{"id":7641,"date":"2010-11-11T10:26:26","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T15:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=7641"},"modified":"2013-01-09T11:58:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T16:58:50","slug":"a-week-in-culture-tim-wu-professor-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/11\/a-week-in-culture-tim-wu-professor-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in Culture: Tim Wu, Professor, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This is the second installment of Tim Wu\u2019s culture diary. Click here<\/a> to read part 1. <\/em><\/p>\n

DAY FOUR<\/h3>\n

11:00 A.M.<\/strong>, Amtrak, Washington, D.C. \u2192 New York City<\/em><\/p>\n

Taking a break, I read P. G. Wodehouse<\/a>, whose work I would call a guilty pleasure if I actually felt any guilt about it. Today, I read what must be one of his most brilliant stories, \u201cThe Story of Webster.\u201d It is about a young Bohemian named Lancelot whose uncle, a disapproving Vicar, makes him take care of his cat while he is on missionary duty in Bongo Bongo.<\/p>\n

The cat, it turns out is something of a proxy for the Vicar\u2019s disapproval. \u201cHis eyes were clear and steady, and seemed to pierce to the very roots of the young man\u2019s soul, filling him with a sense of guilt.\u201d Lancelot cannot seem to ignore the pressure. Soon he has begun to shave daily, clean his apartment, and under the cat\u2019s influence even ditches his fun-loving poetess girlfriend for a Miss Carberry-Pirbright, \u201ca young woman of prim and glacial aspect.\u201d All seems lost, until at the end the hero solves the problem in a way I won\u2019t spoil.<\/p>\n

\"\"2:50 P.M.<\/strong>, Room 104, Jerome Green Hall, Columbia University<\/em><\/p>\n

My copyright class today is about cultural appropriation, or more precisely, what a secondary author can and cannot do without the first author\u2019s permission. We talk about the case of the Harry Potter Lexicon<\/a><\/em>\u2014a detailed encyclopedia of all things Potter, which J. K. Rowling declared an infringement of her authorial rights. <\/p>\n

This year\u2019s copyright class is a good crowd. I banned laptops, and class speaking is done standing so it has a performative aspect that adds intensity. It also doesn\u2019t hurt that the underlying topic\u2014authorship\u2014is just interesting. <\/p>\n

How authors react to works based on their work is unpredictable. Some authors take the existence of any secondary works as a sign of success. Others are hurt, even if the work is flattering. I tell the class about the day I watched Ms. Rowling on the witness stand, crying<\/a> and saying that her life had lost meaning thanks to that nasty Lexicon<\/em>. <\/p>\n

8:00 P.M.<\/strong>, Chelsea Theater<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"No one will go see Never Let Me Go<\/a><\/em> with me so I have to go by myself. Everyone says it will ruin the book, which is among my favorites. I don\u2019t think so. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, my friends were right. I tried to deny it for a while, but I think it did ruin the book. The problem, I think, was casting. Once you put Keira Knightly on the screen, the idea of using her and her friends for a cloning\/organ-donation setup starts to seem implausible. She does not fit any conceivable idea of what an outcast looks like.<\/p>\n

11:00 P.M.<\/strong>, Satsko<\/a>, East Village<\/em><\/p>\n

Blondie playing. Ask bartender, \u201cWhat are you up to tonight?\u201d \u201cGetting wasted.\u201d <\/p>\n

12:30 A.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

Some subjects for I Gotta Know: what happened to graffiti on New York subways; Masai warriors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DAY FIVE<\/h3>\n

10:30 A.M.<\/strong>, Grounded Caf\u00e9, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"At breakfast I read Franzen\u2019s How To Be Alone<\/a><\/em>. I remember picking the book up years ago and not liking it. Now I remember why. Despite the great title it reads like the speeches he puts in his characters mouths.<\/p>\n

However, a new essay, \u201cMr. Difficult\u201d is great. It’s on the attractions, respectively, of obtuse and popular writing. He writes:<\/p>\n

\n

It turns out that I subscribe to two wildly different models of how fiction relates to its audience. In one model \u2026 the best novels are great works of art \u2026 and if the average reader rejects the work it\u2019s because the average reader is a philistine. In the opposing model, a novel represents a compact between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out which the reader creates a pleasurable experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

3:00 P.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"I do an interview with Vice Magazine<\/a><\/em>. Based on the Web site I was expecting to, say, chop up a few beer cans with a sword and see how that goes.<\/p>\n

Instead, a man named Alex Pasternack interviews me for an hour and forty minutes, the length of a feature film. It\u2019s fun for a while but becomes exhausting. I do remember saying something along the lines of this: \u201cHannah Arendt theorized that every revolution is styled a counterrevolution. Today, every reactionary decision is styled a revolution.\u201d <\/p>\n

11:00 P.M.<\/strong>, Kickstarter<\/a> HQ, Lower East Side<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"For Halloween this year, I decide to dress as a Masai warrior. The Masai were very impressive in Kenya: the whole business of drinking blood and killing lions has a deep appeal. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t look so much like them, but I do have the outfit, the sword, and I try on the attitude.<\/p>\n

To me, the most interesting thing about Halloween is identity. Perhaps I am reading too much into Halloween, but choosing a costume is not unlike choosing a career. Because \u201cWho are you\u201d is not so dissimilar from \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, you can gain a lot of freedom if you\u2019re willing to sacrifice having easy answers.<\/p>\n

At the party, I run into a woman who says she is the girlfriend of today\u2019s interviewer, Mr. Pasternack. I tell her that the interview was good but very long. She says, \u201cHe\u2019s not always so good with boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

DAY SIX<\/h3>\n

9:30 A.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"I do a lot of reading after my mind wakes up but my body is unwilling to move (other than the effort of picking up a book). Kate is enrolled in Laughing Lotus<\/a> school with Dana Flynn, so there are yoga books lying around everywhere. On the bedside table is T. K. V. Desikachar\u2019s The Heart of Yoga<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

When we succeed in becoming so absorbed in something that our mind becomes completely one with it, we are in a state of Samadhi. In Samadhi our personal identity\u2014name, profession, family history, bank account and so forth\u2014completely disappears.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thinking about my life, that actually happens quite a bit. It is usually, however, followed by someone shouting, \u201cWhat were you thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n

2:50 P.M.<\/strong>, Room 104, Jerome Green Hall, Columbia University<\/em><\/p>\n

George Harrison\u2019s \u201cMy Sweet Lord,\u201d and \u201cShe\u2019s so Fine\u201d by the Chiffons are note-by-note almost exactly the same song. Sued, Harrison testified that he came up with \u201cMy Sweet Lord\u201d independently, just sitting with his guitar and strumming. <\/p>\n

\"\"Relatedly, the Bee Gees were accused of stealing \u201cHow Deep is Your Love<\/a>\u201d from a musician named Ronald Selle in Chicago, whose song \u201cLet It End<\/a>\u201d is strikingly similar. The Bee Gees argue that they wrote that the song in a French castle, and therefore couldn\u2019t have copied from Selle. (They were in the castle pictured in this video<\/a> for \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive.\u201d) I am struck by the size of Barry Gibbs\u2019s teeth. <\/p>\n

The problem is that Mr. Selle and his small band had only performed the song at several bar mitzvahs in the Chicago area, so even if the song is the same song it is hard to see how the Bee Gees got access to it. A student raises his hand and says, \u201cBut the Bee Gees were Jewish!\u201d <\/p>\n

6:00 P.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

By the magic of shuffle I discover, bolting upright in my seat, that Alvin and the Chipmunks have found their way into my iTunes library. They come on after Leonard Cohen, which augments the shock. That\u2019s what I get for ripping music off my wife\u2019s old iPod, or more precisely, her ex-boyfriend\u2019s iPod.<\/p>\n

10:00 P.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Foursquare is a cell-phone app that you can use to keep track of where your friends are. It is sometimes useful, but the designers have a creepy habit of congratulating you for using their product. The other day I \u201cunlocked\u201d a level and got this e-mail:<\/p>\n

\n

Great work. Keep it up!<\/p>\n

\u2014Your friends @ foursquare<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Great work? Keep it up? Did I sign up for WeightWatchers by mistake?<\/p>\n

This experience reminds me of Nick Bilton\u2019s book, I Live in the Future<\/a><\/em>, which I read two weeks ago. Bilton is a talented futurist, and one thing that impressed me was that he managed to be consistently optimistic about technologies like Twitter and Foursquare\u2014technologies that are often annoying. On the other hand, I suppose that hating technology might be disqualifying for a tech blogger, something akin to hiring Christopher Hitchens to teach Sunday School. <\/p>\n

DAY SEVEN<\/h3>\n

10:00 A.M.<\/strong>, Grounded Cafe, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Under the influence of \u201cMr. Difficult,\u201d I begin reading Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/a><\/em>, which I\u2019ve had around the house for years. The size of the book and its tiny print give me the sense it might be \u201cdifficult.\u201d The book begins with a quote from Wernher von Braun: <\/p>\n

\n

Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After that it does get difficult. It\u2019s written in a kind of jumpy prose; there are dozens of characters, a large banana breakfast, and a giant adenoid wandering around London, and lots of \u201cnubile women.\u201d It is written as a series of scenes that lack a clear connection, other than a texture of dirtiness, weariness, and sexiness. In other words, it\u2019s not bad. Reflecting on \u201cMr. Difficult,\u201d I start to wonder why it should matter at all whether I finish the book or not, or even read it sequentially. It doesn\u2019t seem like the author cares so much. <\/p>\n

7:00 P.M.<\/strong>, home of Jacob Weisberg & Deborah Needleman, Tribeca<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Tonight, I throw a book party for my new book<\/a>. Against the considered advice of many friends, I\u2019ve engaged an all-girls drumming band named Chica Vas<\/a> to play at the party.<\/p>\n

My theory is that New York book parties are sometimes too static\u2014nothing but talk\u2014and that pounding drums may break things up a bit. At a minimum, it\u2019ll give people something to either like or hate, and in my experience partygoers want one, the other, or both. <\/p>\n

The band plays from an internal balcony twenty feet in the air. They are wearing feathers and lots of shine and are joined for a while by Lily, Deborah and Jacob\u2019s daughter. In what may be the highlight of my year, for one song, I sing with the band, at least for the chorus. <\/p>\n

12:00 A.M.<\/strong>, home, West Village<\/em><\/p>\n

Subjects for I Gotta Know: fastest steam trains ever<\/a>; Chinese checkers. <\/p>\n

Tim Wu is the author of <\/em>The Master Switch<\/a>, a professor at Columbia Law School, and a contributing writer at <\/em>Slate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the second installment of Tim Wu\u2019s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 11:00 A.M., Amtrak, Washington, D.C. \u2192 New York City Taking a break, I read P. G. Wodehouse, whose work I would call a guilty pleasure if I actually felt any guilt about it. Today, I read what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1307,1288,601,1309,1311,1310,110,1313,1315,1312,1308,1314],"class_list":["post-7641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-diaries","tag-bee-gees","tag-columbia-law","tag-copyright","tag-harry-potter","tag-harry-potter-lexicon","tag-j-k-rowling","tag-jonathan-franzen","tag-keira-knightly","tag-masai","tag-never-let-me-go","tag-ronald-selle","tag-vice-magazine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Week in Culture: Tim Wu, Professor, Part 2 by Tim Wu<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 11, 2010 \u2013 This is the second installment of Tim Wu\u2019s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. 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