The Bookhouse Boys discussion
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message 701:
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Dave Alluisi, Evolution of the Arm
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May 18, 2013 07:16PM
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Sipping bourbon
Good gin (I like Hendricks or Bombay Dry for 'tinis)
Cheap gin for G&T
White rum for summer (daiquiris, et al)
Mixing vodka (for Renee)
Bitters
Grenadine (a splash in almost any booze with fresh citrus juice and seltzer is an easy go-to)
That's bare bones for me.
The second tier stuff:
Sweet and dry vermouth
Curaçao
Pimm's
Irish cream
I find that keeping those little 6 or 8 oz bottles of tonic, ginger ale, and soda is the easiest for guests, because anything bigger usually gets thrown out after I open it. We don't drink sodas; we're a seltzer family. I use seltzer in most of my drinks (the Matt is bourbon on the rocks with a splash of bitters topped with seltzer).
Sorry for babbling. :)
Do you not keep dark rum around, Matt?
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The beer is bottle aging. It needs a couple weeks yet for optimal results, but I'll crack one on the show tonight and see how it's coming along.
Wish I could add something of value to this discussion. But it has encouraged me to enjoy my first glass of bourbon in months, cut with Diet Mountain Dew (hi Jason!) over ice. It's hot here in NC today, and the drink's hitting the spot.
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Hello Bookhouse. I'm sure you all know about this, but just in case, I thought I'd throw it out there. Have any of you heard of abe.com? It is an online bookstore that searches the databases of hundreds (maybe thousands) of independent book stores. It's a great way to support small book sellers. A lot of the time, the books are in great used condition, or brand new, and you can filter the results to include only those book sellers that offer free shipping. A great alternative to Amazon, BN and others. Powell's is great, too if you want to support a book store that pays it's workers a living wage and allowed them to unionize. A little more expensive, but worth it. Also, I see you still have Black Swan Green as your July selection...any discussion on switching to Ghostwritten? Or should I just zip my lip on that :-) Yep...just used an emoticon. Peace.
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Anyway, I have heard of Abe.com. I've been buying a lot of my books electronically lately, but when I'm looking for a print copy, I'll keep it in mind. I buy most of my print books at Powell's.
I did think about switching to Ghostwritten as you had suggested, but didn't for around three reasons:
The just over 300 pages is more within our usual purview. We read longer books on occasion for the podcast, but we try to avoid it.
The description reminded me strongly of a book we read last summer, Dandelion Wine, and I'm curious about how such a story plays in 2007 versus 1957.
And lastly, when I picked it I was (and am) interested in his work, but had just seen Cloud Atlas, and found myself wondering what Mitchell can do without the interweaving narrative structure he seems to favor, a structure that Ghostwritten appears to share.
Hopefully, Mitchell is going to become a favorite new writer of mine, and I'll end up reading a bunch of others. Who knows, if we all love it, maybe we'll end up doing Ghostwritten down the road for the show.
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Jason wrote: "Hey, Sam. If you're wondering, I'm the "ook" part of "Bookhouse."Anyway, I have heard of Abe.com. I've been buying a lot of my books electronically lately, but when I'm looking for a print copy..."
Jason...good argument for BSG, well written and clearly reasoned...it is a coming-of-age-story written around '06, if I remember correctly, which takes place in the early '80s. It has two (I think) characters that appear in Cloud Atlas.
Ghostwritten is an interweaving, cross-the-world story whose characters all exist in the same time.
Cloud Atlas is interweaving across different times, from the 1600s (I think) to hundreds of years in the future. I really am excited for you guys to dig into Mitchell. He is my favorite author alive today...well, Cormac is up there, too...so is Stephen King come to think of it.
I've always considered Ghostwritten to be the smoky topaz. Number9dream is the fiery opal, Cloud Atlas is the brilliant diamond, and BSG is the emerald. Thousand Autumns is the sapphire. I envision the next one will be a ruby...if it's a Burmese ruby, it could be better than Cloud Atlas's diamond...but only if it's Burmese mind you...other rubies don't carry the same value. He is the only writer whose books I see as gemstones...no idea why.
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You need an injection of 350pp of Russell Banks, stat!
Matt wrote: "Sam wrote: "He is my favorite author alive today...well, Cormac is up there, too...so is Stephen King come to think of it."You need an injection of 350pp of Russell Banks, stat!"
