Unprintable Version

Triumph of the Willa

1.  I regret that I dismissed Willa Cather as a grandmotherly irrelevance. My Antonia is an invaluable book.  Its celebration and criticism of the Midwest still rings true.

2. Part of my problem with Cather was that she was so quintessentially Midwestern.  And there’s always been a certain kind of Midwestern writing which I’ve  disdained: self-consciously folksy, smugly dreary, theatrically laconic.  Identity as self-parody.  I still hate that kind of writing, but that’s not Willa.

3. I am also embarrassed by the Midwest in approximately the same way that teenagers are embarrassed by their parents. I’ve confused this with a literary judgment. 

4. I scanned the intelligent introduction and it points out that the book’s essential emotion is nostalgia–an emotion defined by its very inability to become action and thus not a tricky theme for fiction. Interestingly, the liveliest parts of the book are the chapters when Jim–who is so clearly a stand-in for Cather that the book exudes a strangely wholesome androgyny–is a senior in high school and about the leave Black Hawk.  In this, the book feels closer to movies like Ghost World and Diner than to old prairie novels. 

Picture of the week : Daniel Eatock

Link: Picture of the week : Daniel Eatock.I should be working, but if i am an awful person who loiters on the web, this is an interesting place to do so.

Most Unlikely March Madness Promo Ever or Bill Russell and Hazel

From Russell and Hazel, makers of very nice, not particularly macho writing, storage, and office products, a Sweet 16 bracket for those of you infected by March Madness and Design Madness simultaneously:

Writes of Spring (Willa Cather II)

There is a great deal of tact and pragmatism and sweetness in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for flinching or ‘denial.”  Consider this sentence:  “Jake and Jelnick went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground.”

That image sweetens this one: “When spring came, after that hard winter, one couldn’t get enough of the nimble air.” The evocation of a midwestern spring that follows strikes me as definitive or at least exemplary.

Going Green

Now that we've all celebrated the feast of Saint Patrick, patron saint of projectile vomiting and date rape, can we maybe talk about the less merchandised aspects of Irish culture?

What's your favorite Irish cultural product? 
1. Ullysses
2. Lucky Charms
3. Seamus Heaney
4. U2
5. Boomtown Rats
6. Edna OBrien
7. William Trevor
8. What's His Face From Miami Vice
9. South Boston (cf. the Departed) 
10. Colm Toibin 
11. The Pogues
12. The Irish Rovers 
13. The Chieftains
14 Albert the Greyhound (his sire was Fortess, a Dublin racer)
15. Guilt
16 Other

(Sorry, we live near bars and spend the day hoping no one runs over our dog.) 

Life short, craft long etc.

I've heard people say that one of the worst things that can happen to you is to get published.  After noting that that is what salespeople call a high quality problem,  I should also note that, in my case, it has been true. Publication would have embalmed some of my thinner drafts.

I recently met with my agent about my sort-of novel and while she was very encouraging, she pointed out some weaknesses.  I realized immediately that she was right and I spent the weekend writing a chapter which the book requires and I have at least one more new chapter to write and that chapter now feels equally inevitable. It is humbling to have someone point such obvious weaknesses out about a manuscript you've worked on for over a decade, but it is also exhilarating.

R.I.P. Dean "Bro" Lanz, 1953 - 2007

Link: Winona Daily News - 6.0. I will miss Dean. He was a feisty citizen and avid fan. Politically, I'm a knee-jerk centrist and he was a knee-jerk liberal so we'd sometimes bang knees, but I always admired his passion, which was rooted in the raucous, heroic politics of the Sixties.   

My favorite memory of him was at a Saints game, with a bunch of guys I worked with at the time;  he and his brother Daryl joined us after some people bailed. One of our party had never been to a game before. When an outfielder showboated during a routine catch, Dean yelled, "Hey want some mustard with that hot dog?!"  My friend  had never heard that piece of  ballpark poetry before or maybe he didn't understand the freedom to occasionally just up and yell your opinions, but he turned his head in amazement, as if he'd just seen a somersault. I've given up my Saints tickets, but I now feel like catching a few games.

Orwell Card

If you are very tired and you've been working too much and you need to read something serious, grab Orwell's Essays, the hulking Everyman's Edition, and read a random paragraph. 

If you would like to view the Craig Ferguson monologue I referenced a post or two ago, click here. 

My Antonia: Little House On The Runway

I got about sixty pages into Willa Cather's My Antonia on the flight back from New York and thanks to some relentless deadlines haven't had a chance to do any pleasure reading since. (Since I'm a writer, avocational reading is a better term.) Thus, the appreciations of television shows. 

I remember thinking three thoughts about My Antonia:

1. When I read this as a novel, I don't enjoy it. When I read it as a memoir, I do.

2. Nebraska was every bit as much of a immigrant community as the lower east side.  One of the best scenes so far is set in Russia.

3. This may be the unhippest serious novel ever written.