According to Wikipedia, the rooftop of the Stephansdom in Vienna contains over 230,000 tiles.

Some days we wish we could count every single one.

*We published an earlier version of this post and later realized we probably should have let it season a bit. Oh well, too late!

According to Wikipedia, the rooftop of the Stephansdom in Vienna contains over 230,000 tiles. It was originally built in the Middle Ages and then — after it was destroyed by fire at the end of WWII — rebuilt in 1952 with the help of Google Images and Soviet robots.

One fear of the modern age is that we serve no purpose in life but to increase the profit margins on the spreadsheets of our superiors.

Of course in our modern jobs — for which we have attended college and sometimes even more than that — we are insulated from the occupational ravages of disease and prosecution and slavery.

But there is still a part of us that no matter what the risk longs to be one of ten thousand others toiling away for a five or six decades, despite the numbing cold and the slippery slope and the certainty that our name will never be attached to this work.

Only when observing the obsessive madness of such art do we feel anything close to hopeful about humanity.

But then we remember standing on the plaza, hating the hordes of tourists who (just like us) had come to gawk at this spectacle before returning home, where the image becomes — as much as a memory or hope — a bludgeon with which we beat ourselves, knowing what we can never be.

A new and improved version of this post can be found here.

Recently we learned from US Magazine that “[a] few weeks after signing the lease on a $60 million Long Island mansion, [Angelina Jolie], 33, was spotted checking out a nice building in Manhattan’s uptown Washington Heights neighborhood Tuesday afternoon.”

It makes us wonder how it came about that she would consider Washington Heights for even a second.

Did Angelina wake up one morning and say: I want to live in the most ruined and barely functional neighborhood in New York City, with sweeping views of the Hudson and the George Washington Bridge, which has been my favorite bridge in the world since I first saw it as a child driving from ___ to ____ in the back seat of my ____’s car?

Or perhaps she’s going to be starring in a movie about the drug trade and wants to understand what it’s like to roll up and down Broadway in a massive SUV with blackened windows, laughing at the cops and expressing surprise/dismay at all the “white fggts” starting to move into the neighborhood.

Or maybe she’s a fan of The Gay Recluse!? (<3 u, Angie!)

Whether she moves in or not, we were struck less by the implausibility of it than a certain longing to see what would happen if she did.

Does she know that Washington Heights is a metaphorical and literal graveyard of shipwrecks and resignation, from which most of us who are lucky or unlucky enough to end up here can never hope to escape?

Maybe she will be the one to change this collective destiny:  maybe Angelina could live here for a few seconds and then leave forever, having taken in her share of the beauty — both architectural and geographic — yet remain unscathed by the ghosts of longing and torment with which the rest of us are so familiar.  After all, as US Magazine breathlessly informs us: Angelina “has owned or rented properties in three different countries in the past year alone.”

Or maybe this is too much to ask, even of her; maybe she looked out the window and was disturbingly entranced by the clouds gathering over her beloved bridge, at which point she instructed her driver to take her away from this place as quickly as possible, knowing that if she stayed any longer, she would never be able to leave.

[Thanks to Bennett for sending us the US Magazine article.]

Through the fourth part of 2666, Roberto Bolano’s epic treatment of many things, we were extremely forgiving of the many tangents and digressions that permeate the work; not only were we impressed by the obvious genius of the writer, but we marveled at his ability to seamlessly move between the lyrical, the clinical, the suspenseful, the psychological, the satirical and the philosophical.  Although we had a few complaints — the pervasively unredeemed homophobia, the fact that many and possibly all of the characters felt like constructs of ideas as opposed to living entities — we never lost patience with Bolaño; his world was lush and full of compelling contradictions, we wanted to know more about the hundreds of murders in his fictional city of Santa Teresa and how the mysterious German author from the first part — Benno von Archimboldi — would or would not figure into them.

Sadly however, the fifth part doesn’t deliver much more than extreme tedium, to the point where we begin to question our initial love for the book as a whole. Language that once seemed magical now comes off as indulgent and often masturbatory (not coincidentally a tired theme here), every plot twist feels like a chiche, and worst of all, the more we learn about the decreasingly mysterious author — Archimboldi — the less we care about him. Although we see a few characters from the earlier parts, there is no sense of evolution or really any insight (from a reading perspective) into why this part could not have come first or second or third.

Ultimately, the problem can be traced back to the structure of the book; in the first four parts, the tension builds and builds as Bolaño teases and hints at the mystery — and in some cases — conspiracy surrounding the deaths of the women in Mexico. No matter where he goes, we want to know more! But when he leaves this electric setting for the mundane upbringing — albeit with a liberal sprinkling of exceedingly wooden symbols, e.g., as a child, he preferred to remain underwater — of Archimboldi, we feel deflated and long for the mystery and strength of the previous parts.

In a few pages at the end of the book that practically weep with a sense of obligation, Bolano “ties things up,” but again we are past wanting to confirm what has become obvious and mundane.

It’s the same feeling we get watching a teevee series — the X-Files is a particularly apt example in this regard — that reaches its peak in a shadowy but compelling aura of mystery, but one we realize has passed as it soldiers on in mediocrity for several more seasons before finally being killed off.

Perhaps Bolaño should have ended 2666 after the fourth part, when our interest was at its height and we burned with questions burned about its outcome; as it turned out, this last part gained nothing and cost much, so that we ultimately close the cover with a sense of disappointment. We still strongly recommend that everyone read this novel, but with the understanding that sometimes questions are better posed than answered.

The 2666 Review Roundup:
The Part About the Critics
The Part About Amalfitano
The Part About Fate
The Part About the Crimes

In the fourth book of 2666, we are presented with something of an encyclopedia of the literally thousands of crimes (99 percent of them against women) that occur in Bolano’s fictional border city of Santa Teresa — modeled on the real Juarez — over a period of perhaps ten years, with an emphasis on those who were tortured, raped, mutilated (sometimes but not always in the same horrible way) and murdered, and whose bodies were most often found in the desert or an illegal dump or a remote ravine or ditch.

For the most part, Bolano describes these murders in the distant, clinical tone of a medical report — or sometime the more hard-boiled prose of a detective novel — and gives a short summary of the investigative follow-up, which invariably dissolves into the case being “shelved” for all of the usual reasons (apathy, no clues, lost evidence, no resources, horrible bureaucracy, possible cover-ups). But even as the mounting atrocity of the events described threatens to paralyze us, there is enough nuance and lyrical beauty to the prose, so that we are like a victim beaten down and increasingly horrified that these murders could continue for so long, with so little apparent repercussion to those committing them.

Which of course begs the question of who in fact is committing them, and here Bolano also has an amazing ability to draw us into the many different possibilities, while identifying none as dispositive. There are drug dealers and pimps and rich capitalists — the factory owners who hire these women — who may or may not be involved; there is a creepy “gringo” who “seems like” a serial killer and may or may not be orchestrating kidnappings/murders from a prison, even after he’s arrested; there are government officials who may or may not be in league with the drug dealers and pimps and capitalists; there are the police, whose baseline level of misogyny is so high as to be completely demoralizing as they laugh about all the different ways a woman can be raped; there are men in general in this society, who are brought up to view women as subhumans, and there are women who for whatever reason become enmeshed with these men; above all else, there is capitalism and money, which trumps even the most violent of crimes.

Bolano gives us all of this and more, so that by the end, we have no choice but to indict society, i.e., ourselves, because while Santa Teresa (and Mexico) may or may not be a special case, it’s clearly less (of a special case) than more. In essence, it’s hard to emerge from this book without a conviction that we are all guilty of these horrible acts.

It could probably be argued that Bolano’s reflection of reality in this regard is a little too realistic for purposes of a novel; is it really necessary to introduce us to so many characters and leave their stories unresolved? Ultimately it didn’t bother us, because underneath the brutality his work resonates with a compassion for the murdered women — or women in general — that leads us as readers to care about what he’s describing, even if we know — like in real life — so little of it will lead anywhere.

