Monthly Archives: June 2006

Mailbag: The Cramble Contest

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A glad reader whose questions were answered–after reading the illumination of Galway Kinnell’s poetic vocabulary in “Burning the Brush Pile” (June 19) by the amazing Sue Blank, about whom more shortly–writes:

Ms Gordon–I believe in serendipity but this has me wheezing–I read the Kinnell poem while enroute to Ireland and noted four words to look up upon my return home. Yes, those four. [“Clart,” “crambles,” “shinicle,” and “hirple.”]

(It occurs to me only now that I might have used Trinity or the National libraries while in Dublin–all four have a celtic-brit air about them, don’t they–but I didn’t. Beckett and Yeats shows erased everything.)

Only now, back here, this very morning, did I return to the list and met total frustration both on and offline … until I at last Googled ‘crambles’ and found you waiting right beneath them!

You’re right, the context did help with them all, crambles suggesting brambles to me (only packed tighter) … shinicle fairly screamed pile, pyre, chimney … clarts are practically onomatopoetic for cinder bits (also those chads of mud you knock out of the cleated soles of your Merrills with a whack of a stick) … and the Aer Lingus seating has had me hirpling around since deboarding, … tho I had osmosed more of a hip-swerving, snakey ankling action from the word itself. Prufrock’s crab, even.

PS. “Isaac” I take to be Old Testament, tho I connect him to “knife” before “fire” but I guess if he were going to forerun the Paschal Lamb in being sacrificed, he’d be roasted in the process. If there’s one false note or red herring in the poem that would be it, giving the work its requisite imperfection.

Anyhow, thanks for being there, I was beginning to wonder how I’d ever live without Safire.

Ed Hannibal

Meanwhile, you are wondering (I know because you’ve written to me wondering) who won the aforementioned Cramble Contest, which challenged readers to come up with the most satisfying definition for “cramble” as Galway uses it in the poem. There were two extremely close-reading co-winners: the still-mysterious Sanbornnapper and Newyorkette, a.k.a. The New Yorker‘s own whip-smart cartoonist Carolita Johnson, who had no assistance from the poetry department in reaching her surmise.

Sanbornnapper’s entry: “Cramble is a v. in the Oxford Universal meaning the twisting of vines or roots. Kinnell nouns it. How about roundel? That’s not a rung. Is he standing on his little shield?” And here’s Carolita’s:

It seems that the French use it as a French version of the word “crumble” as in apple crumble. I found several recipes for “cramble,” all being desserts of the “crumble” type.

It sounds, in the poem, like crumbly baked (by fire) morsels of whatever got burned and cooked. It’s particularly apt because of it’s rhyming to “ramble,” as in the kind of outdoorsy places full of brush and weeds and stuff to stop on that goes crunch in the fall, such as in Central Park. The “cra” has that crunchy sound.

I think it’s an improper (poetic licensed) use of the word for its sound, and vague association with baking.

The winners will each receive a Galway Kinnell volume of their choice. And I’ve since heard from both the marvelously assiduous Sue Blank and her daughter, both of whom write a terrific letter. More Eustace Google contests to come, you can be sure of it.

Incidentally, Carolita has a very funny story on her blog about how the publication of her uproarious recent cartoon–“I never thought turning eighty would be so much fun!”–transpired. It’s a great peek at the cartoon-cooking process.

Mimi Swartz Wins Journalism Prize

Swartz, who’s been a staff writer for The New Yorker (from 1997-99), just won the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, for a Texas Monthly story: “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” (“Like a lot of old-fashioned Texans, Alvin Berry is the kind of man who bears the pain and indignities of life with good grace….”)

Swartz’s piece is about tort reform. Semi-related: Last month I served for nearly a week on a medical malpractice case, and we sided with the plaintiff. Make of that what you will. And please, for the love of feet, warm up before you exercise, won’t you? Don’t, I repeat, don’t, snap that essential Achilles tendon. Especially if you’re a guy (it happens most often to older men—older meaning older than 30, according to Dr. X the expert witness). Trust me, please. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d be stretching the thing 24/7.

Art Spiegelman Explained?

by The Conservative Voice, commenting on Spiegelman’s June Harper’s piece on the infamous Mohammed cartoons:

Spiegelman lives in Manhattan and works for the New Yorker, which provides a clue to his multiculti leanings. Obviously, he does not believe that Muslims are the unassimilable Other despite the overwhelming evidence of what is happening to his beloved Europe. Sun Tzu counseled, “Know thy enemy,” but whole classes of endangered species, specifically our Euro-leaning liberal elite, continue to view Islam through the prism of diversity where no culture can be recognized superior to any other. Friday night Seder is the same as some spiritual leader performing a clitorectomy on a teen-age girl with a sharpened rock.
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At least Spiegelman is upfront about where he’s coming from. “As a secular Jewish cartoonist living in New York City, I start out with four strikes against me, but I really don’t want any irate Muslims declaring holy war on me. (Although I’m not at all religious, I am a devout coward.)” (Emphasis Spiegelman’s) This is perhaps the most honest statement in the essay, and could just as well serve as the motto of the New York Times.

The Smokers Look Persecuted Today


And when I made this observation to the gaggle outside my office building, they replied, “We are persecuted.” Poor devils.

As the Surgeon General’s uncompromised edict swirls around our bombarded heads, let us note once more how lame that Times magazine piece was about the Philip Morris flack Steve Parrish. It had, at first, the deep, satisfying pull of a principled stand, then became so much hot air.

Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes, Dave Eggers

I’ve been thinking about this passage by Eggers, from that year-2000 Harvard Advocate interview, for precisely two months, ever since I saw it quoted in Rob Brezsny’s humanity-celebrating anti-horoscope. (About which I enthused to a Times reporter a millenium ago. Hi Brian!)

Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.

Since this was published, some people went through all of high school and half of college. Isn’t that amazing? How did this change them? What kind of critics will they be? I can’t follow Eggers’ prescription to the letter, but I’m trying to wait until all the facts are in, in general.

Katha Pollitt on Linda Hirshman

From the L.A. Times review of Linda R. Hirshman’s new book Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World:

“Get to Work” showcases a concern for the fate of elite, educated women in the U.S. that is both off-putting in its narrow scope and refreshing in its candor. The polemic expands on her December “American Prospect” article “Homeward Bound,” which argued that these women, especially, should stay in their jobs after they have kids, so that they are in a position to effect real change in the world, and so that they can force men to shoulder more of the workload at home.
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This is her chaos theory of work-life balance: Women shouldn’t constantly worry about whether the milk’s gone sour or their husband’s socks are strewn across the kitchen table. In the case of “a choice between something that engages your full human capacities and gives you power, honor, wealth and so forth in the world on the one hand, and something that’s repetitious, physical, low-level on the other hand, do the higher thing,” she said.

But is corporate law, for example, the “higher thing”? Reached by phone, Katha Pollitt, a columnist for the Nation and author of the forthcoming book “Virginity or Death!”” said she admired Hirshman for “laying down the law like the anti-feminists” who are “very free in telling people what to do.” But Pollitt also said, “There’s a lot of work that isn’t very exciting, and you can easily find yourself thinking: ‘What’s this all for?’ Then the notion of putting your energies toward the family seems very appealing because the alternative is continuing to do something that’s not all that interesting or fulfilling.” And, indeed, some women might enjoy working in the home. “Well, everybody needs a hobby,” Hirshman said at this suggestion. “I am an elitist in that I believe people have different capacities.”

Houellebecq Boy

A well-versed reader alerts me that in the current Voice, David Ng skewers John Updike’s May 22 New Yorker review of Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island:

Mankind asks for everlasting life, and he receives it. But as Daniel25 learns, it’s a mixed blessing at best. What does zero times infinity equal? Each Daniel realizes in his own way that life is neither good nor bad; it’s just there. And so are Houellebecq’s novels, which exist far beyond the realm of morality. Reviewers intent on taking him down (as John Updike attempted in a recent New Yorker) come off as prudish and puny. Houellebecq’s infinite void swallows everything and spits nothing back.

The last time I read Ng (who pre-softens his barb with an admiring Kael citation in the lede), he was carelessly misreading Juliette Binoche’s character in Caché, but perhaps he’s right here; Updike may not have been the ideal critic for this sort of book. These two bloggers (“like a 1st year undergrad in lit class, I’m going to highlight The Important Pointth and Themeth in Updike’s critithism”) agree (“The catch is that Updike himself offers Hef-style hedonism; it’s exactly his softcore sensibility that is turned off by the dissociated raunch Houellebecq peddles”), mounting the podium in aggrieved defense of Fun. Dissenting opinions welcome.

Orlean and McPhee on the Web

And because the web is eternal, one link is from 2000. Which one? This interview with Susan Orlean on Powells.com about The Orchid Thief and redheaded girls, among other things:

Orlean: The Internet didn’t exist when I left Portland. I’m beginning to feel like I shouldn’t say that anymore because it makes me sound so old.

Dave Weich: When did you leave?

Orlean: 1983. We didn’t work on computers at Willamette Week, that’s for sure. People thought it was a principled stand. I’m not going to work on computers! That’s bad!
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Dave: Part of the book’s success stems from how informative or educational it is – I don’t know what word to use without making it sound dry. That’s been a problem when I’ve tried to explain it to people. I felt like I’d learned a lot, but at the same time, it’s really entertaining. It’s one of the fastest, page-turning books I’ve read in a long time, which is why I think it works so well: because it’s neither one nor the other. It’s both.

Orlean: Sometimes I think, Oh God, I don’t want people to think they’re learning. That’s so boring! Why write about it if they could go and look up all the information at the library? Well, because they’re not going to. Much the same way you could say, “Why read about the swamp when you could go see it?” Well, most people will never see it. And that’s what I do for a living: I go see it and describe it.

Dave: You said writing helps you understand what you figured out. So what did you figure out?

Orlean: That you need to care deeply about something or you’re going to feel lost in the universe. I’ve felt that from my stories before, but this really confirmed it. It’s a deep instinct people have: to be able to make sense of this weird, chaotic experience of life, you have to figure out some order, some logic, something to desire. Otherwise, why wake up in the morning?

At the same time, I thought maybe that instinct was disappearing, that people are just too cynical nowadays to feel devoted to something. So maybe it didn’t apply anymore. Look at me: I didn’t think I was particularly devoted. I love my family and my friends – it’s not that I don’t care about things – but I don’t identify so strongly with any one thing.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize toward the end of this process that that was entirely untrue. Not just a little bit untrue, but so wildly untrue that the obviousness of it caught me up short. I’m madly passionate about my work. There’s something really important about doing it well, doing it right, and being able to say to someone, “Come read this book. It’s about orchids, but it’s not really about orchids.” That meant so much to me that I was willing to be quite uncomfortable, walking in the swamp, and to be lonely, away from home.

It struck me as almost hilarious to suddenly think, How could I have been so oblivious? Yes, I’m cynical and skeptical. I’m not a joiner. I don’t see myself fitting in to some niche. But it was exhilarating to think, Oh, this isn’t so strange to me. I get it.

And this one’s brand-new: a satisfying, sweet NPR interview with John McPhee (“A familiar name, but a rarely seen face”), John McPhee: A Reporter’s Reporter. From the NPR site:

John McPhee has written at length about fish, geology, oranges, nuclear power, basketball… and the list goes on.

At 75, the prolific journalist feels he has plenty of words, characters and subjects left to explore. He has already published 27 works of non-fiction. His long pieces in The New Yorker are treasured by his many fans.

A shy man, McPhee shuns most interviews and doesn’t much like having his photo taken. But he connects deeply with his subjects. His latest book is Uncommon Carriers, a collection of stories about freight… and like all of McPhee’s best work, about the people involved with sorting it, flying it, floating it and trucking it.

Special features: a 1978 interview with McPhee and Howard Berkes on “A Sense of Where John McPhee Is.” Not that you can really tell on the radio, with all those clever sound effects. Here’s a New Yorker Q. & A. from last year with McPhee and Matt Dellinger.

My Heart Is Achin’, For You Harper Lee

‘Cause I love you so, and I’ll never let you go. From Yahoo News:

Harper Lee writes rare item for O magazine

MONROEVILLE, Ala. – Harper Lee, author of the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird,” has written a rare published item — a letter for
Oprah Winfrey’s magazine on how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town.

The 80-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner quit giving interviews about 40 years ago and, other than a 1983 review of an Alabama history book, has published nothing of significance in some four decades. That makes her article for O, The Oprah Magazine, something of a literary coup for the television talk show celebrity.

In a letter for the magazine’s July “special summer reading issue,” Lee tells of becoming a reader before first grade: She was read to by her older sisters and brother, a story a day by her mother, newspaper articles by her father. “Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggly at bedtime.”

She also writes about the scarcity of books in the 1930s in Monroeville, where she grew up and where she lives part of each year. That deficit, combined with a lack of anything else to do — no movies for kids, no parks for games — made books especially treasured, she writes.

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books,” she writes.

Via the Daily Media News Feed.