Kenzaburo Oe in “The Art of Fiction,” The Paris Review
From interview no. 195 (Winter 2007):
When I was in my twenties, my mentor Jazuo Watanabe told me that because I was not going to be a teacher or a professor of literature, I would need to study by myself. I have two cycles: a five-year rotation, which centers on a specific writer or thinker; and a three-year rotation on a particular theme. I have been doing that since I was twenty-five. I have had more than a dozen of the three-year periods. When I am working on a single theme, I often spend from morning to evening reading. I read everything written by that writer and all of the scholarship on that writer’s work.
If I am reading something in another language, say Eliot’s Four Quartets, I spend the first three months reading a section such as “East Coker” over and over again in English until I have it memorized. Then I find a good translation in Japanese and memorize that. Then I go back and forth between the two — the original in English and the Japanese translation — until I feel I am in a spiral that consists of the English text, the Japanese text, and myself. From there Eliot emerges.
INTERVIEWER
It’s interesting that you include academic scholarship and literary theory in your reading cycles. In America, literary criticism and creative writing are, for the most part, mutually exclusive.
OE
I respect scholars most of all. Although they struggle in a narrow space, they find truly creative ways of reading certain authors. To a novelist who thinks broadly, such insight gives a sharper way of comprehending an author’s work.
When I read scholarship on Blake or Yeats or Dante, I read it all and I pay attention to the accumulation of differences between scholars. That’s where I learn the most. Every few years a new scholar puts out a book on Dante, and each scholar has his or her own approach or method. I follow each scholar and study that way for a year. Then I follow another scholar for about a year, and so on.
[snip]
iNTERVIEWER
It sounds like when you travel you spend most of your time in your hotel room reading.
OE
Yes, that’s right. I do some sightseeing, but I have no interest in good food. I like drinking, but I don’t like going to bars because I get in fights.
Pyongyang as virtual space
Fiction Pyongyang, curated by Joseph Grima together with Stefano Boeri and Armin Linke
Pyongyang’s sinister landscapes are not to be quickly dismissed as the tangible proof of the existence of a “kingdom of evil.” As we pointed out, one can perceive something familiar in them, an eerie familiarity to an eye accustomed to the imagery of western science fiction. It’s as though in the aftermath of the 1952 bombing of Pyongyang (an entire city razed to the ground seven years after Hiroshima and Dresden — have we all forgotten?), someone like George Orwell or Ridley Scott decided to create, without a hint of irony, Western culture’s worst dystopia. It is impossible to remain indifferent to the bizarre collection of architectural caricatures built by the North Korean nomenklatura. They created a city populated by automata unable to exercise their free will, the incarnation of an isolated absolute regime that is nevertheless capable of unscrupulous recourse to the symbolic language of Western democracies. –from an interview with Stefano Boeri in Artkrush
I know next to nothing about the capital of North Korea, but hey–that describes, quite literally, just about everyone else in the world, too. Finally, a subject on which the vast, vast majority of people can be equally knowledgeable.
Some cases in point: Via Andrew Sullivan, this article in Esquire about the focal point of much of the video above, the uncompleted Ryugyong Hotel. As you can see, it looks like the Dark Lord Sauron’s idea of a destination hotel. The article reveals that this building is regarded by the government as being so hideous (not to mention embarrassingly uncompleted) that it regularly airbrushes it out of its photos of the Pyongyang skyline.
The Esquire article led me to Ryugyong.org, a site where visitors can (or could because, analogously to the hotel, it’s no longer being supported) claim space in a 3-D model of the building and install projects of their own design in that space. The idea is reminiscent of Second Life–but, again, it’s curious that this site’s space is like that of the hotel it’s modeled on. It’s fun to speculate that Pyongyang just has that effect on those who deign to engage with it, even in the blogosphere.
And finally there is the site I visited a couple of years ago which first piqued my curiosity about Pyongyang, this unofficial site describing the Pyongyang Metro. The first two paragraphs from the “Statistics” page are actually pretty typical–read closely and ponder the implications of what it’s saying:
The Pyongyang Metro consists of two public lines, north-south Chollima (named for a mythical flying horse, the Korean Pegasus) and east-west Hyoksin (Renovation); there are also believed to be other undisclosed lines for government use. The total length of the public system is probably around 22.5 km, of which the Chollima line is about 12 km and the Hyoksin line about 10. Like most North Korean statistics, this figure may be inaccurate, as it has been reported since the mid-1980s, and may not include the nearly 2 km between Ponghwa and Puhung, opened in 1987; if this is so the system is approximately 24 km. Some sources claim 34 km, of which the Chollima line is 14 km and the Hyoksin line 20 km, however this figure may be arrived at by adding the original 24 km mentioned above and a planned 10-km extension to Mangyongdae, and thus likely does not refer to the system’s current length.
