Tag Archives: Ted Gioia

Authors

Herta Müller Asks If You Have a Handkerchief

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Herta Müller, author of The Hunger Angel and The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, as John Wilson notes in his piece on the value of this award. For her lecture at the Swedish Academy, she talked about handkerchiefs.

The harassment was passed down; the rumor was set into circulation among my colleagues. That was the worst. You can defend yourself against an attack, but there’s nothing you can do against libel. Every day I prepared myself for anything, including death. But I couldn’t cope with this perfidy. No preparation made it bearable. Libel stuffs you with filth; you suffocate because you can’t defend yourself. . . .

Since now I really had to make sure I came to work, but no longer had an office, and since my friend could no longer let me into hers, I stood in the stairwell, unable to decide what to do. I climbed up and down the stairs a few times and suddenly I was again my mother’s child, because I HAD A HANDKERCHIEF. I placed it on one of the stairs between the second and third floors, carefully smoothed it out and sat down. I rested my thick dictionaries on my knee and translated the descriptions of hydraulic machines. I was a staircase wit and my office was a handkerchief. 

Music: And just one more thing, critic Ted Gioia shares his 12 favorite problems, such as how can music change lives and how can artists sustain creativity.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Music, Reading

Witnessing to Social Media Scammers, Good Novels, and the Legal Power of Music

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Social media is something of a minefield. It’s easily misused, partly because it’s easy for people to write poorly and misunderstand what they’ve read. People do that with books, and they misspeak and misheard live conversations. Some of us are astonishingly accomplished at misunderstanding what people say. There ought to be annual awards for that level of skill.

And the socials have another aspect that complicates communication— anonymity.

I had an interaction with a new follow on Twitter/X, which I noticed and returned the follow even though the profile and activity were sparse and a little sus. I played the Benefit of the Doubt card this time—not my usual strategy. She slid into my DMs saying she wanted to be my friend (also sus). I say “she” because that’s how the profile was set up, but I can’t confirm that. I found two other profiles with the same or similar names, images, and profile descriptions, so I figured I wasn’t dealing with an honest individual. But I didn’t ignore her this time.

She DMed me in an overly friendly way, so I asked about the username, which didn’t fit her name or profile. It was like Cindy @kergu_addict. I asked what @kergu_addict referred to. She said it was just something she filled in earlier. I responded by praising the Lord’s mercy and goodness and asking if she knew Him. That question was ignored.

The next day after another DM checking up on me, I told her she needed in-person friends. Online connections can’t keep up with daily living. She responded with one of those statements you see in spam, like it was cut from two separate sentences.

“I’m not sure what you’re saying,” I said. “In person, we have proximity–people in the same room. We can talk with our voices and body language, and that’s a big difference. Online, we can only type and wait for the other person to read our message.”

“So that you wish you could find someone like that?” she asked.

“I have people like that,” I said. “I also have a close relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you have a Bible? Do you know something about Jesus?”

“I’m an atheist. I believe in what I do.”

“You don’t have to stay that way. This life, this world, are not there is. We were made for eternity.”

“Why? Don’t you believe in what you’re doing?”

“Because God, the creator of everything, and Jesus, the incarnation of God, are real. I believe in them because they exist. It’s reality.”

“Of course, I respect you. Faith is a good thing.”

She unfollowed me after that, which is what I expected. I wonder if anything I said will stay with whoever is on the other side.

What else can we look into?

Fantasy: The Queen of Ebenezer is “a dreamlike but intense story of two lost teenagers trying to find their way through a mysterious swamp—and that’s just the beginning of what they’re trying to find.” Gina Dalfonzo talks to author K. B. Hoyle about her latest novel.

Novels: John Wilson reminisces about his early novel reading in light of “Joseph Epstein’s just-published book The Novel, Who Needs It? If, like me, you are an incorrigible reader of novels, you should make haste to acquire it. . . . Most readers besotted with ‘the novel,’ as I am, will get their money’s worth.”

