Puzzling

One of the unexpected things about parenting is teaching another human about how to do stuff that we take for granted. And I'm not talking things like riding a bike. I mean turning the light off when you leave the room, changing the channel on the TV or brushing one's teeth. One of the things we're examining now is how to work puzzles. What do you do first? You find the edge pieces, the ones that have one straight side. And when you have them all, you put them together and then you fill in the rest.

Right now I have two stories with no edge pieces. There is a certain liberation in simply sitting down and writing whatever the hell you want, especially when what comes out is good. But I have two little sprouts of stories, or maybe they're not even the germinal parts of the stories but a scene therein. I have no idea.

This is unusual for me because I most often start my writing with the edge pieces. The middle of the story may change as I fit the pieces in, but usually I start from a structure, a shape of some kind, and work my way in. This is entirely new to me. (And not the most productive use of time, considering that I should be studying or revising the Third Novel. What can you do? Some things just have to be written.)

Playing: Chopin, Sonata No. 3; Martha Argerich.
Today's short story: "Nighthawks," Stuart Dybek.

My brain hurts

Studying for the CFA exam so far has been a lot of memorization, mostly of formulas. The discounted cash flows and time value of money applications are not challenging, because you can get the calculator to do that stuff for you. The calculator, however, will not help you do the probability stuff. Yikes. I'm finally starting to get a grip on what's wanted here, but I had to go back and do the first part of the probability lesson over again.

It helps little that most of the time this past weekend that I wanted to study was consumed with arbitration of the likes of "Daddy, he took my crayon!" Expressed as a probability, P(S|A) < 0.1, where S = study and A = arbitration. This has likely contributed to my cranial pain.

And for recreation I have been reading more short fiction because, well, honestly, I don't have to remember as much each time I come to the book. This week I've been working on Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago. Most of these stories are of the sort I bemoaned several weeks ago, meandering ruminations on family and growing up. But I can't put the thing down. I have no idea how these work, but I have no trouble "getting" Dybek's characters. The Coast of Chicago features several longer stories interleaved with flash pieces, the best of which, "Bottle Caps," is barely 500 words long. Highly recommended, and I'd also suggest tracking down Dybek's "We Didn't," a fabulous short story that isn't part of this collection that I have set aside to read when I get done here.

Playing: Johann Strauss II, Vienna Blood (Waltz); Strauss Festival Orchestra, Andre Lenard. I love these pieces. Everyone knows them, whether they know it or not. They've become cultural wallpaper. But Strauss was a popular and critical success in his time: Wagner was an admirer, and Brahms told friends that he wished he could have written the melody to The Blue Danube Waltz.
Reading: The Coast of Chicago; Jerusalem Inn, Martha Grimes.
Studying: Common Probability Distributions.

Avoiding relegation: A 12-step program

1. Don't start Alan Smith.

2. Don't start wingers at left back.

3. Pair Michael Owen with a striker who might actually hold the ball up in front of goal.

4. Therefore, don't start Alan Smith.

5. Pluck your koras, strike the balafons, and start Beye and Faye in defense.

6. Don't start Joey Barton.

7. Give David Edgar a chance.

8. Don't start Alan Smith.

9. Forbid Duff and Milner to take shots. Make them run the field and fire in crosses to Owen, who only scores on headers now anyway.

10. Don't start N'Zogbia in defense.

11. Pray that Stephen Carr's injury is healed in time for June.

12. Don't start Alan Smith.

Perhaps you can tell, but I think selection has been one of the more significant problems for Newcastle United of late. Look, if Tottenham can win the Carling Cup after their fiasco in the fall, surely Newcastle United can avoid relegation.

Thoughts on Zeroville

There are several things I want to say about Steve Erickson's Zeroville, but none of them really describe what's going on here. The first would be that you really need to love and know vintage movies to get this, but that's not entirely true. Yes, it would add to the experience to know the difference between Rio Bravo and Red River, and to understand what Vikar means when he says that Travis Bickle is in another movie where he's a boxer. But that's also completely unnecessary to get into the quest--and that's what this story is, a quest--that Vikar undertakes. The second is that this story, with its piles upon piles of coincidence, wonder and desperation reminds me, more than any other book, of House of Leaves. I think Vikar and Johnny have a lot in common, but Vikar's quest is absent the unnamed menace of Johnny's.