I will have to add Banks to my list.
Also, you guys should seriously consider Andre Dubus II (not his son who wrote House of Sand and Fog). Check out "Selected Stories"...I know the length is a bit long for the Bookhouse, but you could choose some of the more prime cuts like "Rose," "Voices from the Moon," "Killings," "Adultery," and "The Winter Father." He's a New England guy, Catholic, and uses a lot of the Divine and Sacred in the every day lives of people...his stories are breath-taking. My brother Ryan loaned me his copy...I read it in 2000, when I was 25. Arguably the best short story writer of our day...neck and neck with Carver. It is one of the few books I have kept that I know I will read and re-read. I sighed with pleasure after each and every story. Dubus's life is a pretty amazing story itself. Speaking of Carver, perhaps "Where I'm Calling From?" I also saw that you guys read some Larry Brown..."Big, Bad Love" and "Facing the Music" are also amazing collections of short stories...not too long! The short story/novella "92 Days" ranks at the top of my list.
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OUTRO: "Houston, TX" by Deer Tick
http://bookhouseboyspodcast.podomatic...
Our June book is Back in the World, a collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff. Discussion thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
We'd love to hear from you: here, or by tweeting us at @BBoysPodcast
This was a good episode. Please don't rein yourself in, gentlemen.Someone on a comment thread at The Hooded Utilitarian posted this quote, which reminded me of your discussion of art:
"In his novel The Hippopotamus, Stephen Fry’s hero attends a local elementary school’s parents’ day exhibition of kids’ art.
“Call that art?” he shouts.”An abstract expressionist of forty could do that!”"
(from http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/06/...)
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Someone on a comment thread at The Hooded Utilitarian posted this quote, which reminded me of your discussion of art:
"In his no..."
Ha! That's good. I like a lot of expressionist art, but the price tags and deification of the artists usually stagger the mind.
Also, that was a real nice mini-ep thread we had once, Jason. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!
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Like Matt, I like abstract expressionism and think it works great in a lot of settings. A million bucks for pretty much ANY painting, though, much less one most people could easily duplicate themselves, is grounded in pretention. Being constantly broke, the only way I have to fight back against the obnoxious ways in which rich people flaunt their money is to remain unimpressed.
I do love a lot of that stuff, though, and argued vehemently with a friend a few years back about skipping a modernist display at the Met. Exploration of an aesthetic as opposed to a representation of a scene or object can absolutely be art.
(More than what anyone asked for or was talking about, but I wanted to get that in since I didn't on the podcast.)
Oh, I agree completely! Rothko is one of my favorite artists of the 20th century, without a doubt.
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Wonderful! My friend Joe is an artist and he turned me on to Richard Diebenkorn, whose work I love.
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You mean the thread I made? *Facepalm* I just realized I did that when Jeppe replied. I'll leave it here since there's a discussion going on. BUT NEXT TIME!
I'd be lying if I said, as I kinda wanted to, "Oh, yeah, expressionism is as valid as any form of art, it's just the $44 million price tag that got me going" because, guys, I just googled Rothko and, while paintings like that might look good in a room and help set a kind of mood, I can't see any kind of talent there. In other words, I think you could take anybody with decent color sense and a functional arm and they could do the same thing, and the only difference in how that work was perceived/received would be luck and external factors. Diebenkorn's art looks more interesting based on a quick perusal.
But that's me. I do like other types of modern art. I went to an exhibit a few years back at the Portland Art Museum of the kind of stuff Nick on Family Ties used to do: art made from ordinary objects, combined and modified in various ways. Thought those were interesting.
Jason, have you seen Simon Schama's series "The Power of Art"? The last episode is a heartfelt portrait of Rothko and his art, and Schama hit on a lot of the reasons why I so adore it. I urge you to watch it, if you get the chance and have 40 minutes to (possibly) get swayed.
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I'll try. At least the narrator has a British accent. ;)
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You mean the thread I made? *Facepalm* I just realized I did that when Jeppe re..."
Any difference in opinion we've ever had or ever will have is absolved by your reference to Nick from Family Ties.
