6.28.2007

On Chesil Beach


This is a relatively short novel (just over 200 pages), but it carries quite a devastating emotional punch, particularly in its final chapters. McEwan's story concerns a newly married young couple in the early 1960's, neither of whom are sexually experienced. Edward looks forward to the societal license granted to him by his wedding to act on his physical impulses; Florence's love for Edward is honest, but the wedding night looms in her imagination like an unpleasant chore.
McEwan follows this couple as they arrive in their honeymoon suite and pares apart their respective emotional histories with an almost cold precision. Edward and Florence live just on the edge of the massive cultural changes of the mid-1960's; Florence, for example, anticipates a successful career with her string quartet and politely tolerates Edward's fondness for Chuck Berry and early rock & roll: "When the tunes were so elementary, mostly in simple four-four time, why this relentless thumping and crashing and clattering to keep time? What was the point, when there was already a rhythm guitar, and often a piano?"
Different taste in music is probably the least of this couple's trouble, but McEwan uses this polite disagreement ("He kissed her and told her she was the squarest person in all of Western civilization.") as an indicator of future divergencies. The literally climactic scene of the wedding consummation reads at first like slapstick, but McEwan's precise delving into Edward's and Florence's internal dialogue makes it tragic. The novel turns entirely on the reader's acceptance of this scene, and McEwan's blend of emotional and physical detail is flawless. It's a scene that would only be lessened by paraphrase (or a filmed interpretation, for that matter).
McEwan's skill is to use these two characters, neither of which is ultimately very likeable, to offer a subtle indication of what the convulsive societal shifts of the 1960s freed us from and, more important, to demonstrate how "by doing nothing. . . the entire course of a life can be changed." By the end of the novel, it's not just the characters who feel the chill winds off the beach.
The clumsy fumbling of a newly married couple is not unknown to me. Nor is the frustration of a young man whose partner is less experienced than he. This is McEwan's starting point, and perhaps one that elicits easy empathy, but by the time the full consequences of this young couple's inexperience become evident, the reader is almost divided in their loyalties (or pity) for the characters.
More so than other McEwan novels I've read, On Chesil Beach carries a direct moralistic tone, one that would seem chiding in the hands of a lesser stylist. The beauty of McEwan's language, the patience of his narrative voice as he outlines the tangled emotional backgrounds of his characters, and the sense of omniscient pity he uses to instruct us are Hardy-esque. The impact of this small novel is heartbreaking and cold.
The first chapter of the novel appeared in The New Yorker and is available here.
More excerpts and reviews at Ian McEwan's website.

6.19.2007

I Am Resolved to Grow Fat and Look Young


Well, shit. I thought I'd be dead by now. But apparently I have more disasters to face and/or some mission to fulfill for the Time Lords, because I'm still here. Not that I'm complaining. Look who else is still around after this long!

The lovely Ms. Kidman:




Rolling Stone Magazine (my lifetime subscription expires with the June 1, 2056 issue. Which of the two of us do you think is going to make it that far? Place your bets now.):



and the glory that is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on June 2, 1967 (once my favorite Beatles album, though now I favor Revolver or, in my cynical moods, The Beatles):




Also celebrating (?) a 40th anniversary this month is the Monterey Pop Festival, one of the few music festivals of the late 1960's where the music was actually worth listening to without pharmacological enhancement. Check out the DVD if you don't believe me.

One of my other favorite albums, Radiohead's OK Computer, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month (released on June 16, 1997), Star Wars (or Episode IV, if you prefer) just passed its 30th, and Brian Wilson, the tormented genius behind the Beach Boys, despite whatever Mike Love thinks, is still kicking at 65, and he is (or was) twice as coked out and depressed as I am (I think he's better now). Woo-hoo!

I'm afraid I have no pearls of wisdom to share, no words of advice to you younguns with your iPods and your Pogs and your Transformers. My right knee aches all the time. I'm still considering what my career will be. I have survived two car crashes, exposure to numerous deadly substances, a UFO, two alcoholic parents, a year in a meat-packing plant with an ex-con co-worker, several psychotic roommates, and The Phantom Menace (or Episode I, if you prefer). I am 3/4 of the way toward a PhD, I have thousands of CDs and vinyl albums, I dream about the future, I teach college classes, and I try to avoid writing whenever possible. I miss my cat and my grandmother, who both died last year around this time. What can I tell you? I'm glad I made it this far. And if you're reading this, chances are I'm glad to know you. It's my friends and my brother who make it worth hanging around. And the faint hope that The Simpsons movie will not suck.

Good luck to you for the next forty. Let's hope we all make it that far, huh?





6.11.2007

Attack of the Superzeroes

from an article by Thomas de Zengotita appearing in the December 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine:

. . . This is the ultimate significance of all the technology: cable, satellite, the web, camcorders, video phones--all the usual suspects. They were the means to virtual revolution.

