George Grosz @ 50 Watts

>>>Twenty-One Book Covers by George Grosz @ 50 Watts

Es ist ziemlich bekannt, daß zwischen dem Proletariat und der Bourgeoisie gegenwärtig Krieg herrscht. [...] Es geschieht Unrecht von Seiten der Bourgeoisie, aber es geschieht überall Unrecht. Sie, George Grosz, und ich sind gegen Unrecht (wie alle Welt), aber wir hätten weniger dagegen, wenn vom Proletariat aus Unrecht getan werden könnte.

It is fairly well-known that, at present, war reigns between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. [...] There are injustices committed by the bourgeoisie, but there are injustices committed everywhere. You, George Grosz, and I stand against injustice (like the whole world), but we are less in objection when injustices may be committed by the proletariat.

–Bertolt Brecht, Foreword to Trommeln in der Nacht, 1926.

Edvard Munch at the Centre Pompidou (Against Curators, pt. 1)

The Edvard Munch exhibition currently showing at the Centre Pompidou, "Edvard Munch: L'Oeil Moderne", collects paintings, drawings, and photographs from the middle and later stages of the Norwegian painter’s career. In the exhibit program, the curators declare their intent to offer viewers a new view of Munch which highlights his modernity (fair enough, although it seems like a bit of a straw-man argument to say the Munch is generally considered otherwise), by illustrating the ways in which his work concerns itself with the major questions of 20th-century modernity, such as intermediality, self-representation, and the reproducibility of the work of art. As H. and I moved through the exhibit admiring Munch’s works, we constantly came up against a blockade of human bodies, gathered around what one thought would have been a Munch painting, but was actually a large block of text printed in French and poorly-translated English at the entrance to each room of the exhibition. While I was content at first to just ignore the texts, which at first glance seemed to offer nothing of substance or import, and form my own conclusions from the developments of Munch’s style easily observable in the paintings when one is aware of their historical succession, I was eventually forced to take a serious look at the wall texts, as the selection of paintings in the individual rooms ceased to have any recognizable ordered affinities. For example, the room entitled “Rayonnements” informed the viewer that “Munch was part of a generation of artists for whom the imaginary was marked by a culture of radiation.” I forget exactly which paintings were gathered in this room, but I know there was one of his striking paintings of the sun, while other works portrayed geometric circles, and there may have also been some experimental photographs.

Edvard Munch, "The Sun" (1916)

I was certain, however, that none of the works collected in the room had anything to do with radiation, or a "culture of rays," and were more obviously products of Munch’s life-long involvement with questions of light and form, which are indeed the same questions that guide the work of every painter in the early-20th century. Observing the perplexed, searching faces of my fellow exhibition-viewers, I felt with renewed clarity a sentiment that I’ve often had in the past few years, namely that the art world is suffocating under the malignant influence of the curator.
I’ve seen numerous art exhibitions of contemporary as well as older artworks, whose entire conceptual organization rests on a half-baked, hare-brained conceptual framework designed by a curator. Although designed to emphasize certain aesthetic trends in a group of artworks, these curatorial concepts constantly impose their own pop-philosophical concept onto a collection of unwilling participants, uncomfortably forcing a reading which has very little to do with either the artwork or the artist who created it. Not content with traditional curatorial themes such as “good works of art from a certain region/period”, “works of art of a certain kind from a certain artist”, or “works of art from artists who knew each other,” today’s curators attempt to construct impressive-sounding conceptual frameworks on which to hang works of art, as one hangs decorative baubles on a Christmas tree. The result is not only misguided, but misguiding. The basic aesthetic qualities of an artwork, often obvious to even the least informed of art viewers, are misrepresented through the funhouse mirror of the curator’s theoretical approach. Worse still, the pseudo-intellectualism of such theories can convince the viewer that he or she doesn’t actually understand the work of art in question, since they don’t quite see how the work relates to question of the ontological subjectivity of the body in its (post)colonial state of inverted reflexivity. I should really start a scrapbook of some of the explanatory texts written by curators to explain their curatorial intent; among them there are, without a doubt, examples of some of the worst-written and least-helpful writing produced in the past decades.
Such curators are undoubtedly products of academia, and are in the worst-case scenario failed artists themselves. Today's curators are individuals who come of age within the milieu of art and art history, who want to be part of a creative action within the art world, while lacking either the talent or the courage to make art themselves. They content themselves with a destructive act of theoretical framing which is designed, by the way, to promote simplistic art while ignoring works of complexity or mysterious beauty, since works which lend themselves to the most simple, uncomplicated interpretations are precisely those which fit most easily within the curator's theoretical framework. Furthermore, it is not only the representation of existing works of art which suffers from the curatorial menace: young artists are coerced into creating simplistic works of art based on easily-legible, untroubled and untroubling concepts, so that they may be included in exhibitions, the most prestigious of which always seem to be curated by complete fools.
While the Pompidou’s Munch exhibit is not so egregious in its theoretical indulgences, it still produces some clangers. For example, pointing out that, while Munch is considered an introspective painter, “his painting is very taken up with the outside world.” What’s this, an introspective painter that paints pictures of the outside world? Quel paradoxe modern! It’s also stated that Munch’s habit of painting self-portraits is a “perfect response to the Norwegian Bohemian literary agenda that was in place at the end of the 19th century.” True, only such a historical situation could lead a painter to do something as unconventional as paint a picture of himself! I now see that Munch was, indeed, truly modern! Thanks, curators!

Chris Marker's Junkopia (1981)

Here's a nice little Marker short that I didn't know existed until now. It's a film about the Albany Bulb, a former landfill on a peninsula that juts out into the SF Bay from Berkeley. From the 60s onwards, the Bulb has been used as a refuge for large urban art/art brut installations, including some impressive architectural creations. I remember being led here when I was last in San Francisco, while on tour with Dreamhouse in 2004. There is a very strong homeless community that lives there now, but it also seems to be a popular place for dogwalking. Marker's film captures the otherworldly atmosphere of the place, which contrasts here richly with the traces of 1980's America that sneak in. As usual, the soundtrack credited to Michel Krasna (aka Marker himself) is great as well.

Schiller you old fool

Lying on the couch, thinking about Schiller. From the poem "Die Götter Griechenlands" (1788):

Da die Götter menschlicher noch waren, waren Menschen göttlicher.

[When the gods were still human-like, humans were more god-like.] 

