amid a crowd of stars

I recently read Andrew Kean’s book, “The Cult of the Amateur,” and though I found it engaging and even possibly important inasmuch as it vigorously counters the notions of the digital utopians’ who gush that the web “changes everything,” I would say that his position is probably not all that defensible. But then, it may not need to be defended, because I would guess that if the army of amateurs, as he calls them, ever bothers to glance up from their machines to note the book, their appetite for the ever-new will soon draw them back to their online quests.

And so, as a group of school children might stop to investigate, torment and perhaps even kill an unfortunate bug, so it is with the cult as Kean describes them. They may stop, snuffle about, write a few incendiary blog posts, but
soon enough… they’ll move on.

… and perhaps that is as it should be.

Related : In praise of editing

Breathing on embers

I wait,

hurriedly,

bringing fire to life.

Snow accumulates on the ledge.

Flakes move with the wind

in haloes of lamplight.

Trying not to look too far into things —

the shape by the fire, resolves

into a dog

and a literary cat

asleep on a book.

Picked up Nomad’s Hotel at Carmichael’s in Louisville… along with a copy of the Best Fiction of 2010. I got into Nooteboom a couple of year’s ago when I stumbled on an podcast interview with him discussing his new work Lost Paradise.

Nomad’s Hotel is travel writing, not fiction, and I don’t usually read travel writing, but since we’re in DC this week, I thought it might make sense. Reading about Nooteboom’s adventures traveling up the Gambia increased my general sense of dislocation, but also piqued my interest in further adventure.

When I wake […] I hear […] a low crunching sound, as if someone is chewing on too-long nails. I fell behind me for the lamp, and kick off the sweaty sheets. On the rim of the grimy washbasin, a brown cockroach as big as a child’s thumb sits staring dreamily at me. “So, Moriarty, we meet at last.” I think, and consider what sort of sound it will make when I crush it. So I don’t.

Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout… interview here at onpoint radio.

She makes a good point about arguing with yourself.

Listening as I write. It is always nice to find new music… especially on Sunday via the Times.
Best album, and band, that I have heard in a while. I like the song-writing.

I still owe money to the money to the money I owe…

Very good.

high violet

The Count of Monte Cristo
A classic for a reason. As a result of a generally misspent youth, I’ve been trying to read some of the classic adventure novels that I should have read long ago. The Count of Monte Cristo sat unread on my shelves for too long until my wife brought it down, worked her way through 1300 pages, and exhorted me to follow suit.

I read Robinson Crusoe a year or so ago, and I loved it. Everyone knows the gist of the story, but what amazes me, about both of these works, is how modern they are. Every generation seems to think that they’ve invented the world, or that the world was invented for their pleasure, but it hasn’t, and that is a fact of which we need to be reminded. I’ve never watched the program Lost, bit it has its antecedents.

And I can’t imagine anything much more terrifying than after having spent years alone on an island, and resolved oneself to that fate, to find suddenly on the pristine beach a single footprint, revealing indelibly that you are not alone after all.

And the Wyeth illustrations are like a portal into the past.