Payback Time

Anybody with an RRSP, or anyone who owns property, plans to own property, or uses government services of any kind should read this short article very, very carefully. Anyone tempted to blow the warning off -- "It's the US, stupid, not Canada, I read about it last week in The Economist!" -- should note that many European and Asian economies are in exactly the same boat.

"Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." (my italics)
- posted by cjb @ 9:15 AM

 

Stephen King (the good one, the clear, straightforward voice of "The Body" and On Writing and The Long Walk, among many others) on Raymond Carver

"Sklenicka’s account of the changes in Carver’s third book of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), is meticulous and heartbreaking. There were, she says, three versions: A, B and C. Version A was the manuscript Car­ver submitted. It was titled 'So Much Water So Close to Home.' B was the manuscript Lish initially sent back. He changed the name of the story 'Beginners' to 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,' and that became the new title of the book. Although Carver was disturbed by this, he nonetheless signed a binding (and unagented) contract in 1980. Soon after, Version C — the version most readers know — arrived on Carver’s desk. The differences between B and C 'astounded' him. 'He had urged Lish to take a pencil to the stories,' Skle­nicka writes. 'He had not expected . . . a meat cleaver.' Unsure of himself, Carver was only three years into sobriety after two decades of heavy drinking; his correspondence with Lish over the wholesale changes to his work alternated between groveling ('you are a wonder, a genius') and outright begging for a return to Version B. It did no good. According to Tess Gallagher, Lish refused by telephone to restore the earlier version, and if Carver understood nothing else, he understood that Lish held the 'power of publication access.'

This Hobson’s choice is the beating heart of Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life. Any writer might wonder what he’d do in such a case. Certainly I did; in 1973, when my first novel was accepted for publication, I was in similar straits: young, endlessly drunk, trying to support a wife and two children, writing at night, hoping for a break. The break came, but until reading Sklenicka’s book, I thought it was the $2,500 advance Doubleday paid for Carrie. Now I realize it may have been not winding up with Gordon Lish as my editor."
- posted by cjb @ 4:06 PM

 

Cormac McCarthy talks to the press.

"Q: [I]s there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CORMAC MCCARTHY: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs."
- posted by cjb @ 6:55 PM

 



Studies for Empire, 2010
- posted by cjb @ 9:09 AM

 





Studies for Empire, 2010
- posted by cjb @ 9:53 AM

 

Brandon Lattu, Beacon, 1998


Robert Adams, On Signal Hill, Overlooking Los Angeles, 1983


Robert Adams, Redlands, Looking Toward Los Angeles, 1983
- posted by cjb @ 9:20 PM

 



Studies for Empire, 2010
- posted by cjb @ 9:15 PM

 
"Why Do You Seek the Memory Man, Man?"

A familiar figure in that white sport coat, behind those shades.

- posted by cjb @ 8:20 PM

 

Recent reading:

Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason
Vancouver Art Gallery Kai Althoff catalog
Stephen King, Under the Dome
H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
- posted by cjb @ 1:29 PM

 

Just arrived in the mail from Montreal. Canon apparently couldn't wait to take the G10 out of production; it seems that no one but me wanted a pocket digital camera built like a tank, with 15MP resolution and an amazing lens. Forthcoming: pictures of a Greek Orthodox church; a flat, south-facing park; a copse of trees. Maybe the photographs will be terrible or probably just derivative but they'll still exist free of my corrosive head, no better or worse than a Winnie-the-Pooh doll or a sculptural installation meant to celebrate and empower museum visitors' creativity.
- posted by cjb @ 12:40 PM

 

PULPFICTION DID NOT BURN DOWN IN LAST NIGHT'S BIG FIRE. WE ARE OPEN AND INTACT. C'MON DOWN!
- posted by cjb @ 9:43 AM

 
"I believe there's immense power in restriction and holding back."

John Taylor, Duran Duran's bassist, has some thoughts about instant unlimited access to centuries of creative production:

"In September 1972, Roxy Music appeared on prime time TV in the UK. It was their first national TV exposure, a three-minute appearance performing their first single.

And the way they looked and sounded stunned me, and a generation of mes.

But we had no video recorders, and of course there was no YouTube. There was no way whatsoever that I could watch that appearance again, however badly I wanted to. And the power of that restriction was enormous.

The only way I could get close to that experience was to own the song. I lived in the suburbs, so I had to ride my bike for miles before I could find a store that sold music, let alone one that had the record in stock. It was [. . .] an adventure."

(via K.)
- posted by cjb @ 12:19 PM