Staring at the Apollonian head above, I reflect on the line's meaning, and the beauty of Schiller's idea. In his 18th-century Christian/Enlightenment society, the idea of the divine has become abstracted to such an extent as to be only conceivable as a nebulous authoritarian force or a cloudy philosophical concept. When gods took human-form, like the one depicted on the poster above, humans would compare themselves to deities, and be more likely to imitate their actions.
Suddenly I realize the extent of the mistake Winckelmann makes in excluding the Dionysian from his vision of Greece, conceiving of a purely Apollonian, noble, balanced divinity. What does it mean for a person to become more god-like? More like Apollo, or more like Dionysus? More like Athena, or more like Hera? The Greek gods are human, all too human, and it is only with the advent of the Christian tradition that imitation of divinity can be seen as a good thing. Schiller, you old fool, your critique of Christian theology is based on a mistaken image of Greek divinity which is based on Christian divinity itself!
The beauty of the idea falls apart in my hands, but luckily I am able to turn to Lessing, from the Briefwechsel über das Trauerspiel (1756):

Der mitleidigste Mensch ist der beste Mensch.

[The most sympathetic person is the best person.] 

Now this is an idea whose beauty withstands a moment's reflection.

Cosas

1.

New logo for Guardian business blog

2. Mahmoud Ahmed live in Amsterdam, 1987

For the last few years I've had an MP3 of 20 minutes of a Mahmoud Ahmed concert floating around my computer. I originally got it from the sadly-defunct Benn loxo du taccu blog, and never knew much about its origins, except that it was broadcast on Dutch radio. I recently unearthed it again after being disappointed with the comparatively low energy of the "Live in Paris" CD from 1994. The Paris concert is not bad, but it seems so uninspired compared with the pure fire that is this Amsterdam show. Looking around the internet today I was incredibly pleased to happen upon a video of one of the songs from the Benn loxo recording:



Only after finding the video did I discover the date of the recording. I previously thought it was from the 90s. Looking at the video again, the poster says this was from a concert of the Adei Ababa Ensemble, featuring other famous Ethiopian singers, such as Tilahun Gessesse.
In honor of Mahmoud, and of Benn loxo as well, I'm re-upping the original recording here. If anyone has more tracks from this show, please get in touch!

Mahmoud Ahmed - Live in Amsterdam, 1987 (MP3, 29.7 mb)


3. Kebad Kenya

In these sad days it is incredibly revitalizing to see a casual, intelligent, non-academic/non-professional blog devoted to an underread and underrated writer such as Hans Henny Jahnn. The Kebad Kenya blog, run by Will from 50 Watts, is a great little thing indeed.

Schlehe

Just found another very nice Workshop video which was uploaded to YouTube this summer. This song is from 1997's Meiguiweisheng Xiang.

Unemployed satirists

"Satire ends at the very point where hatred of the world's abuses becomes irrelevant. This point is reached when absurdity gains control of that plane of experience at which men, throughout the ages, have formed their idea of order and normality [...] When Hitler came to power, Karl Kraus realized that it was the end of his satirical world. In 1919 he said of The Last Days of Mankind that its satirical inventions and exaggerations were mere quotations of what was said and done. Hitler's Germany reversed the situation: her words and deeds merely quoted, and by quoting exaggerated beyond belief, the satirist's inventions."
Eric Heller, from The Dear Purchase (Bowes & Bowes, 1971), p. 259

Below are three examples from contemporary culture that show a similar tendency to that described by Heller: what would have previously been satirical commentary on a particular event or cultural tendency (the mourning of the death of a billionaire technocrat, the insularity of academic political correctness, or the commodification of anti-capitalist discourse) is produced now as sincere expression by the would-be cultural target. Like Kraus during WWII, today's satirists are out of a job.

1. "Steve Nagata, right, holds an Apple iPad displaying an image of a candle as he takes part in a vigil outside the company's store in the Ginza district of Tokyo on Oct. 6, 2011."

2. Fat Studies 2012 PCA Call for Papers (via Good Jobbb Jr.)

3. Tote bag worn by a graduate student at my university.

Perloff on the intellectual first-person plural

LINK: Marjorie Perloff, From PMLA, September 1997 issue, commissioned for roundtable on "Intellectuals"
Though this little piece dates from 15 years ago, its general diagnosis of the economic and institutional position of the intellectual rings true today. Perloff is one of the few academics today who is both willing and able to offer a valid critique of the institutional and disciplinary blockades to critical thought in American universities.

The assignment from PMLA was to write a 1000-word letter on "the notion of the intellectual in the twenty-first century"-- a letter that should be "double spaced and . . . avoid using the universal ungrounded 'we'."

That says it all, doesn't it? For what function can the intellectual have in a world that prescribes double-spacing but doesn't permit the use of the first-person plural? [...]  

The loss of this "we" is the sign that there is no longer a generic intellectual class to which "you" or "I" or "one" might belong. The causes of this large-scale transformation are manifold: the end of the cold war and, with it, of an effective international Left, the dominance of money over the old class formations coupled with an often militant identity politics that creates smaller and smaller micro-units defining the individual's place, and the increasing commodification and media-ization of society, which prompts even a scholarly journal like PMLA to resort to sound-bytes like the one I am writing. But perhaps the greatest threat to the intellectual life is that of the institution, whether the university, the foundation, the professional organization, or the government arts agency, that supposedly fosters it. 

In "The Intellectual Field: A World Apart" (1985), Pierre Bourdieu characterizes intellectuals as "a dominated fraction of the dominant class. They are dominant in so far as they hold the power and privileges conferred by the possession of cultural capital . . . but . . . dominated in their relations with those who hold political and economic power." Intellectuals "remain loyal to the bourgeois order," because it is, after all, the bourgeois order that confers upon them whatever power they have. What this means in practice, is that, in late twentieth-century culture, institutional intellectuals may profess any number of "radical" ideas but are curiously passive vis-à-vis the system itself--that is, the basic university structure with its conferral of advanced degrees, grading and certification of students, and "peer review" of scholarly materials for the purpose of tenure or promotion decisions. [...]

Perloff has said that she doesn't want to write a book on method: I find this regrettable, as her work represents the revitalization of a certain critical spirit lacking from current academic discourse. Her rigorous, historical approach is undistorted by fashionable trends in theory, and she remains always ready to actually criticize—i.e. to praise certain works and denounce others, the original "task of the critic" which very few critics seem interested in today. I always find her work reinvigorating.
More Perloffian material here and here.

The same place the fly got smashed

From the heady days of this past summer: "In Tempelhof this evening, as far in the middle as was possible to go, blinded by the sun, I angle my neck and all I can see is a blue expanse. I am moved by music recorded in Dayton, Ohio. I think thus, that there are too many possibilities for emotional experience for there to be a god."
My clip-on shades provided the perfect protection from the fields of shimmering gold. I had fought and ended up alone, and this was my solace. I worshiped the passing minutes, not knowing whence they came or where they would lead. I no longer know exactly what I meant, but I think it had to do with an inverted tribute to Kierkegaard, a mis-reading in which the parallel levels of ethical experience find expression today (in these sad days) as fleeting emotional vibes. "Don't need no God,"sadly. Need music and something to drink during a sunny vision, wherein ethics disguises itself as emotion passing for a solitary aesthetic experience.
"Organize my world," my world's pointless and ecstatic—worthless and exotic—mirthless and erotic. Very simple and therefore spiritual—very difficult and therefore satisfying—very hard and therefore cathartic—very easy and therefore disappointing—none of the above, and always different.

Nowadays: Preparing to fight, negotiating concessions between my own convictions and my desire to avoid annoyances and/or threats to my material well-being. At this point I am only interested in the next two and a half years, and am content to let the later future work itself out in due time. This allows me to follow my personal vision of φιλοσοφία, and what could be of greater importance than that? What is a job compared with a text. A text is eternal and gives itself to the world. I asked: what does it mean to be ambitious? He said: "I want my work to be important." Why? There are texts, and they are there to be read. Can one/should one desire anything more than to to read a text? Read it for the world, if it is there to be read. You shouldn't expect anything else from a textual institution. Your work can and therefore must be faceless, it is the text which should become important.
A job is only important insofar as it puts food on the table, but this isn't what you consider valuable.
I am only beginning my thirtieth year, but I feel far too old to have guidance forced upon me. "No need to get all caught up / in society's stipulations..." I used to be a member of the freak generation, and now I'm doing all I can to avoid being a middle-aged child! The freaks certainly don't have a monopoly on middle-aged infancy, that's certain. It is a vast social ill: "Capitalism makes a fool of you, every time."
I dropped my tool, which made a loud clanging sound as it struck the floor: "I did it on purpose." Wait while I retrieve it...

Here goes: Though it came as a disappointment, she felt it simultaneously as a relief. It became apparent to her that the career she had begun working towards was an ignoble one: or rather, in order to be successful in such a career (in these sad days), one would have to go about it in an ignoble way. This was not always the case! Many things were not always the case, but whose fault is it that they are now such a case? When will things return to how they were? Each decade is worse in its own way.
"You as a person have got to think fast"—less in order to process information quicker, but to calculate the necessary tactical approach which allows you to avoid annoyances and/or threats to your physical well-being. Leave her alone, let her conclude: "I as a fly was smashed at this very spot two and a half years ago. My story lives on..."

Grossman on Die Linke

There's a pretty good English-language roundup of recent developments in Die Linke by Victor Grossman at the Monthly Review.

LINK: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/grossman291011.html

Grossman sees reason to be optimistic after 96.9% of party representatives ratified a formal statement of their party program in Erfurt last month. It must also be considered a positive to have Oskar Lafontaine back in action after a period of convalescence following his fight against cancer. Apart from Gregor Gysi, I feel like only Lafontaine has the charisma, rhetorical skill and star-power to return Die Linke to visibility on a national level. (German-speakers: Das Herz schlägt links!)

Das dreißigste Jahr

"If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a non-entity [ein Nichts], a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I don't deserve, but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad. I wish I could call out to all those who believe in their unique brains and the hard currency of their thoughts: be of good faith! But they have been taken out of circulation, these coins that you jingle, you simply don't know it yet. Withdraw them from currency along with the images of death's heads and eagles which they bear. Admit that it's all over with the land of Greece and the land of Buddha, with enlightenment and alchemy. Admit that you are merely living in a country furnished by the ancients, that your views are only rented, the pictures of your world hired..."

Adapted from Michael Bullock's translation, Holmes & Meier, 1987.

Protest is not in itself a good thing

Protest is not in itself a good thing. A protest that accomplishes nothing is a failure. Some might say that any protest accomplishes something by drawing attention to certain issues, perhaps even affecting public policy by making demands on politicians. This may be true, but it still stands that the success of a protest needs to be judged by its concrete effects.
This is one problem with the Occupy movement. While I am sincerely excited about the potential of such a widespread outpouring of anger against the power of business and money in government, I have a hard time whole-heartedly taking part in their protest actions. There are two reasons for my ambivalence, both concerned with the democratic ideals upon which the protests operate.
Firstly, the protesters often seem too enthusiastic about the bare act of protesting: they see it as a good thing in itself, separated from its effectiveness or even from the beliefs expressed. Their most popular chant expresses this ideal: "Show me what democracy looks like -- This is what democracy looks like!" For me this is equivalent to chanting "Protest! Protest! Protest!" Protest is not and has never been about fighting for the right to protest. It is about the expression of a specific qualm held by a group of people. I would gladly and wholeheartedly chant along with "Tax the rich!" or "Nationalized health care now!"; these chants express actions rather than ideals, and agitate towards a specific policy change. We don't need to fight for our right to protest: our democratic government guarantees us this right, occasional police brutality notwithstanding. But the right to protest is meaningless without the possibility of producing tangible results.
Secondly, there is not enough of a clear emphasis on issues of class. To say "We are the 99%" is to sketch out a system of two classes: the ultra-rich and everyone else. This is simply insufficient to describe the system that needs to be radically reformed. Declaring the solidarity of the 99% is to declare the solidarity of the working-classes and those living in poverty with the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie. This is obviously not fair to the lower classes. 99% leaves too much leeway for extreme economic equality. When the protesters chant "The people united will never be defeated," who counts among this people? The "American People" is myth, a PR stunt used daily by politicians to gain votes. There is no American People; but there are certainly American classes. As it stands now, the unification of the ultra-rich with the politicians is looking pretty undefeatable. Marx wasn't speaking of "the people" nor of "the 99%." It is the working classes who need to unite in class warfare against their class enemies: the bourgeoisie as well as the ultra-rich.

Gass on Poetry/Philosophy

"I have a distrust—not so much from Wittgenstein as a natural bent of mind—a very Wittgensteinian distrust of philosophical pronouncements, the difficulty of getting anywhere in the subject, so that the suspicion about ideas is very great. But the notion that literature was going to give them to me I never really had. For example, Rilke, I suppose my favorite writer really, and in the best sense a profound writer, is full of shit. I mean his ideas as nonsensical. As philosophical notions I have no respect for them at all, but as poetic notions they are absolutely beautiful. This is one of the reasons I am really a Heidegger hater, because Heidegger gets most of his ideas from Rilke and does not have the sense to see that this is great poetry. He projects it into religion, and I have an immense mistrust of that."

