Wednesday, February 29, 2012
New Year
Between the Rue du Four and the Rue du
Buci, where our youth so completely went astray as a few glasses were
drunk, one could feel certain that we would never do any better.
- Guy Debord, Panegyric
#endcommuniqueintotheblackhole
- Guy Debord, Panegyric
#endcommuniqueintotheblackhole
2666; Interrupted
I've had to put down the book for a bit. It feels a bit damaging to the psyche to be reading at this point. I had a similar experience with Houellebecq at one point. It's not a bad thing, it only speaks to how some material cuts so close to the bone, and is so truthful, that sometimes it is painful to face up to it.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A Slight Detour Into Hunter Thompson
Fear And Loathing In Gonzovision '78 is more a curiosity than anything else, a BBC mini-documentary shot in the late 70s. If you've seen the posthumous Hunter S. Thompson doc Gonzo, then you've already seen a lot of this footage before. But the original film is interesting on its own for a few simple reasons. First, it happens to catch a formidable literary figure right on the cusp of a descent into self-parody and relative obscurity, and it depicts him fully aware of being on the cusp, grappling with what it, trying to formulate some way out of the trap of his (self-constructed) public persona. Also, it's just always interesting to see gritty, unvarnished footage of a legendary character in his element and in his own time. It's just a nice reminder that the people you know through books and media, who exist mainly as avatars in your own mind, free-floating and near-god-like, were actual human beings, living flesh and blood in their own present, a concrete physical world that hemmed them in and defined them, no matter what sort of immortality their great creative works have achieved.
The most famous citation from Hunter S. Thompson is the great elegaic passage from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas where he describes the high water mark of the 60s and then the ineluctable breaking of the wave. One can't help but think that Thompson, the greatest chronicler of that wave there ever was, was also tragically bound up in it, riding it and describing its every pitch and roll. So that when it did finally break, and he was left wiped out on the shore, what else was there for him to do but let the tide carry him out again, into oblivion?
The most famous citation from Hunter S. Thompson is the great elegaic passage from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas where he describes the high water mark of the 60s and then the ineluctable breaking of the wave. One can't help but think that Thompson, the greatest chronicler of that wave there ever was, was also tragically bound up in it, riding it and describing its every pitch and roll. So that when it did finally break, and he was left wiped out on the shore, what else was there for him to do but let the tide carry him out again, into oblivion?
Friday, February 10, 2012
Unexpected Hanging
Description of the paradox
The paradox has been described as follows:[4]Other versions of the paradox replace the death sentence with a surprise fire drill, examination, or lion behind a door or when the bin will be emptied.[1]A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week but that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. He will not know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on his cell door at noon that day. Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging. His reasoning is in several parts. He begins by concluding that the "surprise hanging" can't be on Friday, as if he hasn't been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left - and so it won't be a surprise if he's hanged on Friday. Since the judge's sentence stipulated that the hanging would be a surprise to him, he concludes it cannot occur on Friday.
He then reasons that the surprise hanging cannot be on Thursday either, because Friday has already been eliminated and if he hasn't been hanged by Wednesday night, the hanging must occur on Thursday, making a Thursday hanging not a surprise either. By similar reasoning he concludes that the hanging can also not occur on Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday. Joyfully he retires to his cell confident that the hanging will not occur at all.
The next week, the executioner knocks on the prisoner's door at noon on Wednesday — which, despite all the above, was an utter surprise to him. Everything the judge said came true.
The informal nature of everyday language allows for multiple interpretations of the paradox. In the extreme case, a prisoner who is paranoid might feel certain in his knowledge that the executioner will arrive at noon on Monday, then certain that he will come on Tuesday and so forth, thus ensuring that every day really is a "surprise" to him. But even without adding this element to the story, the vagueness of the account prohibits one from being objectively clear about which formalization truly captures its essence. There has been considerable debate between the logical school, which uses mathematical language, and the epistemological school, which employs concepts such as knowledge, belief and memory, over which formulation is correct.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Third Go-Round: Roberto Bolaño’s "2666"
So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.
2666, pg. 209, "The Part About Amalfitano"
In a book full of bitter jokes, this is perhaps the most brutal. It also bolsters the view of 2666 as the curdled and disconsolate mirror image of the vibrancy of The Savage Detectives, though upon a recent re-reading of the latter novel, there is a heavy sense of loss hanging in its margins.
