100 Days
100 Days by Gabriel Josipovici is a pandemic-era lockdown diary combined with a collection of critical essays. Each day comes with one of each. The diary segments are good and full of rage (though my favourite is simply "9.6.2020. Headache.") and the essays are wideranging and thought-provoking.
Here are my sticky notes:
On the artist's apparent need to stand apart or, at least, to have solitude in which to work:
I think the idea of cutting oneself off from the world to concentrate on one's art can be as detrimental to the art as trying to live a full and rich social life can be. [The composer Maxwell] Davies produced wonderful work when he first went to live on Orkney -- Ave Maris Stella, Image Reflection Shadow ... but soon, I feel, he lost his way as he went on living in Orkney isolation.
On "he said":
In my novels I seem to be wedded the phrase 'he said,' 'she said.' This is partly a rhythmic thing but I feel it is deeper than that. I want the reader, I think, to be subliminally reminded that this is not 'reality,' but, inevitably, 'reality filtered through narrative fiction.' And yet I don't want to try and convey through adjective and verb the way he or she is speaking because, however you elaborate the description, you won't really be able to convey it -- better put it down starkly and allow the reader to work out how it is said. So no 'he said, sighing deeply,' or 'he said in a low growl,' or 'she answered calmly,' but simply: He said, she said. Let the reader work.
On hope:
Especially in the past decade I have lost any faith in progress and the betterment of society. ... social democracy, greater equality and the improvement of living conditions for all around the world is a dream which is never likely to be achieved. ... So: every reason to be pessimistic, yet I wake up most mornings when the weather is good and feel joy in my heart at being alive.
On routine:
How I enjoy it. F, many years ago: 'why do you lay the table for breakfast the evening before? You might want quite different food or no breakfast at all.' I try to explain that when I come downstairs to make breakfast, I don't really want to have to think, just to make it automatically, since I don't feel properly awake til I've had my cup of tea. But I knew even then that that wasn't the only or at least the real reason.
Quoting [a presumably fictional] Philippe Petite in The Walk (2015):
"Once I'm on the wire it's alright. It's the moment of transition from the solidity building to the wire that's frightening.
On surreality and baseline reality in comedy:
And part of the contract, it seems to me, is that, however much the laws of plausibility are flouted, some of them have to remain in place. To do away with all of them leads to vacuity, to boredom. It's a matter of getting the balance just right, of pushing the boundaries of anarchy just far enough but no further. When, at the opening of one of the Marx Brothers films, we see a large silent room with several beds in it and an alarm clock suddenly goes off and in seconds the occupants of those beds have leapt out, shoved the beds up against the walls, and it looks for all the world that we're now in a busy office -- except for the fact that a slice of toast keeps popping out of a typewriter and has to be hurriedly buried again. In another Chico stands against a wall and, on being asked 'Why are you standing there?' answers: 'I'm propping up the wall.' 'Scram!' the other says. Chico takes the hint and walks away and the wall falls down. Yet at once the episode of the wall is forgotten and the plot moves on.