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October 17, 2005
Literary Capital
Just stumbled upon this doing some research for my thesis. Thought it was interesting, though cannot determine if it is consequential or not. Lousy excuse for an update? Perhaps.
This city, so gorgeous from a distance, so unlovely up close, remains a foreign land in American literature. The novelist Ward Just works the terrain in near-solitude.
''The first Washington novel was Mark Twain's 'The Gilded Age,' '' Mr. Just noted recently. ''Four years later comes Henry Adams's 'Democracy.' '' And that was more than 100 years ago.
''Those were the last two writers in the canon who have ever visited Washington, D.C.,'' Mr. Just said. ''Not Melville. Not Fitzgerald. Not Hemingway. Not Faulkner. Not James. Not Wharton. It's peculiar. ''Compare that to Berlin, London, Paris. All of the great French, British, German writers dealt with their capital and its politics. We have no equivalent in the United States. There have been more novels of consequence written about southern Mississippi than Washington, and that's not counting Faulkner.''
Maybe this is because Washington is more like Brasilia or Canberra than London or Rome: an artificial capital conjured from the swamp. Or maybe it is because Washington itself has a tin ear. Its most famous writers are reporters, people who struggle to compose simple declarative sentences summing up Byzantine complexities.
Posted by houch at 05:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 10, 2005
Imaging Summer
So, the only thing that can revive this blog is a picture post. Let's see what happens. Perhaps I'll start updating more. Perhaps I will not.
But anyway, I never properly documented what I did this summer. So, take a peek, thanks to eClaire.
As you can see, space was infinitely abundant, especially in the midst of the Great CD Cleanup of 2k5.
Cleanliness was another big deal. We didn't call it the "intern"-ment camp for nothing.
At least we honor our gods.
But that didn't keep us from setting sail with Captain Morgan on a really cheap shaved ice machine.
Eventually we set sail for Bonnaroo and its primordial hippie confines.
The blurry man on the right is named Jay Sweet. Perhaps the craziest person I've ever met. Just ask him about he and ?uestlove's adopted Eastern European love child.
Yes, so myself and What We All Want raise the real reasons we worked internships.
The head of custodial engineering has no patience for a trapeze artist.
Praying for angels to save me from that demon.
Our intern family portrait.
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