Thought, Image, Language, History, Identity, Otherness and Vegan Meat

IMAGE OF THE DAY: Self-Portrait with Twin Towered Empire State Building.

LITERARY COMMENTS OF THE DAY: In re "Falling Man" by Don Delillo

Delillo is clearly drawn towards the rigor and severity of the terrorist's perspective. He understands the disgust with the contingent, the messy and the impure. But where the terrorist knows only the seduction of the absolute, Delillo knows both the seduction and the folly. It is in the grip of this tension that he generates his taut, oblique, artfully awkward lines.

Much as the piece of art I talked about recently sort of upstaged the Frank Rich review of Delillo's 9/11 book in the NYT Book Review, so too the photo of people crowded at the window of the north tower moments before the towers fell upstages Andrew O'Hagan's critical (in both senses of the word) review of Delillo's novel in the most recent New York Review of Books. What is it specifically that the novel (let alone the review of the novel) cannot compare to? The haunting facticity of the image. The still unthinkable and inassimilable fact of its actually having happened.

As mentioned above, O'hagan's review is highly critical of Delillo. Among other things, he notes that Delillo has always had a near prophetic sense of the imminence and inevitablity of this kind of a spectacular terrorist act. Indeed, in White Noise he had one character hypothesize that the terrorist would replace the novelist as the pre-eminent artist of our time. O'hagan seems to be saying that now, with the fulfillment of his prophetic vision, Delillo the novelist is rendered strangely irrelevant. A lingering redundancy. His powers of imagination sadly unequal to the staggering reality of the events.

There is an almost moral outrage in O'hagan's critique. One senses an unspoken attribution of blame--as if, having anticipated such an event, the author were somehow complicit in its coming to pass. But O'hagan's main criticism seems to be that Delillo is somehow insulting the lives of those lost in the 9/11 catastrophe by failing to imagine their stories as richly and as fully as they deserve to be imagined. It is clear to me (and, I imagine, to most readers of the book) however, that this is not what Delillo has assumed as his project. He is, in truth, more compelled by the almost ontological dislocation experienced by the survivors and by the challenge of imagining the consciousness of the terrorists responsible for the terrible acts. The criteria on which O'hagan is judging the work bear little relation to the challenge the author set himself in creating it. This is not to claim that Delillo's work is a clear success (whatever that would mean). It is merely to point out how highly charged the feelings surrounding this event remain and how they are liable to generate harsh judgements and unproductive discourse in all realms of endeavor--from the municipal to the architectural to the literary.

Also, it should be noted that Don Delillo writes about kids with the kind of compelling verisimilitude and persuasive naturalism that Alice Munro might evince in writing about Crips and Bloods or that Danielle Steele might exhibit in describing physicists at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY:

"Maybe this is what things look like when there is no one there to see them."

--Delillo, in "Falling Man" --describing the protagonist's experience of the dizzying, post-apocalyptic landscape he staggered through right after the towers collapsed.

CULTURAL-LITERARY TROPE OF THE DAY:

Alzheimer's. It figured prominently in the finale to the Sopranos (in the form of Uncle Junior's failure to remember even that he had been in the mob) and in Delillo's "Falling Man" (where the protagonst's wife conducts writing groups with people suffering from the disease.) In both instances, the disease functions as the mortal mirror of the narrative; the haunting reminder of both the vanity of all things and the ineluctable otherness that lurks within ourselves.

HORRIBLE AND RELUCTANTLY SHARED PREMONITION OF THE DAY:

Remember about 6 years ago when Bush had just been elected by the Supreme Court there was this show they were running on Comedy Central called "My Bush" or something which made him out to be a harmlessly likeable but pretty dumb rascal of a frat boy? I think Timothy Bottoms played Bush. Anyhow, that show was, of course, immediately pulled from the air after 9/11--correctly deemed to be inappropriate to the solemn climate of that time. For some reason, I have always associated that show with 9/11. Or at least with the moment that our collective state of shock about Bush being our president was replaced by our collective state of shock about the terrorist attacks. (Which of course was soon followed by our collective state of shock at Bush being our president in the scary, new world after the shocking terrorist attacks). I have one other thing I associate with that transitional moment. As I think I mentioned on these electronic pages some time back, at 9 a.m. on the morning of 9/11/2001, I stepped in dog feces on the sidewalk for the first time in a decade. I remember screaming "Fuck!" and then, upon seeing a lady passing, offering half apologetically through still clenched teeth: "It's gonna be a bad day."

It was only ten minutes later--after diligently wiping the turd off my shoe--that I stopped in the local coffee shop and learned that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Anyhow, why do I bring these two things up? Well, I have been seeing promotions for a new Bush Parody on Comedy Central called "Li'l Bush" and it strikes me as a weird attempt to turn back the clock and totally erase the national trauma that ended the last Bush parody show on Comedy Central (and a good many other things as well, of course). It almost felt like a way of challenging the terrorists to shock us anew from our cozy little stupor. And, the other night, I JUST missed stepping in dog feces on the sidewalk. It was the first time I'd even had a close call since 9/11/2001. And it left me with a terrible feeling which was probably mere flashback, but which I took as foreshadowing. So as a sort of jinx on a jinx, I figured I should just put this out there...to neutralize whatever premonitory power or anticipatory accuracy it might have. Maybe it's also that I've been reading Don Delillo's 9/11 novel "Falling Man" but I've been thinking a lot about those terrorist attacks these days. And the way we've completely suppressed the emotional reality of their actually having happened. And, well, I'm just not ready for another one. So, please indulge me in this act of superstitious stupidity. I thank you in advance for your complicity, cooperation and/or mere, slightly perplexed, indulgence.

