(I've updated this with a bunch of links about YA Literature below)
I apologize. I might, at some point, go back and add more hyper-links, but I figured I’d left my readers waiting so long . . .
Leave me with my illusions!
Young Adult literature is often seen as being exactly that: books for
teenagers -- and that's it.
However, a lot of great books get unread by people who would probably
enjoy and appreciate the writing, if they either A) knew about the
books, and/or B) weren't embarrassed to be reading "kiddie" books.
Think about Harry Potter for example. Here were books (I find it hard to think that anyone considers them strictly YA anymore) that a lot of adults dismissed as being childish. But as they grew in popularity (and, for some reason, infamy), parents started reading the books to see “what all the fuss was about.” Well, it turns out the fuss was about awesome books that were just as much mystery/thrillers as they were children’s fantasy. And as Harry grew, so did the books, so that they got to be as mature (and annoying) as a teenager can be. It’s one of the many reasons J.K. Rowling is a genius.
There are billions of reasons, though . . .
Luckily for you all, I have no compunctions going into the kids
sections of book stores (looking like the bearded pedophile I am) and
buying these books to bring you good tidings.
The book is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and it's a pretty
accurate look at the social hierarchy of high school from the
viewpoint of a freshman girl (I'm assuming, although I’m pretty sure more than one of you out there can relate). What's so great about the story is that there is clearly something that the narrator isn't telling us about what happened the
summer before she enters high school, and her quirks (such as rarely,
if ever speaking – like the title, Dave!), are somehow a result of this event. The mystery isn't really too hard to solve (one of the slight draw backs of the YA
genre), but it still is a good story.
An interesting thing about the YA genre is that just because a book is about children, it is not necessarily for children. For example, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep is about a young girl from “the wrong side of the tracks” who ends up at a prestigious (read: rich) prep school and has to deal with not only being poor, but also simply being in high school. The subject matter is similar to Speak but the style, the content, is most certainly more “adult” than “young.” This is not to say that YA necessarily means “childish” (or that, conversely, “adult” literature is necessarily mature) it’s just that Prep feels like you need to have had adult experiences to connect with, whereas Speak makes sense as long as you’ve had high school experience.
Of course, a lot of high school kids probably have more “experience” than a lot of adults, but that’s another topic.
But it is the readers’ experience that is what makes YA able to straddle age-groups. Because, whereas teenagers may not connect with all the aspects of Prep (although, to be fair, Sittenfeld does a good job of painting high school relationships), adults have been to high school – for many, it was the greatest time of their lives – so reading YA actually makes sense. Considering many adults have teenagers of their own (you wacky Baby Boomers!), connections might be made that are even deeper than for those of us without.
What’s different about YA as a genre – as opposed to, say, science fiction or romance – is that it is more about audience than about content. So, while Prep probably falls under “literary fiction,” a book like Holes, by Louis Sachar (Wayside School, motherfu*@&$s!) is considered in the same genre as Speak. And it should, if that genre was labeled “awesome” (and, really, shouldn’t there be an “awesome” genre. I wonder where Dewey would put those decimals?). Holes – which was made into an excellent movie with Shia LeBouf (of “Even, Stevens” fame – well, I watched it) and the Fonz – is the story of a boy who is falsely convicted of theft and sent to a juvenile camp in the desert, where all day, every day, the boys are made to dig holes (once again, ingenious title). Sachar does a great job weaving the various characters and plot-lines (including moving back-and-forth in time), and keeps it whimsical enough for kids to enjoy, while clever enough for adults to not feel ridiculous.
Because that’s the other great feature of good YA: it makes sure that both kids and adults feel comfortable encountering it (think of teens, and how they balance those two age groups. Then think how touchy they can be. The last thing you want to do with that audience is talk-down-to or baby-up the writing. Try to be honest about yourself as a teen when you do this exercise). For example, although Eragon is wildly popular as a book (I think I heard somewhere the movie was not very good – someone needs to tell Jeremy Irons to stay out of fantasy movies), realistically, they do a poor job addressing adults. At least, they do a poor job of adults who have grown up reading science fiction/fantasy. Maybe this is jealousy (okay, this is blatantly jealously – I want to be published, too! (Probably should start writing. . .)), but if Christopher Paolini had been thirty when he wrote the first book, instead of nineteen or so, I doubt these books would have been as much of a success. It’s so obvious that Paolini has read all the books I did while growing up (Dragonlance, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Anne McCaffery – you know, beat-the-nerd fodder), and his books seems to do a fair job “borrowing” from them.
Of course, as Jonathan Lethem (of Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn fame) wrote in his article “The Ecstasy of Influence” (February 2007 issue of Harper’s), writers have been biting off each other since the beginning of time.
(NOTE: The brilliance of Lethem’s essay is that he goes through example of example of borrowing, only to show in the end that his entire essay was in fact constructed entirely of “plagiarism.” It’s very cool, and I highly recommend it. On the flip-side, as a big fan of web-comics, you can check out this douche-berry (it could be a word) to see the “dark side” of plagarism. I'm changing an earlier position, to an extent).
That little tangent aside, read YA literature – because it truly is literature. If you don’t believe me, think about these titles: Lord of the Flies, Huckleberry Finn, Ender’s Game (okay, the last one might be a stretch), and tell me they aren’t literature. Go ahead. I dare you.
I double dare you.
Physical challenge!
Suffolk County, NY -- Library
theliterarylink.com
Alan-YA
Wikipedia--YA Literature
If you haven't read the comments, I suggest you do so -- they're pretty interesting.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
It's Pretty Darn Long and Convoluted
I haven’t written in a while, and I don’t necessarily have anything exciting to say at length, so I’m going to write a little, but a couple of times. Blogging Lite, I call it.
First up: Sister Act II. Great movie. Okay, “great” might be an over-statement, but as a staple TBS movie, it’s gold. A “TBS movie” being not only a movie that is played regularly on TBS, it is a movie that you can start watching from any point, and continue to the end, without missing any useful content. This is possible either because there is no useful content, or because the movie is so familiar that you already know what you’ve missed. For me, Sister Act II falls into both categories.
The things that make it such a good movie go beyond Whoopi Goldberg dressed up as a nun. It’s deep and insightful about the plight of inner-city schools. It’s basically a Stand and Deliver with less Latinos and more singing. Kind of like Natalie Wood starring in West Side Story.
