Just a nice Jewish boy from Minneapolis

Cross-listed under "Celebrities Margaret and I have had our photos taken with" (Dave Letterman, the cast of "How I Met Your Mother") and "Political figures Margaret and I have seen in person" (John Kerry, John Edwards). What a nice guy that Al Franken is! We got a chance to see his radio show at San Francisco's City Hall today, thanks to Jim, and if I lived in MN, and he runs for Senate in '08, sure -- I'd vote for him. He's way more entertaining than any of the rest of the Democrats, and he sure as hell knows (and cares) more about the issues than Bush does. That being said, I think Addison knows more about the issues than Bush does...

The End of an ETA

I took a detour this week and wrote an article for my old friend Flak Magazine on the ETA ceasefire that was announced on Wednesday, and goes into effect today. You can read it here. Let me know what you think.

A Hispanofile in Puerto Rico

I'm back from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I gave a paper to the assembled throngs at the Latin American Studies Association convention (LASA). Actually, the assembled throngs couldn't make it, but my friend Schoellky represented all of them by being the only one to show up to my panel. LASA is so unlike the stodgy MLA -- there's a Gran Baile (sort-of a grown up conference prom) that is so popular we had to wait in line for an hour to get in; you see more conference people crawling the streets of San Juan at 2 a.m. than at your panel; grad students aren't wound up tight waiting for interviews, instead they're dancing the rumba with their advisors; and everyone dresses like they're on their way to or just got back from the beach -- Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, midriff baring tops -- even when they're presenting a paper. It's all good at LASA 'cause they're fed up and they're not gonna take the MLA empire anymore. I don't blame them. In fact, I think I'll join them again.

San Juan was beautiful, and a great place for a conference (not to beat this MLA thing to death, but why can't the MLA pick someplace exotic? I mean, Philadelphia in December? You can't wear flip-flops in Philadelphia in December.), since you really could tune in and tune out of academia at will. The theme of the conference was Decentering Latin America, which is why someone like yours truly, who studies Spain, snuck in through the conference back door. The conference and all my fellow Cal grad students were incredibly welcoming to an outsider like me, and very tolerant of my accent, my use of vosotros and my symbolic representation of the Spanish empire, which I tried to play down by not yelling "Remember the Maine!" at every opportunity. (That's a really nerdy Spanish-American War of 1898 reference, which I only learned while in P.R.)

Old San Juan -- the part of the city that the Spanish built in part to defend their Carribean empire, deflated in that fateful year of 1898 -- really represented a mix of Spain and Latin America to me. This was, as it happens, my first trip to Latin America, so I spent a lot of time thinking about the similarities Puerto Rico has with Spain, which is my main point of reference. As I wandered the streets of the old city, I felt like I was in one of the pueblos blancos in Southern Spain: the whitewashed hill towns that dot the countryside in Andalucía and Cádiz. Right down to the balconies and the cobblestone streets, old San Juan looked like a Spanish pueblo, or even the Malasaña neighborhood in Madrid. But the differences were just as obvious: the houses in San Juan are painted bright pastel colors, and the cobblestones are blue. In between downhome Puerto Rican lunch counter joints serving plates of arroz con habichuelas (rice and beans) and mofongo (mashed plantains) are Doir and Banana Republic boutiques. And although the Puerto Rican accent reminded me of the way my Extremaduran (Spanish) friend Marce speaks, Puerto Rican Spanish is peppered with English -- "Dame el ticket, por favor" -- and has a cadance all its own. Plus there's the whole tropical weather thing, which Spain doesn't really have going for it in March.

I've returned to Berkeley with a bottle of rum and a newfound interest in exploring more of Latin America. I suspect that in 2009, when LASA goes to Río de Janeiro, I will once again find a pressing transatlantic issue in my research, so I can ditch the MLA and party with the Latin Americanists!

For a non-fiction character, Russ, you are also cool

In the interest of fairness to real-life politicians, I add my salute to Senator Russ Feingold, D-WI, for trying to censure GW yesterday for his No Wiretap Left Behind program, and saying: "This is certainly more serious than anything President Clinton was accused of doing." Understatement of the decade. And also: "It is reminiscent of what President Nixon was not only accused of doing, but was basically removed from office for doing." (I stole these quotes from the New York Times) And this is only one of the few things we know about!!

My question is: why must the rest of the Democrats treat Russ like a leper? What do they have against taking a stand?

We love you Donna, oh yes we do...

I realize I'm one of a dying breed of "West Wing" fans at this point, but now that it's the beginning of the end, I'm going to bust out my pop culture references. Even if no one else is watching.

I was under the impression that it was only after John Spencer died and the series was given its walking papers that they decided to pull out all the stops, bring back old characters and get Josh and Donna together. But it was clear in last night's episode that at least the Josh and Donna storyline was in the works before John Spencer died, since he was in that first scene.

Also, does anyone care about Khasakstan at this point? Or, for that matter, about Will Bailey and Kate Harper? I'm annoyed that they've gotten more central roles, while Charlie and Toby have been AWOL for months.

Anyway, Donna rocks. And I'm not just saying that because she's from Wisconsin, although I think that's a big part of her appeal, naturally. She seems to have become the most human character on the show.

Next time: Bradley Whitford's mother knew my grandmother, and other amazing brushes with fame...

Go E.T.S. Tech!

I'm trying to decide whether to take my laptop with me to Puerto Rico this week. On the one hand, I'm going for a conference, so I could conceivably want to look up some academic-minded thing, or add a hot little tidbit to my dissertation, or do some last-minute editing of my presentation, or keep in touch with my advisor over email. But, realistically, if I brought my laptop, I'd use it to check my email, to see if anyone's commented on my blog, to recharge my iPod and basically to keep up appearances. I don't think I'd be fooling anyone, though. I mean, would I be going to this conference if it were in Beaumont, Texas?*

Sunscreen, on the other hand, is not optional.


*I don't have anything against Beaumont, Texas, really. Someone used it as their standard "nightmare" academic destination in conversation with me the other day. My standard nightmare job destination is usually Eastern Tennessee State Tech, which, to my knowledge, doesn't really exist. This makes it somewhat more immune to the horrified reaction of "My mother went to Eastern Tennessee State Tech! How dare you!!" I say "somewhat" because there's always the chance that you've just picked the wrong "nightmare" state for your audience, which I did the other day with Iowa.
Slightly Embellished Actual Conversation:
Me: "I turned down this job in Iowa, because, you know, it was Iowa."
Friendly Neighbor: "I went to grad school in Iowa."
Me: "Oh, Iowa's lovely. Really lovely. The school was really small. And, it was in Cedar Rapids."
Slightly Offended Friendly Neighbor: "I was in Iowa City."
Me: "I mean, if the job had been the University of Iowa, that would have been one thing. I hear Iowa City is great. Everyone in Cedar Rapids hangs out in Iowa City. Yeah. I love Iowa."
Lesson learned.

This Day in SJB History

Wow, what with the post-Oscars frenzy I'm not getting anything done on my dissertation this morning, so how about a trip down memory lane instead? This'll be fun, I promise.

Ten years ago today, on a cold night in a dark New York City alley, Margaret and I met David Letterman. I'm pretty sure I talked about nothing else for the rest of 1996, because I was a little -- yes, I'll say it -- obsessed with Dave at that point in my life. Anyway, although some claimed I was stalking Letterman, I was simply in the right place at the right time. And I had a camera with me. Dave and I chatted, we took these now-infamous photos (visitors to my bathroom may have seen them prominently displayed), and I returned to my dorm room at dear ol' Wes with a plan: I would assemble the greatest Web page ever.

I spent a good deal of March 1996 teaching myself HTML and learning the ins and outs of Web page design, and the result was the now-defunct "I Met Dave" Web page, which some of you may have actually seen back in its glory days. And what days they were! The "I Met Dave" page shot up the charts, and became a fixture on "Top Ten Web Pages about David Letterman" lists across the Internet. I enjoyed this pseudo-fame for a few years, until Wesleyan unceremoniously took down the pages, and my tale became nothing but a broken link.

