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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Chapter 4 of The Golden Compass: Sylvia and I are both, separately, trying to figure out why the Master sends Lyra off with Mrs. Coulter,  who is obviously a Bad Guy. Sylvia laid out her hypothesis to me: Sylvia: Dad? What is that thing the Master gave Lyra? What did he say it could do? Me: The Alethiometer you mean? He said it was a machine that would tell her the truth. Sylvia: ...I think it's going to tell her that she's a Gobbler. He knows it and he wants it to tell her. Me: Hm, that sounds like it could be...
(A minute later) If he knows though, why doesn't he just tell her? Sylvia: Because she would probably just refuse.
That's a good thought. I also am working on an idea where maybe Mrs. Coulter's kid-stealing activities are actually benign, or serving a greater good, and we've been misled by the children's talk of Gobblers. The distinction between Good Guys and Bad Guys is not as clear in this book as in most of the other stuff we've read before. But I think Sylvia's idea is probably closer to right.
posted evening of October 30th, 2008: Respond
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In his playlist today, Dave Barber includes a recording of Caroline Bergvall reading the first stanza of the Inferno, in every English translation found in the British Library.
 I've assembled a playlist of Bergvall readings so they're all in one place. You can download it from box.net. (Click "download folder" to get all tracks zipped, for a faster download.) The tracks are:  - "The Host's Tale"
- "The Summer Tale"
- "The Franker Tale"
- "The Not Tale"
- Inferno, first stanza
- "Mont Blanc", by Percy B. Shelley
- "Pervaded with that ceaseless motion": a reading of "Mont Blanc" in collaboration with composer Mario Diaz de León.
A note about her Chaucer project can be found in issue 32 of Jacket.
posted morning of October 30th, 2008: Respond
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Over at History Time, jfruh asks the question: Was McCain 2008 the worst presidential campaign in history? And answers "No," but has to go back to the Whigs of 1836 to find a worse one.
Also at History Time today, a bit of Jersey history.
posted morning of October 30th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
Joyce Hinnefeld is conducting an author chat over at LibraryThing, from today through November 12th. ("Chat" is kind of a strange name for a two-week exchange of messages...) You will need to be logged in to view it. (Link via She Is Too Fond Of Books....)
 In the chat, Joyce links to a playlist she created to go along with In Hovering Flight.
posted morning of October 29th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
I worked at a BlueWave NJPAC phonebank event this evening, calling voters about the election. I have a hard time doing stuff like this -- I find it pretty easy to put on a happy, friendly voice and chat to the person I'm calling as long as I don't have to make any actual argument, but I can't see what good that does. (The whole event was dedicated to calling registered Democrats in Montclair, which it's hard for me to see what the point of doing that is. So I didn't have to make much of an argument, but it was hard to see myself as doing something useful to the campaign.) Most of the people I talked to (I probably made about 100 calls or a bit more, and spoke to about 25 people?) were enthusiastically supporting Obama and the Democratic ticket -- one guy was not so enthusiastic about Lautenberg but planned to vote for him because there is no alternative; a few people said they were voting a straight Democratic ticket but didn't know or care much about the people on it below the presidential candidate. Several people did not want to talk. One woman said she was concerned about voting for Obama because of his plans to redistribute the nation's wealth -- I engaged this for a while (not particularly well I think -- see above about making arguments -- but earnestly) until she brought up Jeremiah Wright, at which point I hung up on her. Not sure what her game was but it was not honest inquiry. They are having the same event tomorrow but I think I will skip that -- I see on Thursday there's a phonebank event in West Orange to call swing voters. Maybe I will go there. But I'm not sure, based on doubting whether I can do a good job at it.
posted evening of October 28th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, October 26th, 2008
Thanks to commenter RedRum for finding a bug in my comments code and telling me to fix it -- I put in a quick and easy, but hacky, fix; maybe will think about figuring out a more fully-featured solution.
posted evening of October 26th, 2008: Respond
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Before the movie this afternoon, Ellen and I swung by Montclair Book Center. Ellen picked up Anne of Green Gables, which she has been wanting to read with Sylvia. I went looking to see if they had cheap used copies of any Saramago titles that I haven't read, and found The Stone Raft; and while I was browsing through the used books I found something I'd never heard of before but that looks interesting:  Fortunata and Jacinta, by Benito Pérez Galdós (tr. Agnes Moncy Gullón, 1986) -- a weighty 19th-century novel set in Madrid. I'm looking forward to reading it -- the first couple of pages are good reading -- and speculating that it may give me some background for Saramago and other modern Iberian novelists.
