Wait, just let me read you this one part

[Bernard]

A thread for the good bits from what you're reading.

Lydia Davis & Chris Kraus make the same point in two different ways:

,AeuSat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand, knocked over glass of water onto waiting-room floor. Put down Foucault and pencil, mopped up water, refilled glass. Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand. Stopped to write note in notebook. Took up Foucault with pencil in hand. Counselor beckoned from doorway. Put away Foucault and pencil as well as notebook and pen. Sat with counselor discussing situation fraught with conflict taking form of many heated arguments. Counselor pointed to danger, raised red flag. Left counselor, went to subway. Sat in subway car, took out Foucault and pencil but did not read, thought instead about situation fraught with conflict, red flag, recent argument concerning travel: argument itself became form of travel, each sentence carrying arguers on to next sentence, next sentence on to next, and in the end, arguers were not where they had started, were also tired from traveling and spending so long face-to-face in each other's company. After several stations on subway thinking about argument, stopped thinking and opened Foucault. Found Foucault, in French, hard to understand. Short sentences easier to understand than long ones. Certain long ones understandable part by part, but so long, forgot beginning before reaching end. Went back to beginning, understood beginning, read on, and again forgot beginning before reaching end. Read on without going back and without understanding, without remembering, and without learning, pencil idle in hand. Came to sentence that was clear, made pencil mark in margin. Mark indicated understanding, indicated forward progress in book. Lifted eyes from Foucault, looked at other passengers. Took out notebook and pen to make note about passengers, made accidental mark with pencil in margin of Foucault, put down notebook, erased mark. Returned thoughts to argument. Argument not only like vehicle, carried arguers forward, but also like plant, grew like hedge, surrounding arguers at first thinly, some light coming through, then more thickly, keeping light out, or darkening light. By argument's end, arguers could not leave hedge, could not leave each other, and light was dim. Thought of question to ask about argument, took out notebook and pen and wrote down. Put away notebook and returned to Foucault. Understood more clearly at which points Foucault harder to understand and at which points easier: harder to understand when sentence was long and noun identifying subject of sentence was left back at beginning, replaced by male or female pronoun, when forgot what noun pronoun replaced and had only pronoun for company traveling through sentence. Sometimes pronoun then giving way in mid-sentence to new noun, new noun in turn replaced by new pronoun which then continued on to end of sentence. Also harder to understand when subject of sentence was noun like thought, absence, law; easier to understand when subject was noun like beach, wave, sand, sanatorium, pension, door, hallway, or civil servant. Before and after sentence about sand, civil servant, or pension, however, came sentence about attraction, neglect, emptiness, absence, or law, so parts of book understood were separated by parts not understood. Put down Foucault and pencil, took out notebook and made note of what was now at least understood about lack of understanding reading Foucault, looked up at other passengers, thought again about argument, made note of same question about argument as before though with stress on different word.,Aeu

Lydia Davis, Foucault & Pencil


,AeuMontage of Irony was the title of one of the courses offered at the institution where she taught. Like most of the discourse about contemporary art that went on there, the meaning of it narrowly escaped her. She recognized the words, but the meanings of the words in these new combinations drifted out beyond the range of anything she knew. Given that "the work of art as such ... exists to manufacture ambiguity" the trick was to create an atmosphere of meaning without the burden of any particular meaning. Disparaging asides about ones enemies (the "left" and "feminism"} are infinitely more effective than a confrontation. "When considered as action rather than idea, in other words, the categorical intentions contained in the word 'feminism' may be seen, sometimes, sadly, to have effects which add further testimony to the case for describing the signified as unstable, and therefore to how it is pointless to attribute to categories the kind of stable and collective benevolence which is their common due on the left."(Gilbert-Rolfe, Beyond Piety, 1995) Subordinate clauses are your friends. It's best to drop the poison at the end, when the subject of the sentence has been buried in the drift and can no longer be refuted because it is impossible to decode.,Aeu

Chris Kraus, Emotional Technologies

[Bernard]

'In the back of her mind Sherri thought about death ceaselessly. Everything else, all people, objects, and processes had become reduced to the status of shadows. Worse yet, when she contemplated other people she contemplated the injustice of the universe. They did not have cancer. This meant that, psychologically speaking, they were immortal. This was unfair. Everyone had conspired to rob her of her youth, her happiness, and eventually her life; in place of those, everyone else had piled infinit epain on her, and probably they secretly enjoyed it. "Enjoyed themselves" and "enjoying it" amounted to the same evil thing. Sherri, therefore, had motivation for wishing that the whole world would go to hell in a handbasket.'

