Naomi Wolf Memorial Footnote

How do you comment on an author's dust jacket picture? A word to the wise -- be careful to not wax effusive on the beauty of the author, which I did in a semi-ironical, post modern comment about Naomi Wolf, who had written The Beauty Myth. I suppose that my author/wife may be a little more sensitive to such comments due to the fact that I met her partly because I was pursuing a visual representation of her book cover, but that is another story.

I wasn't reading The Beauty Myth, but The End of America. The video below will fill in the gaps, but facists scare me. Vote and speak out to retain fundamental American ideals of freedom. Sign up to be stalked by the FBI and CIA here at http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/ .

The Kafka-ian pledge that will get you stalked is as follows:

We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people’s phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power.

I find it incredible, yet necessary to agree with Ms. Wolf, regardless of what her dust jacket looks like.

Wall Street Blues Memorial Footnote

Prophets interest me, much like profits interest Wall Street. Charles Morris published a book at the first of the year called The Trillion Dollar Meltdown. After watching all the congressional shenanigans this week, I thought I should at least read his book to see just how right he was. He was pretty much right on. If you want to have a fun little romp through the acrimonious acronymity of CDO, SIV, CMO, MBS and CLO, I can't help but say you should read Mr. Morris's dead on predictions of the crash that was September 2008. (OK, he said the crash would happen mid-2008 and it was closer to the last quarter, but future gazing is a tough business.)

As an anecdote to Morris, I'd recommend Robert Shiller's The Subprime Solution. Shiller actually sounds the cry of hope about of the September rubble of our financial industry. Yes, everything collapsed, so Shiller recommends building something better and more Utopian. Three cheers for the democratization of finance.

BACK.

Franz Kafka Memorial Blog Footnote I

I'm obsessed with Kafka. Ever since The Metamorphosis in high school. Is life Kafka-esque or does Kafka simply reflect life? The Trial is masterpiece of the bureacracy of existentialism.

Negotiating Kafka is a lot like negotiating hyper-links.

Haruki Murakami Memorial Footnote I

I gave this post a Roman Numeral because Mr. Murakami will be back. The Wind up Bird Chronicle has its main character living in a well looking for his lost wife for the good part of the book. How could I have a post like today's and not mention this book? I'm going to go climb in a metaphoric well now.

Paul Auster Memorial Footnote

Man in the Dark is my most recently completed novel. I loved the concept of an alternate universe in which the United States in 2007 is in the midst of a civil war(probably the result of being sucked through a black hole as his character wakes up in a literal black hole with bombs and gunfire overhead) . The novel also dealt with the dreaded "R" word -- "relationships."

Kobo Abe Memorial Footnote

I have a predliction for surrealistic Japanese fiction. The Woman in the Dunes is a good movie too. Anytime a guy gets tossed down a giant sand dune with a beautiful woman and he is left with nothing else to do but shovel sand and fuck a beautiful woman, you have the makings of a great novel.

Stephen Hawking Memorial Note

I saw Stephen Hawking once about fifteen years ago when I paid to go see him at the local university’s sports stadium (same place I saw the Dalai Llama, NCAA basketball and the Harlem Globetrotters). Given the cost of tickets, I opted for nose bleed seats. Hawking is the only physicist I know of that could fill a university basketball arena. He wheeled out on to the stage and his mechanical voice was broadcast over the basketball PA system as information about all the weirdness of modern physics filled the arena. There wasn’t much to his stage presence. Not to be crass about his disability, but it was a little bit like those old science fiction movies with the talking brains -- a disembodied voice, wildly intelligent with scientific theories that one hundred years ago only a mad man could spout. Even the title of his book suggests the mad scientist connotation: The Universe in a Nutshell.