Remember the Bowladrome
Life's persistent questions: where to bowl, and what to read
Dear Readers,
I’ve heard through the grapevine that some who know me well have been worried about my absence from the local bowling scene lately. If I were a politician I might loudly declare, “I didn’t leave bowling — bowling left me!” So, yes, I’m still a little sore that the former Turnpike Bowladrome on the former Concord Turnpike went and shut down on me so a bunch of developers could build luxury apartments. And, as most of you know, I lamented this unfortunate development here in the pages of the Boston Globe Magazine, where we featured an excellent photo of my bowling pal Al, rolling his 14 pounds of thunder at the place the AABL News used to refer to as Lanes & Games Lanes (and Games).
Anyway, this is just to say that I received a gift certificate from a loved one the other day to Portland’s hotspot, Bayside Bowl. (That’s Portland, Maine, so I will not have to fly cross-country.) And because readers of Dots & Arrows expect regular bowling updates, I pledge that when I get there, the highlights will be prominently featured here. Word is that lane conditions at Bayside tend to be challenging. No effortless string of strikes. You have to hit your marks.
Kill Your TV
By now you are all aware, I’m sure, that we’ve printed and distributed a new issue of our sometimes-baffling magazine, The Baffler. Truly, I often think that the most baffling thing is that this magazine even exists, and that I am somehow employed to write and edit for this production.
There’s an essay in this issue (Baffler #48) that made me think back to a conversation I had many years ago with my friend Jim, who is an engineer and also a sharp social critic (unusual combination!). For some reason, Jim was making the argument that television is so awful that we’d be better off it didn’t exist. (That won’t stop him or me from dialing up the broadcast of a certain football team on any given Sunday, but whatever.) The reason the conversation stuck in my mind is because just a few days later I happened to be in a used bookstore and I glanced down to see the title Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by an author with the improbable name of Jerry Mander. Because the author was not Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman, I didn’t make the purchase. But that is the kind of title that stays in your head.
Now all these years later comes the writer Alexander Zaitchik and he has a brilliant critique in this new Baffler, in which he takes up the arguments made by Jerry Mander, who it turns out was a disenchanted ad man, and who—Zaitchik tells us—was more on target when it comes to “the political economy” of today’s media than McLuhan was. Zaitchik writes:
The thesis of Four Arguments is built upon the rubble of an unflinching assault on Marshall McLuhan—one that is both entertaining and necessary. While McLuhan’s biggest ideas were important and sound—a society’s technologies determine the nature of its thoughts and conversations; modern communications make a global culture possible—much of what he wrote was nonsensical, wrong, or reflected a disqualifying lack of interest in the political economy of modern media.
And yes, Zaitchik addresses the common notion that we are now in a “golden age” of quality television dramas, etc. etc. I recommend the essay because it is so illuminating—but also because it’s the perfect example of the kind of writing that gives this magazine a reason to keep plugging along.
I should mention that I also got to work with two excellent writers who are also excellent humans for this issue: Barry Yeoman with an essay on stuttering and “disability,” and Ann Neumann on menopause. Both of these essays have found a lot of appreciative readers in recent weeks. (Feel free to subscribe!)
Horn tooting
I realized the other day that I’ve neglected to toot my own horn about something that really give me a jolt. This also harkens back to a comment made by a friend: in this case, writer-friend Joshua Leibner, who took note in a Baffler web post three years ago of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. I realized then I ought to get a copy of The Sympathizer, but . . . time spun forward. Then, last month, this happened:
Readers, I went directly to a brick-and-mortar bookstore and purchased a copy of The Sympathizer. It has been described as “A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a ‘man of two minds’ — and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.” The novel came out in 2015, at the end of the Obama years. That was a time when even the president of the United States was often “of two minds” about things. I wonder if the sequel will reflect the changes in American life during the Trump years. And if he puts that odious schlump Dr. K. in a third novel, maybe I will be able to claim at least one small bit of influence on the nation’s literary output.
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