What I’ve Learned So Far

Universcale, presented by Nikon.

It’s an essentially an update of Powers of Ten. Worth checking out and showing to any inquisitive children who happen to be hanging around.

One more New Yorker note as I clear off my desk: on the other side of the first page of Haruki Murakami’s essay on running and writing is a Tobias Wolff essay called “Winter Light.” The piece centers on the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name, which had a deep effect on Wolff when he first saw it as a twentysomething university student at Oxford.

This passage particularly caught my attention:

It is a harrowing experience, this film, shot starkly in the winter light of its title and filled with wintry silences, the camera often unmoving in its scrutiny of the human face in anguish, uncertainty, and yearning. When the movie ended, we all sat there as if stunned. I used the word “harrowing.” Truly I felt harrowed, crust broken, buried things churning to the surface.

To me, harrowing the minds of the audience is a fine goal for any creator — writer, filmmaker, painter, what have you. And harrowing yourself is a fine goal for any sort of devotion, be it spiritual, intellectual, psychological, or physical.

~

(Photo by Keith@Fibonacci.)

Objet de Carte via The Ampersand.

Speaking of things that I’m giving up, it’s time to say goodbye to Sudoku puzzles. I’ve always loved word and shape and number and logic puzzles, and for a long time I was a regular solver of New York Times crosswords.

If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you may recall that I gave up Sudokus a while back. I’m often a backslider when it comes to resolutions like that, and lately I’ve fallen back into the Sudoku trap. On the plane to and from Seattle this week, I worked the puzzles on the Sudoku page of the in-flight magazine. Or rather, I worked the “Gentle” and “Moderate” puzzles, and started in on the “Diabolical” one.

Just now, as I opened the book I’m in the middle of reading, I found that puzzle again, tucked between the pages. I started to look over Mr. Diabolical while I brewed another pot of coffee, making no real headway in 10 or 15 minutes of puzzling.

And then, thinking of what I just wrote about giving up The New Yorker, it hit me: Sudoku puzzles are a lovely way to pass the time, but I don’t have extra time that needs passing. They have nothing to do with writing, which must be the sole focus of my work these days, and I can’t really share them with anybody. So, while Sudokus are fun, and a neat thing in their own right, they’re not my way of making a contribution.

The sheet of puzzles: gone. My Sudoku bookmarks: gone.

Sayonara, Sudoku. It was nice knowing you.

The first time I ever bought a copy of The New Yorker, I was in Honolulu’s airport on my way to Tokyo. I had just turned 16, and was setting off on the main leg of the biggest traveling adventure of my youth: a two-month group study tour, without my parents, that included two weeks in Hawaii and six weeks in the People’s Republic of China. It was 1988 — one year before the Tiananmen Sqaure crackdown.

Memory won’t tell me what, exactly, was on the cover of that issue, but I remember that it was a cartoon in a pastel shade of green. It might have been by Saul Steinberg. But I loved it — the cover, the long stories inside, the cartoon, the typefaces, the Jazz Age/midcentury sensibility that has made this high-middlebrow magazine a standard for culture to generations of educated middle-class Americans.

It was also, of course, the perfect thing to read on a long plane flight: the variety of articles, especially when mixed in with cartoons, fiction, and poetry, held the attention. When you were done, you felt like you had learned something, while also getting a glimpse into a world that was considerably removed from the quiet slice of suburbia where I lived in West Texas. Regardless of what The New Yorker’s articles addressed, the magazine really represented that certain sensibility, slightly anachronistic but unquestionably more stylish than the way that most of its readers have lived.

More than a decade later, I did my first piece of grade-A commercial writing when I wrote a review (now lost, alas) of Ben Yagoda’s history of The New Yorker, About Town, for the late, great online magazine Blue Ear. It was the first time I had ever been given a free review copy of a book, and I worked like a dog to live up to what I thought of as a high honor. Later, I used that review as a writing sample for the Austin Chronicle’s books department, which led to more reviews and more writing samples that helped me land my job at Hoover’s, where I still work.

Along the way, The New Yorker has been an inconstant but welcome companion. I clearly recall the day of my undergraduate career when a friend showed me the very first issue of the magazine to include a photograph in its editorial pages. The picture was of Malcolm X, and its inclusion represented a “bold” departure by the then-editor, Tina Brown.

