Randall Jarrell

I've been reading No Other Book, a collection of brilliant essays by the poet and critic Randall Jarrell. You might not agree with him, but his nuance and freedom from ideology make you grateful for his contribution. Bad criticism doesn't make things worse, it just doesn't do anything. Good criticism can point, at its best, and get you excited and want to experience the work or consider it even if there are problems with it.

I thought I'd quote from him the next few posts, and to start, why not point to something that seems to me dead wrong: his rejection of abstract expressionism on fairly simple terms. Jarrell says,

[Abstract expressionism…] is the specialized, intensive exploitation of one part of such painting, and the rejection of other parts and of the whole.

Earlier painting is a kind of metaphor: the world of the painting itself, of the oil-and-canvas objects and their and oil-and-canvas relations, is one that stands for — that has come into being because of the world of flesh-and-blood objects…

He goes on like this, decrying the lack of representation, of clear reference. You can understand the despair — he wants to recognize things. He was a literalist by inclination — a strange spin for the mind of a poet. Jarrell didn't understand that art divided up about the time of Matisse into an art of sensibility and an art of the mind. AE is an art of sensibility, where you ride the energy. Much of current painting involves the art of the mind — conceptualized, illustrations of sophisticated and often shallow theory. On the other hand, arts of sensibility can go wrong by devolving into narcissistic indulgence. But both approaches don't have to resolve to their worst extensions. I don't know how you could look at Gorky or De Kooning or Pollock, and miss the energy, the sensitivity and feeling in the work. Admittedly, abstract expressionism is finally a poignant pipe dream, a yearning for freedom, that very much expresses the American spirit and its despairs.

But Jarrell is honest in a real sense, and well spoken, a tremendously sensitive and subtle mind, and you read him with understanding.

Here is the conclusion to his poem, in the voice of a fictive character attempting to reassure herself of her worth; the conclusion to the poem, Next Day:

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I'm anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

No question Jarrell identified. Jarrell was killed by a car while walking by a road. He had been treated for mental illness and had attempted suicide.

Philip Roth

In this interview at YouTube Philip Roth expresses the malaise of disappointed old age. As is the current fashion, his feelings are deflected from the personal and then politicized. Roth says, “[Bush]…utterly destroyed whatever moral authority the United States had”, suggesting that it might also be the company Roth keeps that is clouding his mind, resulting in mind-numbing slogans rather than nuanced ideas. Roth appears to have collapsed internally and projects that despair on everyone else. Roth is a fine writer, with a substantial body of work, who instead of achieving wisdom has devolved into ponderousness.

Craig Ferguson and the Clever Girl

Last night Craig Ferguson expressed admiration for a pickup line aimed his way: Ferguson was driving in LA when four girls pulled up to his car at a light and gestured for him to roll down his window.

One of the girls said, “I lost my phone number, can I have yours?”

Reaper

Kevin Smith did a great job directing Reaper — a show he didn't write. He was able to fully focus his talent for direction — the humor was embedded in the show. I almost said “in the film” because this TV show feels like a film. Combine Buffy, Ghost Busters, X Files, all-the-slacker-movies, Angel, some Twin Peaks, and…how can you miss? Especially when the director loves comics.This is a good time for House to be displaced because it was getting pretty tired — although House itself has as its main character a depressed devil.

New Gallery

Just added new images to a gallery here at PaintedMatter, with a new interface as well. Check out the Selected Work gallery.

In addition, improved the navigation for the Recent Work galleries.

And finally created a navigation page for Archived Projects and the PaintedMatter Storefront.

Deezer

Pandora.com, the online radio site, never quite got it right because of the restrictions placed on it by the music companies. If you wanted to hear a steady diet of Tom Waits you would get one Tom Waits song and others they felt were related. Pandora fancied it up: it was a “music genome project”. But you wanted Waits, not an intern's judgment of what other things you would like.

Now a French company has done it — they negotiated an ad sharing deal with the music consortiums. Deezer is a site you can search for, say, Tom Waits, and get a long list that plays all…Tom Waits.

The library at present is not as large as you might like, but the idea is great, and despite a few glitches when setting up playlists (you have to register), deezer is very well implemented.

Here is a sample playlist:

First Sarkozy, now deezer.com — La France may be finding its way.

ABCs "This Week"

It has been awhile since we watched ABCs This Week . George Stephanopoulos, who appeared a good choice as host, seemingly bright and congenial, does indeed possess those qualities, but he is a weak and incompetent host. Stephanopoulos is incapable of teasing out coherence. The show is well represented graphically by the seating. Instead of a large table, with room for thoughts to grow, as Thoreau might have liked, you have this group of yentas clucking all at once, like chickens in a henhouse, shoulder to shoulder.

The producer is not overseeing the show: the interview with Hillary Clinton lasted way too long and Stephanopoulos could get little more than a long political speech out of her. Clinton does look the best of the lot for the Democrats however — but we knew that before the interview. If she ran against Giuliani it would be a rare election where you felt the country might be well served by either candidate.

