Breathnaigh

Hunting, fishing, and camping with Leon Leonwood Bean.

Not sure how long it's been up there, but L.L. Bean's original guide to the above mentioned activities is on Google Books (it's a reprint from the 90s, really). In 2009 I picked up a hardcover version from the 50s and it's a pleasure to thumb through. The online scans aren't fantastic, but the text is clear. Bean's writing is practical and unfussy. As he stated himself,

"The object of this book is not to bore my readers with personal yarns and experiences but to give definite information in the fewest words possible on how to hunt, fish, and camp."

Personal tales from ol' Leon would realistically be as useful to me as pragmatic advice on bagging ruffed grouse, and doubly entertaining.

Anderson & Sheppard--a new coffee table book for #menswear nerds.

In October, Anderson & Sheppard is publishing a lengthy (297 pp.) tome on their history and that of their customers, circumscribing many of the reputed best-dressed men in the world in the last 100 years or so. The Savile Row firm has been a lightning rod for (online) criticism over the years, maybe mostly because the specialties of A+S are subtle, complex, and not necessarily in tune with the Browne-ian direction of tailoring in the last 10 years. I'll try not to communicate my own limited understanding here, because "drape" and "soft tailoring" do seem subjects more suited to a book, a few A&S lifers, and a good ghostwriter (Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter is helping out on this one). But I will say that A+S is more associated with movement, comfort, and three-dimensional shape than trimness or body-flattering cuts.

Elements of style: Tobias Wolff and This Boy's Life.

"When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters."

OK, unlike Hemingway, Updike, etc., there aren't a million photos out there of Tobias Wolff dressed to the nines, or at least outfitted in some dated costume that can be posted on an inspiration board, or tumblr. I mean, his time continueth. Dude is still writing. Most photos out there are of Wolff well into his career as writer and academic, and while they say he's not afraid of a pink shirt, they're not especially distinctive. So I'm dressing up this post with some snips from This Boy's Life, Wolff's memoir of his transient, messy boyhood, anchored by his time in rural Washington state. His portrayal of himself as a young fabulist is entertaining, depressing, and easy to identify with, even though the circumstances of his upbringing are unusual. And the writing is smart, incisive, and full of gems.

Leonardo DiCaprio played young Wolff in the film version of This Boy's Life.

"Like chess or music, coolness claimed its own out of some mysterious impulse of recognition. Uncoolness did likewise. We had been claimed by uncoolness." --Wolff on making friends

Wolff in full dad gear.

"His vanity crested above his head in a stupendous gleaming pompadour." --Wolff on one of his bad-crowd pals in high school

An older photo of the always-mustachioed Wolff.

A recent photo. OCBD and club tie imply some lingering effects of his Hill School education. Wolff's entirely fraudulent application, and subsequent acceptance, at the Pennsylvania prep school is documented in This Boy's Life. He was expelled after two years. Of course, the Preppy Handbook devoted an entire section to "the importance of getting kicked out." It should probably be noted that Wolff does not bask in the imagined glory of prep/Ivy-ness, or at least he doesn't any longer. He has said that his father harbored a "pathetic WASP fantasy."

A shot from Life magazine of life at the Hill, a few years before Wolff's time.

"A pile grew. Two jackets, one of Donegal, the other of Harris tweed. A blazer. A suit. Several pairs of pants in gabardine and twill. A dozen Oxford shirts. Ties. A raincoat. Corduroy pants and flannel shirts for "hacking around," as Mr. Howard put it. A pair of Weejuns, a pair of dress shoes, and a pair of brogans-also for hacking around. Three sweaters. Then another pile of clothes for warm weather, and another for sports." --Wolff on getting outfitted for life at the Hill

A good chunk of This Boy's Life is dedicated to Wolff's years in Washington state, when he lived near Concrete.

"Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain." --Wolff on the joys of kid-dom

Vietnam Zippos.

Although I don't have access to Zippo sales figures, I gotta think lighter sales have not been booming in the last few decades. Unfortunate that a useful, dare-I-say iconic tool like the Zippo has to be a casualty in the inevitable decline of tobacco. Because Zippos are hella cool. Every boy goes through a period of fascination with fire, and I remember trying to master the quick lighting of a Zippo with a flick of the wrist against my thigh--click, zwip, flame on. My model was a modest, pinstriped lighter with a block for monogramming--maybe a little too much class for a skate rat--purchased at a corner news agency and eventually confiscated. Probably for the best.

Bradford Edwards' collection of lighters documented in Vietnam Zippos (utterly cheap on Amazon at $16.50) tells a more adult story. Men deployed to Vietnam used the 2.2 x 1.4 inch lighters as a folk art canvas, detailing deployments, messages home, and some bluer sentiments via Zippo. The book offers some context for the collection without going too deep into the politics or history of the war, but doesn't take the focus off the lighters for long. The range of art follows the range of personalites in a modern army--from men pining for home to soldiers jaded by battle.

Men's lives.

Recently picked up a hardbound copy of Peter Matthiessen's Men's Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork. Matthiessen can be a tough read--he's a thorough, deliberate writer who doesn't neglect details and uses the language and style of the people whose lives he chronicles. I struggled through several of his books in college, and met him once, at a poorly attended reading; he was an imposing figure with whom I had a hard time making small talk (fortunately I didn't have to; he retired with my professors before I could get my teenage foot too far into my mouth). Even without reading his work you could see the varied lives Matthiessen had lived. He's been a commercial fisherman (hence the book), a CIA agent, a buddhist monk, a publisher (he helped found The Paris Review); and all the while a prolific and well-regarded writer. He's a strong example of the school of literature that encourages writing from experience, and, before doing so, living the hell out of something.

I'm not far enough into Men's Lives to offer much insight into that corner of Matthiessen's life or the culture of Long Island fisherman clans it's about, but I can share some poor reproductions of the fantastic photos that accompany the text. There are great archival shots throughout, but a few dozen pages of glossy plates at the back of the book show the setting in the early 1980s, as the book was written. They're bleak and impressively beautiful, many as composed as classical paintings.

Many more below the fold.

Elements of style: Jonathan Franzen.

Men of words often prefer the appearance that appearances don't matter--don't judge a book, etc. But many best-loved writers had idiosyncratic personal style: consider Twain's stache and his Col. Sanders suits; Wilde's awesome foppishness. As cultural juggernauts, their manner of dress was part of their appeal and, excuse the anachronism, their brand management. Those were different times, of course. The current lit culture of book tours and Oprah appearances demands even more image management from its favorites. All that public facetime forces many to a defensive middle ground in re clothing--dress as normally as possible; look like you stepped out of a J. Crew (not a J. Crew catalogue, that would be too manicured; just a J. Crew store. Maybe even a J. Crew factory store). Going to post on this occasionally, documenting the potentially boring style of exciting writers, or the exciting style of occasionally boring writers.

J. Crew syndrome appears to be the diagnosis for 2010's big important writer, Jonathan Franzen. A quick rundown of Franzen fashion over the years:

Date unknown; 1970s?--Franzen family. Last known photo of Franzen wearing an unironic smile. The blue oxford cloth button-down collar is never a bad choice--nice roll.

1981--Franzen's lit mag staff at Swarhmore. Notable that he appears to be wearing a tie and maybe being teased for it.

1996--Big gap between that and this professional photo. Note exceedingly 90s hair, what appear to be jeans, and maybe a rumpled chambray shirt, air tie, and sport coat.

More below the fold...

SPX.

The annual Small Press Expo (SPX) is invading Bethesda (well, NORTH Bethesda) with a horde of the special brand of hipster nerd that indie comics attract. I'll be there, for example. I wish I could get into the programming SPX offers--panel discussions, etc.--but most of it is too inside for me. This year's discussion of the recently departed Harvey Pekar by his collaborators sounds especially nice, but I mostly go to thumb through comics and buy stuff, and maybe meet some artists.

Last year I had the opportunity to shake hands with Frank Santoro (panels from the brilliant, Melville-ian Storeyville below), the impossibly clever John Allison of Scary Go Round / Bad Machinery, and snarkily goateed punctuation enthusiast David Malki! of Wondermark, and picked up books and/or prints from them, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and others.

The indie comics world and the indie rock world have a lot in common, but artists don't, as a rule, tour, so the chance to connect the author/artists with the work is rare. The Expo itself can be a crowded, slightly harried affair, but I'm glad to have it in my backyard again.

This year, I'm hoping to fill up my tote bag with some hefty graphic novels, some minicomics, and some pieces from the featured artists: Dean Haspiel, who worked with Pekar in the aughts, Jaime Hernandez, who created ur-alt comic Love and Rockets. Kate Beaton, whose webcomic always makes me laugh, will be there, as well. Doesn't look like John Allison or the talented and local Ben Claassen will be there, unfortunately!

Small Press Expo
September 11-12, 2010
Marriott Bethesda North Hotel + Conference Center

Imagery.

I don't usually do this, but I got a lot of stuff sitting around that I don't know what to do with.

More...

Dude writes longer footnotes than I write stories.

"

As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it's only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let's-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourusm is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way -- hostile to my fantasy of being a true individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourst, you become econimcally significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."

--David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster. (They should really close the comments on that article.) Can't wait to go to Chicago and NY this spring!! :) :)