Over the years of our marriage, my wife and I have subscribed to The New Yorker for long runs, and when we lived in New York for a year in the 1990s, my wife discovered the great utility of a weekly magazine with so much editorial content (all those long stories). It was the perfect thing to read on the subway, and you could actually read the whole magazine every week. These days, I still love to see a new New Yorker on the coffee table, but often I leave it unread, or just flip through to look at the cartoons. (My father-in-law loves the cartoon-captioning contest that was introduced to the back page a few years ago; I have no taste for it.) Anything I do read from it I choose from the contents page, because I can’t afford to get mired in so much material every week. I’ve got a job to do — several, in fact — and this Ph.D. won’t finish itself, either.

Not that the choices are always easy. Sure, there are issues when very little in the magazine appeals to me specifically; those are the ones I set aside unread. Sometimes I find one piece that I know I want to read (like the Haruki Murakami essay from which I quoted in the prior entry); when that happens, I get in and out of the magazine like a commando, not stopping for any of its other temptations.

And then there are issues like the latest one to hit our mailbox (June 23, 2008), which reminds me of the downside of my intellectual omnivorosity. Let’s just pick some highlights, eh?

• Peter Boyer writes “One Angry Man: Keith Olbermann’s rants and ratings.” — Okay, I’d like to read this, because (a) I’ve been following Olbermann’s career since his SportsCenter days, (b) I’ve seen plenty of these rants and think that Olbermann plays a tonic role in today’s media discourse (such as it is) about politics, (c) Boyer’s a good writer, and (d) I’m especially interested in an old-media notable, in this case from television, who has such a strong presence (via YouTube etc.) on the Internet. On the other hand, (a) ALL of the writers for The New Yorker are good, to the point that it’s not even worth calling out, and (b) I’ve told myself that I’m not going to read any more politics this year. I know how I’m voting in November, I have no time or money to give to political activism this year, and I simply have more pressing things to do with my time.
• George Saunders writes a “Shouts & Murmurs” casual/humor piece called “Antiheroes.” — Saunders is the favorite living fiction writer of my pal Austin Kleon, as is borne out by Austin’s many blog posts about him. So I’d like to give this a read, even though I might not be drawn to read it otherwise.
• John Seabrook writes an “Annals of Technology” piece, “Hello, HAL: The batle to make computers understand.” — I used to be a technology writer for Hoover’s, and I see the development of information technology as an overlooked element in mainstream academic history writing, so I’m tempted to read this for my own enlightenment.
• Jon Lee Anderson writes “Fidel’s Heir: Hugo Chavez’s big ambitions.” — Have I mentioned that I’m getting a Ph.D. in the recent history of U.S. foreign relations and that it focuses on the worldwide oil business? This article would seem to be germane.
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes a fictional story, “The Headstrong Historian.” — First, I studied a fair amount of African history in my Ph.D. coursework. Second, I’ve been reading more short fiction lately as I try to work on stories of my own. Third, this one has “historian” in the title. I sigh.
• James Wood and John Updike write reviews of novels I probably will never read, but I want to know what they have to say about them — again because I’m working on my fiction chops.
• David Denby writes reviews of “The Incredible Hulk” and “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” — neither of which I’m likely to see. But I read the reviews anyway because I like Denby’s viewpoint.

A-a-a-and, next thing you know, you’ve read a third of a book’s worth of material, while the actual books that I actually must read — to finish my Ph.D., to finish other scholarly pieces, to review for my professional blog, etc. — still sit in stacks on the floor around my desk. That’s not to mention the books that fill an entire bookcase in my living room, or the scores of books that I want to read after my Ph.D., which I’ve boxed up and stored in the garage to keep them from tempting me.

Which brings me to my real topic: trying to strike a balance between the sort of omnivorous reading that has always fed my imagination, and the sort of targeted reading that feeds real expertise in a given field.

When I write it down that way, the choice isn’t so hard, because my imagination is pretty well-fed already. More accurately, it’s morbidly obese, what with the hundreds of half-developed ideas for pieces — fiction, essays, scholarship, blog posts, magazine articles, poems, et cetera ad nauseam — that populate my world and my mind. When I’m honest with myself, the meter on my idea tank is pegged at More-than-Aplenty. I do need to keep up the pace of my reading, and even increase it, but not with the sort of miscellaneous matter that comes in each week’s New Yorker. Just looking at the reading material I have within arm’s reach, in fact, I’d be better served to spend my serendipitous browsing time with the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review, the latest issues of which — each with an unusual number of articles of interest to me — arrived in the mail this week.

