"Thought Through My Eyes": Epilogue, Part 1

"Everything that terrifies others delights me, the fears and phantasms that others commonly carefully repress are to me so many fresh sources for my critical intelligence, but one would have to be far more foolish than I to try to analyze the complexity of my intentions and motivations. I who live them am far from understanding all about them! Fortunately, there are still my works which, subjected to the most objective examination, allow some of the truths I have been dredging up from the depths to come through."

-Salvador Dali (The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali, p. 141)

At the top of this post is the cover for the presentation/paper I delivered at the James Joyce Conference two weeks ago. The drawing is from Salvador Dali's book The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (which features prominently in my study) and it was put together by my girlfriend's dad, Luther, a highly talented graphic designer. The talk that I gave in Pasadena was just a very basic overview of the material in the paper. The full version is available in a 17-page booklet format with color images so if you'd like one of those just let me know and I can mail you one.

The essence of my paper is an analysis of Salvador Dali's The Temptation of St. Anthony showing that the material in the painting bears a striking resemblance to the symbols and structure of Joyce's first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Then I go on to explore whether Dali ever explicitly acknowledged any Joyce influence (or vice versa) and what this interpretation of the painting means, concluding with a look at Jacques Lacan's role as "shoelace" tying together Joyce, Dali, and my new interpretation of the painting.

What I'd like to do here is present some of the left-over material that didn't make it into the final version of the paper and also (in Part 2) discuss the meaning of the title which, unfortunately, I didn't really get to touch on at all in the paper. In the interest of graciously acknowledging all of my sources, I will also go through most of the books and scholarly stuff I used in my research (this will be Part 3) and point out some of the material one should seek to study if they have any further interest in this stuff.

Image drawn at the top of a chapter in Dali's book The Secret Life.

So, in analyzing the painting, the first thing I looked at is that tiny image in the very center amid the elephant legs showing what appears to be a parent with child and, as I tried to show, this is Dali himself as a young child, an image of his earliest memories and experiences. What I didn't get to mention is that this is a frequent motif in Dali's paintings from around this era (1930s-40s), as you can see from these examples.

Atavistic Ruins After the Rain (1934)

And (as in the St. Anthony painting) much smaller, barely visible here:

Geological Development (1933)

The Ambivalent Image (1933)

Here are a couple more instances of this motif appearing, this time in two of Dali's works that incorporate the elements from Jean-Francois Millet's Angelus which Dali became obsessed with.

Archaeological Reminscence of Millet's Angelus (1935)

The Architectonic Angelus of Millet (1933)

The Angelus

As a child going to school, there was an image of Millet's The Angelus hanging on the wall just outside the classroom door and young Salvador would stare at it until it was branded on his brain. As you can see, he was prone to incorporate this image or its likeness into his work. In the 1930s, when penning numerous articles and essays on his developing paranoiac-critical method (one of which I've published on this blog before) he composed a paranoiac study of The Angelus in which he asserted a whole new and different meaning behind the painting. One of his assertions was that the man and woman in the scene (to the right) are standing over the buried body of their child. In 1963, the laboratory at the Louvre actually x-rayed the original painting and saw that there was originally what looks like a casket at the mother's feet but it had been painted over by Millet.

Unfortunately, there's no way to x-ray The Temptation of St. Anthony to see if my interpretation of it is accurate but I did confirm that the meanings I perceived within the painting were apprehended, witnessed, or "thought through my eyes" in a process exactly like Dali's paranoiac-critical method. I did manage to magnify and zoom into some of the smaller elements in the painting and the autobiographic aspect of my interpretation is, as I've showed, justified by just taking a look at the images in Dali's wonderful and illustrated autobiography entitled The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

To be continued...

Hot as a Texas Summer

With a few lengthy but unfinished posts clogging up the pipeline, I might as well take a break and talk a little bit about the Mets and my first live baseball experience of 2011.

I went to sleep last Friday night undecided on whether or not it would be worth driving a total of 7 hours by myself back and forth to Arlington to watch the visiting New York Mets play the Texas Rangers on Saturday. When I awoke Saturday morning I couldn't recall my dreams but there were baseball images, players, scenes, thoughts left over in my mind and I realized my unconscious mind had made the decision for me.

I quickly prepared some long-drive materials (music, snacks, directions, places to eat on the way) and hit the road. After over 3 hours of driving through a boring flat landscape, I got closer to Arlington and was driving on single-lane roads through farms with haystacks, horses, and cows. Finally I saw the huge ballpark's castle-like outer walls. As I approached, I was confronted by an imposing, enormous bulb that looked exactly like a spaceship had landed and settled in the grass. I later realized it was the gaudy new Dallas Cowboys stadium.

I entered the Ballpark in Arlington through its centerfield gate and the place was packed though surprisingly pretty easy to maneuver around. I picked up a scorecard and searched in vain for a pen to use. In the process, I didn't come away with a pen but did encounter the strongest Texas accents I've ever heard.  The game had already begun and when I peeked out at the bright emerald expanse there was Carlos Beltran standing at third and the Mets had already tacked on 2 runs before recording an out (Beltran had brought in both runs with a triple). It seemed my long drive would be rewarded with, at the very least, a competitive effort from the New York nine.

When I reached my seat in the middle of the right field grandstand, it was already 3-0 Mets and the sweaty crowd around me was getting annoyed. In a row of 16 seats I had to maneuver past everybody to sit in the 8th seat and I sat next to a lovely woman who was at the game with her family, she even let me borrow her pen (a pink "girly pen" she warned) to keep score for the whole game and we chatted it up through the ebbs and flows of the game.

Here's the view I had:

The Mets went down quickly in the 2nd inning but then knocked in another 3 runs in the third to take a commanding 6-0 lead. I was jubilant after my team's aggressive start but I was also by this point soaking in (literally, it was around 100 degrees) my surroundings and having old memories of admiring this park on television over the years. It was infamous for "it ain't over til it's over" kind of games because the sweltering Texas air allows the ball to fly out of the park easily. Sure enough, Mets starter Jonathsn Niese gave up back-to-back homers the next inning and the big lead was cut to 6-2. Then came the 6th inning.

I've been going to Mets games for about 10 years now and there were a few years in NY when I managed to get to about 10 games a year. I can't remember ever witnessing as unrelenting an offensive onslaught as they executed in that 6th inning. The first 8 batters of the inning reached base before an out was recorded. By the end of the inning they had blown the game open with 8 more runs, making the score 14-2! I literally could not have imagined a more satisfying performance from my favorite team.

With the game essentially out of hand, I decided to get up out of my seat and walk around the premises a bit. I ended up sitting at the very top of the stadium, up in the last row deep in left field. I could see off in the distant horizon the cluster of towers that make up the city of Dallas and, to the west, a smaller cluster making up Fort Worth. Beyond the ballpark walls I could see the domed top of the Cowboys stadium gleaming. To my right, a cowboy with sunglasses was guzzling a Coors Light with crushed cans of the same scattered around him. Way down below, the Mets closed out a big victory and I sat for a moment pondering the vastness of Texas. The ride home was unbearably bland and filled with lonely farmland as I stared in stupefied surprise at some of the rural flat emptiness in the vicinity of one of the planet's largest and most expensive super stadiums.

*   *   *

Over the years, when I would play baseball video games and watch nationally televised ballgames, I had always looked upon the Ballpark in Arlington as one of those really cool stadiums with its own unique characteristics and game-altering aura but I could never picture it as an actual destination for viewing a game. I could never picture myself ending up in the heart of Texas watching a baseball game (where the crowd actually sung "Deep in the Heart of Texas"!). Now, here I am and there I was.

Having ticked another ballpark off my list, I've been considering other parks that I may or may not end up attending in the future. I find it hard to envision a scenario where I would end up seeing a game in Detroit's Comerica Park. I have never been to the city of Detroit and don't foresee myself going there in the near future although, with it's rich musical history (and my current favorite musicians present there), there's always a possibility I'll stop by.

After laying two consecutive whoopings on the Rangers, the Mets now find themselves in Motown facing another first place American League team, the Tigers. With my personal favorite AL team, the Oakland A's, tanking yet again this year I'd been searching for another junior circuit squad to root for and I've developed an interest in this Tigers team. As I discussed in my team previews, they are built to be a very top heavy team but so far this year their lineup has gotten strong contributions from hitters not named Miguel Cabrera. I loved the Victor Martinez signing and V-Mart is hitting as well as ever (.336/.385/.498 AVG/OBP/SLG) but they've also seen catcher Alex Avila come into his own as a major league hitter this year (at the age of 24) putting up perhaps the best offensive season by a catcher in all of baseball. The other surprises are Brennan Boesch (136 OPS+) who most analysts expected to collapse after his sudden ascent last year and the former failed prospect Jhonny Peralta who's having a career year (.311/.360/.531) at the age of 29. Their only problem is that, other than those five guys, nobody else has hit even close to the league average. (It also bothers me to see manager Jim Leyland continue to pencil in three of his worst hitters atop the batting order while putting all five of his legit sluggers further down.)

Peralta, who'd always been considered a poor shortstop for a lack of range (he was even moved over to third base while still with his original team, the Cleveland Indians), seems to be holding his own out on defense and speedy sophomore centerfielder Austin Jackson is covering the vast Detroit middle pastures more than adequately as well so their defense remains reliably solid.

In the rotation, Justin Verlander has been one of the best pitchers in baseball and the Mets will have to face him on Thursday, but the rest of the staff hasn't been all that good. I expected young righty Max Scherzer to take a big step forward this year but he's kind of been treading water thus far.  The bullpen has some good arms on the back end (including one of my favorite new ballplayer names, Al Albuquerque) but they've also got some ridiculously bad walk rates on that staff. The closer Jose Valverde walks nearly five men per 9 innings and there are two other relievers (Albuquerque and Daniel Schlereth) walking over six batters per 9. 

As I type this, the Mets are in the middle of yet another offensive outburst with two grand slams against the Tigers already and 13 runs total. I imagine they'll probably continue the streak of making pitchers cry tomorrow when they face lefty Phil Coke who, despite having a birthday within one day of my own, kinda sucks. I'd be surprised and delighted if the runs continue to pour in against Verlander, though.

Retrospective Arrangement of Thoughts

Dali's "architecture of eternity" sketching

It's about time I resuscitate this blog after nearly a month of silence. My absence was due, as I've frequently mentioned, to the completion of my paper on James Joyce and Salvador Dali as well as the visual presentation material that I delivered to a group of about 25 people this past Thursday morning at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. My paper, entitled "Thought Through My Eyes: A Portrait of the Artist as a Dali Painting" was well-received; everybody seemed to enjoy it and I got plenty of positive feedback from folks. Having not endured public speaking for nearly four years, I somehow managed to avoid spontaneously combusting. In fact, I think I did pretty well.

The Joyce Conference overall was fun, though a bit mentally taxing (which is to be expected). Everybody I met was very nice to me and the whole group of Joyceans were very welcoming and appreciative that a young, non-academic like me was there to present my work. I did feel a little bit out of place at times, especially since most people would ask "so where are you from?" upon introduction, expecting to hear what university I teach (or go to grad school) at but not only am I independent of any university, I've also bounced around three time zones the last three and a half years. So, my answer was always complicated. Nevertheless, I made some friends and had a good time with everyone, getting to hang out with folks from all over the globe (Denmark, Australia, UK, Canada, Japan, to name a few).

One of the more interesting individuals there was an Australian named Jaya Savige who, as I realized earlier today from Googling him, is an award-winning poet attending Cambridge University on a full scholarship. One night, while gripping a glass of some sort of hard liquor, he told a memorable story about confronting Bill Gates on capitalism to the point where the bajillionaire Microsoft man accused him of being a "Stalinist." The story becomes all the more comical when you read that Savige is in fact a Gates Scholar, receiving the rare $100K scholarship grant to attend Cambridge for free.

Throughout the four day conference, the most captivating things I witnessed were:

1. Adam Harvey's mind-blowing performance of the Mookse and the Gripes story from Finnegans Wake, reciting with great dramatic emphasis the entire 15-page selection from memory. As far as I know, it was the only thing in the conference that achieved a standing ovation.

2. Actress Fionnula Flanagan's recitation of the short story "Counterparts" as well as the discussion afterwards. The Dubliners story, about a man who slips out of work for a quick beer, gets berated by his boss, gets drunk after work, loses a barroom arm-wrestling match and then beats up his son, was emotionally striking and she performed it extremely well. Afterwards, the white-haired (but beautiful) Irish woman discussed how important the story is to her because of the realness of it, mentioning "the sickness of my nation: alcoholism," and reflecting on why she feels it's the greatest short story ever written.

3. The closing ceremony, an outdoor dinner in the middle of a beautiful old Spanish-style villa on the campus of Caltech (right underneath the windows of a room where Albert Einstein lived for a while) in which two old songs that appear in Portrait and Ulysses were sung. I had never really thought I would enjoy hearing these old songs but the magical alchemy of the evening managed to lift me off the earth momentarily. Particularly, the song sung acapella (and with no microphone) by Patrick Reilly of the CUNY Graduate Center entered me into a trance, the undulating tones of human chords making me feel as though my beating heart were a uvula dangling alone in the universe amidst the entire vibrating energy of existence. Yup, it was that good. (The song is an old ballad called "Love is Pleasin', Love is Teasin'.")

4. Some of the academic papers I enjoyed were: Jeffrey Drouin's talk on Joyce as "The Einstein of English Fiction"; Benjamin Boysen's takedown of Jacques Lacan entitled "When the Psychiatrist Needs a Psychiatrist"; Tim Martin talking about Ulysses as an elegy; Mark Osteen on the "Handiwork of Portrait"; and Sheldon Brivic's paper on "Ulysses and Badiou" even though I didn't know who Badiou was and still don't (Brivic was just really interesting to listen to).

It is often sporting events that mark historical points in the constellations of my life experiences, time markers, helping me reach back and remember the specifics of past autobiographical events. This wonderful return trip to Cali certainly had that: I watched the Mavericks capture the NBA Finals inside the hotel bar drinking a brew with a new pal from the University of Alberta, and then sat next to a table full of black-and-yellow-clad cheering Bruins fans in a restaurant when they won Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Certainly a memorable time. I'll probably have much more to say about it soon and I'm working on some more posts about my Joyce-Dali paper (which I printed in a monograph booklet, contact me and I'll send you one) as well as a bunch of other writings to come.

A Cacophony of Shouts

Inside the Sagrada Familia

For over a week, I have devoted the bulk of my free time to completing my essay on James Joyce and Salvador Dali (which I will be presenting at the North American James Joyce Conference in Pasadena on June 16th). After finishing it the other day, I've been immersed in some further residual readings related to my study of these two 20th Century master craftsmen. One book in particular has really been sparking my interest, the extravagantly titled Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali as told to André Parinaud. It's from the early 1970s so Dali, who had been a famous artist for about 5 decades already, has plenty of interesting things to say. I've been most fascinated by his discussion of the paranoiac (a main aspect of my paper) but I will get into it all of that here later on, I'm planning on writing a big post detailing all of the books used for my essay.

So I was reading it today and Dali was speaking very favorably about an architect, Antoni Gaudi, who hails from Catalonia, Dali's hometown in Spain. I had never heard of Gaudi or his works before and so I had to look him up after reading such laudatory praise as this:

The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

What I love about Gaudi is his vitality. His brain is at the tips of his fingers... I remember Lorca [Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet, a friend of Dali's] in front of the admirable facade of the Sagrada Familia claiming to hear a griterio---a cacophony of shouts---that rose stridently to the top of the cathedral, creating such tension in him that it became unbearable. There is the proof of Gaudi's genius. He appeals to all of our senses and creates the imagination of the senses. Gaudi researched this deeply by studying applications of acoustics. He turned bells into organ pipes....
Everything in his work, light as well as silence, "transports us elsewhere," and none was more adept than he at using bad taste to throw us, decondition us, tear us away from the sterility of good taste. He provokes us down to our innermost depths. Through him, everything is metamorphosis, nothing is taboo nor set any longer, the Gothic rejoins the Hellenic, which in turn merges into Far Eastern forms....The Sagrada Familia is a magnetic tuning-fork whose waves spread ceaselessly and penetrate all minds receptive to the irrational that often practice and live art nouvea unwittingly. (pg 146-147)

Needless to say, I'm in awe.

More Mind Fusion

"De la musique avant toute chose..."
("Music before anything else")
- Paul Verlaine, Art Poétique

I'd like to share a few more examples of the records that appear on Volume 2 of Madlib's Mind Fusion series I talked about in the last post. The essence of this first song embodies, for me, the whole approach of these Madlib mixes and serves as a nice introduction to the catalogue of forgotten beauties that this musical savant seeks to entertain us with.



This next one is an epic 1960s Italian song with great drums.



That song is by the famous Italian composer Ennio Morricone who also produced the legendary soundtrack to the trilogy of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns in the 60s. Of all the great musical notes in that classic film series, the one that I've always been most struck by is the poignant little pocket watch tune that plays an important part in the second film of that trilogy, For a Few Dollars More.



And, last but not least, a glorious explosion of drums and piano, again from Mind Fusion Vol. 2:



(I just want to point out that this isn't even the best mix in the 5-part Mind Fusion series. That would be Volume 3 which contains about 70 minutes of nothing but gems. Unfortunately, there is no extant tracklist for Volume 3 and I've only been able to identify one song, though it's a beauty.)

The Flight of the Oriole

For the last 2 or 3 weeks I've found myself listening almost exclusively to Madlib's Mind Fusion series, a pretty rare set of cds featuring a vast display of old soul-jazz-funk-psychedelic-global-whatever records (there are 5 albums/mixtapes in the series, 2 of them feature Madlib-produced hip hop remixes, 3 of them are diverse DJ mixes from Mind Altering Demented Lessons In Beats' famous 5-ton collection of vinyl and those mixes are superb).

The song above is from Volume 2 of the series (you can see the full tracklist here) and this tune has captivated me from the first time it hit my ears. It's jazz/soul with an old nightclub feel (the singer, Lorez Alexandria, had performed in Chicago nightclubs in the 1950s but this song is from her 1978 album How Will I Remember You?). I'm entranced by the blend of fast-tapping drums, deep bass strumming slowly, and the singer's strong voice and delivery. Her voice darts and floats like a bird as she sings the seductive story of a ladybird, a Baltimore Oriole, using avian archetypes ("no time for a lady to be dragging her feathers around in the snow"). A bird's eye view of the track reveals the full synthesis of meaning, content, and flavorful delivery---her French-sounding pronunciation of the "r" in Oriole even brings to mind the French word orielle which means "ear" and it's as though the temptress described in the song is also tempting the musical ear of the listener (the oriole is, after all, a songbird). It becomes clear that this was all purposely done by this very talented musician, her bio states that her "clearly enunciated delivery...was always highly sensitive to the import of the lyric she was singing" and the info shown at the bottom of the YouTube clip describes her as "superior at interpreting lyrics."

*   *   *

The Baltimore Oriole first received its name because the bird's orange-and-black feathers resembled the coat of arms of Lord Baltimore, a British coloniser in the 1600s who was the first proprietor of the colony of Maryland in North America. The Baltimore Oriole is (surprise!) the state bird of Maryland and, following the pastoral tradition of naming baseball teams after state birds, Baltimore ballclubs have used the symbol of the Oriole for almost 130 years now.

The Baltimore Nine in the 1890s

The original Baltimore Orioles baseball franchise was founded way back in 1882 (the year James Joyce was born). They were a charter member of the American Association, an old professional league that lasted for ten years. When that league folded in 1892, the Orioles joined the National League (yep, the same National League that the Mets and everyone else play in today) and became a powerhouse, winning three consecutive pennants.

The National League during the 1890s was a scary place, the games often filled with violent, dirty play, the umpires were often spat on, punched, or shoved and the fans involved themselves in the game's quarrels to a degree unlike anything we could imagine nowadays. In their tame moments, they were known to hurl rotten eggs or beer bottles at the on-field arbiters. As Bill James wrote in the Historical Baseball Abstract,

 "the fans never actually killed an umpire. They tried. Umpires required police protection countless times, and there was an incident in Minnesota in 1906 in which a crowd got hold of an umpire with apparent intent to do bodily harm, but was dissuaded by a local athlete. A good many umpires have been killed in on-field accidents, some of them in the minors. But if they didn't kill one (deliberately) in the 1890s, then it just wasn't destined to happen, because they sure tried." (pg 53)

During this violent era, the Orioles were known as the absolute dirtiest team of them all. In 1894, the Orioles started a fight on the field in Boston that got so ugly it ended up with the the fans rioting and starting a fire that destroyed the ballpark and 170 surrounding buildings. Led by third baseman John McGraw, who would eventually go on to become one of the greatest managers of all time for the New York Giants, they played rough and they succeeded with it.

But just as the 20th century dawned, the National League decide to get rid of four teams including the Orioles. Members of the defunct team went to the brand spankin' new American League and made their own Baltimore Orioles team though they'd only last a couple of years before moving to New York and becoming the Highlanders (eventually changing their name to the Yankees).

The Orioles of today that we know and love were originally the St. Louis Browns, another team in the early American League, until the franchise transferred to Baltimore in 1954 and took on the name of the famous old B-more ballclubs. The newly minted Orioles stunk during their early years in the American League but they would eventually build up a pretty spectacular team that managed to stay in contention virtually every year from 1960 to 1983, winning three World Series titles along the way.

Those Orioles teams pulled off the exalted feat of playing in the Fall Classic for three consecutive years from 1969 to 1971, though they only won once during that span (in 1970). In 1969, the highly-favored, powerhouse O's went up against the scrappy New York Mets. The Amazin' and lovable Mets pulled off the upset, defeating Baltimore in 5 games, winning their first ever World Championship in a series that featured a handful of legendary moments. Here's the Mets segment from Ken Burns' wonderful baseball documentary:


*   *   *

Having departed San Diego and lost the luxury of rooting for and seeing a nearby baseball team (the Padres) on the regular, I've found thus far this season that I'm clutching to my Mets fanhood as tightly as ever. I'm now deep in the heart of Texas, the state's two pro ball teams are each at least three hours away from me and I've got absolutely no interest in either of them anyway. I don't have cable, so I can't pick up their games on TV and while I do watch baseball on MLB.tv, I'm blacked out from watching any games involving a Texas team. So, early on in the season while league storylines are still developing, I've latched onto my ol' Mets.

This year's team got off to a terrible start but they've looked pretty respectable lately as their deep offense has awoken from its offseason hibernation. As I mentioned recently, I've been particularly glad to see Carlos Beltran back in the lineup and mashing the ball like he used to. As I cooked dinner the other night, I watched and cheered loudly as Beltran launched three homeruns against Colorado.

This weekend, the Metropolitans make their only trip to the city of Houston (though they do return to Texas to face the Rangers in June) and I've been trying to figure out a way to head over there to see a game but my schedule doesn't allow it and it's a three hour drive each way. I can't help but be annoyed by this, though, because my favorite baseball team is playing within driving distance from here and I'm unable to go see them.

I didn't even get to watch last night's game live as it was blacked out. The Mets went about their business anyway and blasted three monstrous homeruns in a nice comeback win against the Astros. For tomorrow afternoon's tilt, featuring the knuckleball-flinging sensation that is R.A. Dickey taking the hill for the Mets, I'll probably resort to tuning into the game's radio broadcast to keep up with the happenings of the National League New York Nine.

*   *   *

The inimitable Joe Posnanski wrote a nice blog post that briefly examines the reborn Carlos Beltran (leading the NL in extra base hits at the moment) and compares him to Derek Jeter while also painting a humorously accurate and well-written portrayal of New York City and her relationship with her baseball teams. As anyone who's spent time in Manhattan knows, the best way to get a glimpse of what's going on with the local teams is to drop a quarter and pick up the often absurd New York Post tabloid. Sayeth Joe:

"I look to the Post front page for overreaction, for gut punches, for the very thing that New York cops, construction workers, store owners and waitresses and anyone else you might run into would say."

Three Baseball Book Reviews

Reviewing the three baseball books that have occupied my mind the last couple months.

Baseball Prospectus 2011

I never really thought about this until now, but it's incredible to realize that every year (for 8 years and counting) I devour the entirety of a book that is literally the size of a phonebook. Usually, I will gradually cruise through the Baseball Prospectus annual throughout the summer until I've finished it. This year, I surprised myself by zipping through the whole thing in less than two months.

The arrival of the new BPro publication is a yearly ritual for me as I'm sure it is for many other devout baseball fans. In the foreword to this year's edition, Joe Posnanski gives a rundown of the exact manner in which he approaches the great tome every year. For me, I spend a few days just flipping through it, reading bits and pieces and soaking up the feeling that a new baseball season is upon us. Then I start reading through the essays of each team (starting with the crappy ones, saving the best teams for last) along with the capsules for their key players. One of the many beautiful things about this book is that after reading the whole thing, it then becomes an essential reference book; a perfect, handy (though heavy) guide to flip through whenever watching a ballgame.

Now, as an annual devourer of these books, I find myself scrutinizing the mistakes and typos (there are plenty, as usual) and holding it up to a very high standard. I expect a lot from this book and it's something I look forward to reading every year, not just because of the sharp and thorough baseball analysis, but because the quality of the writing is usually excellent. The Prospectus think-tank has seen a lot of turnaround among its ranks these last few years, though, and the quality does occasionally reflect that. Some of the writing is very bland and doesn't offer anything new or special in the way of baseball analysis---I was particularly unimpressed with the team essays for the White Sox, Rangers, Giants, and especially the Mets. It also becomes very obvious when you read through the player essays that the writer isn't looking at the same stats that the reader is being shown. In that respect, they actually got a bit sloppy this year.

