Eisner/Miller? How's about: Weingarten/Varley?

"Just two good ol' boys..."

I can’t recall when I read this book — probably about 10 years ago. And my recollection of its content is patchy — justifiably so, because the chatter is forgettable. I gave it away and moved on with life.

Still, there’s a moment midway through the book that does stand out. Frank Miller describes fellow industry provocateur Todd McFarlane as that kid in the classroom “who carves a swastika into the desk” just for the hell of it because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. This summary gets a rise out of Eisner’s wife Ann, who blurts, “I can see that!”

I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Will Eisner was one of the greats in the American comic book industry. Everything he drew was in a league of its own. But more than that, he had an exceedingly keen business acumen — a rarity among the artists who bumped elbows with him. The Schusters and Kirbys and Kanes of his world lamented comic book work — they were slumming it, doing the only work that paid (and paid poorly) while in their heart of hearts they yearned to be artistes. Eisner saw no shame in the work, but kept his eye on the point of profit and never left it. Giving away all rights to a character you created? Unthinkable.

Eisner did alright — when his future father-in-law hired a detective to see if this man-about-town was keener on the family fortune than he was on the daughter he was courting, it came back a nothing sandwich.

As for Miller — if you have to ask (hey, even if you don’t!) go here.

The interview takes place over a weekend in 2002. Miller’s description of McFarlane is punky — Miller is notoriously thick in these matters, but who the hell says something like this in a Jewish household? That the Eisners respond with amusement speaks volumes to the relationship they have with Miller.

And Ann — how remarkable that she knows exactly what is being said here. At this point the Eisners have been married over 50 years. A spouse could be forgiven for losing interest in the family business after a few decades. But Ann is more than just in sync with what Will is doing — she not only knows about McFarlane, she seemingly KNOWS McFarlane. McFarlane is a relative upstart. Eisner likely has zero business relations with him, unless it’s discussion over a Spirit figurine. And yet Ann knows.

Further in the conversation Eisner and Miller discuss the dollars-and-cents business of comics. Eisner points out Miller’s unique benefit — You married your colorist; In your case your wife does the colors. Until reading this book I had no idea Miller tied the knot with 80s/90s colorist phenom Lynn Varley.

Lynn Varley — the prestige work speaks for itself. But what that woman could get a five color press to commit to pulp paper is just this side of miraculous.

A quick Google search reveals the situation changed since the interview. Eisner died in '05, Miller and Varley separated later that year. The explosive success of the first Sin City movie, followed up with 300 seems to have set Miller off the chain.

In that light one almost wonders if Eisner wasn’t gently suggesting to the younger man Guard this bond — guard it with your life. Eisner was too soft-spoken to be so blunt. Neal Adams, arguably the greater mentor to Miller, is characteristically more to the point.

I keep thinking of Ann. “I can see that!” Yeah, I’ll just bet — that and a whole lot more. Where Miller and Eisner drift off in dozey reveries I daresay Ann Weingarten Eisner could have dished the real dirt and left this reader more to remember.

Ann Weingarten Eisner/Lynn Varley — I would pay real money for that.

Rattling in my brain-pan

Some pieces what’s got me cogitatin’ this week:

RIP Peter Green.

