Raronauer’ed

No Way to Say “Manhattan”

February 8, 2010 by raronauer

The other day, I was in the mood to enjoy Woody Allen, and there’s no better way to enjoy him than Manhattan.

There’s so much to love about this movie, and the opening sequence, though missing the repartee and emotional complexities of the rest of the movie, is one of my favorite parts.

The cinematography is great. But, duh, obviously. Along with the shots of crowded streets and New York under fresh snow, there’s Woody Allen, trying to explain Manhattan. It takes him about a half dozen tries. But even in the version he settles on, with the George Gershwin bubbling up underneath, he isn’t able to fully capture the city.

Woody Allen could have created one introduction to Manhattan, and one a lot tighter than what he uses. But that’s not the point of the tiered start. Sort of like Moby-Dick, what Woody Allen is getting at is there no way to explain New York, and what it means to the people who live there. These introductions aren’t meant to sum up New York because there’s no way to.

Posted in Film, New York | Leave a Comment »

It’s Either Writing A Book Or Going To Target

January 30, 2010 by raronauer

The day Haruki Murakami realized he could write a novel was April 1, 1978. He was at the season opener of Yakult Swallows baseball team, and after an American player made a double, Murakami thought, “You know what? I could try writing a novel.” I can remember the day I decided to write a book too. It was November 3, 2007. I went to the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey with some friends for an afternoon of goofiness and fun with static electricity.

About two months before, I had switched jobs from a reporter at a trade magazine to a blogger at a mid-level website. I was still excited about the transition, but I was working ten hours a day to make hyperlinks. And a month before, my mother sent me a postcard with the Pablo Picasso quote, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” I had been pretend interested in writing a book all my life, but I never really did anything about it.

During a 3-D movie about sun spots at the Liberty Science Center, I realized I didn’t have any real ambition for blogging. What I really wanted to do was write, and it wasn’t going to happen until I started working. In that way, it became my 2008 New Year’s resolution to write a book.

I started working on it on weekends, and in April, 2008, I ended up losing my blogging job. But this was a stroke of luck because it meant I could work on the book full-time.

More than two years later, I wonder why I hadn’t started smaller, like with short stories or serious essays on Murakami’s use of cats. But I set out to write a book, and now I mostly have a book. The whole thing is written, but it needs to be rewritten with a more defined narrative voice.

But I’m not going to work on that for the next few weeks. For the next few weeks, inspiration will find me at Target, where I’ll be doing errands and taking a break.

Posted in Haruki Murakami, Raronauer'ed, The Novel, Resolutions, Writing | 1 Comment »

Never Read James Wood on Philip Roth While Trying to Write a Book

January 24, 2010 by raronauer

In fact, in this later, plainer work Roth often makes subtle poetry by using ordinary words in unexpected ways, or by mobilizing cliché, but he slips these phrases past us conversationally, almost before we have noticed them. … [In Exit Ghost,] Zuckerman reflects that he cannot defeat a much younger man, a literary journalist named Richard Kliman, who is ’savage with health and armed to the teeth with time.’ It is wonderful to take the cliché ‘armed to the teeth’ and combine it with the abstract word ‘time,’ producing a hovering suggestion of a second cliché, this one having to do with old age, being ‘long in the tooth.’ In this novel, and in this phrase, short in the tooth meets long in the tooth.

link

Coming up with an expression like “armed to the teeth” is easy compared with fitting it into the style and narrative of a whole book. Of course, this isn’t a problem for P. Roth.

Posted in Writers, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Missing Tapered Jeans and Crime Bills

January 6, 2010 by raronauer

The other day I was watching The American President. What I like best about the movie is the 90s version of political drama. Like my high school 90s experience, everything in the movie is way melodramatic for what’s actually happening.

Michael Douglas is trying to pass a crime bill. If only hand guns were our big problem! And Annette Bening is lobbying for environmental reform. (Well I guess that’s still an issue.) And the best part of the movie is when Michael Douglas finally speaks up for his girlfriend—who Richard Dreyfus as Cheney before we knew who Cheny was has called a whore—and he’s like, “this country has real problems,” when the only problems are vague crime bill legislation.

This is all to say I don’t envy the security/terrorism/civil liberty mess that Obama is in.

Posted in Film, Politics, The 90s | 1 Comment »

Year in Read, 2009

December 31, 2009 by raronauer

I spent most of this year rereading or reading books I should have read a long time ago.

Key:
® – Reread
@ – Aronauer seal of approval

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz – @, ®

Earlier: Brief and Wondrous Dreams, ‘Your Adoring Audience Is Clamoring For More Heavy-Handed Sarcastic Wit And Cynicism.’

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Earlier: You Know That Book Everyone Was Talking About Twenty Years Ago? I Just Read It

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – @, ®

Additional recommendation: Slate’s audio book club podcast on The Great Gatsby

Netherland, Joseph O’Neill – @, ®

Additional recommendation: Slate’s audio book club podcast on Netherland
Earlier: Cricket Writing

Diana by Tina Brown
Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Lost City of Z by David Gramm – @
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – @
Blood Dark Track by Joseph O’Neill
Mrs. Dallaway by Virgina Woolf
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
King of the World by David Remnick
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell – @

I know a lot of SATC fans who hate the book, but I thought it was fantastic. Bushnell’s integration of the Carrie “character” as a stand-in for herself is well done, and she is very perspective about the fears and doubts women have about monogomy and motherhood.

The Shadow Club by Neal Shusterman – ®

So funny story: I reread some YA for research for my book.

Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth
Woe Is I by Patricia O’Conner – @, ®
The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm – @
How Fiction Works by James Woods
My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather – ®
My Life in France by Julia Child – @

Earlier: Before That Movie Comes Out
Also, the book is way better than the movie.

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody
The Believers by Zoë Heller
Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Smiles on Washington Square by Raymond Federman
The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor by Flannery O’Connor

Earlier: Flannery O’Connor Short Story Recipe

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
The Cost of Living by Mavis Gallant – @

This was the only book I paid retail for all year. Gallant was a major influence for Jhumpa Lahiri, and after hearing Lahiri read one of the stories, I couldn’t help but support the publishing industry. I liked this collection more than Varieties of Exile.

102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – @

When I wrote about this book earlier, I did a lousy job of explaining why it’s so great. I’ll try again: Sentence for sentence, it’s hard to argue with the genius of Hemingway. The characters in this book are living a glamorous post-WWI life, but their relationships are meaningless. Over the course of the novel, the vapidness of their lifestyles becomes almost painful. Even afcion, the the one thing that drives the narrative and Jake, is lost to thse empty friendships.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Cheever Stories by John Cheever – @

After my inevitable move to the suburbs, I’m going to make a self-aware and pretentious joke and name my dog Cheever. This guy understands America (“Clementina”), the craft of short story writing (“The Day the Pig Fell Down the Well”) and is very honest with American man’s confusion with the women’s movement (“An Educated American Woman”). If you’re interested in the origins of modern American literature, you should read Cheever.

Personal Days by Ed Park

Posted in 2009, Raronauer Recommends, Reading, Writers | Leave a Comment »

No Obituaries for Dentists

November 19, 2009 by raronauer

Careful visitors to my site will notice that my banner comes from a sketch Christo made for The Gates. Careful chroniclers of my life will know that I was obsessed with the Gates. And now Jeanne-Claude, Christo’s wife and collaborator, is dead.

One of the reasons I was so into the Gates was this piece in the New Yorker, where Jeanne-Claude said,

I was not an artist when I married Christo, but I became one … If Christo had been a dentist, I would have become a dentist

I don’t have anything larger to say about that quote or this death, but I still think the Gates were pretty awesome.

Posted in Art, New York | 1 Comment »

In Which My Blog Becomes a Place for Pull Quotes from Classic Literature

November 18, 2009 by raronauer

Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya’s hotel that is, those with aficion stayed there. …

We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasure of discovering what we each felt. Men would come in from distant towns and before they left Pamplona stop and talk for a few minutes with Montoya about bulls. These men were aficionados. Those who were aficionados could always get rooms even when the hotel was full. Montoya introduced me to some of them. They were always very polite at first, and it amused them very much that I should be an American. Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. … When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spiritual examination with questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the should, or a “Buen hombre.” But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain.

-The Sun Also Rises

To me, an aficion is something that makes you happy without help from anyone else. To me, that’s ice cream and running. (Writing and reading are both too fraught with disappointment to count as an aficion.) I feel very lucky that there are so many people in my life who have aficion; passionate people usually have interesting things to say.

