I mentioned some weeks ago that I saw Les Contes d'Hoffmann, an opera by Offenbach, in the theater thanks to the Met summer encore series. The opera is structured in three acts, each of which has a central female role: Olympia, a mechanical doll, Antonia, a melodramatic singer, and Giulietta, a scheming courtesan. There is also a prologue and an epilogue. The main character, Hoffmann, is a poet who fell in love with these three women, and the structure of the opera is that he's telling the stories of these loves to a bar full of drunken Frenchmen. The styles of each act are quite different. The first act is comic and quick-witted; the second is practically a parody of itself, with the weepy diva and her mysterious illness; the third is a sort of supernatural femme fatale story.
The music and the thematic elements of this opera double back on themselves here and there, and there are two characters (chaotic neutral and lawful evil) that appear consistently throughout each of the acts in an odd, novel way. The story, such as it is, rambles off into three completely different directions and you really have no idea where Offenbach is going with all this until he gets there. Some of its ideas seem utterly bizarre for their time to this 21st-century resident. Each of the three central female parts was intended by Offenbach to be sung by the same soprano. (Having seen the opera, I can tell you this is madness. The role of Olympia alone is unbelievably demanding, even though she only has one major aria. (But it's a stunner.))
Plainly, to me, Offenbach wrote this opera exactly as he wanted, without much thought as to who would be able to sing it and who would want to see it. Okay, exhibit one.
Exhibit two is the White Album, which I'm going to admit candidly I have never really liked. I've always thought it lacked discipline and failed at coherency too often to be a successful experiment. Of course there are amazing masterpieces of songs on it which I don't need to name, but the balance of the album, the songs that weren't singles, always dragged it down to unlistenable for me. "Yer Blues" came up on my randomizer the other day, though. I realized that even though my opinion of the White Album as not much fun to listen to probably won't change, it's still an artifact of some of the best musicians on earth operating at the top of their game with a clear intent to push artistic boundaries.
The White Album is legendary for a reason. It does what it wants to do, presents the songs and musicianship exactly as intended by the band. There may have been better bands operating in 1968, but not many, and no one in such a stratosphere of fame forged ahead so deliberately and fearlessly as the Beatles did with that album.
Exhibit three: Infinite Jest. 1,079 pages of unparalleled genius and, I'd argue, unparalleled difficulty, except for probably Ulysses and À la recherche du temps perdu. I can't imagine what it must have been like to write it, but I know what it was like to read it - like being hit in the face with an overwhelmingly brilliant sun for page after page of incredible intention. Exhausting. Punishing. Full of light. Wallace had to know that it was insane to write a book like this, absurdly long and obsessively detailed and jammed with dozens of characters and so full of its own vernacular that it makes the reader live in two worlds for its length. But he wrote it anyway.
These three works epitomize uncompromising art. Each of these creators had a vision for what they wanted their art to be and say and do, and they went forth and created it, without regard for how it would be received in the world.
I've read enough experimental fiction to know that you can have this attitude and wind up with a big ol' mess. The temptation for me when I'm writing is constantly to temper and fiddle until I feel like what I've produced is right for an audience, not just for myself. If I go too far in the direction of uncompromising art, I feel like I'm letting my ego get the better of me, thinking I'm a lot more talented than I am.
Where's the line? How do you be secure enough that you've created a terrific piece of art that suggestions to make it "better" may be interpreted as compromising the art, and you rightly refuse to take them?
I had a very hard time writing this post. I could overindulge on this topic and write paragraphs upon paragraphs about writer insecurity vs. writer arrogance, the demands of the market vs. the demands of art and whether there's any way to balance the two without losing your damn mind, and a question that I find particularly enduring: how you create art that's uncompromising while still creating art that's excellent or even comprehensible. The simple answer is that you're just that good, but that's not enough of an answer for me. What compels people to sit through the first weird act of Les Contes d'Hoffmann or keep on reading after page three of Infinite Jest, other than perverse curiosity? How did those items get accepted in the marketplace - how did some gatekeeper see promise and decide to take a chance on them?
All of this applies to me only in the most rudimentary way. I have not written Infinite Jest. But I wonder whether the compromises I'm planning for certain pieces of art are entirely the wrong thing to do, whether I'm bowing to the market in ways that lessen the impact and excellence of the art. Whether I should hold out and try to sell what I have, instead of trying to fold it up and fit it in a specific box. Or is it just a big ol' mess, what I have, and I need to tamp it down for it to be good art at all?
Showing posts with label Infinite Jest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infinite Jest. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Although "Completism and Infinite Jest" Sounds Like a Decent Thesis
In the same day, I finished episode number 45 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and page 981 (the last page before ~100 pages of footnotes, which I also read (except for the one about Pemulis's calculus equation, no, sorry, but no)) of Infinite Jest. Marathons, both, and now completed. And not entirely dissimilar, for what it's worth; interesting to consume in tandem. There's a little sadness in my heart for both completions. I'll never watch any Monty Python sketches for the first time again, which is a little sad. And I'm finished with a Big Literary Project - certainly the biggest and most difficult single book I've ever read - which, while frustrating, had moments of great transcendence that I'm sorry to let go of.
My mom asked me if it was good, if I enjoyed it, and I said that I couldn't really answer that. I told Matt that I enjoyed it immensely on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph basis, because the writing is so utterly unlike anything else in its virtuosity. So enjoyable to read Wallace doing that work - like watching Baryshnikov dance, I told Mom. But on the whole, it was a slog, and I won't pretend that it wasn't. I'm not smart enough as to have picked up everything that went on, and I think ultimately I am not smart enough not to be frustrated by the lack of conclusion in the book. I think Wallace had a real intention and purpose in beginning and ending thoroughly in medias res, without starting a story or ending it in a way that makes linear or traditional narrative sense. But I like to read, and I do not like to be a literary critic, and I wanted a conclusion.
See here for some reactions of readers upon reaching the end of Infinite Jest. I identify most strongly with "Ongoing"'s two sentences. I also listened to this half-hour interview with Wallace, done in 1996, about the book, and felt on the whole much more settled about having read it, less of a love-hate rage, after hearing his nice measured articulate voice and foul mouth. Despite the business about having actually structured the book mathematically, to which my reaction was "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" However, smart as he is (and popular as he apparently is), I found the interviewer intolerable to listen to, and I don't know how he got into radio.
Next on my list is Then We Came to the End, which was a seriously hot book a couple of years ago and which I'm just now getting around to. 50 pages in it's pretty good and lots of fun, and maybe I'm seeing phantoms, but I see some annoying Wallace influence in it - the sort of bunch-of-random-sentences-squashed-into-one-paragraph thing, which I am not really in love with as a style. I thought it would be a relief to read something NOT written by someone brilliant beyond the ordinary realm (sorry, Joshua Ferris, but I hope you know what I mean), and it is, but Edna O'Brien is next, and then Meghan Daum. I'm tired of dudes.
As for my own work, a couple of lovely people got back to me about the Greenland book, and their feedback was helpful. One reader had this very interesting approach to certain aspects of the story, one that I never, ever would have thought of, not if you'd given me a hundred years to sort through potential reader reactions. I wish I could be more specific. Take my word that I was flummoxed and amused.
Also, I think I'm finally ready to stop fucking around and revise the horror book. I bought a red pen especially, and more than one person has agreed to read it. This process is so frustrating, y'all: writing, then revising, then reader one (Matt), then more revising, then additional readers, then hounding them all for feedback, then MORE revising, and then putting together the materials to begin hounding agents/editors, which I'm not even ready to do yet. I find myself wondering (wistfully) how people even wrote good books before the present day, when it was all typewriters and garrets and letters by post.
I read a book last fall that was set in the early 19th century in Britain wherein the main character wrote and then sold an adventure novel. It was all so simple. She wrote it, longhand, exactly as she intended to write it, and when finished, read it through once without doing much of anything to it. Her local bookshop-owner read it, loved it, and sent it to a publisher-friend. With some mild edits, it was printed and published and she received a draft for a few hundred pounds in the mail. *snap* Like that. Now I'm all wrapped up with revisions and platforms and the rules for writing a winning synopsis, and ensuring that I get enough reader feedback to make sense out of my draft, and serious novelists taking four years to write a book, and blaaaaaaaah. Can't it be more simple than this without questioning oneself? Or is it actually better this way, with more committee action and extroversion?
I wanted to write a post relating the experience of reading all six books of the original Dune saga to reading Infinite Jest, but this post just didn't turn out that way. Maybe another time. For those of you who know what's involved: yes, I really did read them all, every page. And it taught me an excellent lesson about being a completist, namely that being a completist just is NOT worth the trouble for certain aspects of life. Which is part of why I may not ever read The Pale King.
My mom asked me if it was good, if I enjoyed it, and I said that I couldn't really answer that. I told Matt that I enjoyed it immensely on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph basis, because the writing is so utterly unlike anything else in its virtuosity. So enjoyable to read Wallace doing that work - like watching Baryshnikov dance, I told Mom. But on the whole, it was a slog, and I won't pretend that it wasn't. I'm not smart enough as to have picked up everything that went on, and I think ultimately I am not smart enough not to be frustrated by the lack of conclusion in the book. I think Wallace had a real intention and purpose in beginning and ending thoroughly in medias res, without starting a story or ending it in a way that makes linear or traditional narrative sense. But I like to read, and I do not like to be a literary critic, and I wanted a conclusion.
