Counterbalance

Today is Friday, but it's not THE Friday

 

  

Reader-Writer Moments #432 & #433

"I see a lot of people, especially younger people, they involve themselves---they have an opportunity to open a restaurant---they involve themselves heart and soul, and that's good, but to the point where they may get burned out. My viewpoint is, there are other parts to life that are very important, and it's by maintaining that balance that I can always find this to be exciting and always get pleasure out of being involved in cooking. If this is the only thing I do and I do it eighteen hours a day, it becomes drudgery and something I may not look forward to. A friend of mine felt that way: he hated to go back into the bakeshop, into the kitchen, and that's terrible if it comes to that, because then he doesn't do a good job. You're not happy, you're miserable, you don't look forward to it."

"You know an artist is represented by his or her paintings or drawings or sculpture, the quality of it...I think we project our values by the food we have on the plate, not necessarily in an artistic sense, but in the sense of flavors we offer. I always feel that when I put food on the plate for my family---anybody---I'm saying 'I feel good about this. This is what I believe is good food. If it's not good food, I wouldn't put it there. This is what I like, this is my standard, this is what I believe is good food and I hope you enjoy it.' I think you make a value statement every time."

        -Ferdinand Metz, speaking to Michael Ruhlman in The Making of a Chef

Oh yes.

 
Absolutely, 100%, with every fiber of my being, yes.  A swoon-worthy reading "room", no?

I've spent the morning admiring the gorgeous of work of another very talented Richard Powers (not Echo Maker, Galatea 2.2, The Gold Bug Variations Powers, but Federal NSW Australia, Havana, Kuala Lumpur Richard Powers) and I'm smitten & transported & thrilled. 

Wonder if the two have ever met? Wonder if I could write a whole story about men named Richard Powers?  Wonder if that sounds as nutty/cool to you as it does to me. No matter - breathtaking work that has my brain making other connections to other artists is always a good thing.

Photo above of Fire Canyon House in Santa Barbara, via Apartment Therapy.

Finding Inspiration in Unusual Places

It has been so long since I blogged properly (tweets don't count) that I didn't even know my login/password to Typepad.  That's a sad, sad state of affairs.  I'm still questioning many of the points raised in my post on loving books/being done with books - namely having something of value to add to the mix that isn't already being added by the vast number of those who blog about and report on books.  I've also been working my ass off, so there's that.  Mortgages, taxes, a family member with cancer, and neighbors with attorneys can seriously hamper your productivity.

What it all comes down to though is this - I need to be writing a book.  And the more time I spend writing about the writing of books, the less I write my book. Simple, you'd think. But oh so not. I believe there is something else I wish to do with it all - some site, some group blog, some channel that will take everything to the next level.  I don't know what that is yet (do you?) so I'm taking my inspiration where I can find it and remaining open to many creative/design influences. That "next level thing" is in me somewhere, I just need to tap into it.

Until said thing is located, here's what I've been inspired by lately:

  

(Loeffler Randall's Poppy Perforated Sandal, Man on Wire film, David Turbridge's stunning Floral Pendant, Amienne font by ascender fonts)

Reader-Writer Moment #428

I haven't had a moment of "oh yes, this is spot on" in a long time and while I've been enjoying Seth Greenland's Shining City, it wasn't until the revelatory end that I arrived at this pasage:

"It must be glorious to exist in the eternal present, Marcus thought, as he watched the littled dog dig a hole. He wished he had faith. He envied those who did, and the blissful afterlife they were promised. In the meantime, this was the dirty world in which he found himself, the moist field on which he played; this realm of animal and mineral, salt, iron, water, dust, light, desire, and darkness. He'd seen it up close, tasted it, felt it in his pores. It was the essence, bountiful and life-giving, and human beings wanted to touch it, wanted to live, to stretch their spines, arch their backs, and, arms spread, face the sun, fingertips reaching upward toward the eternal sky. But they needed to go to school, to work, to make money, to raise families, to bury the dead. He understood. He knew."

I suspect that many are feeling this unique brand of desire mixed with harsh reality at the moment. The beauty of this passage, though, is that it resonates in any time, any place. It strikes me as a dreamy example of damn good writing.

Shifting

 

I've been caught in a whirlwind of goodness and not so goodness and there's so much going on I've been unable to stop and think.  For the past two days I've been sick and had to settle down.  A wonderful thing has happened as a result: glimmers of a story (that until now have appeared in quick bursts of half-memory, half-make-believe only to fade as soon as I re-focus back on the insanity of my working life) have become concrete. I'm mining past moments to tease it all out, but it is happening.

