Le Flâneur

It’s proper good reading this Augie March, it really is. Don’t always get it and some of it is frankly over my head, but so often passages deserve to be read again and savored. Like this one where Augie is returning from an accidental road trip across Michigan:

When evening came on we were tearing out of Gary and toward South Chicago, the fire and smudge mouth of the city gorping to us. As the flamy bay shivers for home-coming Neopolitans. You enter your native water like a fish. And there sits the great fish god or Dragon. You then bear your soul like a minnow before Dragon, in your familiar water.

Or this passage where Augie is ruminating on the subjectivity of bitterness:

And if the highest should come in that empty overheated tavern with its flies and the hot radio buzzing between the plays and plugged beer from Sox Park, what are you supposed to do but take the mixture and say imperfection is always the condition as found; all great beauty too, my scratched eyeballs will always see scratched. And there may gods turn up anywhere.

It’s really bloody good this book.

Here is a lazily cobbled together list of likes and dislikes that have been sustaining me over the past few weeks. Other stuff has been happening, it’s just well, y’know…

Hates

1. That advert that features a guy using a car for a skateboard. I can’t begin to describe how much this advert annoys me. The thought of thousands of gawpers sat in their homes transfixed by this singularly empty imagery fills me with despair. I think it’s the tinkly piano music cynically employed to try and lend it some air of nuanced grace or profundity that gets to me. There was this jerk I went to University with who works in advertising and I imagine this to be exactly the kind of unadulterated crap he’d come up with.

Actually I can’t think of any more hates right now (aside from moaning about the British weather and my personal gripes with the department of work and pensions with whom I’ve had some regretful yet necessary dealings with lately), so I’ll just move on to more positive things instead.

Loves

1. Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I’ve been watching this seminal series from 1980 on tv links and believe it to be the best effort of its kind I’ve seen on television. Though they cover mostly things I’ve encountered before somewhere, the shows have a remarkable way of clarifying ideas and explaining them in a simple way. This must in part be down to the sympathetic and affable narrator himself, (though bizarrely I’ve noticed how a Sagan has a strong resemblance in speech to Agent Smith from the Matrix films). It also has a kind of retro appeal reminiscent of a gentler and more subtle time. A contemporary rendering of the same ideas would no doubt bombard you with impressive visuals but at the same time it would spoon feed you information and generally insult your intelligence.

2. The Adventures of Augie March. This is the most difficult but rewarding novel I’ve read in a long time. I’ve struggled with Saul Bellow in the past but once you get into the flow of this one it’s really compelling. It reminds me a little of Felix Krull by Thomas Man. Both novels follow a young man into maturity and both central protagonists seem to have a similar quality of being empty vessels able to alter themselves chameleon-like to each new situation that presents itself. Though not having finished it yet, I’m sure its full off great insights into the the nature of the American experience. For instance, the way in which Augie’s brother Simon marries into a family of money despite being from a poverty stricken background. It is the very quality of having come from a modest background and being a self-made man that is seen as an attribute by the new in-laws, who themselves were once poor. This is the very opposite of the European way where almost invariably the monied marry the monied and the nouveau riche are to be looked down upon. The way immigrant families picked themselves up and carried on after the great depression is at the heart of the American myth and a prelude to its becoming the undisputed superpower in the second half of the twentieth century. The text is peppered with references to European literature and history that, though perplexing and obscure at times, throw into the relief the human drama playing out in the New World. I’m also enjoying the rather lost quality of Augie as he tries to find a place in the world for himself.

3. The Office (US Vesrion). Like most people I was a bit prejudiced when I heard that there was to be an American version of the classic British comedy, and this probably explains why I’d not given this show a try until very recently (again through the generosity of tv links). I’m pleased to be able to report that it works! Sometimes marvelously so; I have on occasion uttered forth proper belly-laughs when viewing it. It fills a gap left by the end of the brilliant Peep Show 4. Once you get over the fact that it’s just different actors playing the same parts, and realise that they’ve achieved more or less the same formula its really very enjoyable. ‘Michael Scott’ i.e. David Brent is played by Steve Carall who is as we all know a gifted comic. Give it a try.

At perhaps arguably the slightly too old age of twenty six I am officially no longer a student. From now on I’m only going to read books I really want to read; in fact I’m only going to read science fiction from now on. Don’t try and talk me out of it. I know where my place is and it’s thousands of light years from the here and now.

I went to see Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s new film Sunshine the other day. I really enjoyed it. Despite failing on the science front somewhat (it’s never explained why the sun is suddenly dying in the near future, or how putting a bomb in it will somehow replenish its fuel), it does get you thinking about some big questions: for instance, is conscious life the supreme accomplishment of the universe, and can life outlive it’s own solar system of origin? All the way through I was thinking about that saying, I can’t remember which physicists said it, that “human beings are atoms way of thinking about atoms”.

Speaking of sunshine, I can’t believe the weather we’re having. It’s been great for about a month now. Last year was the hottest on record and April this year was the hottest April on record. Perfect weather for sitting in the garden reading.

So before I go outside myself I just want to draw your attention to the video below. I was searching for footage of Christopher Hitchens’ recent appearance on the daily show when I came across the video below. I didn’t realise that Penn and Teller did this kind of thing. They haven’t been on our screens for ages it seems which is a shame. incidentally I’m sure everyone is excited about the release of Hitchens’ new book ‘God is Not Great’. I’ve got mine pre-ordered already.