First, another great episode, gentlemen, and I concur with Mr. Mulich. Please, please, PLLLLEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASE, for the love of Cthulhu, don't edit out the light banter that permeates each episode.In regards to Jean-Louise-Ernest Meissonier, this is the FIRST I have heard his name or have been introduced to his work. I don't know if that is more my fault or the institutions who have purported to teach art history. That being said, his omission from many art history courses is reflective of the times, that being late 19c. art.
Revolution was in the air, and for the first the word leisure was being bandied about like a French whore. Citizens were more interested in themselves and everyday minutia rather than their regal historical leaders. Meissonier was still firmly entrenched in this camp of historical genre painting. Unapologetically so. For this, he was largely ignored by the general, newly forming, middle class population while still eeking out a decent living while creating large masterpieces to the elite rich and powerful classes.
In regards to paying 44 million dollars for a Barnett Newman painting? Well, 44 million dollars for any painting seems a bit absurd. I agree with Jeppe, that Rothko is one of my favorite painters ever, and I enjoy many of the abstract expressionists, but that kind of money, to me, seems to better well spent elsewhere. But I don't limit that kind of expenditure to simply art and art purchases, I paint a broader brush that I also apply to professional athletes and CEO's. No human being should be making that kind of money while there is so much poverty to speak of throughout humanity.
But to address Jason's comments in regards to "anyone can lay down color on a canvas", and I know I'm paraphrasing so apologies, it wasn't about the external so much as it was about what you don't see. Many of artists during this period; Rothko, Newman, Pollock were interested with the internal or conceptual process and creating an affect rather than an effect. Of course, interpretations and reactions are going to swing as wildly as a metronome, but the conceptual began to supersede the craft. You could argue that the Impressionist movement was the beginning of the pendulum swing toward conceptual or internal painting, hence, Modern Art.
An amendment to my earlier comments regarding a $44 million painting, or any astronomical figure, is this. With the exception of a few artists, Picasso, Dali, maybe Basquit or a Matisse, most of them don't see any of that kind of money during their lifetimes. It's this kind of egregious lack of appreciation in terms of monetary compensation that is especially telling. Some would argue that an individuals worth or genius isn't truly appreciated until they have passed and therefore cannot be measured and recompensed during that artist's lifetime. But the truth is, and this doesn't come as a surprise and I know I going on a bit of a rant here, the market is only interested in what cannot be repeated or replaced. A dead artist cannot produce more work and therefore, in essence, becomes more valuable. It's this part of the "fine arts" I find quite reprehensible. It isn't helped or aided by the fact that this kind of equity or value is determined by an elite few, and I may be anti-elitist, but it is rather sickening.
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It's hard to argue with someone who says that their blue square is an externalization of their mood, how they feel when they wake up alone on a cold, December morning, or that their red and yellow square is the light behind their eyes when they squeeze them shut in anger. Certainly we can't treat it as objectively as a painting of what's supposed to be a car, but resembles a horse.
I just feel that the burden of meaning is shifted almost entirely to the viewer in the former case. I might very well feel that a formless blob of color evokes powerfully my sense of drifting through life as a 40 something without a career, and there is value in that, perhaps, because feeling emotions is good, but I can't wrap my head around separating one painter of green blobs from another. Or one green blob from another. Interpretations are going to be highly varied, because interpretations of paintings like that are all there is.
It's like the old joke about the stark white canvas: it's an albino standing naked in a snowstorm waving a flag of surrender. That kind of thing. If someone else walks up, looks sideways at it, and proclaims it a perfect summation of the futility of man's existence in an uncaring universe, it's still a blank canvas.
Jason wrote: "It's hard to argue with someone who says that their blue square is an externalization of their mood, how they feel when they wake up alone on a cold, December morning, or that their red and yellow square is the light behind their eyes when they squeeze them shut in anger. Certainly we can't treat it as objectively as a painting of what's supposed to be a car, but resembles a horse. ..."Here is the wonderfully exciting and frustrating thing about deciphering and interpreting art. We're all right.
When viewing abstract art, the impetus and responsibility often lies upon the viewer, hence abstraction. We are all going to have unique experiences based upon an illogical creation, as emotions are not logically based. How do you create let alone respond to something that is illogical?
That doesn't make sense and is absolutely frustrating, but its also spiritual in a way.
