[Daily] Saturday 2018.05.12 - Beautiful weather; McPhee on editors

It's a beautiful day in San Francisco, sunny, high in the upper 60s, windy. I forced myself out of bed to go for a run this morning. As I stepped outside and smelled the air I felt immediately energized—perfect running weather. For the first time, I made it first in line at Andytown.

Not wanting to squander this day, I wandered to one of the sunniest cafes I know, Neighbor's Corner. They were closed due to a power outage. I went to Hearth instead and read for a few hours: first, some of Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel and then a chapter of John McPhee's Draft No. 4. I noticed the days-of-week of Steinbeck's journal are almost aligned with 2018, and I had happened to have made it to early May, so I made an effort to read through Friday May 10; there's no Saturday entry and it picks up tomorrow, Sunday.

In the McPhee, I read the chapter on editors and publishers. It was mainly a portrait of William Shawn, longtime editor of The New Yorker (he held a tenure of 35 years) and the first of McPhee's editors there. The portrait was McPhee's lens through which he made points about editors: what they are when they are good or bad; weird biases even great ones can have (e.g. Shawn did not like reading about cold places or unusual food). I liked this particular passage regarding the role:

        Shawn also recognized that no two writers are the same, like snowflakes and fingerprints. No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of that fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor's goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.
        There are people who superimpose their own patterns on the work of writers and seem to think it is their role to force things in the direction they would have gone in if they had been doing the writing. Such people are called editors, and are not editors but rewriters. I couldn't begin to guess the number of onetime students of mine who have sent me printed articles full of notes in the margins telling me what the original said. An editor I know (not professionally) tells me that he sees this topic from the other side and most writers need what they get. He will never convince this writer. My advice is, never stop battling for the survival of your own unique stamp. An editor can contribute a lot to your thoughts but the piece is yours—and ought to be yours—if it is under your name.

I like that sentiment—it's not a novel idea, but well said. He goes on to talk about "nut graphs" in the next paragraph. This section brought on unpleasant memories from writing for The Tech (where pieces got edited last-minute by sleepy, overworked student editors to the point of inserting factual errors, and nut graphs were often discussed).


I have a chunk of coding to chew through this weekend, so I'm now home. Despite the work, I'm in enviable circumstances: south-facing window open a crack, a splash of rye in my old Facebook whiskey glass, listening to Seong-Jin Cho's Chopin Preludes.

[Daily] Monday 2018.04.30 - Timeboxed Panic, Routine Obligations, New Books

About every Sunday night now, I'm arrested by panic about the upcoming week and weeks. I lose about thirty minutes gazing off into nothingness while I visualize the work, meetings, and insurmountable goals ahead. Then life goes on, the week comes, the next arrives. I would prefer to cut out this activity, and console myself with the thought that it's timeboxed and maybe even necessary.

There are two coffee shops below the office—Blue Bottle and Illy. For the first six months I was a regular customer at Blue Bottle and learned almost every barista's name. For my tastes, their cappuccinos are the most consistently good in the city. Yet for the past month I've only visited Illy, where the cafe au lait is consistently weak. What I get here, ironically, is a feeling of anonymity, and a more extended period of calm in the mornings because Illy doesn't fill up as fast. I'm further deterred from Blue Bottle knowing it's going to be a little awkward going back—I'll have to explain. This situation seems more complicated than it should be and non-ideal for any coffeeshop: routine turns into relationships and relationships turn into expectation, then unfulfilled expectation becomes a deterrent for return. How do you stop it? High staff turnover, stand-offish service, or a staff of robots? I begin to see the appeal of CafeX (if only they had seating).

Last night I picked up two fun books I saw at Booksmith:

• Zizek's Jokes [some excerpts] — as the title says. Jokes of Slavoj Žižek.
• Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve [review by NPR] — a statistical look at famous authors' writing styles.

A Ceramicist's Coffeehouse

In the idyllic downtown area of Saratoga, CA, there is a coffeehouse with soaring ceilings and large windows, a calming wood-accented interior, and a patio out front surrounded by plants. Sue's Gallery Cafe has two rooms with seating: one where you order and one that houses the eponymous gallery of ceramic housewares. On my first visit, the mugs displayed behind the counter caught my eye: they were extra large and the handles were shaped like human stick figures in crawling poses. My cappuccino came in a plainer but lovely ceramic cup. I learned from the barista that the ceramics used for the food and those in the gallery, which can be purchased, are made by the cafe owner's wife.

Cafe-ceramics is an uncommon but inspired marriage. The cafe can serve its food in unique, beautiful vessels; the ceramicist sees her wares in use and gets marketing and a storefront; patrons experience art with their coffee. Seeing this partnership made me wonder what other fortuitous combinations aren't yet mainstream.

I imagine it would be gratifying for one person to do both activities: to make and serve coffee for part of the day and throw pottery for the rest. One activity is social, the other more cerebral and solitary. It makes me think, in the likely future in which robots do much of the necessary work that maintains human existence, and humans must work not to survive but to occupy ourselves and maintain a sense of purpose—at this point, "work" will have to be fulfilling or it will not be done. We will still have specialists who have the innate interest and mental fortitude to pursue one thing deeply, but we are all some parts social, some parts mentally curious, some parts excited to work with our hands. My guess is as the need for fulfillment from our work increases, we'll see more Ceramicist's Coffeehouses.