I've been thinking lately that another ironic twist, though perhaps not a bitter one, is that 2666 may, strangely, come to be even more appreciated as a work of fiction than it already is. This may sound grandiose, given that the novel was annointed as a masterpiece even before its English publication, but the publication of so many of Bolaño’s shorter works since his death has changed things a bit. In these shorter works, especially Amulet and the short story collection Last Evenings On Earth, the author's mastery of his craft is so full-fledged and visible, that it throws the sprawl of his two major novels into a different light. A common criticism of both 2666 and The Savage Detectives is that they indulge in literary "excess," but this misses the point I think. The author's self-stated ambition (in both the essay collection Between Parentheses and as told anecdotally by friend and co-conspirator Rodrigo Fresán) was the Total Novel, something all-encompassing and reflective of life itself, in all its grandeur and squalor.
It's obvious in the shorter works that Bolaño could turn out tightly structured narratives of unified form. But it's also obvious that he felt the need to stretch his legs a bit, and he was very aware of how risky that is. He even has a character in 2666 rhapsodize about how readers prefer the smaller, perfect works to the more unwieldy and ambitious tomes (in the novel the comparison is between Melville's Bartelby The Scrivener and Moby-Dick).
As a sucker for enormous books, this is right in my wheelhouse, and I realize that a novel like this suits my literary biases quite well, and that this could color my interpretations. But on this re-reading I'm noticing just how much of the craft and careful structure of the shorter novels finds its way into 2666. When people say "excess" I take that to mean a work haphazardly arranged, fraught with tangents that lead nowhere and lacking a cohesive internal structure, and that is simply not the case with this novel. In its own way it is as finely aligned as a solar system, and in fact when I visualize the structure I see an array of elliptical orbits in which the five individual parts of the novel and the myriad characters revolve around the inscrutable black hole which serves as their gravitational center - the city of Santa Teresa, and all the horror and violence contained within it.
This elliptical structure manifests itself a number of ways. Its in the dreams that the four eponymous literary critics in "The Part About The Critics" wander in and out of, where details of their actual lives are warped and reorganized, only to reappear later in the waking world. Its in the numerous stories-within-stories, where one character recounts meeting another character wherein the second character begins telling their own story which includes a third and fourth character, each with their own story. And the structure fundamentally shapes the overall impact of the narrative as well; this is a novel where nearly every character, as well as the very narrative itself (and trying to explicate the narrative voice is worthy of its own essay), is constantly circling around some destination without ever quite arriving there. The critics search for Benno von Archimboldi but never find him. Professor Amalfitano seeks a remedy for his encroaching madness but fins only a web of reflexive self-doubt. Oscar Fate wants to protect Rosa but can't quite get close enough to her to even understand what exactly it is that endangers her. Lalo Cura aims to solve the mystery of the Santa Teresa murders but his logic and zeal is thwarted at every turn by corruption and indifference. And finally, Archimboldi himself, nee Hans Reiter, seems to live his very life at a remove from himself and unable to grasp conclusively anyone or anything around him, whether lovers or family, and the tangled web of his life - which spans all the horror of the late-20th century - still draws him, in the end, inexplicably back to Mexico, and back to Santa Teresa.
Perhaps the most poignant detail I've noticed this time is just how close the critics come to locating their literary idol. Norton leaves Santa Teresa to join Morini in Turin, the two of them convinced the quest was a fool's errand, while Espinoza and Pelletier are left to ruminate on their failure. And they come to agree - against a backdrop of a tennis match reminiscent of Antonnioni's Blow-Out - that Archimboldi is indeed somewhere in Santa Teresa. They've discovered his real name, his physical attributes, they've doggedly tracked down his previous locations, but still he eludes them. They won't get any closer, and they'll never know just how close they did come. The conclusion of "The Part About The Critics" serves as an apt summation of the tricky game that 2666 plays with meaning and interpretation:
"I believe you," he said, and he really did believe what his friend was saying.
"Archimboldi is here," said Pelletier, "and we're here, and this is the closest we'll ever be to him ."
2666, pg. 209, "The Part About Amalfitano"
In a book full of bitter jokes, this is perhaps the most brutal. It also bolsters the view of 2666 as the curdled and disconsolate mirror image of the vibrancy of The Savage Detectives, though upon a recent re-reading of the latter novel, there is a heavy sense of loss hanging in its margins.
I've been thinking lately that another ironic twist, though perhaps not a bitter one, is that 2666 may, strangely, come to be even more appreciated as a work of fiction than it already is. This may sound grandiose, given that the novel was annointed as a masterpiece even before its English publication, but the publication of so many of Bolaño’s shorter works since his death has changed things a bit. In these shorter works, especially Amulet and the short story collection Last Evenings On Earth, the author's mastery of his craft is so full-fledged and visible, that it throws the sprawl of his two major novels into a different light. A common criticism of both 2666 and The Savage Detectives is that they indulge in literary "excess," but this misses the point I think. The author's self-stated ambition (in both the essay collection Between Parentheses and as told anecdotally by friend and co-conspirator Rodrigo Fresán) was the Total Novel, something all-encompassing and reflective of life itself, in all its grandeur and squalor.
