Christina > Recent Status Updates

'The image of the empty house also recurs in the Proustian moment in the final pages when Alex stares at Sasha's old apartment and "imagined..finding himself still there." The poignancy of Egan's image - as well as of Proust's original one - lies in the noncorrespondence of time; what one looks for (one's younger self or experiences) is inevitably missing, producing an effect of emptiness.'

'Alex's note, "the edges torn, the pale blue lines rubbed almost away," could also be described as..."over-handled." The adjective raises larger questions: how much or often should a "tale" be told, and for how long? How much "handling" can a narrative bear? Does a story wear down under excessive use? And who has the right to "handle" or to retell others' stories?'

'What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?
   You shut down for the night and go home to your wife, right? You have a martini, order dinner. You read or watch television.
   You are Brueghel's tiny Icarus, drowning unnoticed in a corner of a vast canvas on which men till fields and tend sheep.'

"Groff is new to you, right?"
   "Yeah. He's not actually officially one of my artists yet. We're trying each other out."
   Never lie to these people. They hate, above all, being deceived by the help.'

'The train from Grand Central to Greenwich runs through a morass of exurbia that, let's just say, one would want to conceal from a visiting extraterrestrial. ...The eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg would not be entirely out of place here.'

"...He's having dinner with a friend. Some girl he used to know."
   "Are we . . . . concerned about that?"
   "We're a little concerned about everything. He seems slightly funny to me this time."
   He's doing drugs again, Rebecca. Peter Harris, tell your wife that her little brother is back on drugs. Do it now.
   "Funnier than usual?" he asks.

'As Heidegger also pointed out in his analysis of our technological culture, the tool invites us to enter into an instrumental relationship with the world, one that reveals objects as standing reserves for human intentions. That is all well and good as long as it doesn't lead to an absolutist understanding of the world.'

'Peter tried to murder his brother only once, which, by the standards of brothers, is modest. He was seven, which would have made Matthew ten.'

'In [Hannah] Arendt's sense, thinking includes conscience, in the form of attention and thoughtfulness towards other people. This was an attribute sorely lacking in [Adolf] Eichmann, who had turned himself into an unthinking cog in a machine, obeying orders. You can, of course, have a high IQ without thinking very much in Arendt's sense of the word – and vice versa.'

'...it's all well and good to 'realize yourself' as a unique individual, but not at the expense of the universal human values and obligations from which ethics originate. To put it bluntly, it is fine to be yourself, but not if that means you're a bad person.'

'It is no longer good enough to do something well. Everything must constantly be better – or indeed 'even better'. This is where my defense of thoughtfulness may be relevant to the discussion of depression. It is no coincidence that the sales slogan for the antidepressant 'happy pill' Paxil was 'Do more, feel better, live longer'. And think less?'

'Thinking that generates meaning is about everything we don't know – but it often takes a great deal of knowledge to understand how little we actually know. It takes courage to stand by the idea that there's something we don't know, and it takes curiosity to want to learn more.'

'...it is normal to memorialize and document happy or successful moments, but if those memorials seem to occupy too much of your present day, it is a likely sign that you may have no new moments worth memorializing or remembering.'

'Peter lets himself into the loft. Quarter past four. He goes to the kitchen counter, puts down the drugstore bag that contains the Excedrin and dental floss he's picked up (why is it so impossible to go out in New York without buying something?), slips off his jacket, hangs it up.'

'...the more technology simplifies things and improves efficiency, the more difficult it is to think because thinking depends on the ability not to react in a knee-jerk manner, to postpone decisions, consult other people, to listen to their experiences and arguments and consider the matter properly.

'When watching The X-Factor and munching popcorn, you experience the taste of the popcorn and the sound of the songs, but it is only once you become aware that you are experiencing these things that you can be said to be starting to think. There may then be a risk of you wondering whether this is a worthwhile use of your time – and that may not be a pleasant experience.'

'When Reagan tapped the 35-year-old Michigan Congressman David Stockman to be his Budget Director, Stockman, who had grown up on Conscience of a Conservative, set out to bring Goldwater's dream to life. ...When the computer simulations at the Office of Management and Budget showed that the proposed tax cuts would not increase revenues ...and explode the deficit, Stockman simply reprogrammed the computers.'

'An implied narrative of the novel's decline maps onto a parallel cultural shift... the transition from the analog or material recording of music on vinyl albums to digital forms. ...Egan has commented that her organization of the novel into two "sides" was intended as an homage to "a form that's sadly gone—the LP, even the CD."'

'McCarthy had shown the Taft wing of the Republican Party how to advance their agenda by exploiting the media. He yelled, made crazy accusations, badgered, and hectored in what was essentially performance art that advanced a simple, almost mythical narrative... He alone was defending America by protecting individualism from an all-pervasive government of godless communists. ...Taft Republicans had found a game plan.'

'...one of the basic (and unusual) structural features of Goon Squad is that we are not guaranteed to "see" any given character again after the chapter in which they feature concludes. The novel emphasizes the minor tragedy of every individual's impermanence: we are all doomed to become simply "a glint in the hazy memories" of others who may struggle even to recall us at all.'

'To rebuild the South, [Andrew] Johnson turned not to the Army, or to the ex-slaves who had supported the Union, but to former Confederates. He offered pardons to all but about 1,500 Confederate leaders... The states...then codified the racial violence that swept across the South in the summer of 1865.'

"A novel reader or critic is also a traveler who leaves behind her own world in order to "dive" headfirst into another, fictional one, a "foreign country." We return from these pilgrimages back into our own world and selves, clutching treasured relics from the territories we've visited."

Kreilkamp reminiscing about the pop music and arts coverage in the Village Voice; "...the vividness of its profane, ridiculously insider debates inextricable from the thick layers of pulpy newsprint pages they spilled out of, the issues bloated by the NYC real estate and massage-parlor ads that subsidized them. (We never realized just how precariously an entire bohemian way of life rested upon...apartment ads"

'Gus pushed his plate of nearly untouched salad to the center and leaned back.
   "I'll tell you one thing, he said. "I don't blame White Buffalo for not trusting the sheriff. What's his name? Fucky?"
   "Gus," Morgan said, "Such language. Why the hell would you say some shit like that?"
   Gus roared. David laughed as well, and that was good to see.'

"Drew," you say.
He's looking at the water with that stoned distraction that makes anything seem worth studying. You laugh, nervous, and he turns. "What?"
"I wish we could live in that cabin. You and me."
"What cabin?"
"The one you built. In Wisconsin." You see confusion in Drew's face, and you add, "If there is a cabin."
"Of course there's a cabin."

Finished! Review to come after my thoughts are done percolating. Hopefully.

'According to Bix, this computer-message-sending is going to be huge—way beyond the telephone. He's big on predicting the future, and you haven't really challenged him—maybe because he's older, maybe because he's black.'

1 0  O C T O B E R
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On October 10 and 11, 1963, the citizens of France mourned the successive deaths of Édith Piaf and Jean Cocteau.