Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 101

Boston, Writing, Art.

Why was I so impressed with the Barbara's bookstore in Ohare' s K&H wings? I think I had grown used to finding bookstores and seeing the top 10 or so fiction and non-fiction bestsellers with a handful of other curated top books from various listicles. Most of these books yell out about how they've made X-list or won Y-awars or even that some star recommends them. Now, I know that this goes towards helping any book sell more units and it certainly speaks to its social acceptance. But I've found it nothing short of annoying and have found myself unable to buy the books. 
Yet, when I walked into this small bookstore in the airport, it smelling like coffee and traveling dreams—I was impressed when I saw Master and Margarita , poetry books, and 2666 , amongst many other at least somewhat interesting books. 
Now, this story isn't about my idiosyncrasies as a reader, or writer, but rather about the business of bookselling and especially bookselling from an airport and the sliver of that group that overlaps with my tastes. 
Of course, I have to wonder about the business end of things; how many of one book (a classic, the ones I mentioned above) compared to another, to say nothing of the presence of such books amidst the bestsellers of the day. A familiar book will sell more than one that isn't familiar, I assume (and that's the reason why the big names have to give a blurb for the smaller books). Same goes for the tie-ins to other mediums like film or TV. [1]
This makes me wonder if my own reaction is an anomaly and if the average person walks up, sees 2666,  is puzzled and decides to walk away. What I'm worried about, is that this process over time will weed out all the stores that I like and create ones where I can rarely find a book I like. 
I won't get into the myriad of bookstores I wish to see and instead I'll dwell upon the sad fact that my tastes may no longer be catered to in any physical sense. As I grow older and further away from the zeitgeist and the coveted 18-34 age group, this will only grow worse, I assume. So for now, let me recommend this bookstore to you. 


[1] something I actually find annoying, seeing the film or TV show on the cover of a book, seems odd to me, but it seems to work. 
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Where is Our Apocalypse Now?

I'll get to the state of the literary post-war (well it's not really post, is it?) landscape soon enough. I do want to talk more about the state of movies and how it seems so lackluster compared to the previous major war. [1] The main point could have been how so much more status quo the current batch of movies seem. But let me not dwell on that. Let's instead just look at a war movie with some sense of history and some sense of operatic theme. Especially when compared to even the likes of Apocalypse Now.




[1] Not that I'm diminishing the very fact of war and all the horrors it entails. Also some of the documentaries have been absolutely amazing.
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An addition to the 21st Century Best Novels (so far, and at this time and place)

If you don't know about my list of best 21st century novels, it's here . [1] It's a list I'll be curating until I somehow (apocalypse or heart attack from running) cease to have internet access. I've mentioned before that the filter of time may add or take away a novel or two. So far, nothing has really been taken away, though I've demoted Llosa's Dream of the Celt for some reasons that aren't wholly apparent to me. 

I'm also adding Adiche's Half a Yellow Sun to the list of the books I have in consideration, though not in the final set. A talented author, Adiche is sure to come up with a few more books to this list (I haven't read Americanah).

 If you think I should add anything else, please let me know!

[1] Now I know that these lists can be parsed ten ways and picked to death, but—of course—my list a better list than the GQ one—which seems to look through a list of NYTimes recs and come to its choices. On the other hand, the BBC one seems a little better since it's somewhat more worldwide, but still seems like a list of short term favorites (Adiche, of course, excepted).

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Out in the Wild

I think I recently mentioned how my latest foray into the wilds of America—national park style, which isn't entirely wild, tbf—was met with much apathy by my own "soul" or nature-loving subsection of my mind. Of course, I'm in a relationship and as most people know, the happiness of the other is highly correlated with one's own happiness. 

Nevertheless, I was more than happy when we returned to the city and watched a series of short movies at what must have been Seattle's last anarchist bookstore. I'm not sure how, amongst all the glittering monuments to gluttony, envy, pride, greed, lust and Pharaohs, we found this place, but it was after some time looking for a bathroom open to other than customers that we did.
Inside, we heard about the local directors and their movies and this piqued our curiosity enough to stay for more (I will say that their posters were flashy enough to put most capitalists to shame). I've mentioned before how I love the short film medium; enough that I'm still shocked that they haven't caught on. And here, in a dusty, weed-filled theater, with little cats hunting our feet, I waited for the first film. 
Unfortunately it, and all that followed, were too avant garde for me to enjoy. Certainly, they were all trying to break the viewer of their normative expectations from film, and to step away from the common peasant's narrative, but dammit it all, I wasn't ready for that: an uber driver who filmed his passengers, never asking them questions, just a few seconds of each being whatever they were; a film of a sidewalk in Syria, but instead of any linear time, it was all over the place, thus a strong statement could have been made about war, but it wasn't; a sad but true series of execution films from the internet; then the most popular gifs on the internet. 
I mean, I kinda got what they were trying to say, but a rock settled in my chest and I couldn't deal with it anymore. Know what I mean?