It's obvious in the shorter works that Bolaño could turn out tightly structured narratives of unified form. But it's also obvious that he felt the need to stretch his legs a bit, and he was very aware of how risky that is. He even has a character in 2666 rhapsodize about how readers prefer the smaller, perfect works to the more unwieldy and ambitious tomes (in the novel the comparison is between Melville's Bartelby The Scrivener and Moby-Dick).
As a sucker for enormous books, this is right in my wheelhouse, and I realize that a novel like this suits my literary biases quite well, and that this could color my interpretations. But on this re-reading I'm noticing just how much of the craft and careful structure of the shorter novels finds its way into 2666. When people say "excess" I take that to mean a work haphazardly arranged, fraught with tangents that lead nowhere and lacking a cohesive internal structure, and that is simply not the case with this novel. In its own way it is as finely aligned as a solar system, and in fact when I visualize the structure I see an array of elliptical orbits in which the five individual parts of the novel and the myriad characters revolve around the inscrutable black hole which serves as their gravitational center - the city of Santa Teresa, and all the horror and violence contained within it.
This elliptical structure manifests itself a number of ways. Its in the dreams that the four eponymous literary critics in "The Part About The Critics" wander in and out of, where details of their actual lives are warped and reorganized, only to reappear later in the waking world. Its in the numerous stories-within-stories, where one character recounts meeting another character wherein the second character begins telling their own story which includes a third and fourth character, each with their own story. And the structure fundamentally shapes the overall impact of the narrative as well; this is a novel where nearly every character, as well as the very narrative itself (and trying to explicate the narrative voice is worthy of its own essay), is constantly circling around some destination without ever quite arriving there. The critics search for Benno von Archimboldi but never find him. Professor Amalfitano seeks a remedy for his encroaching madness but fins only a web of reflexive self-doubt. Oscar Fate wants to protect Rosa but can't quite get close enough to her to even understand what exactly it is that endangers her. Lalo Cura aims to solve the mystery of the Santa Teresa murders but his logic and zeal is thwarted at every turn by corruption and indifference. And finally, Archimboldi himself, nee Hans Reiter, seems to live his very life at a remove from himself and unable to grasp conclusively anyone or anything around him, whether lovers or family, and the tangled web of his life - which spans all the horror of the late-20th century - still draws him, in the end, inexplicably back to Mexico, and back to Santa Teresa.
Perhaps the most poignant detail I've noticed this time is just how close the critics come to locating their literary idol. Norton leaves Santa Teresa to join Morini in Turin, the two of them convinced the quest was a fool's errand, while Espinoza and Pelletier are left to ruminate on their failure. And they come to agree - against a backdrop of a tennis match reminiscent of Antonnioni's Blow-Out - that Archimboldi is indeed somewhere in Santa Teresa. They've discovered his real name, his physical attributes, they've doggedly tracked down his previous locations, but still he eludes them. They won't get any closer, and they'll never know just how close they did come. The conclusion of "The Part About The Critics" serves as an apt summation of the tricky game that 2666 plays with meaning and interpretation:
"I believe you," he said, and he really did believe what his friend was saying.
"Archimboldi is here," said Pelletier, "and we're here, and this is the closest we'll ever be to him ."
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Escape Velocity
Behind this crowd, however, hides the one true patron. If you have patience enough to search, maybe you'll catch a glimpse of what you're looking for. And when you find it, you'll probably be disappointed. It isn't the devil. It isn't the State. It isn't a magical child. It's the void.
- Roberto Bolaño, "An Attempt at an Exhaustive Catalog of Patrons" Between Parentheses.
"UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4."
- Transmission from Russian shortwave radio station UBV-76, 23 August 2008 at 13:35UTC
UVB-76 Aug.23.2010 9.32amPST by djoutcold
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Breathing Isn't The Right Word
"Yes, one can wage war in this world, ape love, torture one's fellow man, or merely say evil of one's neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman."
The Fall, Albert Camus.
A few small comforts in a hollow world;
The Rebel.
Explication of The Enemies.
Redemption.
Continuing.....
The Fall, Albert Camus.
A few small comforts in a hollow world;
The Rebel.
Explication of The Enemies.
Redemption.
Continuing.....
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