A Reader Writes

posted by Emily Gordon

“But today, more to the point of my writing, what is a “fuckable shame cycle”? And how exactly is Franzen in this what-ever-it-is? Read the previous info on [Emdashes] about Franzen, and the link takes me to a laudatory review of a non-fiction essay of his.”

Hello, reader! You mean shame spiral, right? Oh, you know, that Warner Brothers squiggle people descend into when their self-disgust becomes manifest, like the lie-clouds over the heads of fibbing children in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. In fact, I did spend a minute considering my emphasis, in yesterday’s quickie preview of today’s forthcoming review of the evening, on Franzen’s sexy melancholy over his fierce engagement with the American landscape, his laudably stretchy metaphor of marriage/global warming, and his admission that he does, kinda, think about whether his book will rock the core of society even as he’s writing it.

But I waited on that stuff, because for me last night, Franzen’s frank, extreme likability was a revelation. My sister had long been advocating his early novels, but I, like many of you, began with The Corrections. I really disliked it. Then the Oprah business, which made me angry and combative, and I couldn’t agree with friends who were taking his side. But then, How to Be Alone. These essays were good, they were important, and I got a lot of pleasure from reading them; moreover, I was teaching essay-writing to irony-suffocated, critical-perspective-starved undergraduates. I assigned them some of the Franzen essays and they responded by waking up and writing better essays themselves. Amazing!

So my irk-meter moved from red to neutral, I stopped being mad (though I’ll always be pro-Oprah’s Book Club and any similar enterprises), and there I was in the front row of an auditorium watching him fumbling with the mike and the stand, apologizing for himself and his essay, knowing his schtick is based in truth and that it works and that he’s mostly loved for being smart and sound even more than for being rather adorably broken-winged, and so, I get the Franzen thing now. He read excellently; he’s an appreciative listener; he respects talent and self-transcending endeavor; he’s wrong about Oprah; I’d do him. Sorry if that’s not literary-intellectual enough, but sometimes I think the Pauline has gone out of the responses to artwork we’re allowed. When it comes to writing and reading and (maybe especially) watching someone read, you can’t get away from physical pleasure, in some form or other. But more about all the words later, not to mention the many powers of Zadie Smith; I’m late for Updike!

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |

Live from Saturday Afternoon!

Emily Gordon: It’s going to be a bit easier to blog many-venued events like this when New York becomes (surely it will?) an all-WiFi-city, like the pleasingly cutting-edge Salem, Mass., or, soon if controversially, Philly. Anyway, I’m in Bryant Park, having just heard an intriguingly academic, consciously nonpolitical, occasionally contentious dialogue between Mikhail Baryshnikov and New Yorker dance critic (and occasional writer of book reviews) Joan Acocella. She pelted him with questions about his switch to modern dance and his relationship to classical ballet, and he was firm in declaring his devotion to Downtown, his indignation that young artists can’t afford to see any art (when he moved to the city, he said, he saw dance, Broadway shows, theater, or some other performence every night), and his hope that he’ll be able to make a difference with his new West 37th St. performance space. Which we were all sitting in; nice acoustics!

We also saw a nine-minute archival film of Baryshnikov dancing a somber, poignant modern piece (I didn’t catch the whole name, so if someone else knows it, please write in). I’ve never been witness to a more moving spectacle of mortality. Watching the great dancer sit on a stage with his fists clenched or one hand in his hair, the other covering his thigh protectively, and willing his head to turn toward the screen, where his younger self is holding himself on one leg in a mastery of time, space, muscle, and feeling—how could you not tear up at the ridiculous shortness of our lifetimes and the frailty of the human body? The whole thing made me want to be, and want all of us to be, worthy of Baryshnikov’s passion for saving and bolstering an arts community that has allowed him to take so many mighty risks. There are quotes, lots of ’em, so I’ll post presently.

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |