Dear Catherine,

I'm tired of living day to day, willy nilly, mollycoddling myself, featherbedding my every whim, checkbook open. I have taken an informal vow of cheapness, which involves cooking my own food and going to the library instead of the bookstore, and another vow of self-education, which involves chosing which books I'll read over the next 5-10 years.

I find real satisfaction in tallying up the low cost of a cooked dinner. Baked chicken legs with garlic, pepper, rosemary, rice, chopped vegetables, and vermicelli: $4.50. That's what I cooked tonight, tearing the skin off the chicken before it went into the oven. 2 friends called while I was cooking and I punctuated my conversation with the sound of the oven opening and closing. I let one friend hear the sizzle of chicken grease in the pan.

I'm an unimaginative cook. I cook based on memories of my mother cooking when I was 10 and 11. She put animal parts in a pan with rice and vegetables and put the pan in the oven. Then we'd all have a fight, my father, my mother, and I. It only took ten minutes to eat and fight, and then I could go do something else. Now, 15 years later, I have a good relationship with my oven, and since I usually eat alone I fight less. The oven is small and clean, white enameled, tucked in a corner behind the fridge, connected to the stainless steel sink by an inch of laquered plywood.

Someone who had a bad relationship with her oven is Sylvia Plath. I won't have that problem. There just isn't room for my head in there, and I couldn't really fit around the fridge to get the angle right.

(Fact: Ted Hughes, Yoko Ono, and Tess Gallagher were/are the three most annoying surviving spouses on planet earth. Each of them has gotten much more mileage out of being married to someone talented than is deserved.)

I found some cranberry sauce in the cuboard and sat down to read the 2nd chapter of Ulysses, where Stephen is teaching a class of thickheaded boys who want to go play British field hockey.

James Joyce has moved into my small apartment and is sleeping on my futon. My next-door neighbor and I went out last night to Sparky's, the bar 2 blocks from here where they let in dogs, and discussed the 1st chapter, "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...." Our rule is "1 chapter a week or more, no pussying out." When we're done with Ulysses (with diversions for The Odyssey and Hamlet, to get close to the allusions), we're going to take a break for Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Philip K. Dick, one novel from each each week, and then we're going to tackle Being and Time, which is a true absolute cocksucking monster of a book. My neighbor started it and got to p 150; I started it and got to p 3. We'll probably have to backtrack and read Being and Nothingness, and I have a cartoon book about Heidigger that I'll need to get moving. I like those cartoon books about great historical thinkers, even if I get embarassed reading them on the Ftrain.

We'd started the night at RobotWisdom's James Joyce pages, to look at the pictures of the Martello Tower, where Joyce lived and where the book opens. My neighbor was taken aback by the density of Jorn Barger's Joyce site, which includes links to multiple views of the tower, as well as copious annotations and a plethora of other material unmatched on the Web.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "1 person did this? Is he crazy? Is he fucking schizo?"

"He has a beard," I said. "I think he's just very dedicated. There's a Finnegan's Wake search engine, and there's a lot of tips for beginners. And here's a picture of Gogarty, who's actually Mulligan."

"Is there a picure of Haines?"

"I don't know who Haines was really....if there is it's probably there. Look, there's Joyce's manuscript doodle of what Bloom looks like. He's got links to all the songs, too."

"When do we get to Bloom?"

"Chapter 4 or 5, I think."

"All the pages are green for Ireland. Is he a professor?"

"No. I don't even know if he went to grad school. I can't tell what he does. That's the sum of several year's work you're looking at, though. It makes you wonder why they don't give a grad class an assignment, they don't say, 'go, build a really powerful Edith Wharton or Charles Brockton Brown resource, or Joseph Conrad, and use this Joyce resource as an example.' And the professor could be a sort of project manager. Or a sociology search engine, or a history resource, or do some stuff with textual criticism. They are doing some stuff at Virginia, Jerome McGann is. That man's like a God. A textual criticism monster. If grad school was like that - real research with utility and value, with grad schools working together on the Web to build public resources in a topic - which would allow academics to network early, get their ideas, I'd be much more interested in going. But instead it's just so much motherfucking."

My NDN said, "Professors aren't creative enough to come up with something like this. They're too busy inside the department to see anything else could have consequence. And they've given up, most of them. They're like lapsed Jesuits who got too smart to believe but too dumb to get out. Half-Joyces. Especially in the humanities. When I was in grad school [for history] I realized that everyone who had their own ideas was quitting when they got their MA because they couldn't take it and everyone who could do the really dry, repetitive, meaningless work was sticking for the PhD. Which is why I got the MA and got out."

"This site's the exception," I said. "Most of the resources out there on the Web are bullshit, either hobbyists with little critical background or learnèd societies that don't share the ideas online. Like for Thomas Hardy, or Conrad. The Web is no place for lit, really. Compared to a good-sized University library."

At Sparky's, a squat brown-and-white bulldog stomped near our table and sat for a moment, a long string of drool lingering out of its jaws, and then a woman at the next table began to slap her thigh until he lumbered over to her, licking the back of her hand. Another woman said something sexual - I couldn't hear anything but the word "lick" - and all five women crowded around that table laughed.

I am serious about Joyce this time around; I've weaseled out of Ulysses three times before, reading most of it over the last 5 years and comprehending less, and my neighbor and I have each promised to make the other feel like a goodfornothing if he doesn't get the reading done. At our table, scratched soft wood, I had a stack of 4 books: Ulysses, Ulysses Annotated, The Bloomsday Book, and the Ellman biography of Joyce. I know I look like a complete jackass, drinking Harp with my portable library by my elbow, but at least I wasn't watching the Yankees or stretched on the bed with the newspaper. We each smoked an Ashton cigar from my tupperware-with-a-yellow-sponge-and-cedar humidor. The women from the nearby table stared disapprovingly at the smoke.

--It says here the green jewel in the silver cigarette case represents Ireland.

--No, no, fuck that, said my next-door neighbor. That critic's a cocksucker. It's not Ireland.

--Cocksucker, definitely. But right. Joyce does this, and it's Haines offering him the cigarette. Haines is British. So yes. It probably does mean something.

My neighbor breathed out a long cloud.

--Jesus Christ, does it go on forever? Is everything a symbol? And then there's the two masters, the Italian and the Britishman...

--And the one for odd jobs is Ireland, I said. I remember from Dr. Greiff's English 461.

We ended up ordering a beer that tasted like bubblegum. Delirium Tremens. It was awful, filthy, and pink.

We came to some conclusions, and then we came back and watched the end of the Yankees. I decided when my neighbor left that I must take a vow to drink one day a week and no more. I've been drinking "to take the edge off," which considering I'm unemployed, work 3 hours a day for my clients, and spend the rest of my time "thinking" and "writing" isn't really excusable. About 1200 calories in my already hypercaloric and underathletic day come from Corona, Budweiser, Labatts, and El Presidente, and my postal-approved leather belt has begun to impede breathing, leaving a big red stripe around my already fat stomach when I take it off.

Damn.

In other and related news, Ulysses is part of a trend. I am developing a curriculum for my next 5-10 years, figuring out what books I want to read.

There are many canons, and I don't know if I like just one. I found the ML 100 great nonfiction books, ML 100 great novels, great science books of the century, and Harold Bloom's canon. this general canon resource. I have some problems with the idea of "great books," but that's for another email.

I'm also seeking a patron, of course. But isn't everyone? I wish there was some sort of patron/writer resource out there. Why don't all these jackoff dotcommers create a Web site that matches Renaissance-style wealthy patrons of the arts with needy artists who are sick of writing copy and living in a shoebox in Brooklyn and just want to read books and write touching stories with a slightly forced style? I'm perfect for patronage. I have nothing but the highest respect for capitalism and corporations, you know. I'm not even a hypocritical commie artist biting the fiscal teat of the patron who might feeds me.

I should probably go back to work, get on a schedule, but I just can't help myself; I get behind a desk and I get so depressed I'm not functional. I'm only happy, now, fooling around with words, and only certain words will come out of it, not even the words I really want.

This was originally a Web-based form, but it broke when I converted the archives, and I don't have the energy to re-construct it.
PatronMatch.com! The Ultimate Patronage Matching Tool
Please select your discipline.

