Glenna's Blog

When news outlets run stories about government figures, they can either display an official-type photo of the person or a random one. Potential Supreme Court nominee and arguable lesbian Elena Kagan has a nice pic on her office’s website (there are also flattering candids out there), but blogs keep using horrible shots whenever they’re speculating about whether she’s a lesbian—including supposedly pro-gay sites [New York][Slate][Queerty]. It seems like they’re using imagery instead of English to say: “she must be a lesbian, look how ugly she is!”

To counteract the media’s ugly lesbian stereotype, here is a beautiful picture of a lesbian:

I like Martin Amis because he’s ridiculous, mean, and moralistic. The other day I read his essay exalting James Joyce’s Ulysses, The War Against Cliche. [I meant to quote him here but looking at his essay again, none of the sentences stun.] If Amis likes it then maybe I should give it a shot, I thought, though I’ve never liked Joyce in the past…

Once at UNC I had to read a story from Dubliners about a sweet-natured boy with a sense of wonderment who wanted to buy a gift. He clutched an amount of money which I guessed was poignantly small, though I couldn’t be sure because I wasn’t Irish. The story seemed unrealistic to me because the child didn’t hate anybody but in class I found out there was an epiphany in it.

In between college and law school I read a chunk of Portrait of the Artist. I liked its unorthodox sentence structures. Then I got to a part where the hero, poopy young Stephen Dedalus, gets yelled at by a priest even though he doesn’t deserve it. To remedy the situation he marches to the principal’s office and tells on the priest. His classmates serenade him. In Joyce’s words, “‘poo; poo,’ Stephen said and green roses stream black gentle nighty night.”

The child’s pussiness alienated me. When I was a kid the school librarian used to yell at me out of turn so I started a petition to get her fired. Everyone signed it and she cried. When my brother was in first grade a fifth grader used to taunt him on the bus, so one day my brother stood up on his seat and beat the 5th grader over the head with his backpack over and over until the bus monitor rescued the bully. That is how children should behave, if only so that the protagonist in their first novel will be likable.

Also there was a scene where thuggish kids made fun of Stephen Dedalus’s name. That made me be like good point, thugs, Dedalus is a pretentious name, why didn’t his author give him an authentic one? I concluded that Joyce employed a beatdown-worthy name because Stephen was his alter ego and Joyce liked to think of himself as a victim.

I weighed all of these bad memories of James Joyce against my trust in Martin Amis and Amis won, so last night I started reading Ulysses. Crime #1: Stephen Dedalus is in it. Crime #2: a slovenly character makes fun of Stephen’s name. Crime #3 which means Ulysses should be expelled from society: Stephen is mad at his friend for speaking flippantly about Stephen’s mother dying.

Because of the pollen, every spring a book makes me delirious. In 2007 it was Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night.

Journey’s hero, Bardamu, supports himself by hanging out in the French army during World War I, playing colonial overlord in a remote swamp, standing in an assembly line, and manning an insane asylum. The disgust and jokes don’t quit.

I considered Bardamu’s life to be a melodramatic version of my own. The way he bummed around a war zone reminded me of cutting class in high school. It was all about dodging work and getting yelled at by authority figures whose opinions didn’t preoccupy me. Like Bardamu I used to feel two things all day: grossed out and not sure what to do next.

“It’s hard for a man to get rid of himself in a war!” says a fellow slacker Bardamu meets in the woods. He means it sucks how all day long, for years and years, you have to carry yourself around, eating and thinking. Cut 5th period and get yelled at, or attend and graph an ellipses using spaghetti? Everything you do leads to pain and you can’t just get rid of yourself instead—even if you’re a soldier who gets rid of other people all the time. Survival instinct makes us miserable, it’s true, and the “in a war” ironic twist is genius, so I typed the quote into my diary.

When wikipedia told me that Celine hated Jews I didn’t dwell on it. At least he also hated war, colonialism, making graphs out of spaghetti (presumably) and capitalism. Anyway I’d always pitied anti-semites. Morally they didn’t differ from misogynists, gay-bashers, or the Massachusetts Bay colonists who legalized shooting Rhode Islanders. But just because of Hitler, anti-semites seemed worse. Not fair.

