Logic Takes its Final Bow

Paul Valery wrote, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." The same holds true for books, I think, and most other art as well. You either spend your life tinkering with it, or you say, "I know this is not perfect. I know a better mind than mine could solve its problems. But it's as good as I can make it, and to do any more would be counter-productive."

Alternatively, you could take your manuscript, burn it, and commit its ashes to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, much like John Goodman and Jeff Bridges do for Steve Buscemi.

I spent last evening and early this morning trying to perfect the conclusion. I'm now on my fifth or sixth draft, I've done massive rewrites, and I'm proud as hell of it. Yet there is a lingering feeling of, "I have to make more of this. This has to be better."

As long as I felt I had the capability to make it better, I kept at it. Now I've hit the point where, whatever the book's failings are, they escape me. To do more would be to change for change's sake, which is a sign I've grown bored. I'd rather stop now.

This is new territory for me. Like most people, I'm much more comfortable talking shit about other people, or deluding myself I'm going to finish something, or immersing myself in the trappings of being a writer (I almost wrote "writerly behaviour" Ugggh).

My situation, I think, is analogous to a scene in Deadwood (you knew Milch would come up sooner or later, didn't you?). After Hearst's goon throws down a challenge, Swearengen spends a day trying to figure what exactly Hearst stands to gain by having his man fight Swearengen's. The answer is unknowable, and Al finally decides, "It's past me. I cannot figure the fuckin' angle. Go ahead and fuckin' fight him."

Or as David Mamet says, "After the play's opened you gotta say, I might've known better then, or I might know better now, but that play is done."

I don't know what comes next, aside from the next one. Self-promotion? Fuck me.

And now, to cheer myself up on this dreary afternoon, and to complete the fucking one-eighty my train of thought just pulled, here's that beating scene from Deadwood. It never gets old.

What is Our Generation's Great Movie? Or, Ghostbusters and the Death of Work.

The Boomers have Easy Rider and Woodstock.

The Gen-Xers have the Breakfast Club and the rest of that repugnant John Hughes shit.

Us?

Ghostbusters.

Think I'm kidding?

Easy Rider and Breakfast Club tap into the Great Important Issues of their respective birth eras. For the Boomers, it's freedom. For the X-ers, it's making their parents wrong. What is our issue, our fantasy?

Well, what is Ghostbusters about?

Four entrepreneurs who have important jobs and do them well.

That's our fantasy. In a country with no jobs, where risk is frowned upon and hierarchy rigidly enforced, our fantasy is about economic freedom and earned celebrity.

Many if not most people our age still live with an incredible amount of parental support. This is not by choice, as with the Slackers: it's because the jobs aren't there and, to be fair, the standard of living we aspire to is very high. We all want that middle-class bohemian lifestyle; none of us can afford it. This will be the first generation since the Dust Bowl era to perform worse economically than their parents.

Ghostbusters is about people who invent a new job sector and conquer it. It's about people who do their jobs better than anyone else and get to set the rules. Who's the bad guy? Walter Peck, the government agent, who wants to regulate the fun out of this newly-created vocation. He's Standards and Practices, Clear Channel and the IRS rolled into one. Gozer is a pest compared to him.

The film is about a return to the idea of Meaningful Work, that fantasy we Millenials indulge in which says, 'Back in the day, our grandparents made things of great importance. Their jobs mattered. We are robbed of that, and are hence a lost generation.'

The truth, of course, is that none of us want to work in a steel foundry or a lumber mill. We just want jobs with the salary and security those post-War occupations had. Every generation looks wistfully back, usually for the wrong reasons.

Un petite digression.

Our world is one of regulation, safety standards, political correctness, corporate abrogation of responsibility, lowest-common-denominator programming, and credentialism. And the solutions we are offered lead to an increase in the same. As if the government will work to regulate itself. As if an extra seven years of school will make you more valuable. Like putting fire out with kerosene.

We don't go to school to learn a trade, we go to school to get accredited and to learn how to pander. You need a PhD to teach at the college level now. Ten years ago that was not the case. Have things gotten so complicated in the last decade that a teacher needs an extra seven years of school to teach Fitzgerald and Mary Shelley? Fuck no. School has become self-perpetuating, now that there's a buck to be made. We call sleazy schools degree mills, but really, are UBC and SFU any different?

The Ghostbusters embody the DIY spirit, without the shitty music and social justice. They come up with the technology, they exploit it without exploiting a work force, and they take no shit from their clients, who need them far more than the Ghostbusters need them.

Spurned by academia and fucked over by the government, the Ghostbusters have their revenge. Laissez-faire, baby.

Insincere Endorsement

I guess for this to make sense you need to know that

A) Mass Effect is a sci-fi video game;

B) In the Mass Effect universe, one of the non-important races are called Elcor;

C) The Elcor are distinguished by a complete lack of emotion. They're big Snuffleuphagus-looking things that speak in an Eeyore monotone and always preface their boring remarks with a stated intention of emotion, as in, "Eager Politeness: Welcome customer" or "Resigned desolation: she thinks I'm a monster."

D) One of the running jokes in the first Mass Effect was an advertisement for "Francis Kint's award-winning fourteen-hour production of Hamlet with an all-Elcor cast."

E) In Mass Effect 2, one of the advertisements you pass plays clips from Elcor Hamlet.

F) If you get all that, the clip below is hilarious. "Morose rumination: to be or not to be"

David Mamet on directing, writing, etc.

Totally Worth the Dollar

Great Writing V: Bony Old Ghost of a Whore

Fanny came in a couple of times. Bony old ghost of a whore. Couldn't do much, but I suppose better than a kick in the crutch. The last time wasn't so bad. How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.

Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape.

The more Beckett you read, the better he gets. What a staggering sense of humour.

John Hurt performing as Krapp: