Hedonism run amuck is about all I can say. A spate of movies, Closer and We Don't Live Here Anymore, and the book I'm currently reading and fighting with all my might not to toss across the room in disgust, Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, paint a pretty bleak picture of the current state of relationships between the sexes. In sum, it appears as if no one is capable of being faithful and infidelity is as acceptable as any other relationship quirk. This is by no means a new thing, and it won't be the last, but it's hard for me to believe that this is how people behave. Married men, especially those who look like Jude Law, have little trouble attracting willing women with whom to commiserate their affairs. Does this type of thing occur as frequently as is suggested by these works? I can't say from either experience or secondhand knowledge. The back and forth between affairs and the continuously boorish behavior on the part of the male aggressors is such a stale and depleted idea that I'm stunned that anyone thinks it's original any longer. Some works on this subject definitely, for lack of a better term, work, like Tom Perrotta's Little Children. I'm not sure what other works are trying to accomplish. Do they want you to hate the characters? Are you supposed to sympathize with anyone? I rarely do, and I don't think I'm wrong in not doing so.

My real problem with Ford's writing is that the main character, Frank Boscombe, is portrayed throughout the majority of the book as a sophisticated man, a writer who not so much failed at his art but rather quit. He's not overly academic, although he was a teacher who couldn't teach, and he seems more like a man who would shun such groups. And he seems to have a poignant wisdom that other characters, who are inevitably much more fallible than him, aspire towards being. In other words, he doesn't seem like a phony, but, in reality, someone you could have a conversation with that wasn't devoid of all intellectual content. But Ford can't sustain this type of character for the entire novel. I've found that what usually occurs is that most novels that tend to strike a nerve in me do so about halfway through, and the complaints are usually minor but nonetheless irritating. Turns of phrase that seem way out of character appear for seemingly no reason. Dialogue that's praised by one review as showing Ford's "extraordinary ear" seems stilted and absurd in points. And finally, a character who showed so much promise early in the novel turns out to be less than noble. His ability to effortlessly bed women while married strikes, what I assume is, both a jealous nerve and an enraged moral superiority complex.

I've never understood how writers of tremendous talent let phrases that are juvenile in nature intrude upon what is already established as being a particular way of thinking for a character. To put it another way, it seems incredibly out of character for words like "boink" and phrases like "drunk as a monkey" to be associated with a character who, like I said above, is already established as being much more sophisticated. Good writers, at least those who I really admire, don't allow this type of error to occur in their works. If a certain tone of writing is established then it stays that way until the end. As for this keen ear for dialogue that Ford is supposed to have, I myself rarely if ever feel the need to end every sentence of a conversation with the name of the person with whom I am speaking. Here's some examples from a single conversation between two characters:
"What are you thinking right now, Frank?"
"It didn't seem idiotic, Walter."
"I'm not putting babies in freezers, am I, Frank?"
"Do you think I've done harm, Frank?"
"I think it doesn't matter, Walter, to tell you the truth."
This conversation goes on for pages and pages. "Walter," "Frank," "Walter," "Frank." What the hell? Who talks like this? Also, who talks in a put on accent? Apparently plenty of people do so for entire conversations and this guy runs into all of them.

Finally, to the women. When they aren't baring their breasts to Frank and begging for an affair, as one character does, they're parading around the bedroom naked. For a character whose marriage crumbled from an affair that didn't happen, which was a refreshing change from the norm, these repeated escapades and flashbacks to previous ones more than make me hate this guy. When does it end? Again, is this real life? And why are these books all the same? John Irving's The World According to Garp may have been the first book to really piss me off in this vein. The men in these books are the aggressors who have some sort of sway over all women and dominate them both intellectually and physically. Apparently, nothing has changed over the years. I'm either incredibly out of the loop, overly sensitive, or jealous beyond belief at the physical prowess portrayed in these works. It's probably a little bit of all of them.

Can you hear me?
Everyone else does it, so why can't I? Talking on a cell phone in public, that is.

Trying as hard as I might to hold a conversation with Benedict as I boarded a bus, I was greeted not with what I expected, poor reception, but a total inability on my part to focus on the phone conversation I was trying to maintain while at the same time tuning out the peripheral noise from my fellow passengers. It was not meant to be, I guess. The noise level seemed to grow higher and higher as I tried to lean towards the window and away from the sound in an effort to at least hear Benedict and, likewise, have him hear me.

What effectively ended the call was the woman in front of me with her three, yes three, kids, two of which were in a state of almost certain misery while the third, the oldest of the trio, was independent enough to sit across the aisle and cause his own brand of mischief. Their cries drowned out any sound from my phone. Watching the oldest poke the middle one with a pencil in the arm and then proceed to act as if nothing happened, only further enraged me, and I stifled the notion to tell the mother that she should leave her animals at home in cages when she's going out in public.

