Excellent article on Iran (and some incidentals).

I cannot recommend this article highly enough.  Just the thought of our soldiers having to go into Iran the way they went into Iraq (except Iran is larger and more powerful) has been making me feel sick for a long time, and this article (written by a real Persian who has served as translator to several Iranian presidents) strikes me as a solid, thorough survey of the issue that is completely opposed to war.  Also a nice, oblique “thumbs up” to Obama’s willingness to engage in talks with these regimes, which I had a hunch was a good idea but this guy really gives some geo-political reasons and precedents for why it would be a good idea.  And perhaps best of all, a full deflation of the idea that anything besides the current Republican battle frenzy is “appeasement” (again, I knew this was ridiculous but Majd puts it well and concisely).

In other news, I was back to the Deli again after a bizarre four-day weekend.  I was actually impressed with the new manager, and being impressed with the Deli is not a common occurrence for me, I assure you.  I mean, my first manager was fairly effective but barely literate, writing down anguished commands like “FLUFF CHESE’S,” “ONLY PS MEATS GOSE IN HERE,” or “DOT CHUBS DAILY DOT DOT DOT.”  She had a photograph of Duane “The Rock” Johnson thumbtacked to the bulletin board in the back room with a note reading THIS PICTURE WAS GIVING TO ME.  DO NOT TAKE DOWN.  I’ve wondered, from time to time, exactly what it had been giving to her, and when and why it stopped.  The second manager, a sweet and personable lady, was probably a humanities major at some time, judging by her utter lack of administrative skills.  I feel her pain.  She’s managing a Starbucks somewhere now, which is good, because she used to spend a lot of time drawing the Starbucks chalk advertisement signs (quite aesthetically, I must say) when she was supposed to be, I guess, ordering chicken (we were always out).

But now, under the current regime, we seem to be enjoying a Pax Meyera the likes of which I’ve never known before.  Things are stocked up.  Broken things are sometimes replaced.  Our manager wants us to work out our duties among ourselves at night instead of relying on the confusing, often hidden, often illiterate, “tour sheet” (no more “YOU!  Why didn’t YOU chisel the blood off this drain flume?  It was ON the TOUR SHEET!” business).

And and and.  Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is magnificent so far.  I bet the luminous Padma Lakshmi would have stayed with him if she had read this book (probably a lie: no doubt the man is a total pain to live with, and probably the research he did on this book made it even more so  And she’s like six inches taller than him.  Poor guy).  Anyway, let’s just say that my tendency toward hero-worship is welling up once again, and the absence I’ve felt from him since Senior Novel days has only, as the adage says, made the literary heart grow fonder.  Go buy it.  Now.

Metaphors be with you.

Dave Eggers, the first author on my Summer Reading Challenge list, is really satisfying my deep admiration for exuberant writing; now no doubt (since I possess no consistent style) my own fictional forays will bear the distinction of fervid overwriting (instead of my other vein, that of the petulant self-conscious minimalist).  Usually I’m a bit arch and secretive about my admiration for blatantly po-mo fiction writers and their M.C. Escher tricks: the footnotes, the diagrams, the “wink wink I’m writing about about me writing about me writing a book blah blah blah” thing.  Eggers, though, at least in his debut memoir, is simply a good enough writer that the gimmicks feel like fascinating arabesques, not loud wallpaper meant to cover a stained wall full of nail holes.  He uses the kind of metaphors that most authors would feel a need to build up to as though he’s got better ones to spare, these are just the cannon fodder.  A modest example:

At the same time, it would also be nice to make clear the mistake Laura in casting has made, to have our cameo make clear who the real stars are, stars who far outshine this dowdy Judd person — we the brilliant ringed planets, he just a tiny, cold moon. (245)

Very nice.  He’s talking, by the bye, about the casting agent who decided not to feature him on MTV’s The Real World.  That’s profligacy of talent for you.

On the other hand, I’m reminded of a luminary in my personal pantheon, Milan Kundera, who is incredibly more parsimonious with his metaphors.  There is a place in Testaments Betrayed where he castigates the translators of Kafka for muddling Kafka’s rare, spare, hugely meaningful metaphors.  For instance, one time in The Castle, K. is having sex with a woman on the floor of a bar, and Kafka describes him in terms of a foreigner wandering blindly in an unknown country.  Brilliant.  The fate of the casual lover is at once, electrically, united with that of the exile, and in one paragraph, Kafka has dealt with some of the major themes of the modernist age.  

So my question is: which is better?  Not Kafka vs. Dave Eggers, obviously; I think that one’s pretty much settled, good as the latter is.  But who deserves more respect — the virtuoso who can drop metaphors the way Sviatoslav Richter dropped notes in his Sofia recital (i.e. they make the final product even more impressive), or the brilliantly conservative minimalist who makes every single metaphor a sort of climax within the novelistic texture?  Or are they simply two different but equally respectable modes of expression, like blues and jazz?

Your thoughts are welcomed, nay, encouraged.