et cetera

Christian Bök, “The Great Order of the Universe”, in Poetry, Vol. 194, No. 4, July and August 2009, p. 334. (via)

Do you want to know how to tell when you have gotten old? It’s when a cyclical theory of history starts to strike you as plausible. It begins to seem that the same stuff keeps coming around again, just like Hegel said. Except that it’s not ‘transcended and preserved’; it’s just back.

Fodor, Jerry. 2001. “Doing Without What’s Within: Fiona Cowie’s Critique of Nativism”, in Mind, Vol. 110, No. 437, January 2001, pp. 99–148.

If I could only go now, with my head sixty years old and my body twenty-five, I could do something.

Charles Darwin, on the Beagle voyage, as reported in James D. Hague, “A Reminiscence of Mr. Darwin“, in Harper’s, Vol. 69, No. 413, October 1884, pp. 759-763.

My favourite searches landing here, for the year so far:

• existential query
• fall from horse now with vomiting and headache
• fractured occipital bone/seizures
• full recovery after mania
• observing people in cars
• synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions
• biodegradable robot
• great fraternity of steadily scribbling on
• latest trivia about psychology

Prompted by the extremely polarised reception it has received, and having been curious about the novel since it was first published in France (I mentioned it briefly here and here), I have started reading The Kindly Ones. I’ve also been following some of the critical reception. Now, I am not even a tenth of the way through, so am far from having a verdict—though I did find the Dostoyevskian opening section impressive. Until then, allow me to note the ineptness with which the novel has been reviewed in the New York Times, underscoring the uselessness of newspaper reviewers in the face of intellectually ambitious work. Compare the simplistic, posturing reviews of Michiko Kakutani and David Gates with Daniel Mendelsohn’s penetrating review just published in The New York Review of Books. On the possible theoretical rationale for the psychological perversity of the narrator Mendelsohn provides the most helpful reading I have seen. In contrast Kakutani offers no comment, while Gates somewhat astonishingly flags his own intellectual laziness by writing:

I suppose we’re to connect this compulsion for self-completion with his indifference to the mass murders in which he’s complicit.

You suppose? No wonder Littell doesn’t bother coming to America.

I have posted here before regarding the similarities between spam email and avant garde poetry. This is the best I have yet received:

DON\’T PUSH YOUR WOMAN GO TO THE ANOTHER MAN\’S BED. brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only manage glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with that and turned over heavily. At the door he waited a minute, then shouted: work of the millions in Africa, in India, in America, who have come directly Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, ———————–—Lowering His Voice Stealthily. for anyone to be here who was not a delegate.” “My milk! ” said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable leader splashed across the road. Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, BEEN SOMETHING IN ME THAT ANSWERED TO THE NERVES IN ALL THESE ANARCHIC MEN. German specks had vanished, followed by a trail of little puffs of shrapnel. Japan’s campaign in China lasted from 1937 to the end of the war, during which the Republic of China faced 80% of Japanese troops and relieved the Soviet Union under Stalin from fighting a two-front war. In the war against Japan, China lost more than 3 million soldiers and more than 17 million civilians. Many others were tortured, forced into slavery or raped, which resulted in charges of Japanese war crimes. takes from five to seven days to die—five to seven days of slow choking.” Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; There is a moment’s pause, and gravel and bits of bark tumble about their “Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time coming’; and her round cheeks to be made up entirely of small spheres and large soft the police station, they should make the effort, in passing, to attach to necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy also. have just come out of its wig; he might have been Marat or a more slipshod eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some day. It was ———————–—The Iron Covers Are Clamped On The Smoking-room Windows, For No Lights better get your car ready, my friend.” Covered with greenish mud, splashing the mud right and left with their “We have,” said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up roses, scenting the darkness, then back again past the Opra towards the * “Oh, God, something’s got to happen soon.” * asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly. Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a ———————–—(R) Covered with greenish mud, splashing the mud right and left with their four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some day.

The following story by Daniil Kharms is from The Man with the Black Coat: Russia’s Literature of the Absurd, George Gibian (Trans), Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL, 1997, pp. 104–105. I’ve been reading a new translation of Kharms’ work available here.

One of the very nice perks of working right up the stairs from Open Letter Books—I have just got my hands on a dog-eared advance reader’s copy of 2666.

With the new academic year about to crash, this seems more than usually relevant.

For some reason my most vivid memories concern examinations. Big amphitheater in Goldwin Smith. Exam from 8am to 10:30. About 150 students—unwashed, unshaven young males and reasonably well-groomed young females. A general sense of tedium and disaster. Half-past eight. Little coughs, the clearing of nervous throats, coming in clusters of sound, rustling of pages. Some of the martyrs plunged in meditation, their arms locked behind their heads. I meet a dull gaze directed at me, seeing in me with hope and hate the source of forbidden knowledge. Girl in glasses comes up to my desk to ask: “Professor Kafka, do you want us to say that…? Or do you want us to answer only the first part of the question?” The great fraternity of C-minus, backbone of the nation, steadily scribbling on. A rustle arising simultaneously, the majority turning a page in their bluebooks, good teamwork. The shaking of a cramped wrist, the failing ink, the deodorant that breaks down. When I catch eyes directed at me, they are forthwith raised to the ceiling in pious meditation. Windowpanes getting misty. Boys peeling off sweaters. Girls chewing gum in rapid cadence. Ten minutes, five, three, time’s up.

From Alvin Toffler, “Vladimir Nabokov—A Candid Conversation with the Artful, Erudite Author of Lolita“, in Playboy, Vol. 1, January 1964, pp. 35-45. Reprinted in Strong Opinions, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973. (Via the always wonderful Sentences).

Two questions:

1. Why call this either “candid” or a “conversation”, when it is well known that Nabokov demanded his questions be sent in advance, and then proceeded to read his answers from notecards—or simply handed the notecards to his interviewer?
2. Can the choice of Toffler to interview Nabokov be any more bizarre? Toffler?

In The Rest is Noise, Ross mentions (p. 182) the following “placard-like notice” appearing in the preface to the Ragtime movement of Paul Hindemith‘s Suite ‘1922′:

Mode d’emploi – Direction for Use!!

Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons.
Do not consider for long whether you should play D# with the fourth or sixth finger.
Play this piece very ferociously, but keep strictly in rhythm like a machine.
Regard the piano here as an interesting kind of percussion instrument and treat it accordingly.

(This translation from Glenn Watkins, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century, Schirmer, New York, 1988, p. 289. Cited by Avior Byron, Schoenberg as Performer: An Aesthetics in Practice, PhD Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, p. 64).

Now, Charles Bukowski was born in Germany and voraciously consumed classical music, so the title of his Play the Piano is almost certainly a nod to Hindemith:

These days there are lots of interesting things being done to pianos, and I’m glad to be getting back into New York early enough to hear this: