nästan varenda bok jag läste var ett mästerverk. Vägen och All The Pretty Horses av Cormac McCarthy, Falling Man av Don DeLillo, Där Landet Ligger av Richard Ford.

Problemet är nog att ribban hamnat för högt. Flera av de senaste jag läst ut har varit helt okej, men de har inte nått upp till de höjder jag hoppats på. Strandmannen av Peter Kihlgård var välskriven och tänkvärd men osammanhängande och ganska seg. Dagen Efter av Lionel Shriver var för lång och kändes konstruerad. Och På Chesil Beach av Ian McEwan – som höjts till skyarna av varenda recensent – kantrade över av sentimentalitet.

Så nu vet jag inte vad. Är lite sugen på Hemingway. Har skam till sägandes inte läst en enda av honom. Tror det får bli nästa läsprojekt.

—-

Gårdagens förlust har lagt sig till rätta. Ser fram emot sommaren med kul fotboll sett med objektivt öga. Svennis verkar ligga bra till som ny tränare. Hoppas inte det. Tror han är för mätt. Vi behöver någon med erfarenhet, men som fortfarande är hungrig. Backe eller Hamrén, som båda också ligger bra till, känns mer inspirererande. Fast hade varit kul med nån som Hiddink …

—-

Det har av förklarliga skäl varit mycket The Police på sistone. Intensivt lyssnande, hela tiden med ett jobböra påkopplat. Men inte sista veckan. Beatles har porlat genom mina hörselgångar som en svalkande bäck, renande och len. Det är alltid lätt och friktionslöst att lyssna på Beatles.

—-

Fräckaste namnet på en fotbollsspelare någonsin: Shaka Hislop. Med ett sånt namn är det nästan förlåtet att han höll nollan mot Sverige.

Pode ser que nunca ganhem, mas esses são os meus doze favoritos para o Nobel:

O norte-americano DON DeLILLO, o maior autor do nosso tempo,  a prova de que a pós-modernidade não enfraqueceu em nada a ficção, com pelo menos quatro livros fundamentais: Submundo, Mao II, Cosmópolis & Ruído Branco

O maior contador de histórias do nosso tempo, o grande fabulador anglo-indiano SALMAN RUSHDIE, mestre do  romance rocambolesco.  Obras-primas: Os filhos da meia-noite; O último suspiro do mouro, Os versos satânicos; chegam bem perto: O chão qae ela pisa, Haroun e o mar de Histórias, Fúria.

O deslumbrante autor português ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, desafiador a cada obra que se lê dele. Embora eu tenha demorado a me acostumar com sua genialidade, agora considero-o o único páreo para Don DeLillo em termos de abrangência e originalidade. Obras-primas supremas: Eu hei-de amar uma pedra & Fado Alexandrino. Outros livros essenciais: Conhecimento do Inferno, Os cus de judas, Auto dos Danados. E etc…

O quase centenário (tem 98 anos) autor argentino ERNESTO SÁBATO. Ao contrário de DeLillo, Rushie & Lobo Antunes, há muito que não escreve nada significativo, mas a trilogia O túnel, Sobre heróis e tumbas & Abadon, o exterminador merecia ser homenageada. Além disso, a Argentina , assim como o Brasil, viu seus maiores autores morrerem (Borges, Cortazar, Bioy Casares, Puig), sem ter um único Nobel.

O admirável escritor peruano MARIO VARGAS LLOSA também não tem uma produção atual do nível dos três primeiros, mas o que produziu até os anos 90 o torna mais-que-merecedor do Nobel. Obras-primas: Conversa na catedral, A guerra do fim do mundo, Lituma nos Andes, Tia Júlia e o escrevinhador,  Pantaleón e as visitadoras, A casa verde, além de vários outros títulos notáveis (História de Mayta, Elogio da Madrasta, A cidade e os cachorros, O falador, etc). Não bastasse isso, ainda tem os ensaios notáveis (os de Sabato não o são) como A orgia perpétua, A verdade das mentiras e alguns textos de Contra vento e maré.

