A long quote and some bullshit from me

Libraries are under incredible pressure to conform to the pay-per-view model. Increasingly, academic journals are coming to libraries in electronic form rather than on paper. So imagine this: An electronic journal is streamed into a library. A library never has it on its shelf, never owns a paper copy, can’t archive it for posterity. Its patrons can access the material and maybe print it, maybe not. But if the subscription runs out, if the library loses funding and has to cancel the subscription, or if the company itself goes out of business, all the information is gone. The library has no trace of what it bought: no record, no archive. It’s lost entirely. This is not a good model for a library. It defeats the fundamental purpose of a library. You might as well be sitting at a computer terminal in a copy shop.

[…]

The emerging information pay-per-view regime could signal the death of the liberal Enlightenment project and thus the public library itself. Thinkers as politically diverse as Theodore Adorno, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Dinesh D’Souza, and Neil Postman have predicted the death of the Enlightenment, blaming a variety of causes, including the Enlightenment’s internal contradictions, the empty cleverness of postmodernism, and the social tremors caused by ethnic politics. The real culprit, however, is the steady commercialization of the cultural and communicative process.

There is a real value in a public library and its metaphorical counterpart, the information commons. Though not quantifiable, it is discernible and essential. Public libraries are functional expressions of Enlightenment principles. We are about to let commercial interests shut them down (this will be news to most people but not to librarians). The public library is where the public domain lives, the place where we gain access to the information commons. As our rights of fair use, first sale, and use of works in the public domain disappear, so do the raw materials of our culture and democracy. Most importantly, the public library is where those without money, power, access, university affiliation, or advanced degrees can get information for free. Thus trends toward a pay-per-view delivery system threaten both the public library and Enlightenment ideals. They signal the dawn of the age of proprietary information.

An open global information ecosystem is essential to a dynamic culture and the spread of stable democracy. Our information environment is under attack on technological, legal, and commercial fronts. Information, far from being a scarce resource, is more abundant than ever. For centuries, our species suffered because of maldistribution of information, not necessarily an overall shortage of a deficient quality of information. Facing an apparent oversupply of information, we attempt to employ technological tools to correct the maldistribution of information.

(The Anarchist in the Library, Siva Vaidhyanathan, 121, 124)

For me, that was the high point of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s fine short book on the freedom of information and the clash of oligarchy and anarchy in the realm of technology. Because he’s painting with such broad strokes in that passage, Vaidhyanathan, I think, just misses making a precise argument that he approaches throughout the book. By limiting the freedom of information (one example given is Justice Department injunctions from publishing the winning code from an Adobe-sponsored contest to hack their Ebook format) we are stifling the education of everyone, including (for the sake of my argument) the future generation of military and government intelligence. By blocking the lines of code that break the Ebook software, you are putting our future intelligence one step further from breaking a theoretical enemy code.

An Allston au reviors

I stopped by Diskovery, the wonderful used-book and -record store around the corner from me in Allston, to give the owner, Yolanda, the four dollars I owed her for the copy of Ficciones I picked up a few weeks ago. It was more expensive than I'd expected but Yolanda insisted that I keep the book and simply pay her when I got the chance.

I needed to pay up today because Diskovery is moving to Oak Square, in Brighton, after 25 years in the same spot. The Boston Phoenix has the story here (and the Google cache is here). The store was almost empty, a shock for Diskovery, and there were a few people helping Yolanda finish the move. The new store will be a twenty minute walk, no problem really, but from my stop in today, one thing was clear -- for Yolanda the move is not in any way bittersweet.

Most of you have never seen Diskovery: piles and piles of books from the floor to the ceiling, books behind books, racks of books, slowly tipping heaps of books. At first I found it frustrating because I would go there seaking out one or two particular titles. Eventually I found it calming, almost meditative, to lose myself in the thousands of books. Now it will be a restaurant or a bar, perhaps another real estate agency, or maybe we could use another convenience store as there are only four within a one block radius. It won't be the fault of the new tenant that Diskovery is gone but I doubt I'll be the only one who refuses to enter out of spite.

MC&G #001

In an hour or so I’ll begin work on another novel, tentatively titled Midnight Comes and Goes. The impetus was an email Kugler sent me on 22 December, 2005 positing a “party genre” which would take place entirely at a single party (perhaps with a few book ends). I’ll try to write it from start to finish during April – the novel-in-a-month scheme that NaNoWriMo pushes every November (and which yielded my only novel, unfinished, from 2004) – because I don’t have the discipline to do it without the rules I’ve set for myself. I’ve given myself structural limitations too, dividing the book into two sections and dividing those sections by the two apartments in which the party or parties take place. I always hope that the limitations will provide some inspiration. And… maybe.

Some words #001

op·pro·bri·um
n. 1. Disgrace arising from exceedingly shameful conduct; ignominy; 2. Scornful reproach or contempt: a term of opprobrium; 3. A cause of shame or disgrace.

scle·rot·ic
adj. 1. Affected or marked by sclerosis; 2. Anatomy. Of or relating to the sclera.

scle·ra
n. The tough white fibrous outer envelope of tissue covering all of the eyeball except the cornea. Also called sclerotic, sclerotic coat.

