No. 14 - DFW

Do the world a favor and read some David Foster Wallace today. You'll be better for it:

DFW on Federer

DFW on the hidden language war

DFW on David Lynch

DFW on cruise ships

DFW on growing up a (near) tennis prodigy

DFW on Kafka

No. 13 - Po-Mo

In my spare time, I read about postmodernism (p-r-e-n-t-e-n-t-i-o-u-s!). I find particularly interesting the differences between modernism and its bastard son. LET'S LEARN!

From "approaches to po-mo":

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations.
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.	Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals."	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination.	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. The encyclopedia.	Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.	Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Napster and the Web.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.	Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.	Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.	Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system.

No. 12 - SMiLE (a reconstruction)

SMiLE. Brian Wilson's "teenage symphony to god" - a journey across America, starting in the Northeast and ending on the beaches of California - the notoriously unreleased Beach Boys response to Sgt. Pepper. After getting un-crazy, Brian Wilson rerecorded the entire album in 2003. But it lacks Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al. THIS is a 'reconstruction' of SMiLE from the original Beach Boys studio takes, brought to you by the audio-engineering magic of the 21st century. To put it more urgently, this is an album that shouldn't exist but it does exist and it's hauntingly perfect.

just SMiLE

No. 11 - T.S. and me

I might be getting a chance to work on a new critical edition of T.S. Eliot's complete works as a student researcher at the Harry Ransom Center. I'm absolutely ecstatic at the possibility. And for that, here's an Eliot prose-poem:

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

An interlude

Finals. I'll be mentally prepared to write anything that's not about brides in English drama or Guy Crouchback in a few days, bear with me. For now, here's a picture from pg. 3 of Zak Smith's "Pictures showing what happens on each page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow":


"A screaming comes across the sky...Above him lift girders...the carriage, which is built on several levels...drunks, old veterans...hustlers...derelicts, exhausted women with more children..."

No. 10 - "The Night Porter" and Charlotte Rampling

Alright, so I've currently been watching films that deal with post-WWII Nazism for my German history course, and have come across a real jewel. Directed by Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter is about the reunion of an SS concentration camp officer and his former victim/lover. It's ridiculously atmospheric, sadistic, erotic, and powerful and strikes me as a more Italian version of Polanski; it's also one of the first films to explore the fetishism of military violence and the third reich (which would eventually give us Ilsa [see: No. 7]). But the film only accomplishes all of this through then young actress Charlotte Rampling, whose performance is beautifully ethereal and haunting. Watch it for yourself, it's out on Criterion.

No. 9 - Camels

There is seriously some logic to this picture. Ten dollars to anyone that can guess it. Christ, I'm getting antsy.