IVP - Strangely Dim - July 2009 Archives

Escape from Precision

I t started out innocently enough. I wanted to post a quote from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan to my Facebook(tm) account, but I couldn't think of a way of conveniently including bibliographic data. So I settled on linking the name of his book to its Amazon.com(tm) page, with the presumption that interested readers could "search inside" to find the particular page number of the quotation. Here's the tricky thing: Amazon(tm), so far as I can tell, doesn't list the edition that I got from my library to read, so I just picked one of the editions available there and linked to it instead.

Then I wanted to "tweet" quotes from the book on Twitter(tm). There I'm limited to 140 characters per entry. "Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media" is itself 37 characters, which means I could quote roughly twelve words at a time while giving a sort of baseline bibliographic reference. So I settled for shorthand, depending on how long the quoted material was: anywhere from "Marshall McLuhan, UM" to "MM." I counted on the sheer volume of quotations, archived together sequentially in my Twitter feed, to acclimate readers to my source material.

But then occasionally I couldn't even recover two measly characters to anchor a particularly long quote with "MM." Heck, I couldn't even complete the quote. I was in negative Twittertory. So I had to get cre8ive:I took out spaces between punctuation,b/t lowercase & uppercase letters. I digested two pages of material with ellipses. And then I did it: "at" became "@"; "to" and "too" became "2"; "for" became "4"; & so on & so 4th.

But w8--there's more. I was reading in the car during a road trip and wanted to take notes, but I hadn't brought a pen or paper. (Remember, this was a library book--no underlining or dogearing allowed.) No problem--I pulled out my iPhone(tm) and used the "Notes" app to jot down quotes using the touchscreen QWERTY keypad. Oops! I misspelled something! No prob--the iPhone autocorrects miskeys, even going so far as to guess the word you're spelling so you don't have to waste so much time hunting and pecking. But then--oops! Marshall McLuhan misspelled something!

It turns out the third printing of the 1964 McGraw Hill(tm) hardback edition of Understanding Media has a scandalously large number of typos. It also turns out that it's painfully difficult to intentionally misspell something on the iPhone(tm). My notes, inadvertently, effectively serve to cover over the infelicities of the original edition.

Portrait artists, I'm told, used to do that when painting royalty, conveniently neglecting to paint warts and scars and mustaches onto the ladies and gentlemen of the court. But that was so they would get paid, or even so they wouldn't get their own heads cut off. Now we do it inadvertently, accidentally. Here's a sample text from Understanding Media in two forms--first in its original form (page 353 of the 1964 McGraw Hill[tm] edition) and then as it might appear posted from an iPhone(tm) to Twitter(tm)--in 2 posts, because it's 2 many characters 4 1:

Let us not forget that nationalism was a mighty invention and revolution that, in the Renaissance, wiped out many of the local regions and loyalties. It was a revolution achieved almost entirely by the speed-up of information by means of uniform movable types. Nationalism cut across most of the traditional power and cultural groupings that had slowly grown up in various regions. Mutli-nationalisms had long deprived Europe of its economic unity. The Common Market came to it only with the Second War. War is accelerated social change, as an explosion is an accelerated chemical reaction and movement of matter. (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media [New York: McGraw Hill, 1964], p. 353)

Nationalism...wiped out many of the local regions & loyalties.It was a revolution achieved almost entirely by...uniform movable types.McLuhanUM

Multinationalisms had long deprived Europe of ... economic unity. ... War is accelerated social change. Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding Media*

Note that mutli-nationalisms is corrected in its spelling and omits the hyphen. Elsewhere character spacing has been sacrificed, and an ampersand replaces the word and. The digital age has ushered in the end of precision, I tell you. What's an editor to do?!?

When I was a kid, during the years when preadolescents worried about global thermonuclear war, a girl loaned me a manuscript of a postapocalyptic novel. I liked her, so I read it. In it the main character, a little girl who had survived an atomic explosion, was learning to subsist by herself in a hostile environment. She journaled her way through it and decided, for the sake of efficiency, that she didn't need to use articles and other grammatical devices in her writing. "The dogs are coming for me" became "Dogs coming 4 me"; that sort of thing. It doesn't take an apocalypse, however, for this utility to become commonplace. Precision in prose--even the full development of a thought--has given way to the utility of text. "Dogs coming 4 me" is just the sort of thing a frightened child might text to her mom as she runs away from the neighbor's pit bull. Our communication patterns are catching up to the immediacy of our media, and along the way a little precision simply has to go by the wayside.

That's not all bad--not by a long shot. The more exciting aspect of this is that such a message presumes a response. No word is the final word. Mom might text back "Throw ur bk bg @ it" or "Shout 4 hlp frm some1." Should I post an incomplete thought from McLuhan or someone like him, someone might very well tweet back "What page is that quote on?" There's a feedback loop in the digital age that makes precision less pressing, complete thoughts less requisite.

I would imagine McLuhan himself would have a thought or 2 @ the subject, but the bottom line, I think, is this: Reading does not have to be, nor necessarily should it be, as secluded an exercise as we have come to think it is. Precision is a value, to be sure, but a lack of precision doesn't shut down a discussion, which is where all communication, I think, is headed.

***

This post originally appeared at my personal blog Loud Time. It's been modestly adapted here.

Onward and Upward

Sometimes, I've found, work just gets in the way of things. We didn't know what to get four siblings--ages eight to sixteen--for their birthdays, for example, so we decided to take them all to see Up, this summer's 3-D animated motion picture from Pixar. Nice sentiment, yes? Now all we had to do was figure out a time all four of them--not to mention my wife and I--would be available.

(Incidentally, "my wife and I" is a good indication that this Strangely Dim post was written by Dave, not by fellow contributors Lisa or Christa.)

Turns out that the only time we could come up with was middle of the day Wednesday. Turns out that would be OK, since my boss is out of the office and will never find out I played hooky because he doesn't read this blog and NONE OF MY READERS OR FELLOW CONTRIBUTORS WOULD EVER RAT ME OUT.

So Wednesday I escaped the IVP offices and drove out to Wheaton to pick up the kids, then to Downers Grove to see Up at the Tivoli Theater, a restored "classic" cinema with free refills on popcorn and drinks. On the weekends they precede shows with an old-fashioned organist (not one of those crazy futuristic organists like at other theaters), but this was a Wednesday noon show, which, it turns out, doesn't draw a lot of people. The six of us plopped down in the dead center of the theater, donned our 3-D glasses, slurped our drinks, gobbled our popcorn and enjoyed the show.

Up has, as is typical of Pixar films, an outlandish premise: an old man becomes fed up with the cold press of industrialization all around him and decides to escape to the South American rainforest via thousands of helium balloons attached to his house. A boy scout with an emotionally distant dad inadvertently stows away, and they become unlikely partners, house in tow, on a wild adventure. Like I said, outlandish.

Movies, it turns out, are escapist only when they don't deal with themes that you have a hard time dealing with. I, for example, have a hard time dealing with aging and death. Spend any amount of time rooting around in the Strangely Dim archives and that will become self-evident. So here I was, sitting in the middle of a theater in the middle of the day in the midst of four kids I've known since they were born, watching what was supposed to be a silly distraction from an otherwise burdensome day. And here I was, confronted with aging and death. Some kids' movie this was.

It really was quite a good movie, though. Pixar is well-practiced at telling very grown-up stories in a format suitable for children: from Toy Story to Wall-E and beyond, Pixar makes kids laugh and adults stroke their beards while laughing. Helium is a good medium for Up, because we're carried gently, quietly, almost imperceptibly along from seeing old age as a sad ending--a story of nothing but increasing loss and disappointment and marginalization--to seeing old age as just another chapter in the story that is being written with us as ink.

Up doesn't deny the age (and corresponding limitations) of its hero any more than it denies the sadness of his sidekick's homelife. And yet in true outlandish fashion we see this very old man haul a house across continents, we see him turn his walker into a weapon, we see him let go of his disappointments and embrace the next passage of his destiny. Outlandish? Yes. Effective? Yes.

I'm pretty sure I'm still closer in age to Up's sidekick than to its hero, and yet this question of aging still regularly nags at me. But, as I learned from Up and countless other life lessons, facing your fears, your disillusionments and even painful realities like aging and death often results in new adventures, new courage and, sometimes, whole new chapters in the story of your life. Not bad for a kids' cartoon.

 

My Summer Nemesis

Okay. Maybe The Brothers Karamazov isn't my nemesis per se, but this tome has been mocking me from my very tall bookshelf for at least six years. Every summer I take it down from its little perch and set it on top of the pile of books I hope to get through with all of the "extra time" summer inevitably provides for reading. And every year the summer draws to a close and The Brothers returns to its shelf unopened--except for three summers.

Each of the three years I tried to make good on my intention to read The Brothers, I made it a grand total of about fifty pages, at which point I invariably said to myself, I just can't give this the time it deserves. Grand justification, I think: it retains the bibliophile's piety while crediting the work with the appropriate amount of depth and complexity. I might have added, Really, I started reading it for the wrong reasons anyway.

There are lots of good reasons to read books--even long, foreign classics whose tonnage is comparable to that of a Sumo wrestler. Most of us know why we read--for education, for pleasure, for self-improvement or for vocational advancement. Self-torture is unlikely to make it into a list of reasons to read. In fact, if you're like me, you have a few shelves of books which you purchased in moments of enlightened clarity--books that you "should" read, books that you felt you "should want" to read. And so you bought them, and when you returned from that cloud of misty enlightenment you realized (maybe even after a few pages of dutiful reading) that you did not want to read those books at all. But maybe you would read them later. Or use them for reference. Or, perhaps their words would slip into your dreams by some form of literary osmosis as they lay stacked beside your bed.

