February 1 Wednesday
Master chamber ready by 7:48 am.
News from Nicholas in response to my query about the mysterious arrival of a book by Houghton which I had forgotten I must have ordered.
Dear Bob,
It is probably the ghost of Houghton materializing texts unaware! You must have ordered it (I do not think I know your exact Albuquerque address). It is not one I have read, so you know who to pass it to when you are finished!
The party plans proceed.
Here is the formal invite, should you have a change of mind: You are cordially invited to help me celebrate my 60th birthday on Friday 21st April from 7 pm at the Hôtel de Poulpry, Maison des Polytechniciens - 12 rue de Poitiers - 75007 Paris. Drinks at 7, dinner at 8. Please R.S.V.P. so I can adjust the numbers for the dinner accordingly. Many thanks. Apparently, the dress code is ''correct" so mismatching socks presumably are unacceptable!
I am planning to be in Paris from Wednesday 19th to Monday 24th and stay in the area of St. German de Pres so I will aim to suggest mutual activities over the weekend for those interested or people can, of course, simply enjoy whichever version of Paris takes their fancy!
I think 27 people are coming to date (all being well)!
It is apparently already February! I had an enjoyable time in Bologna and Florence - had an annual dose of angels and saints in only a few days! I do not know why people go into raptures about Florence (except the art of course) because there are many more architecturally interesting cities in Italy of which Bologna is one).
I hope you are enjoying the desert (and the relatively warmth).
Love, Nicholas
—-
Also a reply from Joe—-
Geez, that is some western rattlesnake country! But at least it looks warm. Hope you're enjoying it, Bob.
Heading to Dartmouth today. I've been fighting a lung infection. Always a bit dreadful to go to the doctor's. You never know what you will hear.
Have had some nice notes from PSU kids....although they are 50 now. Melissa Cartwright, Sandy, Demers. That crowd. They did just find with their lives.
Onward we go.
——
Tempur guys here at 9:20. Deboxing the frames now. Not instructed on how high to make the beds by the store.
Bid news in the Post today is Mr Toyoda has caved and agreed that EV is the future of car manufacturing.
CRST truckers departed at 9:39.003 Wrote Super Job at the bottom of the invoice, as his request. The bald guy. The younger muscle guy did most of the work and was revved. Black hair, tattoos, lean. Hyper and super polite.
2 Feb A grand swim for the women yesterday at the New Defined Fitness.
Wonderful night's sleep on the new beds. Hard as rocks, true, from the cold storage and delivery. Heated up the house and by bedtime they folded well into the zero gravity position.
Evening. Charged at Electrify! How much are we saving on this? Pretty good. One more year/season. Linda did not come for piano. No surprise.
Italian soap found on Amazon. 1913. O Lost in the mail. Info from Bridgette on how much shipping an artwork would cost.
3 Feb
Joe sounds awfully good. "I'll try to get Demer's email. Sandy talks to him, I guess. And Melissa is married to a guy who does something for a big rock band. Who knows?
Cold as hell here today. Wind chill and the whole deal. I'm down in the basement making a coal stove.
Hey, I'm reading Death Comes for the Archbishop. Did you ever read it? It's good in that Cather slow way. Very Catholic. But it's all about New Mexico so you might enjoy it if you haven't read it.
Had a good appointment at Dartmouth. No lungs or heart problems...at least it's staying the same. The doc thinks I'm fighting an infection. My cough is better finally.
Not much else to report. I'm writing some poetry! Ethan would be proud of me. It's some way it's all kind of silly.
Hope you two are having fun. How long does it take you to drive out? Or do you fly?
——
so how long does one live with a terminal cancer diagnosis and does the experimental drug keep working? Like adding another layer of mystery to the mysteries of daily life. But then that is life every day any way is it not?
3k in each checking account today. Fingers crossed we will eek through the month and stay afloat. Magical economics.
Today we napped before sushi and avocado for lunch! Long GH report from Natalie. Will copy out. Historical record of all sorts.
Hi, Bob and Virginia!
I do not know if you follow the NH weather when you are in NM, but, let me tell you, it is so, so COLD!!!. Right now it is -5 with on my thermometer, and they say the wind chill is -27. Supposedly, tonight the actual temperature for the Bristol/ Bridgewater region will go down to -16. It will be worse up north, and the wind makes it feel even colder. Enjoy your warmer temps.
I am sure you are settling into your routine and having a nice time.
Wow! What can I say about GH? It has been SO good. That scene today between Spencer and Nicolas with poor Laura looking on was really something. Those actors (S and new N) did a fabulous job. Everything is brewing and seems to be coming to a head although we definitely need to find out who is pulling the strings in the Austin-Mason drama. Get ready for the two crazies to escape and be loose in Port Chuck with Esme in tow. Spring Ridge has a real security problem. When it comes to story lines, there are certainly many irons in the fire, but they are moving along. I am still anxiously awaiting Dex’s story about who he is and why he hates Sonny so much. I have a bad feeling about the upcoming nuptials. (Of course, it is a soap wedding, so it will have some stunning surprise.) I realize Portia has been lying, and Curtis deserves the truth, but when will Aunt Stella learn to stop butting in all the time, not that Jordan was any help. It is Trina that I feel the worst for as she will be devastated. I have to confess that I have started to like Trina and Spencer together but am worried for what they will be dealing with. Yet again, Carly was forgiven very quickly, of course, not by Nina. I do feel certain that Willow will survive. Poor, poor Sasha. Gladys is a good example of the fact that a leopard can’t change its spots, despite truly being fond of Sasha. Cody needs to speak up before Gladys loses all of Sasha’s money. (Never have warmed up to the character of Cody.) Well, our super sleuth spies are still trying to take Victor down. We still do not know his big plan. (Do you think any of the writers do? ) We have gotten many hints about something bad in Dante’s past. That will likely cause problems in his relationship with Sam. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Elizabeth! You are a mess!” Finn would be lucky to leave her in the dust! She has always acted like she is a goody two shoes, but, in reality, I have never seen her that way. Finn probably will not want her to got to the police. Oh! That last scene today with Nik at Ava’s door gave me a chill! That new actor is quite intimidating looking.
Okay, I have gone on long enough. The family will be over soon, right? Have a lovely time.
Natalie
———
4 Feb Saturday Back early for day off. Ed drove us to Jemez Springs for lunch at the tavern. Gorgeous day. Beautiful red hills. 2:26 pm Willow and Beckie walked at the railing at Optum and then in Little Albertson's
she had a soft fall. Nothing seems bruised. Except for pride.
from Elizabeth about the Plymouth furnace—
Good and bad news. It is working fine now. He couldn't find what was wrong with it and doesn't know why the temp dropped 10 degrees. He did notice that the differential had a widespread range, and he shortened the gap. He said that it is possible that the extreme cold temps we just had made it so that the (radiant, auxiliary, or something like that) part couldn't keep up given that the furnace was still running yet the temp inside the house was dropping. The wide differential gap might also have been part of the cause. While he was here, I got a quick heating 101 session so that if it happens again I will have a bit more to go on for trouble shooting. I also found out what to do if the furnace registers as having a "hard lock out." Hopefully though, all will be fine.
—-
“It came also in the sight of great strings of rusty freight cars on the tracks, and in the sight of a rail, shining with the music of space and flight as it swept away into the distance and was lost from sight. In things like these, and countless others, the vision of the city would come alive and stab him like a knife. [¬]”
— Thomas Wolfe: The Complete Works by Thomas Wolfe
“He heard, far off, the deep and beelike murmur of its million-footed life, and all the mystery of the earth and time was in that sound. He saw its thousand streets peopled with a flashing, beautiful, infinitely varied life. The city flashed before him like a glorious jewel, blazing with countless rich and brilliant facets of a life so good, so bountiful, so strangely and constantly beautiful and interesting, that it seemed intolerable that he should miss a moment of it. He saw the streets swarming with the figures of great men and glorious women, and he walked among them like a conqueror, winning fiercely and exultantly by his talent, courage, and merit the greatest tributes that the city had to offer, the highest prize of power, wealth, and fame, and the great emolument of love. There would be villainy and knavery as black and sinister as hell, but he would smash it with a blow, and drive it cringing to its hole. There would be heroic men and lovely women, and he would win and take a place among the highest and most fortunate people on the earth. Thus, in a vision hued with all the strange and magic colors of his adolescence, the boy walked the streets of his great legendary city.”
— Thomas Wolfe: The Complete Works by Thomas Wolfe
Va's leg giving out. Adjustments to change? Roughly same time as last year when we called 911 to help with leg feeling painful pinch? Went to Rust center.
My loose thinking on these things?
The sound of Italian on the tv.
“He heard, far off, the deep and beelike murmur of its million-footed life, and all the mystery of the earth and time was in that sound. He saw its thousand streets peopled with a flashing, beautiful, infinitely varied life. The city flashed before him like a glorious jewel, blazing with countless rich and brilliant facets of a life so good, so bountiful, so strangely and constantly beautiful and interesting, that it seemed intolerable that he should miss a moment of it. He saw the streets swarming with the figures of great men and glorious women, and he walked among them like a conqueror, winning fiercely and exultantly by his talent, courage, and merit the greatest tributes that the city had to offer, the highest prize of power, wealth, and fame, and the great emolument of love. There would be villainy and knavery as black and sinister as hell, but he would smash it with a blow, and drive it cringing to its hole. There would be heroic men and lovely women, and he would win and take a place among the highest and most fortunate people on the earth. Thus, in a vision hued with all the strange and magic colors of his adolescence, the boy walked the streets of his great legendary city.”
— Thomas Wolfe: The Complete Works by Thomas Wolfe
Knew the furnace was ok but had no way of reassuring Elizabeth of that. Live and learn—-and pay the overtime wages. So the technician had a "light" visit to our place. Perhaps it gave him some rest.
Ed told me Dylan had lobbied to get the Nobel Prize. Also that Roth (like Agee) liked to watch while someone screwed his wife or girl friend. He and Tommy have lunch once a week and meet on Wednesdays to watch YouTube lectures on philosophers and then comment on them. Tommy has had a terrible time sleeping all his life. Has tried everything imaginable.
5 Feb Sunday
No Chatter (Barb and Ed can use our tix). Willow felt more pain last night,
took advil and more this morning. Hoping it will be bruising and nothing more. She's at the table doing facebook in her wheelchair and poncho.
from a site by David Teems
Literary critic, Harold Bloom considers Thomas Wolfe not only a poor novelist, he insists that Wolfe is the perpetual adolescent, that his readership is just as adolescent. That explains me, I suppose. Not only does Bloom refer to Wolfe's ''almost dead reputation as a novelist,'' he adds, "There is no possibility for critical dispute about Wolfe's literary merits; he has none whatsoever." [From "Passionate Beholder of America in Trouble," by Harold Bloom, New York Times review of LOOK HOMEWARD: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, by David Herbert Donald.]
Ouch.
There exists the possibility that Dr. Bloom misses the point, which is unlikely, or perhaps there is another one to argue. True genius is not easily measured against conventions. When you read a Thomas Wolfe novel you're not going to get a riveting action adventure. You're not going to get Nick Adams, Daisy Buchanan, Huck Finn, or Harry Potter. You won't get plot, narrative arc, or the usual props that come with the novel. You are going to get rhapsody and excess, prose of varying colors and movement, the full liturgy of life, and in fascinating detail. Wolfe is, first, an artist, with all the curious psychology, sound, fury, and novelty that implies.
From there he begins his little history. And with as little as that, I was smitten. And he never lets me down. He did not sing to me or work me into a swoon, only to leave me wanting and unquenched. He created in me what French poet Paul Valery* refers to as "the poetic state" as a kind of bright delirium.
After another paragraph or two, rhapsody gives way to a prose of such polish, charm, and intelligence, I could not put the book down. Indeed, I finished my first reading of LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL's 563 pages in two days, without sleep or interruption. That is the point of a writer like Thomas Wolfe. It is not the destination as much as it is the journey itself (an attribute more given to poetry than prose). Paul Valery*, writes about the poem as a kind of dance, and a dance has no "destination" but is enjoyed for the sake of grace and movement alone. Either way, I love that in a writer. Ian McEwan affects me that way. Barbara Kingsolver. Toni Morrison. Michael Chabon. Annie Proulx. Cormac McCarthy.
When Wolfe writes about wordcraft, the first thing he emphasizes is the labor, the severity, the possession. His father was a stonecutter. Wolfe uses the stonecutter imagery to describe his own trade. If he was not satisfied with a scene or a character, he would not simply revise his draft. He would put it aside and rewrite it in a different way from start to finish. And he did not have the advantage of a computer. He worked with paper and pencil. See the image above, my favorite of Wolfe. He considered himself a laborer, who worked with his hands. The lesson is a powerful one.
When he writes of food he does so with such finesse and intelligence, you swear you can smell it, taste it, or see it steaming on the table. His range was Shakespearean. Unfortunately, this article can only make the introduction to genius. It is much too broad to summarize here. The best this piece can do is point and attempt to persuade. To experience Wolfe you must read Wolfe for yourself. Then come to your own conclusions. As wide as he is deep, it takes a while to get around him.
My suggestion is to read Wolfe without preconception. He too often circumnavigates them. Read him for the pure joy of language and invention, of an imagination with ridiculous reach. There is much to learn from any writer of genius, whether or not their particular style is in fashion or not, and whatever kind of writing you do. Learn to pay attention to your ear, to your instincts as you understand them, not to the latest conventions, which, paradoxically, are as necessary as they are ephemeral, fleeting. Do so wisely, but play the artist and decide for yourself how you wish to sound, what affect you want to create, and how gently or not your river of words is given to flow. Language, according to Wolfe, is not a matter of fix but flood. If you don't believe that, look at the image of the author and his book (my 2nd favorite Wolfe photo).
In closing, I would say please forgive the length of this article, but like its subject, who brought the manuscript (literally, hand-script) of his second book, OF TIME AND THE RIVER, to Maxwell Perkins in three orange crates (see image of one of those crates), brevity was not a priority.
https://www.davidteems.com/post/2018/10/03/thomas-wolfe-for-the-pure-joy-of-language
Teems' best passage: From there he begins his little history. And with as little as that, I was smitten. And he never lets me down. He did not sing to me or work me into a swoon, only to leave me wanting and unquenched. He created in me what French poet Paul Valery* refers to as "the poetic state" as a kind of bright delirium.
This is indeed the bright delirium I felt when I first read Look Homeward and at the end I wept and cried and started at once to read the book all over again. And I did. Fall of 1960.
Willow on the piano now, 11:16 am, after getting dressed.
Nicholas yesterday on twitter — ncolloff (@Nicholas Colloff) Tweeted: As I was munching my lunch, and considering Bishop Berkeley (as you do), I realized that our deep problem is both that we don’t realize we are in Plato’s cave and that with Jung we don’t realize that unreflected, non-individuated myth lives amongst us …
6 February Monday
Just back from Wally's. Essentials like Advil and soup and windex to clean the patio door.
This from Matt Demers—-
- Hi Matt Joe told me you had sent him a message and that got me wondering where and how you are. Looks like all goes well. We now
- winter every year in Albuquerque. Here now. Saw Joe in November. He was in good shape, all things considered. He has a book coming out in March about it all. Bests
Matt Demers sent the following messages at 9:48 AM
View Matt’s profile
Hey Bob! wow what a great note to receive. all is well on this end. I talked to Sandy Srodin last week and she told me about Joe's condition. Great to know about the book coming out. Let's talk live at some point to really catch up -- want to hear more about you are doing as well -- 617 416 8385
Now I feel embarrassed and shy. Sent him a reply anyway.
Wolfe Reading Web and Rock. He's writing just as Willow wrote her book. Segments, fragments, episodes, memories as they come back to him.
He is avant! beyond the modernist novel, Proust, beyond all novels. Autobiography overwhelms the old novel in a post-modernist way that Woolf et al could not have foreseen. Wolfe is post-deconstructionist!
post-Beckett, post-Vila-Matas, post Mark Haber, post-Bernhard, post-Bolañ0.
Huge earthquake in Turkey.
7 Feb Face visit with Dave and kids. Got their plans which include night in LA before flying here and two nights in AZ at the canyon. All of us excited about their visit. Snow today. Colder by ten degrees, sky still bright grey at noon.
Made video contact with Turbo advisor. Must be what online ed is like now. Easy and pleasant enough. If impersonally personal.
Emma looks and sounds so much older. Likes her physics class and her history class. Eliot back from kickboxing. Said RP had a great birthday day.
Emile did my taxes for me while we talked online for about hour and a half. Turbo premium. Worth every penny. Might not need it next year but after
last year this was a great clarification and assistance.
9 Feb Thurs
Standard walk at weeWal, all went well. Shopped basics, especially jams.
