New Uses for Old Books
The library at Delft University of Technology has a new information desk made out of books! I would love to sneak behind there and check out the spines of the books. Somehow it would seem way lamer if it turned out to be made out of old chemistry text books. You can see more pictures here.
The info desk seems to be part of a larger trend in repurposing old books for furniture. Last week Urban Nester, a site that comes up with crafty ideas for small living spaces, posted an idea to make a “table” out of stacked books. Nothing holds the books together – it’s just a pile of books. Hello ruined books and spilled coffee.
This should be called a "stupid table," not a "coffee table,"
J.D. Salinger’s Commode: A Modern Day Relic?
Salinger's toilet: only $1 million?
I recently came across a news story announcing that J.D. Salinger’s toilet is being auctioned on ebay. Starting bid: $1 million. Did I mention that it is being sold – ahem – “uncleaned and in its original condition”? Most online chatter has commented on the general nastiness of selling a dirty toilet and the invasion of Salinger’s privacy. Of course they’re right. And yes, it’s a sign of celebrity obsession run amok. But it also makes sense.
Let’s look at the facts.
In this NPR story about the auction, commentator David Was discusses celebrity worship and mentions that, “The personal effects of celebrities are the modern- day equivalent of medieval religious relics.” He’s absolutely right.
Evidently there are two types of religious relics – brandea, which are ordinary objects that became holy by coming into contact with holy people, and bodily relics, which are actual pieces of a saint’s body. In olden times, people wanted to see or touch these relics – some even made pilgrimages to see these holy objects. Rich people purchased and collected them. Sound familiar?
In contemporary Western society, culture (books, movies, songs, etc) has taken the place of religion.* Right or wrong, we look to culture for instructions on how to live. What is important? How should we behave? What moments are significant? What should we want? This is why people have such fanatical devotion to certain movies or books or singers or authors or actors – they help us answer the question of how to live. In this day in age, picking who you are a fan of is akin to picking a religion. Except you don’t have to be faithful to a single one.
Elvis throwing a fresh relic to the devoted
Because our connection to these works is so personal, we also have the illusion of a personal connection with the people who made them – and anything that reinforces this feeling is exciting and desirable. We want to be close to these people, but owning or touching something that belonged to them is often the closest we can get. This is why people want Elvis’ sweat-soaked scarves (they still sell for close to $2,000 a piece), and why a clump of his hair sold for $115,000 in 2002 (bodily relic anyone?) This is also why, when a friend let me hold a scrap of one of Morrissey’s shirts from a concert a few years ago, well, let’s just say I was excited. These things are like relics, special from having touched a celebrity. Owning them makes us feel closer to the person and the intimacy of it reinforces our feeling that we have a unique relationship with that person.
Now, J.D. Salinger is a special case. He has inspired a particularly devoted, intense following for a number of reasons. For one, his writing addresses the question of how to live more directly than most authors. Characters like Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass detail their problems with modern society (phoniness, materialism) and tell readers the things they think should be valued instead (sincerity, being true to ones self and ones art, loyalty to ones family). A number of people criticized Salinger’s later work for this very quality, saying that he turned his characters into mouthpieces for his personal philosophy. Be that as it may, his ideas obviously touched a nerve for some, as many people have an almost religious reverence for the author.
My boy J.D., looking very Seymour Glass
Salinger objects are also valuable because of simple issue of supply and demand: Salinger was a private man. He didn’t give interviews. He didn’t sign autographs. He rarely went into public. There aren’t even very many photographs in circulation of him. Try doing a google image search for J.D.Salinger; the same 3 or 4 photos come up again and again. Salinger’s physical absence from public life makes anything relating to his physicality rare and more valuable.
As foul as it is, Salinger’s toilet is an object he touched day after day. Somebody might want it for the mere fact that it was his. Although strangely enough, the parts he touched the most (the lid and seat) are not being sold in the auction. Perhaps this is why the sellers are making a big deal about it being “uncleaned” – they’re advertising the possibility of some remaining Salinger DNA. After all, the object’s contact with celebrity is what makes it a relic – without that, it’s just an old commode.
Now that Salinger has passed, I suspect that there will be lots more of his personal effects for sale. I’m no expert, but my guess is that you’ll be able to do better than a dirty toilet for a million dollars.
Rat Girl
In 1999 Kristin Hersh played a free in-store performance at the record store where I worked. My roommate, Jason, was ecstatic.
“I love her! I fucking love her!” he gushed.
Not knowing who she was, I skipped it. I probably spent the evening drinking strawberry Mad Dog on our porch, or picking up extra hours at my shitty part-time mall job. But today, having read Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl, I wish I’d gone.
Based on a diary she began at 18, Rat Girl takes you through an important year in Hersh’s life. She moves from Newport, Rhode Island to Boston; her band, Throwing Muses, records their first album; she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder; and she has her first child. Despite all these seemingly big events, in the book’s introduction Hersh claims, “This wasn’t a year when a whole lot happened,” adding, “It was a year when many things began.”
After finishing Rat Girl, it certainly feels like a lot happens. Although only 18, Hersh battles sketchy club owners for the band’s pay, drives to gigs in a van without brakes and describes her vision of an ideal life: living in a van, driving from town to town, making music with her friends. The book also gives an insider’s account of what it’s like to be in a band on the verge of making it big, including dinners with record executives, strangers showing up on your doorstep and the process of writing and recording an album. Hersh is a charming narrator, at once critical of the world, dreamily idealistic and incredibly entertaining.
Hersh was probably touring to support this record when I foolishly skipped her show
Like many artists, Hersh describes worrying about the mysterious origins of her creative ideas. Hersh – at least, the 18 year old version described in the book – has a superstitious belief that being hit by a car as a teenager gave her the ability to write music. In one passage she says, “Music is something I have almost no control over. Like well-rehearsed Tourettes.” Although I’m hesitant to accept Hersh’s mystical explanation for her creativity, having begun listening to her music since reading the book, all I can say is that whatever her creative process is, it’s working.
Perhaps the most unique feature of the book is it’s style, which alternates between first person prose, song lyrics and dreamy vignettes from Hersh’s childhood. Although such unconventional storytelling could have fallen apart in less capable hands, Rat Girl flows seamlessly between the three elements, allowing Hersh to weave together pieces that may otherwise have seemed like fragments. However, the book’s open style also enables her to sidestep some seemingly important questions. For example, she never reveals whether a hospital stay is the result of a suicide attempt and she never says anything about the relationship that resulted in her pregnancy. She also doesn’t explain why, when the book begins, she’s squatting rather than living with her family or one of her many friends. Still, Hersh’s openness, candor and poetic writing style more than make up for any details left out.
The book is fantastic – and a must-read for Throwing Muses fans.
It’s scheduled to be published August 31 by Penguin.
Beat Memories
Oh, the Beats. I’ve always been fascinated with this group of writers, with their khaki pants, cigarettes and poems about city life, so when I heard about the National Gallery’s exhibit “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,” I had to go.
The museum’s official write up promises intimate shots of Ginsberg and his famous friends – Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, et al – which the exhibit delivers pretty much immediately. Its first room features young Ginsberg on a New York City roof, Neal Cassady kissing a young woman outside the movies, Burroughs visiting the Met and a shot of Kerouac in a jean jacket used on the cover of Desolation Angels.
At first I was enchanted by the exhibit. They went to photobooths, like I do! They hung around in the city and went to little bookstores, just like me! Look at that dude eating grapes at 3 am! I do that too! (Well, sometimes…) But as I moved through the exhibit, my usual nagging hesitations about the Beats came creeping back.
First, there is the issue of women. As in, the world of Ginsberg has virtually none. The few ladies present in the exhibit are accessories to men – always somebody’s girlfriend or grandmother. Sure, Ginsberg was a gay man, so it makes sense that his most intimate portraits are of men. But were there really no women that he considered his peers? Or is this a case of the curators choosing what they thought visitors would want to see?
Who doesn't love a good trip to the photo booth?
There’s also the Beats romanticization of a wild, nomadic, kind of urban life – the very stuff that made these writers so appealing to me when I was a teenager. The trouble is, the cracks in this vision are too visible in the exhibit. One shot shows a homeless man slumped over in a city park, clearly unaware that his photo was being taken. Ginsberg’s inscription describes him as a “shopping cart street prophet.” By calling him a “prophet” Ginsberg aligns the man with himself and his writer friends; they’re all outsiders – seers who get something that mainstream society doesn’t. Yet, while Ginsberg has friends and a nice apartment to return to (both are documented in the exhibit), this guy has nothing and probably has little hope of his situation improving. Is it fair to secretly take his picture, venerate him as a “prophet,” and then go home to your clean apartment? Something feels incongruous about it.
