The New Clap Clap Blog
I originally stumbled across Clap Clap via the Blueberry Boat forum. Blueberry Boat is (or was, as the FF's official forum has taken over the focus) an unofficial Fiery Furnaces fansite, and someone linked to Clap Clap's very ambitious and almost completely thorough analysis of Blueberry Boat, arguably the FF's best album. So I dropped in on his site occasionally and found he had a lot of interesting things to say, many of which are indexed here. The new Clap Clap just launched, and in a bit of serendipity his first real post covers something I mentioned earlier: the weird cultural polarity between the deaths of President Ford and James Brown. He goes into much more detail about it, and despite the post's title never ties Saddam Hussein's execution into it (which I mention because I kind of did, here).
There's actually this tangled web of relations between his circle of friends and their blogs and me, a sort of whole nebulous cloud of serendipity which I would like to get into sometime, although I guess the point would just be to show how the web has made these sorts of anonymous connections possible -- which is old news at this point. Plus it makes me feel a little creepy sometimes when I think about it. I am a blog stalker.
There's actually this tangled web of relations between his circle of friends and their blogs and me, a sort of whole nebulous cloud of serendipity which I would like to get into sometime, although I guess the point would just be to show how the web has made these sorts of anonymous connections possible -- which is old news at this point. Plus it makes me feel a little creepy sometimes when I think about it. I am a blog stalker.
posted by PearJack at 11:41 AM
8 Comments:
Watch out for trackbacks if yer gonna blogstalk!
I started the post meaning to talk about Sadaam, but a) it got too long, and b) he didn't fit in as well as ford and brown did. I was going to talk about the creepy ways in which the execution was a tragicomic echo of Robert Coover's _The Public Burning_, but then I figured I maybe didn't want to go there. I left the title as-is, though, as a sort of exercise to the reader I guess.
What connections are we talking about, if you don't mind me asking?
Well, the ways in which we're connected really are pretty anonymous, although I am friends with some people that Hillary Brown knows, and I think we (Hillary Brown and I) are in a DFW fan group on Friendster but I never really hang out there. Perhaps "a whole nebulous cloud of serendipity" was a bit of an over-statement, but you know how we new bloggers like to hype.
I originally got into DFW, the Fiery Furnaces, and _The Public Burning_ all on a whim and then really latched on to all three (although I haven't read any more Coover). I like them enough that it catches my eye when others do, too, so I started checking out your blog.
I haven't really thought about a connection between Saddam's execution and Coover's novel, although the Phantom of Terror has obviously become our contemporary substitute for the Phantom of Communism. And the execution is, in a way, both highly symbolic yet collateral. I would stop short of calling him a martyr, since even bringing that up seems to embrace some kind of Sunni (or Saddam's own) propaganda, but the question of just why he died and what that death will change are still being worked out on the ground in Iraq. And in our own capital, too.
I don't know, I should probably reread _Burning_ again sometime soon.
I was more struck that it happened so close to New Year's Eve (and actually did happen on the eve of a Shiite religious holiday period). Also about the way Coover's book still holds up even though the Rosenbergs have been pretty much established as spies (Julius, anyway).
I didn't know about the Shiite religious period (is it really a particularly Shia holiday, though?), and yeah, I've heard that the Rosenbergs were probably guilty, but I'm loathe to accept that as a justification for witchhunt/lynching mentalities. I mostly just remember Ethel seducing Nixon and then pantsing him, which of course lent her some gallows dignity.
Plus: In a better world there would be YouTube footage of pantsed world leaders. Alas...
I should look up the exact name, but yeah, it took place on the day before a holiday as the Shiites observe it, but on the first day of that holiday as the Sunnis celebrate it. As I understand it.
I like coover's book because it doesn't dwell on the witch hunt stuff, just takes it as natural and proceeds from there to talk about politics more broadly. I also like that it holds up as art even with everything else removed. It's really remarkable.
I'm actually on a dfw mailing list with Hillary, which is how I guessed we were connected, but I guess it's two degrees. Close enough! I've actually never been to Athens, although I did help her friend apartment-hunt once in NYC.
Eid ul-Adha? Wikipedia says that it commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son, who of course God (or Allah, such as it is) let live at the last second. Which the difference between this and Saddam's execution is pretty obvious.
You're definitely making me want to reread _The Public Burning_! But what exactly do you mean by "everything else removed"? Everything but what? Also, have you read any other Coover? Is anything else really in the same vein as this, or as good?
I think the thing that's most like Public Burning, and is also very good, is his story "The Cat in the Hat for President." As for the rest of his stuff, I seem to have avoided the things people generally cite as his other greats--Pinnochio in Venice and the one about baseball with the long title, so I can't speak for those. Of the ones I have read, I really liked Gerald's Party for some reason, and Briar Rose and A Night at The Movies are also very good and more digestable than Public Burning. I didn't really care for Ghost Town or John's Wife.
Public Burning came with a lot of baggage--it was about a historical figure who was still alive, it addressed a real case that was seen as a historical injustice--that is now gone. Nixon's dead, and the Rosenberg case is now more morally ambiguous. But those things, which were the focus at the time, turned out to be just gravy, and actually the changing circumstances of the Rosenberg's case has just made the book richer, I feel. Without those props, the book still stands.
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