so whats your favourite modern or postmodernist writer and why?
sirb...@hotmail.com
from. i wouldnt know, i can't be arsed to read in depth.
sirb...@hotmail.com
Francis A. Miniter
>what be it, pynchon, gaddis, melville, conrad?? loads more to choose
>from. i wouldnt know, i can't be arsed to read in depth.
>
>
>
I am confused. If you "can't be 'arsed' to read in depth", why bother
asking the question?
Francis A. Miniter
PS
For post-modernism, I would think of Kazuo Ishiguro or Luisa Valenzuela.
sirb...@hotmail.com
Francis A. Miniter ha escrito:
> sirb...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >what be it, pynchon, gaddis, melville, conrad?? loads more to choose
> >from. i wouldnt know, i can't be arsed to read in depth.
> >
> >
> >
>
> I am confused. If you "can't be 'arsed' to read in depth", why bother
> asking the question?
>
well one of the things in postmodernity is the death of the author and
that its all just reformulations and audience response predictions. not
being arsed is a way of taking in postmodernity's big fuck you to in
this case western writings, plus thats also the reason the likes of
vollmann write all over the place without a care in the world.
Francis A. Miniter
>Francis A. Miniter ha escrito:
>
>
>>sirb...@hotmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>>what be it, pynchon, gaddis, melville, conrad?? loads more to choose
>>>from. i wouldnt know, i can't be arsed to read in depth.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I am confused. If you "can't be 'arsed' to read in depth", why bother
>>asking the question?
>>
>>
>
>well one of the things in postmodernity is the death of the author and
>that its all just reformulations and audience response predictions. not
>being arsed is a way of taking in postmodernity's big fuck you to in
>this case western writings, plus thats also the reason the likes of
>vollmann write all over the place without a care in the world.
>
>
Death of the author? That is like saying that Expressionist art
invovles the death of the painter. I don't buy it. Postmodern writing
is, if anything, more self-conscious and self-reflexive. Take Jose
Donoso's "Casa in Campo" aka "The House in the Country", where one of
the characters, dissatisfied with his role, goes into town, walks into
this building and confronts Jose Donoso demanding some changes. Then
there are Puig's novels, some of which have nothing except the words of
the characters, omitting all third person (possibly seen as authorial)
commentary on what is said or done. This does not mean the author is
absent or opinionless; rather the author is placing various
interpretations in the mouths and deeds of the characters - not unlike
what Plato did in the Dialogues. So it makes you think more. So you
don't have a author's commentary to tell you what to think. Is that so
bad? The other extreme is "Pilgrim's Progress". Which do you prefer?
Francis A. Miniter
Harkness
John Harkness
David Oberman
>Death of the author? That is like saying that Expressionist art
>invovles the death of the painter. I don't buy it. Postmodern writing
>is, if anything, more self-conscious and self-reflexive. Take Jose
>Donoso's "Casa in Campo" aka "The House in the Country", where one of
>the characters, dissatisfied with his role, goes into town, walks into
>this building and confronts Jose Donoso demanding some changes. Then
>there are Puig's novels, some of which have nothing except the words of
>the characters, omitting all third person (possibly seen as authorial)
>commentary on what is said or done. This does not mean the author is
>absent or opinionless; rather the author is placing various
>interpretations in the mouths and deeds of the characters - not unlike
>what Plato did in the Dialogues. So it makes you think more. So you
>don't have a author's commentary to tell you what to think. Is that so
>bad? The other extreme is "Pilgrim's Progress". Which do you prefer?
"I think art [went] way off the beam when it suddenly began to magnify
the artist at the expense of the human being. And it became even more
misguided when it began to magnify the process of artistic creation at
the expense of living one's life. And much as I admire people like
Mallarmé, for instance, I still think that he opened a very dangerous
door, when the poem suddenly became a work of art describing primarily
the creation of the work of art. That is the way to not only incest
but something worse than incest: hermaphroditism or onanism ....
--John Simon, "War of the Critics" (1964)
sirb...@hotmail.com
> sirb...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >Francis A. Miniter ha escrito:
> >
> >
> >>sirb...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>what be it, pynchon, gaddis, melville, conrad?? loads more to choose
> >>>from. i wouldnt know, i can't be arsed to read in depth.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I am confused. If you "can't be 'arsed' to read in depth", why bother
> >>asking the question?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >well one of the things in postmodernity is the death of the author and
> >that its all just reformulations and audience response predictions. not
> >being arsed is a way of taking in postmodernity's big fuck you to in
> >this case western writings, plus thats also the reason the likes of
> >vollmann write all over the place without a care in the world.
