From the erratically irritating/illuminating NBCC site, Richard Powers:

The problem is, changing technology invariably produces its own head-on collision of values. The cost of conveying information has plummeted, and we are converging on that moment when everyone will be able to know what anyone else thinks about anything at any given moment. Ideally, I think this is great: it’s the logical extension of the promise implicit in that ancient and most destabilizing of technologies, writing. The complication, of course, is that noise and signal both become cheaper at the same rate, and the novels and reviews that are most capable of making me a better reader may well become harder to find, even as they become more numerous and more thoughtful and more robust. We are in danger of drowning in an ocean of liking or disliking.

I honestly don’t think our crisis is print reviews versus blogs, specialization versus populism, or even the exclusivity of the elite versus the tyranny of the majority. I think our crisis is instant evaluation versus expansive engagement, real time versus reflective time, commodity versus community, product versus process. Substituting a user’s rating for a reader’s rearrangement threatens to turn literature into a lawn ornament. What we need from reviewers in any medium are guides to how to live actively inside a story.

(cross posted at Condalmo)

Many thanks again to the guest bloggers filling in. I’ve been truly stunned and delighted by the remembrances, reading reports and general tomfoolery.

Since there have been a few emails, some news on my coordinates, cunning plans, and the like is forthcoming. But for now, I’ll simply confess that I chatted briefly with David Markson last night. My conversation went something like this:

ME: Congratulations! I very much enjoyed The Last Novel.
MARKSON: You’re drenching!
ME: I’d be interested in interviewing you for the…
MARKSON: You’re soaking wet!
ME: …sort of like radio, the…
MARKSON: You’re drenched!

Nobody informed me about the speed and manner in which starboard thunderstorms stub out sunny afternoons. More later.

Washington Post: “Ryan and three other members of Congress have pledged to live for one week on $21 worth of food, the amount the average food stamp recipient receives in federal assistance. That’s $3 a day or $1 a meal. They started yesterday.” Congressman Ryan’s report here and Congressman McGovern’s report here.

I’m nervous the ROTR fans will think me a cornball for posting a poem, but what the hoo. This is from Kirmen Uribe, whose MEANWHILE TAKE MY HAND (what you say when there is nothing else to say) was recently published by Graywolf Press. I offer you “Apples,” first in English w/translation by Elizabeth Macklin, then in the original Basque:

Homer used a single word for body and skin.
Sappho slept on the breasts of her friends.
Etxepare dreamt of stark naked women.

All of them silent for ages now.

Today it seems we have to be perfect in bed, too,
like those red apples in the supermarket,
too perfect.
We’re asking too much of ourselves,
and what we hope for
from any of us, nearest neighbors,
almost never happens.
The laws are different when bodies tangle.

Homer used a single word for body and skin.
Sappho slept on the breasts of her friends.
Etxepare dreamt of stark-naked women.

Still I have in my mind
that epoch when we slept holding each other,
scared tiger cubs in our vigil.

Kirmen Uribe, “Apples.”

Okay, Basque now.

Homerok hitz bakarra zerabilen gorputza eta azala izendatzeko.
Safok lagunen bularretan hartzen zuen lo.
Etxeparek emazte biluzgorriekin egiten zuen amets.

Aspaldi isildu ziren denak.

Gaur badirudi perfektuak izan behar dugula ohean ere,
supermerkatuko sagar gorri horiek bezala, perfektuegiak.
Larregi eskatzen diogu geure buruari
eta norberaz, ondokoaz
espero duguna ez da ia sekula gertatzen.
Legeak bestelakoak dira gorputzak korapilatzean.

Homerok hitz bakarra zerabilen gorputza eta azala izendatzeko.
Safok lagunen bularretan hartzen zuen lo.
Etxeparek emazte biluzgorriekin egiten zuen amets.

Gogoan dut oraindik
elkarri besarkatuta lo egiten genuen garaia,
tigrekume ikaratiak gu, gaubeilan.

Kirmen Uribe, “Sagarrak”

So, I had no idea Basque existed till I read Uribe. According to its Wikipedia entry, and of course other sources, Basque’s linguistic antecedents are in contention. It isn’t Indoeuropean, for instance. It’s spoken by roughly 1 million people in north-central Spain and southwestern France. Uribe was, according to MEANWHILE TAKE MY HAND, “born in 1970, in Ondarroa, a fishing town on the Bay of Biscay whose port and canneries now handle much of the catch between Galicia and Bayonne on Spain’s northern coast.”

The town, the book’s intro continues, “is home to some 9,900 people now, down from about 14,000 when Uribe was growing up. Just one of his cousins goes out on the fishing boats. Uribe’s mother lives in a farmhouse set back from the cliff that overhangs Saturraran, and these last months he has been living there, writing in a room that looks out at the ocean.” Nice.