Archives for April 12, 2004

“But our successful novelist of to-day begins when he is two- or three-and-twenty. He ‘catches on,’ as they say, and he becomes a laborious professional writer. He toils at his novels as if he were the manager of a bank or the captain of an ocean steamer. In one narrow groove he slides up and down, up and down, growing infinitely skilful at his task of making bricks out of straw. He finishes the last page of ‘The Writhing Victim’ in the morning, lunches at his club, has a nap; and, after dinner, writes the first page of ‘The Swart Sombrero.’ He cannot describe a trade or a profession, for he knows none but his own. He has no time to look at life, and he goes on weaving fancies out of the ever-dwindling stores of his childish and boyish memories. As these grow exhausted, his works get more and more shadowy, till at last even the long-suffering public that once loved his merits, and then grew tolerant of his tricks, can endure him no longer.”

Edmund Gosse, “The Tyranny of the Novel” (1892)

“Reject all para-normal phenomena. It’s the only way to remain sane.”

Joe Orton, What the Butler Saw

Kate Bolick reviewed A Terry Teachout Reader in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review:

Cultural critics may lack the depth of knowledge that comes with specialization, but Terry Teachout’s self-issued carte blanche to submerge himself in whatever he wants (he is the music critic of Commentary, the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, and ”critic-for-hire” on everything from opera to television for many other publications) has left him with an unusual and singular perspective on the last 15 years of American cultural activity. Now that the country has crossed its ”great cultural and technological divide,” Teachout writes, as well as finally left postmodernism behind, he hopes his collection will ”have some value as a chronicle, a road map of how we got from there to here.” That the 58 engaging essays in ”A Terry Teachout Reader,” on subjects ranging from Dawn Powell and Louis Armstrong to David Ives and Martha Graham, tell us as much about America as they do about Teachout’s evolving sensibility makes the book an intellectual memoir by way of enthusiasms. His detailed snapshots of bygone cultural moments are introduced by a thoughtful history of our cultural climate over the last half-century.

If you haven’t yet ordered a copy, go here and do so.

Here’s something you might have missed, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune:

MILWAUKEE — Joseph J. Zimmermann Jr., who invented the telephone answering machine in 1948 and patented it a year later, has died at age 92.

Mr. Zimmermann, who died March 31, said in a 1949 interview with the Milwaukee Journal that he got the idea for the device as the owner of an air-conditioning and heating company when he could not afford to hire a secretary to take calls while he was out of the office.

The first machine, the Electronic Secretary Model R1, was made up of a box that lifted the telephone receiver from its cradle when the phone rang; a box containing a control panel with a 78-r.p.m. record player inside that played a recorded greeting; and a wire recorder on top of the second box for recording a series of 30-second messages.

Mr. Zimmermann teamed with businessman and fellow engineer George Danner to start Waukesha, Wis.-based Electronic Secretary Industries. More than 6,000 answering machines were in use in 1957 when the two sold the company, and the patent rights, to General Telephone Corp., which later became GTE.

“The only modern inventions that have been of any real use to me are the typewriter and the Pullman car,” H.L. Mencken told a reporter for Life in 1946. Kurt Andersen asked me the other day whether I thought Mencken would have taken to blogging. I think it’s possible (just), but I’m absolutely sure he would have bought an answering machine. I’ve used one for the past quarter-century, and I can’t imagine how I ever got through the day without it. I even bought my septuagenarian mother her first answering machine, and though it took her a year or so to get used to it, she now finds it indispensable. Can you think of a postwar invention with a higher ratio of social significance to cost?

I’m not the first blogger to link to Chicha’s devastating takedown of The Swan, but just in case you haven’t read it yet, do so at once:

Other shows have had equally shallow and enraging premises–remember Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? But the premise always drew equally shallow and enraging contestants, while the contestants on The Swan don’t seem shallow so much as insecure and clueless. The show itself is the villain, the only target for our hatred. But the question is, is The Swan purposefully loathsome, or just deeply hypocritical?…

The answer is yes.

Speaking of reality TV, Tom Shales, the Washington Post‘s TV critic, also “reviews” broadcast news coverage, and his comments
on Condoleezza’s Rice testimony are worth pondering:

If it were to be viewed as a battle, or a sporting event, or a contest — and of course that would be wrong — then Condoleezza Rice won it. Indeed, the national security adviser did so well and seemed so firmly in command of the situation yesterday, when she testified under oath before the 9/11 commission, that one had to wonder why the White House spent so much time and energy trying to keep her from having to appear….

I’ve long had mixed feelings about this kind of reviewing, but I’m also well aware that in a world where most people get their news by watching TV, every occurrence is a performance, and to ignore that fact is to disregard the nature of reality in the age of information.

As it happens, I had lunch with a Washington Post editor the same day Shales’ piece appeared, and I asked him, “The only thing I can’t figure out is this: why didn’t the Post start it up front instead of in the Style section?”

“Because it was an opinion piece,” he replied.

So it was–and so what? I don’t see the Post on paper, so I don’t know what was on its front page last Friday, but my guess is that Shales’ piece was far more to the point of the day’s events than at least some of the news stories deemed worthy of page-one placement. Is there really so great a difference between unabashed opinion journalism and the “news analysis” (sometimes labeled as such, sometimes not) regularly published on the front pages of most major papers? Bloggers don’t think so–which I suspect is one of the reasons why their audience is growing daily, while the readership of newspapers continues to shrink.

Critical Mass liked my recent posting on reading lists (the one that inspired me to launch “Consumables”).

Here’s what she said in preface to posting her own list:

In a much earlier incarnation of this blog, I used to maintain a running list of my own reading. I was always surprised by how much traffic my reading list page attracted. I liked contemplating the list just as I like contemplating my own (vastly overcrowded) bookshelves–there’s a sort of mnemonic quality to both activities that is at once soothing and inspiring–but I was quite intrigued to see how many other people were also interested in the list. As Terry says, such lists are approximations of people’s shelves, and as such they offer both insight into the lister’s mind and suggest new directions the reader of the list might take in his or her own reading….

Not surprisingly, her readers are posting their own lists as comments.

Have I started something? I sure hope so.

– On Saturday night I went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (now maybe Our Girl will tell me what she thought of it!), and last night I watched Joel McCrea in Jacques Tourneur’s Stars in My Crown–ideal Easter fare for a small-town boy who loves Westerns.

– Continuing on my Barbara Pym kick, I’m now reading An Unsuitable Attachment, whose characters include Faustina, one of my all-time favorite fictional cats.

– Now playing on iTunes: Ralph Towner’s “Icarus,” recorded by Towner and Gary Burton on Matchbook, one of the most beautiful duo albums ever made. Vibraharp and acoustic twelve-string guitar may sound like an odd match on paper, but on this CD they go together like strawberries and champagne. (Lots of other people think so, too, as you’ll find out when you click on the link and see how much a second-hand copy costs.)

UPDATE: I’d forgotten that OGIC already wrote about Eternal Sunshine.

What she said.