That's not to say that there weren't big improvements in this year's book. The format and design of the player capsules (of which there are over 1,600 making up the bulk of the book) received a major overhaul from past editions. The capsules were cleaned up, some staple stat categories removed and the info condensed to conserve space. It was a visual shock at first, but my eyes quickly got used to it and I actually think the presentation is much smoother than its ever been. A pet peeve of mine with these books, though, is a complete lack of any creativity at all in the appearance. The look of the text is as cold and bland as an instruction manual. And yet the wit and spirit of the written content is lively, occasionally causing me to burst into laughter. (I also get a lot of enjoyment out of the lists of player comps which sometimes bring up amazing old baseball names like Puddin Head Jones and Vinegar Bend Mizell.)

It seems like the best chapters were those for the lesser teams. I loved the Orioles team essay which put into perspective the nearly unprecedented turnaround the team had last year; the Nationals got one of the best essays in the book, one which compares them to Dave Dombrowski's successful Tigers teams and even speaks of a growing Nats bandwagon; the Astros, perhaps the shittiest and most boring franchise in baseball right now, received an insightful and humorous assessment, same with the Indians. As for the good teams, they certainly present a great case for why the Reds will be a competitive force for the upcoming future (a great defensive team with tons of young talent) and pick apart the always interesting Colorado Rockies.

On my eighth or ninth edition of this book, it's pretty clear they have developed a formula for the writing style which always features lots of snark and cultural references to bring much needed levity to a scientific, numbers-heavy content. They can tend to pile it on a bit thick, though, and the same jokes (this year it's obesity humor) repeated over and over fall badly flat. Despite its flaws, this vast text is still a delicious treat that doesn't lose its flavor even months after you've completed it. A worthy addition to the annals of Prospectus annuals.

The Extra 2%

This book felt very much like an unofficial sequel to Moneyball or, perhaps, a nephew to Michael Lewis' famous book. The author certainly doesn't hide that, often referencing the book that told the story of the shrewd Oakland A's front office. Just like Moneyball, this book has a great story. The worst-to-first scenario played out so ideally for the Rays that, honestly, it's a meatball pitch for any astute baseball writer to hit out the park and Jonah Keri does just that.

He's certainly got a gift for storytelling and juggling different scenes in a narrative, often jumping nimbly between decades or individual seasons while following a general chronology of the Tampa Bay Rays' history. After its inception in the late 90s, the organization was so unbelievably pathetic in every possible way that it's often comical. The team president was a world-class schmuck who wouldn't even let the employees use e-mail, considering it to be just a fad. His business manners pissed off everyone: the employees, the fan base, local businesses, even the city itself.

Three Wall Street honchos eventually took over the reins and completely changed everything about the organization, from the team name (exorcising the "Devil" out of "Devil Rays") on down to the allowance of outside food to be brought into the ballpark and free parking. They needed to revamp the team's image and they not only accomplished that, but they built a powerhouse that managed to win the AL East two out of three years with a minuscule payroll.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the team's manager, Joe Maddon, covering his background and ascent to the role of major league manager. Maddon is a highly interesting character; a baseball lifer with broad intellectual interests who frequently goes against the grain and the accepted baseball wisdom in his machinations. The chapter entitled "Mystery Men" was also great, describing the Rays' manner of seeking out bright sabermetricians to build a powerful braintrust of brilliant baseball minds on the cheap. The whole Rays story is a great one, enough to make me a fan of theirs, but what makes this book special is that it's written in an extremely readable, smooth manner.

The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011

At the inception of my deep intellectual interest in baseball, one of my must-read websites was the upstart Hardball Times. The staff has changed a lot over the years as many of their original writers have gone on to bigger gigs, but they still produce plenty of great (and free), cutting edge baseball content. I was one of the few people that bought their first venture into book publishing and I've been getting their Annuals every year since.

The timing of the book's release is a bit awkward, though. First, they were releasing the book at the conclusion of each season to examine what had happened that year. And now this last iteration was released so soon after the season that its content doesn't cover the playoffs or World Series. Repeating the same exact cover art for a few years in a row doesn't look great either. Nevertheless, this an awesome book.