And, further down the same page:
Maps of the system are not widely distributed, and physical locations of stations are not marked on street maps; the brochure “The Pyongyang Metro” does not include one. . . . As an economy measure [due to chronic electricity shortages], the entire service is said to close on the first Monday of each month, and perhaps more often. Station lights are dim or switched off altogether, and many sources report that trains in tunnels are often caught by power cuts, forcing passengers to wait in the darkness, sometimes for hours. Indeed, whether the Metro is in regular service at all is not entirely certain. Practically the only non-North Korean eyewitnesses to Metro use are the visitors given the showcase ride on the system.
I have no big wind-up to all this, aside from the obvious: all cities have their own character, but beyond that they are all the same in that they are inarguably public spaces, a heteroglossic space whose meaning is contested (at times happily, at times less so) by various state and community interests. Those notions are so familiar as to go unremarked . . . unless or until one bumps into a place like Pyongyang.
(Cross-posted at Blog Meridian)
Picture of the day
Barack Obama at a roundtable, Charleston, SC, January 25th (via)
No point to this, except: What a great photo.
Follow the link to see some good suggestions for captions.
See the archives . . .
The archives of Cormac McCarthy, below, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, have been bought for $2 million by the Southwestern Writers Collection of Texas State University-San Marcos, The Associated Press reported. The university said the archives included correspondence, notes, drafts and proofs of 11 novels by Mr. McCarthy, 74, who won the Pulitzer for his 2006 novel, “The Road,” and a 1992 National Book Award for “All the Pretty Horses.”
(link, via private correspondence)
Texas State University (nee Southwest Texas State University) is where I earned my masters; the Southwestern Writers’ Collection was just getting started when I graduated, so I’m feeling especially proud to know this.
Bang a drum
(via)
The intricacies of political strategizing
From here. If/when the time comes to write the Clinton political obituary, it’s hard to imagine a better one than this:
[Internal Clinton staff meeting]
Bill Clinton: “We need a shot in the arm. You hear me boys? In the goddamn arm! Election held tomorrw, that son of bitch Obama would win it in a walk!”
Mark Penn: “Well he’s the change candidate, sir.”
Hillary Clinton: “Yeah.”
Mark Penn: “A lot of people like that change. Maybe we should get us some.”
Bill Clinton: “I’ll change you, you soft-headed son of a bitch. How we gonna run change when we’re running on experience? Is that the best idea you boys can come up with? Change?! Weepin’ jesus on the cross. That’s it! You may as well start drafting her concession speech right now.”
(For the record, I am pulling for Obama, but I personally thought Hillary did well last night–I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her emotionally invested in the race. And Edwards was very impressive as well. I’m not an anyone-but-Hillary guy; I’ll be happy with whoever won the nomination)
She loves you, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven
Meet the Beatnix, Australia’s preeminent Beatles’ tribute band:
(via)
“We want you! We want you! We want you as a new recruit!”
Two recruitment ads for foreign militaries. And to think ours are knock-offs of Top Gun.
A recruitment ad for the Ukrainian army . . .
. . . and one for the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. Andrew Sullivan, my source for these masterpieces, says of this one, “I’m guessing they don’t have a gay ban.”
Stompin’ the Blues
A Christmas story:
The day before yesterday, I received a call from the current occupant of my former apartment about a mysterious package addressed to me delivered via UPS . . .
Excerpts from Amazon UK customer reviews of the Bic Crystal ballpoint pen
(Quick observation: Amazon will indeed sell anything)
Those wishing to order can go here.
Some customers are more pleased than others . . .
I notice that the barrel of the pen has been crafted very carefully to fit in the pen holder down the edge of my Filofax. It’s not so grippy so that it is hard to remove when I want to make a quick note, and yet not so loose that it falls out too easily when I open my Filofax in a hurry. Maybe the choice of surface texture on the pen has some part to play here, because it seems that the inside of the leather grip on the pen holder in my Filofax has just the right level of adhesion that I can be confident when I need to reach in and get my pen it’s going to be just where I left it!
More excerpts below the fold . . .
In a riddle whose answer is “categorical imperative,” what are the only prohibited words?
Over at Crooked Timber, John Holbo counters that nasty hit-job on Kant with this stirring defense of Kantian ethics:
The soft bigotry of low expectations
Actual subject headings of recently-received spam:
“Have an unforgetful night of pleasure with your girlfriend!”
“Satisfactory sexual intercourse.”
The Vegetable Orchestra
A website . . .
and their answer to Rattle and Hum:
(via)
Kant Attack-ad
Nietzsche approves the ad, but I bet some operative in South Carolina is responsible for it . . .
I spotted the (Myspace) video here; the Youtube is from here.
Still working on that documentary, Deron?