William Gass in conversation with G.A.M. Janssens in 1979. From Conversations with William H. Gass (University of Mississippi Press, 2003).

 This is a pretty good summation of a basic problem that can arise when literature and philosophy are undertaken in close proximity. A couple caveats:
1) I am not as ready as Gass to separate philosophical feasibility with poetic beauty, and I happen to find Rilke full of shit as a poet as well as as a philosopher. I think it is healthy to have a distrust of literary pronouncements (especially profound ones) as well as philosophical pronouncements.
2) Heidegger got most of his ideas from Husserl, not Rilke, but it was indeed the literary, Rilkean spirit of his approach that led him to make such a botch of phenomenology.

Politics

"When it comes to deciding whether we should make war, kill so many men, condemn so many Spaniards to death, it is a single man who decides, and an interested party at that; it ought to be an impartial third party."

Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Unchained - The Happy Stirrup (2007)

Here is the last work of my solo noise band, Unchained (ex-Knifestorm, etc.), entitled The Happy Stirrup, and self-released on CDR in 2007. Of all the solo releases I've done, today I am most satisfied with this one. It was the first time I worked with other musicians for something I considered "solo" work: the songs are constructed from the practice tapes of two bands I was playing in at the time, Gateway Evening Colours (with Alex Farrill on drums and Brian House on bass) and Innnocent Delights (with Miles Huston on drums and vocals and Sam Mehran on keyboard and guitar). In both bands I was playing guitar through a no-input mixer setup (Behringer Eurorack mixer, Boss compression/sustain pedal, Boss digital delay, Rat Distortion pedal, Roland volume pedal, and sometimes a Boss octave pedal). Gateway Evening Colours was working on a kind of deep blues/country-rock noise-wall sound, very minimal and 'jammy'. Innocent Delights was less rock-ish, more free, psychedelic sounding. The majority of the songs consist of loops cut from GEC and ID practice tapes, cut and pasted with a computer wave editor, and also EQ'd and tweaked on a computer. While the source tapes were collective efforts, the editing process was my own solipsistic endeavor. However, I still feel that the collective spirit is audible here, and I think it is for this reason that this recording sounds better to my ears than others which were wholly created in an artistic solitary confinement of sorts.
The first song, "Falsini Fop or Blade" is my fake collaboration with Franco Falsini of Sensations Fix, one of my all-time favorite musicians. This was no real collaboration: instead, I created loops from his Cold Nose solo album, played these through my mixer setup, and played guitar and sang over them. Though Falsini had recorded his part three decades before I added my own part, I still felt that the result was enough of a collaboration to create a fake band, Faux Batard (named after a Sensations Fix song), which supposedly had myself and Falsini as members. This is perhaps the most "noise" song of the album, and also comes the closest out of any recording I've ever done to replicating the sound of my live shows as Unchained.
"Spetters" (named after the Verhoeven film), "The Happy Stirrup" (named after a line from a famous translation) and "Suncanal" are all based on practice tapes of Gateway Evening Colours. With these, as well as the Innocent Delights tracks, I wanted to focus on the golden moments of group improvisation, when things suddenly come together into a song form that seems planned, though it isn't. What I wanted to do was isolate these moments, and cut and paste them into a larger composition: in other words, to force an element of postmortem compositional order onto small moments of improvisational magic. It was this combination of the non-control of group improvisation with the hyper-control of cutting and pasting alone on a wave editor that intrigued me. The GEC tracks are marked by more laid-back grooves, more Grateful Dead where the ID tracks are more free-noise.
Innocent Delights was short-lived. "Crystal Drops of Quilmes" and "Licking Tides" were the only recordings that resulted from our collaboration. We jammed 3 or 4 times, and played once live (the massive show for the opening of The Redemption Center in Brooklyn). Miles used to be in Dreamhouse, with whom I did a US tour in 2004, and now helps run the gallery Know More Games. Sam is now getting some recognition as Outer Limits Recordings. These recordings were also improvised, even Miles's vocals. I'm don't think he's actually singing real words, just like sketches for future words—which makes it even funnier when they are looped by me. Instead of developing compositions through the act of improvising, here the improvisations themselves become the compositions.
I made about 70 or 80 copies of this CDR. If anyone is interested in re-releasing it, please get in touch.

Unchained - The Happy Stirrup (2007, CDR)
1. Falsini Fop or Blade
2. Spetters
3. Crystal Drops of Quilmes
4. The Happy Stirrup
5. Suncanal
6. Licking Tides

********
UPDATE: The Happy Stirrup will be reissued as a double LP (w/ bonus tracks) by New Images Ltd., hopefully by late May. More info here: http://newimagesltd.tumblr.com/

Pro-Blog

Though I ‘look at’ Twitter (one can hardly call it reading) and have even ‘tweeted’ a couple times, and while I often get ‘very important information’ (EPL transfer deadline-day, etc.) faster by Twitter than conventional news sources, I think its an inherently flawed method of communication, one which is leading internet society down a very annoying path. The reason for this is very simple: Twitter is designed to be a mouthpiece for snark (for those of you lucky enough to not be familiar with the concept, it’s a self-explanatory portmanteau of “snide” and “remark”). Being limited to 140 characters, Twitter users can either send a short bit of compacted information (sometimes useful, more often useless), or a poorly thought-out attempt at an aphorism—i.e. a snarky one-liner, something which can only be uttered with an air of smug self-satisfaction. I have to clarify: these are not aphorisms. They are not even aphoristic. I have yet to read a good aphorism on Twitter. Aphorisms are perfect jewels of wit and intellect, labored-over and re-written, not shat out on the train to work.
(Karl Kraus: “One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.”)
The gravest dysfunction becomes apparent when one wishes to comment on something someone else has said. My main problem with Twitter is that one cannot reply to messages in any meaningful manner. The only choice is to write a return @ message, which most users have difficulty following. Furthermore, one's commentary is restricted in form: one is compelled to reply in turn with a snarky one-liner, and we should have all learned in third grade that no meaningful conversation can take place when one is limited only to snarky one-liners. The internet is a magnificent medium for interpersonal communication, and I find it really depressing to see its standards of dialogue deteriorate into a mess of fractured, half-baked, smug, thoughtless, and closed-minded snark. Why, why, why? This is not merely the “dumbing-down” of the internet, its the transformation of the internet into a big, spoiled child.
(Twitter users: if you’d like to defend Twitter in the comments below please limit yourselves to 140 characters or less).

