March 17

The Wall Street Journal appears to be shutting down its popular Laid Off and Looking blog, devoted to the ruminations of out-of-work MBAs as they tackle the "job market" (that phrase deserves scare quotes!):

http://blogs.wsj.com/laidoff/2010/03/12/laid-off-and-looking-back/

It could be that the Journal felt the blog had run its course, although it is hard to see that the subject matter has lessened in urgency. A more pertinent factor in the decision might have been that the comments (to which the bloggers were not allowed to respond, oddly) had become increasingly skeptical about the values of corporate America, about the whole system really, and maybe that was felt to be unseemly in such a quasi-official business organ as the Journal (the "daily diary of the American dream," as their advertising once had it). I would sometimes contribute to this skepticism myself:

"I honestly believe (and I’m hardly alone) that the era of the ‘permanent job' is quickly coming to an end, and being replaced by an era of 'gigs.' All jobs are gigs now, even those jobs that come packaged like the jobs of the past, with benefits, offices, and other goodies. In the new world order, we’re all just temps, ultimately, and need to adjust our outlook accordingly....Out of despair and lack of options, job seekers who are lucky enough to find anything take anything, no matter the drop in pay and working conditions, only sometimes to find themselves out of luck again in short order. As sad as it undoubtedly is, I don’t think that any of us can afford to harbor the illusion that things will 'get back to normal' or that these jobless experiences are mere blips in our forward-charging personal narratives. They are not. When we have a job again, for a while, it is only because we are lucky in that round of musical chairs, not because our virtues are once again recognized."

The blog, interesting as it has been to read, has an air of incompletion because, as one commenter put it:

Your bloggers post very sporadically. Has the Wall Street Journal been tracking them to see if the ones that landed jobs were able to keep them? What about the impact to salary? How much of a pay-cut (percentage wise) did they have to take for the dignity of work in the new economy?

Those are very pertinent questions. But one can well surmise why they were never answered: Humankind (or at least businesskind) cannot bear too much reality.

Of course, those who are lucky enough to still have jobs live in fear, not just of losing them, but of being "in trouble" at work:

http://thepeoplestherapist.com/2010/03/17/youre-in-trouble/#more-1512

On to politics: An oddity about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is, that although every profile of him that I have ever read emphasizes the fact that he has not simply impressed but blown away every boss he has ever had, my take-away from watching him is that his facial expressions, body language, and manner of speech are, invariably, weird and troubling. He wouldn't impress me for a second, and I have difficulty reconciling this with the glowing reports of others. Maybe something about him just doesn't work on camera?

For St. Patrick's Day, here's a tribute to Brendan Behan, permanently pickled:

http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/03/up-green.html

The Faster Times has posted a review of post-modernist Robert Coover's new Noir: A Novel (not to be confused with French novelist Olivier Pauvert's Noir: A Novel):

http://thefastertimes.com/fiction/2010/03/16/playing-in-the-shadows-the-tft-review-of-noir-by-robert-coover/

I read plenty of Coover in college in the Seventies, but haven't kept up with his later output. The Universal Baseball Association is still one of my favorite American novels.

A Journey Round My Skull interviews long-time German science fiction editor Franz Rottensteiner in a post of historic significance (and informative on any number of obscure authors):

http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/03/view-from-another-shore-interview-with.html

You can now honor the legacy of American abstract expressionism by buying stamps. These are very cool:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/03/a-rothko-for-44-cents-new-stamps-celebrate-the-work-of-americas-abstract-expressionists.html

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-art-blog/2010/03/abstract-expressionist-stamps.html

When you are in the small town of Mellau, Austria, stop for a glass of wine at the compact Metzgerstuble Bar:

http://www.archdaily.com/52840/metzgerstuble-bar-di-bernardo-bader/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellau

Leslie Stevens's Incubus (1965) is semi-renowned as the "first" (actually the second) feature film made in the artificial language Esperanto; and since it is a horror film by the creator of The Outer Limits starring William Shatner just months before Star Trek got underway -- well, you can see the cult/camp possibilities. However, having seen it, I must say that it's not bad at all, not even that laughable (although The Shat emotes strenuously). It's the most Ingmar Bergman-esque American film I've ever seen, and the cinematography by the great Conrad Hall is up to the Bergman standard. When a print re-surfaced after 30 years in the late Nineties, the new distributors couldn't resist playing up the camp angles in a very funny trailer:



The actual first feature in Esperanto, by the way, was Angoroj (Agonies) (1964):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angoroj

Among notables born on this date are legendary stage actor Edmund Kean, playwright Paul Green, children's author Kate Greenaway, novelists Penelope Lively and Siegfried Lenz, science fiction novelist William Gibson, Romanian avant-garde writer Urmuz, film composer Alfred Newman, jazz pianist and singer Nat King Cole, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, astronauts James Irwin and Ken Mattingly, golfer Bobby Jones, dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and actors Kurt Russell, Rob Lowe, Lesley-Anne Down, and Gary Sinise (who played Ken Mattingly in Apollo 13).

A number of years back there was an excellent book called 4 Dada Suicides, collecting texts by and information about four French writers of the World War I era: Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Jacques Vache, and Julien Torma. The title is a bit of an over-statement, since only Rigaut is a definite suicide (and he announced his well in advance). Vache was the victim of an overdose, possibly but not definitely intentional; Cravan disappeared; Torma disappeared and may never have existed in the first place, but merely have been a fictional persona of an unidentified writer:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR20.4/Kaye.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_Torma

Urmuz could have figured in this book, except that as a Romanian, he is barely known outside his home country. He was a contemporary of the French writers, and wrote material that was Dada in spirit (although he was apparently unaware of the movement). His 1923 suicide seems to have been gestural-enigmatic in the way that Rigaud's 1929 suicide was:

He committed suicide....without giving any reason for his gesture. Apparently, he had intended to die originally, "without any cause".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urmuz