Of course, it’s hard to tell the imagination-glutton that he can’t have his ice cream anymore. But — for now, at least — it’s true. Again, I sigh, but it’s for the best.

This, then, is not a final parting with my dear New Yorker, but merely au revoir. We will meet again . . . after I’ve gotten my imagination into fighting trim.

~

(Photo credits: Chrysler by Brain Toad; hotel by syvwlch; cat & magazine by aturkus.)

Murakami’s recent New Yorker essay offers a piece of wisdom that transcends watching one’s weight:

When I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight is perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don’t want to gain weight I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. People who naturally keep the weight off don’t need to exercise or watch their diet. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. Those of us who have a tendency to gain weight should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. Of course, it’s not always easy to see things this way.

I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do — or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.

For me, the problem isn’t sources of creativity, and it isn’t (especially) the problem of putting on weight easily. It’s the problem of proliferating cruft easily.

If I want to achieve real progress in my work, I have to follow Murakami’s advice about working hard every day, watching my intake, and cutting down on my informational and obligational (?) indulgences.

Her wisdom comes from hard experience. Read what she has to say about choosing to raise her boys without giving in to her fears — or the fears of others:

Being alive — from my perspective as an American suburbanite not suffering through famine or war — is a lucky break, a privilege not to be pissed away on petty fears. […]

I bit back what I wanted to say [to another mother], which was that her fear was not my child’s problem, […] and that I think it’s a straight-up sin to instill a fear of the everyday in a child.

Rock on, Redneck Mother.

This is just a little idea I’m kicking around, so please bear with its molten-ness:

If you cared to, you could think of all of life through the lens of

• Opportunites and
• Opportunity costs.

Every single thing that presents itself to you is an opportunity. It could be an opportunity to do something good, like learn something or connect with a friend or earn some money. It could be something bad, like erode your health or waste your time or alienate someone you love.

But if everything were that easy to figure out, life would be much, much easier than most people find it to be. Much of what we deal with, instead of being clear-cut, is murky: eating a greasy cheeseburger with an old pal is good for me in the sense of human connection and so on, but it’s not good for my cholesterol level. Sometimes you spend down your savings (bad) in order to provide a special experience for your family (good). We’re constantly balancing.

But I think the opportunities-and-opportunity-costs model might be helpful as we try to work this balancing act.

When you’re presented with a choice, think about it in terms of what the opportunity is. Even if you’re encountering a crappy, depressing obligation . . . well, surely it’s an opportunity to do something good, right? What is that opportunity? Maybe you’ll help someone else in their own hard struggle? Maybe you’ll learn something? Maybe you’ll learn better discipline by discharging an obligation? Maybe you’ll serve a long-term objective, even though it’s boring / painful / cringe-making in the short run?

Or maybe it’s just not worth pursuing at all, which is where the opportunity cost part comes in. Recall from economics class that opportunity cost describes the goods you’re giving up by choosing what you choose.  If I put $10 in savings, I’m passing up the opportunity to spend that $10 on something else — and vice versa. Parsing through this also involves lots of gray areas, but that’s life.

Like I said, this is only a partially formed idea. But I’m trying to use it as I navigate through my day. For everything I could do with my time, I’m asking myself two questions:

• What’s the opportunity here?
• What’s the opportunity cost for doing this?

The answers, while not always comforting, certainly are illuminating.

What do you think?  I’ll let you know what sort of lessons I learn from this as I go along.

We’ve spent a long time, in this society, building and stretching out. Longer highways, bigger suburbs, bigger houses, bigger televisions with longer lists of channels supplying them, bigger meals, bigger waistbands, bigger whatever.

It’s no good.

We should seek out not that which is extensive, but that which is intensive.

• Close human relationships.
• Deep understanding.
• Heartfelt compassion.
• Intensive agriculture.
• Rich experiences.
• Dense cities with compact neighborhoods that don’t sprawl.

This list could go on, because the applications are endless. Variety is a wonderful thing, but we have become thralls to variety. We cannot stand ten seconds of boredom. We flit along to the next channel, we focus on acquiring the next thing, we ask for seconds and thirds when the first helping was plenty.

And we wonder why so many people complain of shallow lives, shallow experiences.

Get extensive-enough variety. But above all, seek out intensive meaning in life.