• “It’s strange that we now see America threatened by a plague. Because without plague, America, as we know it, would not exist.” Thus begins Andrew Sullivan’s survey of the plagues that shaped human history, over at New York magazine.
• “What good is it to speak of leaps of religious faith without first speaking of leaps into more immediate paradoxes, into the uncertainties of story and human subjectivity?” At The American Interest Mike St. Thomas reviews a book I very much look forward to reading, Christopher Beha’s new novel, The Index Of Self-Destructive Acts.
• “The so-called Culture Wars are less a war against Christianity than a civil war between Christian factions.” Ed Simon considers the scope and penetration of Christendom while reviewing How The Christian Revolution Remade The World by Tom Holland, at LARB.
• “While Galloway and others see mass delivery of content through online platforms as the solution to the real problems of overpriced and underperforming institutions, Hitz sees such platforms as the catalysts of opinionization and anti-intellectualism. Indeed, the metamorphosis of college education into an enormous Zoom meeting is incompatible with Hitz’s brand of intimate thoughtfulness, for in her eyes the internet is ‘a cesspool for the love of spectacle’ and a ‘bottomless temple of lurid fascination.’” Charles McNamara reviews Lost In Thought by Zena Hitz over at Commonweal. Say, you’ve already dropped in on Michial Farmer’s spritely chat with Hitz, have you not?
• And finally: “No wonder, then, that the dominant online mood is one of resentment that spills over into bitter conflict. The game is signalling to most of us that we are losing.” Hey, any tip o’ the hat to René Girard is the sort of confirmation bias I will affirmationally and biasedly confirm! Geoff Shullenberger at The Tablet.

Bob Dylan, ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’

I ordered Rough And Rowdy Ways after reading Nick Cave’s generous response to inquiries re: Bob Dylan’s lead single: “Murder Most Foul.” The gist shared among enquirers and Cave seemed unique — it appears Dylan is once again tapped into something that registers.

Wrapped in nostalgia.

Dylan has always had a peculiar relationship with nostalgia. He’s reflexively sentimental, but also reflexively contrarian, so the two polarities consistently seesaw in his better songs. There’s a lot of that here. Lyrically, Rough And Rowdy Ways is straight Dylan-the-Lion-in-Winter material.

But the performance is the real surprise. To my ears, he’s singing like he means it.

Sincerity isn’t exactly anathema to Dylan, but it is rare. It makes the album pertinent to the shared moment, I think. Most of us are wrestling with nostalgia and a reckoning with what truly was and is — turns out a little empathy is a welcome solace when sorting through these thorny matters. The album likely will not receive the repeat play that Time Out Of Mind and “Love & Theft” enjoyed in this house — Rough And Rowdy Ways is not quite as rough and rowdy as I prefer my Dylan to be, finally. But it is a lovely album to meditate on, as this particular summer recedes to cooling.

Wither (sic) Liberalism — TIME OUT!

First, a spoonful of sugar: Michial Farmer’s conversation with Zena Hitz (Lost In Thought: The Hidden Pleasures Of The Intellectual Life) will do you more good than anything you are about to read below.

Alright, now that you’re braced . . . 

Never say “never,” but I believe with this post I shall put a cap on the matter of my concern for liberalism, its methods of consideration, and the precipitous erosion thereof. The subject is threatening to become not merely a central concern, but THE central concern for me and this blog, and I won’t have that (because it’s not — but don’t let any of that discourage you from commenting).

Here’s how it shakes down:

"Andrew! Hey, Andrew! Me next, me next!"

• In my most recent back-and-forth with Paul, I all but confessed that I subscribe to New York magazine primarily for the spectacle of that hyper-woke splash-pad giving Andrew Sullivan, of all people, space to spout (along with other guilty pleasures, of course). Just hours after I typed that I was informed those wet-n-wild days have come to a close.
• Lefty journo Doug Henwood proclaims, “Self-expelling is all the rage!” (cf.)
• Over at The New Yorker Gideon Lewis-Krauss asks: What the heck is going on with SlateStarCodex? 

On that last matter Fredrick deBoer framed it as an East-Coast Media vs. Silicon Valley scrap, in which 24/7-ironic ECM twitterers have not the slightest ken to appreciate West Coaster commitment — actual, sincere commitment — to planting a flag up the beach and defending it. I would go further and add that the ECM either does not appreciate the eviscerating effect its spotlight has on its caught-in-the-wrong-intersection subjects, or they know but do not care.

Full disclosure: I’m mostly ambivalent about the SSC project — my presuppositions launch me in a markedly different direction than do theirs (for starters, “Rationalist”? — good luck with that). However, I deeply admire their rigour and good manners. Trolls set up camp in the comments, receiving nearly inexhaustible patience as they attempt to lance the chosen argument with one bad-faith rhetorical ploy after the next. Good manners, patient consideration, careful elucidation — qualities we could all stand to emulate, particularly in these times, no?

