Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 3
April 3, 2019
you take paradise, put up a parking lot (John D. MacDonald cover)
Terrific piece by Craig Pittman on John D. MacDonald, the Travis McGee series, and Floridian environmentalism smuggled into the adventures of a knight in tarnished armor:
I read all the McGee books in Jan 2018 (2C2E); it's interesting to me, at least, that both Carl Hiaasen and Lee Child took him as a starting point. It's interesting that lifestyles that have mass appeal are so scandalous to the people representing the people who dream up these gloriously marketable gigs. Interestingly or not so very, it's seen as dodgy if influencers who promote, as it might be, brand of makeup don't use it, and A Good Thing if they do.
The more I read, the more fascinated I became. MacDonald’s books weren’t just straight-ahead puzzle mysteries like my grandfather’s Perry Mason books. This author digressed. He quipped. He had a lot to say about a lot of things—particularly about the greed and carelessness driving the bad decisions being made about my state. What he had to say was a revelation to teenage me. I’d spent lots of time hunting and fishing with my dad, as well as camping and canoeing with my Boy Scout troop. Until I read MacDonald, I didn’t realize that the places I’d enjoyed visiting might someday be turned into cul-de-sacs and convenience stores, or that such changes might not be for the best.
My experience with MacDonald’s writing is shared by a lot of my fellow Floridians.
“I read all JDM’s books in my early 20s,” non-fiction author Cynthia Barnett (Rain: A Natural and Cultural History) told me. “My father and grandfather had both read them all and it was a point of inter-generational connection for us. We didn’t agree on many things, but Travis McGee and Florida and rapscallions, we could agree upon.”The whole thing here.
I read all the McGee books in Jan 2018 (2C2E); it's interesting to me, at least, that both Carl Hiaasen and Lee Child took him as a starting point. It's interesting that lifestyles that have mass appeal are so scandalous to the people representing the people who dream up these gloriously marketable gigs. Interestingly or not so very, it's seen as dodgy if influencers who promote, as it might be, brand of makeup don't use it, and A Good Thing if they do.
the paranoia of celebrities
If totalitarian regimes greatly restrict public language, pushing people toward coded language but making codes problematic by taking away the shared platforms where they could be unambiguously decoded, then a fraying totalitarian regime where people are bolder with their codes but still lacking the platforms for decoding is doubly problematic.
(Think of a situation where any attempt at alignment, at “clearing up", could constitute an act of transgression in itself, threatening with high costs all participants.)
So while doublespeak and expected complicity were becoming commonplace in the city of my childhood, people were still rightly worried that 1) their codes may be misconstrued, 2) any innocent remark would be interpreted as a code by someone wishing them harm.
Amazing piece on Medium by Anna Gát (Three Prologues to Language), the whole thing here
December 30, 2018
adeste fideles
I'm staying with my mother in Silver Spring for a few weeks and have agreed to do an informal event at Politics & Prose down in DC on Sunday, January 6, at 6 pm.
P&P is at 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, which is just by the intersection of Connecticut and Nebraska. The event will be a sort of get-together downstairs in the Den café - not a formal signing or reading, just a chance to talk about books or whatever else occurs to us. The link to details on the P&P website is here.
The events coordinator (Jonathan Woollen) and I are also trying to work out a way to distribute largesse. I am trying to clear books from my mother's garage and guest bedroom - there are foreign editions of The Last Samurai dating back to 2000-2002 (!), books I brought to New York for a residency in 2003 which never managed to get taken back to Europe, books bought at college, books bought as a graduate student, books bought on visits to the US . . . My idea at the moment is that anyone who buys a book at P&P (not necessarily by me) should have a souvenir book for free. (We may refine this closer to the day.)
I suppose this all does mean I must grapple with updating my website (the horror), but now my mother and I must go to lunch.
P&P is at 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, which is just by the intersection of Connecticut and Nebraska. The event will be a sort of get-together downstairs in the Den café - not a formal signing or reading, just a chance to talk about books or whatever else occurs to us. The link to details on the P&P website is here.
The events coordinator (Jonathan Woollen) and I are also trying to work out a way to distribute largesse. I am trying to clear books from my mother's garage and guest bedroom - there are foreign editions of The Last Samurai dating back to 2000-2002 (!), books I brought to New York for a residency in 2003 which never managed to get taken back to Europe, books bought at college, books bought as a graduate student, books bought on visits to the US . . . My idea at the moment is that anyone who buys a book at P&P (not necessarily by me) should have a souvenir book for free. (We may refine this closer to the day.)
