New Blog

I'm abandoning this blog and using the following one instead:
brodieaustin.blogspot.com

Election story in current Newsweek

The 7-part story on the Election in the current Newsweek, "How He Did It, is a surprisingly good read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the story has a gripping, novelistic quality to it. The story takes all of the little threads and fragments from the last 22 months and weaves them together into a narrative. Reading it this morning, I thought about how familiar, and yet gripping this narrative of recent events seemed to me. Then I realized that this is the same effect that realist fiction had in its heyday. It took what was a more or less recognizable reflection of the world and made meaning out of it, turned it into a story. But the crucial component, for me, was the sense of investment that I had as a reader in the recounting of events. I was reading both about external events, but also about internal states--my internal state. And yet as I did this, I suddenly felt the experience of this external device (the narrative) working itself over and through me, so I suddenly experienced the unfolding of my internal states as an external phenomenon, as something quasi-objective and removed from myself. It was a strange and interesting experience.

Has this really happened?

I want to thank, even though they will never see this, the countless, faceless people who made this amazing victory possible. Thank you. You have redeemed us all.

HIstoric moment?

I went down to Grant Park this afternoon, to see the crowds assembling and take a few pictures. I was struck by the fact that nearly everyone there, gathering together to see Obama later in the night, came with camera in hand. The event was being obsessively recorded, documented, ready to be remembered. And there I was recording, documenting, readying to remember.

It started to get dark--the light wasn't lasting for pictures--so I left early and headed home. Now watching the returns on TV, it appears that Obama may be our next president. I feel so excited, so ready to step into the future that is emerging now. I feel as if I am finally awaking from a dream--an eight year dream.

McCain and Palin

Am I crazy for thinking that McCain's judgement is perfectly sound, that Palin was vetted. That, in fact, the controversy about her daughter was known and planned for? I thought this scanning the intro page of Slate where nearly every columnist there has taken some position on the Palin issue. This is good stuff! Sure to dominate a news-cycle or two. And at least Palin never said she didn't think McCain was ready to be a president!

Newberry Booksale

Found some pretty nice finds at the Newberry Book Fair over the weekend. Found a neat early 20th century home health manual, a biography of George Eliot, a pamphlet detailing Dickens related sites in Canterbury, and a little novel called, Dream Life.

You might care that I am currently reading...

Mad Men

I have really been enjoying the show, Mad Men, and won't even call it a "guilty pleasure," that anti-category of intellectual stupefication in the face of crass enjoyment. It really is a thought provoking and well-assembled show. Now, by well-assembled, I am not referring to set design, costuming, and other effects meant to simulate the period (most notably cigarettes, sexism, and anti-semitism). I have read people on IMDB fruitlessly, hopelessly, even breathlessly debating whether or not the show is "period," "authentic," or take your pick. People particularly like to invoke their own remembrance of growing up in the sixties, which begs the question of who amongst these people grew up in a Madison Avenue ad agency office.

That said, the show is effective because it works by layering details upon each other with varying effects. Sometimes the different vellum panes of detail clash in their hue or texture (the episode focusing on Pete) but sometimes there is a harmonious glow that emanates from the transposition (this week's episode, Babylon).

I have been thinking about a brief exchange that takes place in the aforesaid episode when Don Draper, the main character, meets Rachel, a Jewish woman running her father's department store, but trying to attract a more WASPy clientele. She refers to, though a bit obliquely, the title of Thomas More's famous fictional dialogue, Utopia. The title is a pun on two Greek compounds--eu-topos and ou-topos (though I could be wrong about later). The former means, "happy place," while the later means, "no-place." In the show, however, Rachel says that ou-topos means "the place that cannot be reached," "the place that cannot be" to paraphrase. The minor discrepancy between these two translations is very interesting to me. Part of the point of More's pun is that the two meanings were intertwined, even mutually dependent. Utopia is a happy place because it does not exist and does not exist because it is a happy place, a very tidy reversal. And yet this reversal gives the non-place a kind of virtual existence (thus has a kind of dialectical quality to it). I was taught that this can be exemplified by the humanist community of the 15th and 16th century. This community existed through letters and across the linguistic and geographical boundaries. And yet this non-existent community was of far greater importance to More than the really existing place where he lived (though I'm no expert, and that probably is an arguable point).

So, to change that concept around slighly and say that Utopia is the "happy place that can never be reached" casts a much bleaker pall over the show. But I don't find this alternate meaning to be applicable to every character, though certainly for Don Draper. His character is marked by a restless propulsion, a drive towards something, yet an unidentifiable something. This causes him much angst, seen in--again, small details--the way Jon Hamm (the actor playing Draper) cups a glass when Draper drinks a drink. His hands encircle the top of the glass, cradle it; his eyes seem to peer into its depths, then through the translucence, as if surprised that the cup doesn't have a different substance altogether. There is always this strange reluctance in the way he drinks, a moment thought and hesitation. This is the pause of someone who wants to dive into the abyss and hope to hit the bottom, finally, like the free-fall that dominates the title sequence:



Yet in the episode last night, we see other characters--notably Joan, the red-headed secretary played by Christina Hendricks--who seem much more caught up in the "dialectical, punning notion of Utopia," if I can term it that, aware that desire is always caught up in its presence and absence. There is no absolute state of happiness, which leads to altogether different type of restlessness.