Phil Dick (from VALIS)

[Bernard]

And this, from the one guy besides Wodehouse who's guaranteed to make me laugh:

That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan's licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The threee of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies and expressing by fine disputation the resulting sense of physical and mental well-being. In my thigh pocket I had eleven and eightpence in a weighty pendulum of mixed coins. Each of the arrayed bottles on the shelves before me, narrow or squat-bellied, bore a dull picture of the gas bracket. Who can tell the stock of a public-house? Many are no doubt dummies, those especially within an arm-reach of the snug. The stout was of superior quality, soft against the tongue but sharp upon the orifice of the throat, softly efficient in its magical circulation throught the conduits of the body. Half to myself, I said:
Do not let us forget that I have to buy Die Harzreise.
Do not let us forget that.
Harzreise, said Brinsley. There is a house in Dalkey called Heartrise.
Brinsley then put his dark chin on the cup of a palm and leaned in thought on the counter, overlooking his drink, gazing beyond the frontier of the world.
What about another jar? said Kelly.
Ah, Lesbia, said Brinsley. The finest thing I ever wrote. How many kisses, Lesbia, you ask, would serve to sate this hungry love of mine? -- As many as the Libyan sands that bask along Cyrene's shore where pine-trees wave, where burning Jupiter's undtended shrine lies near to old King Battus' sacred grave:
Three stouts, called Kelly.
Let them be endless stars at night, that stare upon lovers in a ditch -- so often would love-crazed Catullus bite your burning lips , that prying eyes should not have power to count, nor evil tongues bewitch, the frenzied kisses that you gave and got.
Before we die of thirst, called Kelly, will you bring us three more stouts. God, he said to me, it's in the desert you'd think we were.
That's good stuff, you know, I said to Brinsley. A picture came before my mind of the lovers at theire hedge-pleasure in the pale starlight, no sound from them, his fierce mouth burying into hers.
Kelly, invisible to my left, made a slapping noise.
Bloody good stuff, I said.
The best I ever drank, he said.

Flann O'Brien (from At-swim-two-birds)

[elpollodiablo]

Heh heh. Chris Kraus.

We commence to make you
Jump! Jump!
The Mac Dad will make you
Jump! Jump!

...sorry.

[Bernard]

Don't apologize, you can quote whatever you like -- though I'd say there are better parts to that song than that bit.

[Andrew_TSKS]

yeah, like the "r&b--rap and bullcrap" line.

[elpollodiablo]

Better lines...tee eff? "Commence to make you jump"? It don't get no better.

[Lalitree]

If there is something comforting--religious, if you want--about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

 --Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

[milly balgeary]

ole' pynchon! he was the reason i joined the navy after a year in journalism school! NICE!

[milly balgeary]

The Fly-Roper

His friends call him C.B. Ford. He was pot-bellied and bald and he tucked his pants into bright red, rose-stitched, pointy-toed cowboy boots with three-inch heels. There was a calm twinkle in his humor.
His gift was his ability to bulldog and hogtie houseflies. He claimed to have learned it in the Shetland Islands, where the girls came thirty lonesome miles over the moors to drink nickel beer and see the flicks at the Coast Guard station. "But," he laughed, "those girls were all set on getting to the States so you had to be careful with 'em. Nothing they'd like better than get knocked up by a Yank and have Papa herd him to the alter like one of their shit-dragging sheep."

The first fly was always a big to-do. He'd jump all over the stage swiping wildly at the air, come within a frog hair of splatting his fist into the chafing dish a dozen times, get the girl volunteer to flap her arms to flush the little buzzers his way, and all the while talking his talk about the similarities and differences between Herefords and bluebottles until his audience was half-convinced that he was never going to catch the fly but was laughing anyway and jumpy as a drunk with a glass of milk waiting for him to smack a bare hand into that pile of warm dung.

Then, suddenly, he'd catch the fly and hold it, closed in his fist, up to the microphone so they could hear it buzz. Then he'd blow on his thumb knuckle and shout and shake his fist hard, "to make the fly dizzy," and then snap his wrist as he flung the fly down hard onto the table. "Now he's out for a second, but he's just stunned and we've got to act quickly before he regains consciousness."

Whirling on the long-haired girl and drawing small stork-shaped scissors, he would lift a strand of her hair, separate a lone thread, and snip it close to her skull before she had time to do more than squeak.

"We'll tie a slipknot here at one end and have this big fella hobbled in a jiffy."

