So in all the back and forth between the “genius, of course” and “obviously overrated, why do these male authors keep getting all the attention when women have been writing equally eloquent and relevant novels about the contemporary family right along” camps regarding Freedom, I was thinking I’d ignore it for the moment. But the first two chapters are on The New Yorker, so of course I took a peek instead of doing the two hundred and sixteen other things I should. The first two paragraphs seem quite relevant, very specifically, at least to my little life, and induce that self-conscious shifting around on the sofa of the reader – this reader- that, in my experience, indicates that either the author or I is going to suggest we meet up for coffee sometime because there are things to be said, and heaven knows that can’t be tackled without shelling out our collective last $6.18 to consume caffeine concoctions in a public place.

Go ahead, give it a go:

Walter and Patty Berglund were the young pioneers of Ramsey Hill—the first college grads to buy a house on Barrier Street since the old heart of St. Paul had fallen on hard times three decades earlier. The Berglunds paid nothing for their Victorian and then killed themselves for ten years renovating it. Early on, some very determined person torched their garage and twice broke into their car before they got the garage rebuilt. Sunburned bikers descended on the vacant lot across the alley to drink Schlitz and grill knockwurst and rev engines at small hours until Patty went outside in sweatclothes and said, “Hey, you guys, you know what?” Patty frightened nobody, but she’d been a standout athlete in high school and college and possessed a jock sort of fearlessness. From her first day in the neighborhood, she was helplessly conspicuous. Tall, ponytailed, absurdly young, pushing a stroller past stripped cars and broken beer bottles and barfed-upon old snow, she might have been carrying all the hours of her day in the string bags that hung from her stroller. Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby-encumbered errands; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio, “The Silver Palate Cookbook,” cloth diapers, drywall compound, and latex paint, and then “Goodnight Moon,” then Zinfandel. She was already fully the thing that was just starting to happen to the rest of the street.

In the earliest years, when you could still drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious, the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn, like how to interest the local cops in actually doing their job, and how to protect a bike from a highly motivated thief, and when to bother rousting a drunk from your lawn furniture, and how to encourage feral cats to shit in somebody else’s children’s sandbox, and how to determine whether a public school sucked too much to bother trying to fix it. There were also more contemporary questions, like: What about those cloth diapers? Worth the bother? And was it true that you could still get milk delivered in glass bottles? Were the Boy Scouts O.K. politically? Was bulgur really necessary? Where to recycle batteries? How to respond when a poor person of color accused you of destroying her neighborhood? Was it true that the glaze of old Fiestaware contained dangerous amounts of lead? How elaborate did a kitchen water filter actually need to be? Did your 240 sometimes not go into overdrive when you pushed the overdrive button? Was it better to offer panhandlers food or nothing? Was it possible to raise unprecedentedly confident, happy, brilliant kids while working full time? Could coffee beans be ground the night before you used them, or did this have to be done in the morning? Had anybody in the history of St. Paul ever had a positive experience with a roofer? What about a good Volvo mechanic? Did your 240 have that problem with the sticky parking-brake cable? And that enigmatically labelled dashboard switch that made such a satisfying Swedish click but seemed not to be connected to anything: what was that?

Read more.

I suppose some questions could be, “Am I so stereotypically aligned with the experience of my culture, the very same culture that Mr. Franzen, according to the gushing of one faction of literary critics and commentators, has his finger tip consistently pressing on the pulse of?” and/or “Are St. Paul and St. Louis quite similar, perhaps, to be completely absurd at three in the morning, due to their corresponding prefixes?” and/or “Is Jonathan Franzen such a St. Louis boy, or what?” Background: The only work of his I’ve read is How to Be Alone, which I remember liking very much, but nothing else about it without out pulling it down from the highest shelf in this room, and why bother when I could just Google it, which I’m not going to do either right this minute. This just means that I have not read The Twenty-Seventh City, his novel that is officially set in St. Louis. (Should I?)

