Gonzalo Barr

Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.
–Gustave Flaubert

Writing is a lonely job.
– Isaac Asimov

Writing is a lonely job.
– Stephen King

Writing is a lonely process.
– Manil Suri

There’s a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don’t really have access to except at the moment when you’re writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self.  […]  To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.
–Salman Rushdie

Sources: Gustave Flaubert quote from goodreads (accessed Jan. 27, 2009), Isaac Asimov quote from goodreads (accessed Jan. 27, 2009), Stephen King quote from the USF Writing Community Server (accessed Jan. 27, 2009), Manil Suri quote from Ziya Us Salam, “Writing is a lonely process” The Hindu (Jan. 20, 2008), Salman Rushdie quote from Patricia Cohen, “Now He’s Only Hunted by Cameras,” The New York Times (May 25, 2008)

Sometimes an idea makes perfect sense when you first think of it only to lose its brilliance in the execution.  Late last year I promised myself not to buy any books in 2009.  I had accumulated an embarrassing number of books that were still unread, hundreds of books with spines that had been faded by the sun and by time, yet were smooth, uncreased.  So late last year I decreed a “moratorium” on the buying of books, convinced that the very weight of that word would dissuade me from violating it.

It didn’t.

January is not yet over and already I have accumulated another dozen books.  So much for my “resolution,” a cousin of the verb, “to resolve,” which sounds like “dissolve,” and which, in my case, is exactly what happened to it.

But there’s hope.

They say that the first step to a cure is to recognize you have a problem.  So OK, I recognize it.  I admit it.  I like to buy books almost as much as I like to read them.  The only problem here is that I can buy a lot faster than I can read.

Take War and Peace for instance.  If I were to create a table that compared the time it took me to buy the book versus the time it is taking me to read it, the table would look like this –

Time elapsed from beginning to end of purchasing process…………….3 mins., 23 secs. [executed in 1972]
Time elapsed from beginning to completion of reading process……..36 yrs., 5 mos., 29 days, 6 hrs., 14 mins., and counting

They also say that every long journey begins with a first step.  Rather than fight my purchasing proclivity, I have decided to amend my resolution so that it does not contradict my nature, but instead harmonizes with it.  The solution is astonishingly simple.

So here it is, my amended resolution regarding the buying of books in 2009 –

Buy no few new books.

That’s language I can live with, both in the spirit and the letter.  There’s no hurry to define what I mean by “few.”  It’s still January.

Italo Calvino on editing –

The world is so complicated, tangled, and overloaded that to see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune.

Source: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1981, trans. William Weaver), at 242, quoted in Jay Kauffmann, “Understated Prose: The Beauty of Conveying More with Less,” The Writer’s Chronicle (Dec. 2008), at 58

Previously, I posted about the danger of the CERN Hadron collider accidentally creating a black hole that would swallow first Switzerland, then the rest of the earth. The event, if it were to occur, could presumably look like this –

The good news is that when scientists threw the switch, back in September, there was a problem with one of the cooling units and they had to turn it off again.  Instead of the machine coming on line in December 2008, oblivion was postponed until January 2009, which is when they estimated they could get a repairman to come fix it.  (My previous posts on the travails of the CERN Hadron collider are here and here).

Well, there’s more good news.  It seems that it will now take even longer, perhaps until June 2009, before they can fix the cooling system and throw the switch a second time.   From a CERN press release about the repairs –

The initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel. Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no one was put at risk.

Detailed studies of the malfunction have allowed the LHC’s engineers to identify means of preventing a similar incident from reoccurring in the future, and to design new protection systems for the machine. A total of 53 magnet units have to be removed from the tunnel for cleaning or repair, of these, 28 have already been brought to the surface and the first two replacement units have been installed in the tunnel. The current schedule foresees the final magnet being reinstalled by the end of March 2009, with the LHC being cold and ready for powering tests by the end of June 2009.

I know the CERN people mean well.  I know the idea behind the press release is to tell the world that they have a handle on things, but reading it makes me wonder if they know what they are doing.  An electrical short causes the cooling system to break down and their solution is to dismantle half the machine.  What started as a problem with two magnets ended up requiring the replacement of 53 magnets.  Everyone knows that when you have a problem with a refrigerator, you call the Maytag repairman, not some guy who looks like Dr. Evil.

  versus  

In any case, they won’t try to throw the switch on oblivion again for a few more months, so relax.  Enjoy.  Everything is under control.

Source:  “LHC to restart in 2009,” CERN Press Release (Dec. 5, 2008)

Shelly Koontz, a 39-year-old woman from Independence, Iowa, was arrested Thursday night for not returning a library book that she checked out last April.  Library staff members made four phone calls, sent three letters and one certified letter, to her.  In September, a police officer went to her house and told her daughter that Koontz had to pay for the book or return it.  In October, the library contacted the police and pressed charges of theft against her.

She claims that she lost the book during a move out of town.

The gazetteonline.com quotes her as saying –

“I do think it’s extreme going to jail over a library book.”

Police chief Rick Deitrick said –

“Theft is theft, no matter what it is.”

The book cost USD 13.95.

In August 2008, Heidi Dalibor, was arrested in Wisconsin for keeping two library books two months past their due date.

Source: Orlan Love and Jeff Raasch, “Woman embarrassed, angry over library book arrest,” gazetteonline.com (Jan. 23, 2009)(story no longer available)

Compare and contrast –

(1) The review in “History of the Movies” of the film, Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), based on the novel by Arthur Golden –

In the film we see lots of money exchanging hands in the mizuage ritual, a coming-of-age ritual when a young apprentice geisha essentially “sold” her virginity to the highest bidder.

[…] the mizuage ritual was important for her in a couple of ways. If, like Sayuri, her mizuage fetched a high price, her debt to her geisha house could be reduced or even eliminated.

(2) An excerpt from the news –

Student auctions off virginity for offers of more than £2.5 million
A student who is auctioning her virginity to pay for a masters degree in Family and Marriage therapy has seen bidding hit £2.5million ($3.7m).

Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her.

Last September, […] she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed.

The student who has a degree in Women’s Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself.

Miss Dylan, from San Diego, California, USA, said she was persuaded to offer herself to the highest bidder after her sister Avia, 23, paid for her own degree after working as a prostitute for three weeks.

[…]

Miss Dylan said she did not think it was particularly significant to be willing to sell your virginity and insisted that she was happy to undergo medical tests for any doubters.

[…]

“My study is completely authentic in that I truly am auctioning my virginity but I am not being sold into this. I’m not being taken advantage of in any way.

“I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal.”

Other cases of Art vs. Life are here, here, and here.

Sources: Cathy Shultz, “History of the Movies” (Dec. 25, 2005), reviewing the film, Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), based on the novel by Arthur Golden, “Student auctions off virginity for offers of more than £2.5 million,” The Telegraph (Jan. 12, 2009)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., gives writers some advice –

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Class dismissed.

Source: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Introduction,” Bogombo Snuff Box (1999), at 12, quoted in Michael P. Kardos, “In Defense of Starting Early,” The Writer’s Chronicle (Feb. 2009), at 66

Haruki Murakami will receive the Jerusalem Book Fair prize on February 15, the opening day of the fair.  Judges cited his “artistic achievements and love of people.”  The award is given to authors whose works uphold personal freedom.

Source:  “Jerusalem book fair prize announced,” Jerusalem Post (Jan. 21, 2009) via publisherslunchdeluxe blog

Women in Naples, Italy threatened not to have sex with their men if they lit fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

The group of women called itself “Se Spari, Niente Sesso” (If you shoot, no sex).  Their aim was to discourage the use of dangerous fireworks.

Carolina Staiano, […] who is leading the campaign, said it has started with twenty women in the town of Lettere near Naples “almost as a joke” but had spread “like wildfire” by e-mail and mobile phone over the past month to the point where “I can’t keep up.”  [… She] has spent her life caring for father, who became semi-paralysed after someone let off a firework next to him at New Year, injuring his legs.  […]

“If a sex strike is what it takes in order to get the attention of our men, husbands, partners and sons, then we’re ready for it,” she [said]. “This time they’re just going to have to choose: sex or fireworks.”

Lysistrata was unavailable for comment.

For more Art vs. Life, see here and here.

Image: “Lysistrata” illustration by Aubrey Beardsley (1896), article on Lysistrata, wikipedia; Source: Richard Owen, “Naples women go on sex strike over firework injuries,” The Times (Dec. 31, 2008)

It could be called the history of everyday life — books by people with minimum wage jobs that require public exposure and thus provide them with a vantage point from which to observe the world.  Floor jobs in retail offer an excellent platform from which to gather material for a book, even a novel.  You get to observe hundreds of people every day, overhear their conversations, even share a few words.  Anyone with a minimal interest in human behavior is bound to collect material.

And that is what Anna Sam did in her book, Les tribulations d’une caissière (The Tribulations of a Checkout Girl), published last year in France and soon to be translated into English and published in the UK.

The book is not a novel.  It is a slim book, a pocket-sized paperback of 190 pages. Yet that was enough to turn it into a bestseller in France over the summer of 2008 when 100,000 copies were sold. It is what one reviewer called a “livre-blog,” a book full of the kind of day-by-day observations and rants that one expects from a blog.  In fact, the book started as a blog, Sam’s way to dealing with the stress of her job as a cashier, a beepeuse in the argot, in a supermarket in Rennes. She worked as a cashier to finance her studies in French literature. Soon, however, what was originally supposed to be a temporary job became a permanent one with no sign of escape, which is when the 29-year-old Sam started to vent on line. The Telegraph observed –

Sam’s anecdotes make uncomfortable reading for the average shopper. Are you the person who completes an entire supermarket transaction with your mobile phone wedged beneath chin and shoulder? Or forgets to say “hello”, “goodbye” and “please” because what’s going on in your life is more important? Do you try and sneak 11 or 12 items into the 10-items-or-fewer queue? Steal kisses in the frozen foods aisle and have sneaky sex while perusing the detergents? “Idiocy” seems like a benign word for some of the behaviour Sam describes and yet the psychological revelations behind her tales make for compelling reading. […]

“I resigned in December 2007, coincidentally on the same day that a little piece appeared in a local paper unmasking me, and there was a national explosion. Suddenly I was doing TV, radio, and I had 13 publishers offering me deals. I signed with one of them for 12,000 euros (£10,800) – given I was earning 850 euros (£770) a month, that was the equivalent of more than a year’s work for me,” she starts chuckling. “In one day!”

Here is Sam in a report for the Swiss television program Mise en Point (in French) –

The success of the book has lead to talks about making a French film, a play, and a comic strip.

Sources: Celia Walden, “How a checkout girl called Anna Sam bagged a best-seller,” The Telegraph (Jan. 19, 2009), TSR1 (TV Suisse) Bernard Heimo, reporting, “Le fabuleux destin d’une caissière” broadcast on the program Mise au Point (Jan. 11, 2009), from Sam’s blog