Like Mr. Orthofer, I’m both delighted and appalled to see City Lights get the profile treatment. There isn’t time right now to investigate whether Times contributor Megan Walsh has a troublesome history of inserting these corny, oh-so-obvious “comic” observations in her work. But I can assure her that City Lights, while jutting in a diagonal manner along the edge of Columbus, is far from “a cake slice of a bookshop.” This concern for the store’s physical appearance overshadows its more important attribute. City Lights maintains a great poetry selection and also keeps such authors as Eric Kraft, Kathy Acker, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Stanley Elkin circulating in the stacks. And aside from the fact that Mr. Ferlinghetti himself is not what one might call an etiolated individual, countercultures, last I heard, have not faded away. They’re still around if you look a little. Unless, of course, your tastes and perceptive faculties are safer than a reverend who is overly concerned about his stature in a small town.
Month / August 2008
Quick Thoughts on Baltimore
I’m only flitting through, but there are at least four things I have observed about Baltimore: (a) microsized crosswalk signals, no bigger than two cubic feet, suggesting where all pedestrians stand in the transportation food chain, (b) a considerable offering of peanut shops, roughly one every two blocks, which makes me desire to venture further south, (c) a town understandably in debt to George Washington, with monuments in nearly every part of the city ignored by the locals, and (d) a town in which everything closes up at around 6:00 PM.
I’m sorry that I’m not going to have the time to see what now stands in place of the imposing edifice that once housed the Federalist newspaper, or whether there is indeed any monument specifying that this July 27, 1812 riot, which has long fascinated me, was one of the first major post-Revolutionary War acts of violence against the First Amendment.
I’m hoping to come back here again and observe more. One simply cannot take on any metropolitan area within 24 hours, although this hasn’t stopped people who are smarter than me from unfurling impetuous generalizations about this city, home to John Waters and where John Barth once taught. I could dwell upon the many Johns of Baltimore, but I’ll save such a pleasure for another febrile curio (or a valentine?). This city’s variegated makeup reminds me to some degree of San Francisco, in that you can walk three blocks and be in a completely different neighborhood. But the meshing here is more anarchic, making me wonder how effective Baltimore’s zoning forces are. Most residents, from my initial observations, stick to their own territories. Even Berlin is better at cross-cultural fusion.
Within an hour of setting down here, I ventured northward into one downtown area. A gentleman, suspicious of my skin color, insisted that I was “walking the wrong way.” Presumably, he was annoyed by the influx of Caucasians jutting their way to Camden Yards for the Orioles-Red Sox game. It has not occurred to me to apologize on their behalf, although I certainly tried to effect some brotherly amends. I am sorry to say that I did not make this man smile. But I disregarded his warning and ended up chatting with less prejudicial souls in front of a Payless ShoeSource.
Baltimore resists gentrification in certain areas, while embracing it without apology along the divide of Charles Street. Well-heeled dog walkers jut forth their chins with a cartoonish indicator that they are affluent, or certainly desire to be. But sad people sit alone in expensive restaurants. The phrase “Has everything been served to your liking?” replaces “Everything okay?” in restaurants both highbrow and lowbrow. Even those who approach you for change or a cigarette are kinder and more reasonable in their requests, clarifying that they are not, in fact, bums, or do not wish to be. (This was what one gaunt and tired man in his mid-forties told me at an early morning hour.) But despite these peculiar phrasings, people who work in hotels and restaurants offer helpful answers without bullshit, particularly when one treats them with courtesy.
Nevertheless, I was forced to confront one unthinking asshat who tried to back his car over my girlfriend’s toes. He very swiftly backed down and was terrified of my intense gaze. This was not so much an exercise in intimidation on my part (although I was certainly sticking up for my girlfriend, as I am wont to do), as it was a thought experiment on Baltimore masculinity. Masculinity is here in spurts, but has a delayed impulse. Men are happy to expand their chests like peacocks, but they do so when the other man cannot see them. This was evident during another incident I observed in which an unthinking scooter rider nearly toppled over a pedestrian in his mad rush to skedaddle down the sidewalk. The aggrieved party spent a good ten minutes staring at the scooter man. Never mind that the scooter man had no idea what he had done, could not see the other man’s intense stare, and, for all any of us knew, had nearly clipped the toes off another pedestrian in his zeal to race as swiftly as possible.
Perhaps I draw an unfair generalization about Baltimore masculinity here because these two incidents, both involving men, the clipping of toes, and a masculine response, both occurred within an hour. A reverse law of averages, as it were.
Nevertheless, I do like what I have seen of Baltimore. It is certainly a town good enough to produce H.L. Mencken. Perhaps greater sages are gestating in the many brick houses as I write these words.
The Bat Segundo Show: Paul Auster
Paul Auster appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #231. Auster is most recently the author of Man in the Dark.
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Opening himself up to explanation.
Author: Paul Auster
Subjects Discussed: Starting a novel from a title, the advance titles contained within The Book of Illusions, the working title of The Music of Chance, Mr. Blank, the relationship between Travels in the Scriptorium and Man in the Dark, shorter baroque novels vs. longer naturalistic novels, the use and non-use of quotation marks within speech, the writing history of The Brooklyn Follies, the political nature of ending novels, the 2000 presidential election, parallel worlds, the death of Uri Grossman, didactic novels, the comfort of books, the Auster eye-popping moment, the party scene in The Book of Illusions, violence, reminding the reader that he is in a novel, emotional states revealed through imaginary material, Vermont’s frequent appearance in Auster’s novel, Virginia Blaine as the shared element between Brill and Brick in Man in the Dark, magic, The Invention of Solitude, memorializing memory, Rose Hawthorne, website archives, Auster’s relationship with the Internet, having an email surrogate, Auster’s concern for specific dollar amounts in Man in the Dark and Oracle Night, Hand to Mouth, Auster’s reading habits, the 8-10 contemporary novelists Auster follows closely, being distracted, the intrusive nature of the telephone, diner moments in Auster’s most recent novels, perception and stock situations, summaries of books and films within Auster’s books, and intimate moments in great movies.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: I wanted to ask you about something that I’ve long been interested in your books, and that is your concern for specific dollar amounts. Again, it plays up here in the Pulaski Diner, where everything is five dollars. And I also think about the scenario with M.R. Chang in Oracle Night, in which there’s the whole situation between the ten dollar notebook and the ten thousand dollar notebook.
Auster: Right.
Correspondent: And again it becomes completely, ridiculously violent. But there is something about the propinquity of the dollar amount that you keep coming back to in your work. What is it about money? And what is it about a specific figure like this?
Auster: It’s funny. I never, never thought about that. Wow. Well, listen, money’s important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don’t have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life. I wrote a whole book about that.
Correspondent: Yeah.
Auster: Hand to Mouth. And the only good thing about making money is that you don’t have to think about money. It’s the only value. Because if you don’t have it, you’re crushed. And for a long period in my life, I was crushed. And so maybe this is a reflection of those tough years. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Correspondent: Or maybe there is something absurd about a specific dollar amount or something. I mean, certainly, when I go to a store and I see that something is set at a particular dollar amount or it fluctuates, it becomes a rather ridiculous scenario. Because all you want to do is get that particular object.
Auster: Yes, yes, yes. But often in my books, people don’t have a lot of money in their pockets. So they have to budget themselves carefully.
Correspondent: Well, not always. You tend to have characters like, for example in The Brooklyn Follies, people who have a good windfall to fall back on and who also offer frequently to help pay for things, and their efforts are often rejected out of pride by your supporting characters. And so again, money is this interesting concern. But I’m wondering why you’ve held on to this notion. It’s now thirty years since the events depicted in Hand to Mouth. I mean, is this something you just haven’t forgotten about?
Auster: I guess I haven’t forgotten about it. (laughs)
Correspondent: Do you still pinch pennies to this day?
Auster: No, no, no. Not at all. No, I’m not a tightwad at all.
Correspondent: (laughs)
Auster: I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just — the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects. I don’t have a car. We don’t have a country house. We don’t have a boat. We don’t have anything that lots of people have. And I’m not interested. I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much. I guess the only thing that I spend money on is cigars and food and alcohol. Those are the main expenses.
Correspondent: Not books?
Auster: No. Because our library in the house is so bursting, we have no more room. We have things on the floor. And books come into the house at the rate of — you see, three came today for example. I’m pointing to them on the table. So we’re just inundated with books.
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Recent Segundo Shoutouts
We’ve received some very kind shoutouts lately from The Los Angeles Times‘s Carolyn Kellogg, The Sound of Young America‘s Colin Marshall, and The Fiction Circus’s Miracle Jones. Thanks, folks, for the writeups. They’ve even made Mr. Segundo blush!
Roundup, Sleep When?
- Since the sleeping schedule has gone all to hell, it seems as good a time as any to point to numerous things. (I forgot what happens when my mind remains active without a break for seventeen hours. Must remember to do stupid things so that I can sleep in the future.)
- The Los Angeles Times checks in with Howard Junker and Zyzzyva, as Junker has just retired. There doesn’t appear to be a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in Mr. Junker’s hand, but perhaps some unknown moment of spare time involving Photoshop and, well, let’s face it, PBR might remedy this. [UPDATE: To be clear on this, Junker is retiring at the end of next year.]
- Dan Green offers many thoughts on Steven Millhauser.
- And speaking of Millhauser, I’m wondering if there’s a specific name for that optical illusion in which two lower-case ells appear to converge into one when you’re looking at them in a small font. I’m convinced this is why I can never trust myself when I type “Philip Roth.” I always think there might be another ell, when there isn’t. Because if you stare long enough at two ells, they merge into one!
- If Obama wishes to preach hope, I certainly hope he has a solution for this retail bloodletting. Chelsea Green has managed to anger Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers because it intends to distribute Robert Kuttner’s Obama’s Challenge at the Democratic National Convention. There’s just one problem. With the book comes coupons that can be redeemed at Amazon’s BookSurge, which is their POD offering. Independent booksellers revolted and canceled orders, feeling that Chelsea Green’s move was a slap in the face. Chelsea Green president Margo Baldwin responded, blaming this favoritism on the importance of the election season. (Gee, I wonder if I can tell my landlord that I can’t pay the rent next month because I believe that this year’s Mets season is particularly important. Think he’d be sympathetic?) Anyway, instead of offering an alternative that might assist these indie bookstores, Baldwin writes that Chelsea Green “could not have survived and thrived without the innovations that Amazon brought to the book marketplace.” Amazon may be important for a small press to survive, but the people who run indie bookstores are often passionate readers. It’s the people behind the counter who have some say in where your book is positioned. There’s little doubt in my mind that POD will become a retail reality at some point. But with so many POD options out there and the atmosphere uncertain, it seems to me extremely foolish to alienate the support you have operating in the present like this.
- Am I the only person who really doesn’t give two shits about Michael Phelps? You know, world events, economy in the shitter, U.S. presidential election, Georgia, rising gas and food prices, et al.
- Leave it to the EFF to nail down some of the Kindle’s problems. (via Booksquare)
- Newspaper online traffic is jumping. It’s going online. Get on the wagon while you can.
- Is Tom Shales out of line? You make the call.
- Esquire fiction editor L. Rust Hills has died. Daniel Murphy is believed to be in some way responsible.
- The reading tastes of the homeless.
- George Orwell considers cement.
- Wired interviews Neal Stephenson.