Esther Press

Currently reading:

On Art and Life, John Ruskin
Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
3rd bed #11
ArtNews/November 2006
Mulligan Stew, Gilbert Sorrentino

Certain first purchase of the new year: The Complete Poetry

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Making plans, forgetting them, remembering tangents of, misplacing the tangents, remembering incorrectly the reasons.

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Robert Creeley's poem "There..." from his Away:


There is a world
underneath, or
on top of,
this one--and
it's here, now.

The argument for the United States to stay in Iraq due to the fear of an Iraqi government collapse/massive chaos is one of misplaced bravado and naivete, as there seems little doubt that whatever U.S.-approved Iraqi government takes over will be overthrown in short time because it is U.S.-approved. The argument for the continued presence there is really just your basic face-save, but we really have no more face to save at this point. Egotistic pride should never trump the killing of thousands and the daily pain of millions.

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Bush should just stop selling the world on the false binary of "freedom" and "hate," because no one's falling for any of it. No one would ever want U.S. "freedom," precisely because it means a lot of dead people, a lot of destoyed homes, destroyed utilities, frustration, anger, and grief.

Watched Unprecedented: The 2000 Election last night. A truly dismal accounting of the subterfuge, outright lying, staged Republican outrage, and ridiculous conflicts of interest (i.e., Katherine Harris being George Bush's Florida campaign co-chair AND the grotesque who also decided the fate of the recounting). It's truly amazing how any of it was allowed. This year, all of the empty threats the smirking idiots could muster couldn't derail, finally, the taking back of Congress by the Democrats.

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Also began Ozu's Tokyo Story. A sad, quiet film about the impossibilities of meeting needs.

I've read the first 47 pages of Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. It's clever, amusing, self-aware, full of literary pranks, half-hidden diatribes, nonsense, and a lot of snidely parodic exclamation points. All of this is fine, I guess. I did snicker a few times, but I also felt that, ultimately, something essential really isn't being risked. The daring is all in the parody of the literary styles and the egomania of writers (the part I've liked the most)(variations on "please tell me more about my novel, my poem, etc"), while the author himself gets to hide behind the invented chaos, beneath the persona of Anthony Lamont and several other creations. I admit to never liking this kind of frame, as it's so easy to stand behind a sarcastic front and never reveal one's self entirely. Still, I'm enjoying the book, though I wish it would take the real author along for the corrosion.

Watched Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage, the six-hour version. As a document on marriage, on the silences between one another and what they contain, it is a seering, painful, honest, and unflinching look. But with the direct emotional conversations, I felt the cold light of it was almost too much. I didn't and don't trust the harshness, as was apparent many times throughout the movie, when the lead actor would state how much he hated his wife, then ex-wife, then lover again, and yet they would become intimate again shortly after. The dance of the passing emotions is really what's on display here, and for that I really love this film. No other films move toward such delicate gravity, such deep existential grief, such grainy fear, as Bergman's.

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Also finished the documentary on Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train. It's a collection of speeches and interviews and cut-up history, which is fine, engaging, and informative, but it seemed to have no real organization. Perhaps I'm not the one the documentary is intended for, as it functions as a kind of primer on Zinn. I was hoping for more.

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Not-so interesting how the Labor Department has released an extremely rosy picture of employment just a few days before the election. Lowest rates in five and a half years! I expect in another day Bush will find the cure for AIDS on one of his morning jogs.

Continuing from the previous note...both parties are being disingenuous about Kerry's comment, because at heart--whether as a joke on the president or a more cruel joke on the soldiers in the military--it is true, and it is what has always been the case, though it may not be about intelligence as much as it is about class. It is certainly true that the underclass does the killing and dying for the overclass. That can not be disputed. And, certainly, the military is made up of primarily highschool graduates and highschool dropouts--the age for enlistment is purposively situated at age 18, which is the exact age when a young man or woman has to make the leap, usually, from the years of mandatory schooling to a career. It is not age 21 that the military comes calling, which would cause it to lose a large amount of candidates, as the men and women would be further ensconced in a job, in a family, in a routine, etc. It's 18. 18 is also the age when a person is trying to figure out what to do. The military pursues you for a job, not the other way around, like it did me in my junior year. You don't have to even look for a job. They have it all planned for you. Just sign the dotted line. They'll take care of everything, just like the schools did. The subsequent shushing-up of Kerry, and Kerry's apology, was about agendas and political infights and the upcoming election, but the shushing-up was also the overclass (from both parties) telling one of its own (Kerry) to not say such things in public, not because of the supposed offensiveness, which was used as the reason this time, but because the overclass doesn't want to talk about class and certainly doesn't want the underclass to start.

Things really have to enter into a state of severe illogic when the president and his party are asking for someone else (Senator Kerry) to apologize to the American people and troops in Iraq over a comment made about their own failed policy. Bush doesn't have enough days in front of him to apologize for all of his own chosen horrors.