On Libraries

Two Doctors, Columbus Ohio Public Library

Maybe 1984? I don’t remember when, just that I’m a kid, a youngin’, rugrat, pudgy little weirdo who has maybe read a comic or two before, but Dad decides a trip to the library is a good idea, mostly because he wants to exchange whatever he’s read for another book. And yeah, I know there are these places called libraries—each elementary school I’ve attended has one, but they’re places where we play more than read books or do anything serious, except for the library in the Catholic school I went to from first to third grade. They didn’t have a library, or maybe they did? There was that room with a few books and a desk, but it was nothing like the library at my next school or my current school, Wilkins Elementary, where I’m currently enrolled yet on reprieve, this being summer.

I spend summers with Dad because he and Mom are divorced, the best thing to ever happen in my young life not because the divorce ripped our family apart and took me and Mom and the big brother to the Chicago suburbs and left Dad in Ohio, no, I love Dad and don’t want to be away, but, you know, what would they have been if they’d stayed together? A train wreck, right? Fuck if I want to wake up to fighting parents who don’t understand that sound travels the short distance from the kitchen to their child’s bedroom.

So there’s Dad taking us into this place with rows of books and desks, like the school library but bigger, and he’s telling me and the big brother that we can check out whatever we like, encouraging us, really, Go ahead, pick out something, and I find a book on Vincent Van Gogh who I’ve decided I’m interested in because we have the same name, though all I know, and all I want to read about, is that this madman cut his ear off. Tomorrow I’ll skip to the end of the book and look for that, because he must’ve cut it off late in life— can you even survive that? Won’t you bleed out? I’ll be let down when little of this book discusses the gory self-mutilation, focusing instead on brushstrokes and shadows and things I know nothing of, but I’m getting interested, maybe I should become a painter?

The big brother is getting a book on sports. Dad’s is about some president who’s dead by now. He assesses the three texts as we check out and says, “Well, this is a paradox,” and I don’t know the word but I’ll look it up later and wonder if this is the right context, if a synonym might’ve worked better, but no, I’ll not think that because I’m a kid and what do I know? Instead, I’ll ask another adult, “What’s a paradox?” and they’ll answer, “Two doctors.”

A is For Addict. Bridgeview Public Library

Though I’m too young for it, I’ve seen this movie A Clockwork Orange and found a book by the same name in the Waldenbooks at Chicago Ridge Mall. But I decide that living a few minutes from the Bridgeview Public Library has its advantages, one of them being I don’t have to sacrifice my allowance money, which I’ve not really earned, to the corporate mall bookshop, though I’m too young to care about class warfare and am not engaging in critiques of capitalism or anything so academic, no, I’m just looking for a free book that might be as good as The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the book my stepdad told me was a lot of fun, and he was right, read it, read the next few books in the series, the so-called trilogy that is now up to four books, another coming before the author kicks the intergalactic bucket. A Clockwork Orange should be as fun, right? If the movie is any indication, yes, indeed, absolutely.

The librarian is not thrilled to explain the Dewey Decimal System, really just how to find the card with the call number and how to use that breadcrumb to find the hiding Hansel and Gretel, mixing metaphors maybe? Sorry. Ahem.

There is it, at last, after missteps and distractions and near-giving up, I see the book by Anthony Burgess, nice and clean but smells musty, a scent I’d soon be used to, maybe even fond of, though it’ll someday cause conversation with cohabitors about the stink of old books clouding up the air in here, what the hell?

According to the intro to the book, the author was not fond of the movie version. And there’s a last chapter in this novel that the movie ignored. Suddenly I get what the teachers have been saying, that the book is always better, that there’s more to discover in pages than what celluloid has to offer, the director and producer and actor having stepped on the text. This shit is pure! What a rush. I’m hooked.

Cynical Bastard, St. Laurence High School Library

I’m mistaken for someone with a similar name, odd considering no one else has my name, but she’s old this woman in the library, and so when she asks me to assist her, I ought to be a “nice little lamb,” as my English teacher calls his students, but I’m not in the mood and am already concocting some bullshit about being late to class. Have I responded too roughly? Apparently so, but she thinks I work here, is, yep, mistaking me for some student employee whose last name is not really that close to mine, maybe we share the first five letters, an honest mistake— she’s new.

However sassy or otherwise my refusal, it makes no difference, because I’m in hot water, doesn’t matter that she made the mistake or that I may have been busy and late to class (not really). No, what matters is that I’m rude to an adult, a superior, not a Brother or Teacher, but someone nevertheless above me, which is pretty much everyone at this school. So later, when Brother M. catches me in the hall and chews me out, which I suspect he’d like to literally do (or is that figuratively? Not sure, but he wants to get part of me in his mouth, fucking perv, ass grabber), well, I’m a little taken aback and try to explain that she thought I was he, not me, not a kid using the library to study, no, she thought I worked there, but he’s not having it.  

“You don’t speak to her that way,” he says, then calls me a “cynical bastard,” and I have to ask Mom what that word means. “Cynical,” not “bastard”— I know that word.

The Way of All Texts, Moraine Valley Community College Library

I don’t think there will ever be a library I’ll love more than this one, where I’ll spend more of my free time, this fountain in the basement floor is a perfect place to sit and read most of Prizzi’s Honor and a lot of The Godfather— I’m into mafia books at the moment— and none of them books I’m supposed to be reading for class, none of them being “classroom appropriate.” Except for Vonnegut, who I’ve just discovered and who my comp teacher likes, so much so that he asked me, “Which class is that for?” when he saw me reading Slaughterhouse-Five, and when I said, “None,” he was impressed, and yeah, it felt good because I’ve never impressed a teacher before. I’m doubly floored that this comp teacher, Mr. S., has gone and incorporated Slaughterhouse-Five into the lecture, because he loves the book enough to have ready-to-go thoughts, which makes me realize that teachers sometimes just riff, improvise, ad-lib. This is the most informative and perhaps destructive moment of my training, as I will often do exactly that: riff, improv, ad-lib when teaching my comp classes, not always a good idea.

Years later, when I’m an adjunct instructor at this very same junior college, the library will not seem so grand. I’ll not find the fountain, and the stacks will have diminished. The whole place will seem more sterile, the result, no doubt, of renovations but also, sure, because computer screens are eating up some of the space once dedicated to books. The way of all flesh, right? And texts.

Don’t Belong, John T. Richardson Library, DePaul University

My girlfriend has a job at the library. I like this building, but I’ve not been in it much, preferring to spend the trimester smoking cigarettes and drinking malt liquor like the young idiot that I am. She does neither of these things. She likes staying in, going to bed early, reading shitty books by the likes of Jude Deveraux and not taking an interest in the Kerouac and Orwell and Bukowski (so many dudes) books that I’m digging, edgy shit, man!

She works late (for her) and I escort my gal from library to dorm, a short walk but she’s worried, this being the big bad city. Sometimes I go up to her room. Most nights I leave her safe and sound at the door and then I find my friends and we drink malt liquor and smoke cigarettes and talk about Kerouac and Orwell and Bukowski (and Godard and Polanski and Fuller) and think we’re smart, that no one has ever had these brilliant thoughts before. But we’re idiots. And none of us has been in that library, most of all me.