I suppose this all does mean I must grapple with updating my website (the horror), but now my mother and I must go to lunch.
February 20, 2018
Torments
People who at once start talking 19 to the dozen are exasperating. Just consider those documentary films about animals, in which those young, good-looking commentators say something which doesn't have anything to do with an answer. This is actually meaningless, because things are just being read off and because the spokeswoman has never seen the animal. This is one of my chief torments.
Gadamer, interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist in May 2000 (Interviews 1)
December 23, 2017
reprieve
Many, many months ago I met a reader who commented that I never seemed to write on my blog. I said all kinds of bad things were happening and I was dealing with difficult people. He seemed to think I could find something else to write about. I think if you're struggling to keep your head above water you can't think about anything else.
A long time ago my ex's mother had breast cancer. That is, it had been in remission and came back. The thing I remember about Norma is that she never talked about it, never complained.
One problem with dealing with difficult people is that it takes up a lot of energy. It's hard to force yourself to do more than tackle immediate problems. But in late summer/early autumn I forced myself to write some applications - one for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, one for a Stipendium in Berlin for writers in a language other than German, one for a grant from the Society of Authors.
It looks as though I didn't get the stipendium (the announcements were to go out in December). The Radcliffe fellowships won't be announced until March. But today, when I came in from doing a load of laundry, I found a letter from the Society of Authors and a cheque - they'd given me a grant which will let me replace my ailing MacBook. (Its keyboard died in July 2016; I've been nursing it along with an external keyboard every since.)
So that's the good news for the year, because I was wondering what I should do. I could definitely cut costs by switching to a PC - it's not nearly as worrying if a $300 laptop suddenly has to be replaced. And it's not as though I'm a fan of Macs - I loathe Apple with every fibre of my being. But it would limit the kinds of book I could write. I would have to leave all my Mellel documents behind. I had the feeling that it would be bad to sit down and try to think of a book that did not require X, Y and Z, and talk myself into it.
So now I don't have to make that decision. Thank you, Society of Authors!
A long time ago my ex's mother had breast cancer. That is, it had been in remission and came back. The thing I remember about Norma is that she never talked about it, never complained.
One problem with dealing with difficult people is that it takes up a lot of energy. It's hard to force yourself to do more than tackle immediate problems. But in late summer/early autumn I forced myself to write some applications - one for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, one for a Stipendium in Berlin for writers in a language other than German, one for a grant from the Society of Authors.
It looks as though I didn't get the stipendium (the announcements were to go out in December). The Radcliffe fellowships won't be announced until March. But today, when I came in from doing a load of laundry, I found a letter from the Society of Authors and a cheque - they'd given me a grant which will let me replace my ailing MacBook. (Its keyboard died in July 2016; I've been nursing it along with an external keyboard every since.)
So that's the good news for the year, because I was wondering what I should do. I could definitely cut costs by switching to a PC - it's not nearly as worrying if a $300 laptop suddenly has to be replaced. And it's not as though I'm a fan of Macs - I loathe Apple with every fibre of my being. But it would limit the kinds of book I could write. I would have to leave all my Mellel documents behind. I had the feeling that it would be bad to sit down and try to think of a book that did not require X, Y and Z, and talk myself into it.
So now I don't have to make that decision. Thank you, Society of Authors!
August 25, 2017
Sexual Codes of the Europeans in Evergreen Review
A long time ago I started thinking about a book of sexual codes, inspired by Calvino's Invisible Cities. What if cities had sexual codes - that is, systems of conventions for communicating sexual preferences, like the bidding systems of bridge? Travel books would include a brief overview of the relevant codes, the way they now sometimes include useful phrases for ordering a meal or finding the way to the train station.
I was thinking how odd it was: endless ingenuity has been spent developing bidding systems, to the point where if you play bridge with a new partner you always start with a conversation where you ask whether they play Acol, Standard American, Precision or some other system, and where, if you're playing a natural system, you ask whether they use standard conventions (Stayman, Blackwood), whether you will play weak or strong no trump, weak jump overcalls, what system of discards you'll use, and much more. If you play duplicate, everyone has to fill out a preprinted (!) card setting out the conventions they play for the benefit of opponents. The hanky code is the closest thing to this that I've heard of in the sexual realm, but a) it was always pretty simple and b) I'm told it is now passé. For the most part, the rules for communication never get past NO MEANS NO and YES MEANS YES.