See here for some reactions of readers upon reaching the end of Infinite Jest. I identify most strongly with "Ongoing"'s two sentences. I also listened to this half-hour interview with Wallace, done in 1996, about the book, and felt on the whole much more settled about having read it, less of a love-hate rage, after hearing his nice measured articulate voice and foul mouth. Despite the business about having actually structured the book mathematically, to which my reaction was "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" However, smart as he is (and popular as he apparently is), I found the interviewer intolerable to listen to, and I don't know how he got into radio.
Next on my list is Then We Came to the End, which was a seriously hot book a couple of years ago and which I'm just now getting around to. 50 pages in it's pretty good and lots of fun, and maybe I'm seeing phantoms, but I see some annoying Wallace influence in it - the sort of bunch-of-random-sentences-squashed-into-one-paragraph thing, which I am not really in love with as a style. I thought it would be a relief to read something NOT written by someone brilliant beyond the ordinary realm (sorry, Joshua Ferris, but I hope you know what I mean), and it is, but Edna O'Brien is next, and then Meghan Daum. I'm tired of dudes.
As for my own work, a couple of lovely people got back to me about the Greenland book, and their feedback was helpful. One reader had this very interesting approach to certain aspects of the story, one that I never, ever would have thought of, not if you'd given me a hundred years to sort through potential reader reactions. I wish I could be more specific. Take my word that I was flummoxed and amused.
Also, I think I'm finally ready to stop fucking around and revise the horror book. I bought a red pen especially, and more than one person has agreed to read it. This process is so frustrating, y'all: writing, then revising, then reader one (Matt), then more revising, then additional readers, then hounding them all for feedback, then MORE revising, and then putting together the materials to begin hounding agents/editors, which I'm not even ready to do yet. I find myself wondering (wistfully) how people even wrote good books before the present day, when it was all typewriters and garrets and letters by post.
I read a book last fall that was set in the early 19th century in Britain wherein the main character wrote and then sold an adventure novel. It was all so simple. She wrote it, longhand, exactly as she intended to write it, and when finished, read it through once without doing much of anything to it. Her local bookshop-owner read it, loved it, and sent it to a publisher-friend. With some mild edits, it was printed and published and she received a draft for a few hundred pounds in the mail. *snap* Like that. Now I'm all wrapped up with revisions and platforms and the rules for writing a winning synopsis, and ensuring that I get enough reader feedback to make sense out of my draft, and serious novelists taking four years to write a book, and blaaaaaaaah. Can't it be more simple than this without questioning oneself? Or is it actually better this way, with more committee action and extroversion?
I wanted to write a post relating the experience of reading all six books of the original Dune saga to reading Infinite Jest, but this post just didn't turn out that way. Maybe another time. For those of you who know what's involved: yes, I really did read them all, every page. And it taught me an excellent lesson about being a completist, namely that being a completist just is NOT worth the trouble for certain aspects of life. Which is part of why I may not ever read The Pale King.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
You Will Die a Million Deaths
So, I hit a story point in Infinite Jest that's really giving me pause. I'm going to presume those of you out here reading this are either never going to read the book or have read it already (or have started and given up on it (them's statistics I really want to see)), because SPOILERS AHEAD.
A character's talking to another character in a bar. Remy and Kate. Kate has extreme clinical depression, and Remy is legless and has all kinds of weird complicated shit going on around him plot-wise, too much to explain. His wife was born without a skull, which we've known from way back, but here around page 780 he explains how he came to marry a woman born without a skull. (Yes, it's absurd. Just roll with it.) The story is long, but at its essence, Remy was very, very depressed and on the point of suicide when he met his wife, a creature even more pathetic than he, and his mission to love her and care for her became the center of his life. He isn't romantically in love with her (I gather), but he's in love with the purpose in life that she affords him. Throughout the book, we've heard often about his willingness to do various things for the sake of his wife, presuming all along that it was for love of her. But it's really not; she has to stay alive so that his purpose in life stays alive. If she doesn't live, and continue to need him to care for her, then he has no meaning in life.
I should add at this time that this is all my interpretation of this aspect of the book, and I have no idea if it's correct. In theory, I should have added that at the beginning. Oh, well.
The fact is, his motivation is selfish. He doesn't want to slip back into the blackness of depression in which he existed prior to meeting and appointing himself savior of his wife. It is too much for him to comprehend, going back to that. This is something I understand, and something Kate in theory should understand, as she gave an exceptionally cogent account of exactly how bad it is to be depressed early in the novel. (She doesn't understand; she provides the counterpoint of this discussion.) However, it gave me a lot of food for thought about our motivations for doing the things we do. The noble wish to nurture and rescue a woman with a ridiculously crippling [and unrealistic] disability, for this character, has at heart a thoroughly selfish motivation.