And it’s actually the singing that’s so great. Sure, it’s a little slow in the beginning – these kids are way too “street” to sing. But sure enough, the super-hip Whoopi is able to convince them to give it a shot. Doing her best Harold Hill impression, she “la las” them into an amazing choir. And amazing they are. When they first perform, they are timid and shy, especially the soloist, who doesn’t seem to know how to sing at all. By bringing them back into focus, though, not only can they start to sing, but Ahmal, the soloist, turns out to be simply phenomenal. He tears the roof off with his rendition of “Oh Happy Day.” When he hits the high note that surprises everyone, if you don’t feel chills, then you have no soul (both literally and figuratively).
And then, of course, you have the finale, where they do the hip-hoppingest version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (Ninth Symphony), showing up the super-strict, traditional choir who sing the “same” song.
Everything comes together, we see Lauryn Hill is gonna be a super-star, and best of all, they save the school! Now, I went to a public school with a fantastic chorus, and I can honestly say that when the district almost went on austerity, no amount of fancy singing awards was going to kept those boys and girls in maroon jackets (it just so happened we had a championship football team and enough sports boosters willing to raise money until the next budget election to keep us rolling in the arts).
What’s so weird is that the movie was definitely a vehicle to showcase Lauryn Hill’s talents, but also to display Ahmal’s, played by Ryan Toby. But we all saw Hill’s assent into stardom, and yet Toby was left to the wayside. Or was he . . . ?
You see, Toby eventually resurfaced in the hip-hop/r&b group City High. He was one of the two guys you didn’t care about while watching Claudette Ortiz singing (you might remember the song “What Would You Do?”). So you see, Hill wasn’t the only one to make it (and Toby did it without becoming kind of a nut-job).
Also, if you pay attention, you’ll notice Jennifer Love Hewitt doing her thing—post- “Kids Incorporated”, pre-Trojan War—her three best works.
Lastly, the full title of the movie is Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.
It’s a pun. Pun’s are awesome.
‘Nuff said.
Now that I have a roommate, I find myself watching a lot more shows that I normally wouldn’t.
Reality shows.
Now, before I discuss these shows, I do want to point out that I wasn’t actually “forced” to watch television, but that instead of doing, say, anything else, I paid homage to that glowing black box.
Except my “box” is flat. God it’s beautiful . . .
Anyway, last week I saw the finales of two shows, the ubiquitous “Real World,” and “America’s Next Top Model.” Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about the two shows, because they pretty much speak for themselves (literally), but I will say this:
1) Renee clearly should have won
2) Davis set back gay rights a couple of years
3) Everything in Tom de Zengotita’s book Mediated is completely true
Okay, number three is kind of a shameless plug (or, would be shameless if you knew anything about me, so maybe it’s just a plug), but it’s a great book if you want to understand the world we’re living in. It’s a little deep at times, but it’s got a pretty easy-going style.
Which leads me to . . .
Academic papers.
My semester is finally over, and having got my final papers back, I received one constant criticism (albeit in varied form): “colloquial style.”
Apparently, the way I write my papers (which I guess is kind of like how I’m writing right now), isn’t cool with the academic community. It’s not professional-sounding.
Oddly, though, I hear that as meaning: people can actually read it and understand it.
Case-in-point: I mentioned my problems with Emmanuel Levinas in a previous post. Here’s a guy who obviously had an idea, and went out of his way to tell the world about it. Or did he? Because, let me tell you, the world isn’t reading Levinas. That might be because they never heard of him, but it could also be because they can’t read Levinas. Even with someone more famous, such as Foucault, Sartre, or Nietzsche, very few people can actually read and understand their writing (“few” being a relative term). And yet apparently these guys are dropping pretty important knowledge. So where does that leave us?
Turning to others to translate for us. To bring us closer to understanding, say, Levinas’ understanding. But what happens when the “others” are just as impenetrable as the original?
Hubris.
Hubris?
Academic hubris. What I mean by this is that the “Academy” feels that it is the keeper of the Knowledge (capital “K”). Because their livelihood depends on being counted on to decipher these texts for us, it is imperative that they in turn encode their understanding so that they can preserver their role as “explainers.” Sounds like a conspiracy, doesn’t it? And yet it isn’t too far from the truth. “Acadamese” is essentially a technical jargon that you have to be trained to understand, and writing an academic paper becomes less about educating the masses as it is about displaying your ability to adhere to a system (for a cool example of how this worked, read this. You are automatically limiting your audience to people who understand your language.
Apparently, most of the world does not fit in that category.
Now, this may seem a bit ranty, but it just seems odd to me that a “conversational style” is an unacceptable form of discourse. I mean, if the Ideas are there, and they are presented with evidence to back them up, then who cares if it’s in the form of casual prose or a comic book? I don’t mind getting graded off for my content, but my form? What does form have to do with knowledge?
Answer: Nothing. It’s elitism and it’s snobbery.
It’s also kind of stupid. Think about it from a marketing stand-point: what is the value of a book that no one (relative) is going to read? Obviously technical matters, such as scientific papers, tend to be inherently dry, but even that has found a popular audience. Do you know who Stephen Hawking is? I rest my case. So think what you could do with the humanities. Imagine having a great idea on how to interpret a piece of literature, and writing up the idea in such a way so that everyone who reads that book thinks of your idea. Wouldn’t that be great? Moreover, isn’t that the point? To make your idea a part of the literature so that the two are inseparable, thus making your mark and ensuring your position. Which is, of course, the second point of marketing, in which you sell yourself. Style is the way in which writers distinguish themselves from other writers (in conjunction with content). And yet, I’m reading comments on my papers about topic sentences, anecdotes, and figures of speech.
Granted, there were also comments about content, but that’s besides the point—or, at least, part of the point, but not exactly something I wanted to share. But maybe I should. Because I think that maybe if I rocked the house with my research, my style wouldn’t be so much of an issue. However, I didn’t actually do that poorly on these papers, meaning that in the end, my theories weren’t too poorly articulated, and it was my style sticking in their craw, if only a wee bit.
The weird thing is that books like Hawking’s and de Zengotita’s have had success. Clearly there is research, clearly there are ideas, and yet they are written so that people can actually understand them (especially consider Hawking’s, whose A Brief History of Time, which sold quite well, was re-written as A Briefer History of Time, to make the theories even more accessible). I’m not saying I’m writing ground-breaking stuff, but at least someone without a graduate-level education could get to the crux of my papers.
