benefit of the doubt

Chip's post about a DFW signing reminded me of something I did that was stupid w/r/t book signings. (CHIP: THANKS FOR REMINDING ME I AM STUPID)

I went to a Dave Eggers book signing a while back when Dave Eggers lived near me (and when Dave Eggers lived near Chip, for that matter; now none of us live there in that place, not one): right after AHWOSG came out.

I was in a line to get my copy of the book signed, and the further I moved up the line, the stupider I felt, because he was (/is) sort of like my age, and I felt at the time that if I had written so personal a book, I would feel weird that people wanted me to sign it? And I kept moving up the line and feeling increasingly awkward, like in Zeno's paradox about the arrow never reaching its target because it keeps getting stupider?

And then there was just one person in front of me and that person went to get her book signed, but her book was not AHWOSG; it was Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

Which I think her strategy was: He will see I am whimsical yet deep and therefore sleep with me.

And he signed her copy of Myth of Sisyphus without commenting on it, and then it was my turn, and whim took over (or maybe antiwhim, as I was trying to cancel out the previously established whim), and when Eggers looked up at me, instead of just telling him my name, I instead asked Eggers to forge Camus' signature on my copy of AHWOSG (since the only signed DFW book I have is Everything and More, I'll just add that what I was going for is f^–1(f(x)) = x where x = attempted whimsy). And Eggers (again, without any comment) wrote:

Oh the horror.
~ Albert Camus

..and I thought, "That's not Camus, that's Conrad," and I walked away feeling stupider and stupider.

But: To my knowledge, he did not sleep with the whimsical and deep girl!

Because after this signing, we all got on a bus and went to see a gallery in lower Manhattan that was displaying paintings by elephants. Because, and this almost doesn't seem like it could have actually happened, apparently during this period in Thailand's history, all of the elephants were being captured and loaded up on methamphetamine and put to work in the circus or as black market laborers. And so these two Russian expats, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, were rescuing the elephants and having them paint things (like literally they held the paint brushes with their trunks) and then they (the Russians) were selling the paintings and then the money from the sale would go to house and feed the elephants. Which, that plan doesn't seem scalable, but it really was a real thing (unless it's not) -- there were actual paintings in the gallery; there were peanut shells littering the floor. And I did not see that girl there.

And anyway: now it's seven years later and I just did a Google book search; this is from The Plague:

Among the heaps of corpses, the clanging bells of ambulances, the warnings of what goes by the name of fate, among unremitting waves of fear and agonized revolt, the horror that such things could be, always a great voice had been ringing in the ears of these forlorn panicked people, a voice calling them back to the land of their desire, a homeland.

Sidenote: At the elephant painting exhibition, Eggers was taking questions ("How long does it take an elephant to paint something?" "Is this real?" "Really?" "Really is it real, though?") and someone asked how many paintings an elephant could do in one day if it was still on Elephant Meth.

This is funny! But also cynical! (RECALL: This was about eight months before we were attacked, and everyone in New York was nice to everyone else for a while.) Eggers said, "I'm not going to answer that."

I don't know the context of that Camus passage, but here is what I'm going to do: I'm going to give Eggers the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, I'm going to try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even though (it is said) we ultimately have no control and even though (to paraphrase) everything in life entropies toward irrationality; Zadie Smith said recently on DFW (and let's just state it outright: the only reason I'm thinking about any of this (= cynism vs. sincerity) at all and not just spending my day reading, like, Gawker is because of DFW) Zadie Smith summarized at least one aspect of his aesthetic thusly: If we must say something, let's at least only say true things.

I am agreeing for the foreseeable future. Let's see how long it lasts.

Dave Eggers forges Albert Camus' signature because why not?
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

(though now that I think about it maybe I shouldn't start this plan until
after November 4.)



v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Update, 9/24: Roger Ebert on board with giving people the benefit of the doubt. Alex Balk has the money quote.
YOU GUYS! ZEITGEIST MEANS GHOST TIME!

One supposes it unnecessary/indulgent for yet another person with an unloved blog to point out that his was an important voice (to the person).

and but so.

Comma Police, Arrest this Man

I like this power-sentence excerpt from the Times review of the new Newt Gingrich novel:

James nodded his thanks, opened the wax paper and looked a bit suspiciously at the offering, it looked to be a day or two old and suddenly he had a real longing for the faculty dining room on campus, always a good selection of Western and Asian food to choose from, darn good conversations to be found, and here he now sat with a disheveled captain who, with the added realization, due to the direction of the wind, was in serious need of a good shower.

I tried to diagram this sentence, but the diagram collapsed upon itself and turned into a black hole, which sucked the paper inward, folding it into an origami crane (to honor the memory of Sadako Sasaki).

No disrespect, though: it is hard to write when you are having an affair (they say), and anyway this will have to do until the next DFW novel comes out in probably never.

Incarnations of Burned Children

I just ran across this DFW story again online. I’ve read it between twenty and thirty times since I first saw it*, and it completely destroys me every single time. I don’t know if it’s because it stands out so much in the context of all of the other detached-narrator, impossible-to-convey-the-complexity-of-even-one-single-instance-of-what-it-means-to-be-alive-with-mere-words stories in Oblivion (it almost seems like a refutation of every other story in that book) or if it’s something as simple as I Have a Kid And So This Terrifies Me, but every time I read it I feel like someone has slammed me in the chest with an Underwood.


It’s manipulative as hell and screams “unreliable narrator”** but I can’t help being destroyed.
If you feel like being destroyed, here it is.


* in a Zadie Smith-edited collection, which she named after this story, now that I think about it.
** as does the fact that it is by this particular author, although unlike this author’s work, it contains no math that I can recall, though it’s too hard (in the sense of “remorseless”, not “difficult”) a story to read twice in one day so I can’t be sure

ZOMG

This, from comingsoon.net, my favorite site for when I want a webpage backgrond gif to explode my eyes, made me jst wet my pants, metaphorically(1), with glee.

John Krasinski (“The Office”) is writing and directing an adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” reports Production Weekly.

“Hideos Men” features twenty-two stories that intertwine hilarity with an escalating disquiet to create almost unbearable tensions. The series of stories from which the book takes its title is a tour de force sequence of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. These portraits of men at their most self-justifying, loquacious, and benighted explore poignantly and hilariously the agonies of sexual connection.

Five weeks of principal photography begins November in locations around the Northeast.

This: John Krasinski!
Plus this: David Foster Wallace!
Plus this: A misspelling of “hideous”!(2)
Equals: My worlds are colliding!

And I love how it comes preblurbed:

“ESCALATING DISQUIET!”
“SEXUAL!”
“IMAGINED...AGONIES!”
“NORTHEAST!”

JOHN KRASINSKI, PLEASE DO NOT LET ME DOWN LIKE AARON SORKIN HAS APPARENTLY CHOSEN TO DO (3).

(1) Special Note to Jessi: I’m sorry if I am always writing about pee.

(2) The u on my keyboard at work doesn’t always work consistently. (a)

(3) I missed Stdio 60 on Monday but I just watched episode 2 for free on the internet (b) and while I have to admire the amount of energy going into a show that has to include in every episode featring the writers both a bunch of sketch ideas that are sort of funny but don’t really work, and then a bnch of sketch ideas that do (i.e., every episode has to be both SNL and MadTV, (c)), this show isn’t like, working? Like, at all? For me? Yet?

It is DISHEARTENING. There’s a slickness and familiarity to it that makes me feel like everyone’s phoning it in (d) -- a slickness in spite of the clunky, embarrassing stillborn promotional websites (the all-links-are-dead as of this posting Studio 60 on NSS and the not-apparently-even-up-anymore defamer parody/tribute/salute/ripoff defaker (still viewable via google cache. [Update: I can't find it in the cache anymore, but this proves I didn't dream it]

I guess I’ll still watch, because I don’t have cable, but, but, but bt bt bt bt bt bt bt bt bt (2)
I'm only giving you eleven more chances.


(a) which scks (i)

(b) (!)

(c) not that I’m particularly worried Sorkin will run out of steam; no one has had this many throw-away lines at his disposal since the Epstein twins. Oh. Wait, wait. I thought of someone.

(d) the big finale of ep.2 where we see the cold opening that does work and that allegedly proves the genius of Chandler and Lyman (I mean, ha ha, oops), is a Gilbert and Sllivan(b) parody? Really? Didn’t The Simpsons kind of already cover that in “Carpe Feare”? And again in “Deep Space Homer”? And again in “Bart’s Inner Child”? And you you you I'm looking at you Aaron Sorkin, didn’t you go to this particular well in the “And It’s Surely To Their Credit” episode of West Wing? And wasn’t that in November 2000?(ii)

(i) especially for typing in .r.l.'s.

(ii) Um, this post was supposed to be about John Krasinski. John Krasinski, call me.
I love yo.