McFiction

Years ago, when McDonald's was still a recent addition to the world of dining out, the Golden Arches signs always include the tally of how many burgers the company had sold - "over three billion sold," or five billion, six, or seven. I don't remember at what point they stopped counting.

And for all the dollars those billions of burgers sold generated for the chain, never once did I hear of McDonald's complaining that serious restaurant reviewers and critics ignored its offerings in favour of the food at other smaller restaurants  - restaurants where the chefs vied for a review in the New York Times by creating complex, layered, and unique food.

But in response to the critical acclaim and coverage Jonathan Franzen's recent book Freedom received, commercial writers Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult did indeed complain that Franzen's work received more and better attention than did any work of theirs, and that the work of white males, generally, received more attention than did theirs as well.

Jason Pinter, in The Huffington Post (Aug 10/10) interviewed the two authors about the "feud" they have with Franzen, his critics, newspaper reveiwers, and the entire literary world.

Between them, Weiner and Picoult have been on the New York Times bestseller list for months at a time. Between them, they have written over two dozen novels, have generated millions of dollars, and have millions of books in print in several countries.

So why does the literary establishment ignore them?  Picoult believes that her work is like that of Jane Austen or Shakespeare because it was popular, not literary, when written.

Because historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses. (Huff Post)

Indeed, these authors were and are popular, but the comparison only goes so far. The quickly growing capitalist, middle class bought the fiction of Austen and Dickens, fiction that was starkly apart from the literary efforts of the aristocracy that had dominated for centuries. (Shakespeare, who wrote plays, not fiction is a different case.)

Gender lines were also quite different then; Jane Austen was told, as were other serious women writers, that no literary work by women would be published because it would never measure up. This is no longer true. Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 comes to mind - one of many examples of women writers well-regarded by the literary establishment.

Millions of readers love and buy Weiner's and Picoult's books, but from what I have read, the work of neither writer has the depth and complexity that the work of Doris Lessing has, or Austen, or Dickens, or Shakespeare, or countless others. To me, their fiction is cliched and formulaic; they work in a genre that was both expanded and refined by someone like Austen. The commercial fiction Weiner and Picoult write does neither; it takes what was done by others and repeats it endlessly with no innovation.

McDonald's doesn't complain that restaurant and food critics are not banging down the door to include it. McDonald's rakes in millions, offering its formulaic product to the millions who love it - smiling all the way to the bank. Commercial writers like Weiner and Picoult should do the same. They offer a standardized product to millions who love it and make lots of money doing so. If they want critical acclaim, they should offer the kind of fiction that commands it.

They do, though, deserve an award for generating publicity!

A Manic Friday

It wasn't a Monday, It was my husband's fault. It was a chain of events. No time to eat. It was a manic Friday.

I should know the signs by now. It starts with a simple, inocuous task, It mushrooms; the day is chaotic.

Last week, my husband went on a short business trip for a meeting - held in a casino hotel. That was the start of it all. He won $2000 while waiting to go to the airport to come home.

Sometimes the distinction between need and want generates a frenzy. We needed a new stove because the coils on the old one would not sit level, no matter what we did. And when any burner was on high, the whole top of the stove became so hot that getting burned was a real possibility.

On the other hand, the fridge works just fine, no matter that the plastic in one place on the outside is cracked (and the damn thing was expensive to boot) and that we could use more space. But it keeps the food at exactly the right temperature, and really everything fits if we organize it. A new fridge is a want, not a need.

That distinction led to some new handbags, a scarf, and some awesome dress pants, a cleaning, sorting, re-arranging frenzy, and a cull of all the receipts and instruction manuals for everything purchased since about 1995. Oh, and some work on the arrangement of pots and pans and a couple of drawers of seldom-used cooking utensils. As I said, a manic Friday.

I'm not sure if it's my nature to start a task in the spare room and end up several hours later re-decorating the family room and re-stacking the firewood, or if all events in a house are only small threads that we pull, engendering the entire alteration of all storage and living arrangements in said house. It's not procrastination either; no starting something to avoid another something. No, it means finishing it all, often in one day.

So how did I get from saying yes to a stove, no to a fridge, yes to some new apparel and accessories and several hours of work?

The stove was almost a given; win $2000, buy that stove - delivery on Friday; be sorely tempted in appliance store to add a new fridge to the order; talk self out of new fridge.

Feel deprived; shop next day for a new scarf; buy three handbags, a scarf, and some trousers; feel elated. Go home to find that three new handbags will not fit into current space for handbags.

There's the thread. In order to make space for new handbags, I began to sort through a chest of drawers and a closet, which of course grew immediately to a huge undertaking.

Unfortunately, this was on the same day as the delivery of the new stove, which involved some re-arranging in the kitchen, culling some pots that would not work with the ceramic top of the stove, which led to more re-arranging in the kitchen - the 25-year-old espresso maker lived in the pot cupboard and simply had to be removed, which led to a hunt for all the accessories to go with it, which led to cleaning out a drawer with all the old and seldom-used utensils.  Cleaning the floor under the old stove led to some work on the cleaning supplies under the sink and sorting through cleaning rags, of which there were altogether too many.

The bedroom closet/drawer efforts were on hold.

I simply should not have put away the receipt for the new stove in the drawer where I keep all the receipts. I always open that drawer and throw in a new receipt and close the drawer. But not today. Today was the day when one more receipt broke the camel's back, and I spent 30 minutes going through them all, throwing out the 95% which had warranties expired, plus all the instruction manuals for stuff we no longer own!

Somewhere along the way, I managed to shop for a few groceries, go to the bank, try a cooking experiment, cook dinner, and spend 40 minutes on the treadmill. Oh, and pick up and deliver my husband to the car dealership to have his snow tires put on.

