Американский Бродяга

DFW

At the behest of my MA candidates, this summer I compiled a 10 page list of “Suggested Readings in English Prose” from the 18th century to the present day.

The Chinese, unsurprisingly, have a somewhat better idea of Anglo-American Lit. than 99.99 % of Westerners have of Chinese Lit. (Quick: How many Chinese writers can you name? If you can name five—from 5000 B.C. to the present day—congratulations, you’re in the 99th percentile.) However, what the Chinese have heard of represents only a fraction of a fraction…Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, and the like…typically read in bastardized translation (all Chinese translations can safely be assumed to be “bastardized” until demonstrably proven otherwise) or kiddie-lit abridgements. So even after a year’s worth reading has opened their eyes a bit, my students still hardly know where to begin. The list is intended to help them puzzle out the choices at their disposal in inexpensive Wordsworth editions down at Wangfujing, and to broaden their horizon a little beyond “the usual suspects.”

I bring this up only because on this list I ended up noting in red type a handful of authors from each period that I consider personal favorites, and one of them, David Foster Wallace, died yesterday, by his own hand. Not that I expect them to either find or read DFW here—he’s a challenging writer even for native speakers to tackle: as thorny, dense, and deliberately difficult as a Melville or a Joyce—but I thought that as long as I was making a list, the best living writers should be at least be mentioned.

It’s a curious thing, perhaps, to consider an author a “favorite” when one has, in point of fact, read only 1.5 of his works; but when one of those works is Infinite Jest—1,079 pages of pitch-perfect comedy and threnody—it’s a given. Very few novels stay with one 10 years after the fact; that one has. It’s not for everybody—many can’t get past the idea of all that reading-time only to have the rug of any climax or dénouement pulled out from under one’s feet—but I know of no other novel so fully relevant to the world in which we live.

Indeed, a bright student asked me the other day why I have such a fondness for the great Victorian novelists, and, though at a loss for a cogent answer at the time, I subsequently thought it through, and decided it’s because of the catholicity of their vision and their ambition—their attempt to capture an entire world in prose. And this is what DFW, at the height of his powers, accomplished. His voice captured the Zeitgeist of my generation. And despite the dark currents of much of his writing (he is as eloquent as anyone has ever been on monotony and despair) it’s both frightening and dismaying to me that he wouldn’t have chosen to see life’s “jest” through to the end.

P is for...?

Let’s get this straight: “Pitbull in lipstick” = great! “Pig in lipstick” = bad, very bad!

Hmmm. Well, I know which one I’d rather have around my own house…

However, the issue with this particular animal—whatever it may be—is not its maquillage. The issue is that it’s being sold to us “in a poke.” (Caveat emptor!!!)

Отвык

Я отвык—thus the Russians, with uncharacteristic economy, express the idea “I’ve gotten out of the habit / become unaccustomed” So I’ve felt since returning to Beijing. Did I miss it? Not a lick, it turns out. It’s not that I’m displeased to be back—just indifferent. But in some ways that can be a bigger challenge than being displeased.

Remarkable how much changed in the neighborhood in the 7 weeks I was gone. The pre-Olympic frenzy of construction has altered Wudaokou for the better—level sidewalks with potted palms now grace my daily strolls along Chengfu Lu, disorder banished along with tens of thousands of migrant workers in the big sweep for the Big Show. Old stores and restaurants have disappeared, to be replaced by new ones, sprouting like mushrooms after a rain. Regrettably, in the former category is “My Shop,” a bodega catering to Western food tastes, and a reliable source of non-processed cheese and flavorful beer, among other desiderata. Unless it reopens soon as “My SuperShop,” a long cross-town journey beckons any time I hanker for a hunk ‘a, a little slice or chunk ‘a, decent cheese. To everyone’s horror, pirated DVDs are suddenly very hard to come by; the Chinese are such dyed-in-wool scofflaws, though, that nobody can believe it’s anything but a temporary aberration that will disappear along with the Paraolympians in a couple weeks. (Quaintly, the Chinese imagine “the world is still watching,” though I imagine most of humanity is blissfully unaware that there is such a thing as the Paraolympics.)

This overheated reinvention has the effect of making America, with its half-empty strip malls and crumbling roads, seem like yesterday’s news indeed. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind: call it Usain Bolt’s Law. Americans seem to intuitively grasp this—even if they’re too easily distracted by jugglers, conjurors, card-sharps and sideshow charlatans to do anything about it. So much more edifying, after all, to debate the pros and cons of moose burgers and abstinence-only “sex ed” than to actually fix anything; so much easier to worry about “issues” like “patriotism” and “authenticity” than to think about difficult challenges on the Black Sea, the Fertile Crescent, or anywhere else.

And, of course, most of last year’s colleagues/neighbors are off on other adventures, so my social life is rebooted as well. Earlier this week the newbies and I sifted their dusty detritus. An odd, postmortem sort of exercise that made me think with melancholy detachment not of how much I’d miss them, but of how little: bit players in my life that had already strut and fret their hour upon the stage. Some folks you trust to see again someday; some folks you intuitively know you never will.

So an opportunity to start fresh yet again, with all the promise and peril that entails…

Palin!

Wrong Palin, you say? Darn!

My insta-pundit take: the only Hillary supporters who are going to gravitate to McCain merely because he chose a woman are those Rachel Maddow has termed “post-rational.” This is a choice clearly based on the proposition that there’s a sucker born every minute…but that’s never worse than an even-money bet in American politics.

History will likely judge this as either an “inspired” or “lunatic” choice. For the present, the one thing it certainly does is re-boot the discredited idea that McCain is a maverick. Conventional Wisdom never saw this one coming…so even as it destroys the central premise of McCain’s campaign—that Obama is too inexperienced—it at least reestablishes the meme that McCain is a risk-taker.

The question all America is now asking, though: Are we ready to trust the judgement of a woman who named her progeny Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig?

Biden Time!

Well, of course, I’m delighted. There was never the smallest chance that I’d vote McCain, but I still do genuinely find the choice reassuring.

Was it just me, though, or was the whole cloak-and-dagger, midnight-messaging just a bit American Idol? A more dignified announcement about a week ago would have been much more to my druthers.