I must work again today - despite the holiday. Crazy/un-fun deadlines press down on me and add a tension to my shoulders I cannot fully describe.

But - it is happening.  I must stay in this zone and allow this story to unfold. I must believe that a day is coming where I can focus only on this. Until then, I will be at one end of counterbalance, far from the fulcrum. (Image via.)

Hannah Tinti Compares Diaz to DFW

Flavorwire has an interview with Hannah Tinti, author of the remarkable Animal Crackers and The Good Thief (must read this pronto), in which she talks of managing creative writing classes:

"A lot of teaching a creative writing class is about managing personalities. Learning how to workshop something so that everyone leaves a room feeling inspired, rather than depressed."

And likens Junot Diaz to DFW:

"It would be some sort of combination of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and like David Foster Wallace, or something like that — particularly with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with all the footnotes and asides."

I'm with her on the first point, less so on the second one.  Yet I think its safe to say I'm biased in favor of DFW and I'll admit that if someone compared me to Robert Luis Stevenson, I'd probably flatter them right back as well.

LA Weekly Woes

While it is no surprise to many in LA that our beloved LA Weekly has undergone a transformation as of late, nothing shines a light brighter on the dismal state of affairs than Marc Cooper's LA Weekly: The Autopsy Report (via) posted on his blog last night. Wow. Just. Wow.

I'm most saddened about the changes because LA Weekly regularly published original fiction by a great number of interesting voices and many insightful bookish writers can be found within its pages.  The paper is (was?) also a welcome antidote, sorry to say it, to LAT, when it comes to annual lists of books to be read and so forth.  We'll see where the cards fall on this one...

Lit Bits & A Bit About Reading Resolutions

• Sad news in the Bookish LA world which I'm sure you're all well aware of by now - Glenn Goldman, owner & founder of the essential Book Soup, has died. The bookish crowd has written several excellent posts on the subject and I suspect more will be penned in the coming days.  The bits that spoke most directly to me include: David Ulin at Jacket Copy (where there are some lovely comment tributes as well), C. Max Magee & Edan Lepucki at The Millions and Goldman's LA Times obituary.
• Book Soup is also for sale. As I have the pleasure of covering bookish events each week, I see first-hand how the sale and/or closure of fine book stores affect not just our wider literary culture, but how they have a literal effect upon the number of readings in a given week, month or year that Angelenos can attend.  The loss of Dutton's was immense, the loss of so many other great bookstores added insult to injury, and I hope as I'm sure all of you do that the important work that Goldman started at Book Soup will continue on, regardless of who ultimately owns it in the future.
• The first Week in Bookish LA in 2009 is off to an ambitious start, with a load of events crammed into Thursday and Pinky's Carolyn's pick of the week, Denis Dutton (editor of Arts & Letters Daily) at the Central Library @ 7pm on Wednesday night discussing his book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution with Michael Shermer.
• Slumdog Millionaire is quite good, and I do love a good Danny Boyle jaunt, but it is not the best film ever made, nor is it the best film I've ever seen or even one of the best films I've seen in the past five years, as so many are stating.  I can't help but feel our need to have hope in these dark times is the reason the beat-the-odds message of this film resonates with so many, on such a deep level. I'm trying to think of a recent book equivalent, but can't come up with one at the ready. You?
• Not only do I love that Richard Nash at Soft Skull is asking for feedback on cover art preferences for Pasha Malla's debut short story collection, The Withdrawal Method, I love that I found out via @softskull.  Vroman's tweets regularly (@vromans) and I've gotta say, outside of my unwieldy Google Reader feed bonanza, Twitter is my main source for links, info, general vibe of a given day, etc. I wish more bookstores, readers & writers would get thee to Twitter.
• I'm not one who typically goes in for the reading resolutions that so many folks are making, but I can't deny the lure of mapping out a year of reading. There is something so controlledabout such a plan and reading for me (and I suspect most of you) is nearly the opposite of controlled. One book leads me to another, one author leads me to countless others, a conversation, a tweet, a dinner, a film...all lead me to something else.  While I like the idea of mapping out this chaos, I know it will never stick. Yet, still I find I want to jot things down.  See what I'm thinking of reading just to...see. Not resolutions per se, but maybe mini-resos that are...plausible.  As I expect to read several new books this year (some of which are known to me at this moment in time and so many that are not), I'll stick with the not-new ones I very much want to get to: re-read all of David Mitchell in prep for his forthcoming novel & finish up all of Bolano (only The Savage Detectives remains) so that I can properly tackle 2666.  That seems doable. Right?

