Wet Asphalt

Who Cares About the Nobel Prize?

Eric Rosenfield — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:52:25 -0400

One of the things that has had the lit blogosphere all abuzz is the Nobel Prize secretary Horace Engdahl's remarks that "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature," indicating that an American writer would not be getting the big prize this year. People are up in arms, saying that the Nobel Prize committee has "no clue" about American literature. However, to me the whole thing begs a larger question. Why do we care who wins a Nobel, anyway?

Over and over again, we hear the litany of great 20th century writers who never received the prize; Joyce, Kafka, Nabokov, etc. The implication in this list is that the Nobel has to go to writers who really matter and when it doesn't it's some kind of great tragedy. Yet, looking back on the list of laureates past, does it really seem like the creme de la creme is always represented? Sure, you've got Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Mann, Eugene O'Neil and Gabrial Garcia Márquez. But you've also got dozens of names that even the extremely well-read will have never heard of, and also writers, such as Rudyard Kipling, whose star has long since fallen. There's even the occasional touch of the ridiculous, as with the award to Winston Churchill.

Why are we so hung up on awards? If you win one, you have it appended to your name; Jack Nicholson is now Academy Award-Winner Jack Nicholson. Likewise, José Saramago is really Nobel Laureate José Saramago, as if the award conferred some kind of divine rechristening like God changing the name of Abram. Yet, at the same time it's common to debate whether someone deserved an award, whether there were politics involved, whether the award-givers were trying to make some kind of statement. And when someone disagrees with an award, out comes the declamation "Awards are meaningless," to be widely agreed with by all within earshot.

Why do we care if the Nobel people don't understand our American literature? Most of America doesn't understand American literature at this point. Don't we have bigger things to worry about?

Heroes

Eric Rosenfield — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:44:51 -0400

Spoiler alert: don't read this if you haven't watched the latest episode of Heroes.

Is it just me or has Heroes gotten really very bad? It's like the writers have no sense of character integrity or character development at all, and everyone is just slaves to a plot that barely makes sense. Which was a problem in season 2 that only seems to have gotten worse.

Problems:
So Syler's "hunger" is a product of his power and not of his psychosis? Doesn't that take away all of his character development, the whole point of his wanting to gather power so he could finally be special? Now he's just someone who would be a nice, normal guy if he wasn't inflicted with a sort of disease instead of a deeply damaged individual who lusts for power and recognition.

After everything Maya has been through, killing all those people, being manipulated by Syler, having him kill her brother, why does she now come off as a normal, stereotypical girl who seems to be around just to react in obvious ways to Mohinder's transformation? You'd think she'd have issues at this point with aggressive, super-powered individuals and not want to just jump in bed with them. You'd think she'd be a lot more freaked out and jumpy.

Mohinder's transformation is a direct and uninteresting retread of The Fly. Why?

So a bunch of scientists working for the Company created three super-powered identical twins and then split them up (why?) with random families and let them grow up without any supervision from the people who created them? Huh?

Why in the world would you have a man-sized vent in a prison cell?

Is it just me or did Molly not age at all in four years?

Wouldn't Adam have at least grown a beard after being in a coffin for several months?

The climatic fight seen in Costa Verde makes no sense at all. Peter and Syler are SO much more powerful than the three they're fighting it's ludicrous that they would even try to go head to head with them. Peter and Syler could have pinned them all up against the wall the moment they showed up. At the least it would have been very easy for Syler to pull his son away.

Also, is EVERYONE related to the Patrelli's now?

So now we have an injection that can give you super powers, as well as a magic desert paste that can make you see the future. These powers really aren't all that special are they?

"Totem" is a native American word, so why is it being used by an African mystic? In fact, the whole journey with your spirit animal thing is very native American and not very African at all. This is lazy writing.

And that's just off the top of my head. It's really getting to the point where I might not bother to watch this stupid show anymore.

What's the Issue with Issue 1?

J F Quackenbush — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:36:22 -0400

So a couple of guys named Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter have created a new poetry Journal called Issue 1. It's nearly 4000 pages long and is available in PDF form here. It's been creating quite a stir among certain poetry circles lately, mostly because a quick survey of the contributors shows it to be possibly the most significant collection of poets ever assembled. With work ranging from the likes of William Shakespeare, my own 13th Great Grandfather Geof Chaucer, to Contemporary figures like Ron Silliman and Susan Howe, to less widely known but still enormously talented poets like Anny Ballardini, Amy King, and, um, yours truly.

Now, of course, none of us actually wrote any of the pieces attributed to us in the book, but frankly i kind of wish I had written my three contributions. "A Cat of Countries" (page 1248):

A cat of countries

The sympathy of darkness
Singleness
Beardless and eternal
A room of countries
Of progress
Reluctance and fun
Firing beside a cat
Like a considerable sweeping
Feeling love

"Whole as a passage" (page 2646):

Whole as a passage
Into a swept whisper a fascinating trader
   arrived
The passages mumbled
Those were whole
A rapid rib, cheap rib,
   useful rib of an impossible thieving
Was he impenetrable?
Let her stare
Should he have been silent?
From his difficult arm he hungered for
   one, having, from his throat demoralization
     waiting
That was the creek’s wilderness
Sorrow, you were
   not there, making like a head
Fascinating and enthralling
He would sooner
   be different,
Big and little
”I save brass,” he whispered
He was lived by a
   mutter
He was thinking of the ghastly lives
   of bailiffs, knocking silently beside reckless conceptions
Now the thievings filled in the breeze

And my favorite, and the one that sounds the most like me, "Changing news like intelligence" (page 3573):

Changing News Like Intelligence

To burn descending on an art
A person
His anodyne news

Beginning beside a tree
More minor than a beggar

Now, of course there are some people who think this is lame. Others who take issue, like Silliman who made some vague mention of legal action in his blog about it.

