Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

The latest novel by Philip Roth continues the trend of books some of my favorite writers that have infuriated me to the point of rage. Most of this is due to my immediate sense of disappointment at the efforts from artists I consider to be above the norm in their output and who seem to be settling for lesser works. Starting with DeLillo's last novel, Falling Man, or more specifically his last three books, and Roth's last four, The Plot Against America being mostly unobjectionable, these two titans have produced nothing of real merit, and in Roth's case it's been nothing but a rehashing of the same basic plot over and over. The boilerplate version seeming to be: older male with unquenchable sexual drive cheats on wife or wives with mistresses who are either younger, dumber or both and who inevitably have something awful happen to them for their efforts. And yet it's amazing to see that the critical appraisal of these last few books, regardless of their sameness and seemingly uninspired writing, has remained virtually the same, highly praiseworthy, and Roth's popularity and literary standing have done nothing but rise.

What is it that bothers me about these books? It's probably easier to say what doesn't first. Roth's writing is incredibly good in every sense of the word. He's a master wordsmith who has a commanding grasp on the language and is never one to write sparsely. There are passages of dense beauty in every one of his books, and he has a true knack for the ability to alternate between books of sweeping magnitude and novella length works that never fail to showcase his true ability as a writer. As for the plots of the novels themselves, it almost seems secondary at this point for certain writers that I follow. I would pretty much read anything put out by the list of writers I’m devoted to or at least give them the old college try. As I said, the plots of Roth's last few novels are more or less indistinguishable from one another. If not for the changing titles, which seem interchangeable and highly irrelevant, one might not be mistaken in thinking that they'd read the book before. Even knowing that, I'm compelled to read his works again and again, and that's where the burn set in.

Where to begin?

After the aforementioned praise I've heaped on Roth, now it's time to turn my sights to what's wrong with Roth. To start, much like DeLillo, Roth apparently believes that there are no stable marriages, only unstable ones that deteriorate into shattered husks of what marriages represent. The men, again like DeLillo, are almost always too complex for their wives and need to seek solace in the arms of another woman, usually, as I said, someone of far lesser intellect and shallowness beyond the pale. The men, rarely portrayed as being overly handsome seem to be irresistible to these much younger, voracious women. In one novel this is an acceptable plot device, but in novel after novel, it begins to wear thin. Marriage in America is not sacred, not as valued as it once was, not devotion but an act of convenience for the couple, and apparently never based on true love. Fine, the point has been made, and it's time to move on.

Even when the real narrative is supposed to be focusing on another aspect of the character, as in Everyman where we're supposed to be witnessing the slow deterioration of an unnamed protagonist, we are still treated to passages describing his infidelity to his wife. If ever there was a plot device that needed to be buried, this is it.

I also find it odd that no one has really picked up on this repetition in his work, or if they have, and it’s hard to believe that they haven’t, no one is objecting to it in the least. Roth, at this point in his career, seems to have obtained the untouchable status, or that of a literary sacred cow, who is beyond reproach. His writings, if one believes the critics, are full of fresh insights, or they are at least insightful into the human condition, revealing something about ourselves that is rarely spoken aloud. But considering that three of Roth’s last four novels were barely over two hundred pages and with plots wholly reminiscent of one another, it’s hard for me to imagine or detect what that insight is or how fresh it might be. I recently read about the use of coincidence in the "big novel,” and it struck me that if that's a big deal to critics, then why isn't Roth skewered by those very same critics for relying on these tiresome portrayals of suburbia that even Updike has forsaken in favor of other pursuits. Sure, the fifties and sixties were ripe with sexual freedom and a more radical willingness to experiment in many ways, but hasn’t that been established, and how is it that this type of culture hasn’t progressed in the last thirty years? If one looks to Roth as a cultural barometer, then it hasn’t all that much. Roth might be saying that we’re all still prudish and repressive, and that might be true, but he isn’t revealing anything in his writing that would suggest that he’s trying to do anything other than to shock us into awareness that there are a lot of unhappily married people out there.

Accompanying these portrayals of shattered marriages, are the inevitable passages detailing the sexual acts between the male and the mistress, presumably portraying those acts that the wife would not or could not provide the husband. Anal sex, oral sex, women gagging, women biting, masturbation and all sorts of portrayals of sex are thrown in to all of Roth's novels. Sure, sex is a part of life, but Roth's obsession, or his perception that everyone is society is obsessed with sex, is ludicrous. All of Roth's characters seem to engage in is having sex, talking about sex, or thinking about sex, that is when they aren't engaged in conversations leading up to it or fighting about the after affects of it. You'd be hard pressed to find such portrayals of sex anywhere outside of a Penthouse Forum. Does this happen everyday? Sure, but, again, hasn't Roth made his point in countless novels? What more does he hope to accomplish by repeatedly driving this point home?

To round it all out, Roth has every woman in every one of his books posses breasts that are worthy of comment, repeatedly. Now, breasts are as important to me as the next guy, but Roth takes this to another level. Women, even well educated successful ones, are portrayed as using their sexuality as a means to manipulate, and their breasts are the main source of this power. Jamie Logan, the woman in Exit Ghost whom Nathan Zuckerman is so taken with, is a successful writer with a story published in the New Yorker, but that all goes by the wayside, and is apparently not credited to her talent and ability as a writer, but as a woman manipulative enough to ensnare multiple men in her web. And most of the women are like this in Roth's books. Rarely are they blessed with any real talent. As I mentioned, most of these women are then stricken with disease or just plain old age that removes them from the game that men and women play. Amy Bellette's torturous decline is of particular note. Her brain has deteriorated to the point where she's in dialogue with her own brain tumor, one that acts on her behalf, or at least is culpable for all of the bad decisions she’s made lately. And yet one couldn't be blamed for mistaking that this fate is much more preferable to the impotence and incontinence that have beset Nathan Zuckerman. The male deterioration is obviously given greater weight and significance in Roth's world.

Next there's the dialogue that Roth has his writers spout out. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I know that people don't speak the way they speak in novels, but Roth's dialogue is atrocious. It's almost as if he's never actually spoken to another human being and has no idea how people talk, and I'm not referring only to the sexual nature of his dialogue, which is a whole other creature in and of itself, I'm also referring to his dialogue between characters. The scenes in Exit Ghost between Nathan Zuckerman and Richard Kliman, a boisterous writer who wants to reveal a dirty secret regarding Zuckerman's hero E.I. Lonoff, contain some of the worst dialogue I've ever read. "Caligula wins" is a line that Kliman uses upon answering the phone the day after George W. Bush won his second term. Does anyone talk like this? I doubt even the most theatrical of political beasts would be so inclined to use language like that upon answering a phone. There's also a particularly nasty exchange between Kliman and Zuckerman where the former tells the latter, "You stink, you smell bad! Crawl back into your hole and die! You're dying, old man, you'll soon be dead! You smell of decay! You smell of death!" Roth’s writing borders on farce at this point.

Finally, and perhaps most quizzically, Roth devotes several pages to Zuckerman's reaction to the death of George Plimpton. Not only is it an odd choice on Roth's part to add this in the midst of the narrative, but it also stresses the credibility of it. If Zuckerman and Plimpton were the close acquaintances as is portrayed, doesn't it seem odd that more than a year after the latter's death the former is still unaware of it? Sure, Zuckerman is in near isolation in his remote sanctuary, but it seems unrealistic that he's so cut off, even from his publisher or any sort of acquaintance, that the death of a fellow writer, and one who is held in such high esteem by the narrator at that, is a nonevent. It's almost as if Zuckerman's reaction to Plimpton's death is a literal example of the eternal question of if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound, but in this case it's if you live in isolation for so long, does life around you stop?

There's much more I could criticize about the novel, like Zuckerman's repeated claims that his deteriorating mind leaves him grasping for words and memories yet he can still write a flawless sentence, or the totally extraneous dialogues that appear throughout the text that are between an unnamed "He" and "She" who represent Zuckerman and Jamie Logan. Roth and numerous critics apparently believe that this is a stunning novel and a fitting epitaph to the Zuckerman saga, but I'm afraid they are wrong, especially when one considers that Roth has been writing the same novel repeatedly for years now.

Tomorrow....
....life changes forever for Kingmob and V.

Favorite Song of the Moment
My favorite song of late, and probably my favorite song by the group Sigur Ros, is "Milano" from their album Takk.... Unfortunately, there's no proper video for it, but there is this concert footage of them performing it from You Tube.

The Terror Conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the Loss of Liberty by Jim Marrs
Almost as an antithesis to the DeLillo novel, Jim Marrs' book is a lengthy dissection of the events of September 11, 2001 along with a thorough history of not only what led up to it but also the many events that have proceeded as a result of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor. The conceit one must buy into when approaching this work is that the events that day were not as they seemed and not only were distorted substantially but, even worse, maybe even allowed to happen. Yes, it was a huge conspiracy that is so vast and complex that I'm not sure anyone can really comprehend it. Marrs is a good writer, and he definitely pulls you in with a brisk writing style that keeps the reader enthralled with the plethora of revelations, or quasi-revelations, that he throws out there with much supporting evidence and cited sources. In other words, it's not as if he's just making this stuff up off the top of his head or it's something he's gleaned from the many conspiracy sites on the web.

As with any book on this type of subject, though, it's hard to swallow all of it. Were the towers brought down by explosives? Were the planes remotely piloted? What happened at the Pentagon? What happened to Flight 93, and was it really flown into the ground after a passenger revolt? These questions and many others are pretty interesting to explore because there's a certain plausibility to them. On the other hand, Marrs mires the entire scenario with tons of information regarding secret societies and organizations that many of the main players involved are supposedly a part of. I find it interesting to contemplate, but it seems, at points, to be more than one can handle.

The fact that this post is actually getting published on 9/11 adds a certain sense of irony to the post I hadn't intended, and it's always best to be mindful of the fact that while many find conspiracies interesting to ponder, there's also the flip side to consider, the actual victims of the tragedy or event. I'd like to imagine that those who put so much effort into constructing these elaborate theories do in some sense have the victims in mind and that the search for an ultimate truth is really what this is all for. However, I don't think it necessarily happens that way, which is unfortunate. To some people, I'm sure this is just a hobby or interesting area of study, as with the JFK assassination, which coincidentally or perhaps not Marrs wrote extensively on, but for the victims wild theories of remote controlled planes and a government complicit in the very tragedy that took their loved ones from them are not just areas of interest.

The thing with events like 9/11 is that people can have it both ways. It was either a massive intelligence failure on the part of our government, or it was a coordinated attack propagated by vast numbers of people in power from governments far and wide. Either way, one can see that something led to these events. One just needs to choose whether to accept them as fantastical in nature or merely tragic.

Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Finally, Don DeLillo has written a novel about September 11, 2001. I say finally because it seems that everyone in the literary world has been waiting for DeLillo more than any other author to address the events of that day, events that reverberate to this day nearly six years later. Sure, other writers have attempted to write 9/11 novels, but only someone of the stature of DeLillo could truly address it on not only on a worldwide scale but also probe deep into the psyche of those affected and dissect the mood in which the events of that Tuesday morning changed us all, for better or worse. As he has shown in the past, DeLillo can dissect the mood of America and place it in a more stable context. His previous novels have shown that much. Underworld, a sprawling epic that addressed the effects of the Cold War on society, happened to also have the Twin Towers as its cover image. But more than that, DeLillo has addressed issues of terrorism in Mao II, an "airborne toxic event" in White Noise, and the Towers themselves have been featured in his books for quite some time. So if anyone is qualified to analyze the affect of 9/11 on us as a society, it's Don DeLillo.

I'm sorry to say that it's not the case. Falling Man is a failure on all fronts, and one of the worst novels I've ever read.
DeLillo's writing isn't the problem in this book; it's how he chooses to deconstruct the events of that day and tries to put them in a proper context that falls flat; it's also the execution. Many factors contribute to this.

First, as with many of DeLillo's novels, there is no real sense of narrative. Reality, in his eyes, doesn't flow forward fluidly, but is simply a series of vignettes that bare little or no relation to the previous ones. That's not a problem when he's addressing something as sprawling and epic as the Cold War. After all, that took place over decades of time, and to think that all the events flowed one into the other seamlessly is probably asking for too much and would lead to nothing short of an unreadable list. However, when addressing an event like 9/11, it seems to me that it might require a more deliberate exactitude in dissecting the inner lives of those affected, especially since it occurred on United States soil and, clearly, affected everyone in some way or another. What DeLillo settles for, though, is a novel that has 9/11 on the periphery and not as an overarching event that drives the novel forward. One can easily take the characters and replace 9/11 with any number of tragic events and one would hardly notice the difference in the text.

Second, the characters themselves are so far from being sympathetic that it's tough to even imagine DeLillo thinking that we as readers would have any sympathy for them. Keith is a stereotypical male in fiction these days that I could really care less about, and he's the one who survived the attack. I'm so sick of the "I'm too complex for any woman to understand me, so I'll cheat on my wife and go live in a bachelor pad" male. It's an insult to men, and I find it hard to believe that DeLillo would think this type of character would be a wise choice to have survive the attack. And DeLillo compounds this with having Keith seem to spend the entire novel in some sort of "postmodern" fugue. There is nothing that would suggest that Keith is actually, say, human in any sense of the word. Again, this is typical DeLillo, but the effect does not work in this context and seems rather alien to me.

Third, and related to the above, DeLillo chooses to focus on characters that are, what I would term, yuppies. Keith is obviously a yuppie since apparently only yuppies worked in the World Trade Center, or could afford a pricey bachelor pad close to Ground Zero, or play professional poker instead of returning to his real line of work. Lianne, his estranged than reconciled wife, is even worse. A freelance book editor, another total New York cliche, and who runs an Alzheimer's support group, but apparently does little else other than sit and ponder in a confused state of being. Her mother, Nina, is an art historian with, of course, a married lover, Martin, who is yet another typical DeLillo character, a mysterious art dealer who has changed his name and who used to be involved in some sort of radical organizations in the 1970s. He is annoying for many reasons, but most of all for his all knowing demeanor that offers explanations for everything but leaves one more confused than previously thought. He knows why we were attacked and why we deserved it. If one can determine why from his scant dialogue, I'm not one of them.

As an aside, apparently there aren't any marriages in the world where the men are faithful to their wives, and, to some extent vice versa, but primarily the former. That's such a tiring attribute, and I'm not sure what that has to do with making any character more interesting, and in this book, as with most male writers, it's the male who is unfaithful, while the one woman, Nina, was involved with Martin while she was married, but her husband killed himself, so, apparently, that excuses some of that transgression. It's another cliche that I find troubling, insulting, and just plain stupid, and it seems to proliferate with writers like DeLillo and Philip Roth, or anyone who focuses primarily on domesticity. The males are inevitably portrayed as being too complex and too restless to be devoted or satisfied with one woman, while the women are either hapless victims wracked with some form of mental deficiency, willing participants on their own, or simply powerless. What's troubling is that's it seems to be thrown in simply as an aside, especially in this novel. Martin, "might be married." Is that supposed to add some sort of intrigue to him that couldn't be achieved by simply having him be mysterious in other ways? It's also troubling that it's just so effortlessly pulled off in the course of a novel. Keith, for instance, after the attacks starts visiting another survivor, a woman of course, whose briefcase Keith unbelievably made it out of the Towers with. It's hard to tell if the affair is sexual in nature, as with much DeLillo it's rather vague, but it does present a problem for Keith, briefly albeit, regarding how to explain the time he was spending with this woman. Finally, what's troubling is that it never seems to be about sex, rather it's about something else, what I'm not sure, but it ventures pretty closely to, what I would almost term, obligation. Marriages are apparently obligated to disintegrate like this.

Finally, DeLillo's use of dialogue to further muddy the waters of the fugue like state of all involved is by now a given in his work. His dialogue has always been odd in structure and cadence, more like random thoughts or observations than fully formed ideas and real conversations. Nobody talks like they do in novels, but really nobody talks like they do in DeLillo's novels.

Ultimately, the novel is an exercise in creating a mood that provides little or nothing close to insight into how the events of 9/11 affected us as a society. DeLillo took a stock set of characters, had 9/11 occur in the background, and decided to let the novel run its course. It almost appears as if it were a novel written out of a sense of obligation rather than a real desire to provide insight or actual interest. I, personally, have a problem with the idea that 9/11 is something that could and should be used as an emotional provocation. But I'm not opposed to the idea of someone, especially a novelist, attempting to capture the mood of that day. DeLillo, though, isn't the one to do so, and it appears to me that he isn't very interested in it anyway.

iPod Song of the Day

For the second iPod song of the day, I decided to pick a song from one of my favorite bands that don't exist any longer, Stone Temple Pilots. Now, members of the band are still active in the music world, most notably Scott Weiland with former members of Guns N' Roses in Velvet Revolver, but it's not really the same in terms of either band.

Stone Temple Pilots released five albums along with an obligatory greatest hits disc, and the first three are three of my favorite albums of all time. They started out as a typical grunge band, but the evolved to incorporate elements of many different styles of music, from the Rolling Stones to glam infected David Bowie and Roxy Music. Their last two proper albums, while okay, aren't anywhere near as good as the first three.

Today's track comes from their first album Core and is entitled "Creep." It's a really good acoustic ballad that's right up there with "Plush," which is also on this album.

iPod Song of the Day

I have nearly 5,500 songs on my iPod, and while I try to limit listening to the pure random of all of those tracks in favor of playlists I have made, I do try to listen to a sampling of random shuffle before I make the switch. So I'm going to start a new feature on here today for the one song that stands out in the proper shuffle setting. The first song is Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake."



The video is typical from the '80s, weird, goofy, and all fun. The song, though not as good as some other Duran Duran tracks, is still pretty solid with a pretty cool sounding chorus and standard issue keyboards and horns. As for the lyrics, I haven't the faintest clue as to what they're about. When it comes down to it, most lyrics by bands like Duran Duran are about girls, breaking up with girls, longing for girls, etc. This one doesn't seem to fit, though, and seems more along the lines of those for "Wild Boys," another awesome track. Ah, well, the point here isn't to dissect a track, but to showcase a cool one.

Self-Imposed News Blackout

I've been really behind in my reading for what seems like the last several years. Reading books that usually took no time to finish seems to stretch into ungodly lengths, and don't even mention keeping up with all the magazines I subscribe to. Add on top of that the New York Times that I receive every day, and, as you can imagine, it adds up to a lot of reading material to devour during a given day, week, month.

When I leave for any amount of time, naturally, I suspend my paper delivery. And while I can still buy the paper when I'm at home, I still feel less a sense of obligation to read it thoroughly or on time, and I feel much more relaxed with regard to my reading schedule, if you want to call it that.

I'm not sure why I had never thought of this before, but why can't I suspend it for a time even while I'm home? There's nothing that says I can't still be here and not have it delivered for a time, right? Right, so I figured I'd try it for a few days to try to finish a book that's been lingering on my nightstand, and just to give myself a break from it all. How would this turn out?