Bridge players are obsessed with finding a good fit, and they understand that no system is perfect. (Hence the restless search for workarounds.) But the outcome is not the only thing that counts. It's boring to get a strong well-balanced hand. Sometimes you pick up a hand that's not very good and get wildly excited, because it gives you the chance to deploy a convention that rarely comes up. Preferably a really complicated convention. A rare, complicated convention that both partners have probably half-forgotten - the Multi-Colored 2 Diamonds is best of breed. The partners bid on, gazing at each other with a wild surmise...
Anyway, I thought about this as the basis for a book, and sometimes talked about the book, and most people (not, perhaps, being bridge players) looked at me no so much with wild surmise as with blank incomprehension. But I went to New York several years ago and had dinner with Dale Peck and began talking about bridge and sexual codes, and Dale understood instantly! Dale had willfully revived the hanky code in his youth; Dale had been a fanatical bridge player; we talked and talked.
Dale is now editor of the Evergreen Review, an online magazine, and he has published "Sexual Codes of the Europeans: a Preliminary Report" in the latest issue. It's here.
I was thinking how odd it was: endless ingenuity has been spent developing bidding systems, to the point where if you play bridge with a new partner you always start with a conversation where you ask whether they play Acol, Standard American, Precision or some other system, and where, if you're playing a natural system, you ask whether they use standard conventions (Stayman, Blackwood), whether you will play weak or strong no trump, weak jump overcalls, what system of discards you'll use, and much more. If you play duplicate, everyone has to fill out a preprinted (!) card setting out the conventions they play for the benefit of opponents. The hanky code is the closest thing to this that I've heard of in the sexual realm, but a) it was always pretty simple and b) I'm told it is now passé. For the most part, the rules for communication never get past NO MEANS NO and YES MEANS YES.
Bridge players are obsessed with finding a good fit, and they understand that no system is perfect. (Hence the restless search for workarounds.) But the outcome is not the only thing that counts. It's boring to get a strong well-balanced hand. Sometimes you pick up a hand that's not very good and get wildly excited, because it gives you the chance to deploy a convention that rarely comes up. Preferably a really complicated convention. A rare, complicated convention that both partners have probably half-forgotten - the Multi-Colored 2 Diamonds is best of breed. The partners bid on, gazing at each other with a wild surmise...
Anyway, I thought about this as the basis for a book, and sometimes talked about the book, and most people (not, perhaps, being bridge players) looked at me no so much with wild surmise as with blank incomprehension. But I went to New York several years ago and had dinner with Dale Peck and began talking about bridge and sexual codes, and Dale understood instantly! Dale had willfully revived the hanky code in his youth; Dale had been a fanatical bridge player; we talked and talked.
Dale is now editor of the Evergreen Review, an online magazine, and he has published "Sexual Codes of the Europeans: a Preliminary Report" in the latest issue. It's here.
July 20, 2017
shoulder to shoulder
Today I got an uplifting email in an account I rarely use for registrations. I'm not convinced this will rate as Good News for Modern Man for anyone I know, but it cheered ME up. This, mind you, on a day marred by the Hardyesque twists of fate which technology has made so commonplace (and no, I DON'T want to talk about it). Excerpt from cheering email:
Exciting News - ShareLaTeX is joining Overleaf!
We've got some exciting news — Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are joining forces, and we will be bringing our teams and services together as we continue to build the best tools for collaborative writing.
Over the past 4 years, both ShareLaTeX and Overleaf have gone from strength to strength — seeing rapid, sustained growth in usage — and have emerged as the two most popular online LaTeX editors. Our combined community comprises over two million authors at thousands of institutions and enterprises around the world. Naturally, we've always been compared and provided each other with some friendly competition, but behind the scenes, we've often been trying to figure out a way to work together.
Going forwards, our aim is to bring the best of both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX together in a way that benefits everyone. The ShareLaTeX team has done a fantastic job of building a truly real time collaborative LaTeX editing environment, including a great new tracked changes feature, intelligent help for common LaTeX errors, and amazing resources for learning LaTeX. The Overleaf team has at the same time been busy working on its WYSIWYG editing tools for users new to LaTeX and its partnerships with journals, publishers and publisher back-end systems that enable direct submission and streamlined editorial workflows for over 10,000 journals. By working together, we can finally avoid duplicating our efforts when we're both trying to achieve the same goals.
What does this mean for you as an Overleaf or ShareLaTeX user? No worries! ...
I have watched both projects from afar - it should come as no surprise to learn that BOTH have Tufte templates - and it was really rather like reading about Scandinavian welfare systems. Since they were already being all Scandinavian and helpful and empowering, it comes as no real surprise that they have decided to join forces. But, still, awww....
June 28, 2017
cheating
@DegenRolf posted this on Twitter:
He apparently came across this in Pharaoh's Land and Beyond, ed. Pearce Paul Creasman (Ch. 11,
The Flow of Words: Interaction in Writing and Literature during the Bronze Age) and then performed various arcane manipulations to come up with a quotation that blithely bypasses the 140-character limit. My sister spends much of the school year initiating small children into the mysteries of a writing system only loosely connected with how words are pronounced (but is beautifully functional as a mainstay of our new scribal culture) - so lovely to be reminded of how it all began.
(If you are not following @Rolfdegen on Twitter, you should, and if you are not on Twitter you could do worse than sign up and follow only the incomparable @DegenRolf.)
He apparently came across this in Pharaoh's Land and Beyond, ed. Pearce Paul Creasman (Ch. 11,
The Flow of Words: Interaction in Writing and Literature during the Bronze Age) and then performed various arcane manipulations to come up with a quotation that blithely bypasses the 140-character limit. My sister spends much of the school year initiating small children into the mysteries of a writing system only loosely connected with how words are pronounced (but is beautifully functional as a mainstay of our new scribal culture) - so lovely to be reminded of how it all began.
(If you are not following @Rolfdegen on Twitter, you should, and if you are not on Twitter you could do worse than sign up and follow only the incomparable @DegenRolf.)
May 14, 2017
accents of Colombia
HT Margaret Sherman, video on BBC Mundo. (Yes, there probably IS a way to embed this video.)
May 8, 2017
what is (and is not) to be done
My initial prejudice against Facebook took a dent when I managed to get in touch again with Margaret Sherman, who was my best friend in Cali, Colombia when I was 13. If the Internet (and email) had existed back in the day we would not have lost touch, but it didn't. Both sets of parents moved frequently; we weren't good correspondents; we had no contact for (at a guess) 40 years. Margaret has now put up a post on influencing Congress which is largely useless to me (I'm based in Berlin, none of the US ZIP codes with which I might claim affiliation entitle me to vote in the relevant state). I'm copying it here because, erm, I probably have more in common with the readers of PP than with my miscellany of FB friends. The post told me something I didn't know; I wish it weren't true (given my anomalous status), but I'm still glad to know it. So I think some readers of PP will be glad to know, which I can't necessarily assume of my FBFs.What Margaret has sent my way: From Damsels in Defiance: "This post is long because of all the practical information. Only those who are trying to actively speak out on the political scene need read it.
Reposting advice from a friend who knows how things work in DC. Please heed this guidance from a high-level staffer for a Senator: You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. Online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash unless you have a particularly strong emotional story - but even then it's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter.
There are two things that everyone opposing what is happening in DC should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things:
1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.
2. But, those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.
***You should make 6 calls a day (yup. SIX)***:
Two each (DC office and your local office) to your two Senators & your one Representative.
Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics.
They're also sorted by zip code and area code. And this is IMPORTANT: She said Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that has recently pushed Republican congressfolks on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats have not.
SO, WHEN YOU CALL:
A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please"). Local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's ok - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all - then you can...but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).
B) Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.
C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.
D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list - they're figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists, so, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter…even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.
E) Be clear on what you want - "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.
F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you - it doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in 6 weeks. From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward, don't worry...there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the 6 numbers in your phone all under Politician, which makes it really easy to tap down the list each day!
Now go get 'em!
ps - please COPY/PASTE/POST vs Share - it will be visible to more people."
Reposting advice from a friend who knows how things work in DC. Please heed this guidance from a high-level staffer for a Senator: You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. Online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash unless you have a particularly strong emotional story - but even then it's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter.
There are two things that everyone opposing what is happening in DC should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things:
1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.
2. But, those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.
***You should make 6 calls a day (yup. SIX)***:
Two each (DC office and your local office) to your two Senators & your one Representative.
Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics.
They're also sorted by zip code and area code. And this is IMPORTANT: She said Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that has recently pushed Republican congressfolks on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats have not.
SO, WHEN YOU CALL:
A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please"). Local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's ok - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all - then you can...but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).
B) Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.
C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.
D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list - they're figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists, so, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter…even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.
E) Be clear on what you want - "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.
F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you - it doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in 6 weeks. From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward, don't worry...there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the 6 numbers in your phone all under Politician, which makes it really easy to tap down the list each day!
Now go get 'em!
ps - please COPY/PASTE/POST vs Share - it will be visible to more people."
Helen DeWitt's Blog
- Helen DeWitt's profile
- 586 followers
Helen DeWitt isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
