December 2009
83 posts
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Capitalizing on David Foster Wallace's Death
David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech “This is Water,” has recently been printed as a hard-cover book. This desperate attempt to suck a buck out of an author postmortem by exploiting public sentimentality and/or proximity-to-cash-register-induced impulse purchases normally wouldn’t deserve two thoughts, if not for the fact that the publisher, Little, Brown &...
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Variations on a Theme
Love sticks, sweat drips / Break the lock if it don’t fit / A kick in the teeth is good for some / A kiss with a fist is better than none.
A semi-circular bruise marked my chest, a marbled rainbow running from one nipple to the other. During the next week this rainbow moved through a sequence of tone changes like the colour spectrum of automobile varnishes. As I looked down at myself I...
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Notes on the Recording of Classical Music
Of all the piano music Beethoven composed, no piece matches the variety and complexity of his very last composition, the staggering set of 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli (opus 120). The story behind the Diabelli Variations, how they came to be written, reveals something of Beethoven’s creative impulse. Anton Diabelli, a Viennese music publisher, conceived an idea: ask the most popular...
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The IDEA box →
bobulate:
On getting things done:
When producing a movie, everything stems back to this box: IDEA. In the 1940s, these were the sources of ideas: “Play,” “Short Story or Novel,” “Newspaper Story or Current Event,” “Original Story,” “Magazine Article,” or “Historical Incident.” Way off on the left, however, there’s one additional source that’s not shown above: “Vice President in Charge of...
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Madness And The Super Power: Strategic Ignorance...
PART I: THE DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE
While we’re speaking of insanity and madness, as R. Rosenfelt and E. Smith have thus far (flinging the door wide open for fools like me), let us dwell on the fate of the Knight of the Sad Countenance, the ingenious and resourceful, indomitable, Don Quixote de La Mancha. Oh, I hear you snickering and snackering with your clucked tongues, but let me tell you...
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Authenticity, Idiocy and Christ
In Rowan William’s book, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction, he begins with a discussion of a letter Dostoevsky wrote after being released from a labor camp in 1854.
In the letter Dostoevsky writes:
“if someone were to prove to me that Christ were outside of the truth, and it was really the case that the truth lay outside of Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ,...
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Madness, Authenticity & The Religious Right: the...
Remarking on the intellectual tradition that posits “authenticity” as a value associated with insanity, Lionel Trilling identifies two assumptions:
1) “[I]nsanity is a direct and appropriate response to the coercive inauthenticity of society.” It is, in short, a strategy of resistance to the demands of public life; an “act of criticism which exposes the true nature...
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The Utility of Strategic Ignorance (further...
Absorbing Jen’s thoughtful post—-especially her meditation on the Novalis quote and the deft passage concerning the urgency to write—-my mind was knocked back to thoughts of Kafka’s imperishable short story, “The Burrow.” It’s an intensely personal elegy devoted to the labor of writing, likening the arduous nature of the task to the unending construction of a burrow. Within the...
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Scientific study of 'literary fingerprinting'... →
Endeavors like this make hopeful third culture intellectuals cry inside.
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The utility of strategic ignorance, cont.
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. - George Eliot, Middlemarch
It was Mills’ phrase, that Macdonald “has made a fetish of confusion and drift,” which...
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The Side-Effects of AVATAR
It’s been years since I emerged from a movie so bewildered. AVATAR is a sensation to witness, never short of visual majesty or bracing pyrotechnics. I sat in the theater riveted to the screen, never noticing the clumsy man-child spilling M&M’s all over the floor behind me, or the trio of teens who compared every color in this fantasy to shades of lipstick available at Claire’s (apparently...
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Religion and Secularism
thegroundofmybeseeching:
It’s as varieties of literary narrative that religion and secularism look most alike. Religion deserves to be protected absolutely, the political doctrine of secularism goes, as long as it remains private. But it cannot be respected when it claims public authority. So too literature is to be valued as something other than an account of how things really are—as the...
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The utility of strategic ignorance
Macdonald writes:
“Soon after he started sharing quarters in baker Street with Sherlock Holmes, young Dr. Watson was shocked to find that his brainy friend was an ignoramus:
Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be or what he had done. My surprise reached a...
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“My God, I’d love to smash into the casket of Dostoevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, ‘Well done, you goddam genius.”’
-Mel Brooks, “Blazing Brooks” Time Magazine (1975)
image via
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #1
1. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “THERE WILL BE BLOOD” (2007)
After “Punch Drunk Love” P.T. Anderson required five years to breathe life into his most recent work, “There Will Be Blood.” That long pregnancy reflected a filmmaker coming to terms with a radical change in the direction of his art. The qualities that distinguish “Punch Drunk Love” from Anderson’s previous films spawned a new...
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Edna St. Vincent Millay & the Age of the Cynical...
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote some mediocre prose in her day. In the flapper era, after she escaped the cloistered walls of Vassar, Millay hightailed around, charming the pants off male and female lovers alike. In this post-adolescent period, she managed to write sonnets that scraped at the dry, pointed edge of truth for an increasingly dissatisfied age:
I shall forget you presently, my dear, So...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #2
2. Lars Von Trier’s “DANCER IN THE DARK” (2000)
There is no filmmaker working today more committed to ideas than Lars Von Trier. His early work is fascinating, abstract, and visually startling, but a heightened ideological posture accompanied his 1996 effort, “Breaking the Waves.” In it, he thrust a chaste figure named Bess into the world with nothing more than her absolute devotion to...
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“The most ‘popular,’ the most ‘successful’ writers among us (for a brief period...”