The Halting & The Hoping

These words are overdue & I'll attempt to speak as plainly as possible:

 

• I stopped blogging about books because everything began to feel like one big self-congratulatory circle of those in the know slapping backs and those not in the know trying desperately to elbow in. I did not want to play the who could link faster game any longer. I lost interest in adding to the noise simply to do so. I decided I'd only post if I had something new to contribute to the larger bookish conversation.
• This desire to only contribute new insight or new informatio instead of re-reporting what has been reported elsewhere, quickly became a fire that touched everything else I'd normally touch.  My not-yet-launched wine blog seemed instantly stale and blogging at LAist confused me further.  Despite how insanely busy these past few months have been at work, I still wanted to blog every day. I found that not blogging was just as challenging as blogging.  Each time I opened a post, I had to ask myself: will you be adding to the conversation with this post? Or will you instead be summarizing a reporter's hard work? Or linking and citing and sourcing still others' work?  Or, in my time-honored habit, will I be whining (as it could be argued I'm doing here) about something that is specific to me and may be of little interest to anyone other than me? It is amazing how little I had to say when I couldn't fall back on my usual tricks!
• Then DFW left us and I was gutted (yes, Mark, gutted) for a spell so long it surprised me. There were many things I wanted to say about DFW and how his writing affected and inspired me in a way that few writers have and that I did not even fully realize until he was gone.  Yet, before I could assemble my thoughts cogently and attempt to get them on the page, the coverage of him became so insane that to even express the depth of his work and its influence on me would have seemed tawdry & cheap.  Like I was glomming on.
• I sunk further into frustration when I saw that many others, who had not read his work and seemed only to know of a few factoids and his celebrity, used his death as an opportunity to cast the spotlight in their own direction. I loved, however, the tributes of those who cared a great deal and I'm ashamed to say I'm getting teary-eyed now just thinking about them.

• I have missed interviewing authors, but I have not missed reading every new book that comes out on insane deadlines so that I have no time to read any books except the new, new, new books. I have taken great pleasure these past few months in reading books that were published long ago.
• I am saddened about the state of publishing, of the plight of independent bookstores, of the LA Times Book Review, of the LAT in general, of so many, many things that are central to ensuring that talented, undiscovered writers find readers.
• This is where I come full-circle. Despite all my uneasiness about the state of blogging and my deeply felt quest to only contribute something new to the conversation, I've come to see that books and the writers who write them (hah!) need all the attention they can get. I suspect that will be the case in 2009 even more so. 
• I can't tell you exactly what this means for Counterbalance, but I can tell you I'm back.  I spend most of my daily hours working with clients on digital marketing, social media and other online programs to ensure their ideas, products and brands are known, clearly understood, and sought after by the right audience. I spend the remaining daily hours reading novels (and attempting to write them) and worrying that other writers and their books aren't getting the attention they deserve. Seems to me this confluence of forces should produce something new to add to the conversation in 2009...I do hope you'll join me.

The Persistence of Fire Alarms

There are many reasons for the eerily quiet posting schedule here as of late (and as I've promised and over-promised, I'm sure it will all trickle out in good time because I've no intention of abandoning the blog ship entirely), yet there is one reason in particular that has had me over the barrel and unable to come up for air in months.  I've just remembered (and am oddly comforted by) a spot-on passage from Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris:

"A new client pitch due Monday meant a full week of one o'clock nights and a few hours of sleep on random sofas on Sunday. It was called a fire alarm, and when one came along you had to drop everything. There was no going to the gym. Theater tickets were canceled. You saw no one, not your five-year-old, not your marriage counselor, not your sponsor, not even your dog. We feared the fire alarm."

Consider this month - and last month and the month before that - the month of the persistent, never-ending, always looming, ever-terrifying fire alarm.  I have not seen my dog, I've not seen the inside of my gym in months (and it shows) and there have been many theater, event, and travel cancellations.  As the year winds down and I try to catch up on much needed sanity and sleep, I'm hoping to have a fire alarm-less life in the first part of 2009 so I can get some reading & writing done.

Mightier, Indeed

 

I am so, so sad to have missed out on this limited edition print by Seb Lester.  I've got several pieces from the excellent Keep Calm gallery, but this one seemed destined to be mine. Alas, it sold out almost as soon as it was introduced earlier this week. 

