It's a beautiful Sunday. All the windows are open. Mike, who's here for the weekend, is asleep on the couch with a pillow on his face, the way he always sleeps. Danielle is doing Pilates, finished, for the moment, with trying to convince me to go to Vegas. Bukowski is asleep in our bed. I'm sitting here listening to Atmosphere's Sad Clown Bad Dub #2 and writing the newest Sunday Review. What I'm saying is that for the moment, life is good.
But this maximalist ideology may be completely wrong, or at least in serious need of revision. The great American writers of the 19th century, whose novels are now staples of the syllabus, all excelled in the short form.
-There's an oven stuffer marinating in a plastic bag in the refrigerator--we're making the chicken tonight where you put the can of beer in the cavity; Mike loves it. Here's a picture of the produce drawer after shopping today:
Tomatillos for salsa, zucchini for a frittata, hot peppers and green onions for Oaktown Chicken, and baby red potatoes for roasting, to be plated alongside butterflied garlic shrimp--all nice, fresh stuff. You'd be surprised how much of de-stressor cooking nice meals with your loved one(s) is--all it takes is a little planning and good mise en place. I can't suggest it enough.
-As I said on Twitter last night, we hit up Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple of books I'd been dying to get. Here's what I already have in terms of backlog:
And here's what I picked up last night:
The new Robison, which I've mentioned before, will most likely get moved to the top of the list, as the formatting has some similarities to Whitney, and since I'm already halfway done with Phase 1 of the 2nd Edit, I figure it can't hurt. In terms of some Whitney glimpses, I still haven't decided what to show, but I'm still thinking.
-A fellow Bennington grad, Allison Devers, had this article up on Twitter last night, and I was happy to see it this morning in the Times Week in Review section. A.O. Scott has always got something good to say--he's a great film critic--and he decided to set his sights on giving the short story some props, which is always a good thing. Here's a quote:
...the conventional wisdom in American letters has always been that size matters, that the big-game hunters and heavyweight fighters — take your pick of Hemingway-Mailer macho sports metaphors — go after the Great American Novel.
I truly believe that the Facebook status/Twitter update revolution will aid in bringing people's attention back to the short story. Short attention spans deserve short stories, so think short. It doesn't mean you can't write big, full books. Thinking short and writing long can be combined. It's a way of thinking that would benefit more writers.
-There were a couple of iPhone related articles this weekend. The first I noticed is in the NY Times Magazine, called I Hate My iPhone. The author, Virginia Heffernan, basically goes on for a thousand words or so about how scared of the iPhone she is, how she doesn't know how to use the keyboard, how the saleswoman wouldn't set up her e-mail for her because she wanted her to learn how to do it for herself, and ends by saying she returned it and got a Blackberry with "money to spare."
What Heffernan never gets around to telling us is why she, um, hates the iPhone.
She gives us a nice little treatise on how she's against change and would rather stay with a product she's familiar with (BlackBerry), but what she seems to ignore is this: she wanted the iPhone in the first place. Knowing its flaws, knowing about the apps, knowing everything. The idea that it's any more difficult to set up than a BlackBerry is ridiculous--I've set up both, so I know. And the idea that a BlackBerry is any easier to use is ridiculous as well, as one of BlackBerry's signature features is how many key-clicks it takes to perform a task.
I've got no issue with someone saying they prefer this technology over that, or this phone over that one. But don't make a stupid statement and then not back it up. Here's how the article starts:
The iPhone was charging. Refined, introverted, mysteriously chilled, my new $200 tile of technology lay supine on a side table, gulping power from the wall.
Forget the vomit-inducing over-writing for a second. Replace "iPhone" with "Razr" or "Bold" or "G1" and it would make no difference. But the stage is set for more Apple bashing, because that was obviously Heffernan's goal from the start, closeted Apple-lover that she may be. I took the liberty of editing her article for her (and took the pic with my iPhone):
The other iPhone-related article is in the Style section and gives some interesting facts about how the App Store explosion is affecting "regular" people. It's worth the read just to see how much money *some* people can make in a really small amount of time--how's $800K in 5 months sound? It's also funny to read how many of these people are quitting their jobs and opening up software development companies--doesn't strike me as the best five year plan, but hey, the Titanic was completely booked when it set sail, right?
-Last couple of articles are in the Book Review. First, everyone should read Joseph O'Neill's review of The Letters of Samuel Beckett (Vol. 1)--c'mon, it's Beckett. I love the print on the cover too, by Thomas Porostocky & Matthias Ernstherger:
The Jim Holt essay, titled "Got Poetry?", is also a must-read. I don't have enough poetry memorized and I love the idea that he recites it while jogging. I may bring it into my biking routine.
That's it for this edition of The Sunday Review. Danielle is now asleep next to the cat on our bed, Mike's still asleep on the couch, but the pillow isn't on his head anymore, and the chicken still needs more time to marinate. Only one thing left to do.
JS
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