October 24, 2007
The current issue of the New Yorker has a thought-provoking piece on narration in books, movies and DVDs. The piece, written by Adam Gopnik, makes some profound leaps of imagination, such as:

"Western literature begins not with the Trojan War but with the poet's announcement that he is going to tell a story about the Trojan War."

And: "The trouble with popular entertainment is perhaps not that we don't have enough strong stories but that there are not enough weak narrators—not enough Ishmaels, whose slack and troubled attentiveness, accumulated sighs and second thoughts, make the Ahabs live."

And: "Movies need their Thompsons as much as their Kanes. (Thompson? He's the roving reporter who makes the story go for Welles; nobody remembers his name, but without him there's no Rosebud, and no movie.)"

And: "What makes writing matter is not a story, cleanly told, but a voice, however odd or ordinary, and a point of view, however strange or sentimental."

This applies directly to our efforts on the Top Secret Project and our narrator, Freddy Remington (he said, speaking directly to the Top Secret Writer)

In meetings all morning. We're creating a preservation component and it's pretty exciting. Ken. O. flew in and is spear heading the drive.

Went to lunch at Tonto Bar & Grill. Beautiful day out. We all had the Cobb salad ($55 plus $11 tip, biz account).

Bouncing back and forth between my black and white efforts and sepia wash. As I move into the second half of the journey towards 10,000 bad drawings, I feel a strong pull in the direction of the sepia shadows. There's something in there (below, left) that intrigues me. It seems mysterious. I can't believe I even painted it. That's exciting.



The black and white page is also strong (I had a thicker felt-tip pen). FYI: the angry man at bottom, right is a face off the current issue of Newsweek. He's allegedly a Pakistani student. One angry mo-fo. No?

"Meaning resides in the margins."
—Andrew Gopnik, in the same New Yorker piece:"The Corrections: Abridgment, enrichment, and the nature of art"