Category Archives: Arts & culture

The next state of being

Carol came home, made a sandwich, told me about her day, then said, “Did you hear J. D. Salinger died?”

“Finally,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she said.

Twenty years ago, Salinger was one of my literary idols, and news of his death would have sent me into a tizzy. But since then I’ve grown tired of the way Salinger courted publicity by claiming to be a recluse; any time his book sales began to decline, he sued someone to get back in the news. Twenty years ago, I wanted to know what happened to his fictional family, the Glasses, after the events in the story “Franny and Zooey.” But now I’m bored by the preciousness of his characters’ dialogue, bored by Salinger’s half-baked mysticism, bored by his stories in which nothing much happens.

A year or so ago, I met one of Salinger’s neighbors, and this person knew Salinger about as well as a long-time neighbor in a small town could know someone. This neighbor described a man who was deaf as a post, with a long-suffering wife; someone who was cranky and mean but worthy of his neighbor’s amused affection. He was just what you’d expect of an outsider who had moved to a backwater hill town in New England and had tried to imitate an eccentric New Englander; he was not some immortal writer, he was just an ordinary nutty old man.

“Now that he’s dead,” I said to Carol, “maybe this will put an end to all the speculation about what he’s been writing for the past forty years.”

Given that Salinger’s last published story, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” was unreadable crap, you can feel pretty sure he wrote nothing of value after that. But I don’t think Salinger will be allowed to rest in peace. His literary executors will be tempted to follow the path blazed by J. R. R. Tolkien’s son, and cobble together scraps of left-over writing into bad books that will sell tens of thousands of copies. Right now, I’m praying that someone will burn all Salinger’s unpublished manuscripts before they are inflicted on the public. Let the old crank die a decent death.

Significantly, Salinger’s literary agents released a statement in which they stated there won’t be a funeral or memorial service. There are those who want no final end to his life. There are those who hope to turn J. D. Salinger into a zombie, neither alive nor dead, putrescent but tottering forward into a century in which he does not belong.

“Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents”

What are today’s household gods? A few days ago, the New York Slime published Gary Snyder’s paean to his Macintosh computer, titled “why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh.” There are several good lines in the poem, and here are two of them:

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates…

The Roman household gods, the Lares, were less brief and not made of plastic. Yet many of today’s households have small altars devoted to personal computers, we give them offerings of electricity and our attention, and many of us pay obeisance to them on a regular basis; so I’d say at the moment personal computers sometimes fill the role once filled by Lares.

The new pests

Mr. Crankypants just came back from a stroll through downtown San Mateo, where, to his surprise, he saw a few smokers standing outside a bar. You hardly ever see smokers any more, and now that they are a strictly controlled species, Mr. Crankypants feels an odd sort of affection for them, especially when they are out standing in a drizzle. Remember when smokers used to blow smoke right in your face? Only those of us who are middle-aged, or who are from South Carolina, have seen people blowing smoke in the faces of others and getting away with it.

The aggressive smokers who used to blow smoke smoke in your face have been controlled, but now another invasive pest comes along to fill that ecological niche — the oblivious cell phone user. The National Safety Council says oblivious cell phone users cause at least 1.6 million traffic accidents a year, but Mr. Crankypants is talking about something less deadly. He is talking about the stupid man talking loudly on a cell phone while standing right in front of the potato chips who does not move. He is talking about the stupid woman pushing a stroller while mumbling into a cell phone and dragging a toddler (faster than the toddler can comfortably walk) who almost hits a passerby in the shins with the toddler. He is talking about the stupid man riding a bicycle while talking on a cell phone who blows through a stop sign, swerves around a car that stopped just in time, almost picks off a pedestrian in a crosswalk, and blithely keep on peddling and talking.

Like you, Mr. Crankypants is, of course, perfect, and never talks on his cell phone when he is walking on a crowded sidewalk, or while the cashier is totaling up his groceries, or while he is picking up his dog’s poop, or when he is in a one-on-one meeting with someone. A good long-term solution for the oblivious cell phone users is neutering; that will eventually put an end to their species (that, and traffic fatalities), but in the mean time Mr. C. is uncertain how to control these noxious pests.

(sub)urban ag

Carol and I were talking tonight about urban agriculture. She has a friend who teaches landscape design, and this friend is trying to promote fanciful urban agriculture like hydroponically grown plants on the sides of sky scrapers. This seemed a waste of time to both of us; why not farm the many empty lots that exist in some cities? Carol went further than that, saying that we don’t need urban agriculture so much as we need suburban agriculture: farms, not in the city, but close to the city; farms which fill in the spaces left by suburban sprawl. She was trying to explain this to her friend, the landscape designer. She knows he likes catchy phrases, so she told him, “We need growscapes instead of sprawlscapes.” We both laughed at her catchphrase. Yet funny as it is, I’d like it if we replaced suburban lawns front yards with suburban farming.

And if you ever see “Growscapes, Not Sprawlscapes!” on a bumper sticker in the future, remember that Carol was the one who coined the phrase.

Just as I feared

From what Wired has to say about the new “Que” e-reader from Plastic Logic, it has everything I want in an e-reader — ability to handle multiple document formats from .epub to .doc files; large screen capable of adequately displaying online versions of newspapers; light and slim; etc. They’re taking pre-orders now for delivery in mid-April. But I will not be ordering one, because it costs $650.

