Vonnegut, Mailer, Paley

The LA Times has a piece on the passing this past year of these three (very different) giants of American literature. I suppose providing the link (below) is a fitting way to end the year. All were stylish, original, uniquely eloquent writers.

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-dickstein30dec30,0,272691.story?coll=la-books-headlines

This piece brought to mind a Peter Mansbridge interview I saw recently with Ted Sorenson, John F. Kennedy's speechwriter. Mansbridge asked Sorenson why there were so few memorable lines from Presidential speeches these days. (Sorenson wrote the "Ask not" lines.) Sorenson responded that "the age of eloquence" was over. The influence of image (and sound bite to accompany image,) had eclipsed articulation. The current President was perhaps the most inarticulate in US history, he suggested. And when ideas and policies can not be eloquently expressed, it indicates that they are not carefully and completely thought out. Seems to me the same can be said about recent Prime Ministers.

I asked an office colleague if he could repeat a Presidential line. He said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman... Miss Lewinsky." Nough said.

Happy New Year! And may this coming year bring greater eloquence!

Sitcom by David McGimpsey (II)

Here's a link to my review of David McGimpsey's exceptional poetry collection Sitcom from today's Montreal Gazette. It's interesting to compare it with my blog post below ("Who will buy my dirty potatoes"). In both instances I loved the book - nothing's changed there - but frankly I prefer the blog review. It's longer, freer and more in the spirit of the book, which makes me reconsider how restrained I can be in print. To be fair, the Gazette's books editor printed the review almost exactly as I submitted it. I guess I just assumed she (the Gazette editor) would never let "fucktard" appear in a major daily. Maybe I should ask her.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/books/story.html?id=5b1138fb-09cd-497b-92c8-1a5798e942f6

Smarten up!

Malcolm Gladwell writes on the real meaning of IQ tests. I have no recollection of ever taking one of these. I was always scared to. Find out how basically dumb I am, without any hope of ever smartening up. And to think of all the years of schooling and reading books, the money tossed out the window by my parents for my parochial school edumacation. It now seems my fears were unfounded and the money wasn't wasted after all. Thanks mom and dad.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell?printable=true

O, so that's how she does it

If, like me, you've never been able to figure out the Oprah appeal, this article from Lee Siegel in The New Republic may help (and lord knows in the Age of Oprah we all need some help.)

A sample. "Think of it like this: The media is Caesar. Having mastered and then revolutionized its idiom, Oprah is Christ. Like changing water into wine, she has managed--through her elevation of hidden, obscure, or neglected experience into spectacle--to make the television set watch you." And it gets better.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=15d21968-03ba-437e-a5fd-f2712b592b21

A Christmas Poem

Why Not?
With gratitude to The Writer's Almanac.

CHRISTMAS, DECEMBER 25TH

On this day Christ was born
though the actual day is not known
with certainty, experts agree
it was most likely
in the spring and not 1 A.D.
but 4 B.C.
In Finland
they dive into icy lakes then out
for a stint in the sauna
which is how they celebrate.
In Australia it’s mid-summer,
they reach for towels,
sandals and suntan lotion
and make barbecues at the beach.
The Chinese decorate paper lanterns
and light them, and in Spain
children fill shoes
with straw, carrots and barley
and leave them on windowsills
for Balthazar's donkey to nibble.
Venezuelan kids tie long strings to their toes
before going to bed
and hang them out the window.
People rollerskate to Mass
next morning and tug the strings
as they roll by.
The custom in Mexico
includes smashing candy-filled piñatas
while in Brazil they observe the Mass of the Rooster
and Father Christmas wears a silk suit
because it's so hot.
In Greece St. Nick arrives not on sleigh
but drenched in seawater
from trying to rescue drowning sailors. Since
they don't have Christmas trees in Greece
instead they hang crosses
wrapped in basil on wires
from the rims of small bowls of water.
Once a day the crosses are dipped
and water is sprinkled around houses
to protect them from bad luck;
and everyone
everywhere
believes.

The Chabanel Christmas party

Top three things I learned at this year's office Christmas party (really a sit-down dinner):

1. It's very difficult to get drunk on martinis.

2. In Maoist China, some children were essentially isolated and raised away from their parents. A Chinese colleague told me how, as a child, she was sent to live with grandparents for the first six years of her life while her parents both worked as chemical engineers on China's burgeoning space/missile defense program. "They helped to build rockets," she said. When I asked her what it was like to live away from her parents she said, "I didn't know my father for the first six years of my life. He was a stranger. There were times when I was left alone in my house for half the day while my grandparents worked. No one was there. I cried a lot. I remember."

3. The Canadian government built an armoury on Chabanel during WWII. The main building still stands as a sprawling 500,000 square foot single-storey facility that currently houses a plastics manufacturing facilty. But along Meilleur and Chabanel, near the train tracks, there is a subterranean complex that was part of the original armoury which descends six-stories deep. The man who swore to its underground existence could not say what it was being used for at the moment or what purpose it might have served when it was built. But he said that it was still there. A maze of rooms and corridors that went deep underground.

Essential George Johnston

Besides being an accomplished poet in her right, Montrealer Robyn Sarah has spent a great deal of her time and energy educating about poetry (as a teacher, essayist and newspaper columnist) and bringing unheralded poets to wider attention. A little while back she introduced me to the American poet Robert Sward. Now she is championing Canadian George Johnston who died in 2004 with a new edited book The Essential George Johnston. Subtlety, understatement and impeccable craft are the hallmarks of Johnston's work (also Sward's and Sarah's own work.) Zach Wells offers a whole bunch of useful links on his post about Johnston.
http://zachariahwells.blogspot.com/2007/12/george-johnston-on-writers-almanac.html#links