Maybe that’s “selling out.” But last time I checked, universities were going away from the tenure system. Who’s more likely to be given a professorship in the future: the person who publishes Acadamese papers in journals, or the person who publishes best-selling books? I’m not saying I can even belong in either of these categories, but I’m thinking this: If I was the president of the university, I’d probably want the “name” on my faculty, because it might be easier to loosen the purse strings that bolster the endowment if I can trot out the guy who was on “Oprah” instead of the lady who presented at the International Conference on Poems Written About Left-Handed Haberdashers (I’m willing to bet that such poems exist, if not the conference itself).
In Death of a Discipline, a book that kind of falls on the Academic-side of this argument, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (say that name five times fast) calls for those who study Comparative Literature to join forces with those who engage in “Area Studies,” combining, re-thinking, and re-working the approach of these disciplines to be able to do a more thorough (and better) job. At a couple of points, she makes clear that this will not be an easy process, but in the end, this evolution will greatly benefit the studies.
Where I agree with Spivak is that it will be beneficial and that there will be resistance.
What I’m proposing though is not a “combination” of two disciplines, but a de-mystification of all disciplines.
Or maybe I just don’t want to have to change how I write my papers.
The bathroom at my job has a plaque that says:
Plan Ahead: It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
For some reason, I have a problem with this. First off . . . come on. Plaque in the bathroom? Is that necessary? If I want to read in a bathroom, I’ll bring my own material. Or, at least if you’re providing, try some magazines or something. I don’t want to be inspired on the toilet. I’ve got some things on my mind already. That’s why churches have pews, not stalls.
Second, what is the plaque saying, anyway? Yes, on a factual basis it wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark (and by the way, I have some problems with the fact that there are two “Arks” in the bible, and the more important one is less famous -- heck, if it wasn’t for Indiana Jones, some of us still might not know about it. I mean, couldn’t God have come up with a different word for these two artifacts? Then again, he did leave it up to Adam to name everything, so maybe we should just blame the Son of Man). But that’s not the point of the plaque. The message is that Noah, by building the Ark, had the forethought to be prepared for the Flood. That he was being prepared like a proto-Boy Scout.
Here’s my issue with this: He had God telling him to build the Ark! I’d plan ahead too if Yaweh sent me a personal e-mail detailing exactly what I needed to do if I didn’t want to die a horrible death.
So I guess my problem is not so much the message (as trite as it is), but the context. It’s not exactly fair to compare my getting a presentation ready with Noah building the Ark. Not really the analogy I would have went with.
Unless my job is trying to tell me to plan ahead about my time in the bathroom. In which case I guess I do make sure there is toilet paper.
I guess that went pretty long anyway. I should write my prefaces after I write the post.
First up: Sister Act II. Great movie. Okay, “great” might be an over-statement, but as a staple TBS movie, it’s gold. A “TBS movie” being not only a movie that is played regularly on TBS, it is a movie that you can start watching from any point, and continue to the end, without missing any useful content. This is possible either because there is no useful content, or because the movie is so familiar that you already know what you’ve missed. For me, Sister Act II falls into both categories.
The things that make it such a good movie go beyond Whoopi Goldberg dressed up as a nun. It’s deep and insightful about the plight of inner-city schools. It’s basically a Stand and Deliver with less Latinos and more singing. Kind of like Natalie Wood starring in West Side Story.
And it’s actually the singing that’s so great. Sure, it’s a little slow in the beginning – these kids are way too “street” to sing. But sure enough, the super-hip Whoopi is able to convince them to give it a shot. Doing her best Harold Hill impression, she “la las” them into an amazing choir. And amazing they are. When they first perform, they are timid and shy, especially the soloist, who doesn’t seem to know how to sing at all. By bringing them back into focus, though, not only can they start to sing, but Ahmal, the soloist, turns out to be simply phenomenal. He tears the roof off with his rendition of “Oh Happy Day.” When he hits the high note that surprises everyone, if you don’t feel chills, then you have no soul (both literally and figuratively).
And then, of course, you have the finale, where they do the hip-hoppingest version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (Ninth Symphony), showing up the super-strict, traditional choir who sing the “same” song.
Everything comes together, we see Lauryn Hill is gonna be a super-star, and best of all, they save the school! Now, I went to a public school with a fantastic chorus, and I can honestly say that when the district almost went on austerity, no amount of fancy singing awards was going to kept those boys and girls in maroon jackets (it just so happened we had a championship football team and enough sports boosters willing to raise money until the next budget election to keep us rolling in the arts).
What’s so weird is that the movie was definitely a vehicle to showcase Lauryn Hill’s talents, but also to display Ahmal’s, played by Ryan Toby. But we all saw Hill’s assent into stardom, and yet Toby was left to the wayside. Or was he . . . ?
You see, Toby eventually resurfaced in the hip-hop/r&b group City High. He was one of the two guys you didn’t care about while watching Claudette Ortiz singing (you might remember the song “What Would You Do?”). So you see, Hill wasn’t the only one to make it (and Toby did it without becoming kind of a nut-job).
Also, if you pay attention, you’ll notice Jennifer Love Hewitt doing her thing—post- “Kids Incorporated”, pre-Trojan War—her three best works.
Lastly, the full title of the movie is Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.
It’s a pun. Pun’s are awesome.
‘Nuff said.
Now that I have a roommate, I find myself watching a lot more shows that I normally wouldn’t.
Reality shows.
Now, before I discuss these shows, I do want to point out that I wasn’t actually “forced” to watch television, but that instead of doing, say, anything else, I paid homage to that glowing black box.
Except my “box” is flat. God it’s beautiful . . .
Anyway, last week I saw the finales of two shows, the ubiquitous “Real World,” and “America’s Next Top Model.” Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about the two shows, because they pretty much speak for themselves (literally), but I will say this:
1) Renee clearly should have won
2) Davis set back gay rights a couple of years
3) Everything in Tom de Zengotita’s book Mediated is completely true
Okay, number three is kind of a shameless plug (or, would be shameless if you knew anything about me, so maybe it’s just a plug), but it’s a great book if you want to understand the world we’re living in. It’s a little deep at times, but it’s got a pretty easy-going style.
Which leads me to . . .
Academic papers.
My semester is finally over, and having got my final papers back, I received one constant criticism (albeit in varied form): “colloquial style.”