If I spent any time in that library I’d notice that my girlfriend has made fast friends with a blond-haired, blue-eyed, possibly British grad student who also works there, who has more than charmed her, who she’ll not leave me for so much as think about when we’re together and I’m boring everything but the pants off her. And we’re soon to go kaput, which surprises neither of us, but, you know, never a great feeling. It’s okay, though— I don’t belong in this relationship, this school, certainly not that library.

Solace, Schaffner Library, Northwestern University

Word on the street is that it’s not long for this world, another casualty of the pandemic, though I’m sure the axe has been sharp for some time, this being not the biggest library on either campus, but that’s maybe what I like about it, that and the little room on the second floor where I worked as a tutor, a quiet space near the stacks with a window overlooking a courtyard and a computer to write my poems between tutoring sessions. As a grad student intern who’s been tasked with making a mock-book of international poetry for this big ol’ anthology, I roam the bigger stacks in Evanston and pull Milosz and Szymborska and a few other Polish poets (the editor has his preferences) along with the cursory Celan and my latest discovery, the superb Amichai. I’m awash in poems, my own stabs and the polished gems that’ll comprise this book I’ll have a small hand in birthing, the education in international writing is better than the one I’m paying for.

Years later— I can’t let go of the gig, so it’s back to Schaffner until I can get some semblance of a career going, though I suspect that I could stay in that room on the second floor, among the smaller but no less significant stacks with the view of the courtyard, indefinitely, typing wayward poems in the minutes before my next tutee arrives panic-faced with no idea what the professor wants from them.

Anything, Saltzer Regional, Chicago Public Library

I come here on my lunch break and read and then, because the time moves too quickly, eat a fast sandwich while driving back to work. I come here on my lunch break because it’s beautiful upstairs at the long table with the big clock and the feeling that I could be anything.

Get Off My Lawn, Murray-Green Library, Roosevelt University

I walked to the back of the library as an undergrad who’d taken more than a few years off. I was an “adult” and more receptive than ever to the idea of a quiet space full of books, though today, even more adult, employed as lecturer and Faculty Coordinator of Writing Tutoring at this very same school that took me in after desultory years of fucking up, I can’t help but lament the space sacrificed for activities and computers and offices and things other than the old stacks, though some remain, sure.

I’ve made it a point to take my class here, to show them that yes, we still have a library with books and that there are wonderful things and wonderful people here, that they should make the library part of their routine. One of the students expresses grief at the “dead trees”— “All I see is a destroyed forest,” he says, and I ask if he prefers to read on his computer screen, which no one can possibly prefer, but he says he does, though adds that he only reads when he has to, no shock and not anything for me to waste time on, seeing as that is hardly a new problem. But I’m tempted to lecture that books hold a certain value that he’ll not get elsewhere, that libraries are important places, that they represent more than dead trees and dead writers and dead ideas, that they don’t actually represent any of that, that they represent community and scholarship and thought and emotion and life and love and war and hate and discourse and rhetoric and exploration and engagement and humility and desire and tradition and radicalism and socialism and capitalism and egalitarianism and a lot of other isms and that he should see a library as the effort to preserve these things as well as a place to work, study, think, laugh, socialize, mobilize, organize, antagonize, and maybe even better himself and melt into the collective betterment of the fucking world. I succumb briefly to this temptation. An old man shaking his fist. Hoo hum.

On Cynicism

Once upon a time, I was a high school student. In that time, there was a misunderstanding between me and one of the Christian Brothers who “taught” us boys. It’s too stupid to get into now, but I bring it up as a means of introducing today’s theme: cynicism. Basically, I said something that caused a grown man charged with educating me to say: “You’re the most cynical bastard I’ve ever met in all my years.”

I had to ask my mother what “cynical” meant. I don’t remember her definition precisely, but it made me feel both bad and weirdly proud for having merited such a negative adjective. I’d never been the most anything in all of anyone’s years before.

 A quick search on Google offers the following synonyms: skepticism, doubt, mistrust, suspicion. Slightly deeper inspection of Google offers reassurance that the ancient Greek Cynics sought an existence in harmony with the nature of the individual, one free from material concern. Considerably more noble than the contemporary definition: “a general distrust in others.” While I think I see how the word evolved (devolved?) from the ancient Greek usage to the criticism Brother Whatshisname lobbed my way, I won’t detail that here. Doing so would only betray my lack of philosophical erudition.

I have embraced cynicism. There’s an old adage: scratch a cynic, find a romantic. I get that. A cynic is only distrustful of people and the world because they’ve been burned. They never lost sight of how things should be; they just understand the improbability of anything changing for the good. Small movements toward better things, sure, but overall? Nah. At best, “improved means to an unimproved end,” as old Henry David said. Which is why whenever anyone trots out a new gadget, the cynic will logically conclude that the world is about to get faster, and a lot of rich people will get richer, but the mantra that “We’re making the world a better place” will seem ridiculous when coming out of the mouth of a Silicon Valley zealot. Don’t trust those fuckers.

But here’s the thing: there’s a limit to cynicism, hopefully discovered as the cynic matures. And cynicism is not an excuse for nihilism, or for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. And maybe it took me longer than it should have to reach this point, but I think I’m there. Here’s how I know.

Comedian Eddie Pepitone tweets: “Maybe SNL will have Kate McKinnon sing a song to the people of Ukraine tomorrow! That should fix it!” My first response is to smile. Kinda funny. Immediately after recognizing the humor, I feel rotten. What the actual fuck, dude? Yeah, she dressed like Hillary Clinton and sang “Hallelujah” after Trump was elected, and I guess it didn’t really do anything concrete. But fuck man, don’t we need some goddamn symbolic gestures? And what would we have SNL or Facebook posters or anyone else without any actual power do? Keep it light? Ignore the shit show? Get on with toothless, uninspired sketches? Post more snarky edgelord jokes that are surely not going to “fix it!”  

Okay, there are times when celebrities make well-meaning gestures that come off tone deaf or are just plain unnecessary, maybe even insultingly clueless (Hello, Gal Gadot), but Jesus H. Fuck, are we so goddamn cynical we can’t understand the drive to express human responses to tragedy?

Perhaps I’ve grown up. Perhaps, as a college instructor, I’ve spent too much time with Gen Z, the so-called “woke” youngsters who Boomers tell me need to lighten up. Or perhaps Pepitone’s joke was even more useless than the celeb preening he was satirizing. Did it accomplish anything more concrete than Kate McKinnon singing to the people of Ukraine? Did it actually make things worse instead of better? Arguably, yeah, it kinda fucking did.

I doubt 2022 will see me lessen my cynicism. I’m on my way to being an old fuck, meaning that my ways are set and I am set in them. Not to mention I’ve seen the ways of people long enough to not have much faith in them. But I see also the need for catharsis, and yeah, when Kate McKinnon sang that song after Trump won, well, it got to me. It felt necessary. It communicated the feeling a lot of us had that week, that things were fucked, that our country had somehow elevated the worst expression of our worst tendencies to the highest office, and that everything was off, upside down. And it was hard. Damn near devastating. And I’m sure others, those primarily affected by a Trump presidency and his horrific rhetoric, felt it more than I did. Maybe small, symbolic gestures don’t fix things, though they might offer comfort. But please, Eddie, shit on that. How edgy!