Vikar knows movies. In fact, that's all he knows. He finds his feelings in them, but learns how to communicate with others not through what is said during movies but rather what the people around him say about the movies. That's the thing about Erickson's writing that makes this book so hard to pin down: it's not a book about the movies, it's a book about how we feel about the movies. And in a way, it's a book about how the movies feel about us. Vikar gives his whole life to unspooling a cosmic reel of questions--saying that makes the book sound lofty and sanctimonious, but Erickson brings it down to earth with the grit of Vikar's obsessions, appetites and fears.

Like House of Leaves, I'm still not entirely sure that what I have written about Zeroville is even accurate. But to its credit the book was fun to read, even through its ruminations on God and sacrifice, so that I am ready to revisit this, and soon.

Thanks for sending this my way, Andy.

Highly recommended: GOOD ENOUGH TO BUY

Observations, 2/19/2008

1. The Hall of Fame is diminished by Joe Nuxhall's absence, not the other way around.

2. Still having that problem with endings. I just finished the Big Revision on the Third Novel, but the ending seems a bit flat, even to me. And I had a short story rejected today with a similar complaint. I'm glad to be able to enumerate this weakness, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Is it simply a matter of raising the stakes? Is it a pacing issue? Am I simply writing until I run out of ideas? Answers to all these and more on the next installment of HOW NOT TO SELL YOUR WRITING...

3. Just as I complain about the lack of short fiction with strong conflict, the Washington Post Magazine comes out with its Valentine's Day Fiction Issue. Now, the seasonal emphasis on love stories (of one kind or another) makes the conflict all the more important as part of the plot, but the stories here were all very nice, especially the Fiction Contest winner's. Dean Hebert's "Love Is Kryptonite" is his first published work, too.

Playing: "Basie, Straight Ahead"
Reading: Zeroville, Steven Erickson
Studying: Statistical Concepts and Market Returns

At my expense

What a rotten week. We were sick. It was cold. I didn't get anything done. Glad that's over.

I did get a haircut. But I did not know that "short" is apparently the Korean word for "bald." If I had, perhaps I'd not have wound up with the closest haircut I've ever had. It doesn't look bad. Just different. There's nothing to be done--short of some foolish rearrangement of the geography of my coiffure--to hide the thinning areas of my hair anyway.

However, having a two-year old point this out is something else again. I bent over to help Madeleine with something, and she looked at the top of my head and asked, "Daddy, why is there a hole in your hair?"

The best response I could come up with, albeit much later, was that her older brother had done it.

Playing: Bach-Busoni, Chaconne, BWV 1004; Helene Grimaud.
Reading: Zeroville, Steve Erickson
Studying: Discounted Cash Flow applications

The enemy of my enemy

Oddly enough I find myself wanting to cheer for Fulham this afternoon, only so that Boro don't take all three points and wide up higher in the table than Newcastle. On the other hand, Fulham need to stay in the drop zone and keep that cutoff level as low as possible, and in truth it doesn't really matter if Newcastle are 12th or 13th--so long as they aren't 18th. It was never a great likelihood that Newcastle would take points from the Villans, but even so these second-half collapses are tiresome. Trent's right: it sucks to write off an entire half season, but there it is. I said at the end of the season last year that Newcastle's team would look much different this year from the shambles that it was last year. Different, yes, but still a shambles. (Note in the above picture of John Carew having his way with Newcastle from the spot that Alan Smith is still in our XI. Need I say more?)

And noting that, and another season without European play, I have to wonder what Keegan's prospects for bringing on new players will be. Discussion I've seen on this topic ranges from pie-in-the-sky estimations of Keegan's appeal and Mike Ashley's purse to dire predictions of consistent snubs from prospective signings, be it truly big names or "merely" quality players like Jonathan Woodgate.

Here's looking forward to August (while hoping against reason that Citeh and Blackburn can smite the giants this weekend).

Unrelated, I'm also looking forward to an end to the writers' strike. Obviously, I would like the writers to get a better deal and get back to work. From a purely selfish perspective, I'd really like to see new episodes of Bones.

There was (some) cleaning

But mostly there was studying for the CFA exam. The scope of this endeavor is immense, and I have chosen to scale back from some of my activities to be sure that I am preparing as fully as needed. Most people who take this exam spend the first part of their time reviewing what they learned in business school. Alas, I don't have any what-I-learned-in-business-school. And I don't really want any. So I study.

I have carved out some time to keep reading, though I am really trying to limit myself to books I already own and haven't read. And as it happens I have been reading a lot of short fiction again. (I seem always to start the year that way and then shift more to novels and the year wears on. I have no explanation.) I discover that I am a reader who needs a plot. I prefer conflict to angst, struggle to ennui. That's hard to capture in a short piece, especially something less than 4,000 or 5,000 words, which is where many publications would prefer their fiction to be for a variety of editorial reasons. But that's okay, because in many cases that conflict and drive of plot don't seem to be in all that great demand. Which is not to say that my refined tastes are "right" and that the editors and authors of short fiction of another ilk are "wrong," or that I don't enjoy an honest Whiskey Tango Foxtrot story that is well made (like Jeff Ford's "The Bedroom Light"). It's just that I don't see a whole lot of strongly plotted short writing anywhere, literary, genre or otherwise.

(An example of this done well is Holly Phillips' "The Oracle Spoke" at Clarkesworld.)

And so, back in tomorrow for more cleaning and studying--and Lord willing and the creek don't rise, some writing.

Playing: Chopin, Polonaise in A; Vladimir Horowitz.
Today's short story: "Reconstruction," Sam Shaw in Best American Mystery Stories 2005
Studying: CFA Level 1, Economics, Quantitative Methods

There will be cleaning

Wednesday brings this month's work deadline, so Thursday is the Day of Excavation.

Lots of folks can function with a shambolic work space. I can, and in fact I do for great stretches of time. But there is so much going on for me this year that if I don't get my stuff together, literally, I'll never find any of it. So Thursday will include such exciting activities as filing away ALL of the various statements (bank, brokerage and bills), removing the extraneous furniture from the office (a crib mattress and folding chairs), culling from the various piles and hangings those of my children's art works that aren't seminal in their respective oeuvres (don't worry, Dad, I'll send you some of what I don't keep), and sorting out my books from borrowed books from library books from books that are going away.

And as I keep assuring Lera, once I get my office squared away I can then transfer my attention to other parts of the house.

(One could wish that Microsoft would take the same approach: fix their own mess before jumping in to fix Yahoo's.)

Playing: "George's Dilemma," Clifford Brown
Today's short story: "Cruisers," John Sayles in Best American Mystery Stories 2005
Studying: CFA Level I Study Notes: Economics. The previous section, Ethics, might well have been rendered far more elegantly as "Don't be an ass."

Snatching defeat from the hands of victory

The only thing I really need to say about the draw with Boro is at least I didn't waste any time watching it on TV.

What I find myself wanting to say is that this team is not good. They just aren't, and I don't really get that. This is why Newcastle fans are so beside themselves. These players aren't bad. But they consistently act like they have no idea what they are doing. Is giving Keegan time to drill into them his "program" really going to change that? And can it really be such a difficult prescription to swallow that they can't manage to even keep out of each other's way? The worst offenders there are Duff and Milner, ostensibly two of the best players on the team. I don't get it.

Fortunately, there's really only one space up for grabs in the relegation scrap, and that's going down between Sunderland, Reading and Birmingham--all of whom we have yet to play and from whom we need to beat a full measure of points.

Playing: "Sway," Rosemary Clooney.