It turns out that, I didn't miss being out of the loop all that much. While I did feel a certain sense of unawareness, and even out of touch with the world for a bit (I really do not look at news sites on the web. I can't stand reading them, and would much rather have a newspaper in my hands than staring at at screen.) and somewhat ignorant of events, I soon felt a little sense of relief. It was nice not feeling the obligation to have to read the paper every day. I wouldn't want to do this all the time, but the break did serve its purpose and allowed me to catch up and finish my book and just live a little easier.

The other thing I noticed, though, was that I was out of the loop enough to have any sort of anger at the affairs of the world subside substantially. I think you have to be a truly devout critic of the president to hate him 24/7, but it's really hard to muster up any sort of animus towards him when I wasn't reading the paper on a daily basis and, primarily, the editorial page, that lambastes him daily.

I don't think I want to live without the news on a such a frequent basis, but I do believe I will be taking these respites even when I don't leave town more often in the future.

RE: Death Celebration?

I wrote in a previous post about the outpouring of joy at the death of Jerry Falwell not to long ago. My point in that post, if I had one, was that I didn't personally see that as being a good thing to become comfortable with doing. V., whose excellent blog I have a link to on my sidebar, resent me an email discussion I had with her when President Reagan died, and the similarities between my post and that email are pretty striking, and it appears that I had much the same problem then as I did recently with Falwell's death.

However, what caused me to revisit this was not only rereading that email exchange, but also a conversation I had with a coworker regarding the same issue. It was pointed out to me that unless you had to live under the persecution that Falwell and his ilk advocated, then it's hard to really gauge what type of reaction one would have to such a person's death. I guess the adage about walking in one's shoes is truer in this regard than I had thought.

On the other hand, though, there's also the issue of whether or not you're sinking to the level of that which you feel persecuted by when you engage in a celebration of their death. Isn't that the point when someone tells you that if you do such and such, then that person has won? I'm not really advocating one side or another here, but I find it interesting to think about the fact that certain things that would seem to be questionable in one context aren't in another.

I had all but forgotten about the Verve's song "Bittersweet Symphony" until I recently watched a documentary on the British music scene in the late '90s called Live Forever. They briefly played it during a montage of images, and it just reminded of how great the track really is. I remember when it was released that it somehow got adopted, as certain songs do, into the sports world, and, I could be wrong, but I seem to recall it was played during a Nike commercial as well. Regardless, it's a great track that has an unmistakable sound to it. It's one of those songs that gives me goosebumps just hearing the opening.

Oh, and the video is pretty cool, too.

Something I find increasingly troubling is the ease in which people refer to the fact that someone has died as being a good thing or that they are glad that it has happened. Jerry Falwell, a lightning rod of controversy, died last week, and while I don't think I ever agreed with any of his vitriolic statements that were racist, homophobic, and just plain awful, I can't say that I'm "glad" that he's dead.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I feel that death is too sacred of an event, if that's the right terminology, to actually partake in any sort of frivolity from the fact that it has happened to someone who is actively disliked. I also find it hypocritical to say, if one subscribes to the notion that death is something that can be wished upon someone and celebrated after it occurs, that some deaths are off limits while others are more than fair game. For instance, in this country September 11, 2001 is so ingrained into the psyche that any criticism is off limits, and, yes, I'm referring to Ann Coulter's hideous remarks regarding the deceased spouses of the "widows" she slandered in her latest salvo against the left. These people were victims of a crime, and no one is arguing that, but to posit that it's unacceptable to make any sort of disparaging comments, not just about the victims but also of the day itself, while openly embracing the death of someone from the other side of the aisle is absurd. Were all of the victims of that day truly innocent people? Who knows, but what I do know is that Jerry Falwell wasn't a serial killer, mass-murderer, or brutal dictator known to have slaughtered millions of people. No, he wasn't any of those things at all. He was simply a man with a limited vision of the world that was misguided by religion and an open proponent of hatred and intolerance all in the name of God. Does that mean his death should be celebrated? Probably not.

At the end of 2006, two artists, one notorious for being a recluse and the other just as notorious for his strangeness, returned with new offerings for the public’s consumption. Of course I’m talking about Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch respectively. The works, Pynchon’s new novel “Against the Day” and Lynch’s film “Inland Empire,” were greeted with fervent speculation and enormous anticipation. What were either about? Was Pynchon’s novel really nearly eleven-hundred pages long? A three hour Lynch film and shot on digital video? Are you serious? For most ravenous fans, this sounded like a veritable feast, an excessive bounty from two of the more deliberately contemplative artists of our time. The span between new works for both was long, almost a decade for Pynchon and five years for Lynch, especially when one considers that artists routinely put out new products on a yearly basis in most fields. Then, as with most niche artists, the anticipation and exhilaration sputtered out after an initial wave of fury. Sure, the more intense fans are still dissecting the works to this day, which is to be expected from a massive tome such as Pynchon's and a lengthy feature film as with Lynch.

However, what you don't seem to find is active criticism of the works themselves by the professed fans. Both met with critical acclaim from a majority of reviewers, but they also had their fair share of detractors as well, some pretty intense in their criticisms of the artists, especially Pynchon. One could chalk it up to the animosity resulting from having to speed read through a mammoth book like, "Against the Day," quickly enough to compose a coherent and thorough review, or the ass-numbing amount of time one had sit in a darkened movie theater trying mightily to digest what appears to be a personal compendium of Lynch's most inner weirdness. Either way, I have sympathy for someone under a deadline, and I can understand the rush to judgment that may result from a quicker than recommended reading or a long, long viewing of a film. What I don't agree with is the unblinking acceptance and total reluctance to be critical of the works by the fans. In what I'd like to term the necessity of "killing your idols" in an effort to truly dissect a work and place it within the pantheon of the works not only of the artist themselves but also of the greater artistic community at large. To me, that seems like the only truly honest way of assessing any work of art, and regardless of how painful it might be to be critical of someone whom you adore, it only seems right to be as unflinchingly honest as possible.

To illustrate my point, I'd go so far as to claim that neither Lynch nor Pynchon edited anything out of these works. If they did, I'd be incredibly surprised. Lynch seems to have just shot scenes and compiled them together into one massive film leaving little on the cutting room floor (Lynch apparently shot many, many hours of film, so the fact that he whittled it down to three hours and it still retains this quality is astonishing), and Pynchon appears to have just dropped his manuscript on the publisher's door with a note stating that any alterations would be unnecessary. Any film or book of the lengths these two produced is bound to have stretches that seem irrelevant or tedious. It's just that these two works seem to have more than average. However, if you read any of the numerous blogs or fan sites devoted to these artists, the criticism in this regard is rather muted or absent altogether. Like I said above, it might stem from the many factors, but I for one feel like the above are criticisms are necessary to contemplate. The idea of swallowing hook, line and sinker from a beloved artist just isn’t that appealing to me as a consumer and appreciator of art. Criticism, in my mind, is a good thing to engage in. Not only does it help you as to be critical as a consumer, but it also, in some roundabout way, may influence the artist. In this wireless age, it’s not unheard of for artists to lurk within the communities of those dedicated to them to glean some form of feedback. A recent example, albeit not the most perfect one, is that of Anne Rice and her feud on Amazon’s comment section.

My ultimate point is that even though I’m all for the freedom of an artist to present whatever work they’ve completed in the form they so desire, but at the same time I also feel that they should be responsible enough to recognize that when they produce works of such grandeur that they are asking for a time commitment by the consumer, and that you shouldn’t feel as if it always boils down to, “Well, I just don’t get it, so it must be me.” That type of thinking only floats for so long and it’s really not that productive, because how often does one feel compelled to actually follow up on what may be the root cause of the problem that prohibits understanding? Probably not all that often, which is especially true when one is dealing with Pynchon, who crams so many obscure references onto every page that, it’s possible, one could devote years to reading just one of his books. I commend those who do take this task seriously. What I don’t feel like is justified, though, is to put one’s self down for the purpose of consuming art, or feeling like it’s an act of betrayal to criticize a work by an artist you adore. That, I think, would go against the spirit of the entire enterprise of art itself.

Musings on Current Events

Over the past two weeks, two events have occurred concerning our government that have been and continue to be particularly troubling. I'm referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision regarding the ban on "partial birth abortion" and President Bush's reluctance to accept any sort of spending bill to fund the continuing saga in Iraq that includes language regarding a date to start withdrawing troops from what as been long evident to most people as a lost cause in the region.

First the spending bills. Bush promises to veto any bill that makes its way to his office. Both the House and the Senate have approved their respective bills and both majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem poised to enter a battle with the president, which is what I as a Democrat would hope they would do. One aspect of their strategy, which I agree with, is to make the war the president's and his alone. If he should veto the bill, and there's no reason to believe that he won't, then it serves notice to the American people that both he and Vice President Cheney are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the war for what it is, a lost cause that never should have been entered into in the first place.

I find this troubling for many reasons, but the primary of which is that the longer this goes on the more it seems like we're entering into an unreality of sorts. I don't deny that the president and his enablers actually believe that we're doing the right thing by staying in Iraq. In some twisted logic, the belief that by fighting the enemy (al Qaeda, Islamofascists, etc.) on their home turf we are avoiding the fight with them here at home, which makes perfect sense only if one doesn't consider the fact that we weren't actually attacked by anyone or group that resided in Iraq. Now, after what has occurred there, what the president is saying is without a doubt true. Iraq has become nothing more than a breeding ground for future terrorists who would attack the United States.

What's also troubling is that after four plus years with little or nothing to show in terms of progress, the president insists that 1. there's so many positive stories emerging from Iraq that go unreported because the media is fixated on the tragic death spiral that consumes Iraq on a daily basis 2. the surge will work if given adequate time. Neither of these scenarios seem likely or correct in terms with the actual reality on the ground. I'm sure some of our tax dollars are being used to build schools and other important projects that will, hopefully, go towards rebuilding the basic infrastructure of the country, most of which I'm sure is being handled by Haliburton. Yet, the fact of the matter is there are bombings daily throughout the country that continue to take massive amounts of human life and that, I'm sorry to say, takes precedent over any manner of uplifting human interest development that might be occurring concurrently. Finally, the troop surge is nothing compared to the amount of troops truly necessary to contain the country. It's not even worth it at this point to make an analogy about band-aids and mortal wounds.

"Partial birth abortion" is the crude terminology for what is medically known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure is rather gruesome in detail, so regardless of whether you choose to refer to it in the technical terminology or the politically charged layman's term, it doesn't lessen the notion of its inherent brutal nature. Knowing what the procedure entails could sway any supporter of abortion rights to the other side, but I don't think it's necessarily an issue that's common enough to really warrant the debate. In fact, the procedure is so rarely done that it's almost an afterthought with regard to larger debate. The circumstances that surround the necessity of such a procedure occur so infrequently that the ban may not be something to become truly troubled about, especially when one considers that many states are promoting exceptions to the rule that would allow the procedure to occur under special circumstances.

So why am I troubled by this? I'm not so much opposed to banning a procedure that happens pretty infrequently. In fact, I'm sure it gives the pro-life camp a small victory to taut that may or may not serve as fodder for the greater debate over abortion. No, I don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that all of the decisions regarding abortion are made by predominantly male-centered courts. Unless I'm missing something regarding basic biology, I don't think males can reproduce without the female to bare the child, right? My thinking is that if it should reach the point where there is a national referendum on abortion, then the voting should be solely for women only. If the majority of women decide that abortion is a right they can live without, then so be it, it should be repealed. Why males have such a huge say in this issue is beyond me.

A flickering match point excels softly into the aether.

Transcending the emotional into an equally mortified existence,

It becomes necessary to transform into a spectral entity that subsists

solely on the random grief of strangers who flock for the sole purpose

of experiencing the momentary gladness of being.

An entire being composed of thought and sadness.

A flickering luminescence haunts an antiquated framework.

Incandescence flows in a solitary manner

unbeknownst to those most faithful to the cause.

I become confident that I know

the most effective course to steer the fragmented ship of emotions

that have ravaged the mindful tenants of this most respected and treasured

of foes.

After morrow becomes a moot point.

War Plans?
Today's edition of the Guardian has a troubling article regarding the Bush administration's advanced plans to bomb Iran, which refuses to cease the uranium enrichment that may or may not be for the purposes of creating a nuclear weapon; in fact, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has gone so far as to claim that the work is so far advanced at this point as to be "irreversible." To be more specific, the article is about an article, a coming piece by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. Of course, the piece was greeted with denials from the White House who insist that no such planning is under way and that it is in fact absurd to even suggest such a thing, and Hersh continues to stand by his reporting that, as usual, was gleaned mostly from unnamed sources.

Now, herein lies the problem. Someone is not telling the truth, right? How is it that this operation, which has been hinted at before by Hersh in previous New Yorker columns, has been in the planning stages for so long, but at the same time is being sprung upon an unknowing public that has neither the stomach for another war nor removed the bitter taste of the previous run up to our current situation in Iraq? It just doesn't make sense. It's apparent that our leaders are very adept at the art of saber rattling. Cheney has been doing pretty much as long as he's been in office, and Bush himself is no stranger to the tactic. However, as much as I'd like to say that this all stinks and Hersh is revealing a dirty secret that no one wants to acknowledge, I can't do that. I just don't buy it.

As I alluded to above, this isn't the first time Hersh as written about this subject. Looking back, this operation has been in the works for a better part of the last year, a year in which Bush and his various henchmen have alternately either pushed for tougher sanctions, more diplomacy, or military threats, sometimes, it seems all at once. Hersh, though, was writing about it after the Israeli war with Hezbollah and earlier. In fact, one can go back as far as January 2005 and read a Hersh article about impending military action against Iran.

I've written about it before, but I have a hard time trusting articles that rely on so many unnamed sources and former officials. The New York Times is just as guilty. You can count on one hand the number of named sources that appear in either the Times or New Yorker. Unnamed sources seem to reveal anything, a lot of which seems overly dramatic and that hardly ever comes to fruition.

I guess what it comes down to is that it's easy to get blinded by either mistrust or hatred regarding politics. You can say, "That damn Bush and Cheney," all you want, but at some point it reaches a critical mass where it's too easy to absolutely never read between the lines or see through the doom and gloom scenarios that these various unnamed sources and star reporters like Hersh traffic in. Hersh made a comeback of sorts with the Abu Ghraib scandal, and, like any reporter, he's probably searching for the next big story. Our secret war with Iran seems to be what he's settled on.

An Important Death

Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was the 3000th casualty the United States sustained in the war with Iraq.

I find it incredibly funny watching professors and my co-workers take magazines from the shelf to read while eating. Why? Because I have observed, surreptitiously, other people taking those very magazines into the restroom with them.

Today's chronicle of rudeness.

1. To the old lady at the library,
When someone is at the circulation desk waiting for an attendant to check out materials to them that are on hold, please don't feel like you need to put the books you plan on checking out on the counter right in front of them. This being the same old woman who the staff said is such a "cool lady." No, she's not cool. She's a rude asshole with poor taste in reading.

2. To the young guy coming into the library,
It's usually customary to say, "Thank you," to the person who holds the door open for you. It's not as if you're crippled, elderly, blind or suffer from any other malady, so show some manners next time.

3. To the butcher at Giant Eagle,
Please don't run me over with huge cart you're pushing filled with packages of fresh meat. In fact, it's probably a good idea to say, "Excuse me," to the person you are pushing out of the way, the same person who happens to be looking at packages of meat that they might purchase. Guess what? You just lost a sale for your store!

4. To the girl driving to a red light,
The big, solid white line is where you're supposed to stop, not the white lines of the crosswalk that I happen to be using to cross right in front of you.

As the occupation of Iraq enters, what seems to be, its final stages before erupting into an all-out civil war that threatens to engulf the entire region in one way or another, the situation in this country seems to remain steady as she goes. An election won, a new year begun, and it seems like the more things change the more they stay the same. The President seems reluctant to accept any advice or criticism from outside of his loyal circle, and would rather make boisterous statements about being the "decider" on all issues regarding the war regardless of which party is in power. The Vice President, in all of his ominous glory, would rather spar with Wolf Blitzer over the appropriateness of questions regarding his pregnant, lesbian daughter and proclaiming that nothing will stop the "surge" from advancing. Is it just me, or didn't we spend the entire last year, and most of the previous three, hearing exactly the same thing? If someone can tell me what the point of democracy is, then I'd love to hear it.

From the misguided stunts of the anti-war movement to the increasingly erratic behavior of the citizens of this town, Pittsburgh has it all wrong on a number of fronts. Perhaps it's because of the New Year’s infancy and my own expectations for some newfound civility and common sense in this town, or maybe it's just a case of the winter blues. Whatever the reason, I'm about to unleash a torrent of criticism on Pittsburgh in this post, so turn away if that's what you're not here for.

Anti-War Follies
First, anti-war protesters here in Pittsburgh routinely target the recruiting office right here in the heart of Oakland for their demonstrations. This is not without precedent, and I would agree that recruiter tactics are, without question, somewhat underhanded in nature. However, the latest stunt by the demonstrators left a bad taste in my mouth and more than a little perturbed at, what can be best described as, a desperate attempt to seem relevant and part of the larger anti-war movement. Earlier this month, the so-called Pittsburgh Organizing Group "successfully disrupted the military recruitment machine in Pittsburgh yet again." What made this different from the usual protests is explained as follows:

One difference about this picket, as compared to past ones, was the call for people to bring whipped cream pies (because recruiters should be afraid to show their faces). A number of individuals, young and old, responded to the call and showed up, pie in hand.

As far as I can tell, attacking recruiters in this crude manner has little or nothing to do with their practices and will lead to little or nothing more than a brief mention on the nightly news and the newspapers. Now, I'm not someone who supports the war in Iraq, or occupation as it should be referred to, but I don't think that this is how one should go about the process of voicing that opposition. Attacking soldiers, regardless of their position, is a cowardly act plain and simple, and it's not as if the recruiters are civilians, which wouldn't necessarily make this acceptable.

What else bothers me about this type of action is that I feel that it's just another attempt by Pittsburghers to feel as if they're part of a larger movement, which I just don't think they are. People here want it both ways, and that's just not possible. What I find puzzling about this town is that there seems to be this resistance to anything that's cosmopolitan in nature and outright offense taken when someone from outside of the area remains unimpressed with the scene here. On the other hand, the anti-war movement here would lead you to believe that they're part and parcel of a larger, more impressive machine. This is misleading, to say the least. When one looks at those in attendance, you don't see or hear from any Cindy Sheehan types. No, quite the opposite is apparent. To quote, reluctantly Donald Rumsfeld, these are simply the "dead enders" of the movement. These include the tattooed and pierced set of the "cooler than thou" crowd who I find incredibly puzzling in their desire to portray themselves as an all inclusive group, but are more than likely to act as the antithesis of the highbrow cliques they seek to counteract.

I heartedly endorse protesting the war. In fact, I think it's necessary, but I feel that it's somewhat diluted when you're main proponents are infected with poorly thought out ideas of what's right and how best to draw attention to the cause. Also, the amount of hypocrisy involved within the ranks of those who comprise the group is a little more than offsetting as well.