Taking a break from manifesto-making to share a piece I wrote for the Guardian: “Writers, beware the drive-by when you blog.”
Also: I’m reading my first Murakami this weekend, After Dark, and I see now what the big deal is– it’s so atmospheric, so well-observed, and so mysterious. Highly recommended.
Keith Gessen hath a blog. And we'll be reading.*
At first I thought it was more likely a crazy fan of his who was imitating his voice. He quotes the Lorax, who speaks for the trees. He talks about Emily Gould and Nick Denton. He uses the device of fake reader mail to self-deprecate and pontificate.
It's so much of a caricature… that it can only be the real thing.
I do have one question, though. Gessen gets accused of a lot of things (most attributable to envy and snark), but one label I see over and over is "misogynist." I'd like to hear more about this– I read N+1 when I can, I read Gessen's novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, and I haven't come across anything to get my little Barnard-educated back up. Sure, the female characters might have been a little flat. But that's not misogyny– that's just bad writing. Gessen attends more to the men because he gets the men. He doesn't get the girls. In either sense of the phrase.
So if someone has a real argument to make I'd be interested to hear it.
*well crap, just realized gawker scooped me on this by 8 hours. they really are the last word in media journalism, aren't they? no use trying to fight it.
The holding page for Hitotoki Paris is up! It’s here.
If you are planning to send us something, and you’d like to submit it in time for the official launch in April, please send me your story by March 20th to lauren at hitotoki dot org.
For more information on what Hitotoki is, see the site or this previous post.
And there’s some exciting news: we’re going to be doing a partnership with Arte to kick off the Salon des Livres this weekend! So stay tuned…
Vous voulez contribuer EN FRANÇAIS? Cliquez ici.
Stop me if I’ve already mentioned this, but one of my favorite bloggers is The Little Professor. I love the way she is able to make her academic work the subject of her blog and keep it interesting and useful for her readers. (Not that I think academic work inherently uninteresting or useless. All evidence to the contrary.)
For example, see this recent post on the limitations of biographical criticism, or another fairly recent post on the way parallel plots work. Unlike many litbloggers, who mainly serve as glorified Google Readers, The Little Professor gets down and dirty with the texts she looks at, takes ‘em apart, sees how they tick. You know, literary criticism.
All too often my own blog is just a Google Reader with commentary, but reading TLP is very inspiring. So while I figure out how to bring my blog and my academic research more into line with each other, there is one thing I can borrow from her here and now: the sharing of recent book acquisitions. Here are the paperbacks which have joined my collection this week:
Balzac, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.
In which the phrase "troisième sexe" is coined. Very important for my orals; very important for my dissertation.
Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, suivi du Catalogue des idées chic.
Utterly irreverent and a great cultural studies tool. I give you an example:
Catholicisme: A en une influence très favorable sur les Arts.
Musée (…) du Louvre. à éviter pour les jeunes filles.
Mallarmé, Igitur. Divagations. Un coup de dés.
Orals. Includes "Crise de vers" and an essay on Baudelaire.
Apollinaire, Alcools.
Orals. (à l’orale)
Jacqueline de Romilly, Le Sourire innombrable.
Because if you want to express yourself very well in French you have to read those who write it very well. Ahem. Pour bien s’exprimer il faut lire ceux qui s’expriment bien.
I was a little bitchy on Gridskipper the other day. I know the Gawker Media Empire is built on snark, but it always feels a bit strange when I get a chance to exercise it.
At least it was for a good cause.
Petit expériment en français, ici. On verra ce que ça donne.
Now that I’ve heard back from the other half of my blogger sandwich, I can officially post the results of the Citizen of the Month-sponsored Great Interview Experiment! To participate, go here.
Here I am being interviewed by DaveX of Startling Moniker.
And here is my interview of Pocket CT.
Maîtresse: First things first: Mac or PC?
Pocket CT: PC. I have to admit that I
almost switched to mac when I bought it three years ago. The lure of
pen to screen way beat a mac with a wacom tablet especially since I was using
it for life drawing. I will have to do something rather than go with vista
when the time comes.