Lili Loofbourow wonders to what effect.

I read “Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame For The Death of Good-Faith Debate” and nodded along throughout. I even murmured, “Yikes, that’s me!” at one point. Then she wrapped it all up with her conclusion and — honestly? — only Nietzsche has left me feeling this vertiginous:

“I don’t know how (or if) we get sincerity back.”

Well. In all sincerity I then submit: this isn’t a right-or-left liberal/illiberal woke or tribal thing — it is quite plainly just the latest instance of the Internet gaining its unfeeling mastery over yet another beleaguered member of our groping, simian species.

R.I.P., Google Play Music

Long live YouTube.

I received an unhappy, but not unexpected, email the other day — Google Play Music is shuttering and giving it up to YouTube Music.

There are features to YTM that recommend it above GPM. YTM’s graphic interface is a sexy beast, where GPM’s has been a stodgy old “meh” from Day 1. Also, YTM has seamless access to YouTube proper, which offers inexhaustible troves of delights. Just one example, if, in my newfound love for Ghost Light, I want to compare and contrast concert performances like their delightful Cervantes double-set to their equally delightful available-on-YouTube ONLY double-set at The Independent, San Francisco it can be done with a simple click or tap — no extra tabs to keep open, no painstaking search engine queries, just pure joy.

But YouTube is a streaming service — full stop. And I am loathe to stream music.

There’s the issue of what streaming nets the performers who provide the content, for starters. But, more selfishly, streaming rarely offers good quality sound. Much of that has to do with the technology on my end — very few phones, tablets or laptops have a DAC that brings out what’s actually available in the sound files being played (old Neil is right). And yes, you can download and install better DACs, but then lag-time becomes an issue.

Google Play Music had two features I took advantage of — downloads and uploading. 

With regards to downloads, in the main I prefer to buy CDs directly from the act, but there are occasions where downloads are the only option. GPM’s soundfiles were surprisingly respectable and inexpensive. YTM doesn’t offer downloads, so my next go-to will likely be HDTracks.

As for uploading — I took it for granted, because I rarely streamed my library (it was handy when we were travelling, or visiting family). And yes, I have my digital music library on two separate hard-drives and spread across several portable players. But it was a comfort to think that the hard-to-find out-of-print stuff was secure yet easily accessible in some corner of Google’s massive cloud. And there were albums that I personally remastered and stored there, including the entirety of Citizen: Steely Dan — which sounded great in 1993 but, 27 years later, could stand a serious reengineering.

Google assures me my music lye-berry will be seamlessly transferred to YouTube’s acreage in the Google cloud. We shall see. I have to wonder if YouTube’s algorithm won’t sort through my id tags and decide, “Oh, Citizen: Steely Dan. We have that already. Just bin these files and give him access to ours.” It would be the logical thing to do, but it’d set me out.

Anyhoo, these are admittedly trifles in the current environment of mass discomfort and discombobulation. But sometimes trifles can be welcome diversions, too. So on that note: thanks for reading!

Wither (sic) Liberalism, cont.

Further hand-wringin’:

• Did (Mattress Performance Artist) Emma Sulkowicz get red-pilled? — Sylvie McNamara is nonplussed at NYMag.
• “Our conversation reveals four problematic recent norms in academia” — Bruce Newsome at The Critic.
• “I don’t know how to argue in America anymore, or if it’s even worth it” — Jacob Siegel at Tablet.
• “Can we just proceed by acknowledging what literally everyone quietly knows, which is that the dominant majority of progressive people simply don’t believe in the value of free speech anymore?” — Fredrik deBoer has a modest proposal. (update: it appears Mr. deBoer has removed the content. I'm sorry to see it, as it did nudge my thoughts in helpful directions. Some content, but not the whole quote, available here).
• And, just for shits and giggles, The Letter.

Casual observation, made from a morning of scrolling through my social media feed: Reflexive Righties LOVE this relatively recent development among We The Left (and increasingly Left Behind).

"...oh well, whatever, nevermind...."

Independence/in dependence

When I was a five-year-old I wished our family was American.

I told my father. He said: “We are American — we’re North American!”

Hogwash. America had a beautiful flag. Ours was weird. The Maple Leaf? What was that supposed to mean to a kid parked in the butt-end of Manitoba? The only Maple we had was Manitoba Maple — a weed more than a tree, really.

America had a great national anthem. Canada’s paled in comparison. “With glowing hearts we see thee rise” — those words didn’t make a lick of sense to a five-year-old. “But the rocket’s red glare/The bombs bursting in air” — that was more like it!

Five-year-olds in 1970 were well aware that America had all the good television. Before we got to the spectacular razzle-dazzle of Sesame Street we had to sit though Chez Hélène, The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup. Canadian five-year-olds didn’t have to take a nap in the afternoon — we’d been snoozing all morning.

Even sliced bread was more interesting in America than Canada. They had Snoopy on the bag!

Now, more than ever.

And although I did not understand precisely how this could be the case, I knew the reason why America was so snazzy in contrast to pallid Canada — they’d declared independence from Britain. Canada hadn’t. In fact, it wasn’t clear just what Canada’s relationship to Britain was. Except it was weird. In a boring way.

In 1970 the Kindergarten half-day began with us singing “O Canada” and concluded with us singing “God Save The Queen.”

“Mom, why does the Queen need saving? Is she sick in the hospital?”

“Well, that’s not really what ‘save’ means in this context . . .”

“Is it dangerous for her to live in Canada?”

“The Queen doesn’t live in Canada. She lives in London, England.”

“Then how is she the Queen of Canada?”

“She’s not the Queen of Canada, she’s . . . it’s complicated. You’ll understand when you get older. Say, isn’t it almost time for Mr. Dressup?”

Complicated? Actually, it was just plain weird. That was Canada, all the way around — weird, in a boring way.

Fifty years later our nation’s relationship with “Mother England” is still weird, but the history of it makes damnable sense. In 1870 my forebears understood the British were the ones making Canadian soil available to them for our families and farms. When they sang “God Save The Queen” they meant it. But Mennonites also have a long history of being driven off land that’s suddenly valuable to people with armies. 150 years later we’re coming round to the realization that perhaps Britain’s claims on our behalf and benefit were just a touch presumptive.

Americans gained independence. That’s clear thinking. I envied that.

But what are we ever, finally, independent of? What does manifest independence even look like, except an open grave? To be alive at all is to be in dependence of a dynamic network vastly beyond our capacity to ever fully apprehend.

“The digital age is built on the backs of runaway systems” — Jazzman Ted Gioia reflects on the wisdom of Gregory Bateson, extoller of the feedback loop.

Rattling in my brain pan

• Emasculated: The problem of men writing about sex by Luke Brown (at TLS, here) has me mulling. 
• “It is precisely because of my attachment to the power of data collection that I’m unconvinced video footage can solely, or even primarily, lead to meaningful change.” I am also mulling over Mimi Onuoha’s When Proof Is Not Enough: Throughout history, evidence of racism has failed to effect change at FiveThirtyEight, over here. I was struck by the phrase “meaningful change.” Hardly the first time I’ve encountered it, but it has me speculating just where meaning is to be found, or best cultivated, in these matters.
• “Shifts in consumer behavior have been gnawing away at the classic enclosed suburban mall format for many years; then the pandemic completely upended in-person shopping. Converting commercial real estate to housing may be the best use of land in such an over-retailed country. Big shopping centers tend to be centrally located and connected to transit.” The Dying Mall’s New Lease On Life: Apartments is Patrick Sisson’s proposal, at Bloomberg CityLab, here. Hey, maybe we can repurpose a few empty churches that way too?