There are a few places in this city where I think things can't get any worse - in high school the approaching of places used to make me dizzy, just rounding the curve of a particular building at night, but now that sweep of unfamiliarity comes mostly with imagining dreadful lives. Last night I went to the fair with Kyle, Arlo and Ashley, and I didn't really get this feeling, oddly enough. In distance it's not too far from where I live, which is part of that bewilderment - the sense of geographical estrangement, the fact of being unable to get home without some effort. I felt indifferent to the carnies, to the juggalos and other denizens I saw. Because it was pleasant! Even lightly masked with pageantry, grit loses its vitality. We paid $2 each to be allowed into, heh, the tent of "natural attractions." Images of the "world's fattest man," and a 200-pound tortoise, a Mongolian hissing beetle festooned the tent! We went inside and there was in fact a tortoise. Also a "devil woman" and a rack of deformed fetuses - replicas in fact - in jars. I think the chupacabra had escaped already. The tortoise was pretty sad to watch, breathing in a fetid kiddie pool.

still wish we'd paid a buck to see "the world's smallest woman."

late work and the ends of lives

Here we have an article suggesting - with qualifications - that old writers having exhausted the possibilities of their work might do well to throw in the towel before embarrassing themselves.

The examples of Murdoch and Updike are cited. I have yet to finish reading any of Murdoch's novels past Nuns and Soldiers, and Updike's various doorstop-like compendia of essays are a pleasure for anytime I'm tired and want to see opinions, wrong or right, stated with succinct precision. (But the point stands for his fiction.)

As for Murdoch, what an interesting case! I've only seen a couple of her books called outright duds (Jackson's Dilemma, maybe The Red and the Green?). The later ones seem too heavy with dialogue, not too interesting in their scenarios. But then a bunch of her early novels didn't draw me in at all - I read last week The Italian Girl, something of a bore.

Edward Said in one of his own last works makes a case for the idea that late work can be subtler, richer, distinct from anything that's come before. Of course it's impossible to think of Updike writing "late work" in any real sense of the word, he's working against time and has steadily refused to evolve as an artist to any extent. But what about V.S. Naipaul? Last year in a paper for class, I made a case I'm not sure I believe, that the novels Half a Life and Magic Seeds aren't in fact irredeemable, that they represent the sundering of a life in the midst of modernity and so on. But most would say he too should probably give up.

Henry James, an exception, wrote the three best novels of his career at the end, then spent a few years obsessively polishing up old work. Another troubling case: it's not like he saved it all up for big statements, in terms of publication he was pretty prolific. I think it's bizarre to approach writers' reputations as this article does. Let them worry about that at the time. One never knows what the likes of Doris Lessing might suddenly yield. Reputations will sort themselves out in history.

Exhaust - Enregistreur

In the thick of high school I spent a lot of time looking at the beautiful covers of Constellation releases. Seven years later I somewhat regret a lot of the music I bought in those days, but not a single CST album do I regret shelling out $14 for! There's a singular look, carefully conceived and thoughtful, that elevates these releases and even their music when that's not at its best.

Enregistreur, another I meant to hear and never did till now (ironically I bought most of this pointedly anti-corporate label's releases at Borders, which didn't do the best job of keeping 'em in stock), is rooted in a percussive, droning minimalism that doesn't require the trappings of elegant design to convey its sensibility.

Song titles do go a long way in that direction, though - "Behind the Water Tower," "My Country Is Winter," "Silence Sur le Plateau" - these song titles set me up for compositions rooted in a firm sense of place, and indeed the songs take their time in developing, though they don't reach the level of singular definition that'd carry them out of an album context. It's a wintry album - again I'll say minimal, surprisingly so, with a fluid use of bass as a primary instrument. This isn't rock, even of a post- variety, it's meditative music that lends itself as much to solitude as dread. Where did this stuff go, and why did I stop listening to Constellation stuff in the first place?