Wrangled with Roku and Google this afternoon. Finished two so-so Britbox dramas. Both disappointing. Income tax got revised with Eloy's new statement and Tax reduced a bit. Return Filed. Woo Hoo. Thanks to Emile Desvoir, (Haitian background?)
10 February
Ramana Maharshi said Mount Arunachala was his guru. William Blake said “all mountains are men too”. And I think seeing Arunachala helped me understand more of Blake’s link: the guru-mountain prompts an expansion of one’s humanity and so must participate in that wider self too.— Mark Vernon @platospodcasts
hooray Blake—-all mountains are men too. If only he had seen the Alps?
or Sandia mountain and the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
Writing while New Amsterdam is on—-every so often it is just grossly painful.
we walked at big Alberston's. Then in front of Marshalls. Gorgeous morning. Still a bit too cool. But warmer by 1—-low 40s. Day off tomorrow. Charge the car, check into fireplace updates, read Wolfe.
Lunch somewhere, buy Heritage Os for the kids.
No big projects left. After three weeks we're settled into the vacay most deliciously. Fourth week now, actually. MD magazine said years ago that it takes a physician three weeks on vacation to begin to relax enough into the vacation. To get true rest.
Story on N A involved mother who had two DNAs in her body. Had a twin sister in utero and she absorbed her and some of her DNA was in her body.
She she gave birth to some children but this one child was born from an egg from her missing twin sister!!
sat Feb 11
keep mistakenly buying extra tickets for chatter.
day off imaginings and wonders woo hoo fireplace store and charging
Dear Dave, I have been talking with Warren Book who is one of the two sons of my favorite French teachers at UNM. His mom died last year and he is having trouble getting her ashes back to France to be buried. Maybe you and Cécile could help him with that or find out something that would help him.
I hope he and his brother will come to meet you and the fam sometime while you are here. I am very glad you are all going to the GC. You never know whether you will be able to see it again, Since we won't be going on the train up there with you, I have another idea. Bob and I would like to go to Santa Fe on the Trail Runner commuter train. We would leave here early in the am and get up to SF in an hour. We would Uber from the train station to La Fonda hotel for lunch. The hotel has great historical history as being at the end of the famous Santa Fe trail and as being the first stop on the Band V honey moon in 1969!!
I am thinking that Feb 24th or "our "Christmas Eve would be a good time to go.
Hope you like the idea. See you all soon,
love,mom
———
off to charge car. fireplace stores all closed on Saturdays. What to do, what to do??
Chatter today 12 Bulb by Donnacha Dennehy (b. 1970) Irish composer, Crash Ensemble, now at Princeton
Monday 13 Feb
Cloudy this evening. New Amsterdam rolling along. Pretty good double walk at BigAlbert's. Great lunch. Including chocolate to prepare our bodies for tomorrow's big day. Also bought a real plant, two. One a red Cyclamen the other a cluster of succulent's including a jade. Decompressing the second spare bedroom to have it ready for Emm and Eliot.
Is it possible to compose documents such as this, brilliant documents, on the ipad rather than on here? I have the romantic illusion that the ipad will lighten my life, simplify life, turn all of it into an elegant, clear design paragon as in those photos on dezeen.
The new copy of Willow's book finally arrived. Worth every penny of the 150. I spent to have it done. Subtle minor changes and it looks much better.
This tv show is so virtuous and smug (like West Wing and so many other such). Smug liberal correct tv dramatics. teaching the nation and the world to look, feel and be the best way possible. With ultra cool soundtracks to underline and soothe and smooth. No wonder I want to read Thomas Wolfe. Our anti-Proust.
Or mine. Did I read the first pages of The Web and the Rock? Most likely I did. There are some echoes familiar. But Amsterdam just showed us that recovered memory is totally inadmissible in a court of law—-unreliable.
So these are the fabrications we allow writers to weave. And we make and remake to shape ourselves. And keep reshaping.
Wolfe's note at the beginning says the books has a strong satiric element. "strong element of satiric exaggeration." He sees the book as an artistic and spiritual change from what he had published before. Somehow more objective and imagined.
night. walked in Lowes. Change of scene and ambience. Also in BigAlbert.
Convinced Va to cancel swimming and just have Lou show for lunch and visit. Ten degrees colder by morning. More wind due. What a wuss I am!
We watched first full episode of the French drama Women at War. The red headed actress from the wonderful series about the law courts. Scanned readers comments on Goodreads who give Web and Rock five stars.
Spilled kefir in the kitchen and tried to mop it up. Worries about money have quieted. Remembering we'll get the 15k from dad's estate in July. Willow pleased with the new edition of her book. Looks bit more finished and professional. She seemed to enjoy playing with the new Clementi sheet music that arrived. One or two episodes of New A. I read for most of them and fell asleep. Cookie binge at goutêr time.
Quiet feel waiting for the kids to fly and arrive. Temps will go back up into the low 50s. New A number 3 on Neflix. Why fight it?
15 Feb
super cold day. VMG told us to run the water tonight to keep pipes from freezing.