Maîtresse: I see from reading your "about" page that there’s a really cute
story behind the creation of your blog– one of your friends found you to be
such a useful source of information that she wanted to shrink you and keep you
in her pocket; thus was Pocket CT born. But here’s my question: who would you
shrink and put in YOUR pocket, if you could?
Pocket CT: Wow that is a hard question.
If I could shrink people and put them in
my pocket for easy access, I may have a menagerie. The fact that not one of
them would actually agree to be stored in my pocket until I had want of them is
clogging my brain as I try to answer it. My first answers are the people I miss
the most right now. My friends Robin
who lives in Washington and Rebekah
in California
are sorely missed in my life. Is the answer to this who I enjoy the most right
now? Theresa, Jan, all the
people I like to dance with at the Guiding Star Grange. Is this for practical
purpose? Should I put a handyman there? Or maybe I can use this to take out
someone who isn’t doing anything good for the world. I could have a
giant pocket full of choices there.
“Want to see my mini Pat Robertson? I
know, he is a little smooshed. I forgot he was in my back pocket and must have
sat on something hard and maybe pokey from the look of him. What? You want to
put him in a jar with bees? I don’t think that is very nice. Well yeah,
I agree, it is probably his just due but I don’t think I can…”
Should I answer in the same spirit that
Sheila had of someone who can answer all my geeky questions at a whim? One of
the guys who write the O’Reilly books might do the trick.
OK now I should just choose one. I will
pick Rebekah even though she will probably kick me if she is in my pocket. So
I wouldn’t keep her there, rather send her to my sister’s to help
out. She can easily don a super hero cape for stuff like that.
Maîtresse: You’ve just completed your first full year of blogging. What
have you learned, if anything?
Pocket CT: Don’t write anything that you will be
horrified if the person reads. They will read what ever I write. This seems
to be the case even if the person rarely touches a computer or doesn’t
know me from adam. Something will lead them to that post and then they’ll
tell me they were there.
Maîtresse: Your blog is full of tales of mischief-making– reading it is
so fun and uplifting. How can your readers keep the Pocket CT spirit in between your blog
posts?
Pocket CT: I suggest Pronoia by Rob Brezney, It is
workbook style with exercises. For example he suggests that you stand on a
traffic island holding a sign that says, "I love to help; I need to give;
please take some money." and dole out currency to random people. In
another you are to blow kisses to all the people who need them, even the awful
ones.
Or if you need another blog I suggest http://happyvalleynews.wordpres
Maîtresse: You’ve very into food and cooking– if you could have dinner tonight
in any city in the world, where would it be and why?
Pocket CT: Tonight it would be somewhere warm and
outside. Somewhere I could wear a sundress and wonder if I am sleepy because of
a sunburn or because I got up early to play. When I am not totally starved for
al fresco it is somewhere in Italy
with a group of people it took far too long to organize, yelling or singing at
the table with all the courses and some bitter drink at the end. The dinner
would end with a walk where there would be young families, old couples holding
hands and loud laughter. There may be salt in the air or a balloon man. There
would definitely be people kissing
Maîtresse: Which work of art has moved you the most?
Pocket CT: I saw a painting in a museum in Rome titled “non mi lasciare” -
“don’t leave me” of an woman who is about 40 sitting on the
lap of an older woman in a rocker. It has gorgeous Scott Prior style light,
intricate intermingled color and a profound but stable almost necessary sadness
about it. It had a longing that starts its crescendo before it registers
consciously. At the time I thought of my grandmother, and not having the
opportunity to know her, she died when I was five. Thinking back on the
painting I am reminded of how bittersweet is any relationship between people –
eventually one of us will leave the other. It pretty well captures that.
Maîtresse: Why do you write?
Pocket CT: To get better at writing, it is something I am not naturally good
at so need to practice. Since I won’t unless it is fun I write about
whatever is tickling my fancy.
(Even though it’s Wednesday morning here in Tokyo)
Scott McLemee reviews Swimming in a Sea of Death, a new book on Susan Sontag’s months by her son, David Rieff. Rieff will be reading in Paris next month at the Village Voice, which is appropriate since, as McLemee argues, Sontag should be read within the context of her many French influences and obsessions. And in one final French connection, Sontag is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. (via Conversational Reading)
Lire magazine has a special dossier on Françoise Sagan (FR).
I think for every article James Wood publishes, two are published on James Wood. Here’s one from the FT. Here’s another from the Times. Mr Wood? Your move.
To be fair, the man has a new book out in the UK (US pub date is July). And so there are actually far more than two articles on him this week. Here‘s another. And here’s The Elegant Variation pitting Wood against Anton Ego from "Ratatouille."
The CRITICAL MASS: The NBCC’s Good Reads — Winter List results are up– in this new feature, previously known as the Best Recommended List, over at the National Book Critics’ Circle blog, critics and writers vote for the best books of the preceding season.
Finally, a book I’m hearing about for the first time that sounds like it’s worth a read: Laura Mullen’s Murmur, discussed at The Reading Experience and by Jennifer K. Dick (also via TRE).
"Why the French don’t suck." That’s the theme of the first episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel Network, "No Reservations," which I just watched for the first time. I laughed, of course, in that programmed way (it’s a tired subject, mutual Franco-American disdain), and then thought again, and stopped laughing, and started making notes for this blog post.
I’ve lived out of the States for so long that I forgot there are people in my native country for whom "French" is synonymous with many, many adjectives, none of which have any meaning for me, whether they are true or false. "Snobby. Sophisticated. Rude. Smelly." Whatever. I guess they’re all of those things and none of them. When provoked* I’ve been known to make some sweeping generalizations about the French, but over time I’ve found they’re not on the whole particularly snobby or sophisticated or rude or smelly.
The point is, the French don’t suck and I forgot anyone thought they did. Until the other day.
I signed up to do the Great Interview Experiment, initiated by dear Neil at Citizen of the Month, and was placed in an blogger sandwich, quizzed by DaveX of Startling Moniker and assigned to interview Pocket CT. Here is the result of my interview with DaveX. His questions surprised me, mainly because reading them I got the distinct sensation that this cool radio guy would not normally be interested in my blog and probably thought the French kind of sucked. He might not have intended to imply that at all, but the idea that it could be so shook me out of my complacent expat bubble, where it’s perfectly normal to live in Paris, and what’s abnormal is being obliged to now split time between Paris and Tokyo.
Dave also made a comment to me, privately, that he thought this blog had changed so radically from its beginning to now that, in reading my archives, he had to check a few times to make sure he was reading the right blog. It’s still fun to read, he said, just more "studied" now than it was then.
That was kind of sad, in a way. When I started this blog it was a way to tell all the people at home about my new surroundings, and I was really invested in documenting my Parisian life. Then as traffic started to build up I became much more self-conscious about writing so openly about my life. And as my PhD has advanced I’ve become more concerned about the effect the blog could have on my professional reputation. "I don’t want my students and colleagues to see me blogging about mini-skirts," I explained to Dave. So I started blogging less about my life and more about the life of the mind, and in the transfer I took for granted that my lifestyle was banal and uninteresting, which is, in a way, a snobbish thing to do, in that it assumes the reader is in on the game and doesn’t bother to explain the rules.
That’s when I started to feel sort of cramped here. I see some of the other Paris bloggers having more fun with their writing, and I miss the earlier days of being able to say whatever I wanted, telling crazy stories and still finding everyday life meaningful. I don’t want the blog to come across as "studied." It should be high-minded, but not snobby. It should invite the reader into an experience and a place and an idea, not leave him feeling stuck on the outside. And a good blog should actually serve some informative service, rather than being a monument to the vanity of its writer. As a small beginning towards addressing that, I’ve instituted a little calendar in the left sidebar, featuring upcoming literary events in Paris, along with a link to the complete monthly events calendar maintained by Jennifer K. Dick. (Please let me know, Internet Explorer users, if this has screwed up the way the blog loads for you.)
So thanks to Dave, for helping me get some perspective on what I’m doing here. Maybe being in Tokyo half the time, where once more I am an outsider, will help me loosen up a bit. And I hope I’ll continue to show, though I’m no Anthony Bourdain, why the French don’t suck.
*As I was, for example, in this post.