Archives for March 2004

I got an e-mail from a reader apropos of my posting on Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. He likes Crimes and Misdemeanors, and thinks that this film and a couple of others–I can’t remember which ones, alas–justify calling Allen a major filmmaker. I replied:

Very interesting. Do you really think that “two or three movies” are enough to put you on the top of the list? I can see arguing that “Citizen Kane,” “Touch of Evil” and “Chimes at Midnight” are three of the greatest movies ever made, but do they add up to a bonafide oeuvre? How many points does it take to make a curve? I don’t know–I’m asking.

To which he replied:

I come from mathematics on this issue. There is a saying, which I will quote and then explain: “You judge a mathematician in the L-infinity norm, not the L1 norm”.

— A norm is a measurement of the size of a function, “size” suitably interpreted.

— L-1 norm of a function is like an average value (many details omitted)

— L-infinity norm is like the maximum value of the function (many details omitted)

This is funny in a math class, believe me. One thing it means is that in the long run, productivity is not the standard for greatness. An example is Henri Lebesque, who has his definitions and theorems (and his name) in all the standard graduate textbooks for the work he did for his PhD thesis on integration and measure (which is the basis for modern analysis and
probability); that’s all he is known for, but that’s enough. Then there is Randall Jarrell’s famous remark: “A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times, a dozen or two dozen times and he is great”. This is another way of saying not to look at the “collected works” but at the “selected works”.

If we were under the gun to be official we would have to settle on a cut-off count (two? twelve?) for discrete achievements (theorems, poems, movies) in a given field. And for films, I’m saying three, although my reasoning doesn’t get much better than saying, well, if it’s three then the Woodman makes the cut….

To which I replied:

I’ll take your word that it’s funny! My answer would be that there’s a difference between discovering E=MC2 (or whatever) and writing one or two good books. Ralph Ellison is not a great writer–he just wrote a great book. I do think Jarrell is absolutely right about this, but note that his numbers are a bit higher than yours. It’s fun to kick around, isn’t it?

Indeed it is, although I don’t have any definitive conclusions to share with you, other than this: you don’t have to write a whole shelfful of great books to be a great writer…but it doesn’t hurt.

I just opened a FedEx envelope and pulled out a finished copy of A Terry Teachout Reader, the anthology of my essays, articles, and reviews that Yale University Press will be publishing on May 6. I guess I’m biased (to put it mildly), but I’ve never seen so beautiful a book. It happens that I’ve been very lucky in my designers–all my books have been handsome–but the Teachout Reader stands out. It’s just gorgeous, from the Fairfield Porter lithograph on the jacket to the subtly ribbed green binding to the elegant typography. This is my first book to be composed in Galliard, my favorite typeface. Even if you don’t like the way I write, I think you’ll like the way it looks. To all the folks at Yale, I offer my heartfelt thanks.

In the unlikely event that you don’t know already, you can pre-order a copy from amazon.com by going here.

If you like Unitarian jokes, go here.

(The headline, incidentally, is the punchline of my all-time favorite religious joke, which was told to me by a Lutheran minister who later became a Roman Catholic priest. He told it to me on a plane en route to Chicago, mere minutes after the captain had warned the passengers of a bomb threat. That’s savoir-faire.)

I was just on Amazon looking up books by the novelist Wayne Johnson. The first listing was his new book, which I’m currently reading (and enjoying), The Devil You Know. The second listing was something called Helicopter Theory. I clicked through, thinking, “ooh, that’s a good name for a novel.” Not yet, it’s not. It was actually a book on, um, helicopter theory, by another Wayne Johnson altogether. Needless to say.

Now the Amazon recommendation mill, which never, ever rests, is just positive I’ll find much to divert me in Principles of Helicopter Aerodynamics and Rotary-Wing Aerodynamics, and will doubtless be hawking such wares to me till kingdom come…

“As for the Quarterly Review, I have not read it, nor shall I, nor ought I–where abuse is intended not for my correction but my pain. I am however very fair game. If the oxen catch a butcher, they have a right to toss and gore him.”

