Fire and Knowledge

Choose one:

1. If you're visiting from Joshua Sowin's website, Fire and Knowledge, welcome to Orange Crate Art. You might like browsing via one or more of the Pinboard categories in the sidebar. Or you might enjoy these posts:

The inverse power of praise (On reading and difficulty)
Richard Rorty on the value of literature
Zadie Smith on reading
George Steiner on reading
Mark Edmundson tells it like it is (Excerpt from Why Read?)
Words, mere words (Another excerpt from Why Read?)

2. If you're a regular or occasional reader of Orange Crate Art, you might want to look at Michael Leddy on Reading, an interview that I just did with Josh for his Reading Interviews series.

And then you might like to browse Fire and Knowledge, which, in Josh's words, "addresses culture, books, technology, ecology, religion, and other topics." The excerpts from his reading that Josh posts are always thought-provoking, and they make Fire and Knowledge something of a digital commonplace book. If Josh can get a city-kid like me to borrow some Wendell Berry from the library, he must be doing something right.

Proust: "memory's pictures"

The narrator brings us into present time at the end of Swann's Way, when he recounts taking a walk "this year" in the Bois de Boulogne, where he used to see Mme. Swann, looking "like a queen." From the novel's final paragraph:

Nature was resuming its rule over the Bois, from which the idea that it was the Elysian Garden of Woman had vanished; above the artificial mill the real sky was gray; the wind wrinkled the Grand Lac with little wavelets, like a real lake; large birds swiftly crossed the Bois, like a real wood, and uttering sharp cries alighted one after another in the tall oaks under their druidical crowns and with a Dodonean majesty seemed to proclaim the inhuman emptiness of the disused forest, and helped me better understand what a contradiction it is to search in reality for memory's pictures, which would never have the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from not being perceived by the senses. The reality I had known no longer existed.

From Swann's Way, translated by Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002), 443-44

[A note glosses Dodonean: "In Dodona, in Epirus, the priests of Zeus' sanctuary gave oracles by interpreting the sound of the wind in the sacred oaks." (463)]

All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Twinkie, Deconstructed, rewritten

My daughter, glancing at Steve Ettlinger's Twinkie, Deconstructed (2007) in the library, pronounced it "Unreadable." She may be right. The subtitle alone is off-putting:

My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats

Publishers rely upon ever-lengthening subtitles to press (yes, press) content into the reader's face. But there's a clumsy dissonance between the terse, elegant title (which assumes at least a pop-culture grasp of deconstruction) and the self-promoting, astonished, grandiose tone of what follows: My Journey; Yes, Mined; What America Eats. (What America will soon be eating, at least in my house, is an Amy's California Burger.)

Skipping the Acknowledgments, I stopped at the first two paragraphs of "A Note to the Reader":

One could be forgiven for thinking that all one might have to do to find out what goes into a Hostess® Twinkies® "Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling" is to simply ask the company that makes them. But it is not that simple.

In fact, Interstate Bakeries Corporation, one of the country's largest wholesale bakeries, which owns Hostess®, Drake's® Cakes (Yodels, Devil Dogs, Yankee Doodles, and Ring Dings), Wonder® Bread, Home Pride®, Dolly Madison Bakery®, Butternut®, Merita®, and Cotton's® Holsum, among other familiar brands, was initially receptive to my requests for tours and interviews. However, after about twenty-four hours of contemplation, the company declined via phone, citing its preference to help writers who are merely reminiscing about their sweet childhood memories.

"One could be forgiven": A cliché, and one that makes no sense if the reader has read the book's subtitle.

"One could be forgiven . . . one might have to do": Repeating one is tedious.

"[A]ll one might have to do . . . is to simply ask": Is should be would be.

"[A] Hostess® Twinkies® . . . the company that makes them": Agreement is all askew: a (singular) Twinkies® (plural) Golden Sponge Cake (singular). If "a Hostess® Twinkies® Golden Sponge Cake" is singular, there's also a problem with them.

"[S]imply ask . . . not that simple": The repetition is clumsy. What does it mean to simply ask anyway? Write a letter? Make a phone call? Knock on a door? Use small words?