 A nice passage, from the end of the first chapter. The narrator is describing how Juanito Santa Cruz changed from an avid reader and thinker in college to an anti-intellectual adult:
Living was relating to others, enjoying and suffering, desiring, hating and loing. Reading was artificial borrowed life... He claimed that the difference between these two ways of living was like the difference between eating a chop yourself and having someone tell you how and when someone else ate it, making the story a really good one of course -- describing the expression on the person's face, his pleasure from chewing the meat, his satisfaction upon swallowing it, and then his placid digestion.
posted evening of October 26th, 2008: Respond
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I was thinking more today about why I am identifying Scarlet as the main character of In Hovering Flight, and what it means: the plot* is events that happen in the lives of Scarlet's parents and their friends, she is involved mainly as a spectator. Scarlet is about my age (2 years older), and I can roughly identify all the people in her parents' crowd as people I knew growing up. I am finding it easy to identify with Scarlet's role watching her parents and their friends, forming attachments for some and failing to attach with others, but never really being able to understand them as people rather than as "characters" -- She is experiencing her life as a story told to her. Something that is really puzzling me: The excerpts from Addie's field journal that are part of this book, are from the first field journal, the one she kept in Tom's class. But it was explicitly pointed out in the first chapter, that this was the journal which Tom would not show to Scarlet, presumably because of its role in the beginning of his and Addie's relationship. So it doesn't fit in with the rest of the book being Scarlet's pov. I'm hoping to get some kind of explanation for this before too long. Note: Chapters Nine and Ten are some of the best writing so far. I'm hoping for more of this, it's really comfortable to read.
 * Understood to mean "the plot thus far" -- I've only read half the book so far. These ideas are developing as I progress through it.
posted evening of October 26th, 2008: 2 responses
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So the reason I wanted to see Rachel Getting Married, was the music, specifically Robyn Hitchcock. And I think the music was probably the best thing about the movie, in the end. But look: the music was sufficiently great that I can say that without denigrating the rest of the picture; it was a really fine movie.
A review I read (maybe in the Times?) criticized the reception scene as killing the rhythm of the movie and its plot, making the viewer lose track of what's going on. This seems like an absolutely baffling response to the movie (assuming I'm remembering it right); the reception was a totally integral part of what was going on (which was after all a wedding), it intensified and crystallized the characters, particularly of Kim and her mother. But man oh man, the music was so great.
Two previews we saw that looked good: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and A Christmas Tale.
 Hm, just thinking this post needs a little more -- I finished it in a hurry before dinner -- The reason I chose the title I did is that I flashed on that song at one point in the movie when Kim was watching a car pulling in to her father's driveway. Kim's relationship with cars is definitely a focal point of the plot and of her character. The one thing I really didn't buy in the movie was her accident the night before the wedding -- that (a) was totally predictable and (b) didn't do the work it was supposed to. Auto-accident-as-cathartic-release just doesn't cut it in my book. Her not getting in an accident would have been more compelling; and the fight with her mother fills the need for violent release there.
posted evening of October 26th, 2008: Respond
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Here is a picture I am getting of the political landscape in the US right now. Bear in mind when reading it that I have been wrong about politics... Not sure exactly how often but way more frequently than not. That said it seems to me like the wheels are really coming off the Southern strategy. I noted previously how the Republican racist innuendo tactics don't look like they're getting any traction -- tactics that have played a major role in not all, but several big national political contests I can remember. Frank Rich writes today (in an excellent column, I really recommend reading the whole thing) that "In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included." -- This statistic really makes me do a double-take. It makes "white men" seem like a Republican voting bloc, one that is crumbling. And it seems obvious to me based on (again bear in mind that my political literacy is lacking in some key ways) that this bloc has been maintained over the last three decades through appeal to various bigotries. The Republican party has been banking on the strength of ignorance and god willing, they are going to see their investments go down the drain. The right wing is almost certainly scared that this is exactly what's happening. Take a look at Belle's examination of this fright playing out at the National Review. The Apostropher links to an examination of what's going on at the top levels of the Republican party. 2004 made me extremely leery of hubristic thinking about political victory; but I am hoping against hope that Nixonland's publication marked the beginning of the end of the phenomenon it describes.
(And just to note: I have been waiting for this thing to happen, the thing that I'm speculating is about to happen, since I was 13 years old or so. Wishing for it is a major part of my political consciousness; this is part of the reason I'm skeptical about my accuracy of analysis. And anyways, well, I can still hope for some simulacrum of my dream...)
posted morning of October 26th, 2008: Respond
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