Bookish LA Still Delivers

I'm inching my way back into the blogging world by slow degrees and yes that means I've missed many excellent readings in the past two months. It also means I've been spotty with my LAist Get Your Lit On coverage.

But I'm back and Get Your Lit On: The Week in Bookish LA is up. It is lovely to see that even though I've been on hiatus, the LA lit scene is still delivering excellent evenings of writerly pontification and inspiration.

The one must-see event for this week? Tomorrow night's group reading for The Paris Interviews Vol III at The Hammer Museum with Philip Gourevitch, Stephen Gaghan, Mona Simpson and...surprise literary guests. Delicious! 

Be there or...you know the drill.

Blog is Four, Might Keep It Around

 

 

  

Nine Days & Counting

It would be a lie to say anything other than this: I've not been present in the litblog, reading, writing, fiction scene for over a month.  I've not posted. I've not even had the patience to update the links at left and right that are date-sensitive and that are so obviously now past their prime. 

It would be easy for many of you to assume (and thank you for your vote of confidence) that I have been writing like a madwoman during my absence.  Sadly, it isn't so. 

Life has been by turns hectic and sad and inspiring and confusing and seems to require every last drop of energy and wit I can muster, leaving no time for other pursuits. I have missed all of you and I have missed writing dearly.

We've got nine days until a historic election and I'm giving it everything I have.  Hopefully, you are too.  I'll be back once we've taken our country back.

Truly Counterbalancing

Mr. Counterbalance and I are headed to a wedding up north this weekend and are extending our stay for a week in Napa.  Much as I rolled my eyes at Napa the entire time I grew up in the Bay Area, I find that while some of my angles have hardened with age, my attitude towards Napa has not.  Instead, it has mellowed and since Napa itself seems almost entirely over itself (finally!), it's a perfect time to visit.

I'll be blogging about it all at my new (not yet launched) wine blog.  I'll announce its launch here in the coming days for those who wish to check it out and follow along. Of course, no vacation is a proper vacation for me without lugging along a pile of books. As always, the pile is ambitious, but I'm confident I'll have quite a variety of reading at the ready.  My pile thus far:

• Flaubert & Turvenev The Complete Correspondence Edited & Translated by Barbar Beaumont
• Flying to America by Donald Barthelme
• By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano
• The Exquisite by Laird Hunt
• Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

For kicks, I've thrown in Delaney's dhalgren. I could just make my life easier and bring only the dhalgren...but then I'll get antsy and feel trapped without options.  While I'm steadfastly against The Kindle (for reasons I can't properly articulate) I can see its use in moments like these when I'd like to bring my entire library along for perusal...just in case.

RIP David Foster Wallace

My heart is in my throat as I type this.  But, alas, it is true. David Foster Wallace ended it all on Friday.

DFW is gone.

More when I can wrap my head around this news...

UPDATE: Still processing, as are many readers & writers who've emailed.  Until I get my act together, here is the four-part series, DFW on the Installment Plan, that I wrote about his reading in Westwood at the Hammer Museum in 2006:

• Going to See the Unseeable Man
• DFW on the Installment Plan Part One: The Cold, Cold Hammer Courtyard
• DFW on the Installment Plan Part Two: Consider Me Smitten-Humbled-Smitten
  
• DFW on the Installment Plan Part Three: The Things We Do for Love
  
• DFW on the Installment Plan Part Four: Thank Goodness for Kenyon
  

Seth Greenland Nails It & Gets Me in Trouble

Seth Greenland, author of The Bones and the just-out Shining City, takes a stroll around the contradictory mess that is John McCain's brain as he weighs his VP pick options.

I laughed out loud - very, very loud - several times. In a very quiet place where serious things are taking place and I'm supposed to be quiet as a mouse or some other supposedly similarly quiet creature (Why always a mouse? I've never met a quiet one).  Not good. So not good. Lots of turned heads. Eye-rolls. Looks of utter disdain. Several throat-clearings directed my way.

But oh so worth it.

Do check it out.