It is split into halves: a collection of essays and studies on various aspects of the game in front and full thorough stats for every team in the back. This year had a bunch of excellent essays including a really long one (15 pages) by legendary analyst Craig Wright on the proper way to get the most of a pitcher. That's really the must-read essay in the book that's worth the purchase price on its own. But I also loved Steve Treder's piece on the reasons for last year's low scoring levels (an interesting relationship between pitcher, batter, and umpire is apparently behind it); Jeremy Greenhouse used the data goldmine of Pitch f/x to identify the pitchers in the game with the best "stuff" (hardest throwers/best movement) and location yielding fascinating results in a well-written piece; Sean Smith examined the oft-asked question of whether or not catchers have a real impact on the performance of their pitcher and the results were groundbreaking (backstops do have a noticeable effect). There's also an intricate though highly readable breakdown of Barry Zito's fall from grace and return to respectability as well as an eye-opening little piece by Tom Tango that might make you see the game a bit differently (with regards to balls in play, at least).

The cover boasts "timeless commentary" and, in fact, I do find myself digging out last year's edition of the same book to read some of the essays because, for the most part, they don't lose their luster. And this current edition is already about 6 months old but I've been reading it constantly. Great, informative, worthwhile reading for a baseball nut.

Initial Public Offering

The Beckman Auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena

The preliminary version of the academic program for the upcoming James Joyce Conference has been released and yours truly is scheduled to present on Thursday, June 16th. That is, of course, "Bloomsday" otherwise known as the most famous and perhaps important day for Joyceans and I've got the first slot that morning. My presentation will be an analysis of the two great 20th Century masters, Joyce and Salvador Dali. I'm not sure if it's open to the public or not but it will take place in the auditorium at the California Institute of Technology. See the full event program here.

I'm pretty thrilled about the whole thing but also, as an academic outsider who hasn't endured public speaking in almost four years, quite nervous. Here's hoping you'll be rooting for me.

A Tony Sipp Soliloquy

Here's a little lyric I wrote up while watching the exciting ending to last night's Tigers-Indians ballgame. In the top of the 13th, the Tigers hit two deep shots in a row that looked like homeruns but were caught at the wall in centerfield.

Tied in extra innings, long night in Cleveland
              Indians and Tigers toil.
Detroit thumps bombs, roaring bereavement:
            warning track catch, runs foiled.
Tony Sipp zips overhand heat,
            deep fly balls ensue.
Prospectus reference sought for statspeak,
           on Cleveland: he's Tony who???
Sipp with two P's, the capsule reads...

"power southpaw reliever" with strikeout stuff
If to deep flies the wall catches up,
           he'll last in this league a decade or up.
Good enough.

Dream Architecture

This started out as a long response in the comments section of this recent post, but it immediately became worthy of its own post.

I read a great article on Finnegans Wake a while back (same article discussed here and here) in which a whole class that was studying the book found the Wakean replication---or dream distortion---for each of their own names.

It's a weird and interesting characteristic about the book that you can find something that at least sounds like or in some way resembles your name somewhere in there. My favorite instance of this is Marshall McLuhan mentioned as "Meereschal MacMuhun" on pg 254.

Seana had commented that she was under the impression the title "A Building Roam" had been adopted from a Joyce phrase somewhere. It wasn't. Not as far as I know, at least. I tried a few searches in the Wake Concordex to see if there was anything that came close to "A Building Roam" and found this great sentence:

"Within was my guide and I raised a dome on the wherewithouts of Michan: by awful tors my wellworth building sprang sky spearing spires, cloud cupoled campaniles: further this." - FW pg 541

Beautiful. Let's break it down right quick: 

• Within was my guide and I raised a dome on the wherewithouts - corresponds to my being self-compelled by the guide within to emigrate from New York a few years back, and throughout the roam thus far I've established myself, set up shop, or "raised a dome" in a few different locations amid the wherewithouts.  
• my wellworth building sprang sky spearing spires -  refers to the Woolworth Building in downtown Manhattan, the same majestic old building under which I stood daily during four years of college, awaiting the express bus to bring me home to Staten Island. Also, the awful tors or "awful tours" are the often rough, stressful patches in my travels thus far. 
• cloud cupoled campaniles - a cupola is a dome on a building and campanile is Italian for "bell-tower" (The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a campanile), confirming for us that the whole sentence is about buildings, architecture and growth. 
• further this -instructions to roam, to keep moving, keep growing

The Sound is God

Any producer who incorporates samples of Alan Watts is cool in my book.