Coached by performer heroes, seeking the recognition to which they felt entitled, spectators pushed themselves forward as the technological venues opened up, and not only in what we call the "reality show." Other reality shows, under other names, sprang up everywhere. What they all had in common was the celebration of people refusing to be spectators--all the mini-celebrities, for example, who dominate chat rooms and game sites, and the blogs, the intimate "life journals." Think also of raves and flash mobbing, marathon running, karaoke bars, focus groups, talk-radio call-in shows, homemade porn, sponsored sports teams for tots--and every would-be band in the world can now burn a CD and produce cool cover art and posters.

Being famous isn't what it used to be.

Has it ever struck you, watching interviews with people in clips from the 1940s and 1950s, say, or even just looking at them in photographs, how stiff and unnatural they seem? Even prominent people, but especially regular folk, the way they lean into the mike and glance awkwardly around as they say whatever they have to say in semi-formal tones, almost as if reciting; and the way they raise their voices, as if they can't quite trust the technology to reach an absent audience. But nowadays? Every man on the street, every girl on the subway platform, interviewed about the snowstorm or the transit strike--they are total pros, laughing in the right places, looking directly at the interviewer or into the camera, fluid, colloquial, comments and mannerisms pitched just right for the occasion, completely at ease.

Method actors all.

The full article is available here, but only if you're a Harper's subscriber (which isn't a bad idea--it's consistently readable). If you're not a subscriber, the full essay is well worth digging up from your library. Or you can find a modified version in de Zengotita's book (one I intend to read soon), Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It.

Along the same lines as de Zengotita's piece, here are some interviews with a few of the architects and designers of Black Rock City, Nevada, a city that only exists for one week a year.

6.05.2007

Me in Three

In three weeks, I will kiss my thirties goodbye, so here's an appropriate meme to send them off. Via Billville, your one-stop source for up-to-date Zune news and annoying memes!

3 Names You Go By
Chuckles, Chuck U. Farley, Professor

3 Screen Names You Have
charlec, chazzbotte (fuck Yahoo for making "chazzbot" unavailable!), Frisky Yorktown (my porn-star name)

3 Things You Like About Yourself
I'm reasonably intelligent, I can spend hours in my basement without ever getting bored, and I am a college professor who has worked in a meat-packing plant and driven in a demolition derby.

3 Things You Dislike About Yourself
I procrastinate, I don't read fast enough, I am too easily distracted by memes and questionnaires.

3 Parts of Your Heritage
Uh, see Billville.

3 Things That Scare You
I'm going to answer this as if it were "3 things that give you nightmares". So: falling from the air, nuclear war, and excessively violent episodes of The Sopranos (this week's penultimate episode was a doozy).

3 Everyday Essentials
Glasses, something pointy to gouge out dirt from my fingernails, music (I've noticed I become increasingly tense the longer I've gone without listening to music. It's some kind of psychological addiction, seriously.)

3 Things You're Wearing Right Now
Space shuttle t-shirt, gym shorts, uh . . . three?

3 Favorite Bands/Artists
The Beatles, Radiohead, Otis Redding

3 Favorite Songs at Present
"Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken" by Camera Obscura
"Are You Ready for Love?" by Elton John
"The Best Damn Thing" by Avril Lavigne (I know.)

3 Things You Want to Try and Do in the Next 12 Months
Finish the dissertation. Finish reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series. (I'm on volume four.) Own every episode of Babylon 5 and Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD so JonLee will write poems about me.

3 Things You Want in a Relationship
Loyalty. Curiousity. Super-saver discounts. (Oddly, these criteria also apply to my dealer.)

2 Truths and a Lie
I have mapped out a location and timeline for my "disappearance." I once lived with a prostitute. I have a secret family (well, they don't know they're secret).

3 PHYSICAL Things About the Opposite Sex That Appeal to You
Big teeth. Thighs. The swell of the sternum as it leads into the breasts.

3 Things You Just Can't Do
Repair an automobile engine. Schmooze convincingly. Live on faith.

3 Favorite Hobbies
Reading. Listening to music. Blogging.

3 Things I Want to Do Really Bad Right Now
Figure out how to pay my bills during the summer without working a stupid temp job. Eat a turkey samich. Change the air-flow patterns over Enoch, Utah, so I don't have to listen to the fucking wind blow any more today.

3 Careers You Have Considered
Police detective. Astrophysicist. IRS Section Chief.

3 Places You Want to Go on Vacation
Alaska. New Zealand/Australia. Roswell, New Mexico.

3 Kids' Names You Have Considered
Sarah Jane. Elizabeth Anne. Aretha.

3 Things You Want to Do Before You Die
Publish a novel. See the Earth from orbit. Transcend my human weakness.

3 People Who Have to Take This Quiz Now
Most of my friends don't maintain an online presence. (I know, how boring are these people?) But I'd like to see what Mallyeren comes up with.