Abstract Painter Performance Artist Writer, Historical Verse Epics Poet, Irish Composer, atonal Ethnomusicologist specializing in birdsong Topiarist Creative Web Type Not sure, but good-looking

Gender (you may check more than one)
Male
Female
Other

Compatibility
I will have sex with my patron if they are of the same sex.
I will have sex with my patron if they are of the opposite sex.
I will not have sex with my patron.

I do not mind blowing salty old men.
I am suitable for dinner parties.
I am gay enough to be a walker.

Considerations
I may insert a yam into my vagina for artistic purposes.
I will steal your silver.
I require cocaine.

Financial Concerns
I require housing.
I do not require housing.

I am looking for an annual stipend of:
Food and a cheap apartment
$10,000
$20,000
$30,000
$40,000
$50,000+

Gender (you may check more than one)
Male
Female
Other

Compatibility
I will have sex with my patron if they are of the same sex.
I will have sex with my patron if they are of the opposite sex.
I will not have sex with my patron.

I do not mind blowing salty old men.
I am suitable for dinner parties.
I am gay enough to be a walker.

Considerations
I may insert a yam into my vagina for artistic purposes.
I will steal your silver.
I require cocaine.

Financial Concerns
I require housing.
I do not require housing.

I am looking for an annual stipend of:
Food and a cheap apartment
$10,000
$20,000
$30,000
$40,000
$50,000+

Yes, well, I won't hold my breath on patronage. Here is my current first stab at some of the books in my tentative canon for the next decade, a few minutes of brainstorming. This is about 1/10 of the way there, I think. This canon assumes that I can work around 4 hours a day exclusively on reading and learning (my secret goal). I have decided it's better to be poor and creative (at least for now) than bland, whether the blandness is academic or corporate.

Areopagitica, John Milton
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Fanny Hill, John Cleland
Call of the Wild, Jack London
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Can Such Things Be?, Ambrose Bierce
State and Revolution, Lenin
Lady Chatterley's Love, D.H. Lawerence
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Decameron, Bocaccio
Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
Wieland, The Transformation, Charles Brockton Brown
Carwin the Biloquist, Charles Brockton Brown
Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
Sartor Rasartus, Thomas Carlyle
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Notes on Life and Letters, Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea, Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
A Personal Record, Joseph Conrad
An Outcast of the Islands, Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Middlemarch, George Elliot
The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
Dubliners, James Joyce
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Ulysses, James Joyce
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Dostoevsky, The Brothers
Nathaniel Hawthorne
W. Somerset Maugham
G.B. Shaw
Herman Melville
H.L. Mencken
Guy de Maupassant
Pushkin
Gogol
Plato
The Cartoon History of the Universe I, Larry Gonick
The Cartoon History of the Universe II, Larry Gonick
The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume
Essays, Montaigne
Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell}
The People's History of the United States, Howard Zinnser (sp?)
The History, Herodotus
The Life of Johnson, Boswell
The Plays, William Shakespeare
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom
The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Lanham
Rhetoric, Aristotle
Poetics, Aristotle
Rhetoric and Composition for the Modern Student,
The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne C. Booth
The Rhetoric of Irony, Wayne C. Booth
I. A. Richards
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Marx for Beginners, Ruis
The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith
The Social Life of Information
Intellectual Capital
Mastering Algorithms with Perl
Algorithms (the big book with the Calder on it)
Something on AI
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, Larry Gonick
The Cartoon Guide to Physics, Larry Gonick
Q is for Quantum
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan
The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan

Usurper.

---

I'm reading a collection of essays on ethics, a textbook, and the WWII Holocaust is used as an example in many of the essays. Like many people, I'm fascinated by this particular Holocaust of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and other groups, but I'm also fascinated by others, like the Stalinist purges and the long period of American slavery, the attacks into China by the Japanese.

holocaust (n) -- an act of great destruction and loss of life

fascinated, hypnotized, hypnotised, mesmerized, mesmerised, spellbound, transfixed (adj) -- having your attention fixated as though by a spell

I was raised on these Holocausts. The mix of evil with fear, with a desire to not get involved. Apathy and cruelty. Numbness.

My mother looked at my brother's family: my brother, his wife, a six year old by, a three year old girl, and an infant girl. My mother said, "The baby and the three year old would go on the pile to be burnt. The six year old might live a while. Your brother's wife would go to the showers because of diabetes. Your brother might be given a chance to be a slave."

The Holocaust is everywhere, like dot-coms, like Christmas after Thanksgiving. I get tired of it, bored with the new books, articles, and films, sick of the Jews and the Germans together, tired of Hitler's meaty little face poking out. The History Channel is really the Hitler Channel.

Then comes Italian B-movie actor Roberto Benigni's uplifting film, Holocaust Lite, with Benigni interviewed everywhere, hopping from global media property to global media property, like a merry clown of death. Life is Beautiful. An inscription suitable for a Precious Moments Angel figurine, not for the title of a film about the Holocaust.

Life is Beautiful. Suddenly, the death of 10 million people could be seen as a parable of dignity and love in the face of great odds. And everyone clung to it; this was a Holocaust we could live with, where the human soul triumphed. A Holocaust to hang on the fridge next to "Footprints."

Which just depresses the hell out of me. Life is not actually beautiful. It contains beautiful moments, but to assign an overarching descriptor to life is ridiculous and trite; it's as ridiculous to say "life is horrible" or "life is all about dinner." There is a desire to manifest perceptions and hopes as truth, to believe our hearts. The Germans believed their hearts. They believed that ridiculous bullshit about Aryanism, because it felt good. It made them feel special, more human, unique, correct.

And motivated by that good feeling, they made sure their victims did not just starve; they were not simply marched from place to place and screamed at, forced to eat gruel. Their captors were not morally misguided, confused, comical bunglers, as in Life is Beautiful. For the Germans, starvation was too dignified, too simple. Instead, their victims were chased into trees and shot down; they were forced to drink water mixed with feces; the women were raped, then raped, then shot. Some children had their fingers chopped off, or their bowels filled with concrete, as college-trained scientists observed, and took notes. The language of these acts was dry, professional, well-constructed, corporate, typed up carefully with footnotes and excellent grammar, like the language here in Ftrain. But Life is Beautiful.

I think those idiot truisms are evil. "Life is beautiful." "Every cloud has a silver lining." "It all happens for a reason." These are words to cling to when you've committed yourself to a life of powerlessness, of accepting fate and blaming the world for your own mistakes.

The first time I read seriously about the Holocaust, that Holocaust, I was 14. I picked up Night at Second Reading bookstore in West Chester, PA, on High Street, where it sat in the "literature" paperbacks section by the door. I remember its binding, a late 1970s, early 1980s-style design, black lines and barbed wire with a human outline on a white background and the word Night in san-serif type with Elie Wiesel's name below. I haven't read the book since; I don't have it anymore, and when I think about its contents I can't believe it. It's fiction, horror-story nonsense. No one could do what the Nazis did. To consider it makes me numb, it makes me tired of the inventory of death and monstrish evil. What relevance could it have to my life, my place of birth? Why does it matter?

It's not like in America anyone would chain a black man to the rear fender of their pickup and drag him several miles, or as if the police in New York City would shoot black men indiscriminately.

After all, it was before my time, and not my responsibility. Oh, I forgot.

Each generation, the new bodies forget history, but old ideas never vanish. It never goes away. Slavery, as a fact, will never go away. Antisemitism is something we did. To create a new evil in the world, like the Nazis, is a lasting legacy; that evil as an idea will persist long after our current social order falls into the sea. Can you imagine a pile of babies in front of the gas chamber? I can't; I can't feel it other than a writhing, horrible thing, arms and legs, and yet the German soldiers observed it; eventually they burned it, buried it. I hate them so much thinking it through I envy them, the capacity to be so evil, to live so deeply and numbly in the core of your id, to see something like that and accept your culpability and not simply press a bullet to your temple. How could you go on living afterwards? How could the engineers of the Final Solution flee and make a new life for themselves, build houses, remarry?

The Nazis that fled to Argentina -- they believed they were right. I get so guilty over the ways I've hurt the feelings of others, or betrayed myself - maybe one or two people in my life have suffered real damage at my hands, never intentionally, but still, there it is - that I think about killing myself, at least once a day. I have a fantasy of a gun in my mouth, out of habit, at least every day. What kind of mouth could form the words, "I was only following orders" about a heap of infants? It makes no sense. I've never seen that kind of mouth.

Gandhi said that the Jews should have killed themselves, together, rather than gone to the death camps. He said it would have raised awareness.