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Review

Reviewing the Monocle Guide to Better Living

If time travelling was possible, Frank Bascombe mused, very many people would travel back in time to thank Johann Sebastian Bach for having existed (and created); other people would be travelling back to assassinate Hitler, and those thanking Bach would probably prevent Bach from creating. Which is why the very idea of time travelling remains questionable (even if Hitler could – theoretically – be prevented). It was obviously paradoxical to apply the lessons of history in history. To prevent it from happening, in the then-future. Even if good things could be done (as well as less good things). And about the side effects that would probably occur (all history was made of side effects of many other things with side effects), one had once to muse about thoroughly, but not now.
On the other hand one knew that Bach had been imprisoned for some obscure reason (and in a way history had already prepared for people travelling back in time, to thank him and – albeit unintentionally – to prevent him from creating, but this might be considered as an exeption).
Frank, a little confused by his own thoughts, reopened the book he had been browsing on this New Years Eve. At page 199. The author of an essay about the subject of ›How to enjoy life‹ had added a postcript to his essay, naming the soundtracks he had been listening to while writing that essay: among other things (Genesis, Stones, some Reggae track, appearingly, Frank was not familiar with). And above all (on first position): Johann Sebastian Bach, Contrapunctus I – XIV , with the author (not Bach) adding as a comment that this kind of music was »calm, thoughtful, sparse, like a blank page. Your mind starts filling in the space.«
The essay was just two pages long. How was it possible to fill in the space in Contrapunctus I – XIV? And how could the Reggae be filled in (if, in fact, it was Reggae)?
Another problem was that the essay actually recommended not to do two things at a time (with the author acknowledging his contradicting of his own advice on how to enjoy life in the postscript, and with the postscript). This was all very bewildering.
But Frank Bascombe was actually not doing two things at a time, but at least four. He was waiting for his son Paul to visit him (who probably had also sent him that book, a guide to better living), Frank was musing about, while eating bites of a sandwich, and indeed listening to some music, coming from the TV (watching he was not). This could be Harry Nilsson, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (another record the author of that essay recommended). For what purpose was Paul coming to visit him, his father, Frank did not know. But the postcard announcing the visit had seemed to announce a discussion on that guide to better living.
That seemed rather nice to Frank (while he feared that discussion to come), as well as modest, even displaying some humility (albeit contradictorial), because the authors seem to feel that the real problems causing us to enjoy life or rather not to enjoy it were problems on a level that had little to do with qualities that could be improved (at least not very easily).
While he sensed that Paul intended a ›father to son‹ discussion on grounds of disagreeing on that guide (that certainly was not the Le Monde Diplomatique atlas to globalization, but also showed – somehow – an awareness that it was not). The role of father, albeit that Paul was still son, Paul certainly intended for himself.

(I have to finish here, uncertain if Richard Ford would allow me to carry on with his characters; but this review of the Monocle Guide to Better Living was inspired by watching Richard Ford reading on youtube, with the Monocle Guide to Better Living, see picture, staring at us from the shelf of that nice Washington bookstore; perhaps I carry on with a Sherlock Holmes story about a case involving wild bees another time, since the Sherlock Holmes pastiche is more familiar; but I consider the above as a homage to Ford and Bascombe; and the guide seems to work as some kind of inspiration as well)

(Picture: youtube.com; stormfashion.dk)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Review

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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