Is A Clockwork Orange Any Good?

1.

I’ve seen A Clockwork Orange too many times. Which is to say that I’ve seen it more than twice.

2.

It’s important to see A Clockwork Orange more than once. Especially if, like me, you first saw it when you were a teenage boy. God knows your appreciation of the film would be mired in infantilism.

3.

I saw A Clockwork Orange as a teen with a high school pal who’d rented it. We sat in his room and watched the movie, astonished from the start. I remember being impressed that he had a TV in his room with a VCR, which meant he could watch damn near anything without fearing his mother might catch him in the act of enjoying pornography or sensationalistic movies with heaps of violence and murky morals.

4.

We both loved the movie. Or what we understood about it. We’d taken Psych classes and had heard about Pavlov and his salivating dogs. My friend, once we finished A Clockwork Orange, insisted, “No one’s ever gonna make a classical conditioned dog outta me!”

Thus, we thought the movie was smart because it had a thing in it about what makes a person a person, and if you can control a person then are they really a person. Being teenage boys of the 1980s— a time just after, and still informed by, the 1960s’ and 70s’ fashionable pop revolutions— we adopted the movie as a sort of manifesto.

5.

Truth: we just liked the violence.

6.

I don’t doubt that if one is honest they’ll admit that the first third of A Clockwork Orange is more fun than the rest. The visuals are more stunning. But it’s hard not to notice how drab the scenery becomes once Malcolm McDowell’s character Alex is released from prison. Next to the oddball outfits of the Droogs and the décor of the Korova Milkbar, much of the film is ugly. Of course, the entirety of the film is ugly, at least as far as content. But to my teenage head, rape and “ultraviolence” were funny.

Look at these assholes

7.

The second viewing came not long after the first. Nothing to say about it.

The third viewing I don’t recall. Or the fourth. But somewhere around the fifth I started to feel that the movie was simple, stupid even.

Then I read the book.

Somewhat better

I read the book because, despite thinking the movie was simple, stupid even, I wanted to see if the book was better, operating at that time under the impression that books are always better. This is not true, but don’t tell that to a literature hungry young adult. You’ll crush their curiosity.

The book is better, sorta. The book displays a lot of stuff that I’d later come to love, like linguistic play and obscure yet engaging storytelling. Plus, it has a glossary, so the Nadsat language is easier to absorb. But I have to admit that the visuals, at least in parts of the film, stay with me more than anything in Anthony Burgess’s book. Save for one thing: Stanley Kubrick— either because he didn’t read the full version of the book or he didn’t care— cut the last chapter of Burgess’s novel. The last chapter subverts the whole story. Ending otherwise, the movie makes a point about conditioning, but it misses a sly idea from Burgess about the inevitably of change, how time will condition us without outside intervention. Or something. I dunno. . . I just remember being more excited by an extension of the story that the movie ignored. It got me to rethink the movie, which only made it seem sillier.

8.

Maybe it’s because, somewhere around my fifth viewing of A Clockwork Orange, I’d seen Paths of Glory, The Killing, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove, all of them directed by Kubrick, all of them 100xs better than A Clockwork Orange. Those movies made this other thing by Kubrick seem like a curiosity, a near miss, an exercise in style without much more behind it. Which is when I started to think that maybe A Clockwork Orange is not a bad movie, or even a stupid one, but a movie to be admired for reasons outside of the edgy bullshit or the easy moral. Maybe it should be viewed solely for its aesthetics. That way, it’s sure to please. Because even those dreary post-prison scenes are fun to look at. At least compared to the shit in theaters these days. I mean, A Clockwork Orange is thankfully short of CGI and spandex superheroes.

No Avengers here

9.

The movie introduced me to Beethoven. I don’t know whether I ought to thank it or not.

10.

I love(d) punk culture. As a dumb teenage boy, I defined punk culture by the music, most of it simple three chord stuff. And angry. Snotty. At times loutish. I didn’t understand that “punk” could extend to cinema, visual art, literature. I thought it was solely understood by listening to The Ramones or the Sex Pistols. Then I heard London Calling by the Clash and realized that punk was not just 3 chord music played by non-musicians. It was attitude, aesthetics, ideas, and, weirdly, inclusion. And politics. But I wasn’t ready for Crass and Suicide and the Mekons, bands that didn’t exactly fit my limited definition of punk. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to lump the Dadaists in there either.

But A Clockwork Orange was punk. Or at least punks loved it. It’s easy to see why: the style is close to what punks wore. And punks sometimes emulated the violence in the film. Hoo hum.

A punk girl— with a shaved head and piercings and Doc Martens and everything— called the movie “punk rock.” Later, I’d hear her call Sesame Street “punk rock.” She really opened my eyes!

11.

Thinking of A Clockwork Orange as punk both ups my appreciation for the film and lowers my appreciation for punk.

Actually, no. A Clockwork Orange is not punk. Punk is loose. Punk presents the opportunity for mayhem. Kubrick is too controlled, too precise a director. His movie is rigidly ordered shock. If anything, it represents the regimented lives my punk pals eventually adopted as they aged. Or maybe the punk aesthetic was always performative, as coordinated as Kubrick’s film.

12.

They say (whoever they are) that a good work of art is one that you can’t stop thinking about, so I suppose that makes A Clockwork Orange good. But truth be told: I don’t often think about it. I’m thinking about it today because I saw the book on my shelf buried behind some other pocket paperbacks I haven’t looked at in years. Which got me thinking about the movie. Which got me writing about the movie.

That I can’t land cleanly on Good or Bad is a good sign. I’m sometimes suspicious of work that is universally praised. I love it when asshole contrarians shit on Star Wars, however little criticism I have for the franchise (I liked the first two movies when I was a kid and don’t begrudge the world loving the movies and shows and toys). I don’t mind seeing my sacred cows slaughtered. Someone’s negative feelings on James Joyce won’t rob me of the pleasure of reading Ulysses (happy 100th birthday coming up!). I once posited that good art should divide. Anything that plays it too safe can’t be all that interesting. I may not be able to support those statements completely, but I’m not backing too far from them either.

But here’s another thing: A Clockwork Orange seems constructed to divide. As if the filmmaker knew it would offend some audiences and leaned in. Hardly as intentionally shocking for shock’s sake as Cannibal Holocaust, but nevertheless a film that Kubrick must’ve known would cause a stir. And that foreknowledge almost kills it for me. Maybe I’m too punk, too contrarian, too big an asshole, but when I know someone’s trying to ruffle my feathers my instinct is to deny them the pleasure. I see your easy provocation and it bores me.

But A Clockwork Orange is not boring. And I loved it at one point. Maybe my wrestling with it is as much about me and my efforts at a world-weary persona as it is about an imperfect film that seems increasingly callow the older I grow?

Goddamn, the movie exposed something about me! Fuck. . . I’ve no choice but to admit it that victory.

13.

