(What I learned about craftsmanship in) The Violin Maker (review: 4/5)

Stradivarius: legendary quality, mystery. It's upper-crust and exotic. How did Stradivari make such wonderful instruments? What sort of alchemy was involved, and why haven't we solved it yet? John Marchese's book The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop talks about the mysteries and realities of violin-making. His book follows the work of violin maker Sam Zygmuntowicz as he works on a violin for Gene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet. There's a good bit about the history of violin making, and the experience of playing and hearing a fine instrument, but the bulk of the book is about Edward Heron-Allen's challenge: "Given: A log of wood. Make a violin."

It's those bits about craftsmanship really got my attention. For all the magic and mythology about great violins, it boils down pretty easily. Zygmuntowicz:

It's a very foreign idea that violin making is not all that mysterious, but it is one of those things where the basic way it works best was stumbled onto a long time ago. The requirements haven't changed, and therefore the results haven't changed and therefore it's a very complex custom that is only learned through long application and a great deal of knowledge. It's not arcane knowledge; it's something any guy can learn---if you spend thirty years doing it.

You could probably say the same for writing, drawing, sculpting, cooking, building relationships, any number of things. The not-so-secret is good old-fashioned hard work, deliberate attention. If only there were shortcuts! In one passage Marchese talks about a day with Zygmuntowicz near the end of the violin making process:

I spent a whole afternoon watching him work on the final thickness graduation of the violin top with a scraper that removed wood not in pieces, not even in shavings, but in grains. He'd weighed the piece before he started, scraped and scraped for several hours and weighed it again when he was finished. The sum difference in his day's work was three grams.

Three grams! For reference, 3 grams, give or take a few tenths, is about the weight of a U.S. penny. Metaphorically speaking, I don't know that I've ever paid 3 grams/day worth of attention to any one thing. But the heart of craftsmanship is right there in the attention to detail. Quoting Zygmuntowicz again:

If there's anything I can measure, I measure it, on the theory that it will become interesting in later years. I'll make some varnish notes, and some evaluations of the sound, and if I can I'll follow up and see how the sound might have changed over time... Some guys take two measurements and that's it. I think I'm kind of a maniac.

It's a work technique. Not a particularly efficient one, but we're not judged on high efficiency---which is a very good thing. I wouldn't survive, or I'd certainly have to alter my work style, if I had to be more efficient.

But it's all part of a process of becoming---I don't know what you call it---I guess a more subtle worker. The thing is that you start to care more and more about less and less.

Another spot I loved was Marchese quoting Sir James Beament discussing rare, expensive violins versus work-a-day models: "They do not make any different sound, and no audience can tell what instrument is being played. But if a player thinks he plays better on such an instrument, he will... Audiences are even more susceptible to suggestion than players."

I went to a photography lecture a couple weeks ago, and in the Q&A session were the inevitable questions about gear. What camera? What lense? What film? What paper? There's no shame in wanting to use better equipment so you can work better, but it's dangerous to give in to the lazy thought that equipment trumps the process of attentive labor and the work ethic that drives it (rolls of film shot, hours in the studio, drafts revised, face-time with customers).

Lastly, I liked Zygmuntowicz' comments on how originality and style develop over time: "When people talk about personal style a lot of what they're talking about is slipping away from the original---people were trying to do it just like the original but they didn't."

The Braindead Megaphone (review: 4.5/5)

There's potential for a doctoral dissertation about The Rhetorical Use of Capital Letters in the Writing Of George Saunders. The usage comes in a couple flavors. There are the ineffable concepts, like Freedom and Humility. There's the personalization of general categories, like Writers and the Little Guy. There's the tongue-in-cheek categorization of human sub-groups, like, oh, People Who Analyze Capitalization. And it also appears when it's simply more amusing, e.g. "Oversize Bright-Colored Toy Ships and Trucks." This was only my second try at Saunders. I aborted my attempt of In Persuasion Nation. Maybe it's good. (I think I read so much non-fiction that I have trouble turning the switch every now and then.) And it wasn't funny. But The Braindead Megaphone is funny. And it stays funny even though he writes about Serious Things and has a really earnest style.

