The "F", I am assured, is capitalized.

Musings on art in times of madness

1

These missives tend to be piecemeal affairs, Frankensteined¹ together over a few weeks before I hit send. Much of this installment was written before the world fell to pieces and, like many others, I’ve been awash with grief and anger and have been unsure when or if to send. But I had an exchange this week with one of my workshop students who was been struggling with her own writing right now and this is what I advised her:

For me, I have found that it is [during] times like this that creating art becomes the most important thing I can do; it is the thing that reconnects me to everything I value about the human condition. It literally feels life saving and is essential work (for me); and as hard as writing can feel, not writing always feels even worse. I would also propose that the current situation is the strongest possible argument that your book matters; that the situations aren't changing and won't change without the right kind of deeply humanizing engagement.

So with that spirit in mind, I’m cleaning this up a bit and sending it into the world.

2

To begin, a quick personal note that my third novel, @UGMAN, has at last found a home. Until the ink is dry, I need to withhold details; but I’m thrilled that this weird little book of mine will finally see the light of day, tentatively in fall of 2024.

3

J.M. Coetzee’s new novel, The Pole, is getting a lot of notice and acclaim. I think the consensus that is emerging - a fine example of late period Coetzee, albeit in a minor key - speaks for me. Though the late works (like Philip Roth’s closing pentalogy) are shorter, the palette more limited, they remain ambitious. (The Pole is in conversation with Dante’s La Vita Nuova.) They are dense and focused, like a reduction sauce. What resonated most about The Pole for me is the role language plays in the novel, as characters struggle to communicate across foreign tongues, and all the wonderfully tense uncertainty that comes with it. (Coetzee brought out The Pole in Spanish first, and appears to prefer that version.) At any rate, I have been thinking about this moving chamber piece for some weeks now and recommend it, though not as an introduction to Coetzee. (For that, look to Disgrace or Waiting for the Barbarians.)

I’ve also thought about it via some interesting connections with another short, fragmentary novel, Open Throat by Henry Hoke. This one is told from the point of view of a queer mountain lion roaming the Hollywood Hills, clearly patterned after “celebrity mountain lion” P-22. I’m wary about books told from animal points of view (though I am a sucker for John Berger’s King). But the few I have read never quite unpack the idea of what language is to an animal; they simply take human conventions as a starting point, instead of imagining something truly different. They also tend to anthropomorphize their subjects in a way that makes me impatient. Hoke doesn’t quite escape these traps; although this book lost some altitude for me once the voice became familiar, the depiction of animal consciousness is surprisingly moving; and like the main characters in The Pole, Open Throat’s narrator is constrained by language. His isolation is affecting.

A strange little pas de deux but worth taking together.

4

I wrote a few months ago about my reservations about Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, which went on to win the Tony though I stand by my take. As a corrective, I traveled down to Los Angeles over my birthday weekend to catch a National Theatre Live screening of David Tennant in C.P Taylor’s Good. (Quick aside - if you don’t know the NT Live offerings, you should. The ticket ordering interface is a bit of a mess but their home streaming offerings are also fantastic.)

This bracing revival was staged in London last year, and condenses the many speaking parts of the play into a minimalist setting with three actors taking all the roles. For those who don’t know the play, it follows the evolution of Dr. John Halder from a seemingly “good” German - academic, husband, son - into a full blown Nazi. The play is one of the most effective replies to the question “How could it happen in the land of Goethe?” I love Tennant (Staged helped me through the pandemic) and I found his transformation as chilling and effective as I remembered; it’s an indelible theatrical moment when Halder finally slips on his SS trench coat. That said, I thought his portrayal was a bit too, well, familiarly Tennant. And too confident for the Halder I see in my mind’s eye, whose evolution is more uncertain, diffident. He’s a man trying to persuade himself, until he finally gives up all pretext. But Tennant is a bit too commanding for this kind of diffidence, so there’s less of a journey. (I had the same issue with Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth; he always struck me as far too confident to be convincing.)

I much prefer to acidity of Good to the mawkishness of Leopoldstadt. There aren’t many showings left but if you can find one near you, it’s well worth your time.

5

It seems like the distant past now, but there was briefly an intense flurry of social media activity following an Atlantic article about books being mined for AI. The outrage, I suppose, is understandable though it struck me as a bit overwrought. What I noticed most was the rush of authors posting screencaps confirming that their works had, in fact, been gobbled by the AI machine seemed driven as much by ego (or anxiety) as outrage. I posted one of those myself, though I was well aware of the insecurity beneath my performative dismay; my desire to signal to my peers, “Hey, look, I’m worth mining!”

This is the sort of deforming aspect of social media that I hate and feel a bit powerless to address; though that’s a lie we tell ourselves, it’s easy enough to delete one’s accounts. But we’ve been somehow become convinced we cannot live in the modern world without them. Moments like this one are prompting me to re-evaluate my own relationship with these platforms. Or least to virtue signal that I plan to …

6

Before I forget, I’m excited to share that next year’s writing retreat is open for registration and is already starting to fill up. Early bird registration ends on January 1, so sign up and come spend a days writing with me on the gorgeous Monterey Peninsula.

7

So I am working on this new, personal and totally self-indulgent Beatles-related side project. I’ll share more on that in future installments; but one of the strange and lovely things to come out of is that I’ve fallen in love with a Beatles song I’d overlooked for more than forty years.

George and Paul in the studio, recording “Long, Long, Long” - 8 October 1969. (Photo: Linda McCartney)

I’ve always argued that there’s something timeless about the Beatles; not merely timeless, but outside of time. Like re-reading a great novel, re-listening to this music continues to reveal surprises - surprises that might say as much about me as they do about the music itself. For years, I’d pretty well skipped over “Long, Long, Long,” George Harrison’s side-three closer on The White Album. It was such an abrupt tonal shift after the mayhem of “Helter Skelter.” I could barely hear it on my crappy Panasonic cassette recorder; and it had that weird wailing fade out. Skip, decreed my dopey teenage self.

In my later years, I’ve gone through a real George renaissance, driven largely by Martin Scorsese’s wonderful documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World. All at once, it became clear that he was the Beatle I would most enjoy hanging out with; the deepest, the most thoughtful and articulate. And although he does not, in my book, reach the same levels of consistent musical genius as John and Paul, his later work feels deep and indispensable to me. And so I’ve fallen in love with “Long, Long, Long,” which has moved from being the skippable close to side three to my favorite of all four of George’s excellent White Album contributions. I’ve been playing it non-stop. Here’s a surprisingly lovely cover for your delectation. Secret project update to follow.

8

I’ve been plowing through a lot of reading this fall, and some other books that I bring to your attention include: Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction, which so far feels like a real master class on the history of American publishing; Paul Murray’s Booker-shortlisted The Bee Sting; and Teju Cole’s new novel Tremor (just out yesterday; he’s coming to the Bay Area next week). I’ve also been re-reading one of my great favorites, Giovanni’s Room, as part of Garth Greenwell’s master class through the Shipman Agency; it’s always a pleasure to hear someone like that do a deep dive into a beloved classic. (He’s also inspired me to take yet another stab at Henry James, the one great author I can’t seem to get next to. The Ambassadors is up next.)

9

A dear friend recommended the Australian sitcom Fisk and I inhaled the six hilarious episodes on Netflix. I also finally walked away from The Sopranos toward the end of Season Three. I tried, folks. And like everyone else, I was pretty well swept away by the second season of The Bear, though for me, episode 7 (“Forks”) takes the gold. Richie’s arc is the most moving and genuinely satisfying of the series.

10

To close, I’m heading to London for New Year’s and would love to hear your recommendations. I will also be briefly in NYC next week to celebrate MOTEV’s² 90th birthday! And I will launching my usual holiday specials in November, with my editing rates set to go up next year. My partner Jennifer Carson is also launching a new installment of her close-reading Writers Book Club at To The Lighthouse; round one was a great success.

11

Hard times ahead. I truly do wish every one of you peace and freedom from suffering.

1. I spent a ridiculous amount of time wondering whether to capitalize this; the social media consensus was to capitalize, so I’m doing it but it still doesn’t feel quite right.

2. https://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/motev/