Remember when I suggested Wolfe was our anti-Proust? well here is Alta Ifland in the Brooklyn Rail positing Solenoid as today's hot anti-Proust:
"While In Search of Lost Time is the story of the discovery of a literary vocation and of writing down the story of this discovery, Solenoid is the antithesis of Proust’s search in its programmatic desire to destroy the myth of literature, which, judging from Cărtărescu’s interviews, was the absolute myth of his youth. In this sense, Solenoid is, more than anything else, a project to understand one’s own life, a search for meaning. His life’s desire, says his narrator, has always been to find a coherence of all the signs that scream to be deciphered, and to interpret the puzzle thus found, and his biggest failure would be not to be able to uncover an answer. Of course, the reader can say that the very existence of this book contradicts the narrator’s/author’s claim about his lack of interest in a literary project, but this is the paradox and advantage of literary space, which is also that of a dream: to allow the writer/dreamer to speak about it while being inside it, to be both inside and outside of a given space. His repeated remark that he hates fiction and novels can be read, then, in this context: what he hates is gratuitous invention and the articulation of a plot, and he refuses to invent in the same way Celan once said “I never invented anything.” Nov 2022
without twisting the above to much can it not be used to talk sensibly about what all Wolfe was trying to do ?
Alta Ifland is a Romanian-born American writer whose latest novels are Speaking to No. 4 (Nov. 2022) and The Wife Who Wasn’t (2021). A former French lecturer, she now lives in France.
Actually does she distinguish Solenoid clearly enough from Proust? No matter what they say, are not all writers trying to understand their own lives, searching for meaning?
Lou came for lunch. Gina seems to have found a house in the country club area,
asking price is 400k and needs to have some fixes done before the deal goes through. Something in the heating ducts and something else. Built in '78. Brick floors, larger than our place. We both said later that neither of us felt that we might have liked it better than what we found. The way the yard is fixed up might give us ideas for what to do with our side driveway.
started watching Le Code on MhZ. One show Lou suggested. Policier. Sent Dave some money for the car rental earlier today.
Do I need to jump on the Solenoid bandwagon? Why look to the newest hot thing? Were the same arguments made for Knausgaard ten years ago? Wolfe
just might be better than either of these contemporary flashes.
from web and rock this morning—-
“They felt the power, the presence, and the immanence of all holy and enchanted things, of all joy, all loveliness, and all the beauty and the wonder that the world could offer. They knew, somehow, they had their hands upon it. The triumph of some impending and glorious fulfillment, some impossible possession, some incredible achievement was thrillingly imminent. They knew that it was going to happen—soon.”
16 FEB Mini-Milner reunion a week from today at the Abq Museum. Just spoke with Roy. His birthday two days go. 73. He's coming for the big Thursday.
We walked at little wally then drove to Sadies for lunch. Packed. 20 mins wait. Green chile stew with tortillas and frijoles. Max loved seeing Willow's hair being so long and curly. Gave her a great champagne color and cut. We drove to San Carlos court to see the house Gina is buying. So different from
looking at the photos. Of course we only drove by. Nice circular cul-de-sac
so the privacy is good. But not quite the neighborhood as you expect or assume from driving from Central down San Pasquale. To me it looks
squeezed into the area, all the space must fan away from the front back.
Neighborhood at the rear feels sketchier—-too close to apartment blocks
and the KOB headquarters.
A second cold night coming. Then a real warm up for the weekend.
17 Feb Friday almost 6pm W on the piano. Charged car at Carlisle, walked there, bought big box of Cheerios.
Wolfe has the scene of college dorm room debate about Dickens and Dostoyevski. Conjures much both from personal echoes and then echoes from life at PSC, especially of course our resident Dickens devotee, Henry V. I could feel my dostoyevskian soul breaking away from his dickensian happy england in the way George Webber broke away from Alsop's smarmy unctuousness.
Put up the clothes rack. Put out extra bed covers in case they feel cold at night.
Eloy sent a statement yesterday raising his commission from 22 % to 33 %.
Competition in short term rental more fierce and the city may try to cap
numbers at 1200. Already 1800 they know about. Housing a huge problem.
Biggest problem may not be Eloy's sort of operation but the corporate strategies of buying huge numbers of houses to hold and or rent. All of it of a scale and scope beyond my ken.
Will we live out our days after all in Plymouth. That phrase! Was being used to talk about Barbara's star therapy dog, Nash. Day off canceled because Beckie texted that she got covid and is hoping to get clear of it before they go to Hawaii to transport (and scatter?) the ashes of the woman she cared for.
High hopes for new apple tv show called Sharper.
18 Feb Saturday
Bright once more!! Walked at BigAlb. Lazy feel to the day. Cécile gave us a shopping list once she realized Trader Joes is here. Civilization after all. They are packing today, fly tomorrow evening, I think. Never have given precise info. Well, if I check my email history maybe it is there.
19 Sunday
Kids texted half an hour ago. Lounging in the heated pool in LA and a Hilton, Jamaica Bay Inn. A 4 movie flight. They're not sure if they gained or lost a day. Waiting for jet lag to spin them into sleep. Cloudy day all day here. Chatter was ok. Loved hearing the short Ned Rorem piece. Too bad it got followed by a long Beethoven sonata. Rorem didn't cotton to Beethoven.
Here we are into the fifth and Last season of New Amsterdam. Helen, the actress for her role, left and so they had to dramatize her calling off the marriage with the saintly and heroic Max. I'll try some meditation shortly and more of Wolfe's Web. Which I am enjoying much more than I feared I would.
20 Monday Alexander on his way to tune the piano. Cloudy! Photos early from the kids lounging in their heated outdoor LA pool.
The fight scene in Wolfe. Comic book like in some ways, and yet as full and deep as Musil too. Both analyzing social vectors, power relationships, etc etc.
Text from PT. she and Ray are driving here from Little Rock. Big week shapes up. Piano tuner Alex here this morning. We shopped at the Uptown Trader Joes.
21 Feb Tuesday
Lazy morning. Willow on the piano. Newly tuned. Croissants require pastry paper, will buy soon. Will turn on oven later to see how it works, if it gives off any new oven odors. We will look for the kids to arrive about 11 tonight.