Apparently, the way I write my papers (which I guess is kind of like how I’m writing right now), isn’t cool with the academic community. It’s not professional-sounding.
Oddly, though, I hear that as meaning: people can actually read it and understand it.
Case-in-point: I mentioned my problems with Emmanuel Levinas in a previous post. Here’s a guy who obviously had an idea, and went out of his way to tell the world about it. Or did he? Because, let me tell you, the world isn’t reading Levinas. That might be because they never heard of him, but it could also be because they can’t read Levinas. Even with someone more famous, such as Foucault, Sartre, or Nietzsche, very few people can actually read and understand their writing (“few” being a relative term). And yet apparently these guys are dropping pretty important knowledge. So where does that leave us?
Turning to others to translate for us. To bring us closer to understanding, say, Levinas’ understanding. But what happens when the “others” are just as impenetrable as the original?
Hubris.
Hubris?
Academic hubris. What I mean by this is that the “Academy” feels that it is the keeper of the Knowledge (capital “K”). Because their livelihood depends on being counted on to decipher these texts for us, it is imperative that they in turn encode their understanding so that they can preserver their role as “explainers.” Sounds like a conspiracy, doesn’t it? And yet it isn’t too far from the truth. “Acadamese” is essentially a technical jargon that you have to be trained to understand, and writing an academic paper becomes less about educating the masses as it is about displaying your ability to adhere to a system (for a cool example of how this worked, read this. You are automatically limiting your audience to people who understand your language.
Apparently, most of the world does not fit in that category.
Now, this may seem a bit ranty, but it just seems odd to me that a “conversational style” is an unacceptable form of discourse. I mean, if the Ideas are there, and they are presented with evidence to back them up, then who cares if it’s in the form of casual prose or a comic book? I don’t mind getting graded off for my content, but my form? What does form have to do with knowledge?
Answer: Nothing. It’s elitism and it’s snobbery.
It’s also kind of stupid. Think about it from a marketing stand-point: what is the value of a book that no one (relative) is going to read? Obviously technical matters, such as scientific papers, tend to be inherently dry, but even that has found a popular audience. Do you know who Stephen Hawking is? I rest my case. So think what you could do with the humanities. Imagine having a great idea on how to interpret a piece of literature, and writing up the idea in such a way so that everyone who reads that book thinks of your idea. Wouldn’t that be great? Moreover, isn’t that the point? To make your idea a part of the literature so that the two are inseparable, thus making your mark and ensuring your position. Which is, of course, the second point of marketing, in which you sell yourself. Style is the way in which writers distinguish themselves from other writers (in conjunction with content). And yet, I’m reading comments on my papers about topic sentences, anecdotes, and figures of speech.
Granted, there were also comments about content, but that’s besides the point—or, at least, part of the point, but not exactly something I wanted to share. But maybe I should. Because I think that maybe if I rocked the house with my research, my style wouldn’t be so much of an issue. However, I didn’t actually do that poorly on these papers, meaning that in the end, my theories weren’t too poorly articulated, and it was my style sticking in their craw, if only a wee bit.
The weird thing is that books like Hawking’s and de Zengotita’s have had success. Clearly there is research, clearly there are ideas, and yet they are written so that people can actually understand them (especially consider Hawking’s, whose A Brief History of Time, which sold quite well, was re-written as A Briefer History of Time, to make the theories even more accessible). I’m not saying I’m writing ground-breaking stuff, but at least someone without a graduate-level education could get to the crux of my papers.
Maybe that’s “selling out.” But last time I checked, universities were going away from the tenure system. Who’s more likely to be given a professorship in the future: the person who publishes Acadamese papers in journals, or the person who publishes best-selling books? I’m not saying I can even belong in either of these categories, but I’m thinking this: If I was the president of the university, I’d probably want the “name” on my faculty, because it might be easier to loosen the purse strings that bolster the endowment if I can trot out the guy who was on “Oprah” instead of the lady who presented at the International Conference on Poems Written About Left-Handed Haberdashers (I’m willing to bet that such poems exist, if not the conference itself).
In Death of a Discipline, a book that kind of falls on the Academic-side of this argument, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (say that name five times fast) calls for those who study Comparative Literature to join forces with those who engage in “Area Studies,” combining, re-thinking, and re-working the approach of these disciplines to be able to do a more thorough (and better) job. At a couple of points, she makes clear that this will not be an easy process, but in the end, this evolution will greatly benefit the studies.
Where I agree with Spivak is that it will be beneficial and that there will be resistance.
What I’m proposing though is not a “combination” of two disciplines, but a de-mystification of all disciplines.
Or maybe I just don’t want to have to change how I write my papers.
The bathroom at my job has a plaque that says:
Plan Ahead: It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
For some reason, I have a problem with this. First off . . . come on. Plaque in the bathroom? Is that necessary? If I want to read in a bathroom, I’ll bring my own material. Or, at least if you’re providing, try some magazines or something. I don’t want to be inspired on the toilet. I’ve got some things on my mind already. That’s why churches have pews, not stalls.
Second, what is the plaque saying, anyway? Yes, on a factual basis it wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark (and by the way, I have some problems with the fact that there are two “Arks” in the bible, and the more important one is less famous -- heck, if it wasn’t for Indiana Jones, some of us still might not know about it. I mean, couldn’t God have come up with a different word for these two artifacts? Then again, he did leave it up to Adam to name everything, so maybe we should just blame the Son of Man). But that’s not the point of the plaque. The message is that Noah, by building the Ark, had the forethought to be prepared for the Flood. That he was being prepared like a proto-Boy Scout.
Here’s my issue with this: He had God telling him to build the Ark! I’d plan ahead too if Yaweh sent me a personal e-mail detailing exactly what I needed to do if I didn’t want to die a horrible death.
So I guess my problem is not so much the message (as trite as it is), but the context. It’s not exactly fair to compare my getting a presentation ready with Noah building the Ark. Not really the analogy I would have went with.
Unless my job is trying to tell me to plan ahead about my time in the bathroom. In which case I guess I do make sure there is toilet paper.
I guess that went pretty long anyway. I should write my prefaces after I write the post.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Being Entertained by Sadness
I may have mentioned this before, but my friends and I have a “book club.” I use scare-quotes here because of two reasons: First, we don’t so much meet, as we discuss the books we read using Gmail and the like. Second, no one really seems to do it.
I think the second reason is the biggest problem this club is facing.
As it is, I’ve read every book that’s been proposed, and I’ve enjoyed some, and disliked others—but read them all. The latest book proposed (and I can almost guarantee the proposer, which for some reason isn’t a word to Microsoft, hasn’t read it) was Days and Nights of Love and War, by Eduardo Galeano. Before I get into my review of the book, I would like to point out this one thing:
The book was originally written in Spanish, and in my case, was translated by Judith Brister. I’ll explain why this is important in a minute (unless, of course, you know exactly why I claim it’s important, in which case: GET OUT OF MY HEAD!).
(I also just realized I wrote “I’ll get to this in a minute,” as if I can gauge typography in terms of time and not space, and not in the lovey-dovey, theory-of-relatively time/space, but clock-time and inches-space. Just another idiom gone awry, although this is specifically a disuse, as opposed to a misunderstanding).
So, Galeano. This book is both brutal and beautiful in its portrayal of the world that was (and perhaps still is?) Argentina and Uruguay in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. Brutal, because these are not vacation-destination South America, including Buenos Aires. Repressive regimes meant secret police, a world of bribes, struggles just to eat, and arrests without cause. Galeano shows the ubiquity of murder, and the sense of weariness in his tone belies a sadness and acceptance, even while trying to run a magazine dedicated to resistance. Every time we meet someone new, it is only a matter of time before we find out that he or she is dead, and this repetition bears on the reader relentlessly, and yet isn’t completely numbing (which is a good thing).
Because you want the pain. When Adorno gave us the idea that there should be no poetry after the Holocaust, the idea is that any representation will never do justice to the pain and horror that was Auschwitz, so it would only belittle that moment by trying to replicate it. In other words, for people to watch Schindler’s List, and think: That was so real, are automatically re-situating the context of the Holocaust in thinking that the images and acting (although excellent), give us an accurate idea of what the Holocaust was like (I need to point out here that you should really check out the link I provide for Schindler’s List, because it kind of perfectly illustrates Adorno’s point—take note of the top of the screen on the web-site). Even when we know it’s not real, the perception of reality is such that we can come away from the movie with the belief that we can understand the Holocaust.
But at least people know about the Holocaust. Galeano is not writing from a position in which his situation is well-known. I’m not claiming it’s the same thing as the Holocaust, either, but then again, we may never know the numbers from these South American civil wars. And Galeano is doing his best to make sure that if we don’t know the statistics, at least we are aware of the “feel” of the time.
One way he does this is by setting up the book with the snapshot-stories. Each segment is short (at the most, a couple of pages), and the language moves from poetic to journalistic. In every case, a picture is drawn, and whether it is happiness or despair, it is fleeting. As the title implies, this is not a single moment, but a process, a turning of the Earth, and as such, the ethereal, picaresque nature of the vignettes bring us in and out of the times, places, and emotions.
And that’s why it’s so beautiful. Because Galeano, when he points out dinner with a friend, isn’t doing it to say what happened, but to let us know that he understands how important such encounters are. Especially because those friends could be dead any day (and often that is the case. Since he is writing this in hindsight, I can only imagine the ache he felt writing about these happy times, knowing that they can never happen again). It is also beautiful for its bravery, which is perhaps the reason why Galeano can “ignore” Adorno. He’s not writing after the oppressive times, he’s writing during. This isn’t history, this is blog.
But what does beauty mean, at least for me (and, I would contest, most of my four readers)? Because we are reading a translation, so how can I claim any motive or intention on the part of the author? Sure, Brister’s book is beautiful and sad, but is Galeano’s? Is it even the same story? Did he mean to be so poetic, or are these translational stylistic choices?
And, just as important, does it matter?
I’m not sure it does. Yes, on the one hand, I am analyzing a book with no true reference and little authority. But on the other, I am still a reader, and what I read made me feel these feelings and think these thoughts. It is therefore powerful nevertheless. Whether it is Galeano’s power or the power I’m attributing to Galeano, the fact remains that this is a book worth reading.
Now if only I could get my friends to agree that we’d all read the same book and then talk about it . . .
I think the second reason is the biggest problem this club is facing.
As it is, I’ve read every book that’s been proposed, and I’ve enjoyed some, and disliked others—but read them all. The latest book proposed (and I can almost guarantee the proposer, which for some reason isn’t a word to Microsoft, hasn’t read it) was Days and Nights of Love and War, by Eduardo Galeano. Before I get into my review of the book, I would like to point out this one thing:
The book was originally written in Spanish, and in my case, was translated by Judith Brister. I’ll explain why this is important in a minute (unless, of course, you know exactly why I claim it’s important, in which case: GET OUT OF MY HEAD!).
(I also just realized I wrote “I’ll get to this in a minute,” as if I can gauge typography in terms of time and not space, and not in the lovey-dovey, theory-of-relatively time/space, but clock-time and inches-space. Just another idiom gone awry, although this is specifically a disuse, as opposed to a misunderstanding).
So, Galeano. This book is both brutal and beautiful in its portrayal of the world that was (and perhaps still is?) Argentina and Uruguay in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. Brutal, because these are not vacation-destination South America, including Buenos Aires. Repressive regimes meant secret police, a world of bribes, struggles just to eat, and arrests without cause. Galeano shows the ubiquity of murder, and the sense of weariness in his tone belies a sadness and acceptance, even while trying to run a magazine dedicated to resistance. Every time we meet someone new, it is only a matter of time before we find out that he or she is dead, and this repetition bears on the reader relentlessly, and yet isn’t completely numbing (which is a good thing).
Because you want the pain. When Adorno gave us the idea that there should be no poetry after the Holocaust, the idea is that any representation will never do justice to the pain and horror that was Auschwitz, so it would only belittle that moment by trying to replicate it. In other words, for people to watch Schindler’s List, and think: That was so real, are automatically re-situating the context of the Holocaust in thinking that the images and acting (although excellent), give us an accurate idea of what the Holocaust was like (I need to point out here that you should really check out the link I provide for Schindler’s List, because it kind of perfectly illustrates Adorno’s point—take note of the top of the screen on the web-site). Even when we know it’s not real, the perception of reality is such that we can come away from the movie with the belief that we can understand the Holocaust.