Thirteen films better than A Clockwork Orange:

The Third Man

Naked

Miller’s Crossing

Barton Fink

Au Hazard Balthazar

Time Bandits

Full Metal Jacket

After Hours

I Heart Huckabees

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

The Conversation

Children of Men

Mulholland Drive

Reverse-Liberation: Movies and TV

This one time in the early 2000s, I conned my way into an interview with Jeanette Winterson. If you were to have asked me then, I would have said she was my favorite living novelist (today she shares the title with Ali Smith and Helen DeWitt). One of the things that attracted me to her work was the feeling of freedom and play in her texts, specifically the emphasis on language over plot, the so-called “unconventional” nature of her best work.

When I interviewed Winterson (which you can read here), we got on the subject of the so-called unconventional novel. Something she said has stuck with me all these years (and I’m paraphrasing): The novel, in the 20th century and beyond, was liberated by movies. Movies could handle traditional narratives with rising action and believable characters and recognizable tropes. Thanks to cinema, the classic Victorian novel structure need not always be repeated. We could move on. The camera had liberated painters from always having to do portraiture; the movie camera did the same for the novel. Yay! Here comes Modernism!

Here’s a phrase Winterson used in that interview that struck me then as funny: “Printed television.” Buy this, she meant books that were doing what TV does, which is to say not challenging the audience, giving them what they want, being fun but disposable once finished, a thing you turn on and off for distraction rather than edification or, dare I say, spiritual fulfillment. Today, this phrase is off the mark, but who’d have guessed that TV would have gotten this damn good?

And it has. There are certainly shows that are not nearly as good as they are popular (The Queen’s Gambit, Lovecraft Country), shows that I find lousy (The Chair) and shows that miss the mark the longer they go on but are rather satisfying (Breaking Bad, Mad Men). And then there’s The Walking Dead, which should have been killed off years ago. There are, as we know, a lot of damn shows. Maybe too many? No, I’ll leave that rant for someone else.

The best of the so-called Golden Era we’re (I think) still living in, in my opinion, is The Wire. The best currently running is Succession. If I had to articulate why I hold those highest, I’d likely resort to a lot of the things people say about art when they struggle to communicate their appreciation: compelling characters and situations, well written, not dumbed down, engaging, high stakes, humor, tragedy, pathos. . . but I dunno. All that, sure, but I just like those particular shows. One thing I can point to is their length. At an hour a pop, 10 episodes a season, Succession is, in comparison to a movie, looooooong. But in that length, there’s more than enough room to do all the nasty, compelling things that show does. How do you cram all that into a 90-minute package?

This may be why I love Succession but never understood Wall Street. Two hours is too quick for me to buy Gordon Gekko.

What really concerns me is the way these shows, and so many more I’ve not gotten around to (Hi, Ozark) have adopted what the best movies used to do. They’ve stopped using the old TV templates. We have quirkier meta comedies like Community and absurd ensembles like Brooklyn 99 and those before-mentioned dramas that are leaps and bounds better than Dallas or Melrose Place. I know everyone loves The Office, but if it did anything of note it was to present a sitcom that avoided the easy feel-good gags of Friends. TV started taking more chances, streaming became a thing, Netflix green lit some oddities that wouldn’t have stood a chance in the 90s, and now we are where we are. If we are indeed living in a Golden Era of TV where it’s possible that the shows today are doing what indie movies in the 90s were doing, that may explain why so many of the movies seem to be action based CGI violence celebrations. The movies have been reverse-liberated (hobbled?) by good TV and can focus on giving people digestible content that goes down smoothly, maximizing profits in the process.

But I don’t have to like it.

I know great movies are still being made. But damn if it doesn’t feel like 90% of new releases feature grown-ups in superhero costumes. I loved my Underoos when I was a kid, but there’s a time to grow up.

Okay, there are plenty of lovely, intelligent people in my life who will balk at my suggestion that perhaps better stories are out there than the ones dreamed up by Marvel (and definitely DC), and they are as right as I am in the sense that this is all very subjective. But smarter people than me (by which I mean, actual film critics) have argued that the dominance of superheroes, dragons, and John Wick action films has an effect on what gets green lit in a landscape where fewer films outside those genres receive attention. The result may be the sort of monoculture that has long depressed me, that we see already in publishing (a topic for a different day). When we’re fed multiple 3-hour Avengers extravaganzas, we come to view anything outside as small. The summer blockbuster used to be a thing reserved for, well, summer. Now it feels de rigueur, the thing one should always expect from a theater-going experience. The quaint little movie with the smaller budget, lack of what were once called special effects (which are now too common to be special), and lesser known faces. . .  that’s for at-home streaming, maybe. I mean, am I really going to leave the couch and drive to the dirty little art house cinema for a movie that may be different than what I’m expecting? And what’s with these subtitles?

I’m fond of a lot of stuff. Highbrow, lowbrow. . . You know where I’m going with this. We’re at the part of the essay where I list my various tastes and proudly proclaim how much I love Miles Davis and Schubert and Pig Destroyer and the Butthole Surfers. I’ll throw the names of canonized classic films like The Third Man and some oddball cult favs like Repo Man at you. (These are my two favorite “Man” movies.) I’ll try to sway you by representing my openness to what one former professor called “Intellectual prime rib and intellectual White Castles.” I’ll make the very true claim that there is a place for both, for all of it, for everything. And I’ll restate my “eclectic” taste in art as a means of establishing my credibility. I like some weird stuff, so I’m no snob.

But how convincing can I be? I’ve already lost a segment of theoretically existing readers by talking shit about Marvel movies (and by refusing to use the phrase “The Marvel Cinematic Universe”). The Marvel defenders I envision would read my words and sharpen their critical knives, for they have practiced their retorts often: The themes in the MCU are universal, the filmmakers are using heroic archetypes to tell real-world stories. I know these arguments, and I believe them. I agree. I’m more than convinced. Buuuuuut. . . that doesn’t mean we only ever have to use those heroic archetypes, right? We can tell those stories a number of ways. They need not always be wrapped in spandex and capes.

The arguments from the fanboy crowd tend to feel strained. I know comic book enthusiasts and writers. I know that they fight for acceptance in a literary culture that devalues them. I know that even calling their books “graphic novels” is not enough to convince the tweed and leather-elbow crowd that the X-Men may provide tragedies on par with the canonized tomes. So I don’t want to come off as the university-bred asshole who doesn’t have time for funnybooks. But in working so hard to make the culture accept what was once derided as “nerd shit,” I wonder if we’re not tipping the scale too much for the superheroes. Has nerd culture become just plain culture?

Maybe, and that’s fine and dandy. But again, there are implications to that normalization.

Another issue I have with the more labored arguments for Marvel, et al. being accepted as part of high culture: The most vocal arguers remind me of the people who try so hard to convince me that guns are necessary and that the 2nd Amendment is unquestionably good. All the massaged statistics and forced logic mask one clear truth: people like shooting things. That’s all. Whatever goofy justifications they weave can’t cover up the one argument I can’t defeat: Guns are cool, so don’t take mine. I don’t agree, but I’d respect the honesty if the 2nd Amendment crowd would summarize their position that way.

