Running for Your Life: Star of the Show

When I was 10 to 13 years old, I was tickled to perform (act goofy, sing, dance) in the living room at home in an innocent, upbeat fashion, having been seduced by the golden era of US broadcast TV, the comedians being my favorites – Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Tommy and Dick Smothers, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, and most cherished, Jack Benny, his moon-faced self-deprecation whose humanity appealed to me most of all, he had me with his hand on his face, the bemused, melancholy expression. Piss my pants to think of that.

“Star of the show!” I’d shout. And Mother would smile, wipe her hands dry on her apron, give me no reason to think that my fantasy wasn’t as real as I wanted it to be.

Now, though, a half-century later, the fantasy is made hyperreal. “Parents” Larry, Jeff, Mark and Tim strike up the band of your very own comedy, drama, sports spectacle … Be the star of the show! Your show! Forget about the medieval worldview that the earth is the center the heavens that all revolves around God’s creation; forget about the modern scientific worldview that the earth revolves around the sun and fulfill yourself with the divine truth that all things – love, celestial bodies, gluten-free food – revolves around you. You! The center of the universe!

Next: Running for Your Life: Treetop Tips

Running for Your Life: High Cultural Pluralism – A Few Words

When it comes to writing and publishing, I recently dug out a terrific essay by author Elif Batuman in a September 2010 issue of London Review of Books about the state of the writing academy in the US, called “Get A Real Degree.”

Two gems:

The term to best describe current American literature – high cultural pluralism. (To which I would add, when it comes to high cultural pluralism as it relates to “literature,” the liberal mainstream celebrates the nihilistic hipster and the Upper West nostalgist to the exclusive of just about every else.)

And this, “There is a genuine problem when young people are taught to believe that they can be writers only in the presence of real or invented socio-political grievances.”

An essay that precipitated many letters, including this stirring one:

“[Donald Barthelme’s] fiction, with its multiple references and allusions to the histories of literature, art, philosophy, architecture and politics, certainly bears the traces of his own study of the history of everything, as a ‘melancholy recognition’ [my quotation marks] of how useful the study might ultimately prove to be; asked why he wrote the way he did, he liked to reply: “Because Samuel Beckett always writes the way he does.”

Alex Johnston, Nov. 4, 2010

Next: Running for Your Life: Treetop Tips

Running for Your Life: WTF? Part Two

At best, Tim O’Reilly in the first half of “WTF?” lays out evidence on the current social implications of the tech revolution and then embarks on a Moby Dick-like voyage to rid the tech poobahs of any and all blame, seeing their actions as the essence of purity.

He is a disciple and, alas, America is prone to believe in disciples as proof that despite our flaws we are a godly nation and those who’ve been chosen as prophets to the American Way are indeed haloed and their work should be elevated as divine.

Musk. Bezos. Page. Cook. Four horsemen of the AI-calypse as perceived by the incredibly shrinking world of free thinkers. Words that will by their nature never slip the algorithms and go viral, words that can make a difference only on paper and in the private burrow of those who would debunk them. All of whom are seen as losers, of course. Except where it counts: in the head and in the heart.

How do you spell backlash?

We are secure only in our techno-tribes. Would that a legitimate power, a true mystic leader, take us by the hand and, as disciples to this more righteous cause, escort us all to the promised land.

Next: Running for Your Life: High Cultural Pluralism – A Few Words