What I've Been Reading

I get asked pretty frequently about what I've been reading. I'd like to think this because everybody thinks me to be really well-read, and always seeking to better myself verbally & intellectually. But, the truth is, everybody knows I'm unemployed, and you can only spend so much of your day pouring over Careerbuilder and forging reference letters. Anyway, I've gotten into a really bad habit lately of starting too many books. I have them planted all over the apartment. One in each of the two bathrooms, one next to the bed, a couple on my desk, and one somewhere within groping distance of the couch.

In the upstairs bathroom, I have a copy of Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. Unfortunately, I only ever use the upstairs bathroom to shower and pee. So, I've only gotten through the italicized meditation that takes up three pages. So, no review to offer. In the downstairs bathroom, I generally keep Thomas Pynchon's massive, 1,100-page Against the Day. I'm about halfway through it, and I'm still really liking it. It's definitely not for everybody, so I can't say everybody should dive in. For me, though, I find that I love to sit and read the prose out loud. I've yet to find a dull section, even with the ever-shifting narrative and writing styles. My IM away message is even from it: "It was the U.S.A., after all, and fear was in the air."

On my desk are two books, one I've just finished and the other I've just started. On Monday I finished reading George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning. I can't recommend this book enough. A very quick read, Monbiot approaches the issue of climate change from a British perspective. Which is to say, he approaches it from a perspective that is a) unafraid of science and b) isn't committed to finding minority voices in the scientific community to call into question generally established findings, contrarian voices who happen to be heavily funded by the likes of Exxon. Monbiot, more or less, in short, takes it as a scientific given that our carbon emissions have the potential to kill a lot of people due to rising temperatures. Instead of making the argument that there is a problem, he describes the actual problem itself. That is, by 2030 the world's temperature will likely have risen 2.3 degrees (celcius) above pre-industrial levels (1.4 degrees above what it is now) -- which is the point at which really bad shit will probably start happening ... granted, mostly to people who are already poor and/or already neglected. This last part kind of gets in the way of his call to arms against global warming: a 90% decrease in Britain's carbon emissions by 2030. He very capably shows how this might be possible, but in the end concedes that the political & psychological obstacles actually to do so are enormous. (This is even more true for the U.S., where a 97% decrease would be necessary.) BUT, in spite of this, it's a really great book. Monbiot offers an enthusiasm and fresh perspective to things, and his cynicism is always tempered by, not really hope, but a willingness to show that there is another way even if we don't take it.

The other book on my desk, which I've only just started, is Philip Goodchild's Theology of Money. For me, Goodchild is one of the best thinkers out there right now. This is a really difficult, often very technical book. But, I think it can be translated, and at some point I hope to do so here. From what I gather, about fifty or so pages in, he is looking at money as the force by which we order and identify our individual lives and our political/governmental entities. Money is not just something that resides in your wallet, or in your bank account -- it is the mediating element of what passes for reality. To change ourselves or our collective will, we have first to identify how money does this. Only then is an alternative even thinkable.

Next to my bed is Donald Barthelme's disturbing book, The Dead Father. I'm only about ten pages from finishing this short book, but I've not really read in bed for a while. Fortunately, it is remarkably easy to jump in at any point, and know exactly what is going on. The title says it all. The father -- God, authority, creator -- is dead, kind of. The process of getting rid of the dead father, however, is a bit more difficult.

And in the living room, Gary Giddins' Visions of Jazz. Basically just a collection of Giddins' essays and reviews about the classic jazz greats, from as far back as the '20s, to more brief discussions of contemporary acts in the early '90s, this book is a nice one to read when I get a chance to load whatever new CD I've discovered, and just get into the vibe of things. I learn something new each time I flip through it.

Summary Version

E-fucking-gads. So sorry, my dear Silentio, you've not been ignored. I check you daily, in hopes that somebody has figured out my login info and posted something meaningful. Every week I sit down with the intention of writing something, doing so, and then closing the Blogger window instead of posting it. I've been in crisis mode for about a couple of months, so bear with me. I didn't really want to put you through that. What then would I have to talk about with those I chat with online?

A summary version of the things I wanted to blog, but never did, is in order.

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Saw Sicko. It's good, I guess. Well, no, it's good that for whatever reason Michael Moore captures the media's imagination and gets people wondering, Hey, maybe we can do things a little differently and a little better. That's the American way, or at least its hope for itself, a little differently and a little better ... provided it has a huge in-built margin for profit. Anyway, if you didn't know it already, Moore will lean heavily on the French model for health care -- rightly so, it's pretty nice. Don't tell the newly installed French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, though. It'll be fun to watch him try to gut social spending in France in the coming years, in the name of economic prosperity and embracing Third Way liberalism.

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I'll cut to the chase. I'm not really liking San Francisco. Maybe it's the unemployment, maybe it's the feeling that I'm unemployable. Or, maybe it's the fact that this place is fundamentally over-priced, over-hyped, and over-sold. If you're from here, great. Call it home and love it. If you're not, stay where you are. Make a home and enjoy a community elsewhere. Unless, that is, you want daily to congratulate yourself and your friends on how liberal you are and how backward the rest of the country is. ('Excuse me, Mr. Homeless Man, yes, you can sleep on the front stoop of my million-dollar apartment, and, yes, here's $1, and do you want to sign my petition on a federal law protecting gay marriage? Yay! We're such a happy community here in San Francisco. Oh, and don't piss in the flowers. Do that in Chinatown next time, please.')

Oakland is a bit better, except for the fact that all the sustainable / walkable communities are so fucking expensive. That's also the American way -- one must be able to afford sustainability and good health.

Or, I almost forgot, one can move to a small town just north of Oakland called Emeryville, home to Pixar, which I originally mistook for an enclosed, private garden. In recent years, Emeryville has embraced a bastardized version of new urbanism. The idea as it exists here isn't so much to cut back on suburbanism, or even to create a sustainable community, but simply to get people to live in a tiny town that has no space for rampant suburbanization. What they've done is create a two-or-three block shopping & living district, the ground floor of which functions as a two-or-three block outdoor mall that has two or three floors of apartment space above each store. Here's the thing, though. You're not living above, say, a fruit market, or a butcher, or a hardware store. You're living above The Gap, Abercrombie, Apple, etc. For all the things you need, you'll still need to drive in to Oakland or Berkeley. Ah, but in the event you need a new pair of pants or the new IPhone, they're right downstairs. This is urban progress. It's fucking madness.

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I really miss an occasional cloudy day. I've not seen a real rain storm since I drove through the Rocky Mountains in May. Every day starting at 3 the sun begins its afternoon onslaught through the curtainless windows of my apartment, shining unabated by clouds onto the tv and computer screen, rendering them useless to human vision, which is fine because I'm a blinded sweaty mess until about 6.30. Every day. I see spots until, and change into a new shirt at, 7.30. I then check the weather report, and see that tomorrow is supposed to be exactly the same, forever, until the end of time.

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Though I've yet to get anybody in the great state of California, with its robust and promising economy, to even acknowledge the existence of my resume, I was able to get an interview for a teaching job back in England. It went great! Even for a phone interview at 6.30 in the morning, I was really on. My fifteen-minute presentation on 'Developments in Contemporary Theology' was erudite and concise, my answers to their questions were solid, and my questions for them were insightful. Sadly, in spite of this, I didn't get the job, but there were enough practical reasons that this was both a good thing and completely understandable.

A bit less understandable, perhaps, is that a local public library did not rate my four years of library experience and academic research experience even worthy of an interview. I can but imagine that somebody with five years of library experience and two PhDs applied. Or, a dreaded internal candidate. I hate the internal candidate. I curse you all, and hope your company goes out of business in such a horrific way that you've no hope for a pension. Work to 90, you miserable wankers.

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And lastly, I read Neil Gaiman's American Gods. This is a brilliant book. My wife has been on me to read it for years, fully convinced that I'd love it. I don't think she was prepared for my enthusiasm once I actually did so. I can see actually assigning it, or at least portions of it, should I ever get a chance to teach a course on Religion in America or Survey of World Views. The premise is in the novel's repeated refrain: 'America is no place for gods.' All the ancient gods invoked by America's ancient peoples and not-so-ancient immigrants, they once enjoyed adoration and sacrifice. But no longer. The ancient peoples are dead; the immigrants have been assimilated and forgotten the old ways. The gods originally invoked, be they Norse, or Egyptian, or whatever, they're still around -- they are, however, feeble, and only just getting by on whatever they can get from the few that still remember them. One god, the "all-father" is intent on waging war against the new gods of America, the gods of capital, of media, and industry. Which leads to the climactic battle between, not good and evil, but new and old, a battle that ends suddenly and unexpectedly -- with "the land" getting the final say. Tremendous imagination and insight is at work in this novel, all in a fun and witty story. Very worth your time, even if you're not really into sci-fi fantasy, because the gods know I'm not, and yet I still really dug it.

The Road to Nowhere

Figured I should show some love to my thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's new book, The Road. If nothing else, it deserves a link somewhere. Readers, however, are a different story altogether.

Stay tuned for a more substantial post. Should be up later Monday.