When devices like this are available for $100, I will take e-readers seriously. Not until then.

What makes a good blogger

Chris Walton has decided to end his blog Philocrites, and his decision got me thinking about what makes a good Unitarian Universalist blogger.

Until a year or so ago, when Chris drastically reduced the frequency of his posts, Philocrites was the most authoritative and influential Unitarian Universalist blog. Part of the authority and influence of Philocrites was due to its longevity; Chris began writing it in 2002, one of the earliest Unitarian Universalist bloggers, and kept on writing it after many of the other early bloggers dropped their blogs. Yet longevity cannot fully explain the authority and influence of Philocrites; there are other Unitarian Universalist blogs that are nearly as old as Philocrites, but none of them has filled that central role in the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere.

Chris’s solid writing contributed more to the authority and influence of Philocrites. In addition, Chris is also a good editor, and an editor who can successfully edit himself. Chris uses the plain style: his prose is straightforward, not flowery, designed to communicate what he has to say as clearly as possible. As an editor, Chris edited himself for clarity: his posts contained little or no extraneous verbiage and very few typographical errors or other distractions. I was especially grateful for his careful self-editing: very few self-edited blogs (in or out of the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere) live up to such high standards.

For me, good writing also requires good thinking. Here again, Chris excels. He remains one of the more interesting Unitarian Universalist thinkers. He is not an academic, but he is familiar with the academic literature of liberal religion. He is not ordained, but he has a better knowledge of practical theology than many ordained ministers. He was able to connect religion to other areas of life, especially politics. Even when I didn’t agree with Chris, what he wrote at Philocrites consistently helped me to think more carefully, and often more clearly. I wish liberal religion had more public intellectuals like Chris:– not specialists or academics, but intellectual generalists who are able to write intelligently about a wide range of topics.

Chris also exhibited good judgment. There are plenty of Unitarian Universalist bloggers who write well and think well, but do not exhibit the sure and quick judgment that we got in Philocrites. Judgment is a part of being a public intellectual. It is not enough to be smart; it is not enough to write well; a public intellectual must also have good judgment and be willing to make judgments about the current state of things.

Philocrites had good writing, good editing, good thinking, and good judgment; Chris, in his own small way, was (and is) a public intellectual. Thus Philocrites remains one of the few Unitarian Universalist blogs that non-Unitarian Universalists bothered to read. I hope Chris will continue to develop as a public intellectual, and I hope he will seek out a wider audience, beyond the narrow and parochial world of Unitarian Universalism.

Is there a blog that can fill the place of Philocrites? Not right now. The Unitarian Universalist blogosphere, loosely construed, continues to be a lively place: Peter Bowden’s infectious excitement about growth; the quiet musing of Carrots and Ginger; the Chalice Chick cabal; the sometimes manic and telegraphic posts of Will Shetterly (though I’m not sure Will still thinks of himself as a Unitarian Universalist); and many, many others I take delight in reading. But at the moment, I do not see a Unitarian Universalist blogger who combines good writing, good editing, good thinking, and good judgment with the desire and ability to become a public intellectual grounded in Unitarian Universalism.

Not that I aspire to such a thing, and I suspect most Unitarian Uniersalists bloggers are like me in this respect — we are quite happy doing what we do for our somewhat narrow intended audience. I just wish someone else would come along to fill that role of public intellectual within the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere.

The year of the e-reader? Probably not.

Will this, finally, be the year when e-readers take off? I don’t think so — yet there are two interesting developments worth paying attention to.

First, I’m quite interested in the prototype e-reader about to be released by Silicon Valley start-up Plastic Logic. Not only does it have many of the features I’ve been longing for, on 6 December 2009, the U.K. Independent reported that Plastic Logic’s “Que” e-reader may help the struggling newspaper industry:

“The Que, an A4 sheet of plastic no heavier than a magazine, is powered by electronic circuitry using plastic as a base rather than traditional silicone. This makes for a much lighter, more robust product that is also easier to make than other e-readers…. The screen displays newspapers and magazines in the same format as on the [printed paper] page…. Many analysts believe the Que could benefit the struggling newspaper industry as it strives to find ways of charging for content.” [But the authoritative blog Media Bistro disagrees, saying e-readers will not save newspapers.]

This video shows a prototype of the Que, and this quick look is almost enough to make me excited. But one problem is already obvious:– Plastic Logic refuses to mention price and they’re aiming it at “business users,” which means the Que will probably be too expensive for ordinary mortals like me. However, they supposedly plan to mass-market the Que through Barnes and Noble stores, meaning that they may eventually be aiming for a more reasonable price.

Second, Sony just released its latest and best e-reader, the PRS 900 “Daily Edition.” Continue reading →

New Year’s resolutions

Mr. Crankypants is watching as people write about their resolutions for the new year on their blogs, and on Facebook. Mr. Crankypants says: Hah! half these resolutions will be forgotten within a month, and another third will be forgotten by next Wednesday. And the remaining sixth? — forgotten by tomorrow morning.

Despite that law of nature, Mr. C. will make his own resolution: he resolves to be even crankier in the new year. Especially when it comes to liberal religion and California state politics.

Wait, what was that new year’s resolution? Can’t remember now. Getting crankier and crankier because can’t remember. #@$%!