Intelectual fenomenal, cujas obras teóricas já exercem grande sedução (A obra aberta, As formas do conteúdo, Apocalípticos e integrados, Sobre literatura, Seis passeios pelo bosque da ficção, Viagem à irrealidade cotidiana e um vasto etc), o italiano UMBERTO ECO ainda se deu ao luxo de escrever um dos livros mais carismáticos e apaixonantes das últimas décadas (O nome da rosa) e ainda prosseguir na carreira de romancista com os fascinantes O pêndulo de Foucault e A misteriosa chama da Rainha Loana (A ilha do dia anterior tem um argumento e até certo ponto é genial). 

Seria um prêmio que correria o risco do mal entendido, dada a situação eterna entre Israel e os países árabes, por causa da Palestina. Mas ninguém pode negar que o israelense AMÓS OZ é um dos grandes escritores do mundo. Bastaria ler A caixa preta e o recente Rimas de vida e morte o confirma.

O maravilhoso escritor espanhol JORGE SEMPRÚN é bom na sua língua (Autobiografia de Federico Sánchez; Vinte anos e um dia), mas também é magistral em francês (A segunda morte de Ramón Mercader, Um belo domingo, A grande viagem).

O tcheco (ou boêmio, como ele prefere) MILAN KUNDERA agora escreve diretamente em francês. Mas são as versões francesas dos seus livros tchecos que o tornaram um dos maiores. Obras-primas: A brincadeira, A valsa dos adeuses, Risíveis amores. Chegam bem perto A insustentável leveza do ser, A vida está em outra parte, O livro do riso e do esquecimento, A imortalidade, A ignorância. E tem seus livros de ensaios, notáveis (A arte do romance, A cortina).

A canadense MARGARET ATWOOD é outro caso de multiplicidade: é ótima contista (Dançarinas), ótima romancista (um dos maiores romances dos últimos anos é Madame Oráculo, mas como esquecer Olho de gato, A vida antes do Homem, O lago sagrado, O assassino cego ou A noiva ladra, entre outros), ótima poeta (embora eu só conheça alguns poemas) e ótima ensaísta (Negociando com os mortos, Buscas curiosas).

Quem olhar a foto acima e achar muito solene e sério o sérvio MILORAD PAVITCH vai se enganar. Ele é da minha lista o autor mais lúdico, com seus originalíssimos Dicionário Kasar & Paisagem pintada com chá. Pena que quase não tenhamos acesso à sua obra, ela dá tanto prazer a quem gosta de jogos literários como os de Nabokov ou Dürrenmatt, com um toque de Danilo Kis.

Para mim o maior autor brasileiro ainda vivo, o curitibano DALTON TREVISAN tem um universo absolutamente peculiaríssimo e original, diferente de qualquer outro. Que títulos escolher na sua vasta produção, que começou há exatamente 50 anos com o lançamento do paradigmático Novelas Nada Exemplares?  Qualquer lista tem de forçosamente incluir os geniais A polaquinha; Virgem louca, loucos beijos; A guerra conjugal; O vampiro de Curitiba; A trombeta do anjo vingador; Cemitério de elefantes; O rei da terra…

Martes/ “White noise” by Don DeLillo

“White Noise is a meditation on themes of whiteness—the pallor of death, and white noise, the sound, so emblematic of modern life, that is meant to soothe human beings by screening out the other, more irritating noises of their civilization. The hero and narrator is Jack Gladney, chairman of Hitler Studies at a small eastern university.”

Extraído de New york Review of Books.

Ver además:

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/13/books/delillo-noise.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_(novel)

http://www.epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=1641

Los títulos seleccionados  son una muestra de los materiales actualmente en préstamo de los fondos de la Biblioteca del Instituto Internacional.

Si te interesa ver o leer ésta recomendación puedes consultar su disponibilidad en el catálogo la biblioteca del IIE.

White noise / Don DeLillo. — London: Picador, cop. 1985. — 326 p. ; 20 cm.

ISBN 978-0-330-29108-8

PS 3554.E4425 W45 1985

R. 96015