Lit Bits & A Bit About Running Up Escalators in Heels Whilst Carrying Glass

• I have finished Natsuo Kirino's Out, finally. Thank goodness. Every night I'd race through it, only to find my dreams were labyrinthine and urgent and dark. I woke every morning of this week exhausted from my murder-mystery-esque dreams.  While many have praised Kirino for her writing style, that wasn't what impressed me. Instead, I kept marveling again and again at how she got me to root for truly evil, disturbed people.  I was questioning my own moral codes and beliefs with every page I turned. I didn't quite know what to make of it all.  That is the sign, at least to me, of a very fierce talent.  Grotesque has been moved from the bookshelf to the just-next-to-the-bed waiting stack.
• I have reached a stage in my novel-writing where I want to do little else but write it. I fear any interference (work, social gatherings, travel, other writing) that will take me out of my writerly tunnel. I've spent so many years involved in so many things, soaking it all in, making notes. Now, it would make me blissfully happy if I could state simply to the world (or at least, to all those in my little world): I'll be writing for the next three months, let's catch up at Christmas. Is that wrong?  No matter, it's not realistic.  Must find a way to not be a complete social outcast and disappointer of many by Christmas.
• Fresh off Kirino's Out, I thought a heavy dose of the September fashion magazines (they're so big! with all those new things! all those pretty pictures that don't involve murder or cutting people up!) would lighten things up. Yet after Vogue and Elle and W and Marie Claire, I found I was missing the fix of another plot-driven novel. After so many years of quiet tales and gorgeous sentences, I find I'm now up for any kind of tale, as long as it confounds me til the almost-end. (I suspect this is also because my greatest weakness as a writer is plot and I'm looking for clues.)  What to do? I devoured The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martínez in one sitting. It had me going until the very end and even when I suspected it might disappoint (which, ultimately, I think it did) I was still gloriously unaware of how it might end...which is very good. Quite often I can ferret out how things will wrap up well before I should...and it is my least favorite thing to discover at any point in a novel. Martínez did a great job of leaving just enough loose threads that could lead anywhere.  In the final summation, I didn't buy how it ended.  But I enjoyed the ride.
• As I cast about for to read next (forgoing all the things I am supposed to be reading for interviews and articles and the like), I find I'm scanning my bookshelves for unread mysteries or darker tales. I suspect it is time to visit Sarah's backlog of recommendations with a far keener eye.
• Maybe this focuse on crime novels is an obvious response to my post-Revolutionary Road, post-Human Smoke gaze?
• In between working and writing and taking an odd turn in my reading, I've been very focused on the election. I had questions about Biden, but yesterday's rally set most of my fears to rest. A new fear, however, has supplanted it: when did nearly every "straightforward, unbiased" news source get so out of whack? On NPR and CNN alone this week, I've seen terrible displays of partisan reporting - and not from their designated pundits but from reporters who are meant to deliver facts and unbiased analysis. Then, yesterday's hit by the AP's Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier hit it all home. Very troubling stuff. And lame points go to Yahoo for blindly (or not so?) running Associated Press stories. It has been interesting to see the central news box of the Yahoo home page become a shill as well, inadvertently or not.
• At least when Frank Rich writes something so heavily leaning to one side, it is placed accurately in Opinions.
• Despite all this activity of the week, the most time-consuming and painful of all has been this: falling on broken glass and moving escalator treads at the office on Monday, slicing my hand and arm and knees in several places, and spending a fascinating number of hours in the emergency room. There is a lot here to muse over, to ponder, to gain writerly inspiration from, but after a week of dressing wounds each day and finding new ways to function in the world with one side of my body in awful pain, the only clear insight I can offer now is that same insight I twittered once I returned from the emergency room: if you are wearing heels and carrying a glass bottle of Pellegrino, it is not wise to run up the escalator in a mad rush to start your conference call on time. It is not worth it. Really. This could be the universe telling me, in a rather blunt and literal way, to slow the hell down. For the rest of the week, I have stepped quietly to the side as I've watched countless hurriers race up and down the escalators. I have resisted the urge to hurry right along with them.
• I have also stopped getting Pellegrino with lunch.   

The Value of a Book

"'But then what is literature?'

'Well, for instance, Marcel Proust. Or James Joyce.'

'Joyce?' he asked, moving closer. 'The one who wrote Ulysses? I tried to read it. It's boring. To be honest, I don't know what books like that are any good for.'

'How do you mean?'

'Nobody reads it, that Ulysses. Three people have read it, and then they live off it for the rest of their lives, writing articles and going to conferences. But no one else has ever got through it.'

'Well now', I said, throwing Werewolves on to the floor. 'Let me tell you that the value of a book doesn't depend on how many people read it. The brilliance of the Mona Lisa doesn't depend on how many people file past her every year. The greatest of books have few readers, because reading them requires an effort. But it's precisely that effort that gives rise to the aesthetic effect. Literary junk-food will never give you anything of the kind.'"

       -The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin