Easy Generalizations and Meta-Guilt
Nora:
The only Salter novel I've read is Light Years , which I thought was
just great. But I find any generalized public whining about the decline of the
literary culture annoying, even when I essentially agree with the sentiment-in
part, as you say, because of the helplessness it inspires. And the flip side of
Salter's argument in this morning's essay-all pop culture is garbage-seems to
me just so easy and specious.
Inspired to despair helplessly: That has been my ongoing reaction to the
Peter Singer piece in the Times magazine the week before last, an
article to which John Tierney refers in his column in today's Times as
well. Singer argued that we should regard every $200 we spend on anything
inessential as the heartless crypto-murder of a Third World child, since the
donation of that $200 to Oxfam or UNICEF would prevent an infant from dying. Do
you think there's any real counter-argument to the notion that none of us have
any moral right to buy expensive clothes or eat at restaurants or go on fancy
vacations? The fact that I was left feeling upset and more or less speechless
by that piece, meta-guiltier than I've felt in years, made me wonder if this
country isn't about to experience a resurgence of old-fashioned circa-1965
liberalism.
A Moebius strip is a self-contained closed loop-the thing discovered
(invented?) by Mr. Moebius in the 19th century that's a
two-dimensional surface with just one side. (You take a strip of paper, give it
a half twist, and paste the ends together, enabling you to draw a continuous
never-ending line on it.) It is the one thing from my junior-high-school
topology studies that I remember. It's been striking me lately as a useful
metaphor.
I don't believe Shakespeare invented a twelfth of the words he used, either.
And I was also skeptical of another statistic in the paper (the Journal ,
I think) this morning: of the 30,000 CDs released each year, only 600-2
percent-make money. If it's true, it would make the movie business look
rational.
You are, as you mentioned, in the movie business, and you're going to Los
Angeles momentarily; OK, I have a question. Why don't American screenwriters
own the copyrights to their scripts, as playwrights do, and as (I'm told)
screenwriters in Europe do? Why, in other words, doesn't a screenplay that I
co-wrote revert to me to sell elsewhere after the guys to whom I sold it decide
they don't want to make it into a movie? Couldn't (and shouldn't) the Writers
Guild simply make this a non-negotiable issue and change the custom
overnight?
Also, how did your toes turn out this morning?
Kurt