> >
> >
> Death of the author? That is like saying that Expressionist art
> invovles the death of the painter. I don't buy it. Postmodern writing
> is, if anything, more self-conscious and self-reflexive.
k ill take a long time on this one cuz im watching the arsenal game
well roland barthes death of the author, which i couldnt be arsed to
read, is supposed to be essential to postmodern literary studies? also
the suspicion that the 'quality' held by the political economics of
literature is just a result of its own structures that can be
poststructuralised or deconstructed (or that the medium is the message,
not its content?) ? modernists and postmodernists deride the political
economics of authorship and emotion by maintaining the work of art is
just text. thats why they discover that the worth of knowledge is just
a sickness that the structures of writing were bound to bring along,
which is why some of them say feeling was much important, which may
seem silly but you'd be surprised how many forget the importance of it
and how easy it is, once we begin talking and writing and watching to
actually do so. in fact, there's the conservative way of looking at art
as something that must be enjoyed and as judged as mimesis and as
organic, and then there's the modernist and postmodern way of looking
at it, as something that merely belongs to a language, with infinite
substitutions like in jason and the argonauts example, where i think
the boat was still a boat even thou the bodies that made it up were
completely different (so i can't be arsed and this is an argument i
like since i can't be arsed, perhaps my reductio ad homynem, thou i
doubt it, but also perhaps (much more likely) because it's simply a
very convincing argument- treated as a taboo by conservatives precisely
because it's so convincing- that has nothing to do with my reductio ad
homynem) like in rosalind krauss' introduction to her book on
sculpture, where stanley cavell or aristotle take the former and roland
barthes the latter. another way to look at it is throu the likes of
thomas kuhn or federayabend, who i havent read (i've read gilbert
hottois' great introduction to loads of philosophical stuff from the
renaissance to postmodernism) and from whom we could say authorship is
just a paradigm, infected with serious structural illnesses or at least
enormous cause for suspicion.
you dont buy it? i can't be arsed to buy it too because it means books.
books that ridicule traditions mimesis and the whole book industry, but
books nevertheless. big fuck yous to art as mere decoration but still
trapped in a similar spiral. movies, which i know more about, are a
fucking disgrace. anti-movies for me are sort of superior movies but
still not good enough because they're still stuck in languages.
shoenberg to bresson or cassavetes the big irony was that they were
taking their medium to another level but simultaneously placing rules
too, in fact the rules of the movies themselves. one of the worths of
l'argent is in showing the images that arent shown in usual genre crime
movies, so the importance of not being arsed is essential to these
punks, cuz why watch a mooee when it's just the result of safe
consensus, so predictable, tied down by rules, inherited language and
can be infinitely substituted in your head.
self-conscious because it has a strong tendency to fall precisely into
the traps in denounces. self-reflexive when used by modernists and
postmodernists takes an anti-illusionist turn. kiarostami's close up is
all about thinking real hard if its a documentary or a fiction, but as
i said before its still harbours ambitions to be art in the traditional
sense, it desires to be organic, and in this sense many modernist or
postmodernist attitudes can fall into ultraleftwing classicism at their
worst, while at their best remain capable of totally ridiculing right
wing classicism. its as if the counter-authors who bother to write
share the illness with the authors, the need to be remembered, the
belief in progress and not becoming (except in the cases of those that
write for a living), the ones that confuse myth with praxis and dont
realise that writers only wrote for a living, the notion that writing
is done by the victor, the ones that believe books are important or
that dont suspect that there's an illness ingrained in writing or
filming that consists precisely in not realising that one's reductio ad
homynem should perhaps not interest other people. this last point is
actually very interesting because this sort of thrust that production
takes is very difficult to counter, and isnt this baudrillard's (of
whom i've read a half book and a few articles) speciality? i mean its
very difficult to deny Information, you're bombarded with it from all
sides just like you are with a specific language, all with the
pretense, the classical, traditional and right wing pretense that it
calmly describes the world and not according to postmodernists that it
certainly does not do so and that its merely a hyperreal language that
throu use ceases being capable of describing that world. this is the
attitude you get from postmodernists when we deal with mass media, and
i can't be arsed to give credibility to something i strongly suspect- a
suspicion initiated by the likes of nietszche or freud- is actually
something that doesnt interest me and merely responds to the lack of
imagination behind the economics behind just about everything around
us. i mean, how many times have you found watching shit and in school
how much shit did you go throu you later went oh my god what the fuck
was that about. plus, take emperor's club with kevin kline, ppl never
learn, they keep acting like ants and kevin kline in that movie what a
fucking idiot believes in the worth of dates 3000 years ago. latin, for
example, what kind of a sick fuck would do latin you might ask? i did
myself, and many around me, for many years, the teacher did it and
believes in it when he was just a result of power structures. reminds
me of heidegger, who wrote that loads of stuff that had been written in
philosophy was poppycock and that all that mattered in life was being
authentic whatever, reminds me of the 60 pages of deleuze's
poststructural postmodern logic of sense, where i gather that what
traditional conservatives believe to be aesthetics is merely production
and that aesthetics can be found anywhere. it's only out of confusion
that postmodern writing can be found as celebrating popular art, just
like duchamp or warhol did not, neither do the postmodernists. they do
however recognise that mistakes can be made, like schoenberg's
anti-rules that winded up being rules because they realise what matters
is pleasure, that its not about discovering what a certain author
believes pleasure to be but rather what pleasure is. in that sense,
postmodernists are healthily suspicious of mass art because there's
huge reasons to be so.