~

“As is a tale, so is life:
not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
Seneca

~

(Image by Payton Chung.)

In the back matter of the current edition of their jointly written novel, Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman offer some reflections on each other. Among other laudatory things Gaiman says about Pratchett, he offers this summary of why Pratchett has been so prolific and so funny for so long.

He was having fun. Then again, Terry is that rarity, the kind of author who likes Writing, not Having Written, or Being a Writer, but the actual sitting there and making things up in front of a screen. At the time we met [in 1985], he was still working as a press officer for the South Western Electricity board. He wrote four hundred words a night, every night: it was the only way for him to keep a real job and still write books. One night, a year later, he finished a novel, with a hundred words still to go, so he put a piece of paper into his typewriter, and wrote a hundred words of the next novel.

This is the same approach taken by that other prolific Englishman, Anthony Trollope:

And though in the quick production of my novels I had always ringing in my ears that terrible condemnation and scorn produced by the great man in Paternoster Row, I was nevertheless proud of having done so much. I always had a pen in my hand. Whether crossing the seas, or fighting with American officials, or tramping about the streets of Beverley, I could do a little, and generally more than a little. I had long since convinced myself that in such work as mine the great secret consisted in acknowledging myself to be bound to rules of labour similar to those which an artisan or a mechanic is forced to obey. A shoemaker when he has finished one pair of shoes does not sit down and contemplate his work in idle satisfaction. “There is my pair of shoes finished at last! What a pair of shoes it is!” The shoemaker who so indulged himself would be without wages half his time. It is the same with a professional writer of books. An author may of course want time to study a new subject. He will at any rate assure himself that there is some such good reason why he should pause. He does pause, and will be idle for a month or two while he tells himself how beautiful is that last pair of shoes which he has finished! Having thought much of all this, and having made up my mind that I could be really happy only when I was at work, I had now quite accustomed myself to begin a second pair as soon as the first was out of my hands.

More:

• Wikipedia entry on Good Omens.
• 1991 Locus interview with Gaiman and Pratchett.
• HarperCollins page on Good Omens.

~

I’ve been trying to do the hardest thing: stop my intake of new written material while I increase my output of pending written material. It doesn’t surprise me that it would be a struggle, but it’s a fascinating case-study-of-self to actually engage in that struggle.

Here’s my rationale for my “No Intake” philosophy, which I’m at least applying on the weekends:

• As anyone who’s been reading my tales of Overhang will know, I have way, way, WAY too much material on hand already.
• When I read new material, it gives me ideas for even more material of my own, which is not the most helpful thing when I’m trying to reduce Overhang.
• My production will be much better when I clear off the excess of (good) projects that current infect populate my calendar. When I say “better,” I mean both that I ought to produce more, and that I ought to produce better individual pieces. At least, I think that’s what it will mean to work with clear decks. It’s such an alien concept to me that I’m really just guessing.

Ah, the siren song of habit. I’ve become so accustomed to checking e-mail (three inboxes!), Bloglines, and Twitter umpteen times per day that it’s hard to put those crack-pipes down. It’s funny how these things — which are supposed to increase our pleasure and utility — actually impede us when they become such firmly ingrained habits.

I’ll confess: as I type this entry, which I know won’t be very long, it’s a struggle not to flip over to a new Firefox tab to see what’s happening on Twitter and to see what’s landed in my inbox. In fact, even before I picked up writing here, I cleaned out the comments queue (all spam, as it turned out) for my professional blog. Why? Because I’m sick, that’s why.

Okay, I’m not really sick — but it is worthwhile to think about how what I’m feeling parallels deeper kinds of unhealthy obsession. The inbox obsession won’t ruin a life like alcoholism or drug addiction will, but it certainly degrades one’s effectiveness.

One victory of this weekend: I managed to wrangle many of my self-management notes and to-do lists into one single document. I’m a horrible list-maker: I’ll dash off a new list of to-do’s when another barely-started list is siting right next to it on the desk. Why I keep making these lists is a topic for inquiry on some other day when I have the mental bandwidth to spare. For now, it’s enough to declare victory for purging even a few pending items — blog posts, articles to read, errands, the to-do lists themselves — from my to-do list(s).

How about you? How do you control your intake?

~

(Photo from Irene2005. And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out this feature on “7 amazing holes,” which includes the Kimberley Big Hole, the Mirny diamond mine in Siberia, and five other jaw-dropping holes made by human endeavor.)