Nicholson Baker, re: Maeve Brennan

I am cheered to see Maeve Brennan’s name in a New York Times Q. and A. with Nicholson Baker:

Which writers are egregiously overlooked or underrated?

All writers are underrated. They’re all trying to do their best. It’s hard to finish a book. But Denton Welch deserves more of a fuss. Also John McNulty and that Long-Winded Lady, Maeve Brennan. Shakespeare is probably the most overrated writer of all time, although I must say his sonnets are incredible.

A related post
Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady

The new DFW biography

D. T. Max. Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. New York: Viking, 2012. 356 pages. $27.95.

To its credit, D. T. Max’s biography deepens the enigma of David Foster Wallace’s character. The humble truth-teller of the rightly celebrated Kenyon commencement address was no saint. Wallace’s committment to “the capital-T Truth” (as he called it at Kenyon) did not extend to the presentation of the self in everyday life (claims of perfect SAT scores and other imaginary achievements) or to his non-fiction, which, it turns out, is filled with invented circumstances and events. Wallace’s dedication to teaching did not stop him from sleeping with his students. (He joked to a friend about trying to get fired.) His deep gratitude for the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous did not prevent him from “thirteenth-stepping,” seeking out sexual partners at meetings. The details of Wallace’s violence toward others — shoving a student, ramming a stranger’s car, throwing a table at a lover, plotting, at least briefly, to murder that lover’s husband — make for a very dark portrait.

And then there is the violence Wallace directed against himself. This biography omits the most gruesome detail of his suicide (it can be found in the autopsy report). But Max leaves so much more unsaid. One example: he mentions a history of suicide in Wallace’s mother’s family — and stops there. Did Wallace know about these suicides? Did they occur before his birth, or in his lifetime? Did he know the people involved? Could a family history of depression have had something to do with his struggles? The answers might explain nothing, but the questions are still worth asking. And if Max has no answers to them, that would be worth stating too. Another example: Max has spoken with a man he calls Big Craig, the model for Don Gately in Infinite Jest. That there was a Gately is big news, but it’s presented here in passing. We learn that Craig — also an addict in recovery — suspected that halfway-house resident Wallace was looking for material for a book. But what of their relationship? Did Craig become something of a mentor to Wallace? Did the two stay in touch? Does the climactic fight scene in Infinite Jest draw in any way from Big Craig’s life?

As one must now expect with new non-fiction from trade publishers, the writing in this biography is in need of more careful editorial attention. There are frequent problems with pronouns (missing referents) and at least one error in subject-verb agreement. And there’s a conspicuous factual error about Infinite Jest (Charles Tavis is Avril Incandenza’s half-brother, not her husband’s brother.) A larger criticism: Max’s attempt to link Wallace’s interest in “sincerity” to a midwestern habit of saying what one means is, I think, an East Coaster’s fantasy. Life in the midwest — trust me — can be full of evasions, silences, and mask-like tact. Some of the details of Wallace’s life in the midwest show just that.

Any reader of Wallace’s work will want to read this biography. But I’d suggest — and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know where this sentence is going — getting it from a library.

Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Orange Crate Art

I remember as if it were eight years ago sitting at the fambly Dell after dinner and getting advice from my daughter Rachel about how to begin. It was Rachel who suggested this blog’s name. She and my son Ben were my guides in the world of HyperText Markup Language. Thank you, kiddos.

Now that Orange Crate Art is eight, it enjoys having the opportunity to solve problems independently. It is able to concentrate on tasks for longer periods of time and use its own resources prior to seeking adult help. It applies comprehension and vocabulary strategies to a wider variety of texts and is better able to check on and improve its comprehension as needed. Orange Crate Art applies a host of strategies when solving problems with three-digit numbers or less, recognizes a wide variety of shapes, and can readily identify patterns. It has yet to participate in dance lessons or team sports, though it occasionally dabbles in backyard play.

Thank you, reader, for reading.

[The eight-year-old language is borrowed from PBS Parents’ Child Development Tracker. I hope you agree with me that using quotation marks would destroy the effect.]

E=F♭

Here’s a theory of relativity I can understand.

As a boy caroler, Van Dyke Parks sang “Stille Nacht” for Albert Einstein. They once sat one row apart at the 3-D horror film House of Wax. And at the Princeton Junction train station, three days before Einstein’s death in 1955, twelve-year-old Van Dyke got an autograph.

Thanks to Van Dyke Parks, who sent this doctored photograph my way.

Roger Ebert on current events

Worth reading: A Statement and a “Film” (Chicago Sun-Times).

How to improve writing (no. 40)

This paragraph, on a box of Twinings English Breakast Tea, has been on my mind:

For over 300 years, Twinings has been sourcing and blending the finest, high-quality teas from around the globe to ensure that your tea has the perfect balance of tea taste, flavour and aroma. Twinings blends to perfection the finest black teas to give you a line of great-tasting teas with enticing flavour, fresh taste and invigorating aroma.

I know: it’s adspeak. But still. The redundancy (finest and high-quality, flavour and taste) and repetition (tea, tea, tea) in this paragraph make me think that the writer needs to switch to decaf. I see too a problem of logic with aroma and taste. Isn’t it the aroma that entices and the flavor that invigorates? I cannot imagine being invigorated by sniffing at my morning cup. A more sedate and more effective version:

For over 300 years, Twinings has been sourcing and blending the finest teas from around the globe to bring you the perfect balance of enticing aroma and fresh, invigorating flavour.

As my daughter Rachel pointed out to me several years ago, flavor and taste do not have complete synonymy. But here, as on the package that prompted her observation, one or the other will do.

[This post is no. 40 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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All How to improve writing posts (via Pinboard)
All tea posts (via Pinboard)

Marcus Aurelius on Maximus

Marcus Aurelius, on what he learned from Claudius Maximus, philosopher and teacher:

From Maximus: self-mastery, immune to any passing whim; good cheer in all circumstances, including illness; a nice balance of character, both gentle and dignified; an uncomplaining energy for what needs to be done; the trust he inspired in everyone that he meant what he said and was well-intentioned in all that he did; proof against surprise or panic; in nothing either hurried or hesitant, never short of resource, never downcast or cringing, or on the other hand angry or suspicious; generosity in good works, and a forgiving and truthful nature; the impression he gave of undeviating rectitude as a path chosen rather than enforced; the fact that no one would have ever thought himself belittled by him, or presumed to consider himself superior to him; and a pleasant humour.

Meditations, translated by Martin Hammond (New York: Penguin, 2006).

Do you know a Maximus?

Also from Marcus Aurelius
On change : On distraction : On music, dance, and wrestling : On revenge

How to improve writing (no. 39)

In August 2008 I wrote a note to myself with some book-buying advice. It ended like so: “Ask yourself, self, the crucial question: do you need to buy this book, or can you be happy getting it from the library?”

More and more often, I am happy getting it, whatever it is, from the library. So it is with Kenneth Slawenski’s J. D. Salinger: A Life (New York: Random House, 2011), a book I found myself rewriting as I read it. Its language is filled with tiresome phrasing: criticism is scathing; friends are close and personal; royalties are handsome; stories are finely crafted.¹ The words actual and actually, often meaningless intensifiers, appear again and again. Some sentences appeared to have been run through a thesaurus: “The episode scorched Salinger fans, a sensation exacerabated twelve years later when Internet booksellers replayed the feint only to deliver disappointment once again.” And Slawenski’s efforts at lit crit rely upon lengthy paraphrase and reductive symbolism: “The room also symbolizes Franny’s spiritual and emotional state.” “The value of acceptance through faith is symbolized by the character of Muriel’s tiny great-uncle.” No, and no.

Here is a sample paragraph, about a novel that was to be devoted to the Glass family:

In attempting such an ambitious work, Salinger tried to employ the same method that worked for him so well when he had penned The Catcher in the Rye: he sought to construct the new book by sewing together pieces that could also stand on their own as self-contained stories. “Zooey” is a prime example of this method. While his letters leave no doubt that “Zooey” was intended to rest with the new novel upon the book’s completion, the story’s most immediate purpose was to stand alone as a sequel to the story “Franny.”

Here’s my more readable version, which omits reference to ambition (as there’s no explanation of what makes this work so ambitious), drops the slightly pompous penned, avoids the illogic of a stand-alone sequel, and reorders elements of the paragraph to make a more logical point: yes, the story is a sequel to “Franny,” but it was meant to be more:

Like The Catcher in the Rye, the new novel was to be a sequence of self-contained stories. While “Zooey” would first serve as a sequel to the earlier “Franny,” Salinger’s letters leave no doubt that the new story was meant to be part of the novel.

Shame on Random House for not making this book’s prose better. Back to the library.

¹ And then there’s this sentence about Claire Douglas, who became Salinger’s first wife: “At the time Claire could not have suited Salinger better had he crafted her himself.”

[This post is no. 39 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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WTC, 1980

[From a 1980 New York City subway map.]

A related post
At the World Trade Center and St. Paul’s Chapel

From the eighty-fourth floor

A handwritten note from the eighty-fourth floor of Two World Trade Center found its way to the writer’s family in 2011. Bringing consolation? No.