Music: Ted Gioia on how musicians gave the ancient world law, taken from his new book Music to Raise the Dead. The whole story isn’t spelled out and remains unclear, but “it’s indisputable that ancient communities frequently turned to people outside of the ruling class for their laws.”

Photo: Bomber gas station, Milwaukie, Oregon. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

They Need an Explanation to Feel a Level of Control

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I read one time that Hitchcock wasn’t going to end the movie Psycho the way he did, but his producer insisted he provide an explanation. The story couldn’t end with a wrap-up of the crime. It needed a psychiatrist to give the audience a reason for it. This is because Americans want to know why an evil thing occurred and how could it be prevented in the future.

I felt this need while listening to a couple crime stories this week. In one story, four boys in rural Vermont decided to break and enter a remote home. Two of them said they would murder anyone who happened to be home, and they all carried knives to help, if the need arose. It did, but only the original two attacked the mother and daughter they found. The story was mostly told by one of the two in police interviews. He was an emotionally distant Mormon kid who lacked friends and was beginning to explore gang activity.

In the other story, an elderly couple was kidnapped in an effort to rob them. He said he would kill them after he’d obtained all the money. The wife was able to tip off the cops, who located the man through his car. This culprit was a family man, described by a church member as a Christian who had it all. He had been even a church elder at some point. But along with all of this, he was also a constant manipulator.

If evil like this can come from both social outcasts and respected members, what can be done to foresee or prevent it? We need a healthy understanding of our common depravity, and that out of the heart these and other great sins come. We are not good people. Only the Lord can make us so.

What other things can we say today?

Great Musician: Tony Bennett died this week. Ted Gioia writes, “I probably own 30 or 40 of his albums, and his singing has been part of my life since childhood—when my Sicilian father played Tony Bennett records at our family home. At times, it almost felt like Bennett was a member of my extended family.

… “I could fill up an entire article just with stories of his acts of kindness. He radiated decency and generosity of heart. That showed up in his life and his music.”

Against Apathy: “Artists endure who attend to the world. Details are precious. Art is collecting and arranging them.”

New York City: “As for libraries, the sad truth is that, precisely because of the abandonment of broken-windows policing, those sheltered spaces are havens for the homeless and drug-addicted more than they are resources for the scholarly and intellectually curious.”

Found Music: The Kiffness takes internet videos and makes music with them. The one from July 15 seems appropriate to add here.

Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Music, Non-fiction, The Press

But How Are You Really? Well, Journalism Is Dead

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This week, I had one of those frequently repeated conversations about what we mean when we greet others with “Hello” and “How are you?” An earnest person might think it’s dishonest to ask someone how they are doing without expecting an answer and may feel a burden to share transparently when others ask them. You may have heard someone argue that Christians shouldn’t say they are fine when they aren’t fine; they shouldn’t paint on a smile when they’re going through a hard time.

But honesty doesn’t require complete transparency. That would expose us all to the fixers, who don’t know when to listen and when to advise. Greeting one another with a word or phrase is essentially verbal acknowledgement. We see and maybe recognize each other. We ask each other how’s the day or the doing or life at large as a way of well wishing. If we’re close to each other, we’ll want more than that, but even then, it may not be the time for it.

We can thank Thomas Edison for popularizing the word hello as a good way to answer the phone. Alexander Graham Bell (why do we give his full name so often? why not Alex Bell or Alexander G. Bell?) wanted us to us say ahoy, as if we were called out to someone in the distance. Prior to the phone, hello was a common word of surprise, which I suppose is the reason Bertie Wooster and co. say, “What ho!” regularly. The Online Etymology Dictionary says there are records from 1849 that show hello, the house as “the usual greeting upon approaching a habitation” in the American west.

Yes, yes, I suppose we should get on to other things, shouldn’t we?

Vocabulary: Here’s a good word for everyday use.

via Cian McCarthy/Twitter

Journalism: News outlets aren’t dead, but their owners may be trying to kill them. Ted Gioia has a compelling piece on news sites that wanted our clicks so bad they killed themselves, and now big news outlets appear to want to die the same way. “The company tried to maximize clicks with shallow gimmicks, when it should have been worrying about the articles themselves.”

Conservatism: A right-wing movement wants a big reset. John Ehrett says critics label it different things, but vitalism is a good name for it. “In place of Ronald Reagan’s famous ‘three-legged stool’—free-market economics, military interventionism, and religious conservatism—the new vitalists would burn the place down altogether, and host a festival around the pyre.”

Bruce Springsteen: “He paints his masterpiece of America as a brand and what it does to people. To me, Nebraska is an album-length description of how America has struggled to find its soul, has never had much of an identity beyond the brand that’s been sold over and over again to people living here. But lives are lived behind the brand, and Springsteen is unearthing them, exposing them to the light.” That storytelling was formed by a love of Flannery O’Connor.

Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik on Unsplash

Bookselling, Poetry, Reading

Illinois Tells Readers to Stop Complaining about Library Books

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Illinois will soon have a law designed to put silence readers who might be under a delusion that they have a voice in their community libraries. I wonder if it will matter as much as they think it will.

In his State of the State address, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said, “This afternoon I’ve laid out a budget agenda that does everything possible to invest in the education of our children. Yet it’s all meaningless if we become a nation that bans books from school libraries about racism suffered by Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, and tells kids they can’t talk about being gay, and signals to Black and Brown people and Asian Americans and Jews and Muslims that our authentic stories can’t be told.”

The bill, that has passed both house and senate, requires libraries to adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights or to create their own policy against removing books in response to community pressure. At least, that’s the intent.

What the House bill actually says is “In order to be eligible for State grants, a library or library system shall adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights that indicates materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval or, in the alternative, develop a written statement prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials within the library or library system.” Banning is the term used. Removing from circulation would be another thing entirely, wouldn’t it?

The ALA’s policy says, in part, “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues.” and “libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”

But a library can’t hold everything, can it? Who chooses what goes on the shelf or what provides enlightenment? If the state library system has four copies of one book and 16 copies of another, is the latter book understood to be more enlightening?

This seems to be an attempt to silence reading communities, and I have to wonder if it will amount to much. Will some libraries adopt the proper policy and ignore it, going about their business as usual? Will some communities express their complaints quietly? Will some librarians be run out of town?

Book banning, as you and I both know, is not a thing. Wrestling over the moral propriety and age appropriateness of books is what the ALA calls banning, and that’s what we’re arguing over. Now, Illinois will declare that no one knows moral propriety like public librarians, so sit down and read what they give you.

What other waves are undulating the Internet?

O’Connor: “On Our Need to Be Displaced” – “The richest irony in efforts to dismiss O’Connor is that her fiction provides the insight we need right now to help heal our social and political divisions, and to temper our hostile public discourse. Because Flannery O’Connor, with her scorching wit, fingered the exact cause of all of it, including racism: fear.”

Tips for Creatives: Ted Gioia is offering advice to struggling artists who are trying to make music in the world of TikTok (which is a corrupt platform you shouldn’t use). Here’s a bit of it.

“The music itself is the pathway to joy. Getting applause after a performance is lovely, but not as lovely as the song you just played. Reading a favorable review is sweet, but hardly as sweet as the ecstatic moments of creative expression.”

Podcast: At the end of last year, Trevin Wax released a podcast on the current crises in the church and how to tackles them. It’s called Reconstructing Faith, and it’s marvelous.

Family: Roberto Carlos Garcia has a moving poem about the adults in a child’s life, called “The Tempest.” Poetry Foundation has a short passage from it.

My father was a great sailor, a seaman, navigated
Only the darkest waters—the sweetest squalls

Which is to say he was a drunk

Photo by Maxim Lugina on Unsplash

Writing

Gioia: What I Didn’t Learn in College English

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Ted Gioia writes about the types of papers college professors want to see and what a writer must do to actually write well. It’s a good overview of part of his college career and the aftermath in the workplace.

“A writer must be curious, because the readers are. A writer must seek inspiration and mind-expanding experiences, because the readers do. A writer must try to find wisdom, because that’s what readers are after.”