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Flarf

I'm not a poet. Not even close. It's funny then, that I've chosen to leave the reservation of prose and attempt some flarf , of all things. If you've followed my writing, you will know that by now I've been experimenting more and more with my writing and finding limitations in my skill level as well as the form I had come to love. 

Around this time, I started to write stories about people using methods of story-telling that were beyond my capabilities. If you've been reading my writing, you will have noticed a few of those stories: Algo writing in a fractal manner, coders creating poetry via code only, or painters using edge node methods to tell stories about the world—or a section of it. 
Of course, sometimes my fiction would then follow reality, but it was with flarf that I decided to branch out even further and see what I could do.
Of course, I wasn't here to make something poetic, rather I thought that these curations, from these search words, would indicate something about the zeitgeist, about a subject about which I was writing. 
My second one was similar but drew from Wikileaks and was mainly about war, some thoughts on it, then ala 2666 , a drip drip of all bodies found (IOW: Search: bodies). Well, not all, nut a few of them. 
I suppose I'm not sure what sort of reaction I was expecting, but it wasn't the claims of plagiarism or lack of creativity that were levied at me. 
Now, I'll admit that this new style requires more work to be complete, but I'm a little surprised at how the reaction was, well, so reactionary.
Am I missing something about how this works? I do want to work on juxtaposing a drip about some subject with my prose, to say nothing of increasing the disparity between the two subjects, or to do so with videos or pictures. But before I go further , why isn't this considered legitimate? I've written before about how comments online can represent the ultimate kind of dialogue—and why there are many reasons the novel is losing out to text on the internet. 
Why then, wouldn't this be completely valid? Why the reactions that this is just typing from the internet? I do hope that this new style works, but I want to see what you have to say first. 
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The Anthropologist

I was going to wax lyrical on a quote from Kenneth Goldsmith , "The shipwreck of the singular." In many ways it encompasses what I've been moving towards in trying to see more than what I see in a short story or novel and to try for more than one narrative. But in a used bookstore I found a book (no longer in print and so no links available) from an anthropologist who was exiled during the McCarthy years. 

The tribe was pretty isolated, viewed themselves as the end all be all humans and had developed an interesting agriculture and gift economy. Along with this was an art system so complex as to force this euro-centric man to completely review his views on life. 
Perhaps this is what drove him mad, but as he slowly went native and learned about these people (who were constantly surprised that this pink-skinned man could survive with only flesh for protection from the elements). But then he left when, after a harvest, he found that they were taking those who had contributed the least to the society and making them little better than slaves. Of course, one could always leave the town—if you could survive the jungle on your own. 
This alone seemed to go against the anthropologist's inherent beliefs. When he found that these people were then subject to random attempts at their lives, up to and including sacrifice, he left. 
But back home he found no solace. He could see the same flaws in the town he just left even in his beloved America. That's when he went off the deep end and was soon in and out of jail. His book had sold well enough, but now he was blacklisted and died in penury.
That's it. There's no point to this story except that it seems as I grow older I hear more and more stories like this. Why is that? 

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Nobel, Prizes and Bob Dylan

I just heard the good news about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize. It's great to hear it because in terms of politics, few writers are as prolific as Dylan. Now, I must admit that I was hesitant at first. First off, I'm not a big fan of prizes, as they only confirm the insularity of each[1], but sometimes they can pleasantly surprise me, and this one did just that. 

Now there are certainly some cries from those in the publishing world about how Dylan already has enough musical accolades, or that books need money and thus the prize but this isn't the point—the latter one especially. If your books aren't working, then find better ones. If that medium is done, then the Nobel Prize should change accordingly (what about books or stories written specifically on and for the internet?). Not that this seems to be a complete change. But I would like to see the Nobel Prize (and others) branch out more.


[1] And the Nobel prize, despite its claim that US writing was insular is certainly just that (note prizes given to Swedish writers/poets vs Asia or Africa). 
[2] Seriously, this is the best the nytimes could do? Is the only reason that books need money? Come on, now.
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Omni: Another Short Story Out!!

Just had to thank the good people at Omni for accepting another short story of mine. Here it is, Quantum Swarm . Enjoy reading it and come back to tell me what you think!

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Trolley Problem

I'm writing an essay for a website which should be up soon, but it has to do with the Trolley problem, which I'm trying to read up on right now (the deficit of proper scholarly articles on this matter is certainly pathetic). Now, there are many ways to cut this problem, and as theoretical as it may seem , it is problem that is very relevant to our world. 

