Pater Familias

NANOWRIMO. Today, November 30, is the end of NANOWRIMO, National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November.The event has its own website. The challenge, if you accept it, is to write a 50,000 word novel, starting on November 1 and completing it by November 30. The website proclaims that NANOWRIMO values “enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft,” and says, “Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.” In 2006, there were over 79,000 participants and almost 13,000 completed the challenge. My daughter Annalisa has completed NANOWRIMO for three straight years. Maybe you should think about doing NANOWRIMO next year.

SLEEPING THROUGH THE WINTER. Winter is almost here. I experience a yearning every winter to stay inside and in bed. Graham Robb writes here that until the twentieth century peasants in many parts of Russia and France shut themselves away during the winter months. “A civil servant who investigated [Burgundy’s] economic activity in 1844 found that he was almost the only living presence in the landscape: ‘These vigorous men will now spend their days in bed, packing their bodies tightly together in order to stay warm and to eat less food.’” He also cites a report from 1900 about a region of Russia where, “’At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread.’” Robb thinks all this was a good idea, concluding, “There has never been a better time to stay in bed.” (I have previously posted here and here on reviews of Graham Robb’s book THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE.)

VARIETIES OF FRENCH BREAD. I think of French bread as the best in the world. P.N. Furbank in the review I posted on yesterday says this about French bread in the late nineteenth century: “Country bread was uneatable. In some Alpine districts they only baked once a year, and before eating the stuff you had to smash it with a hammer.”

SHEPHERDS ON STILTS. The review I posted on yesterday has a wonderful photograph of a half dozen shepherds on stilts in a patch of heath in the Landes in about 1900. The stilts have a third leg for support, and the shepherds appear to be conversing. Graham Robb is quoted in the caption as writing in THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE, “’A shepherd on stilts could travel at the speed of a trotting horse’.” Of course, with my interest in unusual sports such as wife carrying and competitive eating, I wondered whether the shepherds ever competed in races on stilts. They did. This wikipedia article has an excerpt from an 1891 Scientific American article on Gascon stilt walking which says that stilt racing was common in Gascon villages in the nineteenth century with girls competing as well as boys.

“ALL ROME LEADS TO ROADS.” That was Mary Jane’s comment when I read her the news articles (here and here) about the display in Vienna for one day (November 26) of a copy made in the thirteenth century of a map of Roman roads dating from the 400’s. I have posted here and here on Roman roads. This wikipedia article has a picture of the map and a link to a better picture. The map, which has been compared to a subway map because it is stylized, was intended for the use of couriers and civil servants. It marks distances in terms of one day’s journey and displays pictograms to show that a site had a hotel. The map suggests that there are still lots of archaeological discoveries to be made; only about half of the 4000 settlements it shows have been found.

UPDATE—“MICROACCENTS IN FRANCE.” I posted here about a review of Graham Robb’s THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE which pointed out the hundreds of subdialects in France at the time of the French Revolution. P.N. Furbank has a review of Robb’s book in the New York Review of Books for December 6 which discusses how small the “pays” which had its own dialect might be: “It might be the area within which its own church bell could be heard more distinctly than those of other villages; and on the other bank of the local river people might very likely speak an altogether different dialect and have quite different traditions and manners.” In my post, I had remarked on how we still have “microaccents”—a contemporary linguist was able to identify the block in the Bronx where Dick Weisfelder grew up.

CLASSIC, ROMANTIC AND STANDUP. The argument as to whether a comedian should be like Jerry Seinfeld and observe ordinary people or should explore human nature by portraying the unusual is like the argument in literature and art between classic and romantic. In the essay linked, Walter Jackson Bate has a lot of helpful distinctions. Like Seinfeld, the classic is not interested in the artist’s subjective feelings. For the classic, insight rather than originality is important. The subject matter is what is “permanent” rather than “isolated and particular”–not so different from a focus on what people generally do. It is not seeking “a change from our daily lives” or “inventive or technical cleverness on the part of the artist.” On the other hand, Romanticism deals with “misunderstood heroic individuals and artists.” Rick Shapiro, the comedian praised in the Ron Rosenbaum article I posted on yesterday, could be considered a misunderstood heroic artist.

STANDUP, PUSH-PIN AND ART–THE MORE THE MERRIER. How do I feel about Ron Rosenbaum’s article that I posted on yesterday, which argues against Jerry Seinfeld’s kind of standup comedy? I guess it should be clear that I take a somewhat utilitarian view of art. Bentham said that “Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either.” (Push-pin is apparently a children’s game). I would be prepared to substitute “bad art” for “push-pin” in the Bentham quotation: “If bad art furnish more pleasure it is more valuable than good art.” I do not see what is gained by persuading people to dislike something that they like, even in the name of raising standards. If people like Jerry Seinfeld, good. If people like Lenny Bruce, good. On the other hand, if a critic can make me like something better–appreciate something more– I am better off.

STANDUP—“CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MASCULINITY.” Ron Rosenbaum, the author of the essay I posted on today, has a friend, Adrian Shapiro, who has an idea for “a book about standup comedy—contemporary American masculinity.” I suppose the book would have no place for English cross-dressers like Eddie Izzard.

REBELLIOUS STANDUP COMEDIANS. This article reflects a dividing line in literature. art and theater as well as in standup comedy. Many feel that art should be subversive of the status quo, and that entertainment or the pursuit of beauty is too trivial for good art. A belief that entertainment is not an important goal may seem paradoxical in comedy, but note the values that are reflected in Ron Rosenbaum’s article (which takes the form of an attack on Jerry Seinfeld). Rick Shapiro, the comic who is the hero of the article, is described as “corruscatingly obscene, vicious, bitter, self-loathing, world-hating”, “far too obscene and extreme,” who has “broken through to a new dimension of filthiness.” His “obscene authenticity” comes out of “his uniquely obscene background.” You get the idea. Is he funny? Rosenbaum indicates a couple times that he is; he uses the word “hilarious” once and says Shapiro had him “reeling with shock, awe, and convulsive laughter”, but you can tell that being funny is not the highest priority. Of course, there is an irony here. If you have spent time in comedy clubs, you will know that are a lot of obscene comedians so that Jerry Seinfeld is, in his own way, a rebel on the standup circuit.