postmodernity is an attack on the (conservative) tenets of modernity.
according to the right, for example, we arent living in postmodernity,
but rather in modernity cuz they say there is nothing wrong with
modernity. all bestsellers believe in modernity and the big book
industries too. thats why postmodern literary studies are so irritating
to conservatives, who believe literature or film students should be
taught how to be efficient salesmen whereas the progressive side adopts
postmodernity, urging the students to be subversive and, why not,
condemning them to financial poverty.
Take Jose
> Donoso's "Casa in Campo" aka "The House in the Country", where one of
> the characters, dissatisfied with his role, goes into town, walks into
> this building and confronts Jose Donoso demanding some changes. Then
> there are Puig's novels, some of which have nothing except the words of
> the characters, omitting all third person (possibly seen as authorial)
> commentary on what is said or done. This does not mean the author is
> absent or opinionless; rather the author is placing various
> interpretations in the mouths and deeds of the characters - not unlike
> what Plato did in the Dialogues. So it makes you think more. So you
> don't have a author's commentary to tell you what to think. Is that so
> bad? The other extreme is "Pilgrim's Progress". Which do you prefer?
>
>
> Francis A. Miniter
havent read either. havent heard of the latter. but the true point of
finnegans wake was the death of the author, when p.a. sitney designed
rebellious cinema he had this death in mind. but once joyce signs his
books he falls into the trap of tradition, of modernity itself. now,
ulysses is a telephone book that substituted the previous ones with
prestige. now it means the same thing with a literature lecturer, it's
all about discovering what joyce thought of this and that and not
whether its merely structures. warhol and duchamp were eaten up by the
noise, in fact they created it themselves thou they tried to be
self-reflexive and have conscience of their role, they also helped it
along in the end. i actually had a whole bunch of artists i could have
mentioned from a 600 page book on art i recently read, but it's already
back in the library. loads of stuff like that. a lot of american off
cinema and european modernist cinema took similar paths, but were too
stuck in their own mediums. its an endlessly repetitive story by a
bunch of people that actually werent that bright or great authors but
placed in this case western production in check by ridiculing it. thats
what we can take from them today. james bennings, stan brakhage, jonas
mekas, ken jacobs, kurt kren, peter kubelka, peter tserkavsky or martin
arnold all take an anti-information stance, a structural modernist one
(who's main difference, if not perhaps the only difference, with
poststructural postmodernism is that the latter believes there's no
ground to contest the information bastards with (for example, the
modernists would substitute a robert rossen film with an antonioni one,
but the postmodernists, at their best, are increasingly worried about
the dubious moral accountability involved in substituting one thing for
another, thou for me its potato batata, i think the modernists were at
it all along, that postmodernism was in the making already in
modernism, thou i concede postmodernism has provided a few very useful
corrections, now we can see godard's movies with retrospect or we can
satirise the art community thoroughly and endlessly with the likes of
foucault, derrida or barthes).
in any case, if postmodernist drifts away from my conclusions, or if
there are brands that already do so, i will cease being interested
(minimally as i am now, in fact not at all, only interested in it when
i'm faced with the rhetoric of tradition or classicism) in it. what i
like in postmodernism isnt finding some communist like garcia marquez
giving me a lecture or on a foucault, a barthes or a derrida whose
reductio ad homynems are also rather pathetic, or on a foucault who
writes from the annihilation of mankind (so what?) or a fredric jameson
who believes in his own authorship and mixes postmodernism with marxism
(which is valid, cuz right wingers are just ant-sheep and immoral but
if in action ends with the annihilation of mankind) who writes
complicated like all good modernist postmodernists but like all
traditionalists believes in his value as a book or author (the risk of
having marxism perverted into stalinism, the latter also believe in
power, just in their own) but rather what i like about postmodernism is
in the denouncing it does of modernity's belief in knowledge,
production, information (god, father etcetera)
in fact, one of the solutions or cures, is endless sentences without
desire to communication, the solutions perhaps are not communication
but rather anti-communication, just like anti-information is the cure
to information. writing, as the classicist traditionalist infoloving
communiparanoids would point out, rather unelegantly as i just did
right now is for me the solution. one of the things behind the
(post)moderns like heidegger or deleuze is autonomy, which i certainly
obtained in this post more than i would have done had i made my writing
slip into the structures of inherited language, by not doing so, by not
rereading over and over like some sort of pathetic psycho i managed a
certain pleasure (certain, perhaps not enough, perhaps, as usual i
committed the mistake of falling into tradition and writings, i shoulnd
have written obviously cuz how you gonna make me change my mind?! and
how does that fall into my discovery that one must not be arsed?) i
guess it was a sort of half pleasure, where my words just flowed out in
stream of consciousness.