EXOTIC TRAVEL EXPERIENCE OF THE DAY:

Coming back from the airport recently, there was some crazy traffic on the expressway. So my cabbie (it turns out, a former stock car racer), treated me to a high speed tour through the back roads of Queens. Wow. What a strange and mysterious place. Less like another city than another country. Or, perhaps, another world. It was genuinely--in its strange, flat, non-descriptness--more compellingly alien to me that any of the cities I've flown to in the last year. One real revelation was the existence of this mega gigantic JC Pennys that dwarfed us (and everything around it) when we finally got to Queens Boulevard. Flanked by a merely huge Sears and a merely enormous Macys, it was an edifice of truly epic scale--dominating the landscape like a federal building or a huge temple, but without any of the architectural distinction one would associate with those types of structures. One's sense of individual identity trembled before it. As I believe (and designated Dembologist D-wid will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong here) the great Fennis Dembo once said in a very different context, it was "more than dizzying."

Anyhow, when the Empire State Building and the other familiar icons of the NYC skyscape finally came into view, it was as if I were arriving through an unsuspected portal from another time and place. I was stunned by this newly discovered proximity. This world of near identical looking buildings, gargantuan stores and vast graveyards that was so far away and yet so close.

NEW YORK EXPERIENCE OF THE DAY:

Last night I enjoyed a quintessentially New York experience. Was it going to Bryant Park to see Annie Hall on the big screen? No, it was going to Bryant Park to see Annie Hall on the big screen, realizing it was far too crowded to get a seat and going home to watch Annie Hall on video while eating takeout. Somehow that felt more authentically New York. And if not more authentically New York, then at least more authentically Woody Allen.

I hadn't seen the movie in decades and--while some of the comedic innovations pioneered there have grown a bit tired through widespread appropriation and imitation --I was charmed and touched by it anew. I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking why in the world would that gorgeous woman fall in love with that goofy looking guy (not that this wasn't a formative inspiration for me.). But as I watch it now, past the actuarially determined mid-point of my life, I see Woody as a sort of goofily cute young guy. And I still see her as really really lovely. I had forgotten that Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and Paul Simon were in the movie. And speaking of Paul Simon. It struck me that three of the key Jewish icons of my 70s childhood (Paul Simon, Woody Allen and Marv Albert) had perpetrated a kind of perceptual fraud on me. Paul Simon and Marv Albert by sporting toupees and Woody Allen by changing his name from Allen Konigsberg. I try to imagine an alternative 70s childhood in which the little melancholic troubador and the ubiquitous sporscaster proudly displayed their naked pates and in which the neurotic funnyman auteur's last name was actually his first. But I am simply not up to the task. History, marking us as it does with its random specificity on our once only path through time.

The film reminded me of that (now poignant) moment just before the dawn of the blockbuster when art house films were part of the popular culture and references to Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud were about as common as references to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Dr. Phil are today.

LFAQs of the DAY:

What if everyone had the same name? Would our perception of and cognition about others be radically altered? Would we in fact see people less as individuals than as diverse reflections of the same essential being? Would we even have a concept of "individuals."?

Is there a correlation between the value placed on "individuality" in a culture and the diversity of first names in that culture?

Which hypocrisy is worse: The hypocrisy of Republican moralists who insisted on Clinton being punished for lying about the Monica Lewinsky affair asking that Scooter Libby be pardoned after being convicted of lying about the Valerie Plame leak or the hypocrisy of Republican "patriots" who extol the paragon importance of protecting our people from "those who would do us harm" defending the man who jeopardized the safety (and perhaps even the life) of an American CIA agent by leaking her identity?

What the hell was Vegas tallking about in that "reluctantly shared premonition of the day?" Is he really superstitious or did he just want an excuse to trot out that damn 9/11 stepping in dog droppings story again?

And what's with all that hair in the self portrait?

Will the air oboe and air bassoon ever become as popular as the air guitar?

SICK COMEDIC RELIEF OF THE DAY: VEGAN MEAT

I want to eat healthy. But who has the time or discipline to always buy organic produce and organic meats? That's why I've resolved my Omnivore's Dilemma by deciding to add a new flesh form to my diet: Vegan. Yes, vegan. After all: Who eats more healthy and organic foods than the modern vegan? And by eating healthy, free-range Vegans myself ...well, I get the benefits of their healthy dietary choices...without having to do the work myself! It's great. I just let those diligent, health conscious folks do the heavy lifting for me. Herboivore? Carnivore? Omnivore? I make it easy on myself. Veganore is the way for me. Ask you local grocer if he carries Veganore products. And when you go to a restuarant always ask if they have a vegas section of the menu. When they point you towards the seitan and bean sprouts, explain that, no, you mean the vegan meat section.

Yes, nutritionally enlightened cannibalism. It's the healthy choice.

MOMENT OF TRUE FEELING OF THE DAY:

I went up to CT yesterday to visit my father (I essentially went up to supervise a nap :)) and, standing on the train platform in the cooling twilight air, waiting to return to the concrete jungle, I could smell the earth and traces of the ocean and I could see green things and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for my suburban childhood and those early intensest trips through time and the seasons.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:

The Remote Sports Bar in Astoria, Queens: Where outer borough meets outer space.

REFLECTION ON BEING AND LANGUAGE OF THE DAY:

I don't know what it is that I love about cows. Maybe it's just that they're so damn bovine.

CULTURAL-POETIC OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

I think our culture has essentially misquoted Keats:

"Youth is beauty and beauty youth...that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."

Youth has taken the place of truth--as the primary cultural value. Ahh...who am I kidding? It's probably always been that way.

SINGLE SENTENCE RANDOM PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He was inconveniently located just outside the narrative.

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Posted on 6/19/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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