Doing the Night Dishes

Maybe it is just the rarity of the occasion, but there is something refreshing about staying up late to clean the house or do the dishes. Not only does it serve as a tranquil reminder of duty, but it also increases the capacity for mental clarity, or what some of my friends might call revelation. So I was just doing the dishes, listening to my 2003 ipod mini, which has qualified as a relic for some time, and I started to get the sense that I should probably write something, but I am not sure what. Somewhere between the kitchen and the computer, the mental clarity escaped, and now I am moving my fingers in anticipation of whatever inspiration may return. I even started listening to some Bach, hoping that some counterpoint would realign the mental stars but I am still not getting word. In the meantime, I'll do some mini-reviews:

In the most recent Atlantic Monthly, Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball is reviewed glowingly, which was nice, especially considering I thought for sure that the Atlantic would begin the backlash. I should have known better. I read the book when it came out in November, and it is a huge piece of NBA appreciation. Since I count NBA basketball as one of the joys of life, and indeed one of the pinnacles of American culture, I like my pieces of NBA appreciation huge. You can read the Atlantic review if you want, which I pretty much agreed with, but let me add that Simmons's best moments are when he is writing from his personal experience. His epilogue about Bill Walton was a wonderful read, and his essay on Isiah Thomas and the "Secret" is pitch perfect. If nothing else, get the book and then read his mini-essays on your favorite players, if those players made his list of 94 greatest basketball players ever. Because I read every column he writes, I know his style maybe too well, but he still consistently surprises me with the way he can turn a phrase. I am pretty sure the Simmons phenomonen will last--he is a really good writer and an acute thinker, even if his analogies of choice are sometimes a bit forced. But the way he forces analogies is actually one of his strong points. He'll push the Kobe Bryant as Teen Wolf analogy until it makes total sense, as if that should have been the obvious comparison all along.

Late last year, I purchased Nocturnes: 5 Stories of Music and Nightfall by one of my favorite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro. This is his first collection of stories, and it is very strange. His previous novel, Never Let Me Go, is one of the best novels of the last ten years as far as I am concerned, and I never tire of his style. Well-reviewed in England but poorly-reviewed here, the new book seems a bit slight, but that is always Ishiguro's trick. I don't know that Ishiguro has ever written fiction without the first-person narrator, and often his narrators sound similar--a careful, polite speaker with a story to tell that is only cloudily remembered. Everything is plainly spoken and banal on the surface, but the prose seems to float around profound experience, as if each narrator knows they need to tell his or her story but doesn't quite know why. This is why I continue to read Ishiguro--his narrators best approximate the profundity of commonplace experience, the tragedy of everyday farce, the beauty in absurdity. None of his narrators are deep thinkers, but the depth of their consciousness is glimplsed in their curious sentences and gives gravity to their words without them quite understanding. I realize this critique is vague considering I have no passages to show you, but read one of these stories--"Crooner" might be my favorite--and you'll get this sense. Ishiguro's prose is hipnotic in its subtle and tricky banality, and it does actually remind me of music. And nightfall, when common things happen but are given gravity by the shadings and colors of dusk. I really liked the collection, although I don't think it lived up to Never Let Me Go, which is also about the power of music (the title of the book is an old jazz standard that plays an integral role in the most powerful scene in the novel). If nothing else, Ishiguro urges his readers to see the everyday as heartbreaking, full of implication, gravity, and meaning. As a reader, though, you have to work to see that, just as you do when you are confronted by the tasks of living. I should probably stop, but maybe I'll turn this into a full blog post eventually. Writing about this after nightfall is helpful and limiting: there is much I want to say while being inspired by night, Bach, and Ishiguro, but I'm just plain tired. It is 1:00, after all.