Home / Portland, OR Here’s what PODF’s reading, O reader. Y tu?

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken: Essays by Daniel Mendelsohn. First, what a great title. I usually think the names of books, movies, albums, and television shows should be pithy, but for me How Beautiful It Is, which Mendelsohn lifted from Tennessee Williams’ stage directions for The Glass Menagerie, is the exception that proves the rule. (Fun fact: Williams was describing the emotional state he wanted to evoke with a musical leitmotif for the play.) Second, Mendelsohn is really good. Many of the essays included here were originally published in the Nerb, for which Mendelsohn is a regular contributor.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford. Crawford’s main point, or one of them, is that not everyone is built for the information economy (what a stupid name) and that there is fulfillment to be found in knowing how to build and/or fix things. I’m all about this, but at the half-way point I’m still not sure what I think about this book. Crawford’s got a libertarian streak, but I’m finding that I do as well, so that can’t be it. I really want to like Shop Class as Soulcraft. It would be good for a discussion group.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman. I’m really surprised at how much I don’t like this book. Klosterman just writes the same two essays over and over: (1) some aspect of pop culture reveals something profound about life; or (2) multiple aspects of pop culture have a surprising but essential relationship to each other, which often reveals something profound about life. I lost all faith after an essay in which Klosterman explains why Michael Jordan could never date Pamela Anderson without risking the apocalypse. But he’s made a career out of this, so good for him.

The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life by Joan Chittister. Part of The Ancient Practices Series (Phyllis Tickle, General Editor). I’ve been surprised lately at how much I want a structure and rhythm to my life, including and especially as it relates to my faith, as well as to be part of something ancient and profound.

Land of the Blind: A Novel by Jess Walter. I recently read and loved Walter’s most recent novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets (a PODF review is forthcoming, and I know you’ll be sitting on pins and needles). I just started this last night.

39th & Sandy SBux / Portland, OR I’ve spent the past week listening to little else but music by The Mountain Goats, mostly their latest album, The Life of the World to Come. Each of the twelve tracks on TLOTWTC is titled after a verse in the Bible. Track 4 is “Philippians 3:20-21.” These verses (as opposed to the song lyrics) read as follows:

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself (KJV).

First of all, I’m pretty sure John Darnielle (the lead Goat) uses the King James, because aesthetically it is superior to all other versions. I don’t know if it is possible for you, dear PODFer, to read something as culturally mediated as the Bible and appreciate it for its language, but try. For our conversation is in heaven. Who shall change our vile body. Whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. These words sound beautiful when said together aloud.

“Philippians 3:20-21″ is a song about suicide – a particular, unspecified suicide. Some folks on the interweb think Darnielle might have Elliott Smith in mind. Others, and this is who I think of when I hear the song, think he’s writing about David Foster Wallace.

The idea of heaven, of a future reward that we should look forward to, has been used to justify all sorts of stuff. Some people withdraw or disengage from society, taking literally the idea of a heavenly citizenship, which is the more common translation for the phrase “our conversation is in heaven.” Why care about this life when the next one is the one that matters? To some this is weak, stupid, and/or escapist – evidence of an inability or unwillingness to cope with reality.

I don’t know anything about David Foster Wallace’s religious beliefs (after reading Infinite Jest I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some sort of personal faith, but I’m bringing a lot of myself into that speculation). But there’s another way besides escapist to read the promise that our vile bodies might be changed, “fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” For the chronically ill, for the internally tortured, these are words of hope. Maybe hope that is foolish and in vain, but hope nonetheless. I have no idea whether DFW would have found hope in the idea of another conversation and another existence where the pain was subdued. But I hope so.

The Mountain Goats – “Philippians 3:20-21″ (3:07)

The path to the awful room that no one will sleep in again
Was lit for one man only gone where none can follow him
Try to look down the way he’d gone:
Back of a closet whose depths draw and on and on

And nice people said he was with God now
Safe in his arms
But the voices of the angels that he heard on his last days with us
Smoke alarms

Well the path to the palace of wisdom that the mystics walk
Is lined with neuroleptics and electric shocks
Hope daily for healing
Try not to go insane
Dance in a circle with bells on
Try to make it rain

And nice people say he had gone home to God now
Safe in his arms, safe in his arms
But the voices of the angels singing to him in his last hours with us
Smoke alarms, smoke alarms

Home / Portland, OR It’s turning into Chuck Klosterman week here at PODF. I’m about two-thirds of the way through his recently published collection, Eating The Dinosaur. Let’s say reading Eating The Dinosaur is similar to a game of football between the Chuck Klostermans and the Boring Essays, with each piece functioning as a scoring drive. Before the game I would have predicted a blowout in favor of the Klostermans. Instead, after eight possessions the score is a little closer than anticipated. Here’s a scoring summary:

Something Instead of Nothing: Chuck Klostermans 8, Boring Essays 0 — I thought the game was over at this point, and for all intents and purposes it is – if at the end of the game I need to go back and revise this possession to make it the equivalent of four touchdowns in order for the Chuck Klostermans to win, I will. That will probably be unnecessary, but seven points for a touchdown isn’t enough for how good this essay is, so the Klostermans successfully completed a two-point conversion.

