June 18th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *And Another Thing* by Eoin Colfer

Finally, after nearly a year of rereading the other 5 books in the series, plus Douglas Adams’s post-humously published collection, *The Salmon of Doubt*, I finally sat down to read the sixth book in my beloved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, And Another Thing written by Eoin Colfer after Adams’s death at the request of Adams’s widow.

Let’s be honest and say that I could not be completely objective with this book. I loved the original 5 despite their myriad flaws because of their author’s deft touch and weird mind. Writing is personal, and it disturbed me profoundly that someone was going to try to write in someone else’s style–seems like wearing someone else’s underpants to me.

Colfer does come, at times, tantalizingly close–some of the gags and non-sequiteurs and, truly, a lightness with language are refreshing to see: “I’ve seen a few things in my day and in my night too” “Ford’s fingers tapped the air impatiently, eager to wrap themselves around a tankard handle.” Someone killed by a laser is “frittered by the beams” and a cheese-worshipping cult fears “Edamnation.” Haha, to all of it.

Though I enjoy that stuff, and read hopefully and attentively throughout, I knew what the problem was going to be as soon as I saw the book, and I am surprised someone else (aka the editor) didn’t have the same immediate reaction: it’s enormous. 340 page, in a 6×10 format. I have the first four books in an omnibus format close to 6×10, and none of them weighs in at much more than 150 pages (albeit a bit smaller font). In that, I think Adams knew what he was doing–these are books of Pythonesque jokes and silliness, nothing you want to see endless extended. While the HHG characters are much stronger than most mainstream genre parody comic novels, they are still not *all* that well-fleshed and one tends to get sick of them and their prat-falling ways after oh, about 150 pages. I was surprised to read in *The Salmon of Doubt* that Adams agonized endlessly about these creations, because they feel so fresh and also so slight–something he and friend might have come up with on a long car-trip and written down on the pitstop at Denny’s.

So while I can’t disagree with critics who say that Colfer nails Adams larkiness very well, I am pretty adamant that what his misses is Adams’s judiciousness with the use of lark. There are a number of “guide notes” in all the books in the series–short passages explaining the esoteric alien concepts that Adams (and Colfer) created to flesh out the galaxy. These notes are supposed to be quoted from the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide, so they have that famous wit and irreverency. However, Adams’ notes are pretty rare, a light and goofy sprinkling, whereas Colfer’s come up every couple pages or, on a few occasions, twice on the same page. One of them, quite late and at the height of the action, actually announced that it was short so as not to interrupt flow, and I almost stamped my little foot–this book is precious short on flow.

Another flow issue is that every character has a plotline or at least a point of view, and there are a lot of characters. For our usual contingent, Trillian wants to recapture her daughter’s love but finds herself meeting the man of her dreams, Arthur is reunited with his true love but in digitized form, Zaphod gets involved with the gods of Aesir, Random loses a husband and plots to gain control of the galaxy and destroy her mother’s happiness (Random’s events are the most, er, random of anyone’s), and Ford…well, Ford doesn’t actually have much going on in this book, but we see a bunch of scenes from his POV anyway. He’s as funny as ever, and somewhat nicer than ever before (this is Colfer’s first book for adults and he seems a bit fonder of people learning their lessons and seeing the power of good than Adams ever was).

In addition to our old friends, we gain some new ones: Wowbagger the Immortal, who had a very few lines in a previous book (I think it was *Life, the Universe, and Everything*, but I refuse on principle to look it up–the principle being that I know no one cares); a Vogon father and son team that are (still!) bent on exterminating the humans, Thor and many of his godly and demi-godly friends (Adams devotees will note that while Thor has never before shown up in a HHG book, he was in one of the Dirk Gently novels); a faux-Irish flimflam man, and…I think that’s everyone. But who knows!

My point is that there was way too much going on in this book. I read it in less than a week and I don’t think I am a sloppy reader, but I would often put the book down for half a day and be simply unable to work out what was going on when I picked it back up. Adams’ books, in addition to being shorter, were far more focussed than AAT–often several of even the major 4 characters were left out, or largely so. In addition to being confusing, Colfer’s rapid cutting back and forth made it difficult to even care what happened to anyone. I admit, this has long been a problem with the series–after umpteen jokes, it’s hard to care who falls in love or into an abyss–but it is even harder when you can’t remember anyone’s names.

I actually don’t know a lot about Eoin Colfer other than that he is a successful kid and YA novelist, but I suspect him of watching a lot of TV and perhaps writing for it. Many of his scenes were utterly impenetrable to me until I pictured them on a soundstage–and then they were funny. There was a lot of bickering and people popping in and out behind walls and radioing each other from afar, and pretending to do one thing while doing another–I wasn’t around for Laugh-in, but I am pretty sure I have the reference right.

And in that sense, I think the new book is true to the series’ roots as a radio show–disjointed, episodic, gag-oriented and inconsistent. I laughed, I admit it, but ten minutes later I usually couldn’t remember at what.

The flap notes state that AAT is going to bring HHG to a new generation of readers–presumably that means the new generation is expected to *start* with the 6th book, since it is shiny and new, and then be drawn into the back-catalogue. I admit, I am old and not of the hyperlink generation, but I can’t imagine how this is going to work. The book makes vague reference to many of the events in the preceding books, but not so that a neophyte could actually understand them. But the past is rarely abandoned, so you can’t just read AAT as a stand-alone novel–you are constantly being reminded of what came before, even if no explanation follows up. Even I couldn’t follow it all, and I’ve read all the books in the past year! Of course, maybe I’m not so smart as I think I am!

What this review basically boils down to is that I really liked Douglas Adams and I wish he weren’t dead. He was *not* an A+ writer, and many of the issues Colfer is encountering he inherited from the master (not least of which is how to write a sequel to a novel which ended with all major characters being killed). Colfer does an ok job with a tough gig, but if there is a 7th book (as was strongly hinted), I’m afraid I’m just going to have to bow out of the party. Time to let that new generation take over.

June 17th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews The Pornographers June 15 concert at The Sound Academy

The nicest thing, in my opinion, to do before the concert is to have a good cheap meal downtown and avoid the baffling expense of trying to eat in the Distillery District (The Old Spaghetti Factory throws in salad, bread, tea/coffee and ice cream with all entrees! And the ice-cream is spumoni!). Failing that, one could likely have gotten something delicious en route at T&T grocery story on Cherry Street, or else the hotdog vendors outside the venue. And then walk–the buses from Union station and Pape station baffled us, but it was a perfectly pleasant 45-ish minute strolled the The Sound Academy, which is down by the Docks (where I had never been).

The Sound Academy turns out to be a nice big venue with enough bars and restrooms and a nice sort of patio area where you can go with your wristband and buy (expensive) snacks and pops. There was a lot of space (the whole second floor, it seemed) devoted to VIPs, but I guess VIPs have to go somewhere.

News of the opening acts didn’t interest me at all, as they went on really early and I hadn’t heard of them. We missed the Dukes and Duchesses entirely but we caught the The Dodos mainly by accident and they were wicked good. This seemed to be a three piece band (I couldn’t really see very well; there could have been more stuff up there), one and a half piecesof which was drum kit. So one guitarist, one traditional drummer, and one guy who played some drums, some xylophone, and a few other instruments I didn’t really understand. Let’s talk about how much I like xylophone music. Let’s talk about the song when Mr. Ambidextrous played one stick on the drums, one stick on the xylophone. Swoon!

The NPs had a very simple stage set up–just illuminated letters spelling their name hanging above a smoke and light filled stage. It was so great to see them in person (I never had before!) There are so many of them! I think I knew that but forgot–I’m a fan, but not a rabid one. But let’s talk about how in awe of Neko Case I am–and there she was with all that red hair in some sort of Grecian shiny headband-crown. Swoon! I love her voice so much–friends I ran into at the show said they thought she got a little squawky at times, but I thought she was perfect, especially on “Go Places,” which has never sounded sweeter to me.