The slipknot in the hair would slide over one of the stiffly splayed legs of the fly and tighten. With a quick flourish a little fluorescent paper sign was taped to the loose end of the hair. While the first fly was recovering its wits C.B. Ford would catch five more as easily as picking grapes and serve them the same way, assuring his blushing assistant that her hair was so thick and lustrous that she could spare six single threads for the taming of a half a dozen wild beasts.

Inside three minutes a flock of confused flies was bobbling drunkenly through the air above the audience, trailing the tiny winking streamers that read "EAT AT JOE'S" and "HOME COOKING

- geek love

[Michael]

Lydia Davis rules so hard. What is Foucault and Pencil from?

I tend to view Lewis Lapham as a quaint old crumudgeon with a tendency towards the purple prose, but I still almost always agree with him:

Whether set up as storekeepers on the banks of the Wabash or as symbolist poets in Brooklyn Heights, the American people appreciate, perhaps better than any other people on the face of the earth, the art of the con game, and they take for granted the slippages (carried on the books as a tax-deductible business expense) between the face and the mask. Fully conscious of the fact that the promises are false, the deals rigged, and the judge safely in the bag, they're conservative in the sense that they wish to protect and preserve the time-honored mores of the country town, and with them their own access to the ways and means by which it remains possible to screw the system. Reformist and left-leaning politicians they tend to see as officious inspectors intent upon closing the loopholes and removing from the grocer's scale the local thumbs heavy with the weight and fragrant with the soil of the sacred American heartland. So what if the vested interests in Washington reserve to themselves the larger portions of the apple pie? Such has been the practice of the vested interests since the heyday of Alexander Hamilton, entirely in keeping with the Americn spirit of things and not to be unduly frowned upon as long as the vested interests remember to leave enough crumbs on or under the table for the chambers of commerce in Sioux Falls and Medicine Bow.

-"Pilgrims of Hope" by Lewis Lapham, in the Feb. Harper's.

[Bernard]

Ha, that was great, Michael. I'm really enjoying these, thanks for playing along, everyone.

The Lydia Davis is from Almost No Memory, a collection of short pieces. I also have Break It Down, her other collection, and recently finished her newish translation of Proust. She's unbelievably great -- completely neurotic and accurate, and so dry that her skewering of Auster & others comes off as really funny. She's the only writer who reminds me of Thomas Bernhard, for whom I have something akin to a fetish.

I'm a big fan of Katherine Dunn as well. Milly, have you read anything else of hers?

I'm not a Pynchon fan, but that bit is spot-on.

[milly balgeary]

no bernard, i tend to try to stay away from such things. that book was given to me as a gift. i like it, i like the use of language. she has an ear. that's what i am reading though.. see, to me, getting really into these ODD books about ODD things, is like.. well, its like reading books by crispin glover. was it you who were reading valis?

[Andrew_TSKS]

wait, what are you trying to say about crispin glover?

by the way, for those who care, i hear "what is it?" will finally be screened, at sundance this year.

[Bernard]

Ha! I have a Crispin Glover CD around here somewhere. Cruel Milly! Dunn's a legit writer, really, and I think her odd subjects give her an opportunity to write about very familiar dark sides of ourselves. More Flannery O'Connor style than Alberto di Savinio style, if you've read those.

I haven't read VALIS recently, but I'm sort of perpetually reading it. All the static aside, it's one of the most touching portraits of loneliness and desperation I've read.

Andrew, what's 'What is it?' about?

[Andrew_TSKS]

that i don't know. what i do know is that crispin glover's been working on it for a really long time--like most of a decade--and it's got an all-retarded cast. should be interesting and weird.

[JamesSchneider]

Going through my favorite book for the 1000000th time. My favorite quote from American Psycho.

    "Honey," I say, ignoring McDermott, taking an arm and pulling her toward me. She flinches but I smile and she lets me pull her closer. "Now we're all going to eat a nice big meal here--" I start to explain.

     "But this isn't what I ordered," Vam Patten says, looking at his plate. "I wanted the mussel Sausage."

     "Shut up." I shoot him a glance then calmly turn toward the hardbody, grinning like an idiot, but a handsome idiot. "Now listen, we are good customers here and we're probobly going to order some fine brandy, cognac, who knows, and we want to relax and bask in this"--I gesture with my arm--"atmosphere. Now"--With the other hand I pull out my gazelleskin wallet--"We would like to enjoy some fine Cuban cigars afterwards and we don't want to be bothered by some loutish--"

     "Loutish." McDermott nods to Van Patten and Price.