Different Prizes pt. 2

Replying to a previous post, Brandon (The Enthusiast) writes:

I've been thinking more and more on those prizes— those "external goods" dangling around here and New York, that seem to keep working their way further and further inward— and it makes me really stick closer to that Internal Good.

I hadn’t considered the issue precisely as Brandon has portrayed it here: for me, I was thinking of Doc in the Boston Aquarium (from Robert Kramer’s Route One USA) musing on the “different prizes” of the culture that strays from the standard ideal of bourgeois America. In Doc’s (and my) original conception, prizes are differentiated between cultural norms, and it is in some sense the burden of those who have devoted their lives to a particular culture that they may only strive towards their culturally-determined prizes. Different pathways lead to different prizes, neither are objectively worth more. Doc’s goal in this little pep-talk is to remind the non-bourgeois individual, whose heart is heavy when he catches a glimpse of the comfortable, domestic life from which he has opted out (I use the masculine, because it seems likely that Doc is directing his talk self-ward, or possibly at director Kramer), that his choice of a different path also brings with it certain opportunities, its own lonely, precarious, yet noble prizes as well.
Brandon’s conception of the “external good” versus the “inner good” considers the situation from within a single cultural milieu, separating the prizes of an endeavor itself (in the university, the love of learning, the φιλοσοφία) from those which stem from the social and economic factors which affect those who partake in said endeavor (the cushy jobs, salaries, stipends, wine and cheese receptions, esteem of peers, cultural capital, etc.).
I’m sure Brandon is thinking also of the art world in NYC, where the actual artworks on the walls are often the least important things at a gallery opening—and are duly ignored by the majority of the socializing crowd. Artworks are sold not for their aesthetic value, but for the current position of the artist/gallery on the market. This position is always determined 90% by pure marketing, 10% by the quality of the artist’s oeuvre as a whole (although there’s no accounting for taste), and 0% by the quality of the work in question. No one would deny this, I think. (And if I sound bitter, it’s because I am: Chelsea is an absolute shit-show these days).
In the academy, the situation is different, and perhaps much more naive (which is not necessarily a bad thing: cynical collaboration is sometimes much worse). It is, in fact, pounded into the heads of incoming students that they are here to learn, to enrich their minds, to become better people. The motto "non scholae sed vitae discimus" (we learn not for school, but for life) provides the cover for what is at heart a training in docility and discipline, picking up enough cultural capital along the way to clear the path towards the highest-paid positions of bourgeois society. The ones who really get fooled return to the fray, and let themselves be trained to do such training, navigating an intricate obstacle course of groveling and pedantic ostentation, ending up with tenure in middle America. The first thing thrown aboard is this ideal of learning for life—the pure encounter between living man and printed word—rather than for school. Unlike the art world insularity, which is openly accepted, the academy never acknowledges the fact that it operates as an enclosed economy, that learning occurs as a stepping stone not towards enlightenment, but towards academic success—the key which (supposedly) unlocks the reservoirs of capital.
All this what I’ve just said is pure Übertreibung (exaggeration), yet to quote Thomas Bernhard, “ohne Übertreibung kann man gar nichts sagen.”
At any rate, I think its important to point out that there are certain ‘prizes’ in the academic world which have naught to do with the “inner good” of the literary experience, and everything to do with the sociological function of the university in present-day capitalistic society. Unlike the art-world, which (for better or for worse) accepts its new role (however ironically), the academy naively presumes idealism where there is only cynicism.

Trikitixa Zoom (1991) / Faruaji (1987)

I would be extremely grateful if anyone could help me find the following two albums:

Kepa Junkera - Trikitixa Zoom (1991, Euskal Herria)


La Ciapa Rusa - Faruaji (1987, Italy)

Cosas

>>>Ernst Tugendhat interview (from 4 years ago) @ signandsight

Villa Tugendhat, Brno.

Here [in Germany] there's a lot of bragging in universities. In England and the USA, people have a different way of addressing you, particularly with me, because my style of thinking is rather Anglo-Saxon. Many German colleagues have it easier in America because there people think, oh, that's some German profundity that's so profound that it can't be understood anyway. [...]

As far as the behavioural sciences are concerned, I think that people are too rash in looking for analogies – for example between human morals and animal altruism. That is what Konrad Lorenz, among others, did. As for brain research, I think it's rather crazy what's going on today. [...] They can only find out what types of processes are going on in which parts of the brain. But then those professors of brain physiology appear and present theories about the nonexistence of human freedom. And those theories are only based on the fact that they see themselves as scientists and believe in determinism.

>>>Philippe Meyer on France @ French Politics

Un pays qui prend Bernard Tapie pour un entrepreneur, Bernard-Henri Lévy pour un philosophe, Jacques Attali pour un penseur, Claire Chazal pour une journaliste, Alain Minc pour un économiste, etc. ne peut s'étonner d'avoir Nicolas Sarkozy comme président de la République.

(And in related news, Michel Serres thinks that at this particular junction in history we need to figure out if Astérix was a fascist.)

>>>Autumn's coming @ The Trad

>>>Edwin Fischer 78s @ 78 toeren klassiek

Artmann describes himself

I recently borrowed The Best of H.C. Artmann, a German (despite the title) anthology of Artmann's work (Suhrkamp, 1970), from my university library. The book did not yet have a bar-code, and so had to be entered into the computing system before it could be checked out. When the student at the desk finally handed me the book, I noticed that my stamp was the first to be placed on the yellowed library slip inside the back cover of the book. The book had probably been sitting in the library since 1970. "Does this mean that I'm the first person ever to check out this book?" The student nodded. I felt as though I had discovered something precious, a small treasure that had awaited my curiosity so patiently.
Artmann is an undervalued writer, one of the first as well as last writers of the post-war Viennese literary avant-garde. He founded the Wiener Gruppe, along with younger writers such as Konrad Bayer and Gerhard Rühm, and served as the president of the Grazer Autorenversammlung. Wikipedia reports that he also apparently founded an "Anti P.E.N. Club", about which I would love to know more, but can't find any information about it (if anyone can enlighten us about this group, please do).
Below is a translation I've just done (hastily, I might add, so please feel free to offer any corrections if I've botched something) of a short Selbstbeschreibung written for the collection das suchen nach dem gestrigen tag oder schnee auf einem heissen brotwecken. eintragungen eines bizarren liebhabers, published in 1964. (Source text from H.C. Artmann, The Best of H.C. Artmann, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt, 1970). (German original follows English below).

