tothesound

“Excuse me. I know I have pledged suspended disbelief to this narrative, and I’m trying to be a good sport about it, but incredulity asks for a moment in which to say its piece. Incredulity says, ‘What ‘old village’ are you referring to? And why do you imagine that the idea of returning there cozens anyone into accepting your future? Is this village of which you speak so fondly in the Carpathian Mountains? Where are those mountains? In Carpathia? Is the village surrounded by rich forests and colorful songbirds? Is it like the cottage in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Or is it perchance in good old Missouri? Will we be gathering around the cracker barrel to listen to the androids indulge their homespun humor and tales of yesteryear down at the general sim-store? Will we eat the crackers, or will they be made of silicon? Will we later meet down by the river? Will Reverend Automaton bless us and dunk us in the eternal waters of the Ether Domain? Will the fragrance of genetically modified apple pie drift from matrix to matrix, causing a pang, a yearning, a hankering for the olden times when some of us had tatters of flesh attached to the hydraulics?’”

[From Middle Mind, a book about how our lack of imagination is destroying our country and the world, which-- though I sympathize with the hesitations-- ultimately I'll be on board with, and have spoken of before: an argument that art or culture is most dangerous when it gives the illusion of engagement without providing tools for true criticism or rebellion, and that insufficient critical thinking skills make it hard to distinguish between art and culture that wants to actually push back and that that is mostly placating. Hard pressed to disagree with the notion that Americans are fairly impoverished as to White's definition of the function of the imagination: "to critique and to imagine alternatives to the social status quo"; so here is his critiquing, the sincerely best parts of the book, I think, flexing and teeth-bearing, but then maybe because it is Most Entertaining so perhaps I do a disservice by quoting it instead of his actual arguments and I am not really engaging with his point, as this is all simply context for the book not for what he's criticizing here, which is the idea that new technologies ("wearing the internet around your neck") will bring us closer and make us, in fact, more like the village of our ancestors and less disconnected. You're already wearing the internet around your neck; this isn't very village-like. But a thing should be engaging to be engaged with, and moving on from his bite White offers possible solutions which are captivating and hopeful despite the weariness that seems to run through the rest of the book, and he is also deeply involved with my favorite book press so there you have it.]

She grew arrowy. “You look like an arrow,” he said.

Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America:

I hope someday we’ll have enough money to get those pictures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, wondering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension now like seeds in a package. I’ll be older when they are developed and easier to please. Look there’s a baby! Look there’s Mushroom Springs! Look there’s me!

I read this book yesterday, which is sort of set in San Francisco which is near where I live. I don’t live in San Francisco; I live in the East Bay, in Oakland. Earlier I worked in San Francisco and spent more time there but I don’t anymore, I work in Oakland and spend my time here and not only is it a good place but it’s probably the right place. Oakland’s just trying to get its shit together which is what I know. When things are right I could move to San Francisco or leave or the idea of right things is stupid.

So yesterday I read this book in a bar in Oakland. The best part of the book is when there’s a used trout stream for sale by the foot, stacked in piles by length. And he goes upstairs to where the divided stacks of trout streams are and sees the trout swimming and sticks his hand in the cold water, which is the kind of brain poets have.

The worst part of the book is probably the last three chapters: the third to last because the character has to wait in Oakland to get paid so he can go to San Francisco, and I hate this waiting version of Oakland, it’s sad and this city deserves more and I’d like to get over it; the second to last chapter because he says

Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.

and in the final chapter he does, the last word is mayonnaise. What I think when I read this is, “fine, end the book with the word mayonnaise but I don’t want to know about wanting to do it, that’s not something I need to know.” God knows I get attached to endings real bad which is part of the reason why I can’t get past writing anything but the very short, but it drives me up the wall to hear it here at the end of this book. I think partly because, maybe someone disagrees, it’s just aesthetically irritating, there’s no need to gigantisize the quirk, man aren’t I crazy ending this book with “mayonnaise.”

I’ve been reading this self-help book for a lot of reasons I may go into another time, probably not, and the whole thing is just the same as every other self-help book, a repetition of the importance of “letting go” over and over in the horrible way self-help books have of using a lot of quotations and backing up claims with pseudo-science and explaining words (”disease = dis-ease”). Honestly I can’t even figure out why I keep reading this book except that I’m hoping it’s a better reminder of letting go, maybe to turn things around here at the end of this year where I have not been very good at getting over shit. (egos, people, the future)

So a “human need” then? To end a book with a certain word? (At the risk of being elementary:) besides just the purely quirk here the human need is just to claim and solidify and know the ending, which is impossible unless you are writing, or shooting yourself. This ending is irritating because what a horrible thing in this ridiculous year to think there might be some control over what would happen next or where it goes.

It’s fine though, inescapable anyway. This book would have always been knitted to knowing endings as I only read it because I have been working my way through this list instead of doing the other summer tribute, and In Watermelon Sugar came in the same book as Trout Fishing in America so I read both, and because Brautigan committed suicide probably around this time too in 1984.

Jesus, this year. I’m done, should be, worrying if things will turn out all right. This is the city I live in.

General Custer Versus the Titanic

For the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry who were killed at the Little Bighorn River and the passengers who were lost on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

God bless their souls.

Yes! It’s true all my visions

have come home to roost at last.

They are all true now and stand

around me like a bouquet of

lost ships and doomed generals.

I gently put them away in a

beautiful and disappearing vase.

Antrim, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World:

It’s a compromise, it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but neither is the world the best of all possible worlds, is it?

McCarthy, Blood Meridian:

I wonder if there’s other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.

***

Here is Antrim reading Barthelme’s “I Bought a Little City,”  (maybe I am going to have to rename this whole thing The Barthelme Experience) and some suggestions of what it means to turn an absurd idea genuine, or make wild impulses register with reality;

Interviewer: …it’s just a way of saying “Wake up, remember who you’re with, remember what you’re doing here.”

Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World is the best thing I have read in a long time.