Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) Read Online Free PDF

fulfilling work, for everyone to earn enough to escape the menace of poverty, but I have no idea how to achieve such worthy goals. Therefore, I will pass over these matters in silence.
    Some last words on the Charlton Heston saga. You argue that those chance meetings became possible because we were both moving in a film milieu, traveling in the same circle. But the fact is that only the first meeting had anything to do with film. The second took place at a book fair in Chicago, the third in a New York hotel lobby. Hence my confusion and amazement, my feeling that those encounters were utterly implausible—as if they were events (as you suggest) not from real life but from a dream.
    Last week, I reread Crime and Punishment for the third or fourth time. I was suddenly struck by plot manipulations that resembled the Charlton Heston story. The most unlikely people wind up living next door to one another. Dunya’s fiancé just happens to be in the same building as Sonya’s stepmother. The man who nearly ruined her (Dunya) just happens to be living in the apartment next to Sonya’s. Implausible? Yes, but highly effective in creating the atmosphere of a fever dream, which gives the book its tremendous force. What I am saying, I suppose, is that there are things that happen to us in the real world that resemble fiction. And if fiction turns out to be real, then perhaps we have to rethink our definition of reality . . .
    WATCHING SPORTS ON T.V.
    I agree with you that it is a useless activity, an utter waste of time. And yet how many hours of my life have I wasted in precisely this way, how many afternoons have I squandered just as you did on December 28th? The total count is no doubt appalling, and merely to think about it fills me with embarrassment.
    You talk about sin (jokingly), but perhaps the real term is guilty pleasure , or perhaps just pleasure . In my own case, the sports I am interested in and watch regularly are the ones I played as a boy. One knows and understands the game intimately, and therefore one can appreciate the prowess, the often dazzling skills, of professionals. I don’t care a lick about ice hockey, for example—because I never played it and don’t truly understand it. Also, in my own case, I tend to focus on and follow specific teams. One’s involvement becomes deeper when each player is a familiar figure, a known quantity, and this familiarity increases one’s capacity to endure boredom , all those dreary moments when nothing much of anything is happening.
    There is no question that games have a strong narrative component. We follow the twists and turns of the combat in order to learn the final outcome. But no, it is not quite like reading a book—at least not the kinds of books you and I try to write. But perhaps it’s more closely related to genre literature. Think of thrillers or detective novels, for example . . .
    [Just now, an unexpected call from a friend, who is waiting downstairs. I have to go, but will continue when I return.] 3 hours later :
    . . . which are always the same book, endlessly repeated, thousands of subtle variations on the same story, and nevertheless the public has an insatiable hunger for these novels. As if each one were the reenactment of a ritual.
    The narrative aspect, yes, which keeps us watching until the final play, the final tick of the clock, but all in all I tend to think of sports as a kind of performance art. You complain about the déjà vu quality of so many games and matches. But doesn’t the same thing happen when you go to a recital of your favorite Beethoven piano sonata? You already know the piece by heart, but you want to hear how this particular pianist will interpret it. There are pedestrian pianists and athletes, and then someone comes along who takes your breath away.
    I wonder if any two contests have ever been exactly alike, play for play. Perhaps. All snowflakes look the same, but common wisdom says that each one is unique. More than six