____________________

My homeland is Austria, my fatherland Europe, my place of residence Malmö, my skin color white, my eyes blue, my courage varied, my mood moody, my intoxications correct, my endurance strong, my concern erratic, my longings like the compass rose, in a flash content, in a flash vexed, a friend of cheerfulness, in principle sad, affectionate towards girls, a big moviegoer, a lover of the twist, a lousy swimmer, a marksman at the shooting range, careless at cards, a zero at chess, not a bad bowler, a master at battleship, shot up in war, cut up in peace, a hater of police, a despiser of authority, an emetic to the left, itching powder to the right, uneasy with parents-in-law, a father of children, a Judas to mother, loyal like Pilatus, soft like Puccini, laid-back like Doctor Ward, shy at first, energetic towards morning, evenings always thirsty, bored at concerts, happy at the tailor, baptized in St. Lorenz, divorced in Klagenfurt, in Poland poetic, in Paris a breather, in Berlin floating, in Rome more timid, in London a bird, in Bremen a raindrop, in Venice an incoming letter, in Zaragoza an awaiting fuse, in Vienna a cracked plate, born in the air, teeth acquired through waiting, hair combed forward, beard tried on like a tie, lived standing with women, squeezed alphabets out of trees, observed carousels in woods, crawled up stairs with lisbonite women, waited for the morning with tourainian women, exploded and shot through the roof with glasgowian women, betrayed catanian women, astounded cairene women, idolized bernese women, advised praguian women, said grüßgott, stolen figs, discovered revolvers, stepped out of boats, cursed kites, fabricated masks, rented catacombs, invented festivals, lost apartments, loved flowers, destroyed records, driven 150, smelled trash, admired lanterns, compared moons, broken noses, abandoned umbrellas, operated malay, devised positions, squashed candies, shaken jukeboxes, been thankful, felt mortal fear, run like the deer, had lungs in the mouth, tarried amid roses, tinkered with toys, bungled dress-arms, read Mickey Spillane, thrown out Goethe, written poems, said bullshit, performed theater, smelled like puke, broken a bottle of Grappa, whispered mi vida, pulled faces, stammered ciao, gone away, said a, did b, thought c, became d.

Everything that one undertakes turns out differently as one hopes…

____________________

Meine heimat ist Österreich, mein vaterland Europa, mein wohnort Malmö, meine hautfarbe weiß, meine augen blau, mein mut verschieden, meine laune launisch, meine räusche richtig, meine ausdauer stark, meine anliegen sprunghaft, meine sehnsüchte wie die windrose, im handumdrehen zufrieden, im handumdrehen verdrossen, ein freund der fröhlichkeit, im grunde traurig, den mädchen gewogen, ein großer kinogeher, ein liebhaber des twist, ein übler schwimmer, an schießständen marksman, beim kartenspiel unachtsam, im schach eine null, kein schlechter kegler, ein meister im seeschlachtspiel. im kriege zerschossen, im frieden zerhaut, ein hasser der polizei, ein verächter der obrigkeit, ein brechmittel der linken, ein juckpulver der rechten, unbehaglich schwiegereltern, ein vater von kindern, ein Judas der mütter, treu wie Pilatus, sanft wie Puccini, locker wie Doctor Ward, schüchtern am anfang, schneidig gen morgen, abends stets durstig, in konzerten gelangweilt, glücklich beim schneider, getauft zu St. Lorenz, geschieden in Klagenfurt, in Polen poetisch, in Paris ein atmer, in Berlin schwebend, in Rom eher scheu, in London ein vogel, in Bremen ein regentropfen, in Venedig ein ankommender brief, in Zaragoza eine wartende zündschnur, in Wien ein teller mit sprüngen, geboren in der luft, die zähne durch warten erlernt, das haar nach vorne gekämmt, die bärte wie schlipse probiert, mit frauen im stehen gelebt, aus bäumen alphabete gepreßt, karussells in wäldern beobachtet, mit lissabonnerinnen über stiegen gekrochen, auf tourainerinnen den morgen erwartet, mit glasgowerinnen explodiert und durchs dach geflogen, catanesinnen verraten, kairenserinnen bestürzt, bernerinnen vergöttert, an pragerinnen herangeraten, grüßgott gesagt, feigen gestohlen, revolver entdeckt, aus booten gestiegen, papierdrachen verwünscht, masken verfertigt, katakomben gemietet, feste erfunden, wohnungen verloren, blumen geliebt, schallplatten verwüstet, 150 gefahren, unrat gewittert, lampione bewundert, monde verglichen, nasen gebrochen, parapluies stehengelassen, malaiisch betrieben, positionen ersonnen, bonbons zertreten, musikautomaten gerüttelt, dankbar gewesen, heidenangst verspürt, wie der hirsch gelaufen, die lunge im maul gehabt, unter rosen geweilt, spielzeug gebastelt, rockärmel verpfuscht, Mickey Spillane gelesen, Goethe verworfen, gedichte geschrieben, scheiße gesagt, theater gespielt, nach kotze gerochen, eine flasche Grappa zerbrochen, mi vida geflüstert, grimassen geschnitten, ciao gestammelt, fortgegangen, a gesagt, b gemacht, c gedacht, d geworden.

Alles was man sich vornimmt, wird anders als man sichs erhofft...

It's more realistic for a man to be singing alone.

Room Sound Marienleben

>>>Hindemith's Das Marienleben @ Squirrel's Nest


This 1950 recording of Hindemith's song-cycle Das Marienleben has reminded me of how much I treasure a good, vintage "room sound." By room sound I mean that it sounds as though it were recorded in a small room—judging by the reverb in this recording, I would guess it was recorded in a room measuring about 14'x18' with a ceiling no higher than 10', perhaps with a window open and several listeners smoking pensively on plush chairs. This, for me, is chamber music sounding its best. Why would you record chamber music in a church or a large concert hall? The music is written for 'room sound'—it is delicate music, with changes in dynamic which require the subtlety of close reverb to be heard. The extended reverb of a great hall drowns such nuances, demanding to be filled with the sonic might of an orchestra. Chamber music is private music: living room, salon, or even bedroom music.
This recording is of the second version of Das Marienleben from 1947, Hindemith's "final word", going against that of Schoenberg, who preferred the 1927 version (which I assume is somewhat less neoclassical, though I have not heard it). The music is classic Hindemith, confidently straddling the gap between atonal formalism and neoclassical impressionism. Hindemith works best as chamber music, where his understated experimentalism is allowed to blossom comfortably within a similarly demure aural sphere.
I haven't yet paid much attention to Rilke's text here, although if Beckett is right, that Rilke, like Klopstock, suffers from "the fidgets"—and has the "childishness to which German writers seem specially prone" to "call the fidgets God, Ego, Orpheus and the rest"—we should be grateful to have such fidgeting transformed into bold, semi-tonal Lyrik. (Poetry can be useful). "The mystic heart, geared to the blaue Blume, petrified!" Hindemith thankfully escapes fidgeting mysticism (perhaps thanks to the ever-steadying close reverb of a small room), producing instead a set of modernist devotional Lieder for the listening pleasure and sober meditations of the refined Christian atheist-aestheticist.