When I think about The Brothers Karamazov, I invariably experience a wave of vague shame at my failure to make it to the end. Most other unread books have very little (if any) psychological effect on me. For whatever reason, this one has stuck with me, so this summer I decided to take it up again--largely due to the fact that a good friend had started reading the book, and I thought that I could count on that person to compare notes and progress with.

No such luck. She bailed on The Brothers and picked up Crime and Punishment instead. This made me curious to find out if Dostoevsky's tome has had this effect on others. I began to ask around to see if anyone else had finished the book. To date I know of one person who has, and he took it upon himself to read much of the Russian literary canon plus commentaries just for kicks and giggles. (Needless to say, pride prevents me from comparing notes with him.) Everyone else I've asked who started The Brothers at some point bailed on the project. One person even suggested that Russian literature is best read in winter. This leaves me in lonely straits.

But it does not leave me unresolved. I've started it, and this time I intend to finish it. In truth, this time around I've rather enjoyed the story. And anyway, maybe summer isn't complete without a summer dare. Since summer doesn't officially end until September 22, there is plenty of time to take this one up.

The Sausage of Summer

A few weekends ago I saw a billboard that almost begged to be blogged about on Strangely Dim as we contemplate summer. Huge letters imposed over a peaceful, scenic picture of . . . something (I don't actually remember the picture because I was distracted by the letters, but I know it was peaceful. And green.) boldly said "VACATIONVILLE." And then, much smaller but still large enough to read from the road (which is, after all, the point of billboards), I noticed "Johnsonville®" (read: "Sausage is all we do.") in the corner. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of vacation, I think of lounging by a beautiful lake or lying on a comfy couch with a stack of books next to me, or maybe eating homemade black cherry frozen yogurt. Call my crazy, but sausage doesn't come to mind. When I think of sausage, memories of youth-group pancake breakfasts and . . . well, only fundraiser pancake breakfasts emerge. Not vacation.

And, if we're talking about escaping (which is what we are talking about at Strangely Dim this summer), we have to bring up the topic of comfort food. But when I'm feeling particularly down, meat is not generally what I reach for. Chai and peanut butter cookies? Yes. Sausage? Well, maybe I'm in the minority here, but no.

However much their sign doesn't resonate with me, though, they raise a good point: Summer (like every season, admittedly) has special food--some of my favorites. I eagerly wait for strawberries and peaches and blueberries to appear and relish the taste of fresh fruit on yogurt, or in salads, or in desserts like shortcake which my sister and I make for dinner some nights using our grandmother's recipe. Fresh markets pop up in the suburbs, easing my homesickness for the farmstands of my growing-up days and offering us suburbanites an easier way to buy local. And, granted, the nicer weather offers barbecuers a plethora of opportunities to show off their skills with tongs and beef, chicken and, yes, sausage. There are new flavors to savor and try.

So whether you're traveling or staying home on these summer days, escape from your regular recipes and fast-food stops, and enjoy the fruits (and veggies) of summer. Support local farms if you can. Try a new recipe with friends. Grill sausage if you like. Just make sure to savor what you eat.

No Time for Losers

Last week I indulged my summer fantasy escape to the eighties and invited you all along. Here are the ten veiled song references in my previous post:

 

"Summer--It Turns Me Upside Down" is the first line from "Magic," by the Cars.

"Doing the time warp again" is a soft paraphrase of a line from "Time Warp," from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

"Alive and Kicking" is a song by Simple Minds.

"John F. Kennedy and the Beatles" is a line from "Life in a Northern Town" by the Dream Academy.

"Young Americans" is a song by David Bowie.

"From our formative years" is a soft paraphrase of a line from "Pretty Good Year" by Tori Amos.

"Out any window" is a line from "Look Out any Window" by Bruce Hornsby & the Range.

"The End of the World As We Know It" is a song by R.E.M.

"These times are the best of times" is a soft paraphrase of a line from "The Best of Times" by Styx.

"Dreamtime" is a song by Darryl Hall.

Explicit references were made to "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins, "1983" by John Mayer, "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones, and "The Other Side of Summer" by Elvis Costello. Those don't count--although I might have given extra credit for the Ramones song.

Anyway, the winner of a free copy of Deliver Us from Me-Ville is . . .

Jeannine! With six correct answers (even though she got the title wrong on one of them), she barely squeaked by Patrick. I'm pretty sure Jeannine already has my book, though, so I'll pick something up her alley and send it forthwith. To the rest of you, better luck next time!