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Sunday, September 9th, 2007
Since chapter 31 of My Name is Red I have been feeling a little at odds with Pamuk's desire to advance the plot, which has been seeming to interfere with the lovely character development and aphoristic nature of the first half of the book. With today's reading however, chapters 43 through 47, he is coming back to the narrative style that I have fallen in love with. Chapter 47 ("I, Satan") is especially nice -- it has been too long since we heard from the coffee-house storyteller, whom I am identifying as Pamuk. He (like Pamuk) obviously has a polemical point -- is not impartial -- but his voice is lovely and seductive enough, and I'm close enough to in agreement with his side of the argument, that I am letting my guard down and just basking in his voice. Here's what his Satan has to say about moralizing preachers: I am not the source of all the evil and sin in the world. Many people sin out of their own blind ambition, lust, lack of willpower, baseness, and most often, out of their own idiocy without any instigation, deception or temptation on my part. However absurd the efforts of certain learned mystics to absolve me of any evil might be, so too is the assumption that I am the source of all of it, which also contradicts the Glorious Koran. I'm not the one who tempts every fruit monger who craftily foists rotten apples upon his customers, every child who tells a lie, every fawning sycophant, every old man who has obscene daydreams or every boy who jacks off. Even the Almighty couldn't find anything evil in passing wind or jacking off. Sure, I work very hard so you might commit grave sins. But some hojas claim that all of you who gape, sneeze or even fart are my dupes, which tells me they haven't understood me in the least. Let them misunderstand you, so you can dupe them all the more easily, you might suggest. True. But let me remind you, I have my pride, which is what caused me to fall out with the Almighty in the first place...
posted evening of September 9th, 2007: Respond
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The Apostropher has posted a mix tape that is better than good. Dig that Al Green.
posted afternoon of September 9th, 2007: Respond
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This week, Sylvia has graduated from riding a little bike, low enough to the ground that she can put both feet down flat while she's mounted, to riding a bike that is her proper size (though with the seat set a little lower than ideal). And this morning the three of us rode to town and back, more than a mile round trip!
posted afternoon of September 9th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, September 7th, 2007
It occurs to me that I don't have much full of a notion of a way of thinking which is not "Bragging" or "Complaining" and since I don't want to brag or to complain, I spend a lot of my time without, properly speaking, thoughts of any sort, and that this thoughtless time gives rise to negative feelings that I would as soon be rid of. Time to come up with a new sort of script.
posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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It is lovely to watch Robyn Hitchcock's interactions with his backup singers and musicians I am watching him sing "Cynthia Mask" with Grant Lee Phillips right now and see a similar vibe to what I have caught going on watching him with the Egyptians and with Captain Keegan. (A different species of interaction between him and Deni Bonet, a less overtly sexual one I think.) If you count yourself among the few readers of this blog and I have not yet raved at/to you about Robyn and the Egyptians performing an acoustic version of "Birds In Perspex (Come Alive)", well, I am doing so now by implication. Go watch it, really I can't imagine your thinking the time poorly spent unless you are Sifu Tweety Fish, whose musical tastes are a cipher to me. (And talk to me about it -- regardless of what I said above I would really like to know what reactions people have to that song, including those reactions that are less wholly enthusiastic than my own.)
posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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A new DVD came in the mail today, for me to watch this evening. It is Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips' Elixirs & Remedies, concert footage from their "Grand Campaign" 2000 tour.
Here is a video of Hitchcock and Phillips performing Satellite of Love, which is not included in the DVD.
Do any of you have exposure to the music of Grant Lee Phillips, solo or in combination with Grant Lee Buffalo? I would appreciate recommendations of albums to listen to.
My expectation with covers sung by Robyn is, if they are of Syd Barrett tunes they will be fantastic, and otherwise the odds are about even for fantastic or awful. An interesting thing about this concert is that the two of them play many covers of songs by a wide variety of artists, and every one of them is successful. Maybe this is a product of their collaboration? "(All I have to do is) Dream" takes on many new dimensions with Robyn singing it.
Another concert from the same tour is available at archive.org.
posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
I have a boxed set of Big Bill Broonzy discs, of which I have for some reason only listened to discs 1, 2, and 5. I put disc 3 on today and was delighted to find some songs with violin accompaniment, which I don't believe I have heard accompanying Broonzy before; and doubly delighted that one of the songs (track 14) is "C. C. Rider".
posted evening of September 5th, 2007: Respond
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Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
Gary Shteyngart has a hilarious essay in this week's New Yorker.
posted evening of September 4th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, September third, 2007
Al-Ahram Weekly looks like a very useful resource for learning about what's going on in the Islamic world. I am reading an essay about Snow right now, written on the occasion of Pamuk's receiving the Nobel Prize; and a review of My Name is Red.
posted afternoon of September third, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, September first, 2007
Ah ok, I got it, not just a distinct character but a distinct type of character -- by my count there are three or four types of narrators so far in this book: {Black, Mr. Uncle, Mr. Elegant, the Murderer, Orhan, Shekure, Esther, and the various miniaturists}; {Dog, Tree, Gold Coin}; and {Red} -- Maybe the Murderer should get a set of his own. Pamuk has impeccable timing. As evidence of this look at the following paragraph, ignoring the minor infelicities of the translation. Red tells how he came to be: Hush and listen to how I developed such a magnificent red tone. A master miniaturist, an expert in paints, furiously pounded the best variety of dried red beetle from the hottest climes of Hindustan into a fine powder using his mortar and pestle. He prepared five drachmas of the red powder, one drachma of soapwort and a half drachma of lotor. He boiled the soapwort in a pot containing three okkas of water. Next, he mixed thoroughly the lotor into the water. He let it boil for as long as it took to drink an excellent cup of coffee. As he enjoyed the coffee, I grew as impatient as a child about to be born. (The paragraph goes on with more description of the mixing and preparation.) The position of the last sentence quoted here is sublime. It makes the description of preparing red dye, which is starting to feel just like reading a recipe, concrete, locating it in time and giving it a personal dimension.Chapter 31 feels very important to me in a similar way to chapter 29 of Snow. It comes about halfway through the book, just after a couple of important plot elements have occurred, and it distances the reader from the immediacy of the narration. And I think we may be seeing the heart of the book in this passage: "What is the meaning of red?" the blind miniaturist who'd drawn the horse from memory asked again."The meaning of color is that it is there before us and we see it," said the other. "Red cannot be explained to he who cannot see." "To deny God's existence, victims of Satan maintain that God is not visible to us," said the blind miniaturist who'd rendered the horse. "Yet, he appears to those who can see," said the other master. "It is for this reason that the Koran states that the blind and the seeing are not equal."
posted afternoon of September first, 2007: Respond
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