But at least people know about the Holocaust. Galeano is not writing from a position in which his situation is well-known. I’m not claiming it’s the same thing as the Holocaust, either, but then again, we may never know the numbers from these South American civil wars. And Galeano is doing his best to make sure that if we don’t know the statistics, at least we are aware of the “feel” of the time.
One way he does this is by setting up the book with the snapshot-stories. Each segment is short (at the most, a couple of pages), and the language moves from poetic to journalistic. In every case, a picture is drawn, and whether it is happiness or despair, it is fleeting. As the title implies, this is not a single moment, but a process, a turning of the Earth, and as such, the ethereal, picaresque nature of the vignettes bring us in and out of the times, places, and emotions.
And that’s why it’s so beautiful. Because Galeano, when he points out dinner with a friend, isn’t doing it to say what happened, but to let us know that he understands how important such encounters are. Especially because those friends could be dead any day (and often that is the case. Since he is writing this in hindsight, I can only imagine the ache he felt writing about these happy times, knowing that they can never happen again). It is also beautiful for its bravery, which is perhaps the reason why Galeano can “ignore” Adorno. He’s not writing after the oppressive times, he’s writing during. This isn’t history, this is blog.
But what does beauty mean, at least for me (and, I would contest, most of my four readers)? Because we are reading a translation, so how can I claim any motive or intention on the part of the author? Sure, Brister’s book is beautiful and sad, but is Galeano’s? Is it even the same story? Did he mean to be so poetic, or are these translational stylistic choices?
And, just as important, does it matter?
I’m not sure it does. Yes, on the one hand, I am analyzing a book with no true reference and little authority. But on the other, I am still a reader, and what I read made me feel these feelings and think these thoughts. It is therefore powerful nevertheless. Whether it is Galeano’s power or the power I’m attributing to Galeano, the fact remains that this is a book worth reading.
Now if only I could get my friends to agree that we’d all read the same book and then talk about it . . .
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Saturday, May 5, 2007
It All Comes Together in the End. . .Kind of
I had my last class on Monday, and throughout the semester, I had been consistently messing up in interpretations of a particular literary critic/philosopher. Time after time, I would claim an understanding, and my professor would look at me, and then the class, and then in a tone that left no uncertainty as to how everyone should think, she would ask “What do you all think of David’s idea.” David’s idea. You don’t even need to read between the lines: by it being my idea, it is clearly not the idea of the philosopher (and therefore not the correct idea).
And yet, there’s a stubbornness innate in my being, and if anything, you could praise my “if at first you don’t succeed” attitude. But the idea with that sentiment is that eventually you will get it.
I didn’t get it.
And so in our final review class, I once again asked a question about the philosophy, but I did so by first positing “I think I understand what he means when he says . . . .” In a consistency the envy of your grandmother’s gravy, I had not understood, so once again the class had to endure an explanation of how I’m an idiot. Amazingly though, all that is just a preface to the actual problem.
Because, as I’m wont to do, once I did understand it, at least as far as my professor explained it, I then had to go ahead (and perhaps a little defensively, at least in tone), I asked: But who actually lives their lives like that?
I think I pissed her off. She then proceeded to explain exactly who lives this way: people who take her class. Apparently, one of the main issues she was trying to tackle with this course was the specific concept I simply wasn’t able to grasp. I would speculate that her anger and disappointment stemmed from two possible causes. First, because she didn’t do a good enough job teaching the subject, or at least delineating the goals of the course. While I would definitely contend this is partially a reason, I don’t think it was a big part, and therefore don’t think that was the pressing matter on her mind. The second reason, though, is that she can’t understand how someone in a graduate program can hear and read something at least three times, and not only not understand, but then act “offended” when he finally does.
In hindsight, I don’t think I’ll be requesting a letter of recommendation from her. It would be kind of hard to ask a question after I’ve already put my foot in my mouth.
Sadly enough, I told that whole story to get to idiom “foot in my mouth” (and seeing how I’m pretty tired, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in reading this, my use of the phrase doesn’t really make sense—but hey, it’s the Internet, so . . . whatever). But I really have a cultural point here; I’m not just trying to tell an anecdote about my life (because even I’m not that interested in my tale).
What caught my attention about “foot in my mouth” is that people say it a lot, but no one really thinks what it means. What does putting a foot in your mouth have to do with embarrassment, in a literal or figurative sense? I think I’d actually be pretty impressed if someone could put their foot in their mouth. In today’s world of Pilates, it may not be such a novel maneuver, but even if you could get your foot to your mouth, you’d need to dislocate you jaw like a boa constrictor to get it in there (unless, perhaps, you are a Chinese woman in an incredibly repressive household):
Snake Eating An Egg
This in turn led me to think about a discussion I had with my friend. We were walking home from another friend’s house, and my one friend, I’ll call him Esteban, was complaining about the snacks that our other friend, I’ll call him Tiberius, had provided. I (I’ll call myself “I”) said “you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,” and he asked what that meant. After explaining what the proverb meant (yes, that’s the level of intellect I’m talking about with Esteban), he still wanted to know what it meant. I explained to him that one way a prospective horse-buyer would determine if a horse was in good condition was by examining the horse’s teeth. The idea was that if a horse’s teeth were healthy, then the owner had clearly taken care of the animal. Hence, “looking in its mouth” (disturbingly and yet not surprisingly, this was also done in determining the health of slaves). Therefore, for some reason, the horse-fairy leaves you a present under your pillow (and you haven’t refused an offer from Don Corleone), the idea is that you should be happy someone gave you a horse, and not worry if it’s healthy or not.
On the flipside, considering how expensive horses are (stabling, food, vet bills), this may be more like a curse than a blessing.
Horses tend to smell, too.
Regardless, the saying, like many proverbs and idioms that we use, are taken for granted. Perhaps ironically, it is this very idea, of reading “texts” for what’s on the surface, that was at issue for me with my professor. To end your suspense, the philosopher we were reading was Emmanuel Levinas, who was talking about . . . never mind. I doubt you want my interpretation of a philosopher I’ve already admitted to misinterpreting on multiple occasions. What’s important to know though, is that my professor’s point was that we have to approach reading in the same ethical style that Levinas proposes (okay, so I guess just ignore the previous sentence), where we can only know about ourselves in relation to the Other, and that is because the Other puts us into question. Now I’ll say I don’t really know what this means. But when reading a book (or any text), it’s not a good idea to go into it by thinking “I’m going to understand everything this book is going to tell me,” because that’s impossible. Books have infinite depth, but too often we care about plot and characters. While I personally see nothing wrong with that, because I think most books should be read to get what you want out of it, as a student, I concede the point. And, to be honest, it can make reading a much different activity than simply curling up in your chair and enjoying the story. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. But if you want to see reading in a Levinasian manner, take this exchange from Bull Durham:
“Crash” Davis: “You have to approach the game with fear and arrogance.”
“Nuke” LaLoosh: “Fear and ignorance. Got it.”
There are two things to note here. First, LaLoosh’s position is the one akin to Levinas’ because we should come to texts not thinking we know everything and be a little apprehensive about what that lack of knowledge means about us. It is also (and in my contention, rightly so), the position the movie is telling us is wrong – LaLoosh is misinterpreting the Wise Mentor (albeit to get a rise out of him).
Second, the movie is about baseball, and not about “texts.” But it’s a great movie anyway, perhaps one of the greatest sports movies ever, but overall one of the better movies period. It’s very funny, has a sense of depth beyond character and plot (so there), and loving embraces baseball. For one thing, it stars a Kevin Costner who isn’t pee-drinking douche. For another, it shows that although you may be insufferable liberals in person, such as the other two stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, you can still be good actors, as opposed to, say, Sean Penn.
(I should note that part of my antipathy to Penn has to deal with the fact that I can’t really name any movies he’s been in, and the ones I can, I wasn’t impressed. My roommate swears by him, especially in 21 Grams, but even she couldn’t think of any other movies where Penn was good. I think maybe she’s thinking of Penn Jillette, which I could then understand. On the other hand, Robbins, if only for The Shawshank Redemption alone deserves praise, but he was also great in the aforementioned Bull Durham, had a great, smaller role in Arlington Road, was charming in Hudsucker Proxy (a highly underrated movie—check it out!), and of course was part of the classic Howard the Duck. In the case of Sarandon, it definitely doesn’t hurt that she’s very attractive—which is true of many insufferable liberals. Hell, if Ann Coulter was super-hot, I’m sure less people would call her a “Nazi-Devil-Bitch”—although that may just be my pet-name for her).
It’s also got the second best use of “Try a Little Tenderness” of any movie (although why they don’t use the Otis Redding version is unconscionable):
But mostly the movie’s great because it’s about baseball, and baseball is the greatest sport on the face of the Earth.
I know this may sound grandiose, but what other sport is both entertaining and poetry? Basketball is ballet with power, hockey is flying on ice, and football is war, but baseball. . .baseball is poetry. It is the greenest grass and the brightest sun. It is spring and summer and hot dogs and beer. The gliding outfielders, the slick infielders, the arc of a long fly ball to deep left. It is Yankee Stadium and history, it is Fenway’s Big Green Monster, it is Wrigley’s ivy.
It’s also a thinking mans’ game, in which the beauty of numbers comes to bear more than any other sport. Sabermetrics is the other piece of the poetic puzzle, because more than just a “game of inches,” it’s a game of statistics. The funny thing is, though, that too often, experts don’t even recognize this, hence the greatest sports blog of all time, Firejoemorgan.com. It is dedicated to being snarky to sports reporters who seem to get paid to know absolutely nothing about the sport they cover. How they can talk about “hustle” and “determination” and “clutch” as if these are quantitatively provable elements, and yet have no idea about why a pitcher’s win/loss record is says relatively nothing about how good that pitcher is (the reason, if you aren’t sure, is because wins are just as dependent on the team’s offense and defense as they are on the pitching performance. Case in point: Jason Marquis, of the St. Louis Cardinals, won 14 games last year, generally considered pretty good, but he had an ERA of over 6. That means for every one of those 14 wins, his team needed to score 7 runs. That’s a tall order for most baseball teams, which goes to show that all those wins were more because he was on a great offensive team and not because he was a great pitcher). How they can talk about how “good” David Eckstein is
Baseball is fantastic. If you don’t think so, listen to this and see if you don’t smile. And I don't really like the Mets (but at least I don't hate them like the Red Sox.
Which all goes to show you: Maybe if Levinas had taken some time to buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, he wouldn’t care so much about “defining himself.” Or maybe, the question he would be answering about himself is: Why can’t I be out there on the field, shagging flies?
And the answer? Because you don’t have the stats, Manny.
Probably won’t get an A in that class, though.
And yet, there’s a stubbornness innate in my being, and if anything, you could praise my “if at first you don’t succeed” attitude. But the idea with that sentiment is that eventually you will get it.
I didn’t get it.
And so in our final review class, I once again asked a question about the philosophy, but I did so by first positing “I think I understand what he means when he says . . . .” In a consistency the envy of your grandmother’s gravy, I had not understood, so once again the class had to endure an explanation of how I’m an idiot. Amazingly though, all that is just a preface to the actual problem.
Because, as I’m wont to do, once I did understand it, at least as far as my professor explained it, I then had to go ahead (and perhaps a little defensively, at least in tone), I asked: But who actually lives their lives like that?
I think I pissed her off. She then proceeded to explain exactly who lives this way: people who take her class. Apparently, one of the main issues she was trying to tackle with this course was the specific concept I simply wasn’t able to grasp. I would speculate that her anger and disappointment stemmed from two possible causes. First, because she didn’t do a good enough job teaching the subject, or at least delineating the goals of the course. While I would definitely contend this is partially a reason, I don’t think it was a big part, and therefore don’t think that was the pressing matter on her mind. The second reason, though, is that she can’t understand how someone in a graduate program can hear and read something at least three times, and not only not understand, but then act “offended” when he finally does.
In hindsight, I don’t think I’ll be requesting a letter of recommendation from her. It would be kind of hard to ask a question after I’ve already put my foot in my mouth.
Sadly enough, I told that whole story to get to idiom “foot in my mouth” (and seeing how I’m pretty tired, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in reading this, my use of the phrase doesn’t really make sense—but hey, it’s the Internet, so . . . whatever). But I really have a cultural point here; I’m not just trying to tell an anecdote about my life (because even I’m not that interested in my tale).