Great French Movie In last night. Monaco. Two more new movies in the series for today. Greatly disappointed Willow was in the final season of
New Ams. Pricey too! Sped to final two episodes to see how happy everyone got to be. Not final kiss. Bah, humbug. Just deleted most followings on twitters and Insta. Figured out that is the way to skim those things. Follow almost nothing. Like what you want, maybe, and see what the AI dopes send.
Donald finally has an iPhone. Lucky he kept the same phone number. Neither Eloise nor I have responded to his email. But probably she phone him. I'm being too grumpy. Miso soup this morning. Way too salty for one human being. Did try Trader Joe's pancake ginger snaps with maple syrup! Probably need a chocolate ball too.
23 Feb
Quiet morning. Showers for everyone. Woke thinking about down and out days in Buenos Aires. Interesting search tweet someone posted looking for novels that feature character walking aimlessly around a city. Lots of good suggestions. Could fill out a few course syllabi. Emma started her story about a scientist and a fisherman. School assignment. Papa suggested five titles, Eliot took one and suggested the transformation of the two friends.
They are having a lunch before going to the museum. We're reading. Event at 2pm. They keep checking weather variables for the grand canyon trip and changing every hour to try to align with the best window.
Once again feels like the money is fine. The ebb and flow of everything. Big winds yesterday. Quiet today. Sunny earlier. Now cloudy.
25 Feb
Dave took his family yesterday off to Tusayan, AZ to see the Grand Canyon. He's slipping in between two big wind storms.
Says the canyon looks beautiful with a recent dusting of snow. Comes back tomorrow and they are here for four more days. Nice visit.
Virginia hosted a party at the Albq Museum for sixteen people. We took them to dinner at the Range Cafe afterwards. Five are the
surviving Milner cousins. Rest were hangers-on and spouses. Young woman archivist at the museum gave us a great
presentation about Va's great-great aunt, Miss Alabama Milner, professional photographer here early to mid 20th century. Va
remembers her wearing silver Indian bracelets all the way up her arms. She was six feet tall and an independent spirit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgeLBqgD9NM
Never heard reading like that called "dog-pile" style. Usually the way I read, five or six books going at once. But right
now I am reading only a big book by Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock. One of the posthumous ones that the
famous editor was not able to slice up. (Good movie about him and Wolfe, Hemingway and Fitzg called Genius).
I loved Wolfe when I was in high school. Reading him again after all these years feels interesting and strange.
Maybe he was the David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) of his day. I did read Once and Future years ago. Seems to me
part of aging is that all books feel too long. TV shows and movies too.
Oh, good movie: on Prime "Eiffel" about building the tower with an imagined romance put at the heart of it.
My sources tell me you are getting socked with two more big snow storms. Winter, gotta love it!! Keep Justin
toting that coal and chopping the wood. Did he make it to Puerto Rico??
——
Dear Bob,
Arguably The Twyborn Affair for White. This is in three parts and where the character presents in the first and the last as a woman and in the second as a man. I have only read it once, a long time ago, and found it the least satisfying of his novels!
I confess I totally draw a blank about a favorite novel or book about being gay! In my twenties, I read my way through Isherwood and Edmund White (and no doubt others in not so organized a fashion and less memorably) and that is about it! The last book I read where it was significant was Selina Hastings' rather wonderful, and sad, (and overlong) biography of Somerset Maugham -and I hold a candle up for Edward Carpenter (whose biography by Sheila Rawbotham is fantastic) but as much for his wider social & spiritual witness as to his courageous championing of gay rights.
When I was in Berlin last with Andrei, he mentioned (we were talking of David Malouf) a preference for gay (and female authors) and I just find this very strange - I just think I want to hold any and all my identities ever more loosely rather than make them criteria. I am probably, offered any fold, instinctively inclined to run away!
I remember going to dinner with James Roose Evans - the theatre director and founder of Bledffa that I ran for a time - and his partner and all the guests (eight in all) were gay men and, however, particularly enjoyable, part of me just wanted to flee! It just felt like a miscued criterion for friendship.
I do have two favorite gay films - Wild Reeds which is French and set in the 1960s - and Fashion Victims - which is German and set in a contemporary setting and a comedy - in both cases because the theme is there, real, and also a part, not all the all-consuming whole!
Off to Kenya and Uganda, enjoy the Parisians, not to late to join the reverse party:-)
Love, Nicholas
——-
We finished watching Eiffel. Earlier we drove to Lisa's to return things. Then walked at Barnes and Nobel. Gratifying that it is still in business.
But also sort of depressing and scary. Conjures so much of our earlier lives.
So long ago.
We ordered four side chairs from Wayfair. Hope they are good. Found another one broken after the kids left for the Grand Canyon.
——
26 Feb Sunday
Round about drive to Big Albert to buy milk. Va insisted on going in. We got out of the car in the big wind, hugged her to try to start walking on the cane, wind and sand fierce. She said ok let's go home. I had gotten in to buy two cartons of milk and a yogurt. Drive back even more sand blowing once we passed CVS.
Great essay in LitHub and figs and literary criticism. so good I will paste it in and take out the fluff later on —— or highlight the best phrases —-
here is the future of the humanities, ta da, and etc
Here’s a weird thing about some kinds of figs: there are male and female figs. The fig is an inverted flower, which needs to be pollinated to make the fig fruit that we eat. There are male and female fig wasps. The female fig wasp burrows into the male fig, called the caprifig, and the process, in turn, is called caprification, when she lays eggs and those eggs hatch. The hatchlings are blind, flightless males and young females. They have incestuous sex. The now pregnant female wasps, the ones Aristotle and Theophrastus call psenes, burst out of the skin of the caprifig and go off to burrow anew into other figs. Both erroneously thought this was a kind of spontaneous wasp generation, but to be fair the actual mechanism is hard to discern such that the biology of it is still a topic now.