Another photo illustrates the toll that the Beat lifestyle can take. Shot in the late 1960s, it shows Kerouac just before his death, slumped in a chair looking depressed, angry and ancient. It’s especially striking when considering the photographs earlier in the exhibit – some taken only 10 years before this one - showing a young, vibrant Kerouac. Ginsberg’s written inscription of the photo says nothing of Kerouac’s remarkable deterioration, but simply comments that this marked his friend’s last visit to his apartment. At this point the romance of the exhibit broke down for me. The shot of Kerouac, 47 but looking 67, seems proof that the Beat dream doesn’t work the way they say it would. Life isn’t as easy and wild and free of consequences as they made it seem. Yet, Ginsberg’s captions, the ads for the show, even the photo used for the exhibit’s accompanying book (young Kerouac), all conspire to build up the Beat myth. Perhaps it isn’t the exhibit’s fault: maybe it’s just that as I get older, it’s harder to be swept away by the Beat dream the way I once was.
For the rest of the exhibit, I began to wonder about the point of the show. Was it to showcase Ginsberg’s photography skills? But Ginsberg didn’t take a good number of the shots. Was the exhibit’s purpose to show Ginsberg’s careful documentation of a particular time and place? Well, that would work except that the shots were taken over the course of 4 decades. Most were taken in the early 1950s and the 1980s – the later shots taken while Ginsberg was trying to launch an art career. Could it be that the show is really about Ginsberg’s writing? A Washington Post review compares Ginsberg’s captions favorably to his poetry. I’d buy this, except that the inscriptions are nearly illegible, written in thick black sharpie, and the curators didn’t bother to transcribe more than a few words of each.
While I enjoyed the exhibit, its larger relevance is questionable. The only thing linking the images is that they’re interesting to look at and the people in a lot of them are famous. Is that enough to warrant a retrospective at such a venerable museum? Decide for yourself – the exhibit is up through September 16.
Home from Paradise
“Welcome to one of the most amazing experiences you will ever have,” said our tour guide, Marco, addressing our group while hanging on to the front seat of the bus.
“Oh Lord, here we go,” I whispered to T, who frowned before returning his attention to Marco.
T and I were on our way to tour Mosquito Bay, a bioluminescent bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico. We rode with a tour group in an ancient school bus that I’d like to call “Spider Bus,” owing to its dangling webs and spider population. Spider Bus was inexplicably missing its door, and its windows were stuck down, so as we rolled down the bumpy, one lane dirt road to the bay, tree branches slapped the bus and occasionally punched through its orifices, showering passengers with water and natural debris. The bouncing from the road and the bang of the branches made it feel as if the bus was being attacked by zombies. I watched a nickle-sized green spider crawl ever closer on the seat in front of me, which, it so happened, my knees were pressed into.
“No me gusta,” I said to T. It was one of the few Spanish phrases I knew. It had gotten a lot of use on the trip.
I wouldn’t normally go on such outdoorsy adventure, but three friends, two tour books, and several people at our hotel insisted that Mosquito Bay is not to be missed. Not only did people demand that we go, but they tended to gush when speaking about it. A woman working at our hotel – who’d lived on the island for years and visited it dozens of times – described it by saying, “Every time I go feels like the very first time. You will love it.” She looked off into the distance as she said it, as if mentally reliving the experience.
Although difficult to imagine without seeing in person, bioluminescent bays (or “bio bays”) are bodies of water filled with microorganisms that glow when disturbed (usually by boat, animal or person). Mosquito Bay is supposedly one of the brightest glowing in the world, filled with a high concentration of glowing organisms and relatively little light pollution. I was interested in seeing the bay, and I didn’t mind the boat ride, but I was worried about the end of the tour. Bio bay tours generally end with a swim, and after a week of nature-related meltdowns, I couldn’t decide if I should go in.
Spider Bus by day
You see, I just didn’t know how to handle Puerto Rico. Unlike my usual urban dwellings, the place is ALIVE. Every inch of ground, water and air is dense with living things. Tiny geckos crawl on every flat surface; stray dogs, cats, horses and chickens roam free, often in the roads; and let’s not even get into the gnats, mosquitoes and gigantic spiders.
All this freaking out made me wonder if I was like Joan Didion, who claimed to “lack all temperament for paradise.” Except that in my own way, I was enjoying paradise. I just seemed to like all the things that a good, young, liberal, environmentally-minded person isn’t supposed to like – or admit to liking. I loved our luxurious hotel room, with its king sized bed and it’s footed bathtub; I loved the strip of bars in Esperanza run by Americans, whose drinks tended to contain at least 3 types of rum; I loved the cocktails served to us at the hotel pool (sometimes served while you’re IN the pool!) and I adored the near perfect croissants we ate each morning. The things that people come to Vieques for – snorkeling, scuba diving, hiking, unspoiled wildlife – these things sent me running to our blue air-conditioned rental jeep.
How can this be wrong when it feels so right?
Part of the problem was that everywhere we went, people warned us about natural hazards. On our way to snorkel, a woman at the hotel cafe warned us that the cay at Blue Beach (the place we were headed, which was said to have some of the best snorkeling on the island), is a known feeding ground of nurse sharks.
“Sharks?” I asked, glancing at T with a look that said, “Let’s go back to the pool.”
“Nurse sharks,” he clarified.
“They don’t usually hurt people. Just be careful,” she said.
Just be careful. That’s what everyone said. I wanted to shake these people and yell, “Yes, but how!” Let’s say you’re snorkeling, awkwardly treading water and trying to breathe through a tube. Then suddenly, through your foggy, spit-soaked mask you see a shark approaching; what does it mean to “be careful.” Do you play dead? Back away slowly? Ignore it? Ask it to pose for your underwater camera? To assuage my fears I decided to read about the animals that scared me on my iPhone as we drove to natural places. This was about as calming as using the internet to self-diagnose an illness.
Here’s what I read about nurse sharks as we approached Blue Beach:
Nurse sharks are slow-moving bottom-dwellers and are, for the most part, harmless to humans. However, they can be huge—up to 14 feet (4.3 meters)—and have very strong jaws filled with thousands of tiny, serrated teeth, and will bite defensively if stepped on or bothered by divers.
It's cool - just be careful.
Ah. Up to 14 feet long. Very strong jaws. Thousands of tiny, serrated teeth. As the world’s most awkward swimmer, is it a good idea to bet that I won’t accidentally kick or step on one of these beauties?
Rather than sharks, swimming in Mosquito Bay worried me for a different reason: jellyfish and sting rays. Sting. Rays. The giant, flat, alien looking things that killed Steve Irwin. Mosquito Bay is home to a large number of these charmers.
When the bus parked we were instructed to line-up in ankle deep mud as an earlier tour unloaded from the boat. I felt something brush against my ankle, but thought better of looking down to see what it was. I probably wouldn’t have seen it anyway, as the only light around was from the bus’ headlights, which cast an ominous light into the mangrove trees surrounding the bay. I felt like we were waiting to be executed.
And then we were on the boat. And there were stars. Billions of flashing, twinkling, glimmering stars! Marco used a super green laser to point out Jupiter rising, Mars, the Milky Way and Scorpius. I was so captivated that I was annoyed when the group began “ahhing” over the boat’s wake. It glowed blue-green.
“I’d just like to remind everybody that this boat has no lights. Everything you see comes from the bay’s natural glow,” said Marco.
I looked again. There was a blue-green glow extending about a foot in every direction from the boat – as if there were spotlights on it.
One of Marco’s assistant’s began slapping the side of the boat, to scare the fish. They jumped from the water in packs, covered in tiny, sparkling lights. As they swam, they cut a glowing blue streak through the water which faded to green, then disappeared in seconds. It seems trite to call it magical, but there’s no other word I can think of to describe it.
An artists' rendering of the bio bay tour
The boat came to a stop and Marco cut the engine. I had to decide if I was going in. People began outfitting themselves with flotation belts and climbing into the water. I stood at the edge of the boat and watched a man doing the backstroke. He looked as if he was covered in sparkling blue flames.
And so I took the plunge.
I thought to myself, “I swam in Walden; goddammit, I’m gonna swim in this.” Then grabbed a flotation belt and climbed in.
The water was warm, like a giant sparkling bath. At water level, the line between the sky and the bay seemed to fade in to one glimmering mass. I went under water and came up, then watched my arms shimmer as if covered in glitter. Everything I touched began to glow. I was surrounded by light.
Our allotted 20 minutes went by in a flash, and I was disappointed when Marco called us back to the boat.
Back on Spider Bus, wrapped in a hotel towel, I said to T, “That was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced.”
