Seeing the Forest for the Trees

...I just finished reading Cesar Aira's book (check out the interview in BOMB Magazine's winter/2009 issue)  An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter -- which is a trim 168 pages and boy, what a masterful book. It is the sort of book that makes writers excited to do their own work. Why? Great short books make us feel like there is a chance that we, too, can finish our books -- shorten what we have, tighten, and smarten it up.  And call out, fini! As we are want to do.
...We were in Los Angeles recently (hence the blog silence) partially to tour UCLA with our son who is now 18 and a senior and a year away from sailing off to the Academy, and partially to inspect the Dennis Hopper show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The MOCA show is curated by Julain Schnabel and displayed in a former police garage, repurposed into a museum by Frank Gehry. Sounds promising, no? And indeed it is. The questions it raises, not about the practice of actors taking candid photos of other actors etc, include what will museums "be" as we plough ahead into this century. They still seem inclined towards a specific sort of spatial performance. I'd be curious to see what art looks like with a slightly lower ceiling. Or in a room that has real human presence -- stacks of papers, messy desks, tea cups from yesterday with dregs of tea in the bottom. Surely the paintings and photos came from these humble beginnings? Or do we treat paintings as pageant for reasons that make it much more celebratory and obvious and gives it the feel of "event" as opposed to "looking."
...The final big news from LA stinks of my suburban gawker core: On Saturday I had lunch at Ivy's my delish high school and college friend, Sally Kushner. Kushner texted me from while I was en route: "Check (discreetly) who is at the bar. It's a good one.) The good one turned out to be Javier Bardem. He was seated at an adjacent table. Then Penelope Cruz came in and joined him. They necked and laughed and were very tender. (Not that we were gawking between sips of Pimm's Cup.)
...A few people have been asking when the two books will be "done." Taking a page from Cedar Aira, we are shooting for no more than 200 pages per. And a deadline of December 1.