Is it very different for the rest of us? Aren't most of us just feeding the monkey? I've been following the implosion of Anusara yoga with some interest, and although I don't begrudge John Friend his characteristics as a flawed mortal, I do think it shows us adequately that no guru is devoted to his followers without saving some of that devotion for himself. Is any human a saint?
A character's talking to another character in a bar. Remy and Kate. Kate has extreme clinical depression, and Remy is legless and has all kinds of weird complicated shit going on around him plot-wise, too much to explain. His wife was born without a skull, which we've known from way back, but here around page 780 he explains how he came to marry a woman born without a skull. (Yes, it's absurd. Just roll with it.) The story is long, but at its essence, Remy was very, very depressed and on the point of suicide when he met his wife, a creature even more pathetic than he, and his mission to love her and care for her became the center of his life. He isn't romantically in love with her (I gather), but he's in love with the purpose in life that she affords him. Throughout the book, we've heard often about his willingness to do various things for the sake of his wife, presuming all along that it was for love of her. But it's really not; she has to stay alive so that his purpose in life stays alive. If she doesn't live, and continue to need him to care for her, then he has no meaning in life.
I should add at this time that this is all my interpretation of this aspect of the book, and I have no idea if it's correct. In theory, I should have added that at the beginning. Oh, well.
The fact is, his motivation is selfish. He doesn't want to slip back into the blackness of depression in which he existed prior to meeting and appointing himself savior of his wife. It is too much for him to comprehend, going back to that. This is something I understand, and something Kate in theory should understand, as she gave an exceptionally cogent account of exactly how bad it is to be depressed early in the novel. (She doesn't understand; she provides the counterpoint of this discussion.) However, it gave me a lot of food for thought about our motivations for doing the things we do. The noble wish to nurture and rescue a woman with a ridiculously crippling [and unrealistic] disability, for this character, has at heart a thoroughly selfish motivation.
Is it very different for the rest of us? Aren't most of us just feeding the monkey? I've been following the implosion of Anusara yoga with some interest, and although I don't begrudge John Friend his characteristics as a flawed mortal, I do think it shows us adequately that no guru is devoted to his followers without saving some of that devotion for himself. Is any human a saint?
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Revision (un)Ready
Matt has now read the first draft of the horror novel, and he has helpfully told me about all sorts of lovely difficult revisions I need to make. Yay. In the meantime, I made an absolutely humiliating admission on Facebook, that I've never been high (from marijuana), and needed feedback about a sequence I wrote wherein my narrating character gets that way. Several people immediately jumped up to offer their expertise, kindly not making me feel stupid at all for not knowing whether I'd written it right or not. Matt says they were just happy to offer expertise about something they'd never thought they'd be able to offer expertise about. As usual, he's probably right.
I'm rounding third on Infinite Jest. It's approaching easy to read at this point. I told Matt the other night that part of what's keeping me going is that I really want to know if Wallace's going to create an actual whole out of the sum of this book's many, many, many parts. Thus far, when things get tossed together and a connection makes itself known, it's extremely satisfying; like Magnolia, if a little less visceral. It would be nice to know that everything's really going to hang together, that it's not just going to be a big tangle.
The book is also inspiring. Although I do not in the least want to write like Wallace, I am inspired by him to toss some rules out the window when composing. If on a reread what I've said isn't clear, I can backtrack, but there's no need to work through that clarity on the first pass. Often what comes out raw sets me to something better and clearer, if not quite formal.
I've just started and stopped two different approaches to filling out this post, and was happy with neither of them. This blog is about writing, right? So why am I going on and on (and on) about other stuff instead?
I think it's because the only things in front of me in my writing life right now are revision. Revision of the Greenland book (eventually...), revision of the horror book, revision of a difficult short story. Revision of my original idea for my next book - it's still going to be what I thought it was, at bottom, but I'm thinking of seriously reworking my main supporting character from what he's been for four years or so. I don't want to do any of this revision. I look ahead and I see this slog, this long and yucky process from which good results are not guaranteed and opportunity for despair abounds. Literally every task to which I've set myself when it comes to writing fiction has taken a shorter time than I have budgeted, and all revisions have ultimately been a good idea, so I don't know why I can't just get over it and do what I'm supposed to do. I believe I can sell this horror book, more credibly than I believe I can sell the Greenland book, and I'm all enthusiastic about query letters and synopses and whatnot. But first I have to revise it, I have to get it in shape for test readers, and I'm stuck there, at that idea.
