Unprintable Version

Thoughts On Leaving San Diego

Yes, La Jolla was embalmed and Hillcrest was a mall that thought it was a neighborhood, and parking was exorbinant at the otherwise stunning Hotel Coronado. And signs for a poor kid who had gone missing went up the day after we arrived. 

But, man, was the place sunny, both literally and figuratively, despite a “winter storm” which consisted of one tree falling over and almost hitting an apartment building. (It was the lead story on the evening news.) But we loved our hotel and our neighborhood just east of downtown, one of those scrappy aspiring urban neighborhoods, with a few too many “for sale” signs on the condos. We wanted sun and didn’t have passports so priceline, perhaps Shatner himself, directed us here, where we amazed the locals by using the pool and read and picked up something at Borders when we ran out of the books we brought.

The easiest point of access to a city is its restaurants, and we had amazing meals at Chive and Café Chloe.. In fact, we returned twice to Chive and I had the Hong Kong Clam Chowder both times and we would have returned again to Café Chloe if we had time. There we had been immediately charmed by the two stone greyhounds outside; we ate mushroom and blue cheese tarts and steak frites at the bar while the after work crowd effervesced around us.  Café Chloe’s menu claims that it is “where east village meets Paris chic” and in that quite inaccurate phrase—it connotes to me something provincial and second-rate when the restaurant is first rate– I recognize a familiar insecurity. Winona was all about that insecurity, so is whatever it is in Minneapolis-Saint Paul that once made us constantly remind people that we have more theatre per capita than New York.

Overheard Conversation Which Is Not At All Representative of San Diego, Which We Are Enjoying A Great Deal

"I'm not going to ever not tan. I'm going to tan for my nuptials."
"I'm going to tan for your nuptials."

Greetings From San Diego

Where spoons hang from the chandeliers of Cafe 222. (Turn your speakers down; the music on the site is great, but there's no "sound off" function.)

TV Math: After Watching 27 Episodes of Twin Peaks

(Twin Peaks  – Serial Killers) + Woody Allen = Northern Exposure

(Northern Exposure –Alaska) + Connecticut  = Gilmore Girls

Laurence Bergreen’s Mongol Hoard

Marco Polo is a biography with the sweep of a history. But what I love is that it is one of those books full of facts that make the world seem more interesting:  that at one time, five percent of all Chinese characters were associated with silk; that in the late 13th century Kublai Kahn’s Muslim financial advisor gained so much power that he threatened to take over the empire, creating the fascinating prospect of Muslim rule over China; that the Mongols protected their wealth by sewing precious gems into their clothing.  At least for someone who has always viewed the Mongols as essentially medieval Klingons–and they were brutal although weirdly squeamish–it was fascinating to learn that they were in many ways more advanced than their contemporaries in Europe: they had a version of freedom of religion; they were logistically brilliant, crossing vast distances at a gallop; they had paper currency; they ruled larger cities and vaster territories and more cultures. And Bergreen also comments on the problems of memoir, of self-interest and delusion, of facts and memory and style.  Polo's own book is strange book, dictated when he was a prisoner of war, dismissed as fable at the time, now seen as being much closer to reportage than originally thought. 

Sometimes you just feel like a sitcom-watching, mall-haunting, videogame playing American rube.

Wendy Lesser writes in Book Forum of the Sicilian novelist Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa. “He seemed to have read everything, not only in Italian but also in French and English, and to a certain extent in German, Russian, and Spanish.  He and Lucy, who had dogs instead of children, spoke to each pet in a different language.”

The Debut of Writing Sisu

Very few people are encouraged to blog. MFA buddy and sometimes Unprintable Version commenter (see below) Sari is one of those few. She used to write these great emails from Venice or southern California or some mountainside in Switzerland.

Welcome to the world of neurotically self-imposed deadlines and uneasy public narcissism.

So go there already. There's a permanent link under "My Writer Friends."

Babuschka-Al (Almost) Ready For A Walk At -6 Degrees

Keening for Sitcoms

“Phil Collins has evidently discovered amphetamines.”

--E, covering the mouthpiece and arching her eye brows, while listening to hold music.

I am married to a really funny woman. I have no idea how the rest of you are getting through the writers’ strike. 

But I still want my sitcoms. I want My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock and the Office. I am tired of jerk executives holding out for the greater greed. I want Earl’s desperate and knocked-up ex-wife saying, while undergoing a gynecological exam, “I don’t feel a ring on that finger.” I miss Alec Baldwin and Steve Carell and Dwight . . . oh, Dwight. 

I am tired of reality shows. I am tired of what appears to be the power of positive taunting. “I am in it to win it and I will take you down.” I’ve never watched Survivor or Idol but I’ve seen enough Machiavellian sous-chefs and trash-talking fat people to know that reality shows have some of the indispensable elements of drama: human frailty colliding with human ambition. What they lack is wit–the inflected intelligence in Tina Fey’s voice when she says to Alec Baldwin’s girlfriend, “You want to be Yoko?” 

Favorite Book Read in 2007

These year end judgments always seem so glib, but I love the discussions they start. One theme was interesting: most of my favorites this year were set in the midwest: two Willa Cather novels, Patricia Hampl's The Florist's Daughter,  Joshua Ferris's Then We Came To The End, and my favorite book read this year, Richard Powers' The Echo Maker–for its incisively beautiful and intelligent prose about such things as the science of consciousness and Nebraska and dudes who drive pick ups and play video games. I have not gotten to Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

What was your favorite book this year (read, not published) ?