Stonehead News

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:35:50 GMT

Your Cat & Other Space Aliens

That's the title of maryturzillo's volume of poetry out from Van Zeno Press. Go out and buy it. Now.

In Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, Mary manages to express the complete range of human exultation and sadness in short, jewel-like paragraphs. Joe Haldeman calls her book "...a huge banquet of food for thought, as well as a display of poetic virtuosity and intense emotional complexity." The book has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

It is an amazing book.

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:58:36 GMT

Things I Am Not Making Up

I knew there was a new film version of Beowulf in the works, co-written by Neil Gaiman. eleanor and I had seen a preview, and my first thought was, "I don't remember so many women in the book." So I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

I almost choked on my coffee this morning, though, while reading the New York Daily News "Fall 101," a roundup of coming attractions in film and music, and found out who would be playing Grendel's mother. That devil-shaped woman is played by none other than pillow-lipped serial adopter Angelina Jolie (last seen making grief unbearably telegenic as the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in A Mighty Heart).

Having read that, I couldn't help wanting a better look at this cinematic train wreck. Imagine my childish delight when I Googled up a Los Angeles Times review and found: "Later, Grendel's mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to reestablish her dominion over the kingdom."

But Neil Gaiman is sensitive to the integrity of the original text. The LA Times piece wraps up with this:

"I have no idea if this thing is going to work because it isn't done yet," Gaiman said. "But because it's so hyper-real and immersive, once you are two to three minutes in, I think it will own you for the full 90 minutes."

Gaiman is also a vocal proponent of an unrated version of "Beowulf" down the line.

Even more than nudity, Gaiman said, "I just really miss all the swearing."

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:15:00 GMT

A Three Hour Tour

The Redhead (eleanor) and I toured Governor's Island on Sunday. It had been 27 years since I'd been stationed there with the U.S. Coast Guard, and the homely government architecture brought up a lot of nostalgia.

In 1996 the Coast Guard decamped and turned the property over to New York, which is now in the process of deciding how to ~~ruin~~ develop it.

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:30:05 GMT

The Redhead's Game Column Debuts

Eleanor Lang's (eleanor) debut column Kill Pixels, Not People, is up today on World Changing. Not surprisingly, her piece is smart and provocative. Go read it. Now.

While I'm at it, there are a bunch of pictures from our Maine getaway last week on Flickr.

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:07:08 GMT

Excrescences

From today's Get Fuzzy:

I am bloated with steamy wondrousness. My poems are not so much written as they are excreted.

Really, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:03:56 GMT

But Will He Pimp It?

The AP moved a story this morning about mckitterick's newest vehicle purchase: a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was buried in brand-new condition under the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse in 1957, and is scheduled to be unearthed June 15 as part of the Oklahoma Centennial.

The only question worth asking is what color Chris will paint the vehicle.

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:01:46 GMT

Pet Advice

This entry by woadwarrior, via mckitterick is a must-read for pet owners: What a terrible product! This has got to be one of the worst veterinary products to come along in a long time.

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 21:27:05 GMT

Open Letter to Salon.com

I wrote this to Salon a week ago, I'm posting it today in response to an entry pegkerr made about a Garrison Keillor piece in Salon.

Walter Thompson
Manager, Salon Premium

Dear Mr. Thompson:

I'm sorry to say I won't be renewing my Salon subscription in January.

I used to love Salon, but it has become the digital equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show: all opinion, all the time, very little of it informed. The editorial standard now seems to be how many letters a given piece will generate. And I have to tell you, every time I read the letters section I want to take a shower afterward. I don't know what it takes to exclude a letter from your pages, short of a death threat, but your "Editor's Choice" designation is merely an abdication of editorial responsibility.

If it was possible to support just the AP feed, War Room, Heather Havrilesky, Joe Conason, Patrick Smith, and maybe one or two others like them, I would. I can't justify underwriting the self-indulgent auto-eroticism of Garrison Keillor; the always-angry, always self-absorbed Debra J. Dickerson (who appears to be the love child of Ayelet Waldman and Anne Lamott), and Cary Tennis, who is quite possibly the last person on Earth from whom I'd seek advice.

I'm troubled that you've turned Salon into a blogger collective, in which opinion pieces, rather than reporting, now dominate the pages (including "news" stories in which the news is merely the hook upon which the writer hangs his or her disquisition). I'm troubled that so much of the content seems designed to pump up the volume on the letters page, rather than inform readers or unpack a complex issue. I'm troubled that so many pieces spotlight the trivial difficulties of relatively privileged people.

I've been watching Salon drift toward the precipice all year, and if it isn't there yet, I don't want to watch it slide over the edge.

Best Wishes,

Bob Howe

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:08:59 GMT

Writing News

This just in: I'll be doing a fiction reading, with fiction writer and SF academic John Langan, at the Melville Gallery of Manhattan's South Street Seaport on Tuesday, January 2, as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series.

The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and complete details can be found on the NYRSF page. The series is curated by Jim Freund, host of Hour of the Wolf, broadcast on WBAI radio.

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:16:32 GMT

The Year in Review

Hello my little forest friends. Anyone who reads this journal knows that I've been posting infrequently. The truth is, I've been missing out on the interactive part of the LJ experience; I haven't taken much time to read my friends' journals, much less comment on them. Mostly I've been using the journal for writing news (also infrequent), which strikes me as the digital equivalent of those horrible Christmas form letters.

You know the ones I mean: they're usually from families with young kids who don't have the time to write individual letters to all their friends, so they mail out a press release (folded awkwardly into a Christmas card) about their doings, their kids' doings, and their pets' doings. The letters often come off as boastful and condescending: not only do I have a fabulous life, home, boat, child, dog, but I have far too many friends to write to them individually.

I hate those letters. Or I used to.

I have far more sympathy for the letter writers than I used to—even the ones who own boats—because whatever else those letters say, they're also saying, "I've neglected my friends and I feel guilty about it." Mea Culpa.

This past year all my friends, on LJ and off, have probably been saying, "What the hell is up with Bob? He doesn't call, he doesn't write, and all my letters are returned, marked Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

Well, I didn't buy a boat. Part of the reason I've been incommunicado, as many of you know, is that I've been working long hours at an absorbing, demanding and very satisfying job. I'm also in a serious relationship for the first time in a while, with the spheniscidaephile eleanor (pictured here presiding over her Christmas dinnertable). To say that I've been struggling to find the balance among work and life and relationships is a vast, drafty understatement. Even when I've had the time, a rare commodity these past nine months, I haven't had the energy to keep up with my friends. For that I'm sorry.

I'm not one for resolutions, New Year's or otherwise, but I'm going to try and make 2007 the year my friends say "What the hell is up with Bob? He's at the door again. Doesn't he have a life?!"

So you'll be hearing from me. Consider yourself warned.

Writing News

So this is pretty gratifying: my novelette, "Do Neanderthals Know?" published in the December 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, made the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award. What this means is that ten of my fellow science fiction and fantasy writers found the story compelling enough to recommend it for the award. I've read half of the other works on the ballot in that category, and they are good, so it's pretty flattering to be included in their company.

Also in December, my short story, "Life Sentences," was reprinted in issue nine of Aeon Speculative Fiction, edited by the fabulous Marti McKenna and Bridget McKenna.

All in all a pretty good way to close out the year.

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:31:53 GMT

Hot Air

Best Day for Radio Since the LZ-129 Docked at Lakehurst: on Saturday, October 14, I will be appearing on Hour of the Wolf, hosted by Jim Freund, on WBAI 99.5 FM, from 5 to 7 a.m.

Hour of the Wolf's format will be music, conversation with Jim about speculative fiction, and a reading by the show's guest (that would be me).

If you're not in WBAI's broadcast range (the New York metropolitan area), you can listen to the show on the web.

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:54:07 GMT

Writing News

My short story, "Miscarriage of Justice," is being reprinted by Aeon Speculative Fiction under its original title "Life Sentences." The story originally appeared on Salon.com, and I'm very pleased it's found a new, SF-nal home at Aeon.

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 22:05:23 GMT

Writing News

• My novelette, "From Wayfield, From Malagasy," appears in the October 2006 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, at your local newsstand now. Directly following my story is a Biolog about me by Richard A. Lovett (a terrific fiction writer himself, who has stories in the September and October Analogs), who makes me seem much more interesting than I actually am.

Other Writing News

A few friends are also having a pretty good writing week: William Shunn's (shunn) novella, "Inclination," and Richard Bowes' novel, From the Files of the Time Rangers, have both made it onto the preliminary Nebula Awards ballot. Congratulations!

David Barr Kirtley's (davekirtley) story, "Blood of Virgins," appears in the October 2006 Realms of Fantasy.

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 06:58:44 GMT

Literary Talk

A dirty secret; the shock of recognition; shallot etymology; why guys dig girl-on-girl action; and whether fiction matters.

Confessional
I don't like being read aloud to. I don't like books on tape, and when I go to fiction or poetry readings, it's sometimes a struggle to stay engaged. I don't know why that is, but the feeling is so pronounced that I'm sometimes tempted to yank the offending material from the reader's hands—not that the content or its relative merit have anything to do with my impatience.

Still, I try to get to readings as often as my work schedule allows, most notably the KGB Fantastic Fiction and New York Review of Science Fiction series. I go not least because people have been very supportive at the few readings I've done, and because I invariably meet interesting people and am exposed to material I might not otherwise come across. And because fiction matters. (More on that in a moment.)

So it was with my usual mixed feelings that I hooked up with shunn at KGB on Wednesday past to hear Paul Witcover read from his Dracula novel, Asylum; and Sarah Langan to read from her forthcoming book, The Keeper.* Both of them rocked the fucking house, as the kids say. It wasn't just that the material was compelling and graphic, though they were (nota bene: neither of these books is for the faint of heart); what struck me was how well the authors knew people.

With both authors I had that shock of psychological recognition that one gets when a character does something that one couldn't have anticipated, but seems so completely right when one reads it. More than once during the readings I said to myself, with rueful admiration, "How does he/she know that?" Fantastic fiction as a whole has (justly) been criticized for insufficient attention to characterization and psychological realism, but these two writers are joyous exceptions to the stereotype. Beyond living, breathing, real characters, I was riveted by both writers' exquisite (and disturbing) wealth of detail. (I don't mean to lump the authors' work together, by the way: they are mining different veins of ore in different ways—the connection is the superb execution by both of them.)

* Full Disclosure: Witcover kindly gave me a copy of Asylum at the recent Readercon (I hadn't cracked the cover prior to the KGB reading); despite that, I would say we have a nodding acquaintance—friendly, but not really friends. Before Langan's reading I had never heard of her, and couldn't have picked her out of a police lineup of garden gnomes. I'm not above plugging friends' books when I think they deserve it, but this isn't one of those instances.

Intermission
Dinner afterward at Uncle Mao's Old Home, Fill 'er Up an' Keep on a-Truckin' Cafe was excellent, though the Napalm Conch seemed not to agree with shunn. Among the dinner throng were leethomas, Rick Bowes, nick_kaufmann and slushmaster. We debated the etymologies for scallion and rapscallion (they're unrelated), and inexplicably referred to Nick Kaufmann in the third person, a practice that metastasized over dinner to include the rest of us at the table, and many other personages, living and dead. I'm not sure if this verbal tic was caused by the food or the Stalinist Revival decor.

Exegesis
Upstream I said, almost in passing, that fiction matters; I have had a lot of dark nights of the soul when I wasn't at all sure. Lately I think it does, a belief I come to via girl-on-girl sex.

I have had several female friends ask me, "What is it with guys that they're so turned on by lesbians?" The tone of the query has ranged from curiosity to mild exasperation to barely-suppressed fury. The subject is a staple among stand-up comics, in sitcoms and films, and even in television commercials. Equally common is the observation that guys are infatuated with a fantasy of lesbianism at odds with reality. But the reality isn't what matters here: why do so many guys fantasize about lesbians?

Probably there are several reasons why guys think lesbians are hot—sexuality is so plastic, and so highly idiosyncratic, that you could make the case that there are as many explanations for the fantasies as there are guys having them. But I think one explanation—one that's probably more often true than not—is that fantasies about lesbians are a safe method for guys to role play in a way that their gender training doesn't normally allow.