What caught my attention about “foot in my mouth” is that people say it a lot, but no one really thinks what it means. What does putting a foot in your mouth have to do with embarrassment, in a literal or figurative sense? I think I’d actually be pretty impressed if someone could put their foot in their mouth. In today’s world of Pilates, it may not be such a novel maneuver, but even if you could get your foot to your mouth, you’d need to dislocate you jaw like a boa constrictor to get it in there (unless, perhaps, you are a Chinese woman in an incredibly repressive household):
Snake Eating An Egg
This in turn led me to think about a discussion I had with my friend. We were walking home from another friend’s house, and my one friend, I’ll call him Esteban, was complaining about the snacks that our other friend, I’ll call him Tiberius, had provided. I (I’ll call myself “I”) said “you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,” and he asked what that meant. After explaining what the proverb meant (yes, that’s the level of intellect I’m talking about with Esteban), he still wanted to know what it meant. I explained to him that one way a prospective horse-buyer would determine if a horse was in good condition was by examining the horse’s teeth. The idea was that if a horse’s teeth were healthy, then the owner had clearly taken care of the animal. Hence, “looking in its mouth” (disturbingly and yet not surprisingly, this was also done in determining the health of slaves). Therefore, for some reason, the horse-fairy leaves you a present under your pillow (and you haven’t refused an offer from Don Corleone), the idea is that you should be happy someone gave you a horse, and not worry if it’s healthy or not.
On the flipside, considering how expensive horses are (stabling, food, vet bills), this may be more like a curse than a blessing.
Horses tend to smell, too.
Regardless, the saying, like many proverbs and idioms that we use, are taken for granted. Perhaps ironically, it is this very idea, of reading “texts” for what’s on the surface, that was at issue for me with my professor. To end your suspense, the philosopher we were reading was Emmanuel Levinas, who was talking about . . . never mind. I doubt you want my interpretation of a philosopher I’ve already admitted to misinterpreting on multiple occasions. What’s important to know though, is that my professor’s point was that we have to approach reading in the same ethical style that Levinas proposes (okay, so I guess just ignore the previous sentence), where we can only know about ourselves in relation to the Other, and that is because the Other puts us into question. Now I’ll say I don’t really know what this means. But when reading a book (or any text), it’s not a good idea to go into it by thinking “I’m going to understand everything this book is going to tell me,” because that’s impossible. Books have infinite depth, but too often we care about plot and characters. While I personally see nothing wrong with that, because I think most books should be read to get what you want out of it, as a student, I concede the point. And, to be honest, it can make reading a much different activity than simply curling up in your chair and enjoying the story. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. But if you want to see reading in a Levinasian manner, take this exchange from Bull Durham:
“Crash” Davis: “You have to approach the game with fear and arrogance.”
“Nuke” LaLoosh: “Fear and ignorance. Got it.”
There are two things to note here. First, LaLoosh’s position is the one akin to Levinas’ because we should come to texts not thinking we know everything and be a little apprehensive about what that lack of knowledge means about us. It is also (and in my contention, rightly so), the position the movie is telling us is wrong – LaLoosh is misinterpreting the Wise Mentor (albeit to get a rise out of him).
Second, the movie is about baseball, and not about “texts.” But it’s a great movie anyway, perhaps one of the greatest sports movies ever, but overall one of the better movies period. It’s very funny, has a sense of depth beyond character and plot (so there), and loving embraces baseball. For one thing, it stars a Kevin Costner who isn’t pee-drinking douche. For another, it shows that although you may be insufferable liberals in person, such as the other two stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, you can still be good actors, as opposed to, say, Sean Penn.
(I should note that part of my antipathy to Penn has to deal with the fact that I can’t really name any movies he’s been in, and the ones I can, I wasn’t impressed. My roommate swears by him, especially in 21 Grams, but even she couldn’t think of any other movies where Penn was good. I think maybe she’s thinking of Penn Jillette, which I could then understand. On the other hand, Robbins, if only for The Shawshank Redemption alone deserves praise, but he was also great in the aforementioned Bull Durham, had a great, smaller role in Arlington Road, was charming in Hudsucker Proxy (a highly underrated movie—check it out!), and of course was part of the classic Howard the Duck. In the case of Sarandon, it definitely doesn’t hurt that she’s very attractive—which is true of many insufferable liberals. Hell, if Ann Coulter was super-hot, I’m sure less people would call her a “Nazi-Devil-Bitch”—although that may just be my pet-name for her).
It’s also got the second best use of “Try a Little Tenderness” of any movie (although why they don’t use the Otis Redding version is unconscionable):
But mostly the movie’s great because it’s about baseball, and baseball is the greatest sport on the face of the Earth.
I know this may sound grandiose, but what other sport is both entertaining and poetry? Basketball is ballet with power, hockey is flying on ice, and football is war, but baseball. . .baseball is poetry. It is the greenest grass and the brightest sun. It is spring and summer and hot dogs and beer. The gliding outfielders, the slick infielders, the arc of a long fly ball to deep left. It is Yankee Stadium and history, it is Fenway’s Big Green Monster, it is Wrigley’s ivy.
It’s also a thinking mans’ game, in which the beauty of numbers comes to bear more than any other sport. Sabermetrics is the other piece of the poetic puzzle, because more than just a “game of inches,” it’s a game of statistics. The funny thing is, though, that too often, experts don’t even recognize this, hence the greatest sports blog of all time, Firejoemorgan.com. It is dedicated to being snarky to sports reporters who seem to get paid to know absolutely nothing about the sport they cover. How they can talk about “hustle” and “determination” and “clutch” as if these are quantitatively provable elements, and yet have no idea about why a pitcher’s win/loss record is says relatively nothing about how good that pitcher is (the reason, if you aren’t sure, is because wins are just as dependent on the team’s offense and defense as they are on the pitching performance. Case in point: Jason Marquis, of the St. Louis Cardinals, won 14 games last year, generally considered pretty good, but he had an ERA of over 6. That means for every one of those 14 wins, his team needed to score 7 runs. That’s a tall order for most baseball teams, which goes to show that all those wins were more because he was on a great offensive team and not because he was a great pitcher). How they can talk about how “good” David Eckstein is
Baseball is fantastic. If you don’t think so, listen to this and see if you don’t smile. And I don't really like the Mets (but at least I don't hate them like the Red Sox.
Which all goes to show you: Maybe if Levinas had taken some time to buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, he wouldn’t care so much about “defining himself.” Or maybe, the question he would be answering about himself is: Why can’t I be out there on the field, shagging flies?
And the answer? Because you don’t have the stats, Manny.
Probably won’t get an A in that class, though.
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