Rote Blumen (1983)

>>>Fit & Limo - Rote Blumen CS (1983) @ Tape Attack


This tape seems like the next step onwards from the wonderful Im Blickpunkt side of a split tape with Stratis which Mutant Sounds posted ages ago. A few of the same tracks are reproduced here, along with a couple newer versions of same or similar songs. This is the pure Küchenpop sound, the result of F&L's induction into the world of DIY recordings direct from the 70s German hippy milieu — by which I mean that they were influenced only by the positivity and self-empowered ethos of the European punk movement, without picking up any trace of the alienated negativity or politically-conscious protest spirit. F&L are one of the only examples I know of the Überleben of a 70s psychedelic orientation within the cultural milieu of 80s DIY, electronically enhanced, lo-fi new wave. These songs thrive as unironic, homemade syntheses of adventurous sonic experimentalism and heartfelt pop instincts.
This tape was self-released on F&L's own Servil label. I would love to hear more of the label's offerings, especially the s/t The Lie tape, as well as the early Pure Luege material. Do get in touch if you have access to such gems.

Heidelberg

In Heidelberg on the night of Michael Jackson’s death, heading to Antonio’s place with DB and others after a poetry reading and a tour of the local bars. We pass a bookshop near the Theodor-Heuss-Brücke, where we are presented with an entire window display devoted to the newest offering from Richard David Precht: Liebe – ein unordentliches Gefühl. From our position on the other side of the glass, outside in the dark summer night, we marvel at the brightly lit pile of hardcover books and the large cardboard profile of Precht’s smiling image. Before any of us has a chance to comment, Antonio leans backwards before swinging his torso swiftly forwards, discharging a large glob of mucus which crashes messily against the large window, directly in front of Precht’s visage, beginning to slowly trickle downwards toward the pile of books. DB jokes about the impending start to my graduate school career: “When you get there you should meet with the Brecht specialist and be like, ‘Oh wait, you work on Brecht? I came here to study Precht!’” When we walk past the bookstore the next morning, the dried spittle is caked onto the window, blocking the passerby’s view of Precht’s facial features.

LINK: Melancholie unterm Regenbogen

@ Revierflaneur >>> http://www.revierflaneur.de/2011/09/15/melancholie-unterm-regenbogen/

 

"Der geniale Einfall von Willy Fleckhaus, die Umschläge der ersten Taschenbücher im Suhrkamp-Verlag ohne Abbildungen zu gestalten, einfarbig und mit einer schlichten Linotype Garamond; und dass die Farben in der Zusammenschau aller Bände das gesamte Spektrum abbildeten – dieser Einfall hat sicher manchen Buchliebhaber dazu verführt, möglichst ausreichend viele dieser Bändchen zu erwerben, um daraus einen schönen Regenbogen ins Regal zaubern zu können."

Preverb

Going through a pre-verbal moment: lots of thoughts about literature, the internet, Ron Paul, Fat Studies, and cinematography, yet nothing coming to fruition.

Woman Reading

Film 2

Film

Advanced Humanism

"My point is that to turn a jungle baboon into a seminar baboon is a cruel, irreversible process. I understand why you won't ever be happy around the waterhole again."

Nathan Zuckerman's agent (from Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound) is referring to the scarring that results from higher education, how four years of training in "Advanced Humanistic Decisions" can make it difficult for an individual to navigate the less advanced humanism of society outside the university. While I think this is true, I've also noticed (in myself and certain other colleagues) that the reverse is also the case: that too much time spent outside the academy leads to dissatisfaction with the functionings of the academic world. After finishing a somewhat botched undergraduate degree, I spent five years enjoying the freedom of a nu-bohemian creative lifestyle—inclusive of autodidactic efforts to approach literature and philosophy outside of a university perspective—before deciding that the time was right to reenter the academic fold. At first I treasured these five years, believing that they gave me a certain perspective that my fellow students (many of whom entered their doctoral programs directly from college) lacked. I am beginning to see now that this brief taste of freedom had its price: that, opposite to Zuckerman, whose academic experience makes it difficult for him to be content in the "real world," my five years out of the academy also represent an irreversible shift, a break from the academic winding-up process, making it very difficult for me to be happy around the university waterhole.
To go back to the clip I posted of Paul McIsaac in Robert Kramer's Route One USA, it's not always a matter of choice which "prizes" one ends up striving for. With academia, as with bourgeois America, it is a matter of being able to enjoy its system of rewards. With any enclosed cultural ecosystem, a dose of perspective can spell exile for the curious participant.

Walk the Walk

Here's a short example of Robert Kramer's cinematography, from Walk the Walk (1996). I'm pretty sure Kramer operates the camera for most of the shooting of his films. In his cinematographic style one can see the soul of a photographer, starting always from the primacy of the first-person image, of shooting film as "looking" (as Paul McIsaac calls it in Dear Doc). What separates Kramer from other "looker"-filmmakers is his lack of the egocentric will to self-exposure. Kramer starts from the personal-visual element, but always manages to weave these aestheticized tidbits of experience into a grand narrative which transcends his personal individualism.

More of the same

(Thank u UQT)

Late-summer spleen-eraser

Literary Reformation

I am somewhat sympathetic to a number of the recent "conservative" critiques of the current state of literary studies in American universities, but I've yet to read one that really expresses my frustrations. There is always something present in such pieces completely foreign to my own concerns, often connected with a certain sentimental view of literature—part old guard liberal humanism, part reactionary hedonism (books are to be enjoyed not analyzed)—which doesn't necessarily need to be the central principle of any proposed reformation of literature departments.

For example, in a recent review of The Cambridge History of the American Novel, Joseph Epstein states that contemporary scholars, though claiming a deeper engagement with the social conditions of the real world, are unknown outside of academic circles due to their inclination to write about abstruse theoretical concerns instead of actual literature, as read by normal people. Epstein claims that this was not the case with the old guard of "Perry Miller, Aileen Ward, Walter Jackson Bate, Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Joseph Wood Krutch, Lionel Trilling," who were more often read by non-academics. Yet Epstein falters when he denounces the confusion that follows from the fall of the barrier between high and low culture. Epstein sets up his argument to defend the reality of literature against that of socio-theoretical analysis: "English departments are less concerned with the consideration of literature per se than with what novels, poems, plays and essays—after being properly X-rayed, frisked, padded down, like so many suspicious-looking air travelers—might yield on the subjects of race, class and gender." He's got a damn good point there, not a very difficult or complex one, but rather a basic one which advocates a very sensible approach to inquiry: we need to start with the text, not with the theory. The theory stems from the reading, not vice versa.

