(dave e)

the sun king

sam phillips is gone.

here's elvis' best biographer, peter guralnick, on sun studio's guide:

It was a lonely path, and one that Sam trod without regard to personal gain or popularity ("I could be a mean motherfucker. Now this may sound like a contradiction, because I needed everybody's help, but I didn't need myself kissing anyone's ass"). He was a man swept up by a belief, in a sound and in an idea. And as discouraged as he might sometimes get, as harsh as the reality of selling this new music might be, he never strayed from his belief, he never allowed himself to be distracted from his main goal. Which was to get them to listen. (Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley 113)

as anyone who's seen phillips command whatever screen he's occupying knows, this was no calm soul. his overexcited presence and his tendency to perform the legend of visionary madman always made me a little nervous, particularly when his interviews were played against the understated and shy young presley. this, however, was the same mind that recognized just what it meant when elvis, scotty moore, and bill black -- goofing off, really -- ended their first session together with "that's all right, mama." any other ear might have continued to pack up the sound booth, not really hearing elvis' voice do something few, if any, had ever done before. phillips heard. he made them do it over again. and again. his was also the same mind that persuaded a brother madman, dj dewey phillips (no earthly relation), to play the record on whbq the next night. as dewey satisfied his station's pleading callers and played the song no less than twenty times, american music changed.

all talk of "firsts" fails at some point. was "rocket 88" the first rock and roll song? was elvis the first popular (read: white) rock and roll artist? or was it bill haley? was sam phillips the first to realize that "race records" would only make it into the living rooms of the nation with a white voice? all talk of race at sun studio falls short, too. phillips' insistence, much like presley's, that he understood black life in the rural south, doesn't really satisfy many questions. were he and elvis ultimately guilty of stealing a kind of music? maybe. is that ameliorated by the fact that sun studio pretty much integrated popular music in the mid-twentieth century (phillips claims to have "knocked the shit out of the color line")? maybe. everyone could record at sun. and many did. at the very least, phillips took that wall down.

phillips was undoubtedly a moneymaker. he contributed happily to the maintenance of his role in the legend. he was, as he says, a "mean motherfucker."

in the face of all that, though, try to imagine things without his elvis. without his little junior parker. without his carl perkins. without his jerry lee lewis. without his johnny cash. all of them brought their art to 706 union avenue.

sam phillips let us know they were singing.

fragments

knowledge is happiest in uncontrolled flotsam and jetsam.

spending whole days reading, researching, and writing.

dutch: a memoir of ronald reagan, edmund morris' vastly proper biographical novel, offers a gem per page. em's reagan acts the part of president and presides over the part of actor. the form of the sometimes fictional work (em creates a sort of boswell character for himself, called edmund morris) seems to me an idealization of the marriage of literary form and historical document. there are bits of imagined movie scripts, complete with lighting direction, in which a reagan moment is narrated. there are transcribed conversations. there are facsimile copies of rr handwriting from the archive. there are graceful metaphors through which morris talks about his biographical project. all of it functions like a sort of pastiche/bricolage. the perfect means to convey the ActorPresident.

my neighbors are sort of bothering me. in the daylight hours, their loud kids scream in the "front yard" (we have a patch of dirt out there, yo). after the sun goes down, their motorcycles scream around the house. it's kind of embarrasing, because ours is the only building on an otherwise calm block that produces so much racket. then again, i feel guilty, because i think i'm being a snob.

i can't keep my glasses clean.

it's wise, i think, to print out a large-font copy of the primary argument you're tying to make in whatever you're writing at the moment. you'll want to hang it on the wall. behind my monitor right now, i see the following: "my study addresses the phenomenon of texts that aggressively interrogate the traditions of western life-writing while they take their place within the biographical discourse; their work as self-conscious critiques from within behaves as a symptom of the discourse's unsettled relationship with both generic and ontological criteria." i guess that's why the writing's slow right now. kind of a clunker.

i'm teaching a section of my department's intro. to the novel this fall. narrowing my syllabus down to a digestible number of novels is difficult. evidence: i want to teach both moby dick and the poisonwood bible. something tells me that's not realistic, as i'll need to work in a few others over the semester.

now i'm tired.

the philologist's method-of-self

from an atlantic interview with Professor harold bloom:

This attitude of reverence is what sets you apart from many of your colleagues. You don't seem to belong to any particular school of literary criticism.

Well, it's such a complex thing. I left the English department twenty-six years ago. I just divorced them and became, as I like to put it, Professor of Absolutely Nothing. To a rather considerable extent, literary studies have been replaced by that incredible absurdity called cultural studies which, as far as I can tell, are neither cultural nor are they studies. But there has always been an arrogance, I think, of the semi-learned.

You know, the term "philology" originally meant indeed a love of learning—a love of the word, a love of literature. I think the more profoundly people love and understand literature, the less likely they are to be supercilious, to feel that somehow they know more than the poems, stories, novels, and epics actually know.

And, of course, we have this nonsense called Theory with a capital T, mostly imported from the French and now having evilly taken root in the English-speaking world. And that, I suppose, also has encouraged absurd attitudes toward what we used to call imaginative literature.

and

You like to tell your students, "There is no method except yourself." What do you mean by that?

I believe that very passionately. My friend Paul de Man with whom, as I say, I used to argue endlessly, would tell me that after a lifetime of searching, he had found the method, the "Troot," as he put it—that Belgian pronunciation of "Truth." I would say, "No, dear Paul, there is no Truth. There is only the Self."

What theory did the great critics have? Critics like Dr. Samuel Johnson or William Hazlitt? Those who adopt a theory are simply imitating somebody else. I believe firmly that, in the end, all useful criticism is based upon experience. An experience of teaching, an experience of reading, one's experience of writing—and most of all, one's experience of living. Just as wisdom, in the end, is purely personal. There can be no method except the Self.

global

hasty recommendation:

sign up for the development executive group's global development briefing. aimed at development agencies and professionals (lots of usaid, imf, worlbank material), but very thorough coverage for the rest of us, too.

from the most recent round-up:

AFGHANISTAN: The Central-Asian country is still one of the poorest countries in the world, German weekly Die Zeit writes. According to recent World Bank estimates, 70 percent of the population is undernourished. Average life expectancy is at 44 years, compared to an average of 59 years in developing countries in general. Infant mortality is with 163 per 1000 births the highest in the world. Eighteen months after the fall of the Taliban regime, there are no country-wide improvements, the weekly writes. While Kosovo is getting $250 per person in development aid, Afghanistan is only receiving $42. All in all, the international community has committed $5.25 billion in development aid, of which Germany is contributing $400 million.

of course, since the u.s. has no strategic interest in little places like liberia and the new genocide capital, eastern d.r. congo, news from somewhere other than washington and baghdad really doesn't matter.

sore legs

so, last night, natalie and i ran the rockville twilight 8k.

i finished at 38:14, running, on average, a 7:41 mile. 473rd out of 1150 men. 168th out of the 352 in my age group. there are no ultra-marathons in my immediate future, and i'll happily admit to getting passed by a bunch of folks. still, i feel pretty good.

whoo!

THIS JUST IN:

16 H 51 - Armstrong Finishes 1'23" Behind...
At the finish Armstrong is 1'23" behind the stage winner, Simoni. The American will keep his overall lead for the 15th stage.

whoo...

understatement?

"The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."

who said that, according to the post? "The official conducting the briefing rejected reporters' entreaties to allow his name to be used, arguing that it was his standard procedure for such sessions to be conducted anonymously."

i don't think i'd put my name with that claim, either. not if the guy-whose-facts-should-pretty-much-be-right-on-in-chief was my boss.

in other news, did everyone get a chance to listen to yesterday's fight in the house ways and means committee? i somehow caught a good bit of its aftermath on c-span in the afternoon. there were capitol police and everything!

sheesh.

exile

somedays, i think it would be wiser to pack it all up and move to tanzania.

what with the job market and invisible adjunct's handy catalogue of cautionary tales. what with my discomfort as a citizen of the new empire. what with the economy. what with the housing market in suburban d.c.. what with the overabundance of unecessary suv's, which does little beyond raising my blood pressure. what with the popular distate for academe. what with the job market... oh, did i already mention that?

i'd never never give up my u.s. citizenship. this is my home. i am an american, and i intend to remain one. but i kind of sort of think i want out for a while.

given natalie's solid experience in subsaharan africa, and the fact that i absolutely loved my visit (oh, alright, i was only in s. africa, but, dammit, we were out of jo'berg, up in the rural stretches around the kruger n.p. -- you know, hoedspruit, the timbavati, hazyview, klaserie, the drakensberg mountains... right around there), i think we could pull it off. maybe up in tanzania somewhere. not too far from kilamanjaro would be nice. arusha, moshi, something like that...

[sound of footsteps approaching quickly. noisy smack of backhand against back of head]

hey, ya jerk! get offa my blog!

sorry, that was a shady doppelganger, i'm afraid. trying to spread bad rumors. i sure am excited about the writing i'm doing today. returning to some work on edmund morris' dutch and gore vidal's lincoln. picking apart the dialectic of fiction and history in those representatively weird u.s. presidential biographies.

i sure am glad i'll get to start picking a job soon. everyone keeps asking me what part of the country i want to live in. i tell them i'd prefer a small new england liberal arts college, near a city, but close enough to the mountains to ski on the weekends, when i don't have to worry about grading and editing for publication anymore. but, if worse comes to worse, i could live in a city on either coast. i figure probably i'll go with a research I kinda school if i take that option, though.

vive le tour!

until this year, i've payed only scant attention to the tour de france. now, as the centennial race is underway, i've somehow picked it up. major props to fritz, a longtime enthusiast and knowledgeable rider, who has patiently explained the difference between general classification and points standings, as well as the difference between the many-colored jerseys. leave it to the french to put the king of the mountain, the most accomplished climber, in a red and white polka dot jersey.

it's hard not to cheer lance armstrong. if he wins (and "everyone" seems to think he will), he'll join a very small class of riders who have won five consecutive tours. what's been most interesting for me is the degree of pressure put on the usps leader by e-v-e-r-y other rider who can pick at his strength. as phil liggett (who's just the coolest color commentary guy) says, he'll have to work quite hard to fend them off.

the reasons i think i've fallen for the race are several.

first, i've always been taken with endurance-y sorts of sports, and 3,427.5 kilometers over 20 stages certainly counts. natalie and i are running regularly now, and working over distance has always sort of appealed to me; i think that's why we're watching those guys grimace over 200k every day.

second, not only does the tour not involve american football-style physical activity (apologies to all y'all, but i get very little from the 8-second duration of plays on the gridiron... maybe it's because i was in marching band when i was 18), but it also seems to be a little elevated over the "i'llkillyouifyougetinmyway" manner of so much of professional sports. i don't have any absolute dislike of aggressive sports, and i recognize the role psychological competition plays for athletes. nevertheless, when i saw competitors piil and sacchi sort of grasp hands before they went into today's final sprint, i smiled. those guys are going to beat the hell out of each other over the next 1,000 meters, but they aren't swiping fingers across their necks, all NCAA style.

third... well, i ain't never been to france, but them bicycle riders shore do go through some purty country. seriously, yesterday's climbs and descents through the alps were stunning to watch. gorgeous.

if only beloki hadn't taken that horrible horrible fall on the wrong side of that mountain. his screams over a broken femur remind this novice viewer of the mountain's sublime.

fourth, tyler hamilton, a strong american rider, broke his collarbone the other day. he is currently in 5th place in the overall standings. with a broken collarbone.

with a broken collarbone.

and if you're schedule's tight, no worries. oln plays and replays every stage like four times a day. and their website coverage is thorough.

allons, enfants!

the fallacy of a philosophy minor

i found these in a brand new AP article by way of the post.

"I think I get is [sic] darn good intelligence and the speeches I have given are backed by good intelligence," Bush said. However, the administration has acknowledged the uncertainty of remarks Bush made in his January State of the Union address about Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium in Iraq [sic].

and

"I think the bottom has been gotten to," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said earlier Monday. "No one can accurately tell you it was wrong. That is not known," he said.

so, i went back to the old logic textbook.

the first is a simple contradiction. easy enough. so long as the several premises contain implicitly contradictory terms like "good" and "uncertainty," there is an inconsistency. purists would of course be troubled by my messy coupling of bush's and the AP's premises (1: the president gets darn good intelligence, and 2: there were uncertain remarks in a speech that followed from that darn good intelligence). no doubt "uncertainty" isn't an often-used term at that end of pennsylvania ave right now. yet the unstated conclusion (the speech was "darn good") is flawed.

i got frustrated looking for a classification of the second fallacy. maybe it doesn't quite make the standard of fallacy? i thought that resovling the question of "that [which] is not known" was precisely what's at "the bottom."

it helps me to write these down somewhere, and mt looks prettier than ms word.

i keep forgetting...

...to say publicly that U2 is the greatest band of all time. not necessarily my favorite, and not necessarily the best rock ensemble or the best songwriters or the best musicians or the best voices, mind you. many are the afternoons i'd rather listen to the pixies, to liz phair (no, i haven't heard it yet, but i have faith), to tom waits. i only have U2 days every once in a while. today is not one of those days. and yet i feel compelled to go ahead and observe that, collectively, it is the best band.