David Brooks always brings thoughts along with him as does EJ Dionne, but Cokie Roberts and George Will contribute only the predictable. Cokie does it with enthusiasm — there is hardly a thought that can be finished without her shrill voice overlapping its completion, after which she runs on at length with some obvious and simple idea. I've heard Cokie be a lot better in other venues — the show brings down the crew.

This Week needs an overhaul, top to bottom.

Andrew Keen's High Quality

Andrew Keen wrote a book about bloggers. He thinks blogging is all junk and lacks, his favorite term, “high quality” (HQ). His examples of HQ are the New York Times and conveniently, the show on which he was appearing, promoting his book : Lehrer. (I keep hearing his “high quality” assertion as I think about Reuters early use of the word “martyr” for suicide murderers.) I wonder if he followed the New York Times' self-sliming under Howell Raines (although they have self-corrected to some extent under Bill Keller).

The fact that most “high quality” journalism venues themselves blog, or that all bloggers are not presenting junk, suggests that Keen is incapable of making distinctions. In fact, many HQ venues pull bloggers into their fold when the bloggers have achieved critical mass via popularity.

There is tremendous resentment on the part of journalists that their sole control of media channels is now complicated with many voices — often more popular and doing a better job at revealing on-the-ground facts, embarrassing mainstream media. The HQ journalists played the corporate media game, got their jobs, and now ask, why should someone without their bureaucratic skills have a larger audience?

Glenn Reynolds said something that made more sense to me: if bloggers are going to play the part of journalists their natural venue is the local. Newspapers and big media can't handle the details but bloggers can unearth through sheer persistence — a proximate cause of change. His interlocutor, Sean Carroll, said that right wing blogs tend to be more diffuse, more “pundit” focused, while left wing blogs are more activist and seek journalistic credibility.

What really needs some regulation on the net are the hate sites and grotesque violence that can be found with a simple search — as Clive James has pointed out. But how can you get rid of that? Keen thinks the web is pre-civilized but in fact it is post-civilized. Welcome to the logical consequence of post-modernism Andrew.

Scientific Problems

In this exchange between two science writers you hear an anecdote that had me laughing out loud.

John Horgan's wife has an animal rescue project on their property; she was caring for a swan which had lost its leg to a snapping turtle. It turns out swans are mean and every time Horgan would pass by the swan, on his way to his work space, the large swan would rise and hiss at him. It turns out as well, that swans produce prodigious poop. John's dog ate some of it and was emitting “chemical warfare farts”.

A mean one-legged swan which rewards your care with hissing at you on your way to work and which emits poop the size of a small mammal — and then the family dog gets gassy eating the fowl (sorry) produce. And you thought you had problems.

YouTube

Just uploaded a new vid @ YouTube:

Obama's Judgment

Obama received an endorsement from and reportedly has as his foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski — national security advisor to failed president and now failed ex-president Jimmy Carter.

If Obama has indeed chosen Zbigniew Brzezinski as an advisor Obama's credibility is greatly diminished — his judgment this time, not his inexperience. The reptilian Brzezinski first came to my notice years ago in a New Yorker piece written by Elizabeth Drew. She said Brzezinski was yapping and walking around his office in a circle, throwing a pillow in the air as he bloviated. She couldn't figure out what Brzezinski thought he was doing. Preening, that is what he was doing.

Christopher Hitchens about Carter's presidency:

In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House “Bible study” sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.

And Zbigniew Brzezinski was Carter's national security advisor.

Antiques and Values

The Antiques Road Show we just watched took place in Honolulu. Trying to play up the lottery aspect of the show the producer airs the antique evaluations so they ascend in monetary value.

At the end of the show a woman with a painting by a native Hawaiian artist was being assessed. It was a landscape with figures portraying a less developed Hawaii. She had purchased it for $400 in the 1970s and spent about $900 on restoration.

It turned out this painting was a “national treasure”. The painting was worth $150,000 at auction. The woman, a shy and dignified person, was having trouble sorting out her emotions. She had goose bumps and was on the edge of tears. It might seem an odd reaction, but it wasn't at all. In fact, it was touching. She wasn't acting like a lottery winner — her emotions appeared only tangentially connected to profit. She said she was “proud to have the painting”. Very fine.

Something like this had happened before, and as been shown often on PBS: a man brought in a Chief's Blanket, associated with a famous Native American chief and I think, Kit Carson, believe it or not, who gave the blanket to his father for work he had done. It too was a national treasure. In that case it was worth 1.5 million bucks. And once again, the man was close to tears, and once again, it appeared something more complex than simple monetary value moved him.

Petraeus

The Democrats have slammed the Republicans — for not planning, not ancipating consequences — in going into Iraq. Now, less interested in putative mistakes or logical consistency, the Democrats want to get out yesterday, without planning, or considering the possible consequences from precipitate withdrawal. Petraeus was chosen to assess the situation and ever since the Democrats have been attempting to undermine him — before he even opened his mouth.