When the comic movie defenders tie themselves in knots trying to get me to validate their superhero stories and admit that Iron Man is as good as The Hurt Locker, well, let’s just say that I can see the real argument under all the bullshit: I like when Iron Man blows things up. Don’t take that away!

Okay, I suspect you’ve got this comeback at the ready: Hey, Vince—The Hurt Locker won Best Picture while Marvel movies barely get an Oscar nod, and never for the top categories. So your so-called “good movies” are still nudging out my beloved superheroes. And you’d be right, but. . . really? First, it’s only a matter of time before Oscar and the Motion Picture Academy—never the most progressive institution—catches up to where the viewers are. Second, don’t you love that your favorite movies are not Oscar winners? Don’t you get the same thrill complaining about this that I got when Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas? Man, the Oscars suck. Fucking idiots. I’m more punk rock than you!

Not to mention that art is not always synonymous with mainstream recognition, right? If anything, the box office returns are the real marker of where the culture is, not the award ceremonies that have rarely if ever gotten things right (Driving Miss Daisey beat Do the Right Thing, after all). And the box offices swell whenever a beautiful person dons a superhero costume.

I’ve spent enough time shitting on the movies under the Disney umbrella (which includes Marvel and Star Wars and DC, to name just a few popular content producers). Suffice it to state that my (I grant you, only partially informed) perception is that the Winterson point about a new technology liberating an older one does not seem to be the case when we think of 21st century TV and film. Things seem to have flipped. I don’t pronounce this good or bad, just curious. My real question is: what can we predict about these forms of art? Will movies become heavier on action and lighter on nuanced storytelling? Will TV continue to do what indie films used to and get quirkier and better at representing traditionally marginalized voices? Let’s hope. Because I’m on board for more shows like Fleabag, Reservation Dogs, and Succession. But I can’t summon the energy to go to the multiplex and drop $20 on a few hours of ScarJo in spandex fighting aliens while somewhere in the background a guy in a tin suit flies to space and does something with a hole in the sky or whatever. My couch is a helluva lot comfier, and my kitchen is better than any I’ve found in a movie theater. Fuck it—let the nerds have the cinema. 12 months of action, explosions, tacked on love stories, B acting in front of a green screen, a talking raccoon because, why not? If people enjoy watching a video game they’re not playing, good for them. I think I’m cool with this cultural shift.

The Messy Chair

An uneasy feeling from the jump: the school looks too much like schools in movies and TV shows. Ivy League despite assurances from the writers that this school is fuuuucked up! Basement level ivy league or some such joke. Everything is so perfectly dignified and picturesque. And then the star of our program, the wonderful Sandra Oh, removes the first in a series of bad jokes that will surely bring a smile to anyone who thought Chandler Bing was funny: a nameplate that reads “Fucker in Charge of You Fucking Fucks.” Must’ve taken the writers weeks to nail that one.

Immediately after that lame joke, we see Oh sit at her desk. If you’ve ever seen a dumb sitcom, you’ll know what’s going to happen next. But no, this is supposed to be a smart show about smart people, right? They won’t. . .  Nope, they did it. They tossed in a broken chair gag. I’m not the biggest stickler when it comes to lazy metaphors, but c’mon.

The concerns of Sandra Oh and her floundering English department ring sadly true, even if their depiction leans heavy on boilerplate. The politics of running a department, the ridiculous demands of donors, the capitulations, complaints, egos, and attitudes—it’s all here, often convincingly so. I mean, David Duchovny as guest lecturer? Seems plausible. Old guard professors scrambling to maintain relevance? Yep. New professors kissing ass for tenure? Oh yeah. Reactionary students? Well, you knew some of the cancel culture debate would make its way in.

What bothers me most about The Chair is the facile way in which it deals with what often seems the most important battle in our contemporary culture war. There is much to say about cancel culture. The Chair seems to critique it as a bunch of rabid, scandal hungry students who misunderstand their professor’s dumb joke and make it a cause, a chance to yell and virtue signal and ask questions in true cable news fashion (not letting one answer, bulldozing ahead with their agenda). While The Atlantic, in a shockingly positive review of The Chair, praised the show for not taking a side, I found the treatment of the issue kind of pointless. Are we supposed to root for the professor (more on him in a minute) who is obviously not the Nazi the students make him into, or are we supposed to side with the students who are justifiably concerned about the white supremacy that is baked into so much of our society, certainly academia?

In other places we see the students riffing on the absence of women in Moby-Dick, not to mention the American literary canon. The students sing/rap about this, to the delight of their young, female, black professor and to the chagrin of the dinosaur Melville expert who laments to his wife that he used to walk those halls as a giant. So I guess I’m supposed to feel bad for Bob Balaban’s aging prof when his wife offers spousal comfort before asking him to don adult diapers. No, I’m supposed to root for the struggling up-n-comer played by Nana Mensah who will get screwed by Balaban, her older peer (who, of course, would never see a woman—much less a woman of color—as a peer). Both, apparently. And that’s okay—I never need clear cut good and bad guys, but the pathos the writers attempt to give Balaban are meager, certainly not enough to get any viewer to see him as sympathetic. So why even try?

I’m happy to see a show aim at tough targets and even opt for ambiguity. Balaban is not such a bad guy? Oh wait, there he goes torpedoing poor Sandra Oh. He’s a shit after all. And what about the character played by the always fantastic Holland Taylor? Looked over too often, never went up for full professor, sidelined by patriarchy and sexist Rate My Professor reviews, struggling to get out of the basement (writers Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman have certainly seen Office Space), struggling to make kids understand that Chaucer is “a badass,” and possibly cultivating a romantic relationship with an IT guy, though that subplot (like others) goes nowhere. Much like her character, this talented actress is given brief moments to shine, then put aside or used as a prop to move the main action along. Is this a meta move? No, that’d be giving The Chair too much credit, for even though it may invite praise for being “smart” the story is anything but. Smart people lobbing the easiest T. S. Eliot quotes about, sure, even a few casual references to Lacan, but much like Frasier was a standard comedy about smart people, The Chair is not as smart as one may think. It’s shockingly banal.

Perhaps I’m not the one to comment on what constitutes a strong female character. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer as much as the next person, but the slew of post-Buffy ass kicking fighting fuck toys (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Caroline Heldman) seemed anything but feminist. Sure, they fight men and are strong, though their strength is measured in ways crafted by patriarchy (violence). Maybe some can dismiss the scores of basement trolls jacking off to the heroines’ perfect legs and asses in those tight leather outfits (dress sexy for you, not him), but those badass female characters always felt like half-measures. Similarly, we have what should be a badass star here in Sandra Oh, who has proven to be pretty badass in Killing Eve. And, to be sure, she has badass moments in The Chair, but they feel too little, too performative. She’s tough talking, but bends way too much to Jay Duplass’s character. We’re supposed to feel frustrated that she has to yield to the demands of the machine she’s both leading and fighting, but then we have some half-assed romantic story? Might as well be a plot from Syd Fields. And that “fucking fuckers” name plate? Actually, it’s perfect for this show: easily obtained, purely symbolic, and, again, a watered-down joke only fast food culture finds hilarious. It is also a gag, much like The Chair, unworthy of Oh.

Sandra Oh’s character Ji-Yoon has her moments, and if the show succeeds anywhere it’s in demonstrating that myriad challenges a woman of color faces in an absurd job like department chair, especially of English. The show rightfully points out that the field is hemorrhaging students and fighting for its existence now that college has been equated with job training. And the show nicely details the wheeling and dealing one must do to make the machine creak along, as well as the ways in which idealism can take a few hits along the way. I felt sincerely bad for Oh when she had to consider optics, cultivate allegiances, and sacrifice desires. I believe the job is far worse than The Chair makes it seem, and that’s saying something. That Oh (spoiler) is ousted by the old men under her simply because they feel their time on campus is at a close, well, that sucks, but when Oh names Taylor as her successor, thwarting Balaban’s ambition for the gig, we’re supposed to see that as a victory, I guess. The stalwart Chaucerian got out of the basement and got the recognition she deserves. So it’s a happy ending? Maybe, but there are loose threads aplenty. Oh was nearly out of a job entirely after sorta kinda gagging a student from speaking about a scandal. Then she’s forgiven by what we are made to understand are unforgiving young people, all simply because she is no longer on top, no longer chair, just a lowly professor. Now there’s a message! Oh’s Ji-Yoon keeps her job and lectures passionately on Emily Dickinson, which is all she ever really wanted to do, apparently. Never mind the chair position. Who needs institutional power when you can stay in your lane?

If the badassery of the leading woman is complicated, the mopey cliché that is our leading man is crystal clear. Maybe it’s because I am a frequently scruffy, mildly disorganized, occasionally intoxicated lover of Modernism and Samuel Beckett that Jay Duplass’s character made me wince. Because I hope to god I’ve never been the cookie-cutter asshole he is. Recently widowed, the “rock star professor” gets away with being a prick and is only pulled from his funk by a woman and her adorable daughter (another prop that is half-heartedly given a story of her own, but who cares?). If you’ve seen Barton Fink you might remember the old screenwriter’s dilemma: dame or kid? Which do we saddle the leading man with? Remember what Barton Fink says: “Both, maybe?” Remember the movie producer’s worried look?

Come to think of it, why is Jay Duplass even in this thing? Why bother with a (barely) sympathetic man? Just ditch his character. He’s not developed, perhaps because there’s nothing to develop. Of course, I’m willing to accept the argument that, after years of being used as satellites and sex objects in male-driven stories, women creators are having their revenge by writing shitty one-dimensional male characters. I guess that’s equality? No, it’s not—I expect more of the women wresting control from us men. We’ve done crap jobs. If you’re up to bat, and you should be, it’s not enough to phone in a character like Prof. Dobson. Again, don’t bother—just focus on the women. They’re far more interesting.

But no, Duplass bumbles along, sport-coated and unshaven, occasionally spouting some professorial lines about Camus and Pavese and, for some reason, he innocently gives a Nazi salute in class, which get filmed and goes viral and costs him his job. But the kids got it wrong—he’s no Nazi, just a tired caricature of a young English professor/lit bro. His interest in Beckett and Modernism is supposed to do all the heavy lifting, and it, sigh, does. We see his existential depression as a given. Those gloomy Modernists! And then there’s a dumb red herring in the form of an adoring student who we’re sure wants to fuck him but really only wants him to read her novel. Yet another prop picked up and too quickly put down.

The show is a mess, but a fun mess. For all the shit I’m complaining about, I wasn’t bored. It’s a sloppy bit of distraction I enjoyed between drafts of my syllabi for the coming semester. And while it offered no real ideas that couldn’t have come from a USA Today article on cancel culture, it didn’t exactly preach either. These days, I’ll take half-baked comedies over sanctimony. But my concern is that the show is being seen as more than it is. It’s being rewarded for not taking a side, which seems stupid. Too often in socio-political discussions, I’m told to consider both sides, as if all perspectives are equally valid. Sure, that’s the ideal, but when one side is objectively loony, both-siding is just plain wrong. And I have no answer to the cancel culture debate, just feelings that are as complicated as The Chair kind of recognizes them to be. But the debate is given less attention than it deserves. We’re meant to sympathize with the misunderstood dude who gave a Nazi salute and shake our heads at the overreactions of the students. And while I would hardly classify Duplass’s salute as sincere, there is a point here: the tenured asshole should’ve known better. His misguided attempt at addressing the issue with what quickly becomes a mob of angry students is born of belief in the power of truth and open discourse, honorable ideas that the show wants us to think are under threat by our snowflake culture. I think. I dunno. . . I’m not sure how to read this subplot. Maybe that’s the point. That ambiguity would be fine were the rest of the show not beholden to old tropes and stereotypes. But hey, it kept me from seeing horrifying images of Afghanistan or thinking about environmental catastrophe for a few hours.

Failure is the Only Option, or: 2,806 words on my difficulty using words

1

This essay is a failure. Because all essays are, if you subscribe to a certain theory of writing as a failed attempt to express ideas, thoughts, emotions, all that ethereal stuff we’re tasked with expressing. Or not—maybe you’re into repressing that shit.

I used to tell my students that “essay” means “attempt,” which I hoped would help them relax when asked to do some writing. Dream on!

Having an Instagram account and not a real idea of why, I’ve followed many a hashtag, among them #samuelbeckett. As a result, I’ve seen plenty of photos of the ultra-photogenic writer, as well as countless uses of this quote from Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Beckett’s “Fail better” is often used to make people feel good about fucking up. The larger quote usually comes accompanied by motivational poster imagery: flowers, sunrises. . . one expects a cat holding onto a rope will pop up at any moment. Hang in there, Baby, and fail better!

All this sunshine runs contrary to my reading of Worstward Ho, a text that seems to want its reader to reach for the bottom. But who cares about authorial intent? Clearly not the Silicon Valley gurus who’ve hijacked Beckett’s words.

2

I am not one to use the Beckett quote in either the overly simple Fuck it, let’s jump into the abyss sense or in the manner of the startup tech bro. Mostly, I try not to use it, as the quote is so divorced from its source that it’s in danger of losing whatever meaning it may have had. (Ironically, this loss of meaning may be in line with Beckettian ethos. Sam has his revenge.) I do think often, though, of another quote from Beckett: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

Of course, as Art Spiegelman pointed out, Beckett said those words.

There’s the rub: to express ideas, we need language, even when the idea is that language is both a mere attempt (often a failure) and an assault on silence. This seems the kind of Zen contradiction monks might meditate on, and I’ll not go too far down that road, but suffice it to state that Beckett was onto something. Language solves as many problems as it creates. At least we hope it does.

3

All this is a long way of introducing my real topic: my inability to express my feelings about visual art without sounding like a ninny. Inspired by my Facebook post of a painting by Remedios Varo that I shared along with the proclamation: “My favorite thing about not studying visual art is that I lack the words to convey why I like the stuff I like. And I like Remedios Varo,” it was suggested (Hi, Billy!) that I try to write about an art form outside my wheelhouse. I’ve studied literature and writing; I’m an autodidact when it comes to film and music—in short, while hardly an expert, I feel capable of discussing literature, film, and music. But not painting.