An essay by Wyatt Mason just waved the anti-semite thing back in front of my face. He notes that no one’s translated Celine’s three anti-Jewish rants into English and then tells us about them. He also includes his own translations of a few paragraphs. Turns out they’re vicious, idiotic, and go on forever. One “pamphlet” alone is almost three times the length of The Great Gatsby. Mason also debunks theories that the pamphlets were either satirical or utilitarian, just intended to keep France out of war. He concludes that Celine was a sociopath:

Once one [reads] the anti-Semitic trilogy, the congruence of Céline’s wink-wink misanthropy with his unblinking sociopathy becomes apparent. […] To understand Céline, we must […] read all that he wrote.

And why should I try to understand Celine? Because, like I said in 2007, we have so much in common.

Two good Christmas presents, a book and an American Apparel circle scarf.

Last night I wondered how a novella’s first sentence could strike me as bad and promising at the same time. (“The chill of suspicion and incomprehension came between me and humankind when I was sixteen, at the time of my high-school exams.”) After finishing the story and gazing at my cat I’ve figured it out.

The sentence repulsed me because I’m used to reading contemporary American fiction. An American story that began so pitty would flower into a goofy stalk of hope. High school exams would go badly, yes, but that would just be chapter one. In chapter two the hero would befriend misfits. Through hard work and despite our increasingly hi-tech society he would learn lessons, in time applying them to the excavation of his pre-high school exams positive attitude. “The chill” would turn out to be a good thing; after all, everyone likes ice cream. And I’d be thinking, come on, American, if you had to write like an MFA degree holder then couldn’t you at least workshop out an opening sentence that showed instead of told?

But I knew at the start of yesterday’s story that its author wasn’t American, he was Italian, and a dead Italian at that. Say what you will about their armies and legal systems, but Europeans don’t mess around when it comes to literary dread. If the hero vaguely fears a punishment, then either he will be punished or he will continue to vaguely fear a punishment. Misfit friends are no help. This book in particular promised dread in the form of suspicion and incomprehension. Then it methodically, lyrically delivered.

The story reminded me of writers I liked in college, before I wanted to be a writer. Hesse, Sartre, Camus, Borges, Houellebecq, Baldwin. Grim, no details, no arc, no clever descriptions of facial features, unrealistic dialogue, commas where there should be semicolons, creepy plants, abstraction-packed, earnest, blockbrain and best of all, short.

I guess now I keep reading 21st century American writers because I want to be published and I am a 21st century American, so I need to analyze how 21st century Americans get published. But I don’t remember the last one who didn’t gross me out. Of recent novels, I’ve only liked non-American ones: The White Tiger, The Exception, My Revolutions, Kafka on the Shore, and Call Me By Your Name, whose author only moved to New York as an adult. Maybe that’s because I’m pretentious, but probably not—I hate foreign films. Or maybe there aren’t any Americans on my list for the same reason there aren’t any women—I hold them to impossible standards. In any case, American writing is not my scene, and I should give up. What kind of jerk spends her whole life reapplying to a club that she hates?

• The ending is where all the contrived stuff comes in
• Snub the author’s authority
• I’m a bad person
• Seduction > climax (note to self: research this at some point)
• If the ending were so great the editor would’ve put it in the beginning
• Finishing a book symbolizes death
• Already gotten my money’s worth

[I was just looking through old work for the Observer and found this report from the morning after the election. It didn’t get published, but I like it! So here it is.]

For weeks good news had been flowing to progressives like a morphine drip, but last night New York wasn’t acting that happy.

In Rockefeller Plaza the left-leaning crowd clapped demurely when MSNBC announced it was 7 pm. “I wanted to be somewhere there’s a lot of energy,” said Kevin Gann, 30, an air traffic controller who lives in Huntington. His pilot boyfriend, Louis Damers, 35, agreed.

“It’s our first year in New York,” both said.

But they partied conservatively, holding their spots on the concrete instead of sidestepping over to, for example, get a picture with the roaming donkey or elephant.

Anne Eiskowitz’s eyes were also glued to the MSNBC broadcast. Eiskowitz, 22, lives in Tudor City and had walked over from her office after a long day of work. “I don’t want to go home and then miss something,” she said. She, Gann, Damers, and other new friends shared stories about how embarrassing it was to be American abroad while they waited for more results.

“Give me a bone!” Damers said to the news screen in the sky.

Further up the income scale people were having even more trouble breathing. Downstairs from the Rainbow Room Alan Patricof, co-founder of Apax Partners, lost his cool over the start time of Bernard Schwartz’s party.

“The invitation said 7,” he insisted to security guards, then to his wife, and then to other arriving guests. It was 7:45 and the guards wanted him to wait down in the lobby until 8. Patricof claimed to find proof of the 7 pm start time on his wife’s PDA, but other guests showed him that their paper invitations read 8 pm.

“We could have gone to Paterson’s,” Patricof muttered, referring to the governor of New York.

Though the guest list seemed to be mainly Democratic, most of the boy-girl pairs entered the lobby scowling. One recurring anxiety concerned the coat check. Should they use the one on the ground floor indicated by a sign, or hope that there would be one upstairs closer to the party?

Lydia Emil, an Obama fan, was more spirited than most but just as insecure. The tiny silver haired lady described herself as “nervous!” She also predicted that Sarah Palin will “come back as some comedian in a weird costume.” Then she hurried to her party to await results.

Upstairs the event’s staff did not suffer reporters gladly. “It would be best if you left,” an old woman said to me. She must have realized that the future conditional tense confused me, because then she walked over to the elevator and pushed the down button herself. “It’s just too private,” she said of the gathering. The Rainbow Room is a 600-person venue.

[Note: I did not want to get into the party. My editor wanted me to. The scene was actually a lot funnier than this—I’d slipped into the elevator with Patricof and company by chatting them up, no doubt spastically. When I got caught right outside the party room, the shawl-slinging wives shot each other sideways glances and stretched their lips out horizontally, oh dear!

Back downstairs, Bernard Schwartz, the host, entered with a few women and refused to answer any questions. I said loudly to his decorator, whom I’d befriended fifteen minutes earlier, “this is why people hate liberals.” The decorator turned away from me; Schwartz clapped his hands together and asked what he could do for me. The hand-clap gesture inspired me to create the Grand Tonsil character in a novel which no one will ever buy.]

Meanwhile a pinata’s worth of electoral votes was falling in Obama’s lap. An hour later at Hugz in Williamsburg, a friend of mine complained about it.

“I wish there were more competition,” she said. We were stuck in the corner of a booth, under and on top of jackets and bags.

“There’s the gay marriage thing in California,” I offered.

She flipped her wrist and rolled her eyes. “I only care about Barack.” And then, serious all of a sudden: “You know he’s against gay marriage.”

“I have a theory about why,” I said. “I think he doesn’t understand out of the closet gay people.” But before I could explain about how Barack doesn’t really love Michelle in a romantic way, CNN called Virginia. My friend and I clapped, screamed, and kneeled on the squishy bench as gracefully as we could.

This is exactly what all us progressives needed! A big moment to swamp all our nerves about gay marriage, the coat check, whatever.

But a few minutes later my friend and I were theorizing about Obama’s marriage. During his victory speech, heckles included “fuck cars” (when he said something about cars). We heard rumors of dancing in the street but couldn’t find it. Most of the evenly spaced people on North Sixth were talking on the phone and covering ears with one hand. A short young woman with bleached hair strode by saying into her phone, “I’m relieved, I am just so relieved.”

Relieved? That’s it? It sounded like the type of emotion a republican would have. “Old fashioned values preserved, whew!”

Actually, Obama’s election is about old fashioned values. A lot of us are feeling for the first time what it’s like to respect the president. If the parties weren’t euphoric, it’s because—from the privacy of the Rainbow Room to the slack streets of Williamsburg—they were comforting instead.

• The Savage Detectives
• Atonement (sex nightmare)
• Ravelstein

Related: For a while I was planning to read Netherland, but then the president publicized his approval of it. Can you think of a better way to define “politically correct”?

Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit is about three dead people trapped in a room together. Inez wants to bang Estelle but Estelle hates her. Estelle wants to bang Garcin but he can’t get it up because Inez hates him. All each cares about is one of the other’s opinion but they can’t control it so they end up torturing each other forever. The play’s catchphrase: hell is other people.

Here is a remix of No Exit based on my life. The characters are GLENNA, her cat GRIFFOTHY, and HIRING MANAGER.

HIRING MANAGER: I’m what some people call “a damned bitch.”

GLENNA: We can help each other. It only needs a little effort, Hiring Manager; just a spark of human feeling.

HIRING MANAGER: It’s no use. I’m all dried up. I can’t give and I can’t receive. How could I help you? I’m a dead twig, ready for the burning. [She falls silent, gazing at GRIFFOTHY, who is licking his tail.]

GLENNA: Please, just start by hiring me as an Office Assistant. My resume is below.

HIRING MANAGER [sighing]: After reviewing your materials I have decided I shan’t love you; I know you too well.

GRIFFOTHY: Now we may continue to spend 24 hours a day together, Glenna. Pet me!

HIRING MANAGER [to Glenna]: Don’t pet him with your dirty unemployable hands. [To Griffothy.] Congratulations! We have reviewed your materials and are most impressed with your shiny fur. The next step in the application process is a questionnaire.

GRIFFOTHY: If you knew how little I care! Unemployed or not, it’s all one—provided she scratches under my chin. Look into my eyes, Glenna!

GLENNA: I won’t let myself get bogged in your eyes. You’re soft and furry. Ugh! Like a carnival prize. Like a quagmire.

GRIFFOTHY: I beg you not to leave me. I daren’t be left alone with the Hiring Manager. She is an abstraction; she doesn’t pet me.

HIRING MANAGER: Is that what you think? But, my poor little fallen nestling, you’ve been sheltering in my heart for ages, though you didn’t realize it. Don’t be afraid; I’ll keep looking at you for ever and ever, without a flutter of my eyelids, and you’ll live in my gaze like a mote in a sunbeam.

GRIFFOTHY: A sunbeam indeed! What’s that got to do with scratching my chin? Don’t talk such rubbish!

GLENNA: Open the door! Open, blast you! I’ll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes—all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears—I’ll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than watching a Hiring Manager recruit my cat instead of me. [She grips the doorknob and rattles it.] Now will you open? [The door flies open with a jerk, and she just avoids falling.] Ah! [A long silence.]

HIRING MANAGER: Well, Glenna? You’re free to go.

GLENNA [meditatively]: Now I wonder why that door opened.

HIRING MANAGER: What are you waiting for? Hurry up and go; leave me alone with your striped cat.

[GRIFFOTHY springs at HIRING MANAGER from behind, hanging from her neck by his claws.]

GRIFFOTHY: Glenna, come and lend a hand. Quickly. We’ll push her out and slam the door on her. That’ll teach her a lesson.

HIRING MANAGER [struggling with GRIFFOTHY]: GRIFFOTHY! I beg you, let me stay. I won’t go, I won’t go! Not into the passage.

GLENNA [pulling GRIFFOTHY off of HIRING MANAGER by the tail]: It’s you who matter, Hiring Manager; you who hate me. If you’ll have faith in me I’m saved.

HIRING MANAGER [laughing]: But, you crazy creature, what do you think you’re doing? You know quite well I’m dead.

GLENNA: Dead?

HIRING MANAGER: Dead! Dead! Dead! Resumes, cover letters, writing samples—all useless. I finished hiring humans two years ago, do you understand?

GRIFFOTHY: I’m dead, too—dead to entities that can’t pet me.

GLENNA: So here we are, forever.

HIRING MANAGER: Forever.

Pros

• Paycheck, health insurance, and student loan repayment
• See Asia
• Increase my odds of turning into a Senator
• If I got kicked out it would make up for never getting expelled from a school
• If I didn’t get kicked out it would make up for past anti-authoritarian behavior and affiliations (which were mistakes)
• Female soldiers die less often but still get full credit
• Slumming is a good way to start a writing career
  • Related: Philip Roth, Walt Whitman, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine fought in wars (at least attended them)
  • But note: Saul Bellow, E. L. Doctorow, and Virginia Woolf did not
• Lots of lesbians around to hook up with but good excuse not to hold hands with them in public
• Strengthen my commitment to living the ironic life
• Honor

Cons

• Physical exertion
• Have to eat three meals a day
• Imperialism?
• Fellow soldiers might not be Humeans
• Stress gives me itchy hives

What have I missed?

Six of the people featured are beautiful women, including two topless porn actresses and Reese Witherspoon in a bunny suit.

The remaining three are fat doofusy men.

Am I sexist?

For at least a few months, Subways all over the city have been refusing to give away (or sell at the cost of a cup) tap water.

Each time I’ve asked for it a manager has gotten involved and said “we don’t do that anymore.” When I ask why not, I’m told to buy bottled water and surliness has happened (on both sides). Then I’ve either badgered them into giving me a cup for free or, failing that, left without paying for the sandwich.

But then yesterday a manager in Fort Greene explained it to me! They’re charged for soda based on the number of cups that are missing at the end of the week. So if they give away a cup for water, it costs them the price of a soda.

Subway should use a separate type of cup for tap water and sell it at cost. Until then I won’t buy sandwiches at Subway, the cheapest restaurant with the most expensive water.