– Poe, “The Literati of New York City”, 1846 (via RSR) (via bourgeoiseldorado)
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Attempts to improve the English language
Consider Maureen Tkacik’s perplexing opening to “Gladwell for Dummies”:
That success is in the eye of the unsuccessful would seem to be the great unspoken dilemma dogging critics asked to consider the work of the rich and famous author and inspirational speaker Malcolm Gladwell. No matter how well intentioned or intellectually honest their attempts to assess his ideas, the...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #3
3. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s “ADAPTATION” (2002)
Some films lend themselves to socio-political commentary, but some films exist as self-contained works of art. “Adaptation” falls into the latter category, spinning out a wild fantasy in which one man, a writer named Charlie Kaufman, adapts to the world around him by methodically destroying the obstacle to his pursuit of artistic...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #4
4. Paul Greengrass’ “UNITED 93” (2006)
In the medium of narrative cinema, there is no greater portrait of 9/11 than Paul Greengrass’ staggering “United 93.” It’s a head-reeling barrage of concentrated imagery, flashing between events on the ground and, specifically, events on board the one hijacked plane which did not reach its intended target. Greengrass dispenses completely...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #5
5. Fernando Meirelles’ “CITY OF GOD” (2002)
Although by 2002 Fernando Meirelles was not new to filmmaking, “City of God” came storming out of nowhere to announce his arrival. The film is a red-hot furnace of fissile material, cross-cutting through time to chronicle a generation of violence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Much like Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” the film tells the...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #6
6. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “AMELIE” (2001)
For an artistic medium to survive, it must be capable of expressing basic humanity. Of all the films produced in this uneven decade, none is more imaginatively humane than “Amelie.” The plot itself is disarmingly simple: A lonely girl becomes a semi-eccentric young woman, who eventually falls in love. From this simple premise, Jeunet musters all...
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"The Haunts of Miss Highsmith" →
“Ms. Schenkar is convinced that if Highsmith had not become a writer, she would have been a murderer. ’From age 8 she wanted to kill her stepfather,’ she said, strolling north toward Grove Street, ‘she was born to murder. She had the mind of a criminal genius.’”
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Alex Carnevale's Top 20 Albums of 2009
Much drooled over blog This Recording, submits to its captive audience Alex Carnevale’s Top 20 Albums of 2009. Many thanks— I don’t even know if I could name 10 albums from this last year; and no, I don’t think “Glee- The Music, Vol 2.” counts.
As the editor of probably the best scrappy-young-thing blog online, I lend Carnevale’s list full authority.
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #7
7. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “PUNCH DRUNK LOVE” (2002)
By the time “Punch Drunk Love” received its debut, P.T. Anderson had been a filmmaker for ten years. The three films prior to it were increasingly dense explorations of divine intervention, highlighting a gallery of players who found themselves meeting the right people at just the right time. In “Hard Eight” John and Clementine were...
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Youth And Age
MUCH did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.
William Butler Yeats
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #8
8. Peter Weir’s “Master And Commander, Far Side Of The World” (2003)
Period films are a tricky genre, largely because the task of capturing the sensual quality, the mindset, of the era in question is often marred by the filmmaker’s inability to remove his own cultural breeding from the finished product. Some period-films (Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” comes to mind),...
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U N D E R W H E L M I N G
The New Yorker’s picks for the 10 best films and books of the decade:
James Wood : Books
David Denby: Films
This makes my insides feel bad.
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Zadie Smith and novel nausea
This article in the Guardian by Zadie Smith has been getting a lot of play in the literary blogosphere (I had to suppress my gag reflex typing that phrase), so I won’t say too much about it.
The “novel nausea” Smith describes is a reaction to traditional novel forms:
A new book by the American novelist-essayist David Shields…makes the case for irregularity. In Reality...
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n+1 on Tumblr
keithgessen:
If you like getting your web reading via tumblr—and who among the 15-18-year-old set does not?—you might consider following nplusonemag.tumblr.com.
For joy!
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On Taking Down Imaginary Enemies
Kevin Mattson’s makes a curious analogy in his review of Michael Bérubé’s The Left at War:
A perceptive critic of the left, Bérubé is a little like George Orwell, except funnier.
What an odd and delightful thing to say about someone—-though admittedly difficult to imagine. What would a funny Orwell be like? Not, it seems, as wonderful one might think. Mattson goes on to...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade, #9
9. Steven Spielberg’s “MINORITY REPORT” (2002)
Among the most important of all American Filmmakers, Steven Spielberg has now been crafting visual spectacles for four decades. His imprint in Cinema, however you regard the quality of his work, is both deep and lasting. For me, the most fascinating of his movies derive from the mature period following the completion of...
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The Ten Best Films of the Decade #10
My intentions should be clear. Despite all my instincts to the contrary, I cannot resist the compulsion to make lists. As the decade draws to a thankful close, I’d like to compose a few of my own which touch on personal passions. I’ll begin with Film, moving backward through the list one at a time, with as little pain as possible. PLEASE NOTE: These assessments are not...
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“I’m reminded therefore of Derrida’s ideas about writing versus speech and the...”
– Rick Moody over at the American Short Fiction blog, in response to the question, “What does online publishing mean to you?”
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Yes.
[…] I love the smell of a rich big shop at 71/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar lid a couple of lbs of course a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea...
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These are our critics?
Cornel West publishes self-aggrandizing book. Scott McLemee criticizes said book. Henry Farrell notes said criticism on Crooked Timber. Edward Champion belittles this criticism, only to be taken to task in his comments and back on Crooked Timber.
Is it too easy to air one’s dirty laundry in public now, or is there more of it? Either way, I might be romanticizing the critic, but I always...