Entry 16:

James,

Yes, a story about why we act isn't really a story at all; it's either metaphysics or psychology. I love that MTA impostor, and it's absolutely heartbreaking to read this guy's dad likening his son's behavior to that of an addict. I mean, he wants to love his boy and cares for him so much but he's been bullied by all this psychology. Well, clearly Darius isn't regarding his love of the subways as a problem and it's not entirely clear to me why he should. I'm wondering also why the MTA doesn't hire the guy; it would certainly make him an exception, since most of the people working for the MTA decidedly do not love it. And yet as much as I'd like Darius McCollum to not get in trouble, it's the fact that he doesn't work for them that makes him an amateur of genius. He's made Ralph Kramden's beat into this heroic, benevolent, sort of delicate calling. All it takes is one quip from a conductor in the morning and I'll smile; Darius helps passengers and he loves the trains. New Yorker of the Year hands down.

Speaking of amateurs, did you see the roster for the U.S. Olympic baseball team? I'm happy to see Sean Burroughs there, former Little League World Series standout, and this is the week of the Little League World Series, but what a bore the rest of that club looks like. We need a World Cup of Baseball--break the United States into two teams, West and East--with all the top big-leaguers. And finally we'll put to rest all this garbage about the untapped greatness of Cuban baseball. Both the Dominican club and the Puerto Rican one will totally house the Cubans.

I haven't seen Big Brother yet, but what you're describing is a porn movie--without the sex. So I don't know if it assumes everyone is interesting or just wants to test the deprived limits of human experience. And I guess the inner self will definitely be exposed; the problem is, as with pornography, that the inner self is a really low common denominator. Appetites and fears. This is why I often wish Freud had focused on food rather than sex; imagine how the 20^th century would have been different! People's taste in sex is pretty similar. (What's that line in Whit Stillman's Barcelona when the women find one of the men's taste in bondage "compelling." Wow, not an edgy surprise.) But the things people do with food, now that speaks much more to character. There's much more strategy there. All the rites and prohibitions--much more various than sexual appetite. And now I'm looking at the third volume of the New Press' Essential Foucault, Power and Thinking about Foucault's trying to move away from sex as the most significant aspect of identity. I wonder how much shame has to do with the idea of interiority.

Yours,
Lee