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Saturday, April 5th, 2008
...as he read, he identified first with the usher, then with the brawling audience, then with the çörek maker, and finally -- good reader that he was -- with Celâl.-- The Black Book
A couple of jottings in furtherance of my essay idea:
- Identity confusion is important in Pamuk.
- I started to formulate this statement while I was reading Other Colors, and have since seen it borne out in The White Castle, The New Life, and especially The Black Book.
- Does this statement also apply to Snow and My Name is Red, which I read before it occurred to me? (beyond the obvious detective-story aspects of Red) -- the answer may well be yes but I think I would need to reread them with this in mind, to be sure. If not, it might seem appropriate to think of this as something Pamuk had "outgrown".
- The confusion that I'm talking about is (frequently) a confusion between the roles of Author and Reader. So it's an easy step to take, to confuse yourself-as-reader with Pamuk-as-author. Or so I think.
- As a side note, I wonder how this plays into my impression of these 5 novels, which is that each of them is written in a distinctly different style and voice -- though I think I can hear shades of the same voice underlying each -- if Pamuk is serious about giving up his identity when he writes that would help explain the differences. An alternate explanation is that there are four different translators involved in creating English versions of these five books -- only Maureen Freely has two translations. But I don't think those two are particularly more similar to each other than any other pair.
- I think the experience of losing track of one's identity while reading a story is a wonderful thing; it might be the primary reason I read novels. Understanding this is something I am taking away from reading Pamuk. Is this the same as saying "I read for escape from my everyday life", which seems banal and not really worth thinking about at length the way I have been doing? In Pamuk's novels it seems to be doing a lot more work than that.
- What larger ideas if any does this lead to? How is the beauty of Pamuk's books explicable in these terms? Would such an explication be "criticism"? (Note: I've had an ongoing conversation with myself about what is criticism, and is it something I would be able to write, for a while now.)
posted evening of April 5th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, April 4th, 2008
Hm. Response to No Country For Old Men is ultimately similar to my response to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which is namely that the acting and direction are beautiful but not, finally, worth sitting through all that shooting for without a story. (And that's not to say that movies with shooting are necessarily bad, or not as good as they would be with less of it: I thought Once Upon a Time in the West was fantastic.) The minimalism and creepiness seem a little studied.
posted evening of April 4th, 2008: Respond
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(Thinking some lines from "Only the Stones Remain" would be a good epigraph, then thinking better of it.)
I was a little irked by my posting earlier that "Shine a Light" is one of my favorite Stones tunes, without fuller qualification. I don't really know their music, and it surprises me that I should not, when I like so much of what I do know by them. I think I've only ever listened to two of their records very closely or repeatedly, namely Beggar's Banquet and Let it Bleed. I only know "Shine a Light" because Janis taught me to play it; I really ought to check out Exile on Main Street sometime.
posted evening of April 4th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday evening I will go into the city to see Robyn Hitchcock! I'm so excited! It is now just about exactly a year since my interest in Hitchcock was reawoken by Ms. Irene Trudel. In that year (in the year since I last saw him play) I've been listening to his music really heavily -- you probably already know this if you read the blog much. This time I am going to have a much fuller notion of what I'm listening to. Can't wait, can't wait. Also on the bill (and indeed, actually at the top of the bill) is Nick Lowe, about whom I know almost nothing at all, but from what I've been reading it sounds like he'll be a lot of fun too.
posted evening of April 4th, 2008: Respond
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I just heard Martin Scorsese give an interview to NPR about his new movie -- I was interested to learn the title is "Shine a Light", since that's one of my favorite Stones songs (and gets fairly little play); but Ellen thinks it is a different song with "shine a light" in the chorus.* I'm looking forward to the movie -- it is probably as close as I will ever get to seeing the Stones live; but Scorsese was kind of grating on my nerves as he described it. You know whose concert films I love? Jonathan Demme's, is whose. The focus is on the music and you get this pretty elemental, raw passion of artistry -- whereas Scorsese was making it sound kind of like his focus was on making the film and on the personalities involved. Hopefully I am misreading the interview, because I'd really love to see a film crystallizing the Stones' music.
 *Update: No, looking at the track list of the soundtrack album now, and "Shine a Light" is indeed present, and is the closing track! Sweet.
posted morning of April 4th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, April third, 2008
 Per Mr. Fritz's request, a comparison of our bathroom floor plan before and after the remodeling project:
Only very roughly to scale. But the basic message communicated, that there is now a lot more open space in the bathroom through which to move, is an accurate one.
posted evening of April third, 2008: 4 responses
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Wednesday, April second, 2008
Could we get people to quit saying "I believe in evolution" and similar constructions? This sticks in my craw every time I read or hear it. Try "I accept the truth of evolution" or something like that -- saying we should "believe in" scientific doctrine is messy thinking. Sure I guess it's better than "I disbelieve in evolution" but still.
posted afternoon of April second, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, April first, 2008
 For the past few months, we've been in the process of renovating our 2nd floor bathroom -- workers in and out of the house, trucks driving up and delivering large heavy objects, paint odors and sawdust mixing with our air... It's finished now! And what an improvement -- the old bathroom just was not a well put-together room. Besides that the tiles were old and ugly and the fixtures falling apart, the layout was nonsensical. You pushed the door open into a narrow corridor next to the bathtub and at the end of the bathtub there was a little bit of space and then the toilet; the sink was placed so that you would always knock into the corner of it when you were going by there.
We rearranged the space pretty radically and as I said, I think it's a huge improvement. Before and after pictures are here. The design and the painting (which still has a little bit of touching up to be done) are my and Ellen's contributions, the other work was contracted out.
Update: I posted a rough floor plan of the before and after layouts here.
posted evening of April first, 2008: 3 responses
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Darn... I can never come up with any good pranks or tricks. Still, there it is, today's the big day.
 Google, OTOH, has no problems coming up with clever pranks. Also Scary-Go-Round is in rare form today -- not strictly an April Fools prank but this one is going to live in my consciousness for a while. "May I have two chocolate eggs?" "No you may have just one." ...And I'm not sure what's going on with Dinosaur Comix and xkcd and Questionable Content but I expect it is first-of-April-related. A-and rounding out the weirdness, Fafblog is back, bigger and better, but with a lot less green and purple. The Apostropher says it is not an April Fools joke, but how would he know?
posted morning of April first, 2008: Respond
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Monday, March 31st, 2008
"In like a lion, out like a lamb" is accurate for this year's third month, but the senses of the similes have been roughly altered: the beginning of March was golden with sun, and its end is grayish white and cloudy like a lamb's wool. Bleah, say I.
posted afternoon of March 31st, 2008: 3 responses
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