It was so nice and fun to run into people I hadn’t seen in years in a big crowded concert hall. One great thing about Toronto is how often I think I am surrounded by strangers and then a face looms out all friendly and familiar. Of course, I wasn’t completely surrounded by strangers anyway, as I went to the show with B., who had given me the tix as a birthday gift (along with a tin of custard powder and a card that read, “To a Great Grandson”).

What else did I like about the show? Man, I bad at reviewing concerts–I don’t even think I attend them right, as I sucked hard candies at intervals and danced in my spot. Almost no one danced at this show–has that gone out of fashion now? Or maybe it was the age of the crowd. Someone commented, when I said I was going, that the band had been around more than 10 years so they are really The Old Pornographers, which I think is laughable–being born in the 1990s is not old! But the crowd was, in places, old*er*–some grey hair, some paunchiness, some real eagerness to get home and sleep when the show ended. But then fully half the crowd was probably a lot younger than me. I don’t know what my point is, but I am happy to announce that I now think I’ve finally figured out what a hipster is, so I can join the rest of you in laughing at them!

I dunno, this is a terrible review, but the show made me really happy. Maybe I have to go to concerts more than once every other year. Maybe I need to adjust to staying out later. Maybe they really should have played “Letter from an Occupant” just for old times sake. Maybe tonight is another late night and I should really get to bed…

June 15th, 2010

Various Goodnesses

This is going to drive me crazy–The Literary Type is searching for a cover image for their “On the Road” issue, which is about travel and transit of all kinds, which is a much beloved them of mine (see last book, as well as the story of mine that’s actually in the “On the Road” issue). But I can’t come up with an image for them–why? Maybe you can come up with an image and solve the problem for us all…?

The National Post ran a piece We’ve Read Your Book, Now What? this weekend, about what authors would recommend people read *after* our own books. Lots of good ideas, including one from me!

I am going to see The New Pornographers in five hours. Well, that’s when the openers come on–TNP will I guess be later. I haven’t been to a concert in a couple years and I sort of forget how they work. But I’m still pretty sure I’m going to like it.

I feel less lousy on less caffeine today. The goal here, after all, is not to eradicate a nice thing from my life, but simply not to be dependent on it. And varying the time and amount of caffeine I consume is *like* not being dependent–isn’t it?

June 14th, 2010

Jobs for writers, part 3

What if someone says, “I love books and I’m always reading. I should be an editor.”

Because I spent a great deal of time and money getting a publishing certificate, it is my knee-jerk reaction to get prissy when someone says something like this. “Does having a really good body qualify you to be a surgeon? Does watching a lot of CSI make you a cop?”

This is mainly bluster–the best editors are exactly the people who could say the above–well, and a little more: those who read omnivorously and think critically about all of it. If you write reviews (insightful rigorous reviews, not silly ones) for no reason other than to test and explore your feelings for the text, if you were the person everyone counted on for a page of notes in writing workshop (even better if you couldn’t let the typos go), if you were easily able to spot patterns and themes and write essays about them in undergrad, you probably would make a good editor. People who would not make good editors include those who said one nice thing to everyone in workshop while patiently waiting for their own turns, people who didn’t like university essays because they just wanted to enjoy the text without analysing it, and folks who have a few favourite authors and don’t really like to go much beyond them. And actually, about those essay writers, I think it’s probably also a good sign if you kept getting Cs because you would always mentioned whether you *liked* the text or how well you thought those metaphors and symbols were working. Academic analysis is not, for good or ill, evaluative, but editing is.

So, there you go–the truth that editorial instinct is not really taught in a classroom.

However, taking apart someone’s manuscript and telling them how to write it better is not an entry-level position. You need to climb the ladder as an editorial assistant doing press kits and tip sheets and review packages and credits–things you *do* learn about in a classroom–before you can get anywhere your instincts can work. Is that the proper definition of ironic? Some days I feel like I’ve entirely lost track of that word.

Also, and this always shocks everyone, you can have a good fun job in publishing *without* being an editor! Not my line, but I know that publicists are professional, strategic book-enthusiasts, and in a different way, so are the sales and marketing folk. Financial and tech jobs in publishing look a lot like those in other industries, only more bookish (and, sigh, lower-paid) and then there’s art, design, page composition… So, there’s a lot more going in publishing than just making the words lovely. To even understand what jobs are out there, let alone get one (er, except the tech and finance stuff), you need some background.

There are many ways to do that, but lots of employers really prefer a publishing program. I don’t think there’s a big difference in how much these programs are respected–from what I hear, all are pretty good. Just find something convenient and vaguely interesting to you. Centenial, you’ll note, you need to do full-time, while the other two can be part-time. I found that once you get a few courses under your belt, you become hireable, and then it is nice to be able to finish the program at night while you are working. If you get a really lovely employer, they might even pay for it.

But this is not the only way. Publishing school is expensive and time-consuming and while I found lots of it valuable, lots of other bits simply don’t apply to the path I am on or the part of the industry I am in. Employers like these programs because they are something of a promise that you know what you are doing and have realistic ideas about the work, but there are other ways to promise them that.

If you somehow pick up some solid experience at one job, you are more likely to get the next one. Real useful publishing experience includes serious  work on something that was actually published–not proofing your friends’ essays (although maybe PhD theses, if you did a number) or a blog, but say, a literary journal you volunteered for (even a unversity/college one, if it is a bit known and you can provide copies). Zines are surprisingly respected, too, if you did serious work and it was a serious zine (ie., could people the editors didn’t know personally buy it?) And working on publications that aren’t books (magazines, newspapers, corporate communications) of course counts, too.

These easiest way to get experience is internships–unfortunately, the easiest way to get an internship is to be in a publishing program (they’ll help you find one). Sigh. But you could get one anyway–there are lots out there and they should really be a post in themselves. Try not to think of these as unpaid work–try to think of them as free school! Even the best internship will involve a lot of the deadly ffts: photocopying, filing, phoning, faxing (who still uses a fax machine, you are wondering–oh no!) However, anyone decent who is employing interns knows that the ffts aren’t the intern’s heart’s desire and will try to give you something cool to do (as well as free books and all the leftover meeting food). You should get to sit in on meetings (obey both injunctions to be silent and encouragement to speak up), to meet any author in the office, and to work on at least one or two independent projects. And an intern should try learn everything possible–at the very least, read what you photocopy and pay attention at the meetings. One of the best things an editorial intern (I return to what I know) can do is be asked to incorporate hardcopy editorial changes into a Word doc. Sounds dull, but it’s so great to see how an experienced, talented editor (try not to work for the lousy ones) sharpens a manuscript. I actually did that sort of work for a long time and it was good for my own writing, too.

Avoid: internships at houses where you hate all the books, massive commutes that are going to make it impossible to work evenings (unless you can afford not to!), and anyone who seems from the interview to clearly be a jerk. You can afford to be a bit choosier about internships than real jobs, and should do. I’d also recommend not taking a full-time unpaid one that lasts longer than three months–that’s the standard, and it won’t necessarily look better on your resume if you stay longer, and you might get very hungry. However, if it is a paid internship (they do exist) and you like it, why not stay if they offer? On the flip side, probably not worth quitting a bad three-month internship unless they are actually abusing you. It’ll be over soon and you’ll have the resume cred even if they kept you locked in the copier room 40 hours a week. But that’s why it’s good not to sign on for longer than 3 months. Oh, and don’t expect an internship to turn into a real job, though occasionally they do–there usually just aren’t any open positions. But if it was a happy experience, ask that they keep you mind in case one does…

Ok, the question everyone asks: is it bad to be working on books all day and writing one in the evening. And I have no idea–it’s not bad for *me* to do it, but I can see how it would be draining or crazy-making if I had a different personality type. This is really a personal fit question. But I suppose it does matter to me that I don’t work on books of short stories, and even when I briefly did, they were nothing like mine. I think I might find that hard to have much distance on. I also don’t do the manuscript-taking-apart work mentioned above–my job is the much more techinical, unglam production editing that you only find out about when you start taking the classes or wandering around the office.

Wow, this post is long, and there’s more to say–anyone who knows more or better or different should chime in, and I’ll eventually write another one of these on the freelance world, which I know even less about, so maybe don’t wait for that with bated breath.