Now here's where it gets really confusing. When you, not you specifically of course, combine economics; aka, an established morgue of expired artists and their works into a single location, and I am typecasting about a museum of course, with the ambiguous or lack of intent, in certain cases, the function of that object has now become more focused simply by being put on display for the public, or private audiences in some cases. It is now deemed "art" because of its environment.
The artist is not ignorant to this notion. Marcel Duchamp really took this notion to heart when he signed a urinal and hung it a gallery, R. Mutt, and said, "now it is art". He transfigured the object and gave it new meaning by plagiarizing and making light of preconceived notions of the society's expectations and molded them into what they should expect, which in essence was, nothing. Duchamp would create the notion of what art was, and your opinion was nothing. He dictated the final word.
Now this certainly ticked folks off and artists have been running with the ball ever since, but the difference is that artists, in maybe the past 50 - 60 years have had a more equilateral approach to their message. That being, the response of the viewer is as important as the process to the object.
So is it a blank canvas? Yes. Is it a statement of the artist's state of mind during a very uncreative period in his/her career? Yes.
We're all right.
By the way, this is not intended to be an argument, but I find this subject to be particularly intriguing and gives me an excuse to babble.
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Mos def! It's just a discussion, and I appreciate the viewpoint of those who know a heck of a lot more about art than I do.
Now here's where it gets really confusing. When you, not you specifically of course, combine economics; aka, an established morgue of expired artists and their works into a single location, and I am typecasting about a museum of course, with the ambiguous or lack of intent, in certain cases, the function of that object has now become more focused simply by being put on display for the public, or private audiences in some cases. It is now deemed "art" because of its environment.
Therein lies the rub. What factors, and who, decides that one blue rectangle, by Barnett Newman, is worth hanging in a gallery and being viewed, and another blue rectangle isn't? What unevenly applied paint parallelogram is worth 44 million dollars, and which isn't?
When I see a Rembrandt or a Diebenkorn hanging in a museum, it may or may not speak to me (or speak to me equally), but I have some idea why they're worth that level of attention and praise. It's not art merely because of its context, but also because of its content. Hang Onement VI in the most famous museum in Paris, and guard it with laser beams and sharp toothed dogs, and I'll still fail to see why another blue rectangle wouldn't have served just as well in its place.
Jason wrote: "Therein lies the rub. What factors, and who, decides that one blue rectangle, by Barnett Newman, is worth hanging in a gallery and being viewed, and another blue rectangle isn't? What unevenly applied paint parallelogram is worth 44 million dollars, and which isn't?I ..."I don't have any easy answers to your first question.
Many times I believe it is more a matter of being able to sell yourself and not simply convincing the world that your art is worth buying, or more importantly, believing. It isn't simply being the loudest person but being the most believable and convincing. If an artist can convince himself that what he is doing is honest, then he should be able to convince the world.
In terms of what is more valuable, it really is more a question of context. A parallelogram, had it painted in the 17th c. would never have happened, or if it had, that artist would have deemed a witch a sent to burn. Said burning artist would make for a wonderful history painting and THAT artist would be seen as a genius by the king and we'd probably be talking about that painter today. But as with human beings, art evolves as so does society.
This doesn't exactly answer your question, but to do so means looking at art in a larger, macroscopic perspective to help get a better understanding. This doesn't mean you'll love it, I know I don't love everything, but it may make for some more context.
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Might be the cynic in me, but that sounds like history written by the victors. Somehow I doubt the unknown blue square painter slaving away in his basement studio and eating Ramen noodles will be much consoled by the idea that his blue squares aren't an honest enough reflection of his views, while similar looking paintings are admired and sold for thousands or millions of dollars. I'd rather leave something up to talent rather than the luck of the draw, myself. Not that it doesn't take luck and drive and those kinds of things anyway, but still...
Jason, you have the right to be cynical, as I too believe that history, art or otherwise, will always be written by the victors.
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Ugh. Unless you like sparkly things, I guess.
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Happy America day, everybody! I'm celebrating mine in Hong Kong today (where it's been the 4ht for more than 10 hours now).
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You know, I think I've only seen one Olivier performance, and that was in Marathon Man. Was he actually a great actor?
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http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
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Just posted this on my blog today: Misogyny at the Book ClubCurious about the thoughts of the Bookhouse Boys community.
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