The grid is relentless…
Francis Morrone
A primer on historic and modern-day Brooklyn. Hopefully we’ll see more episodes soon!
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Samuel Hughes and Francis Morrone -
Michael Chabon’s Summerland is a wrap. 500 pages of weird, muddle, and baseball. Zero boredom though.
The final few chapters had some wonderful bits. The following is one of the most insightful thoughts on parenting and promises I’ve read:
It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of baseball can’t really make a summer day last forever. A home run can’t really heal all the broken places in our world, or in a single human heart. And there was no way Mr. Feld could keep his promise never to leave Ethan again. All parents leave their children one day, Ethan knew that better now than he had ever known before. But he was glad to have the promise nevertheless.
pp 480Last year’s Mets should’ve had this hung in the clubhouse…
One lover of baseball cannot get a team out of the cellar, but two can turn a season around.
pp 496And a concise compilation of all the beauties of playing small ball:
They noticed that there was more to baseball than hitting the ball as hard as you could, than waving your glove in the general direction of the ball and hoping for the best. They took pitches, turned double plays, and hit the cutoff man, and instead of trying to cream it every time they got up, they just did their best to advance the runner. They played like ferishers, with careful abandon.
pp 497A few ideas to ponder if you’re deciding to read Summerland.
One – have a basic grounding of folklore and myth. In particular the meanings of the coyote, faeries, and Sasquatches. Quick Perplexity.ai refresh is all you need. Dive into deeper texts if compelled.
Two – Begin reading it during late summer and carry on through early fall. You may also finish all 500 pgs in a weekend, but bringing the fall classic vibes heightens the reading experience.
Three – Embrace the weird. Characters fly in and fly out of the story. Creatures appear, vanish, and reappear. The story jabs and cracks unexpectedly. Embrace it.
Four – Love baseball. Not a requirement. Ok, it’s a requirement.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003. pp480
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Capra is the last survivor of that great quartet of American comedy; Leo McCarey, Ernst Lubitsch, and Preston Sturges. An Italian, born in Palermo, he brought to Hollywood the secrets of the commedia dell’arte. He was a navigator who knew how to steer his characters into the deepest dimensions of desperate human situations (I have often wept during the tragic moments of Capra’s comedies) before he reestablished a balance and brought off the the miracle that let us leave the theater with a renewed confidence in life.
François Truffaut, 1974Truffaut describes the brilliance of Frank Capra with precision. When you finish watching a Frank Capra film, you absolutely feel a renewed confidence in life.
Truffaut, François. The films in my life. New York, Hachette Books, 1994.
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Kurosawa’s private interests were no less varied than his professional skills–a painter, a mountaineer, a knowledgeable amateur of classical music, a passionate drinker of whiskey, a devourer of cultural experience. He was an ardent student of Japan’s traditional art forms–Noh, kendo, haiku, ceramics–and a thorough scholar of Japan’s history
One can see with Kurosawa how his side-interests would feed into his cinematic work. Artists have to absorb, absorb, absorb.
Reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson…
Wilford, Lauren, and Stevenson, Ryan. The Wes Anderson Collection: Isle of Dogs. United States, ABRAMS, 2018. pp26
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It was Rodrigo Buendía. He had been quiet all morning, puffing away at a succession of cigars, walking back and forth across Diamond Green as if taking the measure of it. The confinement he and the others had undergone, in a lightless cell in the wagon sledge, had been hardest on him; Cinquefoil had told Ethan that the slugger even wept in his sleep. “Waste of time, dude. We should be out there warming up. Sprints. Bunt work–fielding and laying them down. And then a couple of hours of BP. You, little fox dude, you going to be in center today. When the last time you played ball?”
“Fifteen sixy-nine,” Cutbelly said at once. “I hit into three double plays.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Buendía said.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003. pp460
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In this, Kurosawa-tenno was really something of an emperor among directors, seemingly born for the role. A single defining trait as a great film craftsman would be impossible to pinpoint — Kurosawa was one of the all-time greats at blocking, one of the all time greats at pulling powerful performances from actors. At shooting in color, at shooting in black and white; at vertical compositions in Academy ratio and at perfectly balanced framings in anamorphic widescreen. At quick cutting, at holding a long take, at movement, at stillness. At using score, at sourcing music, at choosing and mixing sound. At deeply researched period pieces, at portraits of modern life; at using complex sets, at finding stunning locations. At wrangling even the weather itself, his constant bane and frequent boon — his scenes are set by wind-whipping grass, muddy cloudbursts, volcanic steam and eldritch ice-mists, heatstruck streets and frostbitten hinterlands, lung-spasmingly brisk autumn air. What he couldn’t find, he made. What he couldn’t make, he waited for.
Not to mention he wrote or cowrote every one of his movie’s screenplays. The list of required skills for a director is endless, but Kurosawa is maybe the closest to filling every bubble.
Wilford, Lauren, and Stevenson, Ryan. The Wes Anderson Collection: Isle of Dogs. United States, ABRAMS, 2018. pp26
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- The only relevant artistic talent is the ability to deal with frustration. Most of what I produce is not good enough. It’s too complicated, too simple, or has been done before (by myself or others). This is and always will be frustrating. But I can only survive as an artist if I can constantly brush it off and start over again with childish enthusiasm. That is the most important superpower.
- Be reckless. A piece won’t be great unless you risk it being terrible. By that I mean sometimes a drawing starts out nicely, but then I’m so afraid of ruining it that I become hesitant — which inevitably ruins it. That’s why you should…
- …Deliberately ruin a drawing! This is liberating (and incredibly difficult) exercise. Make a drawing using your usual tools, then step on the gas and drive it into a wall at full speed. Make it pompously, unapologetically, irrevocably ugly and wrong.
- Be less precious about your art. The benefit of this exercise: you remember that if you don’t like it, you can always do another one.
- Draw like nobody’s watching. Nobody sees what you’re doing in your studio. You can make 97 bad drawings, and three great ones. As long as you only show the three good ones, people will believe you’re a great artist.
- Trust the drawing to have its own life. I start with an idea from my head. By default this is derivative and predictable. When I start putting it on paper, it starts having its own agenda. It is only when I manage to let go of my original intentions, that something interesting begins to happen.
- Accept that only a fraction of your work is “great”. (Whatever “great” means)!
- Walk away, The come back. Wait a few days before deciding whether a piece is “great” or not. Drawing is hard and requires all your attention. Thinking about the merits of a piece is a waste of energy. You’ll be a much better judge tomorrow.
- Don’t count the hours. Art is not efficient. Sometimes a good piece is born in minutes, but even then it’s usually surrounded by days of seemingly fruitless poking. Accept this and you’ll be much happier.
- Sitting at my desk is always right. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how to make good work. There are millions of tips and tricks and manifestos out there. But at the end there’s only one single truth for me: sit down and start drawing.
Really what Christoph is saying here is, loosen up! Get in front of your drawing board daily and draw!
h/t Kottke.org – https://kottke.org/23/11/10-rules-for-drawing-from-christoph-niemann
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THE BOY
I like printing. I get a real kick out of it. I mean sometimes when I’m feeding the press, I forget that’s nothing but an old broken-down machine. I think to myself, that’s a black monster who’s going to snap off my fingers if I don’t keep him tame. You know what I mean?
MR. HEALY
I often have the same image myself.
THE BOY
When I go out on deliveries, I always wear my apron because I want everybody in the street to know I’m a printer.
MR. HEALY
Boy, I never met a linotyper who liked his job.
THE BOY
They like their job on payday, I bet you.
MR. HEALY
They sit all day, plunking keys. There’s no craft to it. There’s no pride.
THE BOY
Nowadays, I don’t know you have to be so proud. Mister Healy, I just figure there ain’t much future in being a compositor. I mean, what’s wrong with linotyping? If the didn’t have linotype machines, how would they print all the books in the thousands and thousands of copies?
MR. HEALY
Are there so many good books around? Are the authors any more clever?
THE BOY
How are you going to set up daily newspapers? You can’t supply the public demand for printed matter by hand setting.
MR. HEALY
Are the people any wiser than they were a hundred years ago? Are they happier? This is the great American disease, boy! This passion for machines. Everybody is always inventing labor-saving devices. What’s wrong with labor? A man’s work is the sweetest thing he owns. It would do us a lot better to invent some labor-making devices. We’ve gone mad, boy, with this mad chase for comfort, and it’s sure we’re losing the very juice of living. It’s a sad business, boy, when they sit a row of printers down in a line, and the machine clacks, and the mats flip, and when it comes out, the printer has about as much joy of creation as the delivery boy. There’s no joy in this kind of life, boy–no joy. It’s a very hard hundred dollars a week, I’ll tell you that!
(THE BOY stares down at his feet.)
Chayefsky, Paddy. The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The television plays. United States, Applause, 1994.
Intriguing contrast in this scene. Mr. Healy doesn’t view The Boy’s work as craft, but the boy does. He take genuine pride in his work.
In a way both Mr. Healy and The Boy are both right. Reminds me of when Spike Lee mentioned drama is created when two opposing perspectives are right (paraphrasing).
I disagree with Mr. Healy though. We’re not inventing enough laborsaving devices…
Floodlights and Goalposts 