I’ve been hardcore heimwehkrank this past week, but I’m not sure why. Berlin’s been straight-up lovely: warm and breezy, with blossoming trees, platzes crammed full of romping kids and rowdy dogs, people strolling along licking ice cream cones or sitting out on cafe terraces sipping milchcafes or beers… yet all I keep thinking about is home–the mountains, the sky, the particular smell of the morning air in New England in springtime.

New England, though, is my adopted home; originally, I’m from Philly, a place I have much less of a connection to spiritually, but much more of a connection with culturally. Only other native eastern Pennsylvanians can relate to my occasional longings for TastyKakes, a really good hoagie roll, fresh hot Philly soft pretzels (which are–and I speak from experience here–far far better than the German Brezn from whence they came), and, most inexplicable of all to non-natives, scrapple.

Scrapple is, despite what people unfamiliar with its delights will try to tell you (”Do you know what it’s made of?”), a true food of the gods. Oh, those delicious crispy-peppery wafers–an unassailable argument in favor of the consumption of offal, and one of the few meat products that still makes my mouth water. But for a long-time vegetarian, thinking about meat and eating it are two entirely different things. I’m not ethically veg, and I’ve tried meat here and there over the years, but frankly, the texture and tongue-coating greasiness of formerly-living food is more off-putting than the taste is pleasing (yup: even when it comes to fried pork).

In any case, when I read this morning about Vrapple, I was filled first with astonished elation (Veggie scrapple?? Can it be true??), then hit with an extra-strong wave of homesickness of the i-miss-my-childhood-bedroom variety.

I’ve alerted my local sources of its existence and demanded that it be promptly sampled. If it’s even half as good as the real deal, I’ll be carrying home a suitcase full of fake scrapple the next time I visit the fam.

As for the homesickness: two months and counting. And then, nestled back in my little mountain home, I’ll get to start missing Berlin!

Tags: scrapple, vrapple, heimwehkrank

According to this essay in The Guardian, the nation of France is “currently preoccupied with the fate of its ailing semicolon.” For those of you still blissfully unaware of this minefield of controversy–upon which hinges the future of all discourse–here’s a taste of the shocking revelations contained in Jon Henley’s intrepid piece:

[Subeditor and author Sylvie] Prioul says she recently pored over an entire edition of L’Humanité, France’s once-great Communist daily, without finding a single instance of a semicolon, except in a particularly finely turned editorial.

I’m certain that I should be recoiling in horror at such examples of the troglodytic state of language and its attendant punctuation. But, uh, I’m not.

Tags: punctuation, dubious controversy, semicolon’s last hurrah

I’ve got a minute or two before the next guests arrive, so here’s a selection of items of writerly interest that have been mouldering in my drafts folder, becoming less relevant by the hour.

Reviews/Excerpts:

• Sexual Healing: Tom Bissel’s hilariously negative review of Scott Spencer’s new novel Willing somehow makes you want to read the book.
• An unsanitised history of washing: This little teaser for Katherine Ashenburg’s new book Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing is the kind of light socio-cultural history that unfailingly catches my interest. Bonus: this particular excerpt contains one of the hottest lines I’ve ever read, from a love letter from Napoleon to Josephine (“I will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.”).
• Is there an original voice in there?: The Guardian continues to earn my contempt with this meatheaded take on the just-published UK hardcover edition of Amy Hempel’s The Dog of the Marriage (abounding with wtfs like “[f]irst-person writing can be a tremendous liberation, particularly perhaps for women”).

Interviews:

• “When I run I am in a peaceful place”: Der Spiegel interviews Haruki Murakami about the new German translation of his memoir about running and the kinship between marathons and novels (verdict after reading: he is a seriously tripped-out dude).
• Cover Girl: Interesting Q & A with Graham Rawle, the genuis/madman behind Woman’s World, a novel created entirely out of fragments of text from women’s magazines (here’s an excerpt, from the author’s web site).

Miscellany:

• Rushdie redux?: Danish Caricaturist of Muhammad Fame Now Homeless (”Westergaard was forced to leave his actual residence in November after the Danish security and intelligence agency, PET, informed him of a ‘concrete’ plan to murder him”)
• Hemingway too square for Lucky Strike’s image: Battle ahead for ‘cigarette pack’ books (”[M]embers of the public are unlikely to mistake a Hemingway novel for a packet of cigarettes.”)
• Sci-Fi’s Death Knell?: Virtuality and reality ‘to merge’ (”Computers the size of blood cells will create fully immersive virtual realities by 2033, leading inventor Ray Kurzweil has predicted.” There’s really nowhere for the Phillip K. Dicks of the world to go from there, is there?)

Last but not least: Shout out to Matthew Dickman, who I had the pleasure of meeting (and cutting a rug with) at Bread Loaf back in ‘04. He just won the 2008 Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry!

Tags: lit news roundup, link-o-rama, odds-n-ends

Now that the winteriest bits are behind us, ’tis the season for various friends and family members to pilgrimage to Berlin to sleep on our futon, binge on kebap, and saufen wie ein Bürstenbinder.

Last week was visitor #1; we’ve got 3 more to go before mid-April. Between now and then, updates will be intermittent (and probably focused more on the delights of the city in springtime than on literary happenings).

Tags: life, springtime, blog neglect

Typographica rounds up their 25 favorite typefaces of 2007. Prepare to drool.

Tags: typefaces, design, font fetishist

Apparently big bad Swedish Ikea has, for decades, been using its product names to insult its underdog neighbor to the south. From Der Spiegel:

Two Danish academics, Klaus Kjöller of the University of Copenhagen and Tröls Mylenberg of the University of Southern Denmark, conducted a thorough analysis of the names used in the Ikea catalog. They concluded that the Swedish names are reserved for the “better” products, and that even Norwegian names manage to make it into the bed department. But the “lesser” products bear Danish names like “Roskilde” and “Köge.”

“Doormats and runners, as well as inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting are third-class, if not seventh-class, items when it comes to home furnishings,” Kjöller is quoted as saying in Nyhedsavisen, a Danish free paper. The stuff that goes on the floor, Kjöller said, is about as low as it gets. He accused the home furnishings company of “Swedish imperialism.”

(American readers, I know what you’re thinking: Huh? Those nonsensical words on the Ikea boxes are names? And they actually mean something? Well, yes they do. In fact, according to my Swedish sources, they’re often cute/clever references to the product’s style or function. For example, “Smaka,” the name of a cheese grater, means “taste.”)

The rest of the article is worth the click, if not for the brief primer outlining the historical basis for the Danes’ ire, then for the hilariously impotent revenge scheme they’re considering. The whole thing reads like some kind of Vonnegutian theater of the absurd.

Tags: Ikea is a monster, international rivalries, death by a thousand doormats

I know I’ve got ‘em–don’t we all?–but not as bad as these guys:

Apostrophe Atrophy

lowercase L

(both via Daring Fireball)

Tags: fixations, typography, quirky sites

Sometimes I really miss my old ‘hood.

From Boston.com:

NORRISTOWN, Pa.—Montgomery County authorities say a man stabbed his brother-in-law during an argument over who should get the Democratic nomination for president.

What’s more, Jose Ortiz, 28, who’s charged with felony assault, is a registered Republican.

District Attorney Risa Ferman said Ortiz supports Hillary Clinton and Sean Shurelds supports Barack Obama. She told reporters Monday that the two got into an argument in a Collegeville home Thursday night and Shurelds tried to choke Ortiz. She says Ortiz then stabbed Shurelds in the abdomen.

Shurelds was taken to a hospital in critical condition, but is expected to recover.

Tags: news from home, Norristown pride, roots and origins

Here in dog-friendly Berlin, my furry little companion can follow me into a cafe, ride the buses and trains, and run leashless and free on all manner of public property. The pro-canine sentiment isn’t just institutional, either– she gets more nods and smiles out of the crusty Kreuzberg locals during an average walk around the block than I do in a calendar month.

However, there is one aspect of Berlin living that is most definitely not dog-friendly: glittering bits of glass lurk in every conceivable crevice of the lovely old cobbled sidewalks, just waiting for the chance to pierce some poor Hund’s little paw-pads. I suppose it’s the (only?) downside to Berlin’s liberal approach to public imbibition.

So, while without firsthand knowledge of the context this probably smacks of “news of the weird,” today’s Der Spiegel article about Düsseldorf’s new standard-issue police-dog boots is actually just another example of straight-up German practicality.

(According to the article, I’m not the only one who thinks so: “[s]ince the new uniform policy was reported in the local media the police have been inundated with enquiries from dog owners who want to know where they can get the boots in order to provide protection for their own pets.”)

Tags: police dogs, tender paws, practicality

In the latest Bookforum, Jessa Crispin (editor-in-chief of the excellent Blog of a Bookslut) reviews Julie Doucet’s 365 Days: A Diary.

I didn’t read the book and I’m not familiar with Doucet’s work, but according to the the review, she’s a former wild-child underground cartoonist whose earlier work catalogued, among other things, “life as a broke artist and . . . her rampant id.” Now, though, she’s gone straight, and it seems that her work has suffered for it.

Early in the review, Crispin writes:

“Meet the new Julie Doucet: She’s given up binge drinking, men, and mixing LSD with her epilepsy medicine.”

And later:

“It’s a shame that, for Doucet, gaining stability has meant losing dramatic tension and narrative drive in her work.”

Crispin never claims that getting straight necessarily leads to less vibrant creative work, but in the collective imagination, the erratic/drunken/drugging/wanton artistic genius is certainly an entrenched archetype. Think Jackson Pollock; think William S. Burroughs; think Charlie Parker. In popular mythology if not in actual fact, an artist’s excesses seem not just to feed into the work but to elevate it.

Rumpled, slurring, irascible, depraved–not only do we tolerate bad behavior from artists, we expect it, maybe even desire it. Artists, charged with the task of seeing what no one else can see and saying what no one else can say, are therefore tacitly encouraged to live as no one else is supposed to live: tumultuously, desperately, destructively.

But is unmitigated id really a necessary component of creative genius? (The obvious answer is no: the creation of great art requires great discipline, which runs counter to unfettered impulse.) If not, though, what explains the consistent link between kick-ass art and fucked-up artists (and in cases like Doucet’s, a diminishment in quality if/when the fucked-up-ness abates)?

My take is that creative people are both extra-sensitive and strangely compulsive; making art is one way to cope with those characteristics productively, but there’s still plenty of room for indulgence in other less-productive coping mechanisms. Maybe the productive and un-productive coping mechanisms are so complementary that to let go of the bad, you have to let go of the good, too (sort of like how when I quit smoking, I had to stop drinking coffee for the whole first year, because it was such a trigger for cravings). Or maybe, if you’re historically one to cope multiplicitously, when you come to a place where you can manage to manage without drinking or drugging or copulating compulsively, you’re simply less compelled by your creative outlet as well.

I wonder if there are there any actual solid theories on this out there (as opposed to my pseudo-psychoanalalytic speculation). If anybody has references, send them my way!

Tags: genius, compulsion, addiction