Thursday, September 30, 2010

On Flow

The metaphor of "flow" is one that many have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as "being in the zone," religious mystics as being in "ecstasy," artists and musicians as aesthetic rapture. Athletes, mystics and artists do very different things when they reach flow, yet their descriptions of the experience are remarkably similar.--Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

Here, Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chick-SENT-me-high") has written a self-help book that is truly helpful. He shows how people are often in flow when playing at games and sports, which have clear goals and immediate feedback, and much less so when watching television, which, obviously enough, requires much less ability and isn't intrinsically rewarding. The aim is to maximize the amount of flow you get out of every day.

Clearly, Proust was in flow when he wrote In Search of Lost Time. He needed quiet and solitude in order to concentrate, so he worked night after night in a cork-lined room. In a letter to a friend, he describes his writing regimen: "Never have I lived like this, eating once every forty-eight hours, never before three in the morning, etc., etc." (Notice the telltale mark of "flow" in a lack of awareness of bodily needs.)

In turn, in reading Proust, I am in a state of flow. The last one hundred pages of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower passed as if a dream of a dream. A cloud of Lolita-like nymphs of summer frolicked on the grassy knolls of the fictional seaside resort, Balbec. In my concentration, I lost track of time and self...

Csikszentmihalyi cites "love of fate" as necessary for a good life. He quotes Nietzsche, who wrote: "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity...Not merely bear what is necessary...but love it."

Proust's character Marcel might writhe in pain over a troublesome love affair or express disappointment at some long-anticipated event or encounter, yet he sees beauty in everything.

In the last lines of the second volume, the summer at Balbec doesn't simply end, but becomes a relic in itself. Marcel recalls his maid, Francoise, unpinning the blinds in his windows after he has taken a nap:
"the summer's day that she uncovered seemed as dead and immemorial as a mummy, magnificent and millennial, carefully divested by our old servant of all its wrappings and laid bare, embalmed in its vestments of gold."

As Allen Ginsberg would say: holy, holy, holy...    

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Franzenfreude

"...a well-read man hearing of the latest 'great book,' can give a jaded yawn, assuming the work to be a sort of composite derived from all the fine works he has ever read. But the fact is that a great book is not just the sum of existing masterpieces; it is particular and unforeseeable, being made out of something which, because it lies somewhere beyond that existing sum, cannot be deduced simply from acquaintance with it, however close. No sooner has the well-read man discovered the new work than he forgets his earlier indifference and takes an interest in the reality it sets before him." (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)

This is a great example of how we make books our own. When we finally read a book thought of as a masterpiece--such as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary--it sheds that generic quality and becomes part of our private universe. It's like getting to know someone well you have only seen from afar or going from a vague sketch to sharp focus. From then on, the book belongs to us, to the most private place within us.

Speaking of masterpieces, Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom is already hailed as the novel of the decade. The Observer calls it "the novel of the century" and Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times declares it "a masterpiece of American fiction." Even Michiko Kakutani, whom Franzen once called "the stupidest person in New York," has conceded that it is "an indelible portrait of our times."

On the cover of Time (next to the words "Great American Novelist" printed in bold), Franzen stares off into the distance with a certain unease, while the windswept hair, English professor glasses and face peppered with stubble cry out "boyish charm."

I've had two Franzen sightings since he published The Corrections nine years ago. Once in that fall of 2001 on a subway platform at 96th Street waiting for the 1 train, where he stood in a raincoat and carried a briefcase, cloaked in anonymity. The second time was at a Citibank on the Upper East Side. I can report that he is surprisingly tall and wore faded black jeans.

I suspect his discomfort in public is to a certain extent misinterpreted as self-satisfaction or conceit. If you Google "Jonathan Franzen smug," you get 7, 250 results. "Jonathan Franzen is a great writer," Newsweek declares. "Should it matter if he's not a great guy?"

Bestselling author Jennifer Weiner defines "Franzenfreude" as "taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen." (Even though it was quickly pointed out that "freude" means joy, not displeasure.) The Herald Scotland rallies against those women authors who feel unfairly overlooked: "They may be justified in ranting against the cliche of the white male darling, but they are in danger of being seen as that even worse creature, the shrew."

This entry has the unfortunate second-hand quality of being about book reviews instead of books. I'm looking forward to the pleasure of reading Freedom. I remember the evening in 2001 when I went to three different bookstores where The Corrections was sold out. I finally ordered a copy from my favorite bookstore, Three Lives, and read it compulsively for most of a day and a half.

I also have a sinking feeling. I end with one final quote, this one from Virginia Woolf on Proust: "Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry...One has to put the book down and gasp."       

 

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

On Beauty

     The fact was, he could still see her as a Botticelli. Odette herself, who always tried to conceal things she did not like about her own person, or at least to compensate for them rather than bring them out, things that a painter might have seen as her "type," but which as a woman she saw as defects, had no time for Botticelli. Swann owned a wonderful Oriental stole, in blue and pink, which he had bought because it was exactly the one worn by the virgin in the Magnificat. Mme Swann would not wear it. Once only, she relented and let him give her an outfit based on La Primavera's garlands of daisies, bellwort, cornflowers, and forget-me-nots. In the evenings, Swann would sometimes murmur to me to look at her pensive hands as she gave to them unawares the graceful, rather agitated movement of the Virgin dipping her quill in the angel's inkwell, before writing in the holy book where Magnificat is already inscribed. Then he would add, "Be sure not to mention it to her! One word--and she'd make sure it wouldn't happen again!"

      Here, Swann ponders the beauty of his wife (and former mistress/courtesan) Odette. Throughout In Search of Lost Time so far, Swann has a habit of comparing women to famous works of art. We talk about "types." ("She's not my type.") It's both charming and a little creepy to see Swann compare Odette to a Botticelli right down to her fingertips. (At least he doesn't find his inspiration in Victoria's Secret catalogues!)
     Today's equivalent might be to reference movie stars. For example, I am convinced that my dog Phoebe looks like Elizabeth Taylor. (She has a glossy coat of black and tan, white gloves, soft pointy ears and big worried eyes.)
     I saw the beginning of the Farelly brothers' Shallow Hal on television the other day. Possibly one of the worst movies ever made, it stars Jack Black as someone who suddenly sees women for their inner beauty. He doesn't realize that the woman he finds gorgeous (played by the very blonde and very svelte Gwyneth Paltrow) is actually overweight and ordinary looking. I assume he gets his comeuppance in the end and learns not to judge women by their measurements. Yet every frame the model-thin Gwyneth Paltrow is in contradicts such a lesson.

     Walk through any museum and you can see that there are few universal standards for beauty.

     My mother is enrolled at the Meet Me at MOMA program. Once a month, groups of Alzheimer's patients convene at the Museum of Modern Art to look at, and talk about, art. In front of a Klimt painting called "Hope, II," my mother recently described the oval shapes embedded on the gown of the pregnant woman who is the focus of the piece as "donuts," and added, "They're making me hungry!" She is clearly excited about the art, even if what she is able to express doesn't live up to her emotional impressions.
     Like Rita Hayworth, someone else with early onset Alzheimer's, my mother was a great beauty. Growing up, that's all I ever heard: your mother is gorgeous! Though she is still pretty, people now look at her as if she were a fossil and say, "I can see from her bone structure that she must have been quite beautiful." Yet my mother transcends age and time. She still has mad crushes on people such as Amir, a striking group leader at the Meet Me at MOMA program. "There he is!" she said to me conspiratorially at our last tour. "Let's get him!"
     And why not? After all, he kind of looks like someone I saw in a film once...