if any of the examples you gave me fall out of that anti-authorship
thing of mine, they're falling back into tradition. which is very
probable, and why whenever i pick this kind of stuff up, i prefer
theory to stories, cuz they're more direct to the point and easy to
understand. stories just have loads and loads of arbitrary things
pasted here and there and whats the point. they have to make a living,
dont they, so the writing will always have a huge advantage over the
non-writing.
David Oberman
>in fact, one of the solutions or cures, is endless sentences without
>desire to communication
From the life of the marionette!
sirb...@hotmail.com
David Oberman ha escrito:
my god doberboots why do you keep quoting this imbecile? what modernist
or romantic art did was ridicule lifeless forms like john simon. how
traditional and predictable of you to chime in in this manner. whatll
be next, john ruskin? or the guy who wrote the bergman book whashisname
sirb...@hotmail.com
you were destined to do so, i mean for how long was information going
to hold onto the myth of lifeless decoration, now that writing no
longer belonged to the john simons of the world? wilfully you deny
substance to the layers of art by maintaining you're pro-art and
anti-theory, which is just a trap for the morons to fall into because
there's no such difference, a bit like when you define opposition to
the morons as 'political correctness' or maintain that something called
'politics' belongs only to the right, as if i dunno money or service
isnt politics, as if politics isnt just the same word as religion,
ethics, morals and loads a shit that can be summarised in
just-being-attitude. all of that 'theory', which was just art, was just
better art than simon's art, it had more life in it than simon's
attitude, whose attitude prolly consisted in hopping from dinner
parties with pathetic grandmas to shitting in (unfortunately, not on)
the new criterion.
sirb...@hotmail.com
self conscious insofar as the doubts they had that they werent doing
what they really wanted to do, that they were merely servants blabbing
out shit. some got neurotic on this, or never managed to free
themselves from the tyrannies of service, of having to mindlessly
decorate, so what? some had moronic contradictions, especially the
romantics, a bit like clint eastwood. so what? the jist is 'art' was a
pathetic bureaucracy of information and if anything was satirised, not
created, by the notion of mallarme or rimbaud, if not perfected, flawed
and too traditional as it was and too embedded within precisely the
traditional concept of art as something to be done, by men of action,
dictionary lovers, telephone book lovers, bookworms and courtesans, the
yes men of yesterday's corporate power.
Nick Macpherson
Harkness wrote:
> The guy who wrote the Bazooka Joe cartoons is pretty good.
>
Chick.
David Oberman
>my god doberboots why do you keep quoting this imbecile? what modernist
>or romantic art did was ridicule lifeless forms like john simon. how
>traditional and predictable of you to chime in in this manner. whatll
>be next, john ruskin? or the guy who wrote the bergman book whashisname
"One escapes from oneself _into_ poetry & hopes it will make one
famous, rich, & powerful; when this fails to happen, one escapes
_from_ poetry--into commerce or science--with the same expectations."
--J. Simon
David Oberman
"It is entirely possible that the radical loosening up of French
poetry by Rimbaud--like the analogous process initiated in America by
Whitman--has much to do with the poet's sexual orientation."
--John Simon, 1991
sirb...@hotmail.com
David Oberman ha escrito:
though this is an area of power/knowledge whose claim to reason or
'science', the latter a term with inflated value, you understandably
want to discredit given your ideology (not so other areas which you're
always first to claim a 'science'), thou it is true that the
constitution and the political economics behind a student can be a
desire to deconstruct his teacher, lets just admit, doberboots, that
its damn easy to do so, with rivalries of the following nature:
new rose hotel vs the emperor's club
noel burch vs. vf perkins
pa sitney vs pauline kael
salaam cinema vs steven spielberg
rxmas vs. disneyworld
hoberman vs simon
its too damn easy, doberboots. so their constitution makes humans
cretinlike and opportunistic as john simon doth say, a bit like
truffaut he might have added, a punk when powerless, oh so moral with
the tables changed.
hellas is for gyros
didn't lose much considering the state they are in now.