Sydney Smith, letter to Francis Jeffrey, c. July 3, 1809

As you may have surmised from yesterday’s almanac, I’m deep in the throes of composition (though I am taking time today to brunch with Chicha and show her the Teachout Museum).

See you Monday, unless my resolve slackens and I blog inadvertently.

“There was a small inner room like a cupboard where, morning and afternoon, these girls took turns to make the tea. A list was tacked to the wall, of all the men and their requirements: Mr. Bostock weak with sugar, Mr. Miles strong and plain. Valda’s Leadbetter had an infusion of camomile flowers, which he bought at Jackson’s in Piccadilly; these were prepared in a separate pot and required straining. Another notice cautioned against tea-leaves in the sink. The room was close and shabby. There were stains on the lino and a smell of stale biscuits. On one spattered wall the paint was peeling, from exhalations of an electric kettle.

“Sometimes when Valda made tea Caro would set out cups for her on a scratched brown tray.

“It was something to see the queenly and long-limbed Valda measure, with disdainful scruple, the flowers for Mr. Leadbetter’s special pot (which carried, tied to its handle, a little tag: ‘Let stand five minutes.’). To hear her reel off the directions: ‘Mr. Hoskins, saccharin. Mr. Farquhar, squeeze of lemon.’ She filled the indeterminate little room with scorn and decision, and caused a thrill of wonderful fear among the other women for the conviction that, had one of these men entered, she would not have faltered a moment in her performance.

“When Valda spoke of men more generally, it was in an assumption of shared and calamitous experience. None of the other women entered on such discussions–which were not only indelicate but would have mocked their deferential dealings with Mr. This or That. Furthermore, they feared that Valda, if encouraged, might say something physical.

“Watching the office women file towards the exit at evening, Valda observed to Caro: ‘The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.’

“There was another male faction in the office, of ageing young men who spoke bitterly of class divisions and of the right, or absence, of opportunity. For these, equally, Valda had no patience. ‘They don’t quite believe they exist, and are waiting for someone to complete the job, gratis.’ She would set down the biscuit tin, switch off the electric kettle. ‘Oh Caro, it is true that the common man is everlastingly embattled, but he has a lot of people on his side. It’s the uncommon man who gets everyone’s goat.’

“Valda would tell Caro, ‘You feel downright disloyal to your experience, when you do come across a man you could like. By then you scarcely see how you can decently make terms, it’s like going over to the enemy. And then there’s the waiting. Women have got to fight their way out of that dumb waiting at the end of the never-ringing telephone. The receiver, as our portion of it is called.’ Or, slowly revolving the steeping teapot in her right hand, like an athlete warming up to cast a disc: ‘There is the dressing up, the hair, the fingernails. The toes. And, after all that, you are a meal they eat while reading the newspaper. I tell you that ever one of those fingers we paint is another nail in their eventual coffins.’

“All this was indisputable, even brave. But was a map, from which rooms, hours, and human faces did not rise; on which there was no bloom of generosity or discovery. The omissions might constitute life itself; unless the map was intended as a substitute for the journey.

“Those at least were the objections raised by Caroline Bell.”

Shirley Hazzard, Transit of Venus

(Note: In my first job out of college, Editorial Assistant at a publishing house, I had to make tea most days for a [female] boss. Sometimes, too, go fetch raspberry muffins at the Mrs. Field’s in the subway station. In the latter case, I was always provided money for my own muffin into the bargain, because “I’m affluent and you’re not.” Which was very, very true.)

At Memefirst, Felix Salmon detects a pattern in the all-time best-selling issues of People magazine:

In reverse order, they are: (5) Grace Kelly, dead. (4) John Lennon, dead. (3) John F Kennedy, Jr, dead. (2) Princess Diana, dead. (1) 9/11. Could it be that the best celebrity is a dead celebrity?

Hardly surprising, but still a little bit jarring to see them listed so starkly.