Lesbian fantasies allow guys to step outside their gender armor of toughness and dominance, and let themselves experience tenderness and softness. (And yes, there are certainly guys who can get in touch with their gentler sides without lesbian fantasies, but I don't think they're in the majority in our culture.) That's what fantasies are good for: putting ourselves in someone else's head; in someone else's skin. The high degree to which we can empathize with what other people are feeling is one of our most human attributes.

And what is storytelling, if not that same kind of fantasy role playing? For the duration of the story or novel, we can project ourselves into the hearts of its characters. We can try out the roles of hero and villain, lover and beloved, carpenter and king. Fiction is a chance to put on the mask of The Other, and to walk (or dance or sail or fly) in his shoes. Or her shoes.

Does it matter? You bet your ass it does. There's a reason why bigots don't want to see the objects of their hatred portrayed in fiction or on screen: it's much harder to hate someone once you understand them from the inside. The right-wing homophobes who protested against Brokeback Mountain (the film—E. Annie Proulx's transcendent short story sailed below their radar), were right to fear its effect on society, since seeing gay men as real people is bound to make people more accepting of them. For a long time Blacks struggled with the same near-invisibility in film and television—a struggle that's not over yet, I suppose, but the increasingly common presence of Blacks in leading roles in film and on television has done at least as much to further racial equality as any civil rights legislation.

If that sounds like a sermon, I don't mean it to be. No one, least of all me, wants to read fiction because it's Good For You. Of the many pleasurable things about reading fiction, the one that may matter most is that it makes you feel connected to other people. It can be a cold, lonely world out there, and fiction can bring us back inside the circle of the campfire's light.

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:23:02 GMT

A Blogger's Life

Today's installment of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine needs no editorial gloss from me.

Sun, 21 May 2006 20:19:31 GMT

Writing News

My novelette, "Entropy's Girlfriend," which originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Analog magazine, has been reprinted in the Russian science fiction magazine Esli ("If"). I don't yet know exactly how one gets a copy—when I find out I'll post the details here.

On another note: to those of you who've noticed my almost complete absence from LiveJournal, I wanted to say that it's because of a new and all-consuming job as the editor of internal publications for a university. I'll be more visible in my blog and your comments sections soon.

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:29:07 GMT

E-Mail Follies

Those of you who had e-mail messages to me bounce today, please resend them—I'm using a workaround through Gmail while Verizon, my ISP, lumbers towards the problem (which seems to be with their suddenly hypersensitive spam filters; two hours of my life I'll never get back).

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 16:12:33 GMT

The Tissue-Industrial Complex

An old friend, Rebecca Skloot, has the (fascinating) cover story in today's New York Times Magazine, Taking the Least of You.

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 12:18:07 GMT

The Mice of War

Last week journalist Seymour M. Hersh caused a stir in a New Yorker article in which he said the Bush administration was drawing up targeting plans for air strikes on Iran's nuclear plants and other strategic targets. Hersh said U.S. Special Forces were already operating covertly in Iran, and that the administration refused to take a nuclear "bunker buster" strike off the table. I learned about the New Yorker piece from fantasy writer Jeff Ford (14theditch), who had an interesting post about it in LiveJournal.

(And by the way, if you're not familiar with Jeff's work, I highly recommend you stop reading this drivel immediately and go buy a copy of The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories. His new book, The Empire of Ice Cream, is just out this month.)

In any case, I believe Hersh: he was right about the non-existent WMDs in Iraq; about the administration's push for war there; and about the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But there's nothing surprising about Hersh's article—many nations, including the U.S., maintain war plans for even the most remote contingencies. Thousands of American, Russian and Chinese ICBMs are targeted on major cities and strategic targets. That's in peacetime. Our government would be remiss in not having plans, even military plans, to deal with an emerging Iranian nuclear weapons capability. In the hands of any other administration, such war plans would still be cause for grave concern, but not terrifying. Deterrence works only if other nations can't be sure whether the U.S. will use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with WMDs. (And that is terrifying, but it's not a logic unique to the Bush administration.) "Messianic" and "legacy" are the words Hersh reports hearing most frequently in connection with the president's military adventures in Iraq and Iran.