Also, for those who have been following my personal dramas–I fell pretty solidly off the caffeine wagon today and my head still hurts! I think there’s just something wrong with me!

June 11th, 2010

Petty pettiness

I keep meaning to write a big long post about whether writers should work in the publishing industry, and if so, how. Ironically (well, Alanis Morrissette irony, anyway), actually working in the publishing industry has been preventing me from doing so.

In the meantime, here’s a tiny favour I would like to ask you, dear whoever is reading this. I have had this new website for a month or so now, and I love it very much. It’s elegant and simple, it has the beautiful image of my beloved Toronto subway system at the top, it has the neat contact form and the way simple photo uploads and…it’s what you get when you Google me. Why do I even care, since what you do get is my old blog, so people will just go there and be redirected here? I dunno. This is an imperfect analogy, but I think it might be something like women who change their names when they get married and get annoyed getting mail to the old name. They don’t stop loving their families, but they are choosing to be identified in a new way now and they want that respected.

That’s a bit heavy–maybe I just want people to get to some actual new content before they get tired of looking me up at all and go look at cute kitten pictures. I don’t know. But it’s driving me nuts–I went through 8 pages of Google and then gave up before I even found it! People have told me that the thing that affects Google status is links from other places, so if you have a link to me on your website that you haven’t got round to updating, could you please? Actually, even if you’ve never linked to me in the past, now wouldn’t be a bad time to start…

Forgive this little bit of meglomania. I think next week is going to be better. I am having a tiny bit of caffeine every day now and already things are improving. I still have this pain behind my left eye, but it is no longer overwhelming.

June 8th, 2010

More advices

I suggest

–reading Sarah Selecky’s interview on Joyland. Really really practical useful advice, and an interesting interview. I especially like the stuff she said about getting the most out of a workshop–I heartily agree.

–grilling the packaged, pre-marinated tempeh just a little EVEN THOUGH it is technically fully cooked and won’t kill you if you put it directly from the box onto your plate. It also won’t make you very happy.

–not quitting caffeine on a Monday, not doing it cold turkey, and maybe not doing it at all. My brain feels like it is trying to tunnel its way out with an icepick.

June 7th, 2010

How to have an awesome weekend

Step 1: Accept your limits: come home from work and lie around on Friday night. Talk on the phone with amusing people, maybe read a little bit of the Lists issue of The New Quarterly. Go to bed when you are tired and try not to look at the clock if you are prone to feeling guilty for going to be before 11. Or 10.

Step 2: Get up (reasonably) early without the alarm and read more TNQ over breakfast. Then check Facebook and finally figure out that The National is a band–before when Amy posted about them, you had thought they were a hockey team.

Step 3: Realize The National is your new favourite band. Dance!

Step 4: Finish a bunch of submissions, a grant application, and some emails. Feel really productive and totally justified in going to bed at the unnamed hour you did last night.

Step 5: Think long and hard about which post office you find less annoying. Go to that post office, even if it is a longer walk. It’s sunny out.

Step 6: Buy some pop and sit on a bench in the sunshine and read more TNQ.

Step 7: Go back home and do even more work, because you are such a superstar.

Step 8: Go find a a nice person and some high-quality take-out sushi.

Step 9: Eat the sushi beside the pretty fountain in the College Park courtyard while waiting for the Urban Bard production of Twelth Night to start.

Step 10: Watch the play. Do not get annoyed that you have to stand for pretty much the entire performance and oftentimes the enormous metal pillar/twinkle lights construction (signal to the mother ship of College Park?) obscures the show. The actors are still excellent and the red-headed twins are cute. And it is cool to see people wandering out of the mall and into Illyria carrying bags from Metro and Winners.

Step 11: Tough it out when it rains. It’s only a sprinkle.

Step 12: Win the after-play raffle (illustrated copy of Hamlet).

Step 13: Run away with your booty before it starts to really pour.

Step 14: Go to a party. Hug your friends. Make charming conversation, or have it made with you.

Step 15: Eat some ice-cream cake.

Step 16: Go to bed.

Step 17: Spend almost entire Sunday lying on couch. Go outside only to go somewhere called The Ice Cream Outlet, which is apparently ungooglable but VERY VERY GOOD (and cheap!)

Step 18: Feel happy.

Step 19: Get back to work.

June 4th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work* by Alain de Botton

In addition attempting to give advice on how to go about to writing a book and having a job, it’s not much of a secret that I also am attempting to write a book about having a job. Or having jobs, I guess, since it is a collection of short stories and each character has a different job (but the all work for the same company–you see?)

Anyway! When I heard about the book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, I had thought that would be helpful reading for me. Also interesting–I am fascinated by work most of the time.

The first 50 or so pages, I was pretty crestfallen, but tried to fight against it. I had the completely unreasonable expectation that this book would be a similar to Barbara Ehrenreich’s brilliant Nickel and Dimed, one of my favourite works of nonfiction ever (a slightly less stratospheric compliment when you realize how little nonfic I actually read, but I still think it counts!)

FYI: those two books are nothing alike. Ehrenreich’s is about how the author researched the experience of having minimum wage jobs by taking them, and then talking to the people she met at work. I don’t know for sure, but I believe this is exactly the sort of thing that anthropologists are forbidden to do, but she blended empathy and analysis insightfully enough that I thought the project a success (anyway, she’s not an anthropologist or a sociologist; she has a PhD in cellular biology but she likes this stuff better).

de Botton’s project is the opposite–not only does he not attempt to go incognito, he asserts his writerly status at every turn. As well, despite the title, he is not investigating specific jobs; he is curious about how industries, or parts of industries, function. Each chapter is named for one such industry (Logistics, Biscuit Manufacture, Career Counselling…) and contains an outsider-looking-in view of that world. For example, in the first two of those, he wanders around a logistic park (warehouses where items are held between legs of their shipping adventures) and a company that makes biscuits, talking to folks here or there but examining no job in depth. He follows items instead. He goes to the Maldives to see some fish being caught, then follows its logistical journey to Britain, to the warehouse, the supermarket, and finally (after hiding in the store until someone picks up a package of fish) home to see it being eaten. How cool is that?

Well, very, I guess, and in a way it does prove to us how very little we know about the history of the products we eat and use, how many people’s hard work we take for granted in our consumeristic society. His point is that we feel entitled to things without having even a basic understanding of how they come to be, and he makes a thorough analysis of that fish. Other chapters are more esoteric, however. “Aviation” focuses first on a trade show for products that could be installed in airplanes, and then on a derelict plane yard. We meet no one who actually works on a plane or flies one, just sales and marketing people, and relatively few of those. There are very few quotations from working people in a book I’d thought was about them; by and large, the text is de Botton’s musings *on* the work that people do. And that is work in general, mainly–the concept of biscuit manufacture rather than any one aspect of the process.

Ok, maybe that’s enough to present a balanced portrait of the book before I admit I didn’t like it. This is one of those books that I suspect personal bias might be causing me to dislike: because I expected it to be something else, because I am personally writing something similar but different and wish de Botton’s book was more like mine, because I fear a lot of my revulsion for what is in fact a well-written insightful book comes from the fact that is largely a personality project and I really dislike the writer.

But then again, some of my reasoning might be valid. de Botton often fails to report anything from his interviews , instead simply reporting how he views things. When he does bother to engage someone on his or her job, he is so contemptuous that what we learn is not anything about the person other than that de Botton thinks he is smarter than that person. For example, a dialogue with an employee of the biscuit company, about whom we know nothing other than that she “was typing up a document relating to the brand performance of the Moments” (a new biscuit):

“I wondered out loud to Renae why in our society the greatest sums of money so often tended to accrue from the sale of the least meaningful things, and why the dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity at the heart of the Industrial Revolution so seldom exteneded beyond the provision of commonplace material goods like shampoo or condoms, oven-gloves or lingerie. I told Renae that our robots and engines were delivering the lion’s share of their benefits at the base of our pyramid of needs, that we were evident experts at swiftly assembling confectionery and yet we were still searching for reliable means of generating emotional stability or marital harmony. Renae had little to add to this analysis. A terrified expression spread across her features and she asked if I might excuse her.”

Some of this is insightful, but you can’t really blame Renae–it’s the dialogue tags like “wondered aloud” and “told” that do it: this is a man essentially talking to himself. And he seems to do so out of the assumption that he’s the only one who really gets it.

The best sections are focussed on single actors, when de Botton actually lets someone else’s personality get some of the spotlight. In one of these, Art, the painter actually comes off at least slightly heroic although mainly silent, but in the career-counsellor is mocked because his house smells like cabbage and he has written an unpublished book. de Botton gives him props for genuinely trying to help people with something difficult, and this probably the most complete portrait in the book, but it’s hardly sympathetic, let alone empathetic.

The bits that made me the craziest were the ones in the Accounting section–he shadowed a couple accounts for a few days, without ever mentioning their names or anything meaningful about them, but he did have long paragraphs on their dreams. They sounded plausible as dreams, by which I mean weird and boring, but they also sounded far more like the author than most other people would dream–I’m pretty sure he made them up! But not at all sure to what end…

The final straw came in the final chapter, Aviation, which begins, “During a time when I was finding it hard to write anything and often spent whole days on my bed wondering about the point of my work…” You know who takes to their beds when things aren’t going well? Aristocrats, the independently wealthy, and Hollywood stars. You know who doesn’t? Working people–anyone with sufficient health, anyway.

When I don’t feel confident in my opinions (I know, I know, an opinion can’t be wrong, and yet…) I read other reviews. This one, in Business Week rather likes the book, but also explains that the author was born wealthy and lived off a trustfund until he rennounced it to live off his writing.

Obviously, to do that, one has to be bloody good, and he is, but I wonder if a melancholy philosopher who seems never to have had what the IRS would regard as a job is the best person to write about the world of work. Two chapters, one on cargo-ship spotters and the other on electrical-line tracking, are about things that *aren’t jobs*. These are hobbies, albeit strenuous ones, that people do in *appreciation* of the work that others do. He does say this in both chapters, but his treatment of the hobbiests and the wage-earners is about the same.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” said Hamlet regarding ghosts, but we can expand it to regard all things that cannot be theorized but must be experienced. By relying on theory, musing, and philososophy, I think de Botton makes his book a dream–interesting to mull over, but in the end of little insight into real life.

Hypothetically speaking

If, say, someone were walking past the spot where she always sees a nice robin and she stopped to watch him this morning, only to notice there was a fluffy baby robin on the ground beside him and she thought she would watch the little robin having flying lessons, only the baby robin tried and tried to fly and couldn’t, and then tried to walk and couldn’t, and then the observer realized none of the brother and sister robins were on the ground and this baby robin was right under his nest and clearly something was wrong. And eventually the baby robin stopped trying and just curled up in a fluffy ball on the ground with his head down, so this person freaked out and went and got a friend, a ladder, and some paper towel, and then the father robin freaked out because of all this action BUT he still came over to the baby and put a seed in the baby’s mouth which perked the baby up for a moment and also proved that he wasn’t the least favoured child or something and had been deliberately exiled. So if the human contigent then bundled the little fluffball up in a papertowel (so as not to transmit and nasty human smells), climbed the ladder and puts the baby back in his house, IS THAT BABY ROBIN GOING TO BE OK?????

Please phrase your responses gently.

UPDATE: We went back outside later and the dad robin was in the next feeding the runaway. I was so happy I briefly considered tearing up…but I never do that. So I just hugged R (who did the actually bird retrieval) and went about a much-better day. Whew.

June 3rd, 2010

Imaginary Dream Jobs

I mentioned a while back that my dream job is shepherd at a kitten farm a job which is notable for not actually existing. Scott mentioned to me today that his dream job, which rivals mine for awesomeness, would be to teach English to dolphins (apparently, they are on their way). Which opens up a whole new conversational vista–when you ask people what their ideal employment would be, they usually limit their answers to the possible. What would your dream job be if it had to be imaginary?