"In fact": This transition makes no sense in light of the sentence that precedes it. The phrase leads the reader to expect a fact that contradicts the preceding sentence's hypothesis: You might think it would be easy. In fact, it is not.

"Hostess®, Drake's® Cakes (Yodels, Devil Dogs, Yankee Doodles, and Ring Dings), Wonder® Bread, Home Pride®, Dolly Madison Bakery®, Butternut®, Merita®, and Cotton's® Holsum": The second paragraph of the book is not the best place to present a reader with this inventory. As is, the list raises unnecessary questions: why don't Yodels, for instance, get the registered trademark sign?

"[A]bout twenty-four hours of contemplation": Was the company contemplating, like a monk? Was anyone? For twenty-four hours?

"[T]he company declined via phone": A company cannot use the phone. Via phone is also odd because we don't know how the author made contact. Was there a friendly visit, followed by a curt phone call?

"[M]erely reminiscing about their sweet childhood memories": Merely reminiscing about sweet treats? Merely? So much for Proust! Another problem: there's redundancy in the idea of reminiscing about memories.

Here's what I think is a plausible revision of these two paragraphs:

One might think that finding out what goes into Hostess® Twinkies® would require no more than asking the company that makes them. But it was not that simple.

Interstate Bakeries Corporation, one of the country's largest wholesale bakeries, was initially receptive to my requests for tours and interviews. But one day after I visited IBC headquarters, a company representative called me to decline, citing the company's preference to help writers who reminisce about childhood foods.

Looking closely at these sentences reminds me that with contemporary non-fiction, it's often smart to try (via the library), not buy.

And now, America (my America) eats.

[This post is no. 13 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of published prose.]

All "How to improve writing" posts (Pinboard)
Twinkie, Deconstructed (the website for the book)

Memorial Day, continued

Related post
Memorial Day

100 words

abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious

The start of a list: 100 words that "every high school graduate should know." To the extent that such lists serve as models for writers, they're dangerous stuff. ("I would not kowtow to her loquacious acumen" -- that's the kind of sentence that can result.) To the extent that such lists make for better readers, they're helpful.

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know (Houghton Mifflin)

Proust: names and eros

Proust's narrator dwells upon names, of places and of people. Words, for him, are generally representative, giving "little pictures of things," "like those that are hung on the walls of schools to give children an example of what a workbench is, a bird, an anthill." But names represent individuals. Thus the thrill of hearing Gilberte Swann speak his first name:

And remembering later what I had felt then, I could distinguish within it the impression that I had been held for a moment in her mouth, I myself, naked, without any of the social terms and conditions that also belonged, either to her other friends, or, when she said my family name, to my parents, and of which her lips -- in the effort she made, rather like her father, to articulate the words she wanted to emphasize -- seemed to strip me, undress me, as one removes the skin from a fruit of which only the pulp can be eaten, while her gaze, adopting the same new degree of intimacy as her words, reached me more directly also, while at the same time showing its awareness of this, its pleasure and even its gratitude, by accompanying itself with a smile.

From Swann's Way, translated by Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002), 420

We never learn the narrator’s first name, though there’s a hint much later: Marcel.

Other Mlle. Swann posts
Introducing Mlle. Swann
Love and hate in Proust

All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Gould's Goldberg Variations online

Wow: most of the out-of-print 1981 film of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations can be found online. The Google Video file contains everything but a few minutes of introductory conversation and the Aria da Capo. Move ahead to 5:48 in the YouTube file, and you can pick up with the restatement of the Aria.

The quality of image and sound is not great. But it'll have to do, Until the Real Thing Comes Along.

Aria and Variations 1-30 (Google Video)
Variations 26-30 and Aria da Capo (YouTube)

Proust on love and jealousy

They are digital, not analog:

For what we believe to be our love, our jealousy, is not one single passion, continuous and indivisible. They are composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, which are ephemeral but by their uninterrupted multitude give the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.