What I'll do is, on Monday I'll sit in front of this very laptop and I'll just get to it. No whining; just action. But on this Sunday morning it feels better to wallow and worry.
I'm rounding third on Infinite Jest. It's approaching easy to read at this point. I told Matt the other night that part of what's keeping me going is that I really want to know if Wallace's going to create an actual whole out of the sum of this book's many, many, many parts. Thus far, when things get tossed together and a connection makes itself known, it's extremely satisfying; like Magnolia, if a little less visceral. It would be nice to know that everything's really going to hang together, that it's not just going to be a big tangle.
The book is also inspiring. Although I do not in the least want to write like Wallace, I am inspired by him to toss some rules out the window when composing. If on a reread what I've said isn't clear, I can backtrack, but there's no need to work through that clarity on the first pass. Often what comes out raw sets me to something better and clearer, if not quite formal.
I've just started and stopped two different approaches to filling out this post, and was happy with neither of them. This blog is about writing, right? So why am I going on and on (and on) about other stuff instead?
I think it's because the only things in front of me in my writing life right now are revision. Revision of the Greenland book (eventually...), revision of the horror book, revision of a difficult short story. Revision of my original idea for my next book - it's still going to be what I thought it was, at bottom, but I'm thinking of seriously reworking my main supporting character from what he's been for four years or so. I don't want to do any of this revision. I look ahead and I see this slog, this long and yucky process from which good results are not guaranteed and opportunity for despair abounds. Literally every task to which I've set myself when it comes to writing fiction has taken a shorter time than I have budgeted, and all revisions have ultimately been a good idea, so I don't know why I can't just get over it and do what I'm supposed to do. I believe I can sell this horror book, more credibly than I believe I can sell the Greenland book, and I'm all enthusiastic about query letters and synopses and whatnot. But first I have to revise it, I have to get it in shape for test readers, and I'm stuck there, at that idea.
What I'll do is, on Monday I'll sit in front of this very laptop and I'll just get to it. No whining; just action. But on this Sunday morning it feels better to wallow and worry.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Everything's Really Wrapped Up Nicely
So now, as I announced on Facebook the other day, I am finished with the climactic scene of my horror novel, my evil little girl has been defeated, I've written 82,000 words, and I'm ready to wind the book down and have my characters live sort of happily ever after. Except some of them are dead.
I think the death thing wound up all right in the end. I had originally thought that I'd kill a character I really, really liked and leave alive a character who was all mixed up and not the most likable person there, but I switched 'em up instead. In this way, my resourceful character lives, and the other one doesn't get the chance to un-mix herself, which is really a shame. It was a nice compromise for my emotions.
I think it'll only take me another few days to write the rest of the book. I think. Unless there's more there than I thought, to wrap up. This one I really would like to set aside for a couple of weeks before I start revising it to an open-door draft. I've got some short stories and other fragments that are straining at the bit to get written, so I'm thinking those will occupy me once I'm done with this book. But maybe not; maybe I'll get to outlining my next book, the Marilyn book. Or revise a short story that I think has potential but needs sustained effort. Or just take a breather.
Infinite Jest is taking a lot of my mental energy. I mentioned before that my ability to advance in it comes and goes. I'm in a phase where it's coming (heh), and am just about at page 600, after spending a million years between 450 and 500. I'm guessing that everybody finds different aspects of this book interesting, depending on the individual; I find this long conversation between two spies in Arizona, interspersed throughout all the other stories all braided together, to be deathly boring. But during one of the most recent segments of their conversation, I learned something that ties together two big aspects of the plot. I had never presumed it was a waste of time to read the segments about them, of course (if any author has a method to his madness, it's Wallace), but it was still nice to be rewarded conceptually for dragging through tens of thousands of words that are like stones dropping on my head.
In other news, I got the idea in my head a week or so ago to do the Warrior Dash. I think the only reason I want to do it is to say that I did it. I've been wanting to accomplish a 5K for a couple of years now, and just haven't settled on a time or place, or gotten around to training myself to be able to run that far in a sustained fashion. (I can run about a mile and a quarter before I've had enough. I know that's not very far - please don't make fun of me.) The Warrior Dash looks like a lot of fun and a genuine challenge for my soft-shell never-really-tested body, even if it does also seem kind of insane and really not a good idea for my soft-shell never-really-tested body. I keep waiting for a good bit of logic to talk me out of it, and I keep not running across anything, except for not really wanting to put in the effort to lift weights and run a few miles a few times a week to train. And that's no reason not to do anything, not wanting to put in the effort.