I love visual art. I have favorite painters (Francis Bacon, Ivan Albright, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Gertrude Abercrombie, the before-mentioned Remedios Varo). The Art Institute of Chicago remains my most beloved spot in the city. I love the big dead Jesus renaissance stuff. I love the conceptual pieces that piss people off. Dadaism still excites me. I’ve defended that big all-black canvas called “Painting” against claims of “Well, I could do that.” Rothko’s blurry red cubes? Love ‘em. Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture? Applause! And I even love the hazy Monet paintings, all but those damn wheat stacks. Mexico’s muralists, Russian propaganda posters, Italian Futurism. . . all of it wonderful! I love it all (except Primitivism— fuck that colonialist condescension).

But that’s about all I can say. If I look at the Varo painting I shared on Facebook and try to explain why I like it, I fail. First stabs at forming a recognizable idea are aimed at the technique, as if I know anything about that. But I can see deliberate brushstrokes, shading, attention to what light does to a human form. Clearly Varo is adhering to some traditional representation even if she juxtaposes dreamy surrealism— the caged moon and celestial meat grinder. I immediately make a connection to the work of René Magritte who wanted to be a surrealist but wasn’t going to stop painting men in hats. You can melt some clocks or you can proclaim a perfect looking pipe is not a pipe. There’s more than one way to skin an oboe.

So, I’ve stated my love for specific artists and movements, and I’ve done a very small amount of thinking/writing about the Varo painting. None of this would get published in Artforum, though, would it?

4

My inability to properly articulate my appreciation for visual art bothers me not a whit. I’m not so thoroughly academic as to dissect art to the extent that its parts are laid out neatly for my understanding, but considering I teach composition and the occasional literature class—and that I’ve written two books in a sort of “Look at me! I’m a writer!” gesture—I do recognize some of what’s going on in a piece of printed material. I often wonder, Why did this writer do this? Why resort to an easy metaphor? Oh, this is a fresh approach to internal dialogue. But isn’t this paragraph bordering on purple prose? Oh wow, haven’t seen that before. Look at this deliberate lack of punctuation—someone thinks they’re Kerouac. I was listening to a podcast the other day where the important man being interviewed failed to name Neil Postman as the source of three of his ideas, and it drove me fucking mad. I’m not the most widely read dude, but I read as much as I can. I like recognizing references, seeing the progression of thoughts and the signaling back to past works and concepts, and yes, spotting when podcast guests fail to credit their obvious influences. I like to know about books and writers and have something to say about them. And all of this. . .  I guess I’ll call it “training” has (thankfully) not robbed me of the pleasures of the well-written book, story, essay, or poem, but I do admit to having enough of an understanding of what’s under the hood to see what a writer’s doing.

I have no such insight when it comes to visual art.

I’m not a musician, but I fuck around on guitar. I took lessons in high school and played in garage bands and even in front of people at parties, but my skills never evolved past basic chords and scales. Still, when I hear some rock songs, I know what the guitar player is doing. I know enough to talk, often pompously, about why some guitarists are overrated (looking at you, Clapton) and who I think are the best alive (Robert Fripp and Andy Summers). I can invoke the Aeolian and the Phrygian modes and smile when people talk about Jack White’s genius all the while silencing the part of me that wants to say, “Fuck that guy—listen to Greg Ginn or Jim Hall or fucking Django Reinhardt!”

But with visual art. . .  there’s still the magic of not understanding. I don’t know much about craft, and whatever history I’ve studied is limited. Because I don’t really care about the academic side of it all— I just love the stuff I love, probably because I don’t always “get” it. Or I get something, but that something eludes perfect description.

Okay, here are a few thoughts from two movies:

In an underrated movie from the world’s most overrated filmmaker (and big time creep), Woody Allen’s Another Woman contains a scene where Gena Rowlands’ character meets Mia Farrow’s in an art gallery. The Farrow character is weeping at the sight of a Klimt painting. Rowlands’ character, an academic, tries to tell the crying woman that she ought not to react that way— this is from a very happy period of Klimt. The academic is attempting to stifle a sincere emotional reaction to a work of art. Why? Because the academic’s big brain knows about the painting, whereas Farrow’s character is simply reacting. How often does this sort of thing happen? Are we trained by, and as, academics to detach? Possibly. I’ve met people who’ve said that grad school made them never want to pick up a book again. I know English majors who graduated and never read anything other than the occasional celebrity memoir. I made it out of grad school with my love of literature intact, so it’s not like all of us suffer such a fate. Still, there is something to this example from Another Woman, the emotional confronted with the cerebral, that sticks with me. What has Rowlands’ character, with all her erudition, lost? Is there a Gena Rowlands and a Mia Farrow in my head, always battling it out? Do I too often dry the honest tears of my inner Farrow and let Inner Rowlands go on talk talk talking?

There’s a good chance I’ve seen Monster’s Ball, but all I remember is that a guy on death row sketches people and says, as criticism of the camera, that it takes a human being to see a human being. This may be why I react more strongly to painting than photography. This may be why I respond to the art that I respond to, even if it’s not portraiture: a painting is a human’s unique view of something rendered carefully through a process I don’t really understand, made available to all for their engagement or lack thereof. But through that rendering, something more than the subject is revealed.

If we believe—and I do—that writing exposes something about the writer (shattering the myth of objectivity), why not use the same idea to understand visual art? Not a mind-blowing concept I grant you, but this is where my head is, where I might start to articulate my love for Varo, Bacon, Albright, and all the other artists I admire. Each of these painters would see a shared subject differently. Their art is a form of communication, of the subject and of themselves. Which is why I love their work, but also why I grapple to communicate that love, being trained since birth to use words in a way that, honesty, feels criminal the older I get.

5

Here goes:

I turned 50 recently. No big deal, really. If reaching the half-century mark did anything it was to remind me that I don’t give a fuck about birthdays. And I’m in better shape—physically and mentally— now than I was at 25, so I find it hard being weepy about “getting on.” Nevertheless, I’ve not escaped all of the existential thoughts that come with this “milestone.”

A lot of my thinking lately is on the impossibility of language, the before-(inadequately)-mentioned ideas born of a mangled reading of Beckett and my own simple-headed view that language is a con.

At risk of pissing off potential readers, especially fellow writers who know better than to use the 2nd person POV, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been struck wordless by a work of art? Because I have.

The first time: after watching Mike Leigh’s film Naked in 1993 at the Three Penny on Lincoln Ave. My friends all wanted to talk about it. I had no words. The movie was that devastating. And I found myself annoyed at these people who felt the need to immediately examine the movie, to have an opinion—the “correct” opinion. Fuck me, can we just take a minute to let it all sink in, to process the feelings the movie conjured? Can I pause and come to grips with my own complicated reaction? Forcing words felt wrong, stupid.

The first time I saw Ivan Albright’s That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door) at The Art Institute, I was again silent. The person I was with made comments. Look at the attention the artist paid. Albright used brushes trimmed of all but two of their hairs to get some of the tiny details. He was meticulous, you can see. Blah, blah, blah.

Still my favorite painting, I can’t say much about That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door) except, well, that it’s my favorite painting. Maybe deciding on words to describe the painting would ruin it? There’s magic here, people. Why the fuck would I want to kill that?

In his intro to Anne Sexton’s Transformations, Kurt Vonnegut shared a story about quitting teaching when he realized it was criminal to explain works of art. He’d been tasked with lecturing on Dubliners and found, as he was in front of a room of students, he had nothing to say. Not because he disliked the book, but because, again, it felt wrong to reduce such an achievement through whatever lecture he’d planned. One might say this is a cop out, but I get it.

Which brings me to another example of the difficulty of discussing powerful works of art. Roger Ebert reviewed 2001: A Space Odyssey and used plenty of words, but I only remember his quote from E. E. Cummings “I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing / than try to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.” The idea being that Ebert was happy accepting the mystery of Kubrick’s film, recognizing that over-analysis would kill the magic. Sometimes you have to leave the stars alone and just appreciate how beautiful they are.

Years later, when 2010: The Year We Make Contact was released for reasons I’ll never understand, Ebert referred again to the Cummings poem and said that the unnecessary sequel tried to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

But here’s the thing I’m just now understanding: Ebert used a poem to discuss 2001, and again in his review of 2010. He may have been speaking to the problems with over-analysis, but he still USED WORDS.

Which sorta brings me back to the point of this section of this essay: I’m losing my faith in words. Ebert didn’t— motherfucker kept writing to the very end. And Vonnegut, despite his wordlessness regarding Dubliners, wrote plenty, even later in life when he seemed more interested in his visual art. Critics abound— no one, be they learned or ignorant on their subject, is shutting up anytime soon. And maybe they shouldn’t. (Maybe?) Even when we feel speechless in the face of beauty, truth, or whatever the hell it is about a work of art that challenges, we should likely try to say something. I mean, we can’t just go, “Uh. . .  wow. . . like. . . whoa.” For fuck’s sake, I pass myself off a writer and I can’t write about this subject? Really, Vince. Fuck off, dude. And what’s this shit about the failure of language? It’s been working pretty well for a lot of years, the exact number you could easily google but you’re too lazy and, fuck it, you’re flowing now, aren’t you, adding words words words to this already long (2,558 words, as of this moment—whoops, it’s grown to 2,567) essay, flowing and spouting and writing and thinking and feeling compelled to share these thoughts because it’s soooooo important that it all be shared and that you land on some terra firma in this otherwise abstract clusterfuck of a blog post like it fucking matters and anyone gives a goddamn.

Sorry. I can get a little combative with myself.

Perhaps the best I can do is conclude that however much I write, and regardless of the hours I might spend thinking about this stuff, I’ll never really feel comfortable with my ability to state what I feel about many subjects, not the least of which is visual art. I mean, do I really have anything important to say on the things I feel comfortable discussing? No, not really, but has that stopped me from flapping my gums? Nah. So I can live with the failure. Because what would be the point of succeeding, anyway? If one were to actually say the perfect thing about a painting or book or song or whatever, they’d win the game. No point thinking about it anymore. Where’s the fun in that?

6

Best art criticism I’ve ever heard came from my boss at the bookshop where I worked in the 1990s. He summed up his appreciation for the Dadaists and Surrealists this way: “They looked at the Impressionists and the shit that came before and said: ‘Blow it out your ass!’”

CDC Mask Guidelines: What's Allowed?

The CDC’s latest guidelines suggest that it is safe for the fully vaccinated to suspend mask wearing in most circumstances. Of course, one cannot be sure who has been vaccinated and who has not, not without some sort of vaccination passport issued under strenuous oversight. Lacking such verification or any federal edict, municipalities are being left to decide for themselves how they will use these guidelines to make policies. Despite the city-by-city hodge-podge, there are some agreed upon regulations. Here is what each American needs to know regarding when to go without a mask in a public space:

If you have been fully vaccinated, you may go without a mask if your last name cannot be used as an adjective.

Groups may gather without masks so long as the amount of people in the group does not add up to a prime number.

If you read something on Facebook about vaccines, you are now a medical doctor and know whether or not to wear a mask.

If you’re aware of only your own healthy body, and don’t know or care about the immunocompromised, you can go without a mask the same way you’ve gone without awareness that people unlike you exist.

If you adopted a shelter dog during the pandemic, you can pat yourself on the back. Oh, and wear a mask in stores, maybe?

Jogging or biking without a mask is permitted, so long as you know that you’re going to die one day like everyone else.

Writers who’ve penned their own King Lear during the pandemic are likely immune to Covid and self-criticism, thus they may go maskless.

Doctors, nurses, and all frontline workers should continue to wear masks when appropriate and are allowed to each punch one anti-vaxxer in the face.

Anyone who injected bleach into their veins is dead. They may go without a mask.

It is recommended that Joe Rogan wear his mask inside his mouth.

Masks are required at indoor establishments, especially bars and restaurants. All food will be blended and liquified to facilitate consumption through a straw that can easily be slid under a mask.

If you’ve created a fake vaccination card, congratulations: you’re smarter than the rest of us. You may do as you please.

M95 mask wearers may continue to shame cloth mask wearers.

You’re allowed to go maskless even though… I mean, have you looked in a mirror lately?

The Soft Lunacy Postscript II: Forever Incomplete

During yesterday’s run around the neighborhood—a function of my (sometimes wavering) resolve to stave off physical decline—I passed a Little Free Library. As I often do, I stopped to see what was inside. I expected I’d leave with zero, as these things are typically full of kids’ books or weather-beaten paperbacks too moldy to bring home.

But not that day!

Well whaddya know—volumes IV, V, and VI of the Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw with Prefaces. And in great shape! I have a few odd volumes from the collection at home, which I’ve kept since the 90s when the used book shop I worked for went out of business and I snagged a lot of treasures. The store only had three out of six volumes, but I was happy to have the hardbacks, being a fan of Shaw’s Man and Superman and thinking I’d read some more of the guy.

I cut the run short and took the books home, hoping (because I couldn’t remember for sure) that I had volumes I, II, and III on my shelves. After all these years: a complete set!

But no. Those old books are gone. I’ve checked and rechecked and checked again, but the only volumes from the Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw with Prefaces in my apartment are the ones I just dragged home after an aborted jog. Because, of course, I sold the other volumes in 2016 when I got rid of 2,000 of my books because I was sad and because keeping things seemed stupid. I don’t know why I decided that three volumes from the Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw with Prefaces weren’t worth keeping. I’d had them for nearly 20 years. And sure, I’d not read every play in those three odd volumes, but I’d read some. And there’s still time to read more. Because books are an investment in future reading, even if that future is decades away.

I look at volumes IV, V, and VI. Beautiful. I very much want to keep them, even if the collection in my library will again be incomplete. Maybe I’ll find volumes I, II, and III in a Little Free Library in 24 years. Maybe then I’ll have a complete set. Or maybe I am fated to never have all six volumes in my library. Maybe it was decreed by the book gods that my collection forever be piecemeal.

By the way, a full set of the Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw with Prefaces is going for $280 online. Fuck me.