Once more into the heaps... aaand here on page C3 of the Edmonton Journal, Jan. 5, 2010 is a story on the long-popular (as opposed to me) Steve Martin. God knows when or why I ripped it from the "A&E" section (that's Arts and Entertainment, fellow slowpoke). Perhaps I was in a hurry to do something else, and just tore it out to read later? Not that I'm especially interested in Steve Martin (although I share his parody-of-rationality humor and his love of the banjo, and may be a better player on one of these instruments). I remain curious as to whether he was once a member of the Left Banke, as my errant brain seems to recall. No answer in the paper-and-ink, but the mundane datum MIGHT be on Wikipedia... o-ho!...nope.. studied Philosophy, eh?...
Or perhaps, rather, I was saving the smaller, adjacent story on North America's biggest concert tours of 2009 (yow! history in the made!), as it amplifies my plaintive whine that the stinking dollar-standard is creepingly becoming the criterion-of-choice in the arts. I've clipped many items on this subject and, interestingly, another pops out from the newspaper-heap almost magically: a National Post story from three days earlier (Jan. 2, 2010) about a stolen Degas painting. Sure enough, the short item's lede tells us it is "a valuable painting" and the third sentence gives us the exact value: 800,000 euros or $1.2-million (no indication if the Agence France-Presse figures are U.S. or Cdn, or whether the black market offers a discount).
Oh yes: the painting is "a colorful image of singers performing on a theatre stage" if that matters. An estimated 70,000 people saw it before it was whisked away. That's about $19 of viewing-value per person! (aren't statistics illuminating?) No indication in the story as to whether potential viewers who missed the painting will be compensated for their loss.
But getting back to the Steve Martin story, we could also treasure it for its proper use of italics in listing his book/album/movies. God bless an editor somewhere! As opposed to the online editor at the Library of Congress recently--check this:
Jeanne Guillemin, author of "American Anthrax: Fear, Crime and the Investigation of the Nation’s Deadliest Bioterrorist Attack" (2011), will discuss the case in a lecture at the Library of Congress at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 3, in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.
Yes, American Anthrax is a book, although working from the above you could mistake it for an old 45-single (of a very awkward tune).
What else?... okay, MUST go walk the dog again. This work-in-progress is now officially motionless. Publish-or-perish with this rickety old computer, I fear...
May 5.
Where to start? Where to restart?
Maybe with the novel I have pulled off the shelf yesterday: Jan de Hartog's The Captain. One of the oldest items in the library, 3rd paperback printing 1968, probably read in '69 or '70 while I was in Senior High. Thinking vaguely about giving it to my son, now about the same age, and wondering how stupid an idea that might be. Wondering if the novel is really as good as I seem to remember, and why I remember so little of it (only that the convoy on the Murmansk run is pretty much obliterated by the Germans, as also happens in another novel on the subject, possibly by Alistair Maclean). Wondering if my purchase of the book ($.95!) was at the old Hurtig's bookstore at Jasper Ave-104 St (twice reborn, now Audrey's at Jasper-107St), or why I have troubled to box it and lug it through eight moves, and whether I'm now capable of selling it. Or dumpnating it to charity. Or whether it will gather dust on the shelf for another 20 or 30 years...
Naturally such metaphysical questions are best pondered while re-reading the thing and assiduously avoiding urgent chores. Hm. The climactic obliteration sems a trifle melodramatic, especially the rescue of the oil-soaked sunken U-boat cook, but otherwise credible. Then I randomly dip into the middle, and ho!--what should be there but an interlude where the captain and ship are laid up in Halifax, whereupon a little satire of Canadian niceness (all the more credible for being inflicted by a Dutch author and U.S. publisher... who misspell Kenora as "Kinora"--tsk!) which develops into a larger satire on the stupidity of war and patriotism, and then some sex, as novels are wont to do. All unremembered. The sex is not indulgent. Somewhat wrily and ironically satirical in fact. Maybe I will give it to my son...