As you may have noticed, I've been trying to write consistently every other day here, after that embarrassing gap of a couple of weeks while I tried to get a grip on my schedule. The problem is not having as much to say about writing every two days as I do about other things. Since it's just us, here, I don't really mind that, as long as you don't.
I think the death thing wound up all right in the end. I had originally thought that I'd kill a character I really, really liked and leave alive a character who was all mixed up and not the most likable person there, but I switched 'em up instead. In this way, my resourceful character lives, and the other one doesn't get the chance to un-mix herself, which is really a shame. It was a nice compromise for my emotions.
I think it'll only take me another few days to write the rest of the book. I think. Unless there's more there than I thought, to wrap up. This one I really would like to set aside for a couple of weeks before I start revising it to an open-door draft. I've got some short stories and other fragments that are straining at the bit to get written, so I'm thinking those will occupy me once I'm done with this book. But maybe not; maybe I'll get to outlining my next book, the Marilyn book. Or revise a short story that I think has potential but needs sustained effort. Or just take a breather.
Infinite Jest is taking a lot of my mental energy. I mentioned before that my ability to advance in it comes and goes. I'm in a phase where it's coming (heh), and am just about at page 600, after spending a million years between 450 and 500. I'm guessing that everybody finds different aspects of this book interesting, depending on the individual; I find this long conversation between two spies in Arizona, interspersed throughout all the other stories all braided together, to be deathly boring. But during one of the most recent segments of their conversation, I learned something that ties together two big aspects of the plot. I had never presumed it was a waste of time to read the segments about them, of course (if any author has a method to his madness, it's Wallace), but it was still nice to be rewarded conceptually for dragging through tens of thousands of words that are like stones dropping on my head.
In other news, I got the idea in my head a week or so ago to do the Warrior Dash. I think the only reason I want to do it is to say that I did it. I've been wanting to accomplish a 5K for a couple of years now, and just haven't settled on a time or place, or gotten around to training myself to be able to run that far in a sustained fashion. (I can run about a mile and a quarter before I've had enough. I know that's not very far - please don't make fun of me.) The Warrior Dash looks like a lot of fun and a genuine challenge for my soft-shell never-really-tested body, even if it does also seem kind of insane and really not a good idea for my soft-shell never-really-tested body. I keep waiting for a good bit of logic to talk me out of it, and I keep not running across anything, except for not really wanting to put in the effort to lift weights and run a few miles a few times a week to train. And that's no reason not to do anything, not wanting to put in the effort.
As you may have noticed, I've been trying to write consistently every other day here, after that embarrassing gap of a couple of weeks while I tried to get a grip on my schedule. The problem is not having as much to say about writing every two days as I do about other things. Since it's just us, here, I don't really mind that, as long as you don't.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The Kind of Marathon Where You Sit on Your Couch
For the last week, I've been marathoning episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, between two and five a day. This is how I enjoy watching television: on DVD sets, in great vast gulps of hours and hours of the show at a time, galloping through the entire series in a matter of days or weeks. After Matt bought me the seven seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as a gift, I watched all 168 episodes in less than 30 days. I am uncomfortable with public knowledge of this habit (which, YET AGAIN, is why I'm sharing it with the entire damn internet), because I know it seems a little crazy, because I kind of don't want to do anything else but eat and sleep and finish out the next disc while I'm in marathon mode. It's not pretty to witness.
But in every case I've done so far (Star Trek: The Next Generation, MTM, The Sopranos (years ago, didn't get past the 3rd season, that box set has been on my Amazon Wish List for about five years), Firefly, Dead Like Me, others), it is so superior to experience a whole berth of a show this way, without coming up for air. It means that the show hangs together thematically as an entire body of work, and the evolution of the show is crystal-clear in a way you just don't get from gradual consumption. The different moods of the seasons of MTM were fascinating to see. For instance, Mary's responsibilities at her fictional job changed very suddenly in about season 5, and that altered all sorts of things about the structure of the show and how the other characters interacted with her. Whether that was done because of the departure of her two best friends, or because of feminist motivations, I don't know, but it was a big shift. And I think it was only so noticeable because I was watching, on average, two and a half hours of the show per day.
Monty Python is an interesting experience, because sketch shows are by nature uneven. There doesn't seem to be a progression toward better or more interesting or even just different work as the seasons (in England, of course, they're series) move forward. But they refer back to earlier work in a sort of unique way, and watching it all together means I generally have the prior work still hanging around in my neurons, and can realize exactly how funny they're being by referring to it.