On Javier Marías, TMoF

Opera singers always stay in luxury hotels and our excesses are neither unusual nor excessive, but rather the norm and what is required, yet our life in the city where we have come to work is not so very different from that of a traveling salesman. In every hotel in which I have stayed—in every hotel, therefore, in which there was a singer—there was at least one traveling salesman who, during my sojourn, slashed his wrists in a bubble bath or ruthlessly knifed a bellboy, performed a striptease in the foyer, set fire to a carpet, used the fire extinguisher to smash the mirrors in his luxury suite or, in the elevator, fondled the wife of a member of some government. And before or after such an outburst, I have always identified with some detail, some characteristic, some gesture of utter weariness which I had noticed in the salesman when we coincided in the elevator late at night, tie disheveled and eyes docile; in a shared sideways glance of patience and defeat; in the discreet way we smoother our hair or mopped our brow with a handkerchief; in the unoriginal manner of their suicide.

I am enjoying the hell out of Javier Marías’ The Man of Feeling. I wrote to Kugler, in a drowsy email, that reading Marías is like getting drunk, each sentence like a sip from a too-strong liquor. And I think I was referring specifically to the passage above.

An early Believer article with a stupid premise (“But who from Spain?”) introduced me to Marías and I found a copy of his short story collection, When I Was Mortal, on someone else’s bookshelf. That’s where I realized I’d read him before, the long story, “Blood on A Spear,” was published in Zoetrope a few years earlier.

This past November, the New Yorker profiled Marías on the release of a collection of essays. The article features a few of those long strange passages – like the one above – that saturate his stories. I want to compare Marias to David Lynch but that's probably laziness on my part. They both drift towards domestic strangenesses (I'll add a big 'occasionally' there) and then they go in very much their own directions.

A small moment of serendipity

The same night I finished Patrick Suskind's Perfume which is set in 18th century France and culminates in a collosal public gathering, I cracked the spine on Siva Vaidhyanathan's The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. The first chapter of that book begins:

Parisians living in the turbulent eghteenth century fount out about their world and their politics by sharing "public noises" (bruits publics) in a handful of social nodes around the city. They gathered and gossiped at Pont Neuf, on particular benches in Luxemborug Garden, in avarious cafes, and most importantly under the Tree of Cracow in the gard of the Palais Royal. [...]

You've got to want it.

Last Season's Hottest Short Story Fashions

I'm always about three months behind on The New Yorker and the only reason I don't fall behind further is because I skip entirely the perfect-bound double issues which don't fit the slim magazine-groove on the excercise machines at the gym. I tell you this because I've just gotten around to Tony Earley's "The Cryptozoologist" from the 9 January issue. Maybe I found the story especially interesting because one of the characters seemed very similar to someone I know; regardless, I liked the story. One cryptozoologist did not.

Rebecca Curtis' story, "Twenty Grand," from mid-December was pretty damn good, too.

On Modern Icelandic Literature

Salóme, my penpal via PostCrossing, went all out when I asked her to recommend some Icelandic literature. Here it is, including all of her helpful hyperlinks:

Icelandic authors you should read. This could become tricky since you don't read Icelandic and I'm not sure what has been translated... but.. I know that Angels of the Universe by Einar Már Guðmundsson has been and that's a good book (the movie made after it is too). Oh, and his poems are good. My favourite Icelandic book ever would be LoveStar by Andri Snær Magnason. He is the best... I know that his children's book The Story of the Blue Planet has been translated to some other languages... (everybody should read that beautiful book) and his poems are also great (the only FUN poems I've ever read).

Another favourite is Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, I don't know how many times I've read her book From House from House and her other books are very good too (Karítas, Without Title and Seagull's Laughter). I'm quite fond of Vilborg Davíðsdóttir too, her books The Well of Fates and The Witch's Judgement (or combined in one book as Saga of Korka).

But then again... I don't read so many icelandic books usually... I don't recommend the old sagas like some would do but I do recommend Snorra Edda (from around 1220). Also, Iceland's most famouse author (probably) is Halldór Laxness. He has written some interesting books... I don't know what to think of them... they are long... and strange... and those I've read made me angry... so don't read them.

It has only just occurred to me that a great deal of this is probably available in McSweeney's #15, which is sitting on my least chaotic bookshelf.

Salóme's other recommended Europeans: Jostein Gaarder, Roald Dahl and Patrick Süskind. I'm reading Süskind's Perfume now.

A collasal collective Chinese fiction; JG Ballard on modern architecture

Boingboing links to a couple interesting pieces of writerly interest. VirtualChina reports on a gangster story written collectively by thousands of participants on a Chinese BBS forum -- they include a link to a partial English translation as well. Also, the Guardian has JG Ballard writing on modern architecture.

Improvisational Cooking #001

Carefully open at top. Pour in dressing, etc. Fold bag to reseal. Toss. Serve mixed salad from bag.

Stacked Icecube Trays

Boingboing found this architecture of the arctic gallery. The picture above is a school in Nunavut, Canada, which manages to look exactly like everyone's high school felt.

Ted Walker Loves Baseball...

...and he can make you love it too.