The handbags got put on hold, and I am pooped. I don't usually have these manic kinds of days - probably, I'm more often procrastinating, which leads to chaos when one card gets pulled from the house of cards that is life in most households.

Tomorrow, I am going to sleep in.  I will probably ignore the handbags, or risk starting the whole organizing frenzy again. Phew!!!

Autumn in Taupe-Land

Clear-cut housing and one spot of colour: It is better philosophically and visually as an abstract.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow! I Love Ya Tomorrow!

 Procrastination wastes time, costs money, produces guilt, and delays or negates benefits. So why do we do it?

It turns out that there is no definitive answer. James Surowiecki writes about procrastination in his article "Later" in The New Yorker (Nov 5/10) and includes some interesting theories from economists, psychologists, and philosophers.

There are different kinds of procrastination; perhaps that is why theories and explanations abound. We put off doing things we don't like to do - understandable enough. We also put off doing things we like and things that are good for us - not so understandable. Who hasn't avoided ironing, weeding, cleaning out the garage? But exercising (a biggie for me), contributing to retirement savings, calling friends to get together are either pleasurable or good for us in the long or short term, yet we avoid them too. What's the deal?

One theory is that we are not one self, but several selves with competing ideas, drives, and desires- the one who wants to do the dishes now and the one who wants to watch tv; the one who wants to exercise, and the one who wants to sit down and eat a whole cake. The different selves represent either short term or long term benefits.  It sounds good, but as Surowiecki points out, the short term self would pretty much always win, and nothing would ever get done.

One approach to overcoming procrastination has long been to impose outside pressure on ourselves or ask others to do so. So when we make a bet for a significant sum about losing weight or quitting smoking by a certain date, we are using external factors to help us get something done. A practical solution, but one that has to be re-negotiated for everything!

I especially like Surowiecki's example of the writer Victor Hugo, who wrote naked and asked his valet to hide his clothes until he had written a certain amount each day. (I tried for an image of Victor Hugo naked, but we'll have to settle for this one of him clothed, although after the images of "sexy" old men, it's for the best, I'm sure!)

Some philosophers think that procrastination is an existential problem. Maybe some of those things on the to-do list don't really have a point, in which case, some procrastination is a good thing. We clearly have to make the distinction, though, between meaningless cleaning of knicknacks and sending out the invitations for a child's wedding.

The one idea about procrastination that makes the most sense to me is one that isn't discussed in Surowiecki's article. Procrastination is a form of perfectionism - if you don't try, you can't fail or be less than perfect. I remember when I first heard that many years ago; it was a real eye-opener and actually helped me to procrastinate less.

Whatever the cause, whatever the activity, procrastination is one thing we can share. I don't know anyone - anyone who is not completely neurotic - who does not procrastinate at least a little. On second thought, those who seem never to procrastinate are procrastinating about getting help - after all, being perfect isn't normal.

Sexy Old Men?

My blogging friend Cher states a commonplace in response to my post about aging idols - all men become sexier as they age, she claims, including and especially Leonard Cohen. And while I might quibble about Cohen, - I have been an avid fan for 40 years, but think he seems a bit more old than sexy in recent photos- I'll grant her that one.

Men's sex appeal is not based as much on youtful attributes as is women's - childbearing, fertility, and culture being what they are. So men can stay on longer as sex idols, especially if they have been celebrated for their sex appeal in their youth. Leonard Cohen indeed was.

So Cher, I beg to differ on this one.

I rest my case.

Lennon, Kerouac, and Dad

John Lennon would have been 70 years old on Oct 9, 2010. Many expressed their surprise at this fact; they knew the date of his birth, but somehow couldn't readily accept that he would now be a senior.

I was surprised by people's surprise. For those of us who watched the Beatles' first appearance on Ed Sullivan, or felt smug when parents disapproved of the too long hair, or spent the entire sum of their birthday money on some of the Fab Four's records -  we have only to look in the mirror to get an idea, within a decade or so, anyway, of John's advancing age.

Then there are Paul and Ringo. It's not so much of a stretch to look at Paul and Ringo and imagine how John would look. George would have been 67 on his last birthday. No, I wasn't surprised at all, perhaps amazed that so much time had gone by in a flash, but not surprised by the age.

But Jack Kerouac is a different story. Kerouac died in 1969, at the age of 47. Bad boy and literary icon, he was frozen in time for me - Beatnik idol to future hippies, forever on the road, drinking and carousing, writing and experiencing.

Because he died just after I became a fan, he was more symbol than idol. Kerouac and his escapades, his road, were not part of my lived experience in the way the Beatles were.

Part of that difference was surely that between music and literature; never did anyone read Kerouac's work daily to millions in the way that disc jockeys played Beatles' music. And Kerouac's road was not the hippie road. Kerouac's road still had hobos and more than a touch of the depression era about it.

For the longest time, I admired Jack Kerouac's writing, the Beats' take on the world, never really thinking about context.

Then when my father turned 88 this summer, the math clicked into place. Jack Kerouac and my father were born in the same year; in fact, Kerouac would be older than my dad by a few months. As much as my father is my hero, he is not my idol for rebellion and bad behaviour, for being a proto-hippie, Beat poet/novelist, benzedrine-taking experimenter with prose.

When Kerouac was listening to Ginsberg reading at the famous Six Gallery, I was listening to my dad read to me. My early listening probably led to my love of Kerouac and all things literary.


So, when someone my age expresses surprise at how old John Lennon would be, I would like to suggest looking in the mirror. When anything makes me realize that Jack Kerouac would be older than my dad, though, I am and will stay, in shock.