Month / August 2008

by Edward Champion

Responding to Orwell: August 18

George! You’re back. Was getting a little worried. Had figured that the weather, which you were dutifully recording over the days, had at long last taken the wind out of you. But here you are with not one, but two diary entries. I don’t know if your thoughts on barley represent some insight into Animal Farm. Was reading Daniel Levitin’s The World in Six Songs the other day, and I was struck by his observation about Paul McCartney (we don’t have newspaper cuttings here on the Internet, George, so I hope this blockquote is semi-tantamount to your prudent applique):

Similarly, Paul McCartney seemed to be trying to capture both the sound and the aesthetic essence of a forties dance-hall tune in a string of songs beginning with “When I’m Sixty-Four” (written in 1958, recorded in 1967), “Your Mother Should Know” (1967), and “Honey Pie” (1968). With each one, he got a little closer, until 1976, when he released “You Gave Me the Answer,” with production and orchestration sounding almost exactly like a Fred Astaire record. McCartney never attempted a dance hall-style song after this, and so I assume that he finally met his artistic goal and moved on to other experiments and other challenges.

I’m wondering how your current concerns about wood and barley fit in with this observation. Maybe you’ll be pursuing this question in your diary in the years to come, but to what degree, George, does your diary represent continued efforts to pinpoint the precise book you have to write? And since you expired so young, I’m hoping that your eyes didn’t close with too many regrets along these lines.

I’m sorry to report that greenheart wood (aka Chlorocardium rodiei) is now redlisted by the IUCN as a threatened species. The folks at the Orwell Estate don’t wish to point this out, but I think it’s important to place your enthusiasm in some context. I may be experiencing certain joys and pleasures that, sixty years from now, will be unthinkable. It is for this reason that I consider almost every day blessed in some sense.

I’m glad to hear that some of the blackberries have ripened and that the elder-berries have begun to grow purple! This may seem the kind of routine observation to be mocked, but I suspect those who have ridiculed your efforts fail to understand the pleasure of flora and fauna unfurling and adapting at a slow and leisurely clip.

When I get around to trying out my own efforts with lumber (sometime this year), maybe the two of us will swap some notes. Obviously, it won’t be greenheart. But I do plan to build a few bookcases. Just need to take some measurements of the apartment and draw up plans.

And thank you for referencing the Sardinian mouflon sheep on August 16. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I love the way that phrase rolls off the tip of my tongue and have uttered it a few times to ensure that it is indeed a mellifluous marvel.

Lots of work here, George, but let’s check in with each other.

by Edward Champion

Emails

Some anonymous scum has been spoofing my main email address, pulling a joe job on me and causing me to wade through thousands of bounced emails from time to time. And while steps have been taken to secure things, I understand from a few folks that some of my emails aren’t getting through. If I haven’t responded to you, please try emailing me again. Hopefully, things will be back to normal in the next week or so.

by Edward Champion

Dan Carlin: A Hardcore Podcaster

Dan Carlin is a very intense and passionate man. One can hear the veins bulging out of his neck when he talks about history. I do not know what the man’s caffeine intake is, but his podcasting presence is a welcome alternative to the soporific lectures sometimes associated with historians.

Carlin’s brio is a good thing. And it’s why I’ve become a fan of his podcast, Hardcore History.

There are regrettably no hyperlinks in Carlin’s archive, but if you spend a day or two bouncing around in his archives, you’ll find a 40 minute monlogue on the impact of drugs and alcohol on historical events, a febrile portrait of Winston Churchill (“A racist! A colonialist! An alcoholic! A bad parent! A reactionary! Militaristic! A megalomaniac! A shameless self-promoter and self-advertiser! These are just some of the criticisms that have been leveled at Winston Churchill throughout history.” And he’s only just getting started.), and speculation on what might have happened had events during the year 1066 turned out differently. He’s also managed to land an interview with Connections man James Burke, who sounds slightly wary of Carlin’s enthusiasm, but is a good sport.

