Sinister Dexterity

Monday, September 30, 2002, 09:47 p.m.

I got the CD by The Strokes from the library, and I have to admit I do kind of like it. About a year ago, I didn't even bother to enter into a free Poundhouse drawing to see them, because the hype just seemed obnoxious, as did their anti-fashion fashion statements. But I've decided they're a bit like Oasis — unoriginal, but I they choose their influences well. In the Strokes, I hear The velvet Underground, the Fall, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids — the sort of protean punk sounds from the time before hardcore squeezed everything into monotonous pigeonholes. Their music lacks the essential, necessary quality of their forebears — it is much harder to imagine rock music without the VU, or even without RIchard Hell, than without the Strokes, and I don't picture them assuming the important role in people's lives that really great bands do. But there is room in the world for pretty good bands as well as great bands.

Sunday, September 29, 2002, 08:09 p.m.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In the continuing interest of serving my own vanity, I mean getting back to my roots, yet another undergraduate Comp. Lit. paper, this one analyzing Erich Auerbach's analysis of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

Saturday, September 28, 2002, 06:18 p.m.

Working at the mall, I get the joy of Mall Music all day. I would give examples of the diabetic-coma-inducing tunes they play most of the time, but I don't even know what most of it is called. The bright side of that is that it's especially sweet when something good slips through, like John Lennon's "Woman" or Neil Young's "Harvest Moon." But that's a bit like saying that a bowl of ice cream tastes sweeter when someone removes a ball gag that's been in your mouth all day so you can eat it.

Saturday, September 28, 2002, 01:01 p.m.
The Prism Blooms

Another microwaved leftover from the overcrowded freezer that is my academic background, this time a prismatic exploration of the character Leopold Bloom from Ulysses.

Friday, September 27, 2002, 08:02 p.m.

Recently Read
Bernard Peterson, The Caravaggio Books

I picked this up at my library because I like these mysteries that have a bit of an intellectual conceit, such as the art-historical mysteries of Iain Pears, and it looked like a reasonable way to pass 2-3 hours. And it was. The plot didn't have many twists, and the resolution was not terribly surprising, but the characters and pacing more than made up for any weaknesses as a genre piece.

So I looked to see what other books Peterson had, and found just one thing, from 1980, that might or might not have even been the same Peterson. This one was first published in 1992, but not published in paperback until Worldwide (the mystery division of Harlequin) picked it up in 1997, and apparently not re-published since then.

Plenty of authors write a book or two but fall into, or remain in, obscurity, but there's something more poignant about it when the writer is clearly smart and talented. The book could have had a wide appeal: there are planty of other academic-themed mystery series, the characters display nuanced twists on the stock figures of the genre, the book has no present-tense violence (just discovered victims) and little profanity -- making it more appealing to tamer mystery fans -- yet is free from cats, aged amateur sleuths, and other elements that turn off fans of more serious mysteries.

Maybe there's no mystery or tragedy. Maybe he had an idea for a book and got it out of his system. Maybe, as Tiffany pointed out, he might have been single when he wrote the book and then got married and wanted to spend time with his family, or maybe he got a more demanding or satisfying job. Pretty good book, though.

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 24-5, 2002,

While driving to work, I've been listening to God and Mankind: Comparative Religions, a lecture series by Robert Oden. So far, it's been a great exploration of different myths and worldviews, and the ideas are made more powerful and digestible by Oden's obvious enthusiasm and love of the material.

Oden's lecture on Gilgamesh really makes me want to go back and re-read the epic, which I remember liking when I read it in Comp. Lit. 1 my first semester at UC Davis, but which I haven't gone back to since. Oden draws many parallels between the myths of different religions, such as the way that Sargon of Sumer(?) was set adrift on the river in a basket, like Moses, or the fact that the epic of Gilgamesh features a flood story much like the biblical flood, many centuries before the advent of Judaism. But what struck me were the similarities between Gilgamesh and the young Gautama Buddha, which Oden did not touch on. (more later...)

Tuesday, September 24, 2002, 10:15 p.m.
pretty good quote

"Hawaii is kind of like an extended thanksgiving except that everyone walks around half-naked and there are a lot less consonants."
—Beecroft

Monday, September 23, 2002, 07:06 p.m.
G. K. Chesteron's Blog

I haven't really read this yet, but this is about the coolest thing I've seen in, well, days. I found it just now when I was look ing for the blog Brain Coral, by a guy I used to know virtually, back when it felt new and exciting to know someone virtually. And what was one of the top results for "brain coral blog." And if you don't know who Chesterton is, check the blog.

Monday, September 23, 2002, 04:01 p.m.

Recently Read:
David Rakoff, Fraud

Recently Listened To:
Ridley Pearson, Chain of Evidence

Just Started:
Bernard Peterson, The Caravaggio Books

Ongoing:
Louis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought
Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution

Sunday, September 22, 2002, 10:30 p.m.

Too lazy to write a fresh entry at the moment, but I want to add content, so I will provide a link to an undergraduate paper I wrote on Borges.

Saturday, September 21, 2002, 11:26 a.m.

Belated thanks to libboy for the curious compilation CD, which allows me, once and for all, to have the Kinks and Kid Koala on one disc. (Granted, I could have just sent M.C. Rich an e-mail, but that wouldn't help his Google ranking, and besides, isn't the point of a blog to take things that should probably be private and make them public?) Nice tastes of lots of bands that I have heard of but not heard, or (like Yo La Tengo) heard but not for ten years or so. One day, hopefully soon, I will get myself a CD burner and give Rich a piece of my mind.

Friday, September 20, 2002, 08:22 p.m.

I have bought only two books from Amazon -- one of them from a remainder place that sells through Amazon and one with the meager kickbacks I got from trying to sell schoolbooks to my classmates on an affiliate site. But I hit Amazon several times a week, because it's such a good reader's advisory resource -- even if I'm mainly advising myself.

I think the Listmania! lists are fascinating as a way to see what kind of books people think to associate. More recently, Amazon has started features called "So you want to..." that let people write longer essay-style reviews on a theme: "So you want to be an expert on ferrets" or something like that.

But what I think is really interesting is the way people hijack the "So you want..." feature and use it as a soapbox. This piece by novelist Vera Nazarin is a perfect example. She has written a plea for pity on struggling writers, talking about how hard it is to make a living by writing. But by including links to popular books like The Lovely Bones, Red Rabbit and The Nanny Diaries in her essay, her pieces comes up with the related lists results when people search for the new Tom Clancy, Stephen King or whatever. She links her own book (for obvious reasons), non-bestsellers that she really wants to recommend, and heaps of popular stuff just to draw people to her essay. I've seen other examples of this. It's an interesting symbiotic relationship: Amazon essentially gets people all over the world to write their promotional copy for free, some people review books just to show their tastes to the world, and a few people figure out how to use a commercial Web site for their own agendas.

It also seems like people will make a long list for the purpose of promoting a single book. For example, "Greatest List in Internet History!" by the mysterious Shank440 starts with the book Thunder of Heaven by Ted Dekker, about which Shank440 says "Outstanding Fiction!! Truly Amazing! Click its icon now, come back here later. Seriously!" The list has 24 other books by the eclectic likes of Fern Michaels, Michael Moore, John Grisham, Michael J. Fox and others. Nothing unites them except that they are popular (by some measure) and they are books. Why bother to include a book on a list, and then write a review that consists in its entirety of "Very popular," "Many like this book," or "Intense" (written of Moore's Stupid White Men). In fact, the only reason why I know about Thunder of Heaven is because I have seen it on several of these lists.

P.S. 9/21 7:34 a.m.
Here's another example of hijacking Amazon. Why stand on the corner with a sign saying "The End is Near" when you can let Amazon spread your message for you?

Friday, September 13, 2002, 08:54 p.m.
vegan bondage stuff

For people who want to inflict pain on willing humans, not unwilling animals, apparently.

Recently Read:
Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

Monday, September 9, 2002, 10:38 a.m.
Paul Auster on New York

Nice Paul Auster piece on New York, stories, democracy, and other good stuff.

Monday, September 9, 2002, 10:26 a.m.

Recently Read:
Ridley Pearson, The Angel Maker (finished yesterday)
Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (finished a couple weeks ago, but forgot to list)

Sunday, September 8, 2002, 06:50 p.m.

I very much hope I'm wrong, but I have fear that Resident Bush has been playing coy about possible attacks on Iraq to hype up interest so he can declare the "grand opening" of war on September 11. I hope I am wrong, I'm just writing this now so I can say "I told you so" if it happens.

Thursday, September 5, 2002, 11:27 a.m.

Recently Read:
Robert B. Parker, Looking for Rachel Wallace
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Patrick Quillin, The Healing Power of Cayenne Peppers

How do I get so much read? For one thing, I do read fast. Also, I usually have multiple things going all at once, so I can go a while without finishing any book and then finish three in two days. Most of the books I've been reading lately aren't that long. The Healing Power of Cayenne Peppers is only about 80 pages without the recipes, which I skipped. Some do go really fast: I read Looking for Rachel Wallace in one day; It's a little over 200 pages, and if you've read Robert B. Parker you know he keeps it moving along. I also read Rich Dad, Poor Dad in one day. It's also pretty short, and Kiyosaki jokingly says himself that he's a "terrible writer" but a good salesman, but I wanted to see what he had to say so I breezed through at a rapid pace. He and his co-author are not terrible writers in terms of making the books fast, clear and easy to read. Also, I've been riding the bus to work at least a couple days a week, and it's about an hour each way. And I have a whole hour for lunch, and I bring lunch so I don't waste part of the hour traveling to find food and waiting in line. And we have no kids and no cable TV. It all adds up.

Wednesday, September 4, 2002, 07:07 a.m.

Recent Reading:
Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
Dan Brown, Angels and Demons
Phillip Margolin, Wild Justice
Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Monday, September 2, 2002, 12:50 p.m.

I just did a Google search for "sinister dexterity" to see if I came up, and I was #2! Not bad, especially since their cached version is from the end of July.

If this doesn't seem so surprising, there are a lot of pages that include the phrase. What I didn't realize until I did this search is that James Joyce used the phrase in writing Finnegans Wake.

2:10 p.m. I was just looking at some of the other hits for "sinister dexterity" and found that it's also in Herman Melville's Billy Budd.

Monday, September 2, 2002, 11:10 a.m.

Freaky Linkages:
I'm listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR, and I went to the New York Times online to check the news. Just as the NPR guest mentioned people laid off and and on disability, the NYT page loaded and the top headline was "Laid-Off Workers Swelling the Cost of Disability Pay." Literally right as she was saying that. Synchronicity, dude.

Sunday, September 1, 2002, 11:07 p.m.

Recent Reading:
Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery
Sandra Tsing Loh, A Year in Van Nuys
Howard Lyman, Mad Cowboy: Straight Talk from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat
comments later...