Oh, the Guilt: Chuck Klostermans 11, Boring Essays 0 — Draws a parallel between David Koresh (of Branch Davidians) and Kurt Cobain (of  Nirvana), focusing specifically on Cobain’s reaction to Nirvana’s post-Nevermind fame and their follow-up album, In Utero. Not sure about this, but not a bad effort. It’s possible that someone a few years older than PODF might have given the Chuck Klostermans a touchdown, but I was only 15 in 1993 and didn’t have the cultural awareness to really experience either of these events as they were happening. Field goal for effort.

Tomorrow Rarely Knows: Chuck Klostermans 18, Boring Essays 0 — Another touchdown; this one for an essay on the ethics of and proper motivations for time travel. Surprisingly good. It helped that I had recently watched the movie Primer, which Klosterman references as the most realistic of the time travel genre. The Chuck Klostermans look to be in complete control.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson: Chuck Klostermans 18, Boring Essays 3 — This was a close call, because it’s about basketball and that’s usually a winner for PODF. Instead the Boring Essays get on the board with a field goal. WWTAWWTARS, besides being about Ralph Sampson, is about the reasons why some people relish the spectacle of failed potential greatness (consider your response to the Britney Spears train wreck). A basketball fan maybe a decade older than PODF might have given this one to the Chuck Klostermans, but I think it would have been unearned.

Through a Glass, Blindly: Chuck Klostermans 18, Boring Essays 6 — About voyeurism and why watching people who don’t know they’re being watched do boring things is really interesting. One of Klosterman’s M.O.s is to draw surprising and unlikely connections and conclusions. Often this is very effective. In this essay it is almost effective.

The Passion of the Garth: Chuck Klostermans 18, Boring Essays 14 — Touchdown and two-point conversion for the Boring Essays. This was the first time I questioned the virtue of Chuck Klosterman putting together a collection of unpublished essays, which is what Eating The Dinosaur is. If he had tried to publish this elsewhere – in Rolling Stone or Esquire, for example – his editor might have told him that no one cares about Garth Brooks’ failed Chris Gaines experiment. But that’s not the main problem with this essay, and certainly not a fatal one because he could have made me care. The problem is that the essay is in large measure about what motivated Garth Brooks to do the Chris Gaines thing, but Klosterman never talks to Garth Brooks about it. He just speculates, which seems lazy. In fact, he does something similar in the Ralph Sampson essay – talks all about him without ever taking the time to talk to him. I’m assuming at this point in his career that Chuck Klosterman could get interviews with these guys (Chuck – if you want to respond to this, give me a call). His failure to do so is all the more inexplicable when you consider that the Interview is a theme throughout the book (see below).

“The Best Response”: Chuck Klostermans 21; Boring Essays 14 — After each essay there are these little snippets of interview questions and answers. No context is given, and I can’t tell whether he’s plucked these from actual interviews or if he fashioned them entirely for this book. A few of them have been weirdly funny. For example:

Q: As a woman, did that offend you?

A: What do you mean? Why would it offend me more as a woman?

Q: I don’t know. It just seems like this issue has a rather obvious feminist component. Doesn’t being a woman change how you think about things?

A: Personally, I was more offended because of my Irish heritage.

Q: Really? How so?

A: End of interview.

That’s the whole thing. I don’t know why that cracks me up. Anyhow, “The Best Response,” is a series of imagined answers by famous people to a series of imagined interview questions. No one is identified by name, but you can usually tell who he has in mind. “The best response to being arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun into a nightclub and accidentally shooting yourself in the leg, thereby jeopardizing your pro football career” is particularly good.

Football: Chuck Klostermans 28, Boring Essays 14 — Chuck Klosterman actively encourages readers to consider skipping to the next essay if they are uninterested in the topic. This would have been appropriate for the Garth Brooks’ thing, maybe the Ralph Sampson one, but “Football” is really good. Touchdown! Touchdown, Chuck Klostermans! I think I want to write more about “Football” in another post, so I’ll leave it at that.

There you have it: with eight essays down and five to go, the Chuck Klostermans lead the Boring Essays 28-14. I don’t know if I’ll do the football thing for the final five essays; I’m not sure the conceit held up for this many words, and using the word “boring” so much seems dangerous – a potential “Chuck Klosterman is rubber and PODF is glue” scenario (particularly since this whole post is basically a cheap Chuck Klosterman knock-off).

And, at least in this photo, chunky glasses. Move to Portland, Chuck.