U2's artful balance of sincerity and joke, its sense of subtlety -- which is, for the record, the most important human communicative strategy -- and its late-80s recognition that all important sounds have their origins in memphis make it the best band ever.

viewfinding the architecture

today, while i baked at the bus stop, a man asked me to take a picture of him with this building in the distant background.

image courtesy of Notable Silver Spring Office Buildings

he seemed very proud to have been photographed in front of the silver spring centre.

perspective

from a timely washington post hagiography of former georgia senator max cleland:

"Now wait a minute," he says. "Let me run this back: We have a war. A bunch of Americans die. After the war, we try to figure out why we were there. There's a commitment of 240,000 ground troops with no exit strategy. You know what that's called? Vietnam! Hey, I've been there, done that, got a few holes in my T-shirt."

while i'm not ready to equate cleland's combat injuries with legislative justice (i have never understood the cult-of-personality view people take on when they call politicians they could not possibly know "trustworthy" or "likeable" -- doesn't anyone understand that congresspeople smile when they talk for a reason?), the saxby chambliss ad campaign against cleland buys him some heartfelt sympathy from this quarter.

i've already said enough about gulfwarII, and my inconsistent political stripes are out there for target practice. but this piece on cleland caught my eye. it is life-writing, after all.

in the interest of full disclosure, i'll mention that natalie has sat down to a nice georgia meal with the good senator. so my in-laws' admiration of cleland troubles me not a bit. it's the eyes-glassed-over assurances that "you can just tell, george bush just shoots straight... i just trust him" that f-r-e-a-k me out. ditto clintonphiles. we may know worlds about our "leaders'" actions, but discerning their intent is not a product of reading facial expression and soaking up folksy wisdom. bring 'em on, indeed.

happy fourth of july weekend.

life writing

because i'm not an especially original person and am likely to just imitate those who seem to be doing things right, it may very well be time to hoist my scholar flag and get some of my dissertationisms out there, too.

like chuck, i'm very interested in the question of the blog as a representation and product of its author's specific moments in time, though i'm at a loss to respond to that phenomenon as well as he has. the blog's illusion of immediacy, a function of relatively rapid-fire reports on observation and reflection, most certainly affects the status (and perhaps the nature) of knowledge. even without the dynamic quality of blogging communities -- a core of regular posters and readers (or consumers, or users, or organic information processing units) ostensibly cooperate as knowledge makers and interpreters -- the blogging model, in which an author "publishes" regular journal entries (very often meditations on what it means to publish regular journal entries) arrests, codifies, and publicizes an author's thoughts as quickly as she or he can type and click "save." and this definition neglects all sorts of expression -- images, sounds, design, links, titles, blogrolls. clearly a different model than anything that preceded it.

the implications of new media as new epistemology are no doubt broad. among the effects of all this typing, clicking, and posting, there is inescapably thorough work being done on (and by) the already unstable self.

as any reader of augustine's confessions, boswell's life of samuel johnson, douglass' narrative of the life..., or franklin's autobiography knows, auto/biographical writing has never been good at translating experience into text. in fact, that's often hardly the point. memory, imagination, outright dishonesty, exaggeration, romanticization, and wishful thinking all contribute to what james olney calls metaphors of self. and yet literary critics, historians, and casual readers of life-writing continue the search for a more authentic self who precedes and determines the book in hand. thankfully, the study of autobiography has moved in compelling directions during recent decades; following georges gusdorf's revolutionary "conditions and limits of autobiography," critics like olney, paul john eakin, sidonie smith, julia watson, julia swindells, and timothy dow adams have raised the theoretical bar by moving beyond the bad dichotomy of true/false in life-writing.

what happens, though, when the coupling of book and self, in which life-writers produce a substantial and (relatively) static work that somehow correlates with an experienced life (this holds, with obvious variation, in third-person biography, too), becomes a fast moving, editable, temporary, electronic collection of thoughts?

in short (yes, please!) when life-writing goes bloggy, has boswell lost his johnson? while the opportunities to construct selves in the mutable world of blogs would seem to signify a degree of liberation from the stodginess of print auto/biography's generic demands, i wonder about the sometimes cooperative, sometimes competitive moves to write oneself "honestly" and immediately and to write oneself with self-conscious attention to the question of subject-in-the-blog. is there much difference between the blogger who revels in the artifice made available by the form and the "writer" who willfully fictionalizes in what are conventionally nonfiction genres? i have my unsteady and tentative answer. anyone else?

the wheels of the brain, long attached to the tracks of engl 101, are trying to follow the brakeman's sign and get back on the dissertation line.