This Is Not a Little Story About the Male's Inherent Corruption, Using as Evidence the Swan's Sleazy Definition of Poetry

We were in Politics and Prose Friday night. It's a very cool bookstore - an amazing fiction wall, a decent poetry row. It's a very silly bookstore - bad singer-songwriters in their twenties and thirties wearing hemp vests and straw fedoras sang bad original songs in the coffeeshop. I held in my hand the new paperback edition of Pynchon's Inherent Vice. Bleeding Edge.I am halfway through my biennial reading of Gravity's Rainbow, it's going excellently - for one thing, I've made the discovery that my eyes don't tire nearly as fast if I'm reading on the iPad rather than a book; for another, the novel is amazing, as timely today as ever, especially on the profits and motives of those waging war. It was just over a year ago that Inherent Vice Bleeding Edge was published. I bought it the first day I could, of course, and after four starts I still can't get past page seventy-five. I briefly thought about downloading it through Kobo (cause fuck Amazon whenever possible), then realized who was thinking this and wised up. All this mentioned - it hadn't occurred to me to write about being in Politics and Prose on Friday - because someone is making a movie out of Inherent Vice? and Pynchon is going to make a cameo appearance? And will I go see it?

UPDATE! Charlie (not Slowes; he's down below calling the last out of yesterday's no-hitter) correctly points out that I'm a moron, the paperback I held in my hands was Bleeding Edge, not Inherent Vice, which I did read start to finish and enjoy, I remember reading it when we were on a Planet college tour, the New England one, I remember reading it in a hotel room in Lebanon New Hampshire the night after we visited Middlebury. And Charlie, don't start w/V, I think it's, besides Bleeding Edge, start with either Gravity's Rainbow or Against the Day.

• The places of history.
• Where is the anti-war movement?
• Liberalism and gentrification. I have friends who live in Shaw. They call in Bloomingdale.
• Urban history and the authority of images.
• Urban exploration: a glossary.
• Protests don't work.
• The Pedants' Revolt.
• Literature and gatekeepers.
• A prominent gatekeeper recently died.
• Richard Ford is 20-1 to win Nobel? First, an English language writer won last year, so.... and (b) Richard Ford? Isn't he a blogger in his parents' basement in Terre Haute Indiana?
• Listen to Charlie Slowes call the last out of Jordan Zimmermann's no-hitter.
• Charlie Parker, for those of you who do.
• There will be a McGarrigle Sisters cascade sometime within the week, will include extended family but not the ex-husband.
• And this post's title, picked for the word inherent, means there is a Swans cascade in your future also too.

PARABLE OF THE SWAN

Louise Gluck

On a small lake off

the map of the world, two

swans lived. As swans,

they spent eighty percent of the day studying

themselves in the attentive water and

twenty percent ministering to the beloved

other. Thus

their fame as lovers stems

chiefly from narcissism, which leaves

so little leisure for

more general cruising. But

fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit

slimy water; whatever the filth was, it

clung to the male’s plumage, which turned

instantly gray; simultaneously,

the true purpose of his neck’s

flexible design revealed itself. So much

action on the flat lake, so much

he’s missed! Sooner or later in a long

life together, every couple encounters

some emergency like this, some

drama which results

in harm. This

occurs for a reason: to test

love and to demand

fresh articulation of its complex terms.

So it came to light that the male and female

flew under different banners: whereas

the male believed that love

was what one felt in one’s heart

the female believed

love was what one did. But this is not

a little story about the male’s

inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan’s

sleazy definition of purity. It is

a story of guile and innocence. For ten years

the female studied the male; she dallied

when he slept or when he was

conveniently absorbed in the water,

while the spontaneous male

acted casually, on

the whim of the moment. On the muddy water

they bickered awhile, in the fading light,

until the bickering grew

slowly abstract, becoming

part of their song

after a little longer.