Dream: Malibu Wildlife Search

Walking in sand dunes along the beach near Malibu, California, though out of sight of the water. I reach the top of a small rise. To the east at the bottom of the little hill is a large animal that I decide is a tapir. I become aware that I am looking for one of the largest animals in the world and that it is around here. I am narrating my journey, as if in a nature documentary, though there seems to be no point in doing so: no camera, no recorder, no phone. The "tapir" is not much like a tapir, and there seem to be two of them. It is the size of a hippo, and hippo-like, but where the nose flap is on a tapir, it has a foot long truck like an elephant's.

The tapir are not the large animal I am looking for.

Turning around at the base of the hill, where I have to return, a very large alligator has buried itself into the sand, like it would were the sand water, floating at or just below the surface. The alligator is dangerous.

I am aware that none of these animals are native to Malibu.

The hill seems to get steeper, and I am having a hard time not slipping down the sand towards the alligator. It seems inevitable that I will.

Pick Up Lines At The Gym Of Questionable Utility

1.

Woman exercising. Man standing next to her.

Man: [inaudible]
Woman: What's your name?
Man: [inaudible]
Woman: Rambo?
Man: [inaudible]
Woman: Well, nice to meet you Rambo.


2.

Man and woman enter steam room. Man, very large, very loud voice.

Man: I believed that for 48 years, but it only took 2 hours for me to learn the truth. All that stuff they say about Jesus Christ, it isn't true. But most people don't want to learn the truth. That's okay. Whatever floats your boat. I'm interested in the truth.

Woman: How did you learn the truth?

Man: Oh, lots of scholars who had done studies and stuff. You probably believed in Santa Claus too. I believed in Santa Claus when I was a kid. A large white man with a beard and flying reindeer. You can believe in Jesus Christ too.

Woman gets up to leave.

Man: ?

Woman: Oh, I was in here before, and it is too hot to stay longer. Have a nice day.

Him and George Plimpton

A memoir written with Google Maps (pretty cool):

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117518500794242822937.00046c27922ecb66b6fca&ll=40.438586,-76.970215&spn=3.787431,7.064209&z=7

Hazards of the life of international intrigue

from the story "The Beach Murders" by J.G. Ballard:

"The meeting at the nudist colony on the Isle du Levant had not been entirely fortuitous."

Don't know what this is about

http://www.amazon.com/tag/marriage/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1FLZG3A5ENHEC&cdThread=Tx2ASQYOV6N0BVC

Best Sellers

Compliation of best seller lists for the century.

http://booksofthecentury.com/

2009 Jambalaya Award winners (under construction)

The most interesting books I've read for the first time in 2009 (in the order read):


2666 -- Roberto Bolano
Revenge of The Spellmans -- Lisa Lutz
Seasons Of Migration To The North -- Taye Salih
The Journal of Jules Renard -- Jules Renard
The Tremor of Forgery -- Patricia Highsmith
The City and The City -- China Mieville
The Ax -- Donald E. Westlake
Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi -- Geoff Dyer
Inherent Vice -- Thomas Pynchon
Right Ho, Jeeves -- P.G. Wodehouse
Housekeeping -- Marilynne Robinson
Disgrace -- J.M. Coetzee
Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
Await Your Reply -- Dan Chaon
Then We Came To The End -- Joshua Ferris
Stoner -- John Williams



Honorable mention:

The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes -- K.C. Constantine
The Cold Dish -- Craig Johnson
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read -- Pierre Bayard
Miracles of Life -- J.G. Ballard
Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign -- Phillipe-Paul de Segur
The Dart League King -- Keith Lee Morris
Lush Life -- Richard Price
The Genius -- Jesse Kellerman
New Selected Poems -- Mark Strand
The Act of Love -- Howard Jacobson
Selected Stories -- Robert Walser
The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Vol. 1 1929-40
My Father's Tears -- John Updike
The Old Man And Me -- Elaine Dundy
Erased -- Jim Krusoe
Child 44 -- Tom Rob Smith
The American Painter, Emma Dial -- Samantha Peale
Hard Rain Falling -- Don Carpenter
The Anthologist -- Nicholson Baker
The Pillowman -- Martin McDonagh
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius -- Ray Monk
The Dawn Patrol -- Don Winslow

2009 Reading

In reverse chronological order:

Stoner -- John Williams
The Monster In A Box -- Ruth Rendell
The Dawn Patrol -- Don Winslow
Then We Came To The End -- Joshua Ferris
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius -- Ray Monk
Nonsense Novels -- Stephen Leacock
Phoenix Noir -- Patrick Millikin (ed.)
Await Your Reply -- Dan Chaon
And Here's The Kicker: Conversations With 25 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft (Extended Edition) -- Mike Sacks
Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
The Pillowman -- Martin McDonagh
The Crime Writer -- Gregg Hurwitz
Hard Rain Falling -- Don Carpenter
Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer -- Richard Holmes
The American Painter, Emma Dial -- Samantha Peale
Things The Grandchildren Should Know -- Mark Oliver Everett
The Anthologist -- Nicholson Baker
Disgrace -- J.M. Coetzee
The Art of Harvey Kurtzman -- Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle
Exit Music -- Ian Rankin
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America -- Steven Johnson
Episodes: My life As I See It -- Blaze Ginsberg
Underground Classics: The transformation of Comics into Comix -- James Danky and Denis Kitchen
The Hook -- Donald E. Westlake
Child 44 -- Tom Rob Smith
Housekeeping -- Marilynne Robinson
As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires -- Bruce Weber
Equivocation -- Bill Cain
Right Ho, Jeeves -- P.G. Wodehouse
The Brutal Telling -- Louise Penny
Inherent Vice -- Thomas Pynchon
The Ghost Soldiers -- James Tate
Erased -- Jim Krusoe
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi -- Geoff Dyer
The Ax -- Donald E. Westlake
The Old Man And Me -- Elaine Dundy
Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage -- Stephen Budiansky
My Father's Tears -- John Updike
The City and The City -- China Mieville
My Man Jeeves -- P.G. Wodehouse
Tropic of Cancer -- Henry Miller
The Price of Blood -- Declan Hughes
Dark Places -- Gillian Flynn
The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Vol. 1 1929-40
Selected Stories -- Robert Walser
The Act of Love -- Howard Jacobson
New Selected Poems -- Mark Strand
The Tremor of Forgery -- Patricia Highsmith
Nobody Move -- Denis Johnson
Somebody Owes Me Money -- Donald Westlake
Cat's Cradle -- Kurt Vonnegut
The Journal of Jules Renard -- Jules Renard (ed., tr. Louise Bogan & Elizabeth Roget)
The Genius -- Jesse Kellerman
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher -- Kate Summerscale
Chess Story -- Stefan Zweig
A Likely Story -- Donald Westlake
Lush Life -- Richard Price
Purloining Tiny -- John Franklin Bardin
Seasons Of Migration To The North -- Taye Salih
The Dart League King -- Keith Lee Morris
Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign -- Phillipe-Paul de Segur
Beat The Reaper -- Josh Bazell
Miracles of Life -- J.G. Ballard
The Pilgrim Hawk -- Glenway Wescott
Revenge of The Spellmans -- Lisa Lutz
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read -- Pierre Bayard
The Yankee Years -- Joe Torre and Tom Verducci
Rock and Roll -- Tom Stoppard
The Silver Swan -- Benjamin Black
The Yellow Admiral -- Patrick O'Brian
The Cold Dish -- Craig Johnson
The Ghost In Love -- Jonathan Carroll
Pinocchio -- Carlo Collodi
2666 -- Roberto Bolano
Jar City -- Arnaldur Indridason
The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes -- K.C. Constantine

Ordinary and dazzling

The book "Stoner" by John Williams opens with these two audicious paragraphs:


William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same university, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his course. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University Library. This transcript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues."

An occasional student who comes by the inscription may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones, it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.


And from there launches into the story of Stoner's life, beginning with the next sentence:

He was born on a small farm in central Missouri near the town of Booneville, some forty miles from Columbia, the home of the University.


I'm not sure why I find this opening so thrilling, other than the implied boast by the novelist: "I will make this ordinary unspecial life of interest to you." Which he does.

Woof

from NYT article about Highsmith-related locations in Greenwich Village:

"Morton Street was where Highsmith “started her lifelong career of aggressive seduction,” Ms. Schenkar explained. It is also where Kenneth Rowajinski, the psychopathic dog killer, is murdered in her 1972 novel “A Dog’s Ransom.” (The unlucky poodle, Tina, bears the name of a dog owned by one of her amours.) “She kills so many dogs,” Ms. Schenkar said of Highsmith. “She hated dogs. She couldn’t bear sharing attention.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/books/11highsmith.html

Roger Angell reappears

His New Yorker baseball articles are fewer and shorter, but still full of grace notes of felicitious phrase and precise observation:

"It wound up 6-1, Phillies -- an outcome that was almost visible when Lee fanned Jeter and Teixeira in the first inning and the holiday crowd at the Stadium went all murmurous."

"Utley, who has slicked-back, Jake Gittes hair, possesses a quick bat and a very short home-run stroke; he looks like a man in an A.T.M. reaching for his cash."

from the Nov 30, 2009 issue,

as is this amusing casual by Mike Sacks:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/11/30/091130sh_shouts_sacks

Wittgenstein helps with the war effort

by taking a menial job as a hospital orderly:

"Wittgenstein's job as a porter was to delivery medicines from the dispensary to the wards, where, according to john Ryles' wife, Miriam, he advised the patients not to take them."

from Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius p. 432.

My New Philosopher Joke

Philosopher Fred: Oy!

Jim: What's wrong, Fred? You seem a little down.

Philosopher Fred: I'm so discouraged. It just doesn't seem like I'll live long enough to find out what happens after death.

Overheard at the Bar

I want to write a column for the L.A. Weekly: "This Day In L.A." It would cover what happened in L.A. the preceding week.

Moose and Squirrel Hit 50

Our namesake turns 50. Every appreciation insufficient. Here's a dim view of the statue in West Hollywood. But then even in the best of light, he's a little dim.

Also, he remembers everthing he ever has eaten.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-birthday-rocky-bullwinkle.html

Bookstore story

Tobias Wolff, in The Morning News:

Robert Olen Butler told me a really funny story about going to a Borders out in Berkeley—Berkeley of all places. You know, he likes to travel around, goes to lots of bookstores and signs stock for them because it helps them sell and he likes to help them sell his book. So he goes into this Borders—it might have been a Barnes and Noble [there has never been a Borders in Berkeley—ed.], I can’t remember which and I don’t want to badmouth one if I’m wrong—she had never heard of him to begin with, the woman that was waiting on him. Then he said, Well I just had this book come out, and he had a nice big review of it and showed her. And he said, I’d like to sign these books. And she said, Well let me see if I can find them. She did find them; they had about 20 copies of his book. Brought ‘em over, he signed ‘em all. And she said, Well do you want to pay for these with credit card or cash?

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/tobias_wolff.php