From Swann's Way, translated by Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002), 385-86

All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Sgt. Pepper mono and stereo

While Sgt. Pepper is in the air, it's worth asking: Why haven't the Beatles and their executors given us a mono-stereo CD of the album? The two mixes are markedly different, and many listeners (including me) prefer the mono. A disc with both mixes would be a wonderful and appropriate way to honor the album.

Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys album that inspired Paul McCartney in the Beach Boys-Beatles production duel, has received the mono-stereo treatment. There, to my ears, stereo wins. (Sorry, Mr. Wilson.) Sgt. Pepper -- after forty years! -- is due, I think, the same treatment.

I remember Sgt. Pepper

It was twenty years ago today that it was twenty years ago today that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in the U.K. (it was June 2 here in the States). Sgt. Pepper was my third Beatles album -- I already owned Something New and Help! (the latter of which I still have). I was not yet eleven when Sgt. Pepper was released, and I have a handful of specific memories of the album that I'm recording here.

I remember my dad buying the record for me and bringing it home with him from work.

I remember recognizing Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel on the cover, and Edgar Allan Poe (my then-favorite writer), and probably no one else.

I remember thinking that Dr. David Livingstone was Adolf Hitler. (Strange -- John Lennon did ask that Hitler be included in the cover scene.)

I remember that the doll's WMCA Good Guys sweater confirmed my sense that WMCA was a lot better than WABC.

I remember how tall Paul looked on the back cover. Was that really Paul?

I remember "A splendid time is guaranteed for all" in the bottom-right corner of the back cover. I remember that there was no period after all, even though the word ended a complete sentence. I liked that. This sentence later got me into trouble when I was asked (as an earnest grad student) to design an announcement for a faculty cocktail bash. I typed "A splendid time is guaranteed for all" at the bottom, and people thought I was being sarcastic. They knew more about academic life than I did.

I remember cutting out the cutouts that came with the record. (Yes, where are the snows of yesteryear?)

I remember "A Little Help from My Friends," as the song was mistitled on the back cover.

I remember not being sure whether the words "Billy Shears!" were supposed to be the end of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" or the start of "With a Little Help from My Friends."

I remember how interesting Paul's bass-playing sounded on "With a Little Help from My Friends," though I don't think I knew that it was Paul's bass I was hearing.

I remember understanding how sad "She's Leaving Home" was, even though the music picked up when the departing daughter was "meeting a man from the motor trade."

I remember the two moments on Side One that most struck me musically: 1:01-1:03 in "Fixing a Hole" and 1:56-1:58 in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite."

I remember how grown-up and serious "Within You Without You" felt.

I remember sitting on the edge of my parents' bed reading the lyrics of "Good Morning, Good Morning" and imagining that the song was going to be very decorous, something like a waltz, or something Elizabethan. I have no idea what suggested these possibilities to me -- meter? (Good MORNing, good MORNing.)

I remember associating "Good Morning, Good Morning" with 86th Street, a major Brooklyn shopping street, where I once went in the evening with my parents to get a briefcase for school (yes, kids, at least city kids, carried their books in briefcases then).

I remember listening next to the phonograph speaker at the end of "A Day in the Life" -- the famed "40-second bass note," as it was then called. The surface noise became stronger as the music became fainter.

I remember thinking that "A Day in the Life" must have been the greatest song ever. (It's still my favorite Beatles song, if I have to pick only one, even if I'm not ten.)

I remember the two moments on Side Two that most struck me musically: the clarinet harmonizing with Paul's voice in the last chorus of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and 2:26-2:28 in "A Day in the Life."

I remember standing in a department store (Korvette's?) while my parents looked with dismay at the cover of the follow-up to Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, which I was proposing to buy. "They're all on drugs," my parents always said. That observation was often followed by "You can see it in their eyes." Here though you couldn't, because the Beatles were wearing animal masks. Further proof that my parents were right, right? But I did get the okay to buy Magical Mystery Tour. (Thank you, Mom and Dad.)

My model for this post is Joe Brainard's I Remember, a book with a simple and brilliant premise that by now you understand.



[$2.99 at Sam Goody's, June 1967.]

Thanks to my son Ben for suggesting a much more interesting start than "It was forty years ago today." (The kid's smart.)