Graduation Day + Birthday + Adeus Saramago + Adios (Old New) New York

Although I've already congratulated this year's graduates, since today is GRADUATION DAY, let me extend my deepest CONGRATULATIONS again!

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Yesterday was my birthday. C made a delicious pasta dish (penne con funghi), and baked one of his signature desserts, a coconut-lemon cake, which, as the photo below shows, we dove right into. I'm willing to turn 45 weekly if it results in that meal and one of these cakes!

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Yesterday around the time that Reggie H. sent me the link I saw online that José Saramago (1922-2010) had passed. He was, without a doubt, one of the major writers in contemporary world literature, and one of Portugal's greatest novelists.  I must confess that although I can read Portuguese (to some extent), I've only read his novels in English; years ago, when after teaching myself the rudiments of Portuguese I realized I couldn't speak the language, so I engaged an Azorean tutor-conversationalist in Cambridge who had me read selections from the works of Fernando Namora, Jorge de Sena, José Cardoso Pires, Augustina Bessa-Luís, and several other major 20th century Portuguese (but never Brazilian) writers, including some whom she wasn't so fond of, like Antonio Lobo-Antunes. But Saramago was, I recall, "too difficult" for a beginner. By this, I later gathered as I read his work in English, his formally experimental prose, often comprising long, paratactic and sometimes hypotactic sentences, broken up mainly by commas and few periods, and shifting at times abruptly between points of view and perspectives, while interspersed with direct authorial commentary and philosophizing, certainly would have proved a challenge. Yet I've found that in English at least, Saramago's works, once you engage the prose's rhythms, aren't as narratively difficult in the way that William Faulkner's, Juan Goytisolo's, Claude Simon's, or  are. Nor are they philosophically demanding in the way that superficially more formally simple novels of Clarice Lispector are, or linguistically as impenetrable as Julián Ríos or João Guimarães Rosa (i.e., untranslatable). Saramago is very interested in the traditions not just of the novel but of storytelling, and stories, sometimes remarkable ones, often allegorical and symbolic, his novels do tell. Saramago attributed this deep devotion to story to his illiterate grandparents, great storytellers thesmselves, who reared him when his parents left the small Santarém district village of Azinhaga, where he was born, to look for work in Lisbon.



My introduction to Saramago's work was the 1995 novel Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cergeza), which appeared in English (translated by Giovanni Pontiero) in the fall of 1997.  An allegory about the effects on civilization of man's loss of our most important and essential sense--sight--and the possibility, even after societal breakdown, of humanity, Blindness struck me at the time as the work of someone writing at the very height of his powers. The next year Saramago received the Nobel Prize, in part for this extraordinary book but also for his oeuvre, up to that point, consisting of the poetry he'd written during his fallow fiction period, of some 30 years, and the nearly dozen novels up to that point, including Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, Baltasar and Blimunda (Memorial do Convento), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. This last inventive, irreverantly anti-religious book sparked denunciation by the Roman Catholic Church, which led the Portuguese authorities to withdraw Saramago's name for a prize consideration, which thus led him to decamp for Lanzarote, in Spain, where he lived for the remainder of his life. From the time of his Nobel Prize he was sometimes derided as or viewed solely in terms of his affirmation of Communism, and he also received harsh criticism for his critique of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. His work, however, rarely dealt overtly with contemporary politics or ideology, either in the abstract or, in the case of Portugal's, where the Salazar dictatorship spanned a great portion of his life; only in one novel, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, I believe, does he directly treat a fairly recent political moment, 1936, when war and fascism were engulfing Europe--and Salazar seized control of the Portuguese state--but in his inimical, indirect fashion; the eponymous protagonist, Reis, is, in fact, a heteronym of Portugal's towering 20th century literary figure, Fernando Pessoa, whose death provokes Reis's return from Brazil and who makes repeated, ghostly and increasingly troubling appearances, finally leading to Reis's own "death," as it were, at the novel's end. Saramago has stated that this strange and enchanting book is his favorite.

The last book of Saramago's that I read was 2003's The Double (O Homen Duplicado), published in 2004 in English. A haunting metaphysical meditation, The Double starts with the principle of the doppelgänger, and plays it out, with devastating consequences, to its logical end. Saramago's prose style presents an initial challenge, but once you get past and into the flow of the storytelling, this bizarre tale unfolds like a charm: at the suggestion of a coworker, a man recognizes a double of himself in a videotape, conspires to meet the double, does do so while withholding the details and truth from his beloved, switches places with the man, terrible things ensue, and then...he's contacted by someone whose voice, as was the case with him and his double, sounds--in so much as he might appear--like his double. Only the protagonist decides he ought be preemptive this time around, and so.... This reductive plot summary hardly conveys the literary and philosophical richness of the novel, which, like several of Saramago's later works, unfolds on a more narratively abstract plane, giving it the quality of fable, or allegory, or myth. And there is enough in this work to ground the reader in a here-and-now, in a material world, swiftly but authoritatively drawn, full of suspense and disquiet, such that you not only become part of it, but care about these characters and feel the topsy-turvy emotions they experience.  This is the case not only for The Double, but for all the ones of Saramago's that I've read. He was, and remains, among the best.

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The blog of a mourner of lost New York City, or a fairly recent version. He has, however, tired of his mourning, and now bids his readers, like the now vanished city of a decade ago, adieu. Read it, and commiserate, and weep (if it resonates with you at all).  And to think, but for 50,000 or so more votes (only 1.15 million people voted out of 4+ million eligible voters), New York could have freed itself, at least for a term, of its neoliberal, billionaire billionaire-cheerleader.

Bloomsday + Congrats to the Grads + Buffett's Giveaway + Krugman/Cassandra

It's Bloomsday! "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air..." and you know, or know of, the rest. (If not, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

To commemorate today there's the annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, as well as the Bloomsday Festival in Dublin and elsewhere. Apple, steadily gaining a reputation for prudery regarding its iPhone and iPad applications (and the anti-porn comments of its founder-guru), has decided to reinstate Throwaway House's Ulysses Seen app, created by which it had previously censored because of its depiction of partial nudity (an imagined goddess's breasts, Buck Mulligan's penis, egads!)

I haven't seen this app, but given how the entire novel ends, I wonder if that was bowdlerized too. To Apple's credit, they also reinstated a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which features a strip of a male couple kissing, after having heavily censored it.  Something tells me neither Joyce nor Wilde would have been surprised.

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The university's graduation doesn't officially occur until this weekend, but final grades are posted, so I think I can post without caution:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2010!

Some of the seniors (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and lit scholars writers all) at the annual Bowling challenge (fiction won, creative nonfiction finished second, and I bowled with poetry this year). Congratulations to all the graduating senior major and minors, and to the other undergraduate students finishing up this week that I taught (including those in the Conceptual Art/Writing class--you were great!), advised or worked with over the last few years!

Congratulations also to one of my graduate fiction thesis advisees, Roya Khatiblou, whose magnificent manuscript received a 2009-10 Distinguished Thesis Award! It was exciting to work with Roya, and with the other graduating fiction students I advised this year, whom I'd also taught in the past, Jennifer Companik and Wendy Schoua Musto.

Lastly, to all the students in the novella class (The Theory and Practice of Fiction, Winter-Spring), congratulations on finishing your novellas! It was a huge, speeded up, often stressful undertaking, and you accomplished in 4 1/2 months what it takes many writers a year or more do but you've all completed your little books, and deserve praise for having done so!



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Warren Buffett is giving away 99% of his wealth. That's right--nearly all of it, to charity. And none is going towards endowments, but towards organizations with current pressing needs. He says that he can do this and still maintain his current lifestyle, as can his very wealthy children. This giveaway is part a push that he and Bill and Melinda Gates are making for hundreds of superrich Americans to pledge at least 50% of their wealth to charity. Their target is for their fellow billionaires to give away about $600 billion, thus changing the landscape of charity in this country.

Of course the government could solve countless problems simply by reinstating the estate tax, closing all current tax loopholes and strengthening penalties for tax avoidance, and levying another hefty tax on these folks, putting the money, which would far exceed Buffett's and the Gates' target, towards pressing national needs, of which there are many, as opposed to the idiosyncratic focuses of the superrich, but the larger idea, of giving away this almost unimaginable wealth for the benefit of others, especially at a time of several national economic crisis and of a massive gulf between the rich and the rest of the country, is admirable. Let's see how many take Buffett and the Gateses up on their challenge.

Speaking of unemployment and the struggles people are facing, some of those in power, with great wealth (c. $75 million) at their disposal, still think that people on unemployment don't want to work. It's beyond crazy, really. I doubt even Warren Buffett could get through to these people. But he or someone like him should try, since they only listen to their own.

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Ironically, as Buffett is calling for this extraordinary personal charity, there's Paul Krugman (Princeton Professor, New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate), a/k/a Cassandra, continually trying to address the terrible economic policies now sweeping the US and its major international peers, which have been gripped by deficit frenzy; against the current, he keeps sounding the anti-austerity alarm. Between the Group of 20 and the US Administration and Congress, the mania for cutting deficits through fiscal austerity and tight monetary policies has now become an article of faith.  But Krugman and a few others keep warning against this neo-Hooverism and the dangers it's already sparking. Is anyone (but his loyal readers), especially those controlling the national and global checkbook, listening?  Do they care? Is there any way to make them care?

A Black Hole Is Not Racist

What's it going to take for the NAACP to completely go away? I'm getting really tired of their completely idiotic accusation of racism this and racism that. For cryin' out loud, they call themselves the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Isn't their name alone kind of racist? Or demeaning? Or something completely against what they always claim that they're for? I was hoping with their latest "Cry racism" moment it would perpetuate their downfall or, at the very least, completely remove any last shred of credibility that they might have actually had. But, unfortunately, that's not going to be the case. No, they're just going to be able to claim that a greeting card about graduation and the solar system is racist and it's going to be removed from all stores. Wait. What?

Welcome to Culver City, California where we learn from Channel 7 that a "...graduation card sold at local stores has been pulled from shelves after a civil rights group...claims the card's micro-speaker plays a greeting that's racist." Huh. It's a Hallmark card, too. I'm not really seeing Hallmark as a "racist" company that would produce "racist" greeting cards. But let's just see what all of the fuss is over, shall we? Then let's all beat our collective heads against a wall as we chant in unison, "We're doomed."

The card features greeting card regulars Hoops and Yoyo. I don't know which one is which, but I don't think that it matters. What matters is what the little critters say to the new graduate. Hoops and Yoyo are on the card and inside, there are references to the planets amongst them. It's a space-planetary sort of theme (with kind of bunny-like-ish caricatures as well). The front of the card states harmlessly (to those who are not morons) "You're graduating? Well, then, it's time to let the world know what's coming." Seems harmless enough, right? Not so fast. It gets stupider worse.

You open up the card (which appears to be the size of a billboard, as the thing is massive) and it states, "But not only the world, NOOOO! We're talking the entire solar system!" Then underneath that it says, "The world is yours, grad." And it also says, "Watch out, Saturn, this grad is going to run rings around you!" Get it? Rings? 'Cause Saturn has rings? See? How it's funny? Yeah, OK. Moving right along.

It's clearly a space theme. It's about the graduate being able to take over the world with all of their new found (and extremely expensive) knowledge that they've just been acknowledged as having appropriately completed. Remember that. A space theme. So when the card's annoying little microchip plays the greeting, either Hoops or Yoyo (it's unclear as to who is responsible for this atrocity) says, "Hey world, we are officially putting you on notice." And the other one responds with a childish, "Yeaaahhhh!" Then the first one says, "And you black holes, you are soooo ominous." Meanwhile, the other one, who appears to have inhaled a great deal of helium, cackles, "Hahahaha!" Then the first one pipes up again with, "And you planets? Watch your back." See? Racist.

Wait. What now? Racist? Correct. Racist. See, the dimwits over there at the Los Angeles division of the NAACP claim that the card "...was very demeaning to African American women." It was. Um...de...demeaning? To African American women? Are you sure? Oh, they're sure! It's right there where "...it made reference to African American women as whores". It did?? When? When it said "black holes", that is correct.

Wait a minute. Are you dry shaving me? Yes, they are claiming that the card says "black whores". One woman, a one Minnie Hatley of the aforementioned Los Angeles NAACP, claims, "You hear the 'r' in there. 'Whores,' not, 'holes.' The 'r' is in there." Um, no, you don't and no, it's not. Another moron claimed, "It sounds like a group of children laughing and joking about blackness, again." Again?! When were they doing it before? You folks don't seem to understand something. It's not that we don't like you because you're black. It's that we don't like you because you're ridiculous. I couldn't care less what color you are, but I certainly care if you're a moron. Good Lord, people....

Now, Hallmark sent the news station a transcript of what the card said. That wasn't enough. No, they were still adamant that it said "whores" and not "holes". Even though both you and I and everyone else with half of a brain can hear that it says "holes". Never the less, what do you think Hallmark is going to do about it? If you guessed the answer that I most wanted to hear, that being absolutely nothing, then you'd be sadly mistaken. Hallmark is a weak and cowardly company and has bowed to the NAACP and their ludicrous claim that this card is racist. Hallmark is "...now notifying all of its stores to pull the card. Walgreens and CVS are doing the same." Oh, and did I mention that the card has been out for three years? Yeah, it has. But NOW they're going to pull it because it is suddenly racist? Doomed, I tell you. Doomed.

Well, those are three companies that I have no need to purchase goods from in the future. I'm so sick of any one person or any one group coming up with the most outrageous claims about something and having the company cave in to their ridiculous outrage. Seriously now. Because it would make perfect sense that a graduation card would mention black whores, right? That seems like a reasonable message to have in a graduation card that's been sold for the past three years. "Hey, black whores! You're not so ominous!" Sure, that makes perfect sense that it would say that. Oh, wait. No, it wouldn't! Because it didn't. UN-believable. The link to this ridiculousness is here. Good luck not wanting your life to immediately end after viewing it.

Worst Graduation Song Ever

With the return of American Idol this week for it's ninth season (and the last one with my beloved Simon Cowell), I thought that it would be appropriate to explain just how important it is to be honest with people in your life. Wait. What? Honesty and American Idol go hand in hand? Correct.

See, a lot of the "hopefuls" that tryout for American Idol are not very good. Fortunately, I don't have the "privilege" of listening to all of the auditions. If I did, they never would have been able to hold the auditions on one of those upper floors of whatever building they were at over there in Boston because the temptation to hurl myself out of one of those plate glass windows would have been too strong to overcome at times. But when you hear how horrible some of the "hopefuls" are, you wonder why they are there in the first place?

Now, I firmly believe that some folks know that they are awful and that they are there simply to get on TV (because apparently, it doesn't matter what you're on TV for, if you're on TV, then that is automatically supposed to be "good". Armed robbery, horrible singing, kicking bunnies, etc. It doesn't matter. But if you're on TV, then you've scored! Idiots....)

But I also firmly believe that there are folks who think that they are fantastic, which is why they're trying out for American Idol in the first place. They are convinced that they are going to go into that audition and come out as the next heir to the American Idol throne (which is currently occupied by....um....Kris Allen? Yeah! That's it! Kris Allen!). And the reason that they are convinced of this is because their entire family has lied to them over the course of several years and told them how "good" they were, when in reality nothing could be farther from the truth.

Those people are awful. They should never sing again for the rest of their lives and with some of them, it's really questionable as to whether or not they should ever talk again either. So why are they trying out for American Idol? Because they think that they can sing because (probably well-intentioned) folks have lied to them their entire lives and told them that they're good. And when you convince someone of something that isn't true and then it has to come to light that it isn't true, well, there are consequences, my friend. There are consequences.

And in the case of those who think that they can sing, the main consequence is that the rest of us have to be put through the trauma of having to listen to them attempt to croon some sort of melody that only comes out sounding like a cat in a blender. (No offense to any cats in blenders out there.) Who is that good for? It's not good for me. It's not good for you. It's not good for them. And it certainly isn't good for the cats.

And this is what can happen when you don't quash someone's dreams and/or delusions at an early stage. Below is, quite possibly, the worst thing I have ever heard in my entire life (and I've watched American Idol since Season One!). Seriously, who thought that this was a good idea? The band director should be fired...at. That's right. Physically shot. What did Journey ever do to that band?! I'm guessing nothing! There's no reason for this. None. It's horrible. Did anyone think it wasn't horrible? I can't imagine.

See what I mean? You cannot tell me that the chick singing that song is going to be watching that video the day after and thinking, "Man! I rocked!" No. That can't happen. (The fist pumps only made it worse for me.) Who thought that was a good idea? You know, to have her sing. (She was singing, wasn't she? It's so hard to tell.) Were there no other aspiring "singers" in that graduating class? None? What about a trained seal? Some sort of barking dog? Anything really.

But why did it happen? Likely because someone (lots of someones, probably) couldn't tell someone else "no". No one could find the guts to say to anyone "Um, she can't sing. You? Yeah, you! You can't sing." NO one could say that. I find it astonishing. She was SO bad, wouldn't the thought of not saying anything and the realization that you're going to have to actually listen to that be motivation enough to pipe up and say something?! I guess not, but it's a shame. And let this just be some sort of lesson or reminder or incentive to all of you out there who are tolerating a horrible singer in your life. Say something now, lest the rest of the world be subject to that same sort of otic atrocity.

One more thing. Kudos to the band for being able to play at all with that singing right in front of you. I don't know how you guys did it. You're amazing. Happy graduation. It's over.