The Sun Also Rises also served as a reminder (to me) to revisit this Madonna video.

Posted in Raronauer Recommends, Reading, aficion | 1 Comment »

(Dirty) Blonde Redhead

October 30, 2009 by raronauer

Two months ago, after a cranky day, I went for a walk in my neighborhood and ended up at Unnamable Books on Vanderbilt. In some ways, opening a book store is more optimistic than writing a book. Anyway, I bought Beginner’s Greek, which had been recommended by The Times and after reading two pages, seemed like it would eventually be highly recommended by me. It was one of those gorgeous pre-fall days were the sun and the clouds are really working together, so I went to the park and started reading. After ten more pages, I knew how everything would happen. I was kind of annoyed, especially when I saw the discussion questions in the back. I love reading, but I hate when publishers encourage me to get drunk with friends and talk about obvious symbolism. And that day, I hit my breaking point with commercial literary fiction.

All of this was going to be related to the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of Flannery O’Conner lately. But I already blogged about that. The above paragraph came from Word document I keep called “maybe blog post.” What happens in this word document is that I write a paragraph, get frustrated with myself for wasting time rearranging each word instead of working on my book, and then I quit.

My life has been filled with frustrations lately. Fortunately, not frustrations involving clean water, but frustrations with my book. I’ve been doing it for almost two years now. And while working without feedback (or a boss) has mostly been fantastic, I’m at the end of my rope. See I don’t even have anyone to call me out for using a phrase like “end of my rope.” It’s hard.

I’m just exhausted with Raronauer’ed, The Novel. I’ve come to the point where I am incapable of considering the value of passive voice without a professional’s help. So for better or worse, what I’m working on now will be my last draft before looking for an agent.

I’m sure Junot Diaz is aware that he doesn’t use footnotes evenly in Brief, Wondrous Life. And Jeffrey Eugenides must know that the end of Middlesex is anti-climactic. And both of these guys spent like a decade on each of those books. But there’s only so much you can do before you start wandering around the city in the middle of the afternoon, looking for clothes a redhead would wear so you can go as a ginger for Halloween.

Posted in Narcissism, Raronauer'ed, The Novel, Writing | 1 Comment »

Flannery O’Connor Short Story Recipe

October 6, 2009 by raronauer

Start with 20-something son. Often an aspiring writer, visiting or returning from home after a failed run in a city. In favor of civil rights. Pair with a racist older relative, usually female. Include a gun or a heart condition. Don’t forget a black person. Heat for about twenty to thirty pages. Serve with a death at the end.

I just spent the past month reading all of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. And despite this formula, I like her. Her characters aren’t neurotic. There are not trying to figure out their identity or get laid. Mostly, they’re just are selfish and ignorant. Usually, Hobbesian characters don’t appeal to me. But Flannery O’Conner isn’t trying to get our sympathy. She’s just pointing out a truth.

I especially recommend “A View of the Woods.”

Posted in Reading, Writers | 1 Comment »

On The Other Side of the Avenue

September 18, 2009 by raronauer

For the past month, I’ve read more Craigslist than the New York Times. That’s right, I’m moving. If you don’t mind cats, aren’t around much, all your stuff can fit in your room and you don’t have a Divatitude, finding a place is easy. But for me, someone who hates cats and has a huge Divatitude, getting an apartment on the cheap near Prospect Park has been difficult.

In Crown Heights, I saw a place where the outgoing roommate wanted to sell the couch she kept in the living room. Now that’s bizarre, right? Why wouldn’t she just leave it or have the remaining roommate buy it off of her? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the two old roommates were scheming against the new one. The outgoing roommate didn’t want to give it away and the remaining roommate didn’t want to pay it. A mark from Craigslist would solve both of their problems by buying it. This didn’t seem like the beginning of a warm home to me.

Yesterday, I settled on a place on the Prospect Heights side of Washington Avenue. This is a huge relief to my subconscious, which has been dreaming about homelessness for the past month. For those who were curious, the cost of living in an apartment with a working buzzer and without teenagers smoking blunts in the stairwell is an extra $235 a month. And I’m finally at a point in my life where I’m willing to pay that price.

Posted in Brooklyn, Raronauer Living | Leave a Comment »