The female fig needs to be pollinated to fruit. Bees can’t do this, nor wind, because the inverted flower is sealed up inside itself. So sometimes a female wasp doesn’t crawl into a male fig, where she can lay eggs. Sometimes she crawls into a female fig, where she starves and dies, but in the process pollinates the inverted flower, which can then fruit. The body of the wasp is absorbed by the growing flesh of the fig. You do eat it, in a sense, but you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you.
This is called commensualism, a form of parasitism in which the parasite doesn’t actively harm the host. More properly, it’s even a mutualism, dead wasps and male fig husks aside, because the fig and the wasp need each other to reproduce.
*
I am somehow reading Updike’s The Centaur, which makes me think this is what it must be like to be the caprifig, the male fig the female wasp lays eggs in:
“The pain extended a feeler into his head and unfolded its wet wings along the walls of his thorax, so he felt, in his sudden scarlet blindness, to be himself a large bird waking from sleep… The pain seemed to displacing with its own hairy segments’ his heart and lungs…”
*
But I’m not the fig, I’m the wasp. I burrow into sweet, dark places of fecundity, into novels and paintings and poems and architectures, and I make them my own. I write criticism, I lay it in little translucent eggs. ερινασμός. Caprification. Criticism is a mutualism as parasites like me go, or at least a commensualism, pollinating novels to make more novels; Winckelmann’s halls of beautiful young men in Greek sculpture making the hot breath of living beautiful young men into bildungsroman, which in turn end up in marble of their own. The critical gaze is tearing apart, clawing into the soft central flesh of the tree bud.
The critical gaze is also erotic; we want things, we are by a degree of separation pollinating figs with other figs by means of our wasp bodies, rubbing two novels together like children who make two dolls “have sex”, except we’ll die inside the fruit and someone else will read it and eat it, rich with all the juices of my corpse. This is an odd but sensuous thing to want.
And though the male-female figs exist, and the male-female wasps, the whole process, the generative third body in the dark recesses of the inverted flower, is somehow queer. Criticism, too, is queer in this way, generative outside the two-gendered model, outside the matrimonial light of day way of reproducing people, wasps, figs, or knowledge.
*
I lied when I said I was “somehow” reading The Centaur. I’m reading it because one of the people who taught me, who formed me into a wasp instead of a bee or a wind, had just read it. He says it is about fathers and sons, about being both. I will never be either. I think about Chiron and Achilles, rather than Prometheus, to whom the novel refers.
Chiron, the centaur, was responsible for the education of Achilles. Patroclus, too, though he seems to have more or less tagged along for the ride. Anyhow, Achilles thinks of Chiron as a sort of-father, at least in Statius, where Achilles sleeps entwined around Chiron’s shoulders. There are numerous paintings of this, the education out in the rocky woods. It is no surprise they are often homoerotic— the beautiful young man, still soft before the great war at Troy, made keen-edged by the older, fiercer, inhuman centaur. The frisson as Chiron leans over Achilles, bowstring taught with an arrow about to loose!
You don’t become a fig wasp on the flanks of the neoclassical tradition without having inhabited it, parasitized it yourself first as practice. This is an education. You tell yourself you are Achilles (or sometimes, Patroclus), you rationalize your world with these models, themselves parasitic on a tradition that you did not yourself make. You learn to be by being them, by pushing into them and unfolding your wet wings.This displacement makes me shiver, a kind of longing by proxy. You learn to be an aesthete by honing everything out in some wilderness, where no one sees your missteps, your clumsy formation. I will never be a father or a son. I am not yet Chiron, but I have been Achilles. An education in this way is good practice for being a critic, for inhabiting and bursting out of galls and personae like the psenes.
The critical education, the mapping and re-mapping of the self onto the others of art or canonical literature, onto the Achilleses hanging ripe and easy on the trees, this, too, is an erotics. For everyone you could possibly be, for knowing how to be, for being taught how to know in this way that feels forbidden, queer, like an ekphrasis of somebody else’s kiss on somebody else’s vase, for the remove makes it only sweeter. You need a centaur to teach you how to both inhabit and step outside your own human-ness, to make it that contrafactual, malleable stone, and quick as a horse’s rear legs jutting out of the marble of a metope.
Hence, Chiron. Hence, Achilles. Hence, myself on a cold November afternoon, looking for something in Updike by sheer force of will, of wanting to be the sort of person who can find it, those crystalline-soft particles of pollen. Learning to be a parasite is the crucible of unmet longing for that something-else that can complete you, infolded somewhere, still perhaps hidden. —-A V Maraccini
—-
timesflow (@Anthony) Tweeted: “It is reading that matters most for me, not the voluntary and belligerent act of writing.” — Pascal Quignard
28 Feb Monday
Long lunch at Padilla's at 2:30 today. Place is unchanged it seems. Food as superb as 40 years ago when we would go with Daddy-D. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid last night. Emma left her coat at the Appleby's in Gallop yesterday, they are at Cottonwood looking for a replacement. Laundry started. We walked at little Wally. They went to Tiguex park.
I got a reply from Andrei and asked him to send photos from Nicholas's birthday party in April. I liked that essay by Maraccini yesterday but as I glance back at it tonight I suspect if is a tad precious and overwrought.
Oh well.
Wolfe's chapter "Alone" feels so painful, written one has to suppose, when he is at the far end of the bi-polar experiences, the depressive ones.
Sent my query to Andrei. Will wait with great anticipation to see how he answers.
2 March Thursday
Great morning, early send off. We got up early to see them off.
3 March Friday
Sunny. Ping from Cécile saying the pecans made it and they are all terribly jet lagged.
here is Andrei's letter from last week.
