Religious Leaders Come Together in Warm Glow of Homophobia
Saw the American version of The Office last night. While it's impossible to say what I would have thought if I hadn't seen the original British version first, it seemed pretty obvious to me that even the talents of Steve Carrell couldn't save this strangely literal translation from its probable fate in the pale-shadow-of category.
It got me thinking about the film Office Space, though, and how (while entirely distinct in tone and approach from The Office), it can be lined up with Ricky Jervais's series as examples of what looks like a relatively recent subgenre -- call it "cubicle comedy." While it's antecedents are perhaps as old as some of the scenes in Billy Wilder's The Apartment, cubicle comedy looks to be a fairly recent development. I can think of a few problematic examples -- the films 9 to 5 and Working Girl come to mind. In comics, the glories of My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable has helped cement the genre's cultural standing, as of course has influential (if generally regrettable) Dilbert. In non-pictoral literature, it's a genre harder to track, although Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine is a touchstone if not a precise example.
Are there others we can think of? Or have I announced the birth of this genre prematurely?
Please note that this is distinct from comedies which involve a business setting but which aren't about, so to speak, life in the office.
This also got me thinking about dying genres and subgenres of literature and film. Or those which are almost-but-not-quite-dying. Does Deadwood give life to the almost-dead wood of the Western? Was the real espionage thriller a creature of the 20th century, now superseded by what is essentially an action or superhero film dressed up in its old clothes? Are there genres that have died within our lifetimes?
I hope that Mr. Edwards can somehow sense my gratitude for the loan of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I finished this afternoon on the subway. Crackling with life, engrossing (in each of the six nested narratives, no less), and a more than reasonable choice for last-man-standing by many of the judges in the Morning News's Tourney o' Books a while back (though yours truly still believes that The Plot Against America is in fact the greater work, I reluctantly concede that such comparisons must be made "for entertainment value only" as they say).
I could nitpick about various things that nabbed my attention hither and thither throughout, but on the whole this post comes solely as a recommendation: a blast of a book, a bravura performance that calls attention to itself with such panache that one admires it all the more for being a touch show-offy.
While I'm on the subject of recommendations, now that it's out, let me also note that I enjoyed Saturday quite a bit, despite the fact that Atonement had quite naturally raised my expectations a bit. And I found, for what it's worth, Zoe Heller's cold-eyed appraisal to be an underappreciation of all that McEwan offers the reader.
This, it would seem, is the difficulty presented by ''Saturday'': finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence though it is, it never quite fully submerges its thesis. Its concept is so high and prominent as to disallow the reader the distinctive novelistic pleasure of feeling, rather than coolly registering, the author's intention.
Believe me when I tell you that the shimmer and the finework are more than enough for some of us. It's not a perfect novel, but its easily spotted clockwork and its discursive tendencies aren't, in my view, the enemies of feeling. The anxiety with which this book rather beautifully vibrates, from start to finish, was both thought-provoking and touching. I'll be astonished if I read three books this good published in 2005.
Shoulder-deep in tasks too absolutely, mind-melting boring to enumerate here, I hurl in your direction a few links for your amusement. I'm sure the first one already made the rounds of Metafilter and elsewhere, but stumbled on it entirely by accident.
Recent literature has helped us gain a better understanding of the pathophysiology of hypopituitarism resulting from repeated head trauma. We believe that the multiple traumas Tintin sustained could be the first case of traumatic pituitary injury described in the literature.
Also:
Keeping Libraries Safe (via Bookslut)
From Ed (a little while ago, to be sure: see above, re shoulder-deep enmuckment): FEED MY EGO, SUZE!
The March edition of the Friday Quiz follows, with my apologies for a lack of action around here (although I presume you've all been busy following Harry Shearer's guest-stint on Josh Marshall's political blog Talking Points Memo.) I've been busy actually trying to write something other than the usual dreck that passes for content around here, and spending far too much time trying to get a grip on the world of horseless carriages before I run out and join the auto-consumer frenzy.
Anyway we should be returning to a regular posting schedule next week. Now, your two-part headslapper:
The official language of two countries which, taken together, have a population of seventy million people, is also spoken by some of the residents of a number of other countries. For the great majority of these people, though, it is a second language picked up in later life, and only learned as a mother tongue by a small proportion of its speakers, and in no nation is it spoken by all. Interestingly, the name of this language itself is, according to the linguist Nicholas Oster, derived from a word in yet another, far more widely-spoken language, which referred to the geography of the area in which the native speakers of the smaller language live.
What is this language, and what is the more widespread language from which its name derives?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a non-wax-cylinder copy of The King of the Vermont Cowboys: Don Fields and His Pony Boys, featuring "The Sears Roebuck Rag." Hands off the Google Toolbar please, and stay away from atlases and globes for the duration. One guess per comment, please, but comment as often as you like.
Oh, and if you have any advice about purchasing a used car for a couple of suckers who are doing so for the first time, please feel free to contribute that as well.
Way back when, we ran through one of our customary plaints concerning clunky and insipid titles generated from the modern publishing machine.
One commentor -- the mysterious "lee" -- argued that while many of these modern execrations were duly wince-able, the title of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss was itself an example of a an off-putting title, however classic the novel itself might be deemed.
I'm not sure I agree: "The Mill on the Floss" only sounds weird in a modern, dental context, and I'm willing to forgive Eliot the inability to predict that the name of an English river could one day be confused with a mode of intradental hygenie.
Still, it's an excellent point. Today's investigation returns to this unmined lode of time-wastage: can we arrive at a definitive list of the greatest books with the lousiest titles? Is it always going to be genre fiction -- horror, science fiction, lavish romance -- that takes the bad-title laurels? Or are there larger-category literary artisans with a tin ear for the headline who have nevertheless penned classics?
Is there a literarily worthy writer who can be identified as the champion bad-titler among his or her artistic peers? I await your nominations.
In today's NY Times we noted an article discussing the likelihood of a new civil unions law in Connecticut. One prominent Republican lawmaker (who supports civil unions) had this to say:
Mr. Ward, the Republican leader, said that while he and some other Republicans were likely to support a civil unions bill, marriage was another matter for lawmakers and voters. "When you call it marriage," he said, "they view it as literally changing the definition of the word."
We've heard this before, and it's beginning to sink in that for a lot of people, this may be the real issue on gay marriage. They are afraid that the meaning of "married" will be changing as the result of the inclusion of gay couples in its purview. And, because of this, they worry that once this change in meaning takes place, the meaning of "married" may be rendered -- terrifyingly -- uncertain.
Those of us who don't share this concern may lack empathy for those for whom this possible lack of clarity in the definition is a real and potent fear. Let's dig deeper into this. Given that the "definition" of marriage is already more a matter of legal standing than any single religious or cultural tradition's dicta, it can't be the case that the inclusion of gays in marriage means that a marriage is legally defined differently for heterosexuals. That leaves the social definition -- what it means to others when we say to them that we are married. What do they understand about us? And what might they misunderstand?
When we focus for a moment on this anxiety, when we use the imagination in a "what-if" style exercise, to try to visualize how allowing gay men and lesbians to marry might change the definition of marriage for already-married couples, one important possible scenario comes to mind.
Married couples might be mistaken for gay couples.
For example, let's say that Richard and Linda Hochstadter have been married for some years. Then, in their home state of (let's say) New York, marriage between same-sex couples becomes legal. Now, when they go to a cocktail party and meet other people, awkwardness is sure to ensue. For example, when Richard introduces "My wife, Linda, " many people are likely to get the wrong idea. Is Linda an extremely effeminate gay man with an almost pathological affection for sweater sets? Or is Richard a balding lesbian with a potbelly that makes her lucky to have landed someone as put-together as Linda? What with all the uncertainty surrounding the definition of marriage, Richard and Linda may well spend a lifetime of awkwardly explaining that although they are happily married, they happen not to be of the same sex. You can see how intimidating this prospect is.
I propose that we simply use two simple, easy-to-remember terms where before we used the term "married" or "marriage" that should help everyone feel comfortable. The differently-sexed union can be indicated by the term "Not-Gay Marriage." Young straights can call their friends and crow "We're getting not-gay married!" Tearful Golden Globe winners can express gratitude for the support of "my wonderful not-gay wife Karen." Ceremonies of joyful union can be clarified with equal simplicity: "I now pronounce you not two husbands, nor two wives, but a not-gay husband and wife."
Gay couples, of course, will have to use the plain old "married" formulation, which will to some seem uninteresting and rather dull. "Not-gay married" will have kind of a sparkle to it, the gleam of a new idea. We know that some gay couples might agitate for an equally satisfying new set of terms like the ones straight people will use, but we believe many will understand that such socio-linguistic change must be taken one step at a time.
If you haven't seen this, perhaps you're paying too much attention to real news, but the monkey-bites-man story prompted us to save you from your too-serious-self with a late-in-the-day question. Simply put:
What is the scariest animal, and why?
(Let me hereby pre-empt any "wombat"-answers.)
David Brooks uses his valuable NYT Op-Ed real estate to wag his finger at couples who have separate checking accounts. Once again, Brooks proves that you can't go wrong when you forgo writing about real issues in favor of entirely made-up cultural problems.
Christopher Lloyd returns to televised comedy as "an eccentric customer" in a groaningly-titled Fox series which stars -- wait for it -- Pamela Anderson as a bookstore employee.
A Michigan university is insisting that "individuals who use tobacco products" need not apply for full-time jobs. (via Inside Higher Ed)
The Predictable Thompson Eulogy Backlash® gets underway -- and it's what the author would have wanted! In fact, Thompson, wherever he is, might be contemptuous of the journalistic embalming his erratically brilliant, very flawed character has undergone in death.
Ashton Kucher is still famous.
LATE ADDITION: Apparently at least one Chuck E. Cheese has added a cool new salad-themed game. You have to bring your own Taser, though.