I haven't come to any conclusions about the show on the whole by watching them all this way, except that I see now they've got a limited stable of the types of sketches they do. I.e., this is an interview-show sketch; this is an Eric Idle sex-or-language sketch; this is a domestic-hilarity-ensues sketch; this is a sketch so far into the realm of absurdity that it's just Pythonesque and doesn't have a more specific type. Hence, I can generally get my arms around the intentions of the sketch type, if I can identify it. This is more analysis than I've ever been able to accomplish with comedy; I'm not really skilled at it. So that's sort of edifying. Maybe I'll have more to say about the shape of it all when I'm finished. I'm halfway through now.
Speaking of edification, I am over page 400 in Infinite Jest. My ability to advance in it seems to come and go. I've been hovering between 390 and 420 for the last couple of weeks, instead of getting on with a few dozen pages a night as I was doing. But I will finish it, I will. If for no other reason than I really want to get on and read this.
Along with Monty Python, I've worked a great deal in the past week. There's been a lot of work for my copy-edit job, and last week marked the final week of the crazy glut of subbed yoga classes in which I've been drowning since before Christmas. This upcoming week is the first normal one, teaching-wise, in ages. Also, I've had some wonderful readers get back to me about my book, and they were so helpful. That was more work (even if it was great work to do), as I had to get back to them in detail in the hope that they'd further get back to me. I'm still waiting to hear from at least two more folks, but after that I think I'll be ready to edit. I feel pretty confident that I know what I need to do. I'm very concerned about further growth in the word count, but there's really nothing for it. I hope I can slide by on the "fantasy" label, as fantasy novels are generally longer.
And a wholly separate reader got back to me about a new story that I wasn't sure about, so I owed her analysis on her own story and on her analysis of mine. There was further work I did that I didn't even mention, and work I should have done this week and didn't get around to. Plus, I was quite ill on Tuesday. It was a full week. I kind of want a vacation. Monty Python is comforting, but it's really compressing my time. Damned marathoning.
But in every case I've done so far (Star Trek: The Next Generation, MTM, The Sopranos (years ago, didn't get past the 3rd season, that box set has been on my Amazon Wish List for about five years), Firefly, Dead Like Me, others), it is so superior to experience a whole berth of a show this way, without coming up for air. It means that the show hangs together thematically as an entire body of work, and the evolution of the show is crystal-clear in a way you just don't get from gradual consumption. The different moods of the seasons of MTM were fascinating to see. For instance, Mary's responsibilities at her fictional job changed very suddenly in about season 5, and that altered all sorts of things about the structure of the show and how the other characters interacted with her. Whether that was done because of the departure of her two best friends, or because of feminist motivations, I don't know, but it was a big shift. And I think it was only so noticeable because I was watching, on average, two and a half hours of the show per day.
Monty Python is an interesting experience, because sketch shows are by nature uneven. There doesn't seem to be a progression toward better or more interesting or even just different work as the seasons (in England, of course, they're series) move forward. But they refer back to earlier work in a sort of unique way, and watching it all together means I generally have the prior work still hanging around in my neurons, and can realize exactly how funny they're being by referring to it.
I haven't come to any conclusions about the show on the whole by watching them all this way, except that I see now they've got a limited stable of the types of sketches they do. I.e., this is an interview-show sketch; this is an Eric Idle sex-or-language sketch; this is a domestic-hilarity-ensues sketch; this is a sketch so far into the realm of absurdity that it's just Pythonesque and doesn't have a more specific type. Hence, I can generally get my arms around the intentions of the sketch type, if I can identify it. This is more analysis than I've ever been able to accomplish with comedy; I'm not really skilled at it. So that's sort of edifying. Maybe I'll have more to say about the shape of it all when I'm finished. I'm halfway through now.
Speaking of edification, I am over page 400 in Infinite Jest. My ability to advance in it seems to come and go. I've been hovering between 390 and 420 for the last couple of weeks, instead of getting on with a few dozen pages a night as I was doing. But I will finish it, I will. If for no other reason than I really want to get on and read this.
Along with Monty Python, I've worked a great deal in the past week. There's been a lot of work for my copy-edit job, and last week marked the final week of the crazy glut of subbed yoga classes in which I've been drowning since before Christmas. This upcoming week is the first normal one, teaching-wise, in ages. Also, I've had some wonderful readers get back to me about my book, and they were so helpful. That was more work (even if it was great work to do), as I had to get back to them in detail in the hope that they'd further get back to me. I'm still waiting to hear from at least two more folks, but after that I think I'll be ready to edit. I feel pretty confident that I know what I need to do. I'm very concerned about further growth in the word count, but there's really nothing for it. I hope I can slide by on the "fantasy" label, as fantasy novels are generally longer.