     "Loutish and inconsiderate patrons or tourists who are inevitably going to complain about our innocuous little habit...So"--I press what I hope is a fifty into a small boned hand--"if you could make sure we aren't bothered while we do, we would gratefully appreciate it." I rub the hand, closing it into a fist over the bill. "And if anyone complains, well..." I pause and then warn menacingly, "Kick 'em out."

     She nods mutely and backs away with this dazed, confused look on her face.

     "And," Price adds, smiling, "if another round of Bellinis comes within a twenty-foot radius of this table we are going to set the maitre d' on fire. So, you know, warn him."

[Lalitree]

that i don't know. what i do know is that crispin glover's been working on it for a really long time--like most of a decade--and it's got an all-retarded cast. should be interesting and weird.

The trailer is available

[Bernard]

'Feeling your head exploding. Feeling your brain on the point of bursting to bits. Feeling your spine jammed up into your brain and feeling your brain like a dried fruit. Feeling continuously and unconsciously and like an electric wire. Feeling as if they've stolen the associations of your ideas. Feeling your cells move. You open your eyes. The cells move.'

Ulrike Meinhof

[milly balgeary]

milly's not cruel, bernard! i just think lots of sort of decent writers, at a loss to trying their hand at writing something big and startling and appealing tend to play the postmodern "i'm odder than you" game to make up for their lack. i enjoy the geek book, but i wouldn't read it, had it not been a gift and i feel obliged to report back to the giver. i used to like this kind of stuff, but its really lost its appeal for me. what they don't seem to realize is that it is possible to STICK this oddness into a larger frame, to make it just one of the stitches. on the other hand geek love is strangely hypnotic and i like!

i mean, but, when did people stop reading the adventures of auggie march, and stuff. i'm not talking dan brown here.

language by itself doesn't do anything worthwhile. there are people who argue with this, but they are stuck believing that everything they do is art. i knew a guy who had a degree in art, he was an okay guy, but where did he get off painting with his sh**?

not to hate on glover, but he's absolutely BATS to the skin of the sun Craz-Y. which would qualify as a recommendation, except, i THINK he is, actually, bats to the bigger bats of the moons of the sky truly CRAZY and not faking it, and not to be trusted as a guide to lash our imaginations to, trust, and follow with a narrative.

with all the problems in this world, our best bet is to stay as sane as possible for as long as possible, because "apparently" not that many people can tell the difference, in themselves, in others.

[elpollodiablo]

Going through my favorite book for the 1000000th time. My favorite quote from American Psycho.

I read every Bret Easton Ellis novel in existence four or five times in high school. He remains to this day one of my favorite writers, and American Psycho is still one of the funniest books I've ever read. That or Rules Of Attraction.

[peacocks]

Had to read ch. 4 Rebellion from the brother's karamazov for my heretics class and now I desperately want to read the entire thing.  the only other dostoevsky I've read is crime and punishment:

"What good would it do to send the monsters to hell after they have finished inflicting their suffering on children?  How can their being in hell put things right?  Besides, what sort of harmony can there be as long as there is a hell?  To me, harmony means forgiving and embracing everybody, and I don't want anyone to suffer anymore.  And if the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering required to pay for the truth; I don't want that truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price!.....  

It isn't that I reject God; I am simply returning Him most respectfully the ticket that would entitle me to a seat."
"That's rebellion," Alyosha said softly, lowering his eyes.
"Rebellion?  I wish you hadn't  used that word," Ivan said feelingly.  "I don't believe it's possible to live in rebellion, and I want to live!  Tell me yourself- I challeng you:  let's assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility.  If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let's say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?  Tell me and don't lie!"
"No, I would not," Alyosha said softly.

it kind of sums up what my journal entires have been looking like lately

[Bernard]

Can't claim to be a big Bret Easton Ellis fan -- I read 'Less Than Zero' both during and after the period it deals with, and still think it's the strongest of his works. Seems like he's made a whole career out of one tired, belabored joke that really isn't funny enough to warrant that much blathering on & on. It's not that he's a bad writer, by any means. I just would've like to have seen what else he could do.

[JamesSchneider]

I started something else of his, the Informers I think, and just decided that it was better left at American Psycho. I hear I'm missing out on Less Than Zero though.

[Bernard]

Don't be dissuaded by the awful movie -- if you liked American Psycho you might like Less Than Zero. The comedy is less intentional. You might also want to check out Naked (the Mike leigh film).