If you have even a passing interest in history and science, Carlin’s energy will most certainly get you pumped up in ways that you may not expect.

by Edward Champion

Not Thinking About the Children

Two essays — one from Annalee Newitz and one from Lizzie Skurnick — express needless hostility to books that involve the young. The first essay quibbles over YA science fiction with protagonists under 18 being categorized as YA as niche marketing gone horribly awry. As Newitz writes:

When scifi novels with adolescent protagonists are marketed as “just for adolescents,” a curtain of taboo falls between most adults and that novel. In an era where there is so much legal panic around relations between adults and young adults, it’s hard to deny your knee-jerk response that there’s something slightly distasteful and pedophilic about an adult reading stories aimed at people under the age of 18.

Let me try and understand this strange logic. If I, a balding and bearded thirtysomething man, wander into a YA section at a bookstore, I will immediately find my name listed in the Megan’s Law database. I cannot possibly purchase a book and claim it to be “for my son” or “for my niece.” (Not that I would. Because a book purchase is nobody’s goddam business but mine. And besides, I have braved the apparent choppy waters of the kiddie section many times in purchasing several copies of E. Nesbitt and L. Frank Baum for friends to give to their children to read.) To wander into the kiddie section is now apparently equivalent to clumsily divagating through the beads separating the “adult” titles from the regular movies in a video store. Never mind that, when it comes to YA, it is parents who hold the purchasing power.

And, of course, I cannot possibly read a YA book on a subway. Not even if I remove the dust jacket and make the book’s title difficult to identify. Apparently, the minute that I open up a YA book, all eyes will veer to my perverted and demented form. There can be no other judgment. Not even the usual apathy. You may not know this, but every YA book can be easily identified by the government-mandated bleeping yellow light whenever anyone over the age of eighteen starts reading it. The appropriate authorities will be summoned. I will be thrown in jail and sentenced to a chemical castration. For I have transgressed the boundaries.

For what it’s worth, I have read a few YA titles on the subway and have not yet experienced any such problems. Perhaps Ms. Newitz has some legislative evidence with which to support her utterly strange claim. But I seriously doubt this.

Then there is Ms. Skurnick’s essay, which quibbles with Chris Adrian’s short story collection, A Better Angel. She first casts doubt on a 9-year-old narrator’s ability to recite Emily Dickinson’s poems. (Casual YouTube searches suggest otherwise.) The idea that a 9-year-old would consider More Joy of Sex is likewise impossible. (Never mind that kids are quite curious about anatomy. I should point out that I acquired an illicit copy of The Joy of Sex when I was 6. Puritanical households make children curious quite swiftly.)

Both essays have been dutifully responded to by, respectively, Colleen Mondor and John Fox. Fox suggests that Skurnick failed to read one story correctly and used this to paint a needlessly broad stroke against the capacities of children.

But what is really going on here? I have appreciated both Newitz and Skurnick’s work in the past. However, these essays both represent foolhardy and illogical positions. These two idiotic essays read as if they were written to draw traffic to their respective outlets. Forget reason, ratiocination, or even a modicum of common sense. Newitz and Skurnick both decided that they’d throw all that into the incinerator. And in doing so, they have both settled for pernicious and discriminatory positions that threaten the possibilities of literature. If we cannot accept a 9-year-old who likes Emily Dickinson, then I suppose we should disregard the wisdom of Holden Caulfield or the musings of Huckleberry Finn. After all, all dem kids must be dumb! Likewise, it’s worth pointing out that there was once a time in which anyone reading or writing science fiction was considered a pervert or a loon. (For example, consider this 1954 Time article in which a Cleveland psychiatric social worker declared that science fiction plots betrayed “schizophrenic manifestations” in the minds of their authors.) It is extremely disappointing to see the editor of a sizable science fiction website fall into this same fallacious line of reasoning for YA.