Of course, numbers come into it. If it was a fat man that needed to be pushed and there were 100 people. What then? Or if there was an asteroid heading towards earth and a space station with a person on it can divert the asteroid, can you force the station (via remote command control) to hit the asteroid and save the planet—even against the wishes of the astronaut? Let's say it's 100 astronauts, does that change the morality? Or it's a pretty small asteroid with 50% of ending the world... Or x% chance of killing N people? What N matters vs n in shuttle? Surely a utilitarian worldview needs to prevail at some point?
One thing reading this has got me thinking about is how the moral strictures of our societies really matter and we seem to (or these academics seem to build backwards off it) look for either excuses for our tribe's actions or a way to morally alleviate our anxiety. I'm not being entirely fair, but when I saw the morally right bomber relying on collateral damage to end a war vs the horrendous terrorist bomber I was certainly amused, if only darkly so. 
I would certainly love to see what people still living in more primitive societies think about these problems and how they vary across the board. I should say that a view to long term morality matters.  I lean towards utilitarianism, but I can see the want to not be responsible, that most of us would feel when actually pulling the lever. As a writer, I certainly enjoy the multitude of possible scenarios, but I would like to see more from different cultures, classes and so on. 

Your thoughts?
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London has Fallen, the Movie

London is a beautiful city to visit and, from what I hear, especially nice to live in. I myself remember the plethora of races and languages on the underground, as well as in the many restaurants and on the streets. In terms of sheer diversity, it rivals most parts of New York City. 

Yes, this is morally convenient, but within the diversity of skins and languages and cultures, there's also a diversity of motivation and group and individual choices of advantages, collusion, collaborations and, especially, compromise; and in this mosaic there lies the truth behind the survival of the human story. 
And thus, the survival of these eight million stories—even the diverse ones—cannot be dismissed as collaborations with neocolonialism even if the stench of financiers and oligarchs hangs strong in the air. This is evermore true when we add to the function this city, of this former Empire, the view of the most recent natives of this land and their Brexit vote against the outsiders. I'm getting too abstract now, let me focus on London and her inhabitants. 
One can best gain a sense of this moving collage of 8 million human vectors when reading the lies of Zadie Smith or Salman Rushdie, but even these approximations don't fully explain the city. 
It goes without saying, then, that any look at a subset of the model, or function, or matrix will lead to limited and possibly erroneous conclusions about London .Therefore, when I decided to watch London has Fallen, I didn't have high expectations, but I suppose I had some and that might have been my second mistake. 
It was, of course, a mindless action film, and it started out with the usual premise of a sharp line between good and bad. Perhaps I had not exposed myself to the Hollywood toxin of patriotic propaganda for some time, but this film seemed especially insidious. And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say I've seen more nuance in Youtube comments. 
The basic premise, of a major arms-dealer—a darkie, of course—being the bad guy, never mind the history of American and UK arms dealing, was enough to elicit a laugh from me. So too was the reiteration that drone strikes were surgical tools and those who are innocent are still really guilty by association. I'll sidestep the childish human motivations here—revenge, mainly—and just say that not once was the golden rule applied: the sandbaggers should be saints when killed, we should not, apparently.
Then, we have London, filled with the enemy. Of only. Combine that with the comment of "United Nations of everyone who hates us," and all the diversity I spoke of, all those cultures and histories merely became masked as the enemy. Oh my. 
For humor's sake, let me list a few more of the gems mouthed in this movie. There were enough to make me wonder if this was all tongue in cheek, a comedy disguised as an action movie:
The US President, on what he tells his son: "treat others as you want to be treated." A dark joke for the drakes, if ever there was one. 
POTUS: "Innocents died because of me." Presumably not sand niggers. 
When one of the sandbaggers claims to be killing POTUS because of a dead sister, POTUS replies: "I won't justify your insanity to make you feel better about yourself." Again, this insanity label is never applied to US/UK actions.
The white hero, fully following James Baldwin's accusation of "Aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages," tells the aforementioned darkie during the usual action movie fight (or cleansing blood ritual) that: "Assholes like you have been trying to kill us for a long fucking time. You know what? In a 1000 years, we'll still fucking be here."
While the ending had a truly beautiful gem about minding one's own business as a nation not being enough to prevent such attacks in a dangerous world with few good options. All options, I suppose, having something to do with the Baldwin quote I mentioned and that burden of slaughtering savages.
Indeed, it was telling that the movie was so driven as to never entertain second guessing of said actions and the lack of the following quotes:"Chickens coming home to roost.""If God is just, I weep for my country."
I was going to be unoriginal and label this movie another Triumph of the Will, but that doesn't seem to fit. Nor does war porn or blood porn. No, this film seems to fall exclusively under the wade through the blood of savages kind of porn. Unwieldy, perhaps, and a statement to my skills or lack thereof, but it fits. Onwards, then, as I continue to tilt towards changing the narrative of this unlearning country. 




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