The Adventure Continues

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Women Chasing Men and Dressing for What's Important

A few years ago, Gay Talese, one of the pioneers of literary or “new” journalism, gave an interview to the then online presence of GQ and Details, Men.Style.com:


Two points in Talese's discussion bear attention.

First is his account of the Italian passeggiata in his parents' village:

At night, the men of the town would parade around the fountain….It was a fashion show unreported, uncovered, unphotographed...a tradition of men walking around and the women looking at them -– and maybe picking a man they would like to know. And then they’d tell the brother, the father, and something was arranged.

The role-reversal here is striking. Although the idea of the peacock is nothing new, we in the U.S. at least tend to think of romance as happening along the opposite lines: Women dress up and men (wearing just about anything, really) chase them.

We probably think this way because of the movies we watch, but the funny thing is, regardless of who chases, women ultimately do the choosing, right? The actuality of the American situation is not, therefore, all that different from what's described here. The passeggiata custom is just more honest about it than the typical Hollywood narrative. So why not change our perspective?

In my view, men should focus their energy on refining themselves -- dressing up their characters as well as their bodies, everyday, indoors and out -- and see who shows up to choose them. Likely, men who go this route will have far more options than they would chasing individual woman after individual woman until one said "yes." The irony, in other words, is that with this approach, men actually do more choosing than they do with the current method.

The second point that bears attention is Talese's assertion that he "always dressed up for the story," meaning, his work as a journalist itself merited the respect inherent to dressing up, regardless of the company he kept:

It wasn't who I was with....no matter who I'm talking to, I'm dressing up, not for the people but for the story. It's ceremonious, it's celebratory, it's important.

A friend of mine and I used to dress up for exams in grad school and our reasons were the same as Talese's. Imagine, though, if we as a society dressed up for everything we thought was important and refused to do unimportant things. What would the world -- and our lives -- be like?

Pet Peeves and Idiosyncrasies (Aphorism No. 4)

Pet peeves are things about everyone else that annoy you; idiosyncrasies are things about you that annoy everyone else. With one of these all fights begin.

Previous aphorisms: Dressing for Existence (no.1), Art (no. 2), The Gentleman Formula (no. 3)

Swagger and Sophistry at the Iowa GOP Debate

At this point, I don't have much of a stake in who wins the Republican nomination, but I do have some opinions regarding the candidates at last night's debate:

First, Rick Santorum was right about being slighted on talking time. I know he says dumb things now and then, but fair is fair.

Second, Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty are amateurs. They spent the entire night in the sandbox, throwing boogers at each other. And they don't give arguments; they just say "my record, my record" over and over again, which is not the brightest move, given the relatively stratospheric qualifications of others competing.

Newt, on the other hand, surprised me. I was ready to write this guy off, but he was good last night. He rebuked Chris Wallace with authority and he looked consistently relaxed the whole evening. When he cited cases and statistics, he did so naturally, as if he actually has some experience and doesn't need to memorize a list of facts off a card before taking the stage. This was not the case for any of the others, save perhaps Herman Cain, believe it or not. I did find Newt's attempts to capitalize on Reagan's success objectionable, but he largely vitiated the offense in most cases by providing other examples to make the same point. Of course, this "I'm too experienced to be worried" projection was probably his strategy, but the point is, he pulled it off. All in all, I'd say he outperformed the rest of the group.

And who doesn't love Ron Paul? Every time he starts ranting about the Iraq war with that high-pitched voice of his, I want to give him a big bear hug. Moreover, even though nobody has any idea what the country would look like if anyone actually listened to him, the guy makes a lot of sense.

My overall assessment, without further commentary, is that if last night's debate were the winnowing fork, there wouldn't be anyone left but Mit, Newt, and Paul. The rest of the candidates handled themselves with mediocrity at best and should go home.

The Gentleman Formula (Aphorism No. 3)

If you dress like a gentleman, you'll feel like a gentleman. If you feel like a gentleman, you'll act like a gentleman. If you act like a gentleman, you'll be a gentleman.

Previous aphorisms: Dressing for Existence (no.1), Art (no. 2)

Art, an Aphorism

Nietzsche's aphorisms vary widely in length, sometimes occupying a single line, sometimes going on for several pages. By this standard, every entry on this blog (and most others) qualifies as an aphorism (see here for more on this). But I have also inadvertently begun a series of posts dedicated to coining aphorisms in the more narrow sense of short sayings (see here for the first time I tried this). Here then is one on art:

The best art examines you more than you examine it.

Nietzsche Was a Blogger

I know, I know; Nietzsche would hate being called this, but hear me out.

Because the internet is systematically making us dumber via training us to prefer our information in bite-sized pieces (see here), the task of the blogger is to say as much as possible in a matchbox of space. Every word must count; every thought must be clearly -- and, in the best-case scenario, beautifully -- expressed.

The other day, I was talking to my good friend (and Nietzsche scholar) about this curious and intellectually challenging enterprise. He said "Well, you know, that's essentially what Nietzsche was going for in his aphoristic style." But, he pointed out, the problem with such a pithy, aphoristic format is that it makes the author extremely susceptible to being misunderstood.

Indeed.

I'm not sure what to say about this latter fact, but I will say that with such a forefather in our lineage, practitioners of our craft (that is, blogging) have much to live up to and, in my opinion, change.