I told Benedict I'd have to talk to him later, and hung up. Wouldn't you know it, though, as soon as I hung up the bus entered a realm of utter calmness and the sound level tapered off to a minimum level.

What's Mine is Yours and Yours...
Having been a fan and follower of Metallica since high school and also being interested in seeing the dynamics that surround the artistic process, I've been curious to see the highly praised documentary Some Kind of Monster that chronicles the making of their most recent album and, more interestingly, their need for a group therapist. The film itself became secondary to the subject brought up during its course, the war waged by Metallica, in particular drummer Lars Ulrich, against Napster and all those who downloaded their songs. The friend I was watching the film with made it adamantly clear that he thought that the entire process of downloading songs from the internet is a loathsome activity that serves as nothing more than a way to commit robbery against the artists whose work is being distributed around the world for free. I, on the other hand, proceeded to respond with the blanket statement that I just don't care. Upon further reflection, I realize how bad this sounds, and I don't know that I successfully defended my lackadaisical response. I do know that I haven't wavered on that notion.

Honestly, I just can get myself worked up over the fact that artists are "losing" revenues on works that are being distributed by "illegal" means, especially when these artists are big name acts signed to large record labels that have the gall and the audacity to not only charge upwards of twenty dollars for new albums but also claim that they are losing profits due to the downloading craze. The crux of my friend's argument wasn't focused on the big name acts, but on those bands that are struggling to be heard and signed to a record label. Granted, I can see how this can be a problem, but, as I've mentioned before with other forms of artistic expression, I believe that there's always a reason why individuals or groups have a hard time selling their artistic ventures to large conglomerates. The reason being that it's not very good. I don't consider most of the works being published in the book world to be very good, especially the best seller list which is littered with unreadable abominations of the language and insultingly bad gimmicks that pawn themselves off as being postmodern and clever. In my rationale, if the stuff that's getting published is bad, with a few exceptions, then what are the chances that the stuff that isn't getting published is any better? We'll never know, and I know that's the point, but I just don't think we're, or more importantly I, am missing out on much.

As for the lost revenues, the last I knew there was still a highly successful market for the purchase of new products. CD sales haven't been that drastically affected. The reason sales are down, I would argue, is due to the fact that there just aren't that many good artists releasing good music any more. Moby, for example, appears to be the latest artist to have produced one tremendous album followed by a string of losers. His latest release seems to be, if one can glean anything from reviews, a rehash of his previous material and a desperate attempt to remain a significant figure on the pop scene. To address the downloading of materials by unsigned artists, I can't for the life of me imagine that there's much reason to fear that this is driving unsigned acts to switch occupations. Two people downloading tracks in Idaho from a local artist based in Pittsburgh shouldn't make or break any band. What this would have to do with them not being signed at all I haven't the slightest idea.

Friday's Wall Street Journal featured an editorial entitled "Can Justice Scalia Solve the Riddles of the Internet" by Daniel Henninger. Writing on the case before the Supreme Court of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, Henninger proposes three conundrums that are at the heart of this debate. The first is whether or not the internet has sapped the creative will of artists who apparently are just in it for the money and derive no other form of satisfaction out of their artistic ventures. This is such an absurd notion that it's beyond comment. The second proposes that the internet has effectively eliminated the idea that works are produced for profit and created a complacent populace that sees nothing wrong with the idea that everything should be available for free. This has some merit. It's akin to the notion that everything must be on the internet. Libraries face this everyday, and it's not a phenomenon that's going to be easy to break. Young people raised on the internet see it as the be all to end all resource for everything they need. Books have become secondary if not ignored altogether. That's a problem. The third posits the notion that individuals who commit this crime of downloading see nothing wrong in their actions even when they knowingly will not commit any other types of crimes willingly. This leads into Henninger's main premise that unless we acquire a "moral or at least philosophical commitment to the legitimacy of profit...there's no hope." Henninger paints a picture of starving artists living on Red Bull and Steve Jobs swimming in the millions yielded by his iPods. The idea is about as tear jerking as a mud puddle.

Finally, the idea that artists create art because it's their job came up during the debate. I don't see it that way. If you choose to live your life as a struggling artist, that's your decision. I have neither sympathy nor condemnation for those who do so, but I also feel little towards the notion of the "starving artist" wallowing in obscurity because someone has robbed him or her of their outlet or just hasn't discovered them yet. I love art and I'll support artists that I enjoy, but I won't be forced into some sort of sympathetic symbiotic relationship that condemns either the establishment for not rooting out these special cases or the public for feeding off of their wares without proper compensation. There are more pressing matters in life, and I just don't care enough about this fight to bother.