Also, did I mention that I will soon be in the market for a Volvo wagon? Honestly, a 240, if it’s in good shape. No, really. I’ve been talking about it for a couple of weeks now. It was my first car, and I loved it, and would now like another. But it must be cheap, and in decent shape, and pass inspection. Seriously, let me know if you know of anyone who would like to sell me such a vehicle, know-it-all Franzen be damned. I’ll take him for a drive, in the new car, maybe, see what all this fuss is about.

All new work by Jeremy Rabus, Amy VanDonsel, and Brian Walsh
Opening reception: April 23, 2010 6 – 10 PM
2646 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63118

Exhibition on view:
Saturday, April 24 & Saturday, May 1, Noon – 4 PM

Seen more frequently in the past, the phrase “This page intentionally left blank” sometimes still appears on official or
published documents. Consequently, one is usually struck with a natural curiosity about this phrase and it’s purpose.

In the exhibition, This Page Intentionally Left Blank, the new work of Jeremy Rabus, Amy VanDonsel and Bryan Walsh will
address and investigate the visual and psychological effects of the appearance of this phrase on some printed materials.

Amy VanDonsel combines mediums – including acrylic, pastel, and found paper – to explore the perception of figure versus ground. Her work for “This Page Intentionally Left Blank” examines spacial boundaries by playing hide and seek with layers of objects and mediums. By exposing the supports of stained wood panels, the negative space is highlighted, and what is missing is revealed. “This page intentionally left blank” is an everyday kōan – a statement which is not understood by rational thinking, but rather by intuition. Curiosity about this familiar phrase, and its effects on discursive thought, leads to an exploration of pictorial counterparts to language phenomenon, such as “visual palindromes.” Further imagery is inspired by hazy memories of number two pencils and ditto sheets, the smell of chalk dust, or pink-beige paint peeling from a row of lockers. Subverted maps, graphs and grids, blurring text, and forgotten love notes ask: “What really happened in your third grade mind when page six referred to itself?”

(Also check out the fantastic work of Rabus and Walsh: jeremyrabuspaintings.blogspot.com / iambwalsh.com)

-Ander Monson
(Who has a nifty website and is also on twitter. It could just be my lack of attention, but I don’t notice many poets there.)

But some things that stood out:

“I bought R.E.M.’s first EP, Chronic Town, when it came out and thought I had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning, but then watched, with greater and greater dismay, as this obscure little band’s audience grew, grew beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to encompass casual fans, people who had heard a song on the radio and picked up Green and listened for the hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people, and my moron neighbor who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M.-lovers dead.”

Kinda like when you’ve been raving about Passion Pit for months and then you’re deflated when it shows up on a car commercial… and why shouldn’t it? S’good.

“Now, at that concert the night before, Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, had himself addressed this issue, and to great effect. After playing much of their new album, the band paused and he spoke to the audience. I will paraphrase what he said:

“Hi. Well, some people get all bitter when some song of theirs gets popular, and they refuse to play it. But we’re not like that. We’re happy that people like this song. So here it goes.”

Then they played the song. (You know the song.) “She Don’t Use Jelly” is the song, and it is a silly song, and it was their most popular song. But to highlight their enthusiasm for playing the song, the band released, from the stage and from the balconies, about 200 balloons. (Some of the balloons, it should be noted, were released by two grown men in bunny suits.) Then while playing the song, Wayne sang with a puppet on his hand, who also sang into the microphone. It was fun. It was good.

But was it a sellout? Probably. By some standards, yes. Can a good band play their hit song? Should we hate them for this? Probably, probably. First 90210, now they go playing the song every stupid night. Everyone knows that 90210 is not cutting edge, and that a cutting edge alternarock band should not appear on such a show. That rule is clearly stated in the obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout manual that we were all given when we hit adolescence.”

The obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout manual reminds me of that South Park episode when one of the characters (I don’t really watch SP, forgive my lack of specificity) gets his heartbroken by a Hooter’s girl and learns that he too can be a non-conformist with all the other goth kids if he just starts dressing and acting exactly as they do.

“We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then – gasp! – produced Weezer’s album, and of course Weezer’s no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze, don’t we?

Oh. No. We don’t. We don’t like him anymore because he’s married to Sofia Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So bad in Godfather 3, such nepotism. So let’s check off Spike Jonze – leaving room in our brains for… who??

It’s exhausting.”

Yes. Yes, we exhaust ourselves.

“And now, as far as McSweeney’s is concerned, The Advocate interviewer wants to know if we’re losing also our edge, if the magazine is selling out, hitting the mainstream, if we’re still committed to publishing unknowns, and pieces killed by other magazines.

And the fact is, I don’t give a fuck. When we did the last issue, this was my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided we’d do a box. We were given stories by some of our favorite writers – George Saunders, Rick Moody (who is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, others – and so we published them. Did I wonder if people would think we were selling out, that we were not fulfilling the mission they had assumed we had committed ourselves to?

No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just don’t care. We care about doing what we want to do creatively. We want to be interested in it. We want it to challenge us. We want it to be difficult. We want to reinvent the stupid thing every time. Would I ever think, before I did something, of how those with sellout monitors would respond to this or that move? I would not. The second I sense a thought like that trickling into my brain, I will put my head under the tires of a bus.”

Ok, there I just like Dave Eggers talking about putting his head under a bus to prevent stupid thoughts…

“The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it’s corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I’ll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no’s you’ve said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

There is a point in one’s life when one cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in one’s collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive.”

The bus wheels again. And also encouraging thoughts about saying yes. Sometimes I feel like I say yes too much, like I’m trying to cram all this stuff in, and have no time for sitting at home eating chocolate and watching Netflix on Demand. But I am actually able to do that sometimes- the chocolate + Netflix- so I guess it’s all good. If I didn’t haphazardly commit to a bunch of crazy things all the time, I might have a little less stress and a little more Netflix time, but I’d miss out on so many things that I either end up enjoying or end up learning from, or at the very least, end up being able to without a doubt declare with confidence in the future that I do not ever want to do them again. In other words, less what if.

“Thankfully, for some, this all passes. I am here to tell you that I have, a few years ago, found my way out of that thicket of comparison and relentless suspicion and judgment. And it is a nice feeling. Because, in the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit ‘real’ except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It’s fashion, and I don’t like fashion, because fashion does not matter.”

He straight up just said “the keeping real of shit.”

“Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters”

And this, yeah, this. This digs up a whole big thing that’s been bugging me lately, but that I may not be ready to articulate, involving critique. It seems to me that there must be some easily available distinction to us between the sort of critique that seeks to discern the value, or lack thereof, in a meaningful and useful way through the demonstrable examination and attempted understanding of something, and the sort of critique that merely points out in clever ways that someone finds something lame. And if such a distinction does exist, I would like to order an auto-labeling device of said from the catalog please.

Brain Pickings says, “But where its use in visual storytelling really originated is a little-known Swiss film from 1987 by director duo Peter Fischli and David Weis, titled Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go). In it, an incredible chain reaction of common household objects — tea pots, tires, ladders, trash bags, shoes, soap — unfolds over 29 minutes and 45 seconds across 100 feet of meticulously arranged ramps, swings and surfaces.”

Interviewer: One part I found interesting, from a personal standpoint, was their stop in St. Louis just because I’ve done my own road trip and me and my friend ended up stopping in St. Louis to do work also, it was just paving driveways. I’m curious of why you had them stop there at that time and what were the reasons or was it just coincidence?

MZD: Oh god yes, there were lots of things. St. Louis is such this rich history you know? There’s a centrality to the US and its not precise, but there’s a strange state that saw an enormous amount of violence during and after the civil war because of the mix of factions between North and South that lived there. It wasn’t just a Northern state; it wasn’t just a Southern state. You know, it’s been called the gateway to the west and you can look at the arch, the ark that finally rose out of its soil which could be looked at as a part of Sam and Hailey’s journey: through it and around it. Some of the literary figures that come from there; Elliot was from there. There are a lot of reasons that I’m sort of just giving you sign posts towards which I’m not going to totally divulge, but St. Louis has a very rich history in that respect.

[Full interview at Everyday Yeah]