Responding to Terror.

From the November 28 mass email announcement from my local Chabad Rabbi, responding to the atrocities in Mumbai:

My emotions are raw and numb and I don't really have any words to describe my feelings. The only thing which comes to mind is, let's fight terror by increasing in our good deeds. Let's just do random acts of kindness. Even though we may not feel like it, let's do extra mitzvos.

Light candles, study torah, go to shul, give charity, say a prayer...whatever. Let us become just a little better for the memory of Gavriel, Rivka, and the other terrorist victims.

The Great Thanksgiving Pseudoachievement

Picking every last morsel from the turkey carcass, long after the meal is over.

I am, like, literally annoyed.

I don't know what's up, but this past week I've been (not) literally deluged with improper ``literally'''s over the radio. By professional writers no less. Maybe a dozen or so times. I've heard about Bosnia being literally torn apart, and I've heard about airplane pilots literally barking at their passengers. Sheesh.

The noise in the car.

About 20 years ago, my wife and I were on a somewhat longish drive in western Massachusetts, at night. I started to hear an odd, troubling, knocking sound coming from the passenger side of the car. I asked my wife if she heard a strange noise, and she said that she did. I pulled into a parking lot and walked around the car, looking carefully for whatever was wrong. I looked under the car. I found nothing, and so we pulled back onto the road. The noise began again. I became worried again. I wasn't sure what to do.

At some point I said to my wife that I was afraid that a tire on the passenger side might just detach and roll away, or something like that. She said, ``Passenger side? The noise is coming from the driver's side.'' Immediately I opened the lid of the small storage compartment between the front seats, and we were both able to see that there was a full, unopened can of soda, bought at the previous rest stop, rolling back and forth, causing the knocking sound.

I suppose there's no real point to this story, except that occasionally our worries really are unfounded.

Pseudoachievements.

I have a new word: pseudoachievement (or, pseudo-achievement).

A pseudoachievement is something that feels like an achievement but is not. For instance, watching every episode extant of 24 is a pseudoachievement.

I'm not sure whether watching every episode of The Wire is a pseudoachievement or a real, if minor, achievement; maybe it's a quasiachievement.

I am sure that completing every level of the Linux computer game Supertux is a pseudoachievement.

Learning how to use italics in Blogger is a pseudoachievement.

Blug.

It amazes me how certain people who have otherwise busy lives are able to add to their blogs almost every day. I am not one of these people. In fact, I think I'll refer to this occasional series of ramblings as a blug: A sluggish blog.

Crime Fiction.

For some time now my main vice has been crime fiction. I'm still a novice, but over the last five years or so I've sampled several authors and read the complete (or near complete) works of a few: Elmore Leonard (whom I had regarded the best of the lot for some time); George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin (who were all tied in second place). Runners up, in my ranking, included John Harvey, Lawrence Block, and Ruth Rendell. Lower on the list were Patricia Cornwell and John Sandford.

In fact, once I found Emore Leonard, his work became the standard by which I compared everything else. (With Tishomingo Blues being the last of his great novels, in my opinion.) Indeed, I would rank crime novels on a scale of 0 to 1 Elmore; for instance, Pelecanos' Right as Rain would get a .9 Elmore. Jonathon Kellerman's Dr. Death would get a .05 Elmore.

But in just the past few weeks I've been working through the crime fiction of an author whose work stands well above anything I've read before in the genre: Walter Mosley. While I've only read five or six of his novels so far (in both the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jackson series), his work is deeper and more beautiful than I could have imagined possible. (Now I should warn you, there is a fair amount of schmutz sprinkled throughout his work, but no more than say in Connelly's.)

His books leave me astonished. Moreover, his finely drawn characterizations and fantastic plots remind me more of the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer than other crime fiction novelists.

And here is the question: Why has Mosley not won an Edgar for any of his crime novels? (The Edgar being the award of the Mystery Writers of America.) Unfortunately there is an obvious answer to this question, and it doesn't make me happy.

I'll go further: The world I've entered through Mosley's fiction (i.e., the novels I've read so far), set a generation ago in African-American Los Angeles, is rich, profound, and textured. While much of contemporary American crime fiction is set among the Black American urban underclass, it is only after reading Mosley that I have realized how superficial the portrayal has been by other, white, authors.

So, to all who praise The Wire or Richard Price's Clockers: If you have not yet sampled Walter Mosley's take on urban crime fiction, do so now.

True Genius.

On Monday I had to take my MacBook to the local MacStore for some mundane repairs. The technician who handled the repair had a business card listing his occupation as ``genius.'' Later that day, and over the course of the week, I had the rare privilege of having several conversations with a visitor to my department who was both a MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He also gave a series of astonishingly beautiful lectures on his research in mathematical biology. So I suppose his business card should read ``SuperDuperGenius.''

My Obama Moment.

Friday, November 7, 2008. It had been cloudy and rainy for several days. Almost anyone describing the weather in a single word would have said ``gloomy.'' I was standing in the elevator, when an African American woman in her mid-50's walked on, wearing a large Obama pin. She looked at me with a huge smile and said, ``Isn't it a beautiful day today?''