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The other day I read an essay on how to survive the credit crunch. The author suggests that we read Boccaccio’s Decameron. Written in the 14th century, the Decameron is set in a time more horrific than ours: the Black Death of 1347 which wiped out much of the population of Europe. In the book, seven ladies and three gentlemen try to escape the plague by fleeing to the country. There they entertain themselves by telling stories. Each day a theme is set—say, love stories with unhappy endings—and each participant has to tell a tale along those lines. There are horror stories, romantic stories, tragic, comic, and erotic stories (Such as the one about the well-endowed young man who goes to work as a gardener at a convent and pretends to be a deaf-mute…). The point being that even in the worst of times, people will go on laughing, crying, and repopulating the earth. You can’t beat the life force.

If you’re going to read just one book in your entire life, I recommend the Decameron for its wide range of human experience. I dusted off my browning paperback (the one bright spot in an incredibly tedious Medieval and Renaissance lit survey—some teachers take the fun out of everything), had a little nosh, and before I knew it, it was 3 am. I don’t know about surviving the recession, but Boccaccio is exactly what I need to survive The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I’m still slogging through the James in the hope that any minute its beauty will kick in and I’ll see what the fuss is all about. Whenever I feel like hurling the book at the wall or yelling “Shut up! Shut up, you old fart!” I pick up the Boccaccio and read a few stories until my fury passes. I think of it as cheating on Henry James with Giovanni Boccaccio.

Today after dinner, Jay and I were sitting in Jan’s studio when Jay noticed a pot of basil on the window seat. This reminded me of that tale in the Decameron about a young woman whose lover is killed by her brothers. He appears to her in a dream and tells her where his body is buried. She unearths his head and plants it in a pot of basil which she waters with her tears.

Lorenzo de Medici (the Magnificent) commissioned the painter Sandro Botticelli to do four paintings based on the 8th tale of the 5th day (The table of contents includes very helpful summaries of each tale). In the tale Nastagio falls in love with a haughty woman who treats him cruelly, but he can’t get her out of his mind. So he goes on a trip and one day, in the forest, he beholds a terrifying sight:

A beautiful naked woman being chased by a knight on a black horse (Botticelli preferred white) and two huge dogs.

The dogs attack the woman, tear her apart and devour her. Nastagio learns that the knight was a lovesick man like himself, and the woman was his tormentor. Upon their deaths, the knight and the woman are condemned to enact this horrible chase every Friday for all eternity.

Clever Nastagio realizes that he can benefit from this regularly-occurring apparition. He organizes a breakfast banquet at the exact spot where he’d seen the bloody vision, and invites several guests—including the cruel woman he loves.

The chase takes place right on schedule. Nastagio’s beloved is so disturbed by the vision and its similarity to her own situation that she immediately resolves to be nice to him.

I had a DVD of Pasolini’s adaptation of The Decameron. It came free with an Italian magazine—I don’t speak Italian, but I figure that if I keep trying to read it, comprehension will kick in at any moment (same principle I’m applying to the James). The DVD had no subtitles, not that it needed any: it was all nudity and boinking. It got boring after a while so I gave it away.

Do you love Edward Gorey? On The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, there are scans of his 1965 parody of etiquette books, The Recently-Deflowered Girl.

This goes out to my dear friend Big Bird, who carries on like one. Oh the drama.

Which reminds me that in the 90s, while prowling around a second-hand bookshop on Katipunan Avenue (it didn’t live very long), I found this book.

It contains the transcripts of the tape-recorded dreams of a man who talks in his sleep. More importantly, it is illustrated by Mr. Gorey.

It’s a first edition, meaning it may fetch as much as my vintage Nancy Drew books (about US$1 apiece).

Look what came in the mail: the Roger Federer 2009 calendar. Thanks, Mark Ll, I’ll hang it on the wall as soon as Saffy is through admiring it. Here’s to the Fed bagging his 14th and 15th slams soon. Realistically, retaking the number one spot will be tough. Winning two more majors at least: very doable.

Love means a zero score in tennis; in this now-infamous train wreck thread on an online dating forum it means even less, although there is a score.

Photo: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Question: I’ve been renting an apartment for years and have no complaints. Everybody says I should be practical and buy my own place. What’s more practical, renting or buying?

Adams Myth: Unless you can catch the market’s bottom, renting is always more practical in this country — no risk to your capital. Consider, property values today are still below what they were ten years ago. So if you had been renting all this time, while investing the money you might have used to buy a place in a boring time deposit, you’d be well ahead of your “more practical” home-owning friends.

Q. Where is a safe place to invest my P200,000?

AM. In this environment, cash is still king.

Transporter 3 is silly, loud, illogical, a 90-minute ad for Audi (Apparently it will start right after being completely submerged in water!) with cheesy dialogue. On the plus side, it stars Jason Statham, which is enough reason to watch it. Here is a movie that knows what a crane is for: it’s to take an aerial shot of Jason lying in bed in his underwear. Fight scenes are just an excuse for Jason to take his shirt off. The female lead even holds the car keys hostage until Jason strips off the Dior suit. Clearly, we’re all on the same page.

How to pretend to be a movie critic after seeing Transporter 3
– It’s a hilarious parody of the action genre, though it falls short of the standard set by the first Transporter.
– But it doesn’t have that sense of existential doom that pervades Death Race 2000.
– Or the phenomenological questioning of Crank.
– Still, it does address the Kierkegaardian despair of necessity that animated Rogue Assassin.

Do you want to see a good movie starring Jason Statham? The Bank Job.

Photo: Rialto Bridge. Venice. Merchant of Venice. Merchant. Money.

Question: I’m a software developer for a big management consulting and outsourcing firm. Is it a bad time to seek a higher paying job at a smaller outsourcing firm in the country?

Adams Myth: Small firms enable talented young people to shine in a way that bigger firms cannot. But their smaller balance sheets and narrower customer bases make them more vulnerable in an economic crisis. Check first how diversified and stable the firm’s client base is.

Q: When do you think will we feel the worst of this crisis, after which we can breathe easy and say that “everything will be looking up from now on”?

AM: The real economy will hit bottom just before elections, but the recovery won’t be immediate. Look to the politicians to tell you that “everything will be looking up from now on”—if you elect them.

Q: Do you think Ayn Rand is wrong about objectivism and the “virtue” of selfishness?

AM: If you replace “selfishness” with “self interest”, she would not be far off. The latter is necessary for the invisible hand to work.

Post your questions in Comments.

(JZ: I don’t know about objectivism, and I’m definitely selfish, but I think The Fountainhead is a scream. All that heavy breathing and tearing off of clothes and descriptions of the hero’s muscles. There, two more people just ran off to get copies.)