An international perspective. And no, sadly, I am unable to provide context:
(via)
“White Noise”
Just so you have a bit of context, Phil Nugent’s father was a Klansman, and proud of it. Mr. Nugent himself, considerably less so. That makes the conclusion of his post, on the recent back-and-forth in the New York Times on whether Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, signaled to certain Southern whites that he was, politically, at least, one of them, all the more compelling:
Just for the record though, there are [. . .] those of us who just made it under the wire, generation-wise, and who if we had been born ten years earlier would have been confronted with the “whites only” and “blacks only” drinking fountains, and been forced to make a choice: whether to go with the flow, and, consoling ourselves with what we knew to be in out hearts, sully ourselves by drinking from the “whites” fountain and nodding our tacit approval of the system, or suck it up, drink from the “blacks” fountain, and likely get ourselves stomped, maybe from somebody black who didn’t appreciate our making a gesture that might end up making his life harder? It’s something I was spared by the hard work of thousands of people whose names I will never know, some of who gave up their lives in the process, and whose work David Brooks regards as less important, in the end, than making sure that nobody ever thinks the worst of some of the politicians who defined themselves as the opponents of those people. Because of them and the accident of timing that was my December 6 birthdate, I’ll never know for sure just how brave I was as a kid. And for that, as we wind up a week devoted to the tradition of giving thanks, I’d like to say to several people who’ll never read this: Thank you.
And for good measure: Mr. Nugent also has a nice post up on Todd Haynes and his new Dylan film . . . and Charles Nelson Reilly
StupidFilter
Apparently, an actual project.
From the FAQ:
Isn’t filtering stupidity elitist?
Yes. Yes, it is. That’s sort of the whole point.
(via)
You’re Karl Rove and you’ve just become a Newsweek columnist! What’s the first thing you’ll say?
The New Republic‘s blog The Plank is soliciting suggestions.
(Dictated)
“Mmmm…mmmm…this puppy is so goddam delicious! Mmmmm. What? Oh, hello, and welcome to my column.”
* * *
“Remarkably, Democrats are still enamored with Barack Obama, despite the fact that the senator barely bothers to hide the fact that he has fathered not one, but *two* black children with a black woman.”
* * *
“Only time will tell how recent studies linking support for Hillary Clinton and genital herpes will affect the Iowa caucuses.”
* * *
Rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs
Fun to look at even if, like me, you’re not even fly for a white guy.
(via The Plank)
The Chopstick Bra
Yes–really!
Lingerie-maker Triumph International Japan has just unveiled the “My Chopsticks Bra” in Tokyo to promote the use of reusable chopsticks. That’s right, you can enhance your cleavage and save the planet at the same time.
LOLcat Wasteland
This is for those of us still harboring a smoldering hatred of whoever it was assigned us Eliot’s “atom bomb”:
1. IM IN UR WASTELAND BURYING UR DEAD
april hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has. (1)
april in ur memoriez, making ur desire.
spring rain in ur dull rootzes.earth in ur winter, covered in snow
can has potato. PO-TA-TO.
INVISIBLE SUMMER! RAININGZES!
im in ur hofgarden, drinking ur coffeez.at archduke’s haus, invisible sled!
im in ur moutainz, holding on tight.
no can has cheezburger.
oral sex metaphors in ur poem.
Ponder this moment
I mean, really ponder it:
link (via Andrew Sullivan)
“Dahling I love you/But give me Park Avenue”
If only the Douglases had thought about applying for farm subsidies . . .
A map showing the locations of recipients of farm subsidies. The largest dots=recipients of more than $250,000.
Link (via Matthew Yglesias)
So: make out your budget while listening to “Back in Black”
And They say academics have lost (a) touch (too much) with Things That Really Matter:
Our results suggest that having participants listen to songs by AC/DC in which Brian Johnson served as vocalist results in participants realizing more efficient outcomes. Thus, in terms of a singer’s ability to implement efficient behavioral outcomes among listeners, our results suggest that Brian Johnson was a better vocalist than Bon Scott.
link (via Matthew Yglesias)
Welcome back to school, y’all
“Rudolph the Rad Knows Reign, Dear”
Jim Henley reviews a Very Serious article appearing in Foreign Affairs:
Because the genre requires [Giuliani] to name-check every part of the world – perhaps to assure the alleged author that it exists, perhaps to reassure the FA reader that the alleged author has heard of the world – you get whole sections of “I see India out there tonight. Keep rocking, India! And lemme give a shoutout to my peeps in Germany!” Those passages read like the fellow who addresses the Mount Pleasant, PA Oddfellows’ Hall every year on “The State of the World Today.”
The rest of it reads like the fellow who addresses the Mount Pleasant, PA Oddfellows’ Hall every year on “The State of the World Today” after being maddened by bees.
(italics in the original)
link (via Kevin Drum)