And a wholly separate reader got back to me about a new story that I wasn't sure about, so I owed her analysis on her own story and on her analysis of mine. There was further work I did that I didn't even mention, and work I should have done this week and didn't get around to. Plus, I was quite ill on Tuesday. It was a full week. I kind of want a vacation. Monty Python is comforting, but it's really compressing my time. Damned marathoning.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Genuinely Weird and Totally Awesome
I'm about to hit 55,000 words on the horror novel, and while I'm pleased with its direction, and with some of the individual paragraphs and sentences and whatnot, I'm not sure whether it'll be an utter mess when I'm done with the first draft. I had a meandering talk with Matt yesterday about the spot where I was blocked (until I wrote through it, yay for me), and that brought me to the realization that there are a bunch of different ways I could make this universe work. He is the best devil ever to advocate, so I went down one leafy green path with him before discovering that it wasn't my original intention, and then went down another one while he listened and asked more questions, and then another. I think it might have made him a little nuts, but it was certainly helpful for me.
I wrote a segment yesterday about a couple of my main characters getting high. (On the maryjane.) I am telling you the truth when I say that I have never been high. So even before I put together a complete draft, I'm going to need to beg indulgence from somebody so I can find out if I wrote these few paragraphs properly. It's not with zero knowledge that I cobbled this section together, but certainly it lacks personal experience. I feel a little stupid and extremely square that I have to ask someone else, "Is this more or less what it's like to be high?", but there it is. Someone will probably write to suggest that I just get high myself and find out, but I'm not really interested.
I'm reading Infinite Jest, I think I mentioned a few posts back. I woke up too early the other morning after unsettling, unremembered dreams and I went downstairs and read it for an hour or two. I am on page fifty-eight. I said this proudly to Matt when he came downstairs, and pointed out that I was already an eighteenth of the way through the book. (To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how I'll get through it, or when.) I should have learned the lesson that it's not a good idea to get too heavily into a piece of fiction while you're working on a piece of your own, because the last few chapters of the Greenland book were a tad too Austen-y for their genre due to what I was doing during breaks in the work. But I figure that a little more David Foster Wallace in any given piece of fiction can't really hurt. And it's long past time for me to have read this book.
Today is a day that I'll get the chance to do all three of my jobs, along with my fourth, unpaid one: I taught yoga this morning, I've got a couple of copy-editing tasks to do and turn in, and I've got something to edit with my paralegal hat on. When I'm finished with that, I'm going to work on the novel some more. I wake up and go to bed feeling lucky every day, now, but I don't say to myself often enough how genuinely weird and totally awesome my life is in its new configuration.
Apropos of nothing:
It's from a series of eight which I love utterly. I want to contact the artist and ask him if he'll do mini-prints for me that I can frame, but I have no idea how much I'd pay him for something like that and therefore whether I can afford it, so it seems foolish to ask.
OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH PROCRASTINATING. I have to get to work. Ooh, it's almost time for lunch!
I wrote a segment yesterday about a couple of my main characters getting high. (On the maryjane.) I am telling you the truth when I say that I have never been high. So even before I put together a complete draft, I'm going to need to beg indulgence from somebody so I can find out if I wrote these few paragraphs properly. It's not with zero knowledge that I cobbled this section together, but certainly it lacks personal experience. I feel a little stupid and extremely square that I have to ask someone else, "Is this more or less what it's like to be high?", but there it is. Someone will probably write to suggest that I just get high myself and find out, but I'm not really interested.
I'm reading Infinite Jest, I think I mentioned a few posts back. I woke up too early the other morning after unsettling, unremembered dreams and I went downstairs and read it for an hour or two. I am on page fifty-eight. I said this proudly to Matt when he came downstairs, and pointed out that I was already an eighteenth of the way through the book. (To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how I'll get through it, or when.) I should have learned the lesson that it's not a good idea to get too heavily into a piece of fiction while you're working on a piece of your own, because the last few chapters of the Greenland book were a tad too Austen-y for their genre due to what I was doing during breaks in the work. But I figure that a little more David Foster Wallace in any given piece of fiction can't really hurt. And it's long past time for me to have read this book.
Today is a day that I'll get the chance to do all three of my jobs, along with my fourth, unpaid one: I taught yoga this morning, I've got a couple of copy-editing tasks to do and turn in, and I've got something to edit with my paralegal hat on. When I'm finished with that, I'm going to work on the novel some more. I wake up and go to bed feeling lucky every day, now, but I don't say to myself often enough how genuinely weird and totally awesome my life is in its new configuration.
Apropos of nothing:
It's from a series of eight which I love utterly. I want to contact the artist and ask him if he'll do mini-prints for me that I can frame, but I have no idea how much I'd pay him for something like that and therefore whether I can afford it, so it seems foolish to ask.
OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH PROCRASTINATING. I have to get to work. Ooh, it's almost time for lunch!
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