But the story didn't end there. After the I Met Dave page I actually parlayed my HTML skills into a couple of jobs -- a summer gig with a scissors company, and then an actual full time job as Assistant Web Editor with a nonprofit in New York -- and a budding career as a freelance non-paid journalist with Flak Magazine. One night at a bar in NYC, I was telling someone about my plans to leave behind the web editing gig to start a graduate program in Spanish Literature. I remember the look of horror on his face as he told me I could jump onto the dotcom gravy train and make $80,000 a year starting tomorrow. "Spanish Literature isn't about the money," I told him, "it's about the babes." Was I the only one who felt a sense of satisfaction when the dotcom bubble burst a few years later?

Now, seven years after that auspicious conversation, I've finally picked my HTML skills up off the floor and put them to use in this blog. All thanks to Dave and that dark alley 10 years ago.

Midterm Evaluation

I'm new to this blogging thing, so I was hoping I might get a little user feedback. First of all, is anyone actually reading this? And who lives in Farmingdale, NY?

Secondly:

Is this blog too nerdy?
	No, we love hearing about your dissertation! More, more!
	It's just nerdy enough.
	It's a little too nerdy. More pop culture and references to buttons, please.
	It's waaaaaay too nerdy. I'm only looking at the pictures.
	Como no entiendo la palabra "nerdy," no entiendo la pregunta.

The Truth, Lies and Everything in Between

I saw "Capote" last night, and thought it was well done -- Phillip Seymour Hoffman is especially excellent. But poor Nell Harper Lee, shoved to the side despite the success of her "little novel about killing birds."

Back in high school, I read In Cold Blood straight from my Dad's stash of "New Yorkers," as it was originally published over the course of four issues. In both the magazine version, and in Capote's book, a preface forewarns the reader that all the quotations are taken "verbatim" from "official records" or interviews with those involved. The subtitle on my paperback edition of the novel reads: "A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences". Elsewhere it is referred to as nonfiction, and it's a book generally regarded as the first work -- or most well-known first work -- of New Journalism, the -ism that splashed a little narrative intrigue onto the pages of magazines and newspapers worldwide.

I'll admit that I haven't read James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, but I've nominally followed the fracas to emerge after The Word of Oprah deemed it a big, fat lie. Clearly, according to Oprah, Frey's mistake was calling the book an autobiography, and expecting that it would sit amid other works of nonfiction at your local bookstore, when he'd taken some liberties with his life story. At my local bookstore, Cody's, there's a table for "Nonfiction" and one for "Fiction," but I think Frey's book is just another in a long line of works, Capote's included, that demand a new table. Let's call it the "Ehh... A Little of Both" table.

Because let's get down to brass tacks, here. Sure, you could argue that there's such a thing as "pure" fiction and "pure" nonfiction, but a good portion of literature skirts the boundaries between these two categories. We might assume that a history book is telling us the truth (unless it's something Rush Limbaugh wrote) and therefore should sit with the other nonfiction goody twoshoes. But all writing is in essence a process of revision: that is, in the act of writing a history of the Napoleonic Wars, the historian makes the decision to include some things and omit others. Also, he might throw in a conversation or two that he didn't actually hear, or describe the buttons on someone's jacket even though he doesn't know anything about buttons, much less the buttons Napoleon wore. And that doesn't make the book any less of a history, it just admits that there is a narrative process at work in nonfiction, one that shoves our book about the Napoleonic Wars (a subject about which I know nothing, by the way) over to the edge of the prissy little nonfiction table, where Capote and Frey are teetering.

Fiction is the same way, and perhaps its crossover into nonfiction is a little easier to swallow, since historical fiction is fairly popular among grandparents and nerds these days (and uber-cool bloggers). Plus, no one has a hissy fit if a novelist includes something that's historical, whereas if a so-called nonfiction writer tosses in a couple of imaginary years in jail, well, the shit hits the fan. At least on Oprah.

These are a few of the issues I'm sorting out in my dissertation, if you hadn't guessed. I find it fascinating to think about that undefined space that In Cold Blood occupies: the space between imagination and reality. In an article I read today, a critic writing about testimonial novels (which are fairly similar, in some ways, to autobiographies like Frey's), says she believes that "readers are not aware of the fictitious aspects of testimonial novels," that the imaginary aspects of a "nonfiction" book are "perceived by literary critics but not by ordinary readers."

Now hold on just a gosh darn minute there! I'm not so sure we're* as dumb as we look. Are we?


*For the purposes of this "we," let's just pretend I'm not a literary critic-in-training, ok?