Dear Bob,
I am sorry for taking so long to reply. In the past few days, I was working on the launch of a journal, which finally happened yesterday. It was a busy and stressful time, as you can imagine. (The journal is called The February Journal, it has a long and complicated genesis story: https://thefebruaryjournal.org/en).
Pity you cannot attend Nicholas's party. I haven’t seen you and Virginia in ages, and Nicholas, I know, was hoping you would be able to come. But I understand your decision, of course. I am sure it will be a great party, despite the fact that no roasting has been planned, as far as I know. But who knows? Alcohol is usually good at causing spontaneous bouts of roasting activity :)
Now, to your question(s). You are not being intrusive in any way, of course. In fact, I am honoured to be asked about this – especially because you are a literary scholar.
André Aciman's "Call Me By Your Name" is a lovely book, I thought. Especially in terms of discovering one's sexuality. A bit nostalgic, which I more disliked than liked. But overall well-written and beautiful. I'd recommend watching the film too (even though Armie Hammer, one of the actors, has been cancelled.) The sequel to the book, however, is an absolute no-go. It's appallingly bad.
My absolute favourite is probably Alexander Chee – his "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel" is a masterpiece, in my opinion. (It's a collection of essays). He became famous with a novel called "Edinburgh", but I haven't read it yet. If you read it, please let me know what you think.
Some people love Garth Greenwell – his "What Belongs to You" and "Cleanness." He explores less vanilla aspects of gay sexuality, and his descriptions of sex are considered to be brutally honest and very well-written. I tried reading "Cleanness", but somehow never got hooked.
I recently read Pajtim Statovci's "My Cat Yugoslavia". Statovci is a Finnish Kossovan writer, and his novel is an exploration of trauma & sexuality. It's quite dark, but worth reading.
Speaking of David Malouf (whose "Ransom" I am currently reading, incidentally.) I've read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles – and really enjoyed it. I thought it was so engaging and sexy. But a favourite writer of mine, Daniel Mendelsohn (Have you read his "Three Rings"? It is incredible), trashed it in The New York Times. Personally, I thought his review was too cruel – plus one could detect jealousy in his words.
"Middlesex", by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a great novel, in my opinion. Do read it if you haven't yet. But it is more queer than gay.
I really enjoyed Hilton Als's "White Girls." It is a collection of essays that explore a variety of topics, sexuality and Blackness among them.
This is what comes to mind at the moment. As a reader, I am somewhat all over the place, I am afraid.
Hugs from a finally sunny Berlin,
Andrei
———-
Waiting for Alex the conscientious piano tuner. He called, is coming to put a rubber grip on the piano sheet music shelf.
Chee is at Dartmouth!! first essay about Mexico reads like soft butter. Malouf's opening pages feel more strained.
4 March Saturday
long message from Elizabeth—
Good morning, Virginia and Bob. I had started an e-mail to you the other day, but the message disappeared before I could send it. Wasn't able to redo it at that time. The oil problem was taken care of after 10 PM that night. I had been out pruning blueberries in the snow early that day so was wet and chilled when I got back and found no heat. I didn't want to shower to warm up for fear I'd not hear the oil delivery arrive since they could not pinpoint an ETA. I put on dry clothes, but it wasn't until AM the next morning when the house got back to a normal temp before I felt warm again. In that short period of time, the temp inside the house had fallen down to low 50's. It was a good thing I was here to realize there wasn't any heat. I've had pipes freeze before. It is extremely expensive to repair.
I had to shovel the berm again at the end of the driveway. Maybe I had better call Ben as you suggest in this msg.
The remote stopped working on the garage door. I bought a replacement battery, but that did not take care of the problem. After looking at the unit on the garage door frame, I was able to ascertain the problem and fix it. (The connecting sensory beam had become unaligned.)
Just to let you know, the toilet downstairs had started to do a whole lot of "sighing" as Bob calls it. It was occurring every few minutes. I looked into that and determined that you are wasting a whole lot of water when that happens. I noticed that a tube was not attached on the inside of the tank. I reattached that, and lightly cleaned the suggested areas in the tank which often build up with debris. This helped a lot but didn't completely fix the problem. I shut off the water to the tank to prevent more water wasting. At some point when I have more free time, I might attempt to try the cleaning inside the tank again, but there is a good likelihood the water intake pump (or whatever the pump on the left is called) needs to be replaced. That is the one that seems to be running when it shouldn't be. I don't think that is too difficult or expensive to replace. Is there someone in particular you want me to call to address this problem?
BTW, your garage doorbell doesn't work. It was a good thing I kept checking the back door every couple of minutes for the oil delivery man after he arrived, because he ended up waiting there after ringing the doorbell to no avail (no ringing sound).
House running fun, huh? I'd rather be on this end of the situation. When I go through periods where tenants are constantly calling me, I end up dreading hearing from them. I attempt to address things here without having to bother you, so you don't dread hearing from me. ;)
I trust you are adjusting nicely after your big family visit. That must have been fun for you all.
——
Bright and warmer. Good walk at Albert. After lunch pledge to drive the Old Guadalupe Trail in search of Claude's house.
Chee gives a great portrait of Annie Dillard Dominatrix and how she taught creative writing at Wesleyan. And of how the clicked and he found his vocation under her guidance. Can easily guess how quickly Thomas Wolfe and David Foster Wallace would have flunked and fled her class. Had forgotten about her. She's only 77. She defined a NE aesthetic for a generation. Tight writing a la Strunk & W that could be "taught". Plus she was from Pittsburgh and converted to the RC Church. Chee felt himself an out of place mixed other, growing up in Cape Elizabeth. New Englander's united under the banner of Thoreau.