The Democrats appear intoxicated with a simple herd instinct, their natural intelligence and individual judgment vitiated by their cascading frenzy, “We were right (or so they think), so we should pull out now to underline our transient public opinion victory.” It's all about them, all about some distorted conflation of current circumstance with Viet Nam, all about winning a political battle at home; for them, it is not about succeeding in a military/political battle in Iraq with a sinister enemy percolating just beneath all this. Listening to the hearings, you would hardly know we had a real enemy in that part of the world. You would think the whole problem is politics in the States.

Everyone knows, in both parties, that this is a long term struggle and it will take a sustained effort. Anyone elected president will do just that — gird themselves for the long haul. Soft partition with troops in Kurdistan and reassurances to Turkey appears the best route — from people who have thought seriously about it — but who knows really? Congress isn't even talking about it.

Otter Love

I think I first saw this YouTube vid on NBC. About 8 million people have also viewed it. Two sea otters holding “hands” . You don't have to make much of an effort to anthropomorphize this — it does it for you.

If animals could talk the calculus would change dramatically. A cranky rabbit complaining all the time, a foul mouthed kitten, a canary that was hypercritical, a turtle who was an extremist ideologue — those cute creatures might quickly lose their charm.

On the other hand, if we could open our hearts to our species as we do to other species, as the song goes, oh what a world this would be.

I Don't Think So

There are periodically articles about rejection slips dumped on the doorsteps of the worthy. It is a sure fire subject because gatekeepers seldom feel they will be scrutinized — so in lifting the curtain you get to see the gatekeeper's cluelessness revealed in full blossom.

In this latest NYT iteration of befuddled rejection slips the following judgments were offered to Knopf by its editorial “readers” :

• Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”)
• Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”)
• Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”)
• Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”)
• Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (too racy)
• James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”)

The article says that in a two year period Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman.

One particular chuckle-head takes the cake in their assessment of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, “very dull, a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.”

Born to Bias

This WaPo article affirms a truth you always suspected, but now, sadly, there are studies to confirm. We are born to believe in myths. Bias is folded into thinking and once infected it is hard to cure the patient. The task of sorting out the truth from the falsehood, the reality from the fabrication, seems all the more daunting for a world filled with media chatter, manipulators and the misinformed, all potentially viral on the net.

Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

... Long-term memories matter most in public health campaigns or political ones, and they are the most susceptible to the bias of thinking that well-recalled false information is true...

The research also highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

Only indirectly related, but this reminds me of a cartoon where a man was giving his dog a command while the dog sat looking at him. The caption showing what the dog heard: gibberish punctuated by the dog's name. The only thing the dog heard: his own name. You hear what you are listening for...

The World Without Us

There is a grim, engrossing quality to this book's theme. I've heard the author of The World Without Us interviewed numerous times. The author's speculation speaks to the self-punishment fantasies evoked by liberal guilt.

[The author…] imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.

It is a good thing that at least the author of the book gets the irony. Part of the fascination of Al Gore's current incarnation is the satisfaction he has in earnestly telling us of impending doom while getting fatter and richer; Gore has higher approval ratings with his target audience than he could ever have achieved as president. Sometimes Gore seems like a variant of Wayne Dyer, relentlessly sermonizing with an unerring understanding of what his audience wants to hear. Jeremiads seldom have utility.

Tip O'Neill

On Lehrer, Barney Frank quoted Tip O'Neill's observation about the desire for positive change without pain:

Hey kid, haven't you heard? Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die.

Lucid Dreaming

This section of a discussion about consciousness has science writer John Horgan rejecting post-modernism. Post-modernist nihilism, doubting all knowledge, laying claim that all is context, all narrative, provides no insight but helps rationalize self-absorbed detachment. Science is a model of reality — not its rejection. Art has other entry points for discussion — it is no surprise that the best interpreters of paintings are poets.

Earlier in the discussion the talk is about lucid dreaming and its implications. The mind is always constructing stories to explain ambiguous reality. In an article I read recently, Kurt Gödel was said to have carried it even further, doubting the existence of time, the ultimate pattern we impose on blooming, buzzing reality.

Quoted in the podcast — from Mr. Electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell:

The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Oliver Sacks: The Generalist

Pauline Kael said in her review of Awakenings, the Robin Williams film about Oliver Sacks, that the movies' characterization of Sacks missed the subject's large ego. Kael didn't mean that in a disparaging sense, but to say that someone so accomplished had to have a baseline confidence — not as portrayed in the movie, an absent-minded, good-hearted fud.

Sacks is a remarkable fellow who should be proud of himself, speaking as he does with intensity about the world of wonder in which he lives; Sacks is interested in many things, in a scholarly, soft science, detached manner, which has made Columbia University think of him as an artist. The university has appointed Sacks a “Columbia artist”, a designation that could be euphonious only to a university bureaucrat.

Shy and ambitious, Sacks never seemed to me comfortable in the public realm, but apparently things have changed. Sacks says,

I’m excited, because, in a way, I’ve been a sort of an outsider or freelancer or maverick for the last 40 years, and here I think it will be quite an intense sort of full relationship with Columbia.”

Sacks is a 19th century generalist in a compartmentalized age of narrow specialization. We could use more like him.

Jolly Good Fellow

A friendly looking guy at Google plays Zelig.