To wander my way back to the Capitalization Issue, it reminds me of what Daniel Day Lewis said in a recent interview: "Perhaps I'm particularly serious because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I'm doing." I think satirists like Saunders might agree. While the writing isn't always serious, it is sincere, and I get the sense that he really kicks his own ass to come up with this stuff. Most of it is really, really good.

As for the meat of the book, the titular essay is a brilliant take on banal popular media. What's really wonderful is the way he hedges and offers concessions along the way through his thought experiments. What could be a canned, all-too-familiar diatribe becomes a nice little Journey with George.

Another essay that I liked was about Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five. In one part he talks about how Vonnegut gives up on detail:

"Vonnegut was skipping the lush physical details he had presumably put himself into so much danger to obtain. He was assuming these physical details; that is, he was assuming that I was supplying them. A forest was a forest, he seemed to be saying, let's not get all flaky about it. He did not seem to believe, as I had read Tolstoy did, that his purpose as a writer was to use words to replicate his experience, to make you feel and think and see what he had felt. This book was not a recounting of Vonnegut's actual war experience, but a usage of it."

Later, in an essay on Barthelme's short story, "The School," Saunders offers his own thoughts on the writer-reader relationship:

"The writer is right there with us---he knows where we are, and who we are, and is involved in an intimate and respectful game with us. I think of this as the motorcycle-sidecar model of reading: writer and reader right next to one another, leaning as they corner, the pleasure coming from the mutuality and simultaneity of the experience."

In addition to those gems, there's some great writing on patriotism in a mock-academic "survey of the literature"; a welcome twist on the tired Letters To & From An Advice Columnist genre; reporting on Minutemen and border patrol; and probably my favorite of a bunch, an awesome essay on what's so difficult and wonderful about Huckleberry Finn. The only real duds for me were the foreign reporting essays in Dubai and in Tibet. Skip those, and read everything else.

Memery

Against his better judgment, Austin dragged me in to a meme thingy. My instructions read as follows:

Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. But there is a catch: Link 1 must be about family. Link 2 must be about friends. Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are… what you’re all about. Link 4 must be about something you love. Link 5 can be about anything you choose.

Post your five links and then tag five other people.

1. Hmm. Don't think I have any. 2. Maybe don't have any of those, either. Starting to feel deficient. 3. Flannery O'Connor's androgynous prayer sums up nicely. 4. I love hiking. On April 21 last year I said my farewell and spent a couple months on the Appalachian Trail. It didn't turn out as I expected, in ways both good and bad, but I wouldn't have it any other way. 5. I liked writing about this old guy in the library. May my own interests remain as wide-ranging.

I hate to perpetuate the chain, but I'm glad to give recognition to some of those who were sporting enough to participate, and place further peer pressure on those who have already been tagged but not yet responded. I'm talking to you, Fairy Mum, Kris, Redneck Mother, Zack, MartiniMade, Stitch Bitch, Maureen, Darby, James, Lee, Melissa, Edgar, Miriam, Nic, Jennifer, Dianne, Nicole, AnneMarie, Adam, Heidi, SnarkaP, Tim, Juno, Corgipants, Subu, Patriot Goose, Mushroom Villagers, Dacia Ray, and Adam.

Dining with Notebook Manifesto

The Dining with Notebook Manifesto outlines an ingenious way to get a better dining experience, with some effort and preparation:

Because I’m a bit of a food-geek, I always had a notebook to take down my observations in text and drawings. I semi-noticed that the chefs and staff would become aware of my scribbling in the notebook and that the level of dialogue and service would go up – but it never quite surfaced in my mind why this was happening. It was not until one chef finally asked me what magazine I wrote for that the light bulb clicked on – they thought I was a critic. Cool.