BALDWIN'S GIOVANNI'S ROOM ON A COLD AND WET MORNING

It was cold here last night and it's shaping up to be a cold, wet weekend. The weather forecast looks like we're not about to get above 10C or so with a ninety percent chance of rain. Fall weather, but the depressing kind--not the crisp, cool, bright days that can make Fall so pleasant. The lawn of the house across the street bears remnants of what look like patches of frost. After a relatively mild winter last year--in the midst of it had about a month without snow--I'm wondering if that might not suggest we're in for something a little bit more severe this time around. I wouldn't be opposed to that; the winters of my youth were kind of a draw in moving back East.

In Oregon, this kind of gloomy, wet, cold day would've counted as a fairly typical winter day. As someone who grew up with lake effect snow every winter, I found Oregon winters incredibly depressing. I never descended into the levels of SAD or anything that severe, but I could understand why some of my friends were buying sunlamps to make it through the winter, an urge I've never felt during snowy winters here in the East. As I don't have any particularly outdoorsy plans for the weekend, I'm fine with the weather cooling down a bit--and even the rain is not a total downer--but I would like the sun to make an appearance from time to time as I sit at my desk (the whole reason that I'd put it under my big window in my bedroom/living room). 

On the slate for this weekend: some lesson planning for upcoming classes, some reading for the courses I'm taking, and some working on the paper I'll be giving in front of the department not this Friday but the next. At some point I need to finish that Facebook post, too. I'll do my best to have it up by tomorrow. I'm most excited to work on the paper, though, as I had to submit a title to the organizers so they can start "publicizing" the event (sending out an email to the department), which made it seem real. The person writing the email had told me I could include a brief description of my project if I wanted and, after writing a three hundred or so word abstract, I emailed her back to ask about length. The upshot is that the abstract wouldn't work (too long) and I didn't really have time to whittle it down, so no description in the email. That's fine with me. 

Writing the abstract was really helpful in that it gave me a picture of the whole argument, as abstracts are supposed to do. I'm revising a course paper, and while I'm not shifting entirely away from what I'd said in that paper, the argument definitely has a new focus and approach now, one that I was still unsure of how it would work. Once I've actually written the thing, I'm sure it'll bear no resemblance to this abstract (one of the great joys of writing is an unexpected development in the argument, of course), but I feel like I have more of a map now than I had with just the scrawled comments in the margins (mine and my professor's). More (most?) importantly, this now feels like the first piece of writing I'll have done that captures what I want to do as a scholar, how I want to address texts, and why I have an interest in this field. It's a good feeling--the original paper itself was hinting in that direction, but I was still in the grappling with ideas phase and I don't think the paper ended up really communicating what it should have. Now I have the chance to do just that, and I'd really like to take advantage of that opportunity. 

The paper is on James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, a novel that I read for the first time in the spring. Prior to reading it, Baldwin had always been something of a minor figure in my mind--"Sonny's Blues" and "Going to Meet the Man" are fine stories, but I don't know that I'd really taken notice of him. In terms of writers working the same terrain, to a certain extent, I would've taken Ellison and Wright over Baldwin if you'd asked me. Now, I'd take Baldwin over both of them. Giovanni's Room is an extremely strange novel, but it's also in possession of a haunting, hallucinatory beauty that is at the same time deeply unsettling. I don't think it's going too far to call the novel an expression of the uncanny; the heimlich and the unheimlich reverse so often in the novel that they become hopelessly tangled and enmeshed, just as Freud noted they do in any uncanny artifact, encounter, or situation. Given that this is, to a certain extent, my preferred mood when it comes to texts, I was right on board with the novel from the opening pages. The titular room itself couldn't be a more uncanny space:

I remember that life in that roomed seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning, our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning [I think this should be surface] until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues. By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride. Giovanni's face, which I had memorized so many mornings, noons, and nights, hardened before my eyes, began to give in secret places, began to crack. The light in the eyes became a glitter; the wide and beautiful brow began to suggest the skill beneath. The sensual lips turned inward, busy with the sorrow overflowing from his heart. It became a stranger's face--or it made me so guilty to look on him that I wished it were a stranger's face. Not all my memorizing had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorizing had helped to bring about.

 In keeping with the uncanny, the room itself cannot be avoided. Its repetitions will haunt the narrator forever, replacing a;; heimlich spaces with unheimlich spaces; unheimlich because of their resistance to description other than by reference to the original room, the space the narrator cannot (will not?) describe:

I scarcely know how to describe the room. It became, in a way, every room I had even been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long--we met before the spring began and I left there during the summer--but it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

Good stuff, that. The uncanny is no more than a footnote in my paper, but it would be interesting to see if it appears in any of Baldwin's other novels or stories (I'm fairly certain it's lurking not too far behind the words in "Going to Meet the Man"). Anyway, a project for another day.

RADIOHEAD ON COLBERT: "CAPITAL . . . THE GREAT IRONIST"

I've got a long post on Facebook that should be up by the end of the weekend, but I thought I'd take a minute to comment on Radiohead's appearance on The Colbert Report. In the lead up to the event, Colbert had said "I look forward to meeting the Radioheads and leveraging their anti-corporate indie cred to raise brand awareness for my sponsors," which is in many ways a more interesting statement than it initially appears. Stripped of the perfunctory and surface-level irony that it relies on as a gag*--famously anti-corporate rock band appears on TV show put on and supported by corporations--this statement seems to me to be a particularly good example of anti-capitalism as one of the primary guises of contemporary capitalism. In his take on WALL-E, Mark Fisher points out that:

[T]he ideology of capitalism is now "anti-capitalist." . . . Initially, it might seem subversive and ironic that a film made by a massive corporation should have such an anti-consumerist and anti-corporate message . . . Yet it is capital which is the great ironist, easily able to metabolise anti-corporate rhetoric by selling it back to an audience as entertainment. 

Colbert's statement is essentially a reformulation of this point, making explicit how capital-as-ironist functions with regard to anti-capitalism. His interview with the band goes a step further and continually puts this concept in tension with the band's statements regarding their anti-corporate stance--there is a delicious and palpable dissonance at play because, in a lot of ways, Colbert "wins" the debate: capital succeeds as an ironist (and the band appears to be as humourless as their detractors would have them be).

While some of Colbert's persona's more exaggerated characteristics are starting to wear thin--in much the same way that Jon Stewart's attempts to maintain both his "objectivity" and his status as "just a guy on a comedy show" can make his commentary infuriatingly impotent and toothless--the interviews, especially the one with just Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien, are most interesting when that persona allows him to be punishingly blunt. Until the joke about clean coal, the end of that second interview is almost unbearably pointed. If policies from the left--and political statements made by artists--are to move beyond comfy neoliberalism and the easily consumed anti-capitalism that goes with it, take downs of easy positions like those mocked by Colbert in these two interviews need to continue.


*A gag that was already boring when it featured in every review of Rage Against the Machine in the 90s and is now beyond tired.

R.E.M.: A BRIEF STORY ABOUT BEING AND NOT BEING A FAN

Taking a break from grading for a moment--why do I always leave myself with the majority of papers to finish grading the day before I've said I'd give them back?--I thought I'd offer this short comment on R.E.M.'s breakup. I was at one point, from grade six through grade nine, a more intense fan of R.E.M. than of any other cultural force/object. I still have a poster of Michael Stipe in my bedroom back home. The "Daysleeper" single was the first CD I ever bought--I still think the version of "Sad Professor" on there trumps the version on Up.* Obviously, given the past tense above, I am no longer such a fan. I can trace the decline in my fanhood to two things, basically.

1. The internet: we got the internet at my house in grade eight. While this was initially a boon to my obsession--I could find out more information about the band, albeit on a painfully slow dial-up connection--it also made it possible for me to find out about all sorts of new and exciting music (although again, thanks to said dial-up connection, I could often only read about this music, not hear it). In grade nine, I had Napster, and I started listening to all sorts of stuff that made R.E.M. seem kind of tame and pedestrian.

2.  Reveal: I've often found that discovering a band in the midst of the down time between albums can be trying--especially if it's a long wait until the next album. If it's an established band, by the time I've gone through the back catalogue, I have pretty set opinions about the band's sound. The new album can often be something of a let down, and this was especially devastating when I was young and had an astonishing amount of libidinal energy invested in bands. R.E.M. is the prototypical example. As Up was the second album I bought on CD (after Weezer's Blue Album, which, shockingly, was cheaper than the "Daysleeper" single), and as I considered it my favourite album and R.E.M.'s best, I was stunned to discover that I didn't particularly like Reveal. In the wake of some of the music I'd started listening to thanks to the internet (especially sites like Pitchfork and Allmusic), Reveal was boring. Its electronics were nowhere near as exciting as Kid A's, for example (say what you will about that album, but it was genuinely revolutionary for a kid in the suburbs whose only experience of electronic music was "Firestarter," Fatboy Slim's You've Come A Long Way, Baby, and the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole).

It's been years since I've actually paid attention to R.E.M.--basically since the release of Reveal--and even the kind of "return to form" reviews that surrounded Accelerate and Collapse Into Now couldn't lure me back into the fold. For one thing, R.E.M.'s form, in my eyes, was shaped by the manner in which I experienced them. Reckoning and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Murmur and Monster, everything they'd done existed simultaneously for me. No single album they released could possibly recapture my sense of their sound and scope.

I'm not horrifically upset by the band's breakup. I'm not even really upset. I am a little wistful, though, as I sit here and think back to the hours I spent flipping through the CD booklets and listening to the music, trying to piece together what the songs were about. The early albums especially, Murmur through Fables of the Reconstruction, were as culturally alien to me as anything I'd ever heard--I knew nothing of the lore of the South, and I shared no cultural common ground with what Stipe mumbled about. I have no grand conclusion to draw from R.E.M.'s breakup, but it has given me a chance to go back and re-listen to some fantastic music. So, here are some of my favourites.

"Leave"

"Country Feedback"

"You"

*Another source for my fascination with representations of academics? Perhaps. I didn't think of that until right this minute.

BASIC DISPLAYS OF COMPETENCY

I spent a lot of time yesterday working on an abstract and a rationale for a panel I'm putting together. In and of itself, neither task was that difficult (although I was a little concerned at first that there weren't quite as many points of intersection between the three arguments as I'd hoped, in the end I found a solid through-line), which was a happy discovery. It could just be that my mind is looking forward to the readings I've assigned my students for the next few weeks, or it could be that the extended discussion on the purpose and value of scholarly work in class on Monday night is continuing to hum away in my brain, but I kept imagining how writing this abstract and rationale would have gone a year ago, or two years, or five years ago. This is, of course, not the first time I've wondered about such things.

One year ago it would have been difficult--I could have managed it, though I doubt that the finished abstract and rationale would be of the same quality as what I produced yesterday. Two years ago? I'm not sure I was ready to produce the rationale: I think I would have been able to write one, but I'm not convinced I really understood how to make it do what it needs to do (basically, the whole creating a conversation that the papers are each contributing to would have been okay, but getting across any kind of "So what?" or "Who cares?" point was not my greatest skill). Five years ago? Not a chance. Five years ago I'd never even written a conference length paper for an English class. It's shocking now to look back and realize that, but it wasn't until the very end of my third year of undergrad that I wrote a conference length paper for an English class. Most English classes I took required essay exams, not papers.

In a meeting I had with a professor a couple weeks ago, when I mentioned my anxieties re: my lack of publications--specifically, that I'm starting to feel like I'm falling behind the rest of my cohort in that regard--the response I got was "it's not a race." I don't entirely believe it, but I desperately hope it's true. In a lot of ways, I feel like it took me a year of work in my MA program to wind up where the students with whom I'd entered program had started. By the time I'd finished my MA and was ready to start my PhD, I think I'd reached the point at which most people are starting to apply for PhD programs. A year into my PhD program, it seems like I'm where a lot of people were a year ago. Being able to spend a few hours yesterday afternoon and write those two documents seems to me like a good demonstration of some basic PhD student (and perhaps graduate student at any level) skills. If grad school and professional development aren't a race, that's a good thing, because I think I just managed to get my shoes on. If it is a race, well, I was always better in the second half of my races, anyway.

Now, next test: I need to have a paper ready for presentation to the department three weeks from Friday. If this presentation goes well--and if a few people give the new draft of the whole thing (rather than the condensed version I'll present) a thumbs up--this will be the first thing I send out. Fingers very much crossed, here. Of course, one sop to my confidence: I've been made co-organizer of a panel at ACLA (the same one that had been shot down by MLA). If you'll be at ACLA in March, come say hello!

THOUGHTS FROM A CONVALESCENT

I've been sick for the past few days--surprisingly sick for what seemed like a simple cold--but after about sixteen hours of sleep last night, I'm feeling much better today. I still sound like hell, but at least I don't feel miserable. Obviously I haven't done a whole lot of anything while I've been sick so this update might be a little thin.

I went to a screening of the humanitarian group Invisible Children's film Tony on Wednesday night (this was probably a mistake in retrospect: I felt like crap Wednesday morning, and spending all day on campus having to be awake and somewhat sociable probably did nothing to help my immune system fight off what was coming), and I found it an interesting presentation, if flawed. While I support the group's work to help villages warn each other of, and possibly fend off, attacks from rebel groups in central East Africa, and while their film made at least a token gesture to the idea that white people coming in to Africa and throwing money and consumer goods around does not, in fact, fix anything, I was uncomfortable with the overall tone. There was more than a hint of orientalism (perhaps that's not the exact word I want--maybe just othering or exoticizing Africans?) throughout the video, with the titular man shown to be both a person of tremendous perseverance and a kind of cipher for all the desires, dreams, and guilt of middle and upper class whites about Africa, a kind of "look, we gave him Nikes and rap CDs and he likes us just so much and we're just such great friends, isn't it great?" type narrative. I couldn't help thinking that if Christian Lander had been there, he could've used the film to illustrate any number of points in Stuff White People Like (I think the entries on "Nonprofit Organizations," "Having Black Friends," "Awareness," "Documentaries," "Knowing What's Best for Poor People," "T-Shirts," "Following Their Dreams," and "Self-Importance," at the very least, could easily be illustrated by various aspects of Tony).* At the same time, the subtitles that appeared any time a black person spoke in the video--while all whites remained unsubtitled even when the sound quality of handheld footage made it difficult to make out any words--was, I thought, a telling touch.

The purpose of the video was less to tell the story of Tony than to explain how Invisible Children is the coolest organization you could hope to be a part of, one that will help you "follow your dreams" and realize your "true self" through its internship program: driving around in vans and fundraising for the group by showing their movies and speaking to high school, university, and church groups. The mix of handheld and professional camera work, combined with the quick cuts and trendy camera effects, made it feel like a well-made YouTube video diary. Coupled with the stylish t-shirts and bags on sale after the screening, and the organization's social network style fundraising website, it seemed like a great pitch to capture teens and and university students. The roadtrips appear perfectly designed to serve as material for cooler Facebook status updates and tweets than those of one's peers. Ultimately, I was left cold by the film (and by the personality of the organization's founder, who came across like Tucker Max running a nonprofit), even as I found many of the group's goals admirable. I'd required my students to go to the screening, but I'm less comfortable with that decision now than I had been. A complicated issue, to be sure.

Other than that, not much more to report. As I said, being sick sort of wiped out the last few days. I've (slowly, oh so slowly) been working my way through James Fennimore Cooper's The Pioneers, and while it has more points of interest than I'd been led to believe, it's hard to overcome Mark Twain's masterful putdown of Cooper and give the novel the benefit of the doubt. I'm twenty chapters in and there hasn't been much in the way of plot yet; however, I've been assured that much will take place in the next twenty--for the sake of my brain, which is in danger of turning to mush if I come across another two-page description of what one character or another is wearing, I certainly hope so. On the plus side, this week we're talking about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in my other class. You might say I'm a little excited: a play about academics is awesome--it's not often I actually get to talk about my primary scholarly interest in class.

A sign of the times as I finish? A balloon (it looks like one of the bright plastic helium balloons) shaped like a man just floated across the sky above the houses across the street.


*Of course, part of what makes that book ride the "this is funny"/"this is painful/infuriating" line so well is its accuracy: you can laugh at the foibles of those around you and feel outraged/find yourself forced into justifications about the things you like. The book also goes a long way, I think, to furthering the idea that "white" is, more and more, an economic designation: the last time I filled out the checklist in the back of the book, it told me I was less than 20% white despite my being practically translucent and able to burn on a moment's notice in sunlight; I simply don't have the kind of disposable income necessary to be "white." Of course, this refers to a fairly narrowly defined idea of whiteness, one that groups on the right might be less willing to embrace, even though it shares a particular kind of anti-intellectualism underneath its well-cultivated appearance that would fit in well with the right (the constant belittling of the humanities [and higher education in general], the disparaging remarks about intellectual figures [both Zizek and Lacan are presented as nothing more than fodder for PoMo posers, devoid of any real substance]).