Carver’s Dog

Mark Morford writes in today’s SF Gate (the online version of the venerable San Francisco Chronicle):

The Earth is humming. Singing. Churning out a tune without the aid of battery or string or wind-up mechanism and its song is ethereal and mystifying and very, very weird, a rather astonishing, newly discovered phenomena that’s not easily analyzed, but which, if you really let it sink into your consciousness, can change the way you look at everything.

Indeed, scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can’t really fathom it, so low it can’t be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, “like dozens of lazy hurricanes,” as one writer put it.

This dovetails nicely with a piece from Mick LaSalle’s SF Gate column last week, and apparently validates the philosophy behind one of the most famous paintings in the world:

I’m watching this really good multi-episode BBC series called “The Private Life of a Masterpiece,” just released on DVD, which has the stories behind various major art works. Maybe everybody knows this but me, but did you know, in Munch’s The Scream, the little guy isn’t the thing that’s screaming? It’s nature. It’s everything around him. Everything — the sky, the world — is screaming, and the little fellow is overwhelmed.

It was the product of an experience that Munch had, on that same spot, in which he felt (maybe even heard) the scream of the world, and he tried to reproduce the event for over a year, finally coming upon the idea of drawing himself, not as he looked, but how he felt.

The Morford piece, linked above, is well worth the read.

 They were savage and bitter, especially the middle-aged and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment. All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs … Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?

– The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

Pick up a rock in Hollywood, toss it in the air, and chances are pretty good that you’ll hit a Hollywood hopeful in the head. Some of these star-gazing dreamers and schemers have already had their brush with fame but they just haven’t realized yet that their moment has come and gone. Case in point: Ben Chapman. From the Internet Movie Database mini-biography:

Ben Chapman was born in Oakland, California, while his Tahitian parents were on a trip to the United States. He was raised in Tahiti, relocated to the U.S. in 1940 and went to school in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Working as a Tahitian dancer in nightclubs led to his first movie job, a bit in MGM’s “Pagan Love Song” (1950); other small film roles followed before Korean War duty temporarily sidetracked his modest screen career. Talent scouts from Universal-International “discovered” Chapman upon his return, and for a year he became a U-I stock player–and, at six-foot-five, an ideal choice for the finny title role in “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” (Chapman is the Creature in scenes where the camera is out of water; Ricou Browning is the Creature in scenes where the camera is underwater.) In his later years, Chapman frequently commuted to autograph shows in the mainland United States.

Chapman earned $300.00 a week in 1954 for his appearance as the gilled monster. He also appeared in “Ma and Pa Kettle At Waikiki” (1955) and “Jungle Moon Men” (1955). And that was about it for Mr. Chapman’s brush with fame.

Chapman, who passed away at his Oahu home on February 21, was also a decorated war hero. Or so he claimed. From the For The Record section of the L.A. Times (03/20/08):

The obituary of Ben Chapman, who played the title character in the 1954 film “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”, in the Feb. 24 California section said that as a Marine in the Korean War he received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. Chapman did not receive the awards he claimed to have earned, according to Marine Corps officials and a copy of Chapman’s military Report on Separation, the Marine Corps Times reported this week.

All you can do sometimes is sadly shake your head.

One of the most difficult aspects of caring for an ailing elder parent is getting their shattered financial affairs in order. As I try to pay down my mom’s Past Due accounts I find that there’s no comfort zone to speak of; the moment I think I have everything paid off — bam! — the mailman delivers a surprise.

Today’s unpleasant surprise was a solicitation from the local PBS affiliate. It turns out that mom has been making regular donations; in fact, she has an “annual membership” with PBS Las Vegas. Okay. Fine. But first of all, she doesn’t even watch public broadcasting. She’s addicted — and I mean addicted — to Court TV.

Don’t get me wrong. I love PBS. I grew up with their programming. As a teen PBS introduced me to Monty Python’s Flying Circus and repeat broadcasts of The Ernie Kovacs Show. In my later years I have greatly enjoyed the Masterpiece Theater imports — my favorite being the magnificent Foyle’s War – and the American Masters series. But is the Corporation For Public Broadcasting even relevant today?

There was a time when PBS filled a void in television programming. But today? You want wildlife documentaries? Go to the National Geographic Channel or Animal Planet. Educational programing? It’s all over the channel line-up: Discovery, The Travel Channel, History Channel. We have 24-hour channels devoted to cooking, gardening, children’s programming, politics.

So, I ask you: Who the hell needs PBS in the 21st century?

Today a horror unfolded before my eyes as I surfed and worked on the web. It began with a wire service news story early in the morning: Mystery Surrounds Swayze’s Health. The wires were quoting a National Enquirer story that Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last month and had a mere five weeks remaining in his life. Swayze was undergoing treatments at Stanford University, the reports informed, but the cancer was most certainly spreading and threatening to take the marquee idol down.

Mind you, this was not in the Entertainment News headlines but the national headers. A bummer most certainly for Swayze’s family and Swayze himself, I thought, and I suppose for the legions of Swayze’s fans because most idolators think they own their idols and grieve their loss as deeply as if they were their own family members. I went about my business and didn’t give the Patrick Swayze story another thought – if it’s true, I thought, I mean, consider the source — until I suddenly noticed that the story, after appearing on the Associated Press wires, was popping up all over the World Wide Web like a bad cold. Everyone from People magazine online to dozens and dozens of blogs were sounding the alarms over an unverified report that the film actor was in ailing health.

Imagine being Patrick Swayze at this point: Your phone rings. You recognize the caller as a friend so you answer. “Hello?”

“Dude! You gotta get online right this minute. It’s everywhere. News about your cancer, it’s spreading all over the Web.”

Sure enough, Swayze’s handlers came out to play late in the afternoon, issuing a statement confirming that Swayze is at war with an insidious illness, he is indeed undergoing treatment, and things are not quite so grim as the Enquirer let on but the prognosis isn’t all that great either. The 55-year-old performer will continue with his curent work projects, the statement informed us, and expressed the family’s “deep appreciation (of the) outpouring of support and concern” received from the public. In other words, the Swayze family was forced to play their hand and publicly acknowledge that the rumors flying everywhere at the speed of a bullet that could kill Superman were indeed true.

What a gruesome lot we humans are. The media informs us, through rumor and innuendo at first, that a celebrity is suffering from an incurable illness. They tell us this not because they think it’s important but because we, the media consumers, have informed them that stories such as these compel us.

A friend informed me this evening that the importance of news stories like this is “that it gives those so inclined, fans and friends, the opportunity to pray” for the ill and dying public figure. I suppose she is right but it also fixes in my mind, and I’m sure in the minds of others, the vivid image of a man in horrendous pain and suffering, his mind probably tortured by thoughts of mortality and nagging questions about the concept of life after organic death, undergoing invasive medical procedures, trying to enjoy the time that he has left, time that is now being counted down by the media and the public. If I want to carry a memory of Patrick Swayze in my head it is the image of a movie star whose work I wasn’t terribly fond of but I do not value acquiring the knowledge, through the media, that the man, that any person, is suffering from a debilitating and ultimately killing disease.

Perhaps I understand suffering too well. Suffering is an unpleasant activity that can only be engaged, I am inclined to believe, as a solitary affair. Illness and pain is private and personal. To find oneself separated from, as novelist John Updike calls them, “the happy herds of the healthy” is a lonely place to be.

Updike, like myself, suffers from severe psoriasis, a disease that is not, despite common misconceptions, a dermatological illness but a flaw in the immune system. It is chronic and variable and is unique, researchers have noted, among writers and artists. As Updike observed in At War With My Skin: “What was my creativity, my relentless need to produce, but a parody of my skin’s embarrassing overproduction?” From “The Hidden Delight of Psoriasis” in the Boston Medical Journal:

In addition to The Centaur, Updike devoted the novella From the Journal of a Leper to psoriasis. This is the diary of an anonymous, bumptious potter; 70% of his body is covered in psoriasis plaques. The diary begins as he starts treatment with PUVA (Ultra Violet Light). “Falling in love with the lights,” as he calls it. The basis of the story is the erotic profile of the patient with psoriasis: “Lusty, though we are loathsome to love. Keen-sighted, though we hate to look upon ourselves.” Initially, he looks at women with desire; he loves Carlotta, his mistress, longs to hide between the breasts of a waitress, lusts after the nurse with the body of a puma, and dreams about a female fellow patient. But as his skin clears up, Carlotta—who has saintly tendencies—cools on him, once he no longer has the affliction. From his part he becomes less and less interested in women. When he lies next to her with a clear skin, he discovers blemishes and spots on her skin, which once seemed so flawless. But while she loved him throughout the previous years (in the morning she would carefully brush his flakes off her body), the pale fire of his sexual desire dulls. And there is an artistic transformation worked on him by his cure as well. He loses perfectionism as a potter. He needed the affliction to create great art in compensation.

Severe psoriasis, which I have been at war with since 2000, is the outward manifestation of one hell of an inward battle, a wrestling match between the psyche, a hyperdrive, drive, drive to create (which Freud would probably label under his Death Drive construct), and the immune system shouting “Enough already!” British writer Dennis Potter captured the suffering of the severe psoriatic brilliantly in The Singing Detective. From the BMJ:

The television series The Singing Detective—based on a scenario by Dennis Potter —has had a great impact; patients call it an important source of information and doctors even recommend it as such. The main character, Philip Marlow, is a former writer of detective stories, who has been admitted to a hospital with a severe arthritis psoriatica. Potter introduces him as follows: “Marlow is glowering morosely, crumpled into himself, and his face badly disfigured with a ragingly acute psoriasis, which looks as though boiling oil has been thrown over him.” He is an example of extreme psoriasis at its worst, “cracked, scabbed, scaled, swollen, scarlet and snowy white and boiling with pain.” His medical history is impressive: coal tar, prednisone, corticosteroids, gold injections, and methotrexate, after a positive liver biopsy. All this in a cocktail with barbiturates and antidepressants. He is in agony. His ex-wife is revolted by him because he looks like a burns victim. This gains her torments of abuse from Marlow with his blinding rage.

Potter was writing from personal experience. Unlike his Chandler-esque creation, Marlow, who eventually learns that chronic illness can often be a hiding place from psychological torments and goes on to conquer or at least control his disease, Potter eventually succumbed to liver cancer as a lethal side effect of methotrexate, often considered the drug of last resort for severe psoriatics. I’ve been on doctor-ordered methotrexate since November of ‘07. Over time, the medication could shorten my life span. The medical literature underscores this point. And while I am still wearing the scars of psoriasis and have lesions here and there and painful plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis that compels me to walk with a cane, I am not suffering as I once did with high fevers and endless bouts of insomnia and pain that renders impossible simple tasks like pouring a glass of water or tying one’s own shoes (well, I still can’t do that).

Like Potter, I’ve channeled my bouts with chronic illness into fiction, most notably in the Trace stories, but words cannot convey the agony that severe psoriasis can sometimes be. And messing about with desperate drugs like methotrexate certainly makes Jack London’s The Noseless One inch closer and closer to your ear. But even though I made my illness public through my writing, as the Swayze family was compelled to do this afternoon, the pain and torment I often endure is a privately felt matter. How can it be otherwise? Why should it be otherwise? Whether we accept it or not, life is a solipsistic affair: only the self exists, or can be proved to exist. I’m speculating here, of course, that Mr. Swayze is or may be in a state of suffering. Perhaps, God willing,  he’ll endure the process without an ounce of pain. But if the contrary is true, then that’s a very private matter and not fodder for anyone’s consumption except himself and those nearest to him.

 Some interesting authorial news today. First up, is a little something from the Who Knew She Was Still Alive Department:

Novelist Phyllis A. Whitney, whose romantic suspense tales sold millions of copies and earned her top accolades from the Mystery Writers of America, has died. She was 104.

Whitney died Feb. 8 in a Charlottesville (Virginia) hospital, not far from her home in Nelson County, her son-in-law, Ed Pearson, said Thursday.

Whitney wrote more than 75 books, including three textbooks, and had about a hundred short stories published since the 1940s.

“I’ve slowed down in that I only write one book a year,” she said in a 1989 interview with The Associated Press, when she was 85. “A writer is what I am.”

Whitney’s last novel, “Amethyst Dreams,” was published in 1997. She began working on her autobiography at 102.

The grand old dame won a coveted Edgar Award some years back. Suddenly I feel like such a slacker.

It turns out that Ian McEwan was really impressed with the film adaptation of his novel “Atonement.” From USA Today:

McEwan says he was initially skeptical of the movie’s $40 million budget, worrying that the big investment would allow commercial considerations, such as pressure to cast marketable stars, to trump artistic integrity. But, he says, “all my fears were allayed.”

He typically regards film as “inferior” to books because “you cannot give the reader the fine print of consciousness. You cannot convey that sense of the onward rush of thought and feeling that you can in a novel.”

McEwan’s novels are an acquired taste. I’m right down the middle with the guy. “Saturday” was impressive and his new release, “On Chesil Beach”, was terrific. However, “Atonement” and “Amsterdam” were truly what-the-hell-are-people-thinking-when-they-praise-this-guy material for me.

But at least McEwan strives, sometimes self-conciously, to create literary fiction, which is more than we can say for John Grisham, right? Right. From the AP:

NEW YORK — Some things John Grisham knows: He got 15 rejections before his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. He made $9 million last year. He’s not James Joyce or William Faulkner. He’s an entertainer.

“I’m not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction,” the mega-selling author says. “I can assure you I don’t take myself serious enough to think I’m writing literary fiction and stuff that’s going to be remembered in 50 years. I’m not going to be here in 50 years; I don’t care if I’m remembered or not. It’s pure entertainment.”

Oh God. I just had a horrible thought. What if Grisham continues churning out potboilers until he’s 104? By the way, he just commenced work on his twenty-second book. There’s that “slacker” voice shouting at me again.

Speaking of voices, have you ever wondered what Jack London’s voice sounded like? Well, wonder no longer, you gold seekers and oyster pirates, as the Daily Californian tells us:

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have restored a voice recording of author Jack London’s voice, making it available to modern audiences.

The restoration, which is currently being touched up by a research team at the lab, provides a 1915 recording of a letter by the author.

The audio playback contains a dictated letter London addressed to fellow writer Max Ehrmann discussing the conditions of state prisons and supporting the claims that London made in his novel “The Star Rover.”

“Just a rush letter, ere I sail for Hawaii,” London says in the recording. “Merely want to tell you that everything concerning California prisons in ‘The Star Rover’ is true.”

More details on the restoration process can be found here.

And finally there’s this nugget of Nabokov news from the UK Times Online:

It is one of the most heated debates in contemporary literature: should Vladimir Nabokov’s final and incomplete novel be destroyed, as the author explicitly requested?

Fresh details of “The Original of Laura” — Nabokov’s last significant work — are revealed in times2 today, reviving a debate about the rights of an author to insist on his or her work being destroyed posthumously.

Novelist John Banville, winner of the Man Booker Prize for “The Sea”, says the book is worth salvaging and playwright Tom Stoppard insists the manuscript should be destroyed. The lively debate is here.