To such people, I say chill out. It's a nice piece of something. There's no damage to your reputation taking place here. Clearly the list of authors was gleaned in someway from Buffalo poetics/the kinds of magazines folks like us get printed in. And frankly, taking Rita Dove at one end, and myself at the other, of a spectrum of fame, none of us are all that well known to the point that anybody outside our little poetry world will care about this one way or another. Take it as a compliment and relax. This thing is the best piece of flarf I've ever come across and frankly, like Anny Ballardini said on the Buffalo list today, I wish I'd had the idea.

L'Shana Tovah!

Eric Rosenfield — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:34:36 -0400

Happy Jewish New Year everybody!

Sculpture across the street from the Choral Synagogue in Moscow

Protesters in Moscow

Eric Rosenfield — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:55:22 -0400

In Kitai-Gorod in Moscow, we came across two sets of protesters, at either end of a long park. One set was made up almost entirely of middle-aged men from the Republic of Kalmykia, a subject of the Russian Federation on the Caspian Sea. They were only a small handful of people, handing out photocopied pamphlets and oppositionist newspapers, and generally protesting the Russian government, Putin's United Russia party, the invasion of Georgia and the general oppression of the people of Kalmykia.

Kalmykian protesters. There is one lonely police officer in the back, watching them. I don't know who the person next to him is.

The paper this man is holding up shows a picture of him being arrested for protesting.

One man in their group claimed to have been in Abkhazia during the invasion of Georgia, protesting the whole time. He said that Abkhasia is full of Russian tourists who go there and lie on the beach and completely ignore the protests that are going on and the politics all around them. He said you couldn't even buy a real newspaper in the area he was in, only tabloids, because that was all the Russian tourists wanted to buy.

Some Things I Learned on My Vacation

Eric Rosenfield — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:48:38 -0400

Russia is cold, England is wet
There exists in this world such a thing as an Uzbek restaurant/sushi bar.
People in Moscow do not know how to drive, and do not care about personal safety or the safety of others while driving.
Hot borsch and hot tea will warm you up, no matter how cold it is outside or in a given room.
Do not try to mail things in Russia or to Russia.
Meat pies + cask ale = Crazy Delicious
Russia has the best metros, England has the best cabbies.
There's no place like home.

Back Home

Eric Rosenfield — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:03:25 -0400

I'm back in New York! I have lots more blogging to do about my trip, but was too busy to do it at the time... stay tuned.

Russia is Fun

Eric Rosenfield — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:45:04 -0400

From the last couple posts you might think I haven't been having a good time in Russia. That is not the case.

For instance, last night we went to a restaurant called Cafe Margarita, named after the protagonist from Bulgakov's amazing novel Master and Margarita. The cafe was across the street from Patriarch's Pond (where Master and Margarita opens) covered in art depicting scenes from the book, and a live band composed of two violins and a piano played riotous Russian dance music as the increasingly drunken audience called out numbers and cheered. Though I ordered myself a Sprite, people seemed to keep buying me vodka, and the next thing I know I'm at the piano playing Ziggy Stardust.

We made friends with some Texas tourists who were driving their way across Eastern Europe, and some Georgians took my phone number and promised to call me when they came to America.

Marina in front of Patriach's Pond. I take pictures better when drunk out of my mind.

Mugging in front of the statue of Mayakovsky on the way home from Margarita. This is a country that appreciates its writers. And builds statues of them. Lots and lots of statues. I like that.

Surviving Russia

Eric Rosenfield — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:55:49 -0400

Russia is not forgiving to visitors. In St. Petersburg, you're lucky if you can find a street sign. In Moscow there are more than four streets named Tverskaya-Yamskaya which all intersect. In general the simplest things are much harder and take much longer than they should.

All this cannot be better illustrated then by the trouble we've had simply finding the hostels with which we were booked. Fist there was 71 Griboedeva Hostel. One would think it would be located at 71 Griboedeva Street. However, at that location there is an unmarked door to a residential building. Fortunately we met with a friend who had a cell phone, and after calling the hostel we found out that we had to go around to the opposite side of the building, which is on a completely different street, and there we found the plaque telling us there was a hostel there, and instructions to dial up to the hostel's floor number and wait for someone to buzz us in. Why there is not the merest notice that you must do this at the address which is THE NAME OF THE HOSTEL is beyond me. And do they then give you a key or passcard to get into the building, like most other hostels I've stayed at? No, you must ring up any time you want to enter, which wasn't so great at three in the morning when it took the person at the desk about 20 minutes to answer.

Russian Beaurocracy Inaction, or How Not to Mail A Package in Russia

Eric Rosenfield — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:31:41 -0400

There are certain things you take for granted in America. The ability to mail a package at a post office is one of them.

Marina bought a shower bench for her eldarly grandfather, who we unfortantely can't visit this trip and lives WAY out in Siberia. She bought the bench in America, and figured it would be much easier and less expensive for her to send it from within Russia than from across the ocean. Little did we know.