None of this, of course, helps with the big office-cleanup.
Truth be told, I have actually been to the Wee Book Inn BUYING a few books to further bollox the big mess: on a whimsical impulse, for instance, I snapped up a beautiful BBC hardback In Search of the Trojan War (only $10.99!) No real connection with my Troilus and Cressida research/obsession, although Shakespeare's play does get a few passing mentions. But again I am transported back to high school days, for we had an excellent Grade 10 Social Studies teacher (back when ancient history was still taught) and the names Schliemann and Hattusilis are familiar.
Okay, snap out of it. There is logorhea to be removed, starting with a certain bundle of newspapers, and (I hope) a less lurching train of thought...
May 10
The "certain bundle" still waits, folded and patient. In the meantime I have managed to bag (for recycling) a few sections of newspapers replete with uninteresting items like the Jack Layton funeral, the 40th anniversary of the Alberta Tory dynasty, Hurricane Irene, new Canadian visa rules, "Wine, food and Junior Achievement," touring Ireland's backroads, Sean Penn's non-divorce, Cornelius Vanderbilt, a "Tournement of Vegetables"...
Still, I fear the newspapers (three subscriptions plus the occasional Edmonton Sun) is ultimately jamming the basement far faster than I remove the residue. Even as I write this entry I'm clippping a few items. Hm, was the writing career of Reynolds Price less laughable than mine? And retrieving the discarded Layton section for a second look, I even find a Lorne Gunter column on Layton's final "Letter to Canadians" that I nearly missed (it mentions a person I've met in the flesh and, more importantly, touches on the constant problem of why a person even bothers to write, as does the review of Price's memoirs).
But I've already written a why-I-write sort of essay about ten years ago (the newspaper I sent it to didn't bother to respond, nor did I have the heart to approach a second). And, really, there isn't much more to say about THAT, beyond a frank admission that one has made a great error in taking up the writerly profession.
And now the second bundle of newspapers seems to be mislaid. Well, whatever. I can pull any other item from the paper dunes and extract the same lesson I had in mind when I started this wandering, maundering post: namely that too much knowledge of the seething mass of humanity pumped into one's brain will leave a wise and sensitive person paralyzed, flummoxed and wondering: what the hell is a wise and sensitive person really supposed to DO??
The item at random turns out to be a TVtimes/Edmonton Journal April 27, 2012 item "Keeping Cockburn Running"--for the documentary Bruce Cockburn--Pacing the Cage (note proper use of italics and quotation-marks). I read it with my mind making the the automatic critical notes: hm, the usual ginger and circumlocutory handling of religion, the main "hard news" being that Cockburn doesn't want to be mistaken as a "right-wing evangelical" (no surprise)... not much obvious relation to my own research into Shakespeare's handling of Christian ideas... the usual songs mentioned, although I miss "Tokyo"--my own personal favorite (although I scarcely know anything beyond the radio-fodder)... interesting that the English press wouldn't cover him at all because of the Christianity (compare Bob Dylan's coming-out)... the religious producer is VisionTV... hm, is Cockburn still into those ironic combat-outfits? (or is that an old photo?)... overall, article is exploitable for that "What's the Big Idea?" thing that's been shaping up in the old noggin...
Well, I missed seeing the show (who has time?) but for some stupid reason I dwell on the clipping, trying to gauge those sad basset-hound eyes; trying to think if there might be something to add to a jibe I published decades ago about his "tear-stained rocket-launcher" (yep, implicit indictment of ye olde meek-and-other-cheek); trying to overcome the trace of annoyance at Cockburn using the "pacing the cage" metaphor that, coincidentally, I liked enough to once employ in a short-story (unpublished); trying not to think about the time I'm wasting here, and the newspapers yet undumped...
At this rate (one clipping a week) I'll still be shovelling paper come Judgement Day.