Kitchen Table / Portland, OR That’s probably overstating things a bit. Other than a pervasive and ever-present sense of uncertainty about who I am and what I should be doing, I like my life. It’s more like I want my life to be a more like what I imagine Chuck Klosterman’s life to be like. I imagine it like this: I’m interested in or curious about something so I think about this thing, read about it, explore it, etc. Then I write about it and somebody pays me money. Yeah. Holla atcha boy.

Chuck Klosterman just published a new essay collection titled Eating the Dinosaur (which comes from a piece about the ethics of time travel and the motivations for wanting to go back in time). The first essay, “Something Instead of Nothing,” is about the interview as a general concept. It is fantastic. Throughout the essay Klosterman calls on his own experience as both an interviewer and an interviewee, as well as the experiences of the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris and the host and producer of This American Life, Ira Glass. He doesn’t talk to Terry Gross, which I don’t understand, but maybe he thought Ira Glass filled the public radio quota. Or maybe he has a beef with Terry Gross. I don’t know. I still would have talked to her. Regardless of this one oversight, from now on I’ll think of this essay every time I listen to or read an interview.

Home / Portland, OR Two internet tidbits for you. PODF thanks T.J. and Dustin for passing these along.

The first internidbit, which admittedly hits a little close to home, is from yesterday’s Onion (quoted below in full):

Privileged Little Artiste Writing Something Oh-So-Precious Into His Moleskine Notebook

SAN FRANCISCO—After gently unfastening the elastic strap keeping his dearest musings safe from prying eyes, little literary artiste Evan Stansky penned a few more darling thoughts into his clothbound Moleskine notebook Wednesday. “These are much higher quality than the notebooks you find at CVS,” lilted the auteur, who couldn’t be bothered to use—dare it be said—a journal of lesser craftsmanship or pedigree, or one not famously used by such legendary artists as van Gogh and Hemingway. “They’re a little more expensive, but I try to write on both sides so I don’t go through them as quickly.” At press time, the princely scribe was seen finishing his apricot jasmine tea, asking a mere mortal sitting nearby to watch his literary accoutrements, and then prancing off to the Starbucks powder room, light as a feather.

I don’t know what to say about Internidbit No. 2:

Bipartisan Cafe / Portland, OR The following scene takes place a couple pages before the end of Nicholson Baker’s excellent new novel, The Anthologist. To set things up: the narrator is a minor contemporary poet named Paul Chowder, who is in the midst of leading a class at an international poetry conference thing in Switzerland:

And then a man of forty or so, with a French accent, asked,” How do you achieve the presence of mind to initiate the writing of a poem?” And something cracked open in me, and I finally stopped hoarding and told them my most useful secret. The only secret that has helped me consistently over all the years that I’ve written. I said, “Well, I’ll tell you how. I ask a simple question. I ask myself: What was the very best moment of your day?” The wonder of it was, I told them, that this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about. Something that I hadn’t known was important will leap up and hover there in front of me, saying I am – I am the best moment of the day. I noticed two people were writing down what I was saying. Often, I went on, it’s a moment when you’re waiting for someone, or you’re driving somewhere, or maybe you’re just walking diagonally across a parking lot and you’re admiring the oil stains and the dribble tar patterns. One time it was when I was driving past a certain house that was screaming with sunlitness on its white clapboards, and then I plunged through tree shadows that splashed and splayed over the windshield. I thought, Ah, of course – I’d forgotten. You, windshield shadows, you are the best moment of the day. “And that’s my secret, such as it is,” I said.

The very best moment of your days seems like a decent foundation for a personal journal or, if you feel like sharing, a blog. Of course, in the wrong hands it could be terrible – solipsistic and all that. Then again what harm could come from daily meditating on a single good thing from the day before, even (and perhaps especially) the small things?

Our Kitchen Table / Portland, OR PODF is a public radio fiend. A fiend, I tell you: Radio Lab, This American Life, Bookworm, The Treatment, Planet Money, Car Talk, The Moth. I always like it when one of these shows is on while I’m oot and aboot, but mostly I listen to the podcasts on my computer. (PODF is always looking for more recommendations, dear reader[s].) I spend the first five minutes of my computer-day with Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac.  Mr. Keillor tells me about the important literary events that took place on that day (mostly birthdays – today’s is thought to be Miguel de Cervantes’ 462nd – many happy returns, Miguel), and then he reads a poem. Yesterday’s – “How It Will End” by Denise Duhamel – took up most of the five minutes, but was really good. You can listen to Garrison Keillor read it here, along with the rest of yesterday’s episode.

Facing East from the Portland Japanese Gardens / Portland, OR Poor Old Dirt Parents were in town visiting from Nebraska, and they took Poor Old Dirt Wife and me to the Portland Japanese Gardens. Someday I won’t live in Portland anymore, but I will always love this city.

Avett Brothers – “I and Love and You” (5:01)

Home / PDX, OR This is my favorite song right now. It’s from the Avett Brothers‘ upcoming album, I and Love and You, that drops (as the kids like to say) on September 29.