One question we continue to ask is exactly where Bolano stands with regard to the gays. Although Bolano (unlike 98 percent of U.S novelists, who obv prefer to ignore the issue completely) is to be commended for weaving — what? an awareness, a motif — a presence through the text — e.g., “[a]s you’re well aware,” says one character about Mexico, “this is a macho country full of faggots” — it cannot be doubted that 2666 is pervasively homophobic to the extent that virtually every character — from university professors to blue-collar cops to outspoken feminists — when offered even the slightest opportunity uses it to express nothing but disdain for limp-wristed faggots or fudge packers or whatever else. (There are also brutally violent prison scenes of men raping each other — and worse.) While we admire the truthful tone of this hateful treatment of faggots in Bolano’s work, so far we’ve felt none of the compassion he shows for women; it leaves us a little wistful, knowing that in this fictional world — like the real one — we are somehow even worse off than the hundreds of desperate whores left to rot in the desert and be picked apart by the vultures.

The 2666 Review Roundup:
The Part About the Critics
The Part About Amalfitano
The Part About Fate
The Part About Archimboldi

Today was a tough day on Capitol Hill, where the topic of hot gay statues was taken up and — as usual — soundly defeated. Fortunately, the issue is not entirely moot, and reader Tyler Green was kind enough to point us in the direction of something that until now had escaped our attention:

[This statue is called "Man Controlling Trade" and is by Michael Lantz] the brother of Walter Lantz of Woody Woodpecker fame, from outside the Federal Trade Commission HQ in DC.

Sounds like it might be worth a look?

Whoas. That guy’s controlling something, and it may or may not be “trade.”

Hey, that’s one way to end your “Depression.”

Thanks for the tip, Tyler. Let’s hope the “stimulus plan” delivers everything we were promised, including not only more hot gay statues in the nation’s capital but in every town with a population greater than 100.

Photo credits: Andy961 on Flickr (first) and Eric Marc Crawford on Flickr (second).

The Hot Gay Statue round-up:

• Rules and Guidelines
• Dan Savage Endorsement
• Washington Heights (New York City)
• Washington, DC
• The London Eye Clarifies an Important Issue
• Florence (Italy)
• The Park Avenue Amory (Upper East Side/NYC)
• Murray Hill (New York City)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• The London Eye: “In Your Face”
• The J-Man Inspires
• George Washington
• Georgia (Republic of)
• New Orleans
• Columbus Circle (New York City)
• Two Davids (Florence)
• Franco Harris Statue (Pittsburgh)
• London Firefighters and Other Heroes
• Columbus Circle Mall (New York City)
• Miami
• Paris
• Grand Central Station (New York City)
• Albany, New York
• Chicago
• Albany, New York (Hot Gay Statute)
• The Metropolitan Museum (New York City)
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles)
• More Getty Villa (Los Angeles)
• Union Station Centurions (Washington, DC)
• Hot Gay Ladies in Washington Heights (New York City)
• Honolulu
• Stockholm
• Florence (Italy) II
• Vienna
• San Francisco

Click through for “hi-quality” on YouTube or watch on Facebook.

Stay tuned for the fifth and final installment of “City of Dreams.”

THE CHAOS DETECTIVE

City of Dreams (Part 1)

City of Dreams (Part 2)

City of Dreams (Part 3)

Ohai! We thought we’d play a lil game in which we pull quotes from three pieces about the exurbs, two written in 2k4 by David Brooks in The Times — “Take a Ride to Exurbia“  on the opinion page and “Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia” in the magazine — and the other — “In Florida, Despair and Foreclosure” — published today (i.e., 2k9) in The Times. Try to guess when the quotes were written, and by whom — click through for answers! (Note: there’s one trick question — guess which one it is.)

I came out with a book on the booming exurbs – places like the I-4 corridor in central Florida and Henderson, Nev. These are the places where George Bush racked up the amazing vote totals that allowed him to retain the presidency.

Early last year, garage sales and estate auctions became more common in Lehigh Acres as families sold what they could to survive.

I’m so impressed by Karl Rove. As a group of Times reporters demonstrated in Sunday’s paper, the Republicans achieved huge turnout gains in exurbs like the ones in central Florida.

Home prices have collapsed, and many houses built during the housing bubble have been foreclosed or abandoned.

[C]riticisms don’t get suburbia right. They don’t get America right. The criticisms tend to come enshrouded in predictions of decline or cultural catastrophe. Yet somehow imperial decline never comes, and the social catastrophe never materializes.

Hunger has become a growing problem.

[P]eople move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality.

[I]t went from housing market boomtown to its current landscape of abandoned developments and struggling businesses. No one seemed interested in buying whole houses, and foreclosures soon gave way to empty homes that became magnets for crime.

[T]here is this spot you can get to where all tensions will melt, all time pressures will be relieved and happiness can be realized.

Signs of trouble were ignored. “Sometimes houses would sell three or four times in a few months, and no one would move in.”

Get out into the sprawl, into that other conversation. Take your time. It’s a new world out there.

Panic is a powerful headwind.

Poets, pundits, philosophers and politicians, take note! This is not the story of nations or other one-hit wonders, nor is it the story of religion, for which so many millions have died in futile anger and delusion. It is certainly not the history of capital, although this too has been a scourge; no, friends, these are distractions from the real story, which is the slow but relentless rise of the city. Incomprehensible beauty and despair! Inexplicable dissonance and distortion! Inalterable repudiation of all political philosophers and religious zealots who would explain our existence without acknowledging the seething allure of the trains and tunnels, the buildings and bridges of this endlessly mutating labyrinth into which we must cast ourselves to find civilized life! How sorry and sad — which is to say, irrelevant — are the candidates — which is to say, all of them — who fail to discuss the implications of this truth; how tiresome the critics and commentators who obscure it with egocentric jargon about freedom and community. Is it not immediately obvious who among them has or has not walked the streets, and not only in the tedious safety of the day but in the more barren and remote hours of the night, when we are possessed by creaking gates, distant gunshots and — most of all — the pounding, subterranean space we learn to call our heart?

[All pix except the GWB by Chip Litherland for The New York Times]

In the third book of Roberto Bolaño’s epic 2666, we leave behind the maybe-psychotic descent into madness of Professor Amalfitano for a broader type of madness known as the fringes of modern/capitalistic civilization. Bolaño does this by way of a Harlem-based reporter who goes by the name — for reasons never fully explained — of Oscar Fate. His mother has just died, and we follow him on an assignment that takes him first to Detroit — to interview a former Black Panther — and then to Santa Teresa, the fictional Mexican border city where hundreds of women have turned up murdered in the desert over the past decade or so.

Initially sent to cover a boxing match, Fate becomes at first intrigued and then enmeshed in the local “culture,” a bizarre and thuggish (and macho and obvs homophobic) netherworld. Bolaño’s prose takes an appropriate turn toward the noir; if Fate is not a detective per se, he uncovers tantalizing facts in his adventures in Santa Teresa that may or may not shed light on the outstanding questions of who the mysterious author from the first book is, whether he too is in this Mexican city, and what this may or may not have to do with the murders. Whatever the case may be, there are few people Fate meets who don’t seem to be guilty of something.

So it happens that we become the true detectives; we read with a cool detachment that perfectly captures the sense of unreality we associate with trips to a foreign country, most obviously, but also in our daily lives. Bolaño captures that stunned moment when we ask “wtf are we doing here?” before we spend a few more seconds looking for clues in the deluge of senseless details with which we are all confronted. That there is never a clear answer to this question does not always prevent us from asking; then we stumble forward, perhaps with some recognition (or hope or fear) that this in fact is our Fate.

The 2666 Review Roundup:
The Part About the Critics
The Part About Amalfitano
The Part About the Crimes
The Part About Archimboldi

In this weekend’s City Section of The Times, we learned that the city recently tore down the only luxury condominium development in Washington Heights, located on an undeveloped patch of land under the George Washington Bridge overpass. Nestled in the trees and rock formations, the site had promised a rare opportunity for prospective buyers to own “a slice of old-growth Manhattan,” while remaining close to the “world renowned” Columbia Presbyterian hospital complex. Residents of the new development were promised “easy access” to Wendy’s “gourmet” at 165th and Broadway and all of the other incredible cultural amenities of New York City’s “most vibrant” neighborhood.  Construction had already begun, which makes the city’s actions all the more perplexing. We attended an open house a few months ago and took some shots of the units.

Lush forest shades a gently inclining approach* to the residential complex.

*ADA compliant

Constructed of sustainable-yield hardwoods and recycled stone, the cutting edge of eco-friendly living.

Hudson River views and free tennis courts only minutes away.

RIP, Wahi luxury condos///miss u, 2k6.

[HT Carla]