about a scene from "Boogie Nights"

He finds himself sitting in a strange room surrounded by firecracker explosions, unsustainable highs, men with guns hidden behind waistbands and shirts. Sitting in that room, waiting for what seems like an imminent, inevitable, violent end, he disappears into the last 5 years—through a keyhole he sees it—the first half, the good half coaxes a smile that dissolves into the second half and lost eyes find a narrowing range of options and an expanding sense of desperation. Time to go.

something about "The Complete Stories of Truman Capote"

I read everything in "The Complete Stories of Truman Capote." These are shorts laid out by the famous, brilliant American author. The stories are wonderful, of course. But the introduction is ridiculous—almost hateful. It includes the following passages:

This man who impersonated an exotic clown in the early, more private years of his career and then—pressed by the heavy weight of his past—became the demented public clown of his ending...

And,

In his final wreckage, this slender collection of short stories may well have seemed to Capote the least of his fulfillment ... by his own refusal to conquer his personal hungers ...

Awful.

Of the earlier Capote works collected here, "A Diamond Guitar" strikes a chord. But the best of all the stories was the later work, "Mojave," written in 1975. The protagonists' detachment makes the exotic and strange seem sadly familiar.

something about Denis Johnson's short story collection, "Jesus' Son"

The episodes in Jesus' Son hang on degenerates, but the narrator's simple, intimate diction conveys a sense of peace rather than anxiety about or perverse fascination with the damaged scenery and people at issue. This collection of short stories by American author Denis Johnson is quite good. I learned of Jesus' Son by reading the essay, "Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?," published in The New York Times Magazine in March 2018. The essay includes this quote from Johnson's collection: “The sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity.” I was intrigued. Then the essay's author reveals, "While I was studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I spent my nights at the writers’ bars on Market Street, and I spent my days reading the other writers who had gotten drunk in that town before I’d gotten drunk there: John Berryman, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson." Having read this, when I picked up Jesus' Son, I expected Johnson's stories to boil up in America's less populated stretches of shadow and pain. Not so.
 
My favorite stories include "Dundun," "Emergency," and "Dirty Wedding." In a scene in "Dirty Wedding," the narrator, having accompanied his girlfriend to the abortion clinic, is asked to wait outside the building among pro-life protestors. Johnson writes: "It was raining outdoors and most of the Catholics were squashed up under an awning next door with their signs held overhead against the weather. They splashed holy water on my cheek and on the back of my neck, and I didn't feel a thing. Not for many years."

Note: Jesus' Son was published in 1992

something about Richard Yates

This reading of The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates was my first exposure to the author's writing. A few years ago, I saw and very much enjoyed the film adaptation of what is perhaps Yates' most famous work, "Revolutionary Road." Hard to believe and somewhat sad that I lived this long without reading this brilliant American writer.

Yates (1926–1992) masterfully crafts poignant stories in which personally profound events happen quietly. These are moments the characters will likely relive with feelings of melancholy or bitterness. This book includes stories from previous collections Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love, plus several stories under a chapter heading named "The Uncollected Stories." Of these short stories, I loved "A Glutton for Punishment," a brilliant study of a pathological failure drawn to graceful defeat. I also loved "The B.A.R. Man," a story in which the tension rises until the last word. Yates' stories sometimes end with a feigned punch, and I flinch. "A Convalescent Ego," the last story in this anthology, does the opposite; I laughed as I read it on a plane, and the end warmed my toes.


Notes: Revolutionary Road, the 2008 movie directed by Sam Mendes, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet; but Michael Shannon owns it, of course, with his performance.

something about "Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey

I started reading Zane Grey's Western novella "Riders of the Purple Sage," but I could not stand the unworldly prose. Bits of it were salted goodness; most of it was sour. For example, the good:

The life of his eyes dulled to the gloom with which men of his fear saw the approach of death. But death, while it hovered over him, did not descend, for the rider waited for the twitching fingers, the downward flash of hand that did not come.

But the sour dialog included this:

"Oh! Don't whip him! It would be dastardly!" implored Jane with slow certainty of her failing courage.

And prose like this:

Jane's subtle woman's intuition, even in that brief instant, felt a sadness, a hungering, a secret.

There have been many Western-genre works that I have enjoyed. But, I decided, as I sometimes do, that I did not want to spend my time trying to push through this one. There are many other works worth the time.

Notes:
I had just started chapter three.
The word "sage" (and "purple") was overused and worked into the prose unnecessarily. 

about "This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral (Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!) in America's Gilded Capital" by Mark Leibovich

 

Mark Leibovich wallows in the networking and social maneuverings in This Town—which is, of course, Washington, DC. He kids DC's political players about the unseemly side of their work but never condemns them. Leibovich paints an absurd picture and sort of shrugs it off. His easygoing prose makes a shrug seem like the natural reaction. This Town delivers the goods for political junkies—especially if you tracked national politics from 2007 to 2013. Hearing how embedded Washington correspondents are is discomfiting. But if disillusion has already set in, the disappointment in This Town lands softly.

something about "Herodias" by Gustave Flaubert

The short piece, "Herodias," appears in Gustave Flaubert's 1877 work, Three Tales. (The other two tales are "A Simple Heart" and "Saint Julian the Hospitalier.") "Herodias" concerns the characters and events surrounding the beheading of John the Baptist.

Flaubert casts as the central figure Herod Antipas, now commonly known as King Herod. At the time of the events, however, Herod was probably referred to as Antipas, and he was seen as more of a governor, a regional figure, than a king. Flaubert depicts Antipas as a weak ruler manipulated by his wife, the title character, Herodias, a princess from a powerful family of vassals of the Roman Empire.

Antipas was unpopular, perceived by his public as sycophantic and idolatrous. Added to the ruler's frustrations was John the Baptist's high-profile condemnation of the marriage to Herodias—a scandal; to marry Antipas, Herodias divorced her first husband, Herod II, Antipas's half-brother.

In Flaubert's telling, Herodias uses her daughter, Salomé, to seduce Antipas and persuade him to take John's head. Flaubert deals us a story rich in politics, sex, and violence, then combines them all in the climactic scene of Antipas's seduction and John's beheading.

something about "Potomac Landings" by Paul Wilstach

Paul Wilstach shares with us the life of the the lands pinning in the Potomac River. The encyclopedic Potomac Landings is written with care and traces of affection. Much of national importance in America is rooted in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area (also known as the DMV) along the river. Bits that I found particularly interesting include how many wealthy people settled the area, the plantations, the way children of rich men established estates near each other, and the way those estates became counties.

Covering little bits of everything, Wilstach gives us a book to leaf through. He occasionally indulges in details about, for example, oil lamps. But the bulk of the text traces plantation and estate operations, well-heeled families, social conventions, the landscape, agriculture, architecture, and legal developments.
 
I especially enjoyed stumbling upon brief passages in which the author reveals his talent for literary writing. For example:

So, in brief, civilization came to the Potomac, seated itself at the river's mouth, and began its slow sweep up the shores from point to point, and from creek to creek. It came upward like the tide whose ebb and flow had for ages been as the river's respiration and life. If however, the flow of this tide was slow as centuries, its ebb was eventually just as inevitable as the ebb that twice daily perpetually bares the sandy beaches and the landing piles along its way.

Notes:
-Potomac Landings was published in 1920. I read a 1937 edition.
-The book is somewhat Maryland-centric.

something about "Editors on Editing"

The third edition of Editors on Editing is a collection of somewhat specialized and particular essays about the job of editing. The editor, Gerald Gross, solicited mostly new essays for this edition--this is what is meant by "Completely Revisited" in the subtitle. The only essay I found relevant was "Line Editing, The Art of the Reasonable Suggestion."

something about "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy

This remarkable novella drags a well-heeled federal judge through the ultimate crisis.

Tolstoy does not flatter our protagonist in The Death of Ivan Ilych. In an efficient account of Ilych's professional and social advancement, we learn that the man is shallow, conceited, and vain; he is a social climber and, having climbed, immediately became condescending (though not unkind) in his privilege.

One of the remarkable things about this novella is that these traits do not make Ivan Ilyich a villain; instead, they make him average.

In the story, Ilyich's health declines and he suffers exquisite pain in his illness. Incapacitated, the pointlessness of his life imposes on him. And the degree of suffering mystifies him because he has only ever done what he thought he was supposed to do: develop a career, get married, have kids, get established. But doing what was expected could not spare him an agonizing, slow death. In the end, the inauthenticity of his life leaves him lifeless.

My favorite parts--all of these include a comment on averageness and unoriginality:

On Ivan Ilych's parentage:

He was the son of an official who had worked his way through various ministries and departments in Petersburg, carving out the kind of career that brings people to a position from which, despite their obvious incapacity for doing anything remotely useful, they cannot be sacked because of their status and long years of service, so they end up being given wholly fictitious jobs, anything from six to ten thousand a year, and this enables them to live on to a ripe old age.

On Ivan Ilych decorating his fine new house:

But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming--everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class.

On Ivan Ilych's trip to the doctor early in his mysterious illness:

He was made to wait, the doctor was full of his own importance--an attitude he was familiar with because it was one that he himself assumed in court--then came all the tapping and listening, the questions with predetermined and obviously superfluous answers, the knowing look that seemed to say, "Just place yourself in our hands and we'll sort it out, we know what we're doing, there's no doubt about it, we can sort things out the same way as we would for anyone you care to name."

Note: The Death of Ivan Ilych was published in 1886. Tolstoy was supposedly suffering a personal crisis of meaning.

a hasty and uninvestigated thought on "The Hunger Games"

In the the movie, "The Hunger Games" (the first in the series), the worst violence does not happen during the games. The movie is half over before the games even begin. The worst violence occurs with the social destruction caused by commercial exploitation—the tearing apart of families and friends and the compromising of values for money.

something from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" is one of my favorite pieces of writing. The story's themes of isolation, conformity, and human folly echo loudly. But it is Melville's humor that I heard clearly during my most recent reading. My favorite passage comes when the lawyer, after dismissing Bartleby on a Friday, returns to work Monday morning to find his scrivener still occupying the office. The lawyer, narrating, begins thinking through his next move:

“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went downstairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there anything further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again.

something about "There Will be Blood"

"There Will Blood" tells the story of an oilman building his empire during Southern California's oil boom in the early 20th century. This masterful epic (distantly inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil!) was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the oilman, Daniel Plainview. The film also features Paul Dano playing Eli Sunday, a charismatic young preacher and Plainview's foil. I watched the film again a while back, and considered it as an exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and truth.

Not a word is spoken during the first 15 minutes of the film. During that time, a baby whinnies, Daniel Plainview signs his name to a contract, and later he holds his black-coated finger up to silently signal that he struck oil.

The first spoken dialog in the film comes when Daniel, now with a foothold in the oil business, offers his drilling services to a new oil-struck community. Seated before them, Daniel establishes his ethos: "If I say I am an oilman, you will agree." Throughout the film, characters call attention to their speech acts. Here, Daniel goes on to say he is an experienced oilman with a simple offer: if the town agrees to work with him, he will consume fewer profits than a contractor and be more reliable than a speculator. He points to his young son, H.W., as proof that he runs a family business: honest and trustworthy. But when the town bickers and appears unable to immediately accept Daniel at his word, he leaves and doesn't look back.

Sales pitches--negotiation and manipulation, a play between rhetoric and truth--are heard throughout the film.

The next pitch is Daniel (again with his son at his side) at a kitchen table, an older couple facing him. This time Daniel closes with, "I need you to know what you want to do." This new closing technique is a reaction to the dissolution of his last prospect. The couple acquiesces in silence.

The film establishes that Daniel's voice, with its apparent directness, and the proximity of his young son are a big part of how Daniel communicates. With these tools he signals authority and legitimacy. However, we soon discover that Daniel's plain speaking is not so plain.

In the next pitch scene, roles are reversed, and Daniel finds himself in the role of customer. Paul Sunday (Eli Sunday's twin brother) comes to Daniel looking to sell information: the Sunday family farm is oil-rich: "If I told you I know a place that has oil, what do you think it would be worth?" When Daniel asks questions, poking around at the edges of Paul's secret, Paul flattens: "I'd like it better if you did not think I was stupid." When the cash-for-details trade is done, Paul closes: "The oil is there. I'm telling you."

Again, a character calls attention to his speech act.

With his interest piqued by Paul's revelation, Daniel and his son H.W. visit the Sunday family property posing as quail hunters. H.W. has learned to be the silent partner, and we get the impression that he has some awareness, if only vaguely, that he is a prop in these negotiations and his presence speaks volumes. When Daniel finally gets to negotiate--under the false pretense of buying the land for quail hunting and recreation--Daniel starts in, saying, "I believe in plain speaking." But this is a lie; his plain speaking is anything but. Eli steers the negotiation toward oil, and they all agree to deal.

Again and again, facts are minimized or misrepresented in speech. And with the introduction of Eli, we walk into a rhetorical web-tangling business masking brutality.

Later, when H.W. is alone with Mary, a young Sunday family member, she asks about the money that could be made from the oil pumped out of her family's land. H.W. withholds. After buying up all the nearby land, Daniel makes his pitch to the surrounding community. He appeals to them on the grounds that he comes to them without ceremony or intermediaries; he is there to talk to them "face to face" so that his motives and character are "no great mystery." Again he says, "I like to think of myself as an oilman," and then, "I hope you will forgive old-fashioned plain speaking." Then he describes how he believes family is important, and he enumerates all the benefits he will bring them, including schools, wells, crops, and roads.

As Daniel makes his final preparations to drill, Eli approaches and says he wants to bless the well when the community gathers there at the beginning of operations. Eli's instruction to Daniel is that "When you see me, you will say my name." Then, according to his pitch, Eli will step forward and give a simple blessing that he describes as "just a few words." But when the occasion arrives and the community gathers, Daniel is the demure master of the ceremony: "I'm not good at making speeches." Then Daniel plagiarizes Eli's "simple blessing."

Daniel humiliates others. The rhetorical situation is an opportunity to wield power.

Midway through the film, Daniel's son H.W. loses his hearing (the music in the soundtrack during this scene is all heavy percussion). But during the disaster that robs H.W. of his hearing, Daniel is intoxicated by the thought of all the oil he has found. But he can no longer be heard or understood by his son, H.W.

When Daniel's half-brother Henry arrives unannounced, Henry does not immediately make his intentions clear, and Daniel firmly demands, "I'd like to hear you say you'd like to be here" and Henry obliges. Eventually, Daniel, drunk, tells Henry that he hates people, and that he does not want anyone else to succeed. Daniel claims that he gets all of the information he needs about a person on first sight; yet, Daniel is deceived when he takes Henry's word that they are related.
 
In exchange for getting the final piece of land he needs to build his oil-carrying pipeline to the sea, Daniel agrees to be baptized in Eli's church. The speech act here is confession. Eli asks Daniel to confess (Eli must make multiple verbal demands: "I'll ask it again!"). Daniel answers, "What do you want me to say?" "Say 'I am a sinner!'" Daniel acquiesces. Eli hammers, "Say it louder!" Amid the church-house fervor, under his breath, Daniel whispers "There's a pipeline!"

As the film draws to a close, H.W. marries Mary Sunday. When he comes to his reclusive father, H.W. tells Daniel of his intention to drill for oil in Mexico. Daniel, enraged, mocks him: "You can't speak, so flap your hands! ... you're killing my image of you as my son." Daniel claims H.W. was adopted and used so Daniel would look more sympathetic and honest during negotiations. H.W.'s inability to speak is Daniel's weapon; Daniel's conception of others can only survive if nurtured by speech.

Eli arrives at the recluse Daniel's mansion during the film's final scene. Eli needs money. Daniel asks Eli to confess aloud that he is a false prophet and say that there is no God. "Say it like you mean it!" Daniel demands. Eli waits for the Lord's Word. In a most undivine ending, Daniel kills Eli by pummeling him to death with a bowling pin. Exhausted from having delivered the beating, Daniel announces, "I'm finished."

Notes:
Additional material:
When Eli asks Daniel about money owed to the church, Daniel physically abuses Eli and shoves his face in the mud. Humiliated, Eli later berates his father, Abel. Abel pleads, "I followed his word" (Daniel's word). Eli says Paul told Daniel about their oil-rich land. These speech acts have built an empire. In speech we see tension between business, brutality, honesty, and religion; we see and hear how voice relates to authority.

Later, Daniel meets with oil executives and they ask about H.W.; Daniel explodes, "Did you just tell me how to run my family?...You don't tell me about my son." The executive responds, "I'm not telling you anything. I'm asking you to be reasonable!" The threat of speech draws violent reaction from Daniel. Daniel takes Henry along on negotiations and business trips. But Daniel discovers that Henry lied. Daniel kills Henry because Henry misrepresented who he was.
 
Once H.W. is returned to Daniel's custody, the father and son go to lunch and encounter the oil executives. Daniel hides his face under a napkin and barks out so that the executives can hear, "I told you not to tell me how to raise my family ... I told you what I was gonna do." The executives' (implied) speech act is what injured Daniel, and Daniel's spoken vow affected reality.