Yet we don't need Epstein to tell us that, and we certainly don't need him to tell us that Allen Ginsberg is a "secondary author" on whom The Cambridge History of the American Novel wastes space simply because he wrote about sex. Epstein's reaction against the "automatic Leftism" of the English Department should be kept separate from his critique of its faulty processes of inquiry. (Furthermore, Leftism has always been a part of the academy—it comes from historical awareness, pseudo-Christian ethics, and a palate for the sublime, I think—and it would be more interesting for Epstein to contrast the pragmatism of the Old Left with the politically-correct intellectualitas of the New Left.)

Epstein ends by quoting William Chace, the former president of Wesleyan and Emory Universities and stalwart of old-school English modernism, who in 2008 identified the problem as "the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself." Now, without being too materialist here, I would first argue that the act of cooking soup for a hungry person is a far greater human good than any course of literary study (no matter how passionately it is undertaken). Secondly, while it is naturally important to differentiate between good and bad literature, it is not sufficient to just present something to a group of young people, with passion, simply because it is good, and you think it is good. (In a recent talk by Johanna Drucker at my university, she advocated a similar approach, that she wanted to present things to her classes just because she thought they were awesome and wanted to share them, whereupon I thought: "Isn't that how one should teach literature to first-graders?") A university course on literature should not only present specimens of good literature, but should supply the students with the critical faculty to understand the literary function active in books that makes them beautiful. To do this, the book doesn't even have to be a masterpiece. (An example: this summer I was present at a seminar where Prof. Horst Thomé of the University of Stuttgart spent two hours discussing the Venice Sonnets of Graf Platen, which upon first read I found utterly ordinary. After Thomé's close-reading and analysis of the intermedial, religious, and ekphrastic functions of the poem, I was fully begeistert.) According to Chace, English departments "have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books." This may be true, but while I'm not even sure if there are any more young people today who are interested in good books, I think it would be more useful to outfit them with a rigorous critical apparatus to understand and analyze literature "per se," rather than letting someone tell them how good Willa Cather is. American literature departments certainly need an overhaul, as Epstein argues—yet what is needed is not a reactionary return. The passionate, humanistic sentimentalization of literature is not so bad in itself—it has its place, which is no longer in the university (and I'm not sure it ever should have been in the university, but rather in bourgeois living rooms)—but as academic fodder it is certainly not much more interesting than the abstruse theory and "automatic Leftism" of the current day.

A different piece by Scott Herring also bemoans the estrangement of young people from English departments that offer courses such as "Bat[woman] and Cat[man]: Queering the Canonical Comix." Yet Herring advocates for a shift in literary studies, equally as sentimental as Epstein, though less reactionary, towards a recognition of the power of literature to communicate the reality that history cannot communicate: "History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era."

Firstly, I would like to defend history very briefly: while it is clear that history sometimes misrepresents historical reality, we must remember that this is not history per se, but bad history. Good history offers us facts about what happened. Historical facts about 1848 are always more important and informative than what it smelled like in 1848. Secondly, it is clear to me from this article that Herring is a listener of This American Life. For the record, I hate This American Life, precisely because it engenders a cultural milieu that produces people like Herring, who instead of reading, re-reading, and analyzing texts, find an old motor in a desert, talk about it with an aged American, and think that from this experience they have learned something very special. This is the new American sentimentality, arising from the pseudo-intellectuals of "Generation X," a bohemian-bourgeoisie pseudo-materialism, the self-satisfied cloaking of poverty in a romantic shawl of pastoral Americana. Like Epstein's stodgy protest against the theory-heads, Herring reacts against dysfunction of this country's English departments in an unhelpful manner, offering a reactionary return to a sentimentalized literature, a literature which describes while at the same time elevates itself above the filth of the real world. What we need are newer critical methods, not a resuscitation of bourgeois literary pastoralism.

"Let the dead French theorists lie," Herring advocates. OK, but it would be helpful if you would be a bit more specific. Dead French theorists like Derrida, Saussure, or Pascal? Me, I'd toss the first, and treasure the other two. (In other words, not all French theory is unhelpful.) He continues: "Instead, literary scholars can become guides to the physical reality of the past." For me, this is another abstraction that the discipline could do without. The illness of American literary studies is not spiritual, and doesn't require a booster shot of passionate humanism, nor of pastoralism; the problem concerns the prevalence of an array of bogus critical/theoretical methods that impede accurate textual analysis.

Different Prizes

From Robert Kramer's Route One USA (1989), which portrays the journey of two Americans returning from extended stays in Europe (Kramer himself, behind the camera, and Paul McIsaac playing the "Doc" character originating from Kramer's earlier film, Doc's Kingdom) along the entire stretch of Route 1 from Maine to Key West. Doc plays the home-returner who is simultaneously an alien observer. A wide selection of Americans are interviewed and observed, yet Doc's involvement with them is always transitory: as one who as chosen a different path (namely, that of the expatriated radical) Doc can only continue down the road, hoping to find some situation where he can insert himself back into the American machine. The melancholy of Kramer and McIsaac, products of 60s radical culture, is tangible here, as they look with indignation and admiration at the workings of the society they have turned away from. I find the above sequence especially poignant, with Doc confessing the shameful pangs of regret felt by an aging radical observing the comforts of bourgeois American life. Doc acts as counselor, but also as comrade, reminding the hypothetical viewer of the reasons for choosing a different path, the "different prizes" that replace those of bourgeois society. "Under the surface" is also "beyond the ordinary." Doc assures us that it is worth the effort to uncover the substructure of America, even though this breaks the illusion that would allow us to enjoy its privileged surface.

2 Summer Maxims

Life consists of sensory perceptions from which one draws false conclusions.

Not art, not religion, not nature, and not ethics: the only thing that is truly sacred is one's own childhood.

Architecture collection, Summer 2011

Here is a selection of architectural specimens gathered during my travels this summer. (Click on each for larger view.)

Paris

Paris

Paris

Paris

Paris

Berlin

Berlin

Berlin

Berlin

Berlin

Bamberg

Ulm

Ludwigsburg

Benningen am Neckar

Stuttgart

Tübingen

Tübingen

Eaux-Bonnes

Gernika

Pau

Toulouse