Of the many things about the Hersh article that worries me, exhibit one is the current administration's incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter, though less in the public eye than Iraq, is rapidly devolving back to a medieval theocracy, over which the Taliban and various warlords are fighting for control. The government under Hamid Karzai is only a nominal impediment to the ambitions of these warring factions. As bad as Afghanistan is, Iraq is worse. The U.S. military controls only the ground it stands on, and barely that. Outside the U.S. circle of power—most of the populated areas of the country—the lives of ordinary Iraqis are becoming more nasty, brutish, and short each day. And this, don't forget, is the administration's signature effort.

Iran's population is more than two-and-a-half times larger than Iraq's; its area almost four times that of Iraq's, and has an economy almost six times as large. If an invasion of Iraq was a debacle, given this administration's track record, an attack on Iran would be global catastrophe.

It's hard to know how seriously to take Mahmud Ahmadinejad's bellicose rhetoric, but it seems obvious that if the U.S. attacks, even with "surgical" airstrikes, Iran will have little incentive not to launch attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

The question becomes what do we do then? More air strikes? Do we bomb Tehran into rubble? I don't think the administration would launch a nuclear attack in response to terrorist attacks by Iran, even on U.S. soil, but with 125,000 troops in Iraq, we don't have a lot of other options. For that matter, even with a fresh army and no commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Iranian ground war would be a terrible gamble. I don't know if it could generate a world war, but a U.S. attack on Iran would certainly further inflame Muslim sentiment against us. How many people would we have to kill or subjugate to "win"?

Perhaps worst of all, there may be no good response to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Not every problem has a solution. What's truly terrifying is that this administration is demonstrably unequipped, intellectually and morally, to make these high-stakes decisions. The president and his allies in Congress have bungled every major initiative they've launched.

As I said in Jeff's blog, it wouldn't surprise me if Hersh is right, if the president's finger is on the trigger, and the military is already sending teams into Iran. Such a posture is entirely consistent with the administration's reflexive reliance on military force, completely unhitched from any concern for the consequences. Even some of the neocons are caviling at this fight, and when your recklessness can scare that cadre of ideological stoners, you know you've achieved a perfect level of irrationality.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about the way this administration conducts foreign policy is that it has taken most Americans (neocon operatives and right-wing barking heads included), so long to be troubled by it, and that more than 30 percent of the public still supports the president's war in Iraq. (I find the Thomas Friedman hawks most repellent of all: their cry is "We wanted a war, but GOSH! not this war!")

Decent, honorable people can contemplate, and carry out, horrible acts in the service of what they hope is a higher good. Roosevelt and his generals ordered an unprecedented slaughter of civilians in bomber campaigns against German and Japanese cities, in the belief they were doing so for a greater good. It's a horrible burden for the decision makers and the warriors to live with. George McGovern was a bomber pilot the 8th Air Force, flying 35 combat missions over Europe in World War II. He was disgusted by the violence and carnage, though convinced of its necessity at the time, and ran his failed presidential campaign largely in opposition to the Vietnam War. In several conversations about war and its practitioners, Rick Bowes and I have noted that the most reflexively bellicose individuals are often the ones who've never heard a shot fired in anger, or had to live with the guilt of having killed another human being.

(Richard Bowes, by the way, is another fantasy writer with whom you should be acquainted: his book Minions of the Moon, is transcendent.)

And that lack of awareness, finally, is the most damning indictment of the Bush administration. Aside from the president's cosmetic turn as a Texas Air National Guard pilot, none of the top officials in his administration have ever served in uniform, and the president himself only did so to obtain a safe perch on which to avoid the Vietnam war. That's not to say that only former combatants can make informed, humane decisions about war, but administration officials' scrupulous avoidance of combat certainly casts a long shadow over their decision to send thousands of Americans to die, and to cause the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

The President of the United States is an elephant in a roomful of mice, some of whom he's sworn to protect; others he'd like to protect if he could; and some he'd kill immediately, given the chance. But the position carries so much power that every move the president makes, not just military decisions, kills some mice. Institute a minor rule change at the Department of Health and Human Services, and its a statistical certainty that someone will die as a result. Announce an economic program to boost development in Louisiana, and it's a given that someone, somewhere will suffer from unintended consequences. Launch a war against a foreign country, and no matter how just the cause, you can be sure thousands of innocents will die, and tens of thousands more plunged into chaos and misery.

You would think that five years of bearing such inhuman responsibility would sober any person, but not the president, apparently, nor his top advisors. Having made the gravest possible choice in Iraq with catastrophic results, the administration appears poised to repeat its mistakes in Iran. As the president thunders around the room in search of his legacy, all the mice can do is try to scamper out of the way.

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:51:55 GMT

Writing News

My novelette, "From Wayfield, From Malagasy," has been accepted by Analog Science Fiction & Fact, publication date to be determined. This novelette is an honest-to-god spaceship on an alien planet story—a little outside the soft-science/hard-fantasy reservation I generally roam. Here's a snippet:

Wayfield stood in the torrential rain, trying to wall off his feelings of despondency behind a professionally somber expression. He didn’t think he was making a very good job of it. One of his officers read the traditional verse for the departed souls of Greene, Durban and Mansourian, committing them forever to deep space. Though the ship had grounded, the verse was fitting, since the crewmembers’ bones would be forever entombed in the lethally radioactive hull of the Malagasy.

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:14:59 GMT

The Home Office

Beginning today you'll see some new user icons from the home office in rotation. The icons are culled from a series of terrific photographs of Rapa Nui by minnehaha, who has very generously shared the images with me and given me permission to use them here.

Papa Moai blesses all his little forest friends.

Thanks, too, to shunn, who used valuable novel-writing time to strip the images off DVD and load them into Zip files for me.

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:16:53 GMT

Publication Alert

My longtime friend and SF writer William Shunn (shunn) has a terrific novella, "Inclination," in the April/May 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. The details are available in Bill's LiveJournal entry here, but the issue should be on the stands beginning next week.* Go! Run, my little forest friends! Buy it!

* Update: the issue is available now, according to steelbrassnwood.

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:44:52 GMT

Character Confidential

I just finished reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, thanks to laurie_daniels, who very kindly gave me her copy. It's wild romp, mostly through the mid- to high-end restaurant kitchens of New York City. Though Bourdain indulges a little too often in riffs on what a crazy, piratical, drug-scarfing band of reprobates he and his kitchen mates are, it's one of those books that ably reveals the secret world beneath the skin of everyday life. Bourdain does dish some trade secrets (don't order the fish on Mondays), but what I found really compelling was the way he gets you inside a chef's head.

I've never been a "foodie." Oh, I like to eat, all too much, but I've rarely taken the time to be a sensualist about food. Bordain really gives you a feel for how chefs think about food—what excites them, and what should excite you. Reading it has made me excited to try foods outside my comfort zone, and to really treat a meal as a sensual experience. And by the way, if you've ever been intimidated by a snotty waiter, this book will be the antidote.

Oddly, for all the illegal, anti-social, and boorish behavior Bourdain chronicles (and confesses to), one of the themes that runs through the book is taking responsibility for one's life. He describes some lessons learned from a restaurant owner he only identifies as Bigfoot:

Bigfoot understood--as I came to understand--that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character--good and bad--brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time.

Finally, Bourdain can really write. (He's apparently written a couple of novels.) He's funny, profane, and a very good judge of horseflesh, literally and figuratively. Bourdain has a fantastic eye for detail—his descriptions of Tokyo are riveting—and he sees deeper into people than many novelists.

If you eat, this book is for you.

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:12:52 GMT

Tolerating Ambiguity

Gene Lyons reviews Brokeback Mountain in the Decatur Daily Democrat, in which he says:

The inability to tolerate ambiguity defines the authoritarian mind. To control freaks, there's no such thing as art, only propaganda. Every story must have a didactic message, the simpler the better. In that regard, self-styled "Christians," in the politicized sense, are much like Marxist advocates of "Socialist realism."

Lyons' review of the film and its critics is very much worth reading on its own merits, but it struck me with particular force because I've been musing a lot lately about tolerating ambiguity in life, and how much of becoming an adult—much less a writer—requires the ability to do so.

Freud supposedly wrote "Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity." By that standard the world is full of neurotics. I think while the desire for a black-and-white worldview is at odds with the way the world actually works, that desire seems to be part of the human condition. If "wisdom" means anything, I think it means the willingness to continue struggling with our attraction to absolutes.

The very idea that the struggle is worth making is abhorrent to many people. Christian fundamentalists call that struggle "relativism," with the belief that acknowledging complexity leads to evil. Fundamentalists of all stripes are opposed to this so-called relativism (or "liberalism" or "western ideology"); that's the defining characteristic of the breed. To cite one example, the bumper-sticker biology of "life begins at conception" is at least in part a way to avoid struggling with the complicated biological and ethical question of what it means to be human, and the biologically inescapable reality that "human" is a difficult point to fix on the continuum from fertilization to old age.

It's easy, though, to point the finger at fundamentalists and say "Bad!" It's an example of how seductive the call of absolutism is: we freethinkers are good, and those fundamentalists are bad. steelbrassnwood has a terrific quote from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett on The Fabulous Quoteserver: "Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people." (From the novel Good Omens.)

In my own life I'm often tempted to collapse the wave function: a bad answer, in many ways, is easier to tolerate than no answer at all. When I'm in the throes of temptation to (over)simplify things, I try to ask myself if I'd really prefer a dead cat.

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:09:57 GMT

A Street Lit Only by Fire*

The power was off for about a third of the homes on my block from 6 p.m. yesterday until the wee hours of the morning today. Snow melt had apparently damaged an underground feeder cable, and ConEd had crews working outside my window most of the night. For me it was a minor inconvenience: I curled up in bed and finished reading Steve Jones' Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated, by the light of a battery-powered LED booklight my niece gave me for Christmas. But the enforced vacation from my computer, the Internet, television and radio did remind me of how critically dependent I am, how most Americans are, on the power grid.

Right now the power in Baghdad is only on from two to six hours a day (which has interesting implications for the love lives of Iraqis, as you can see from the linked article). That means for the relative few who can afford it, electricity comes from generators that are loud, dirty and expensive—both to buy and to operate. For the majority of Baghdad residents the lack of power is an ongoing misery, complicating every facet of day to day life.

For most Americans, I suspect nothing would invert the normal order of things more than sustained power outages. After the first day or so the lack of entertainment would be a trivial concern. There would be no refrigerated food (and for many people, no way to cook it), no heat or hot water. No fire or burglar alarms. New York City's water supply is mostly gravity fed, but in a sustained blackout its drinking water would be unfiltered, a potential health problem. In many communities there would be no drinking water. Even if telephone companies powered their cellular networks with generators, mobile phones would begin failing within twenty-four hours because their owners would have no way to recharge them. In New York and a few other big cities, the subway systems would be dead, stranding millions of commuters. Vehicle traffic would slow to a crawl from the lack of signals, and without pumps, subway and vehicle tunnels would begin to flood.

These are just the problems that occur to me immediately. I'm sure there are many, many more I could imagine if I weren't already scaring myself silly. We like to think of the power grid as a robust technology here in the U.S., but the truth is that our normal way of life, and in many cases our lives, are dependent upon resources over which we exert no individual control (and sometimes precious little collective control, as in the case of Enron manipulating the electrical supply in California). It's rather a humbling realization.

Stonehead News

Your Cat & Other Space Aliens

Things I Am Not Making Up

A Three Hour Tour

The Redhead's Game Column Debuts

Excrescences

I am bloated with steamy wondrousness. My poems are not so much written as they are excreted.

But Will He Pimp It?

Pet Advice

Open Letter to Salon.com

Writing News

The Year in Review

Writing News

Hot Air

Writing News

Writing News

Other Writing News

Literary Talk

A Blogger's Life

Writing News

E-Mail Follies

The Tissue-Industrial Complex

The Mice of War

Writing News

The Home Office

Thanks, too, to shunn, who used valuable novel-writing time to strip the images off DVD and load them into Zip files for me.

Publication Alert

Character Confidential

Tolerating Ambiguity

A Street Lit Only by Fire*

*See A World Lit Only by Fire, by William Manchester, about Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

See A World Lit Only by Fire*, by William Manchester, about Medieval and Renaissance Europe.