DFW: Dead on the Page?

Just read an essay by Michael Weiss at The Weekly Standard, linked to from TNC, on the great(?) David Foster Wallace. Predictably, it's not hagiography, which is probably why I enjoyed it. It's defnitely not a hit-piece. The concluding quotation from DFW gave me pause.

"The next real literary 'rebels' in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels"

Hellcat, do you know what quote this is from, bc as long as it isn't Infinite Jest I want to read it.... My question is: Why wasn't DFW one of these rebels? Or was he? Did he consider himself one of them? If not, what was holding him back? Did he want to be one of them? etc, etc...

I bought the Rolling Stone that had the article about him. For me, it was pretty hard to read, and not because anything was wrong with it... I don't think I care to read much if any of of his fiction (his non-fiction is a different story) but my interest in him is growing...

Smoldering

I'm quitting smoking... Believe it, bitches. It's already hard as shit. I decided on a tapering approach at first, but after researching a bit I have decided is a poor solution. Nicotine only stays in the bloodstream for 40 minutes, so each "taper" after that time just starts the process over and is just a temporary "relapse" instead of any real tapering, so to speak.

I had 4 yesterday and almost died. I've had two today but now I'm freezing the fucking turkey. Anyone want to try it with me!?!?! Didn't think so, but you should probably send me money or something as incentives.

Anyway, feel free to tell me "You can do it!!" and all that shit, but I think "You're a goddamn failure, and always will be!" may work better in my case. I need your reverse psychology people!!!

No Pulled Pork

Stefan Beck and I would make great grazing buddies.

"...it reminds me that there are two sources of pleasure in this world: the thing that feels so good when you stop, and the thing that goes on feeling good until you decide to stop. I will always be a fervent devotee of the latter."

Everybody's A Goddamn Comedian

More fun from James Taranto over at WSJ.

Mixing It Up

During his press conference last week, President-elect Obama discussed the dog he's promised his daughters. He mentioned that he'd have to get a hypoallergenic breed. "Our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me."
It was a charming reference to his own diverse racial and ethnic heritage--and some people are taking offense, the Boston Globe reports (last item):

One of the most thought-out [complaints] is from a woman who runs a blog for mothers of Korean-American children. "I've heard mixed-race people use that term to describe themselves before, usually in the same ha-ha way Obama did. I've also heard it thrown around as an insult, a pejorative, a slur. I've felt the slap of that word across my face" she wrote. "My fear, however, is that Obama, as the first mixed-race president, will shape the way most Americans view people of mixed race for at least a generation. And will Obama calling himself a 'mutt'--with humor, as if the word is nothing, nothing at all--make it socially acceptable for people to start calling me a mutt? My kids?"

So what is the politically correct term? Mongrel-American?

Remember Capitalism?

Yah, me neither... It's existence was only imagined in the minds of Marxists and those who couldn't help but to use the language of such a beautifully explicative false-narrative.

Anyhow, James Bowman makes me feel smart again in his latest piece from TNC. It's subscribers only, so here's some snippets...

"Well, the old stories are always the best, I suppose. The day before, the Post had run a front-page “Analysis” piece by Anthony Faiola titled “The End of American Capitalism?”.... Certainly, after the government’s $700 billion bailout of the credit markets, followed by a partial nationalization of the major banks, he had a point. Suddenly everyone was reviving the saying attributed to the British liberal statesman Sir William Harcourt in Victorian times that “We’re all socialists now.” So it could hardly be surprising if we were using socialist language to tell a socialist story based on the Marxist legend about something called “capitalism” which was once supposed to exist precariously poised between the two historical eras of “feudalism” and “socialism,” one of which hadn’t happened yet but doubtless would in short order.

"It seems to me an attractive idea to classify Marx not as a great philosopher or economist—still less, of course, as a prophet—but as a great journalist. For he did what all journalists seek to do, which is to construct a story (or “narrative” as even quite ordinary people are now learning to call it) that accounts for confusing, complex, and often unwelcome events in a way that becomes widely accepted not only by his readers but also by the readers of his readers and even by people who don’t read at all. The enduring nature of his story was obviously owing to the fact that it had clear-cut heroes and villains, that after many a difficulty and setback the heroes were portrayed as triumphing (or bound to triumph) over the villains, and that there was a sense of fate or inevitability, even divine guidance—with “History” in the role of God—about this happy ending. Most importantly, it encouraged a mass audience to identify itself with the good guys and their sense of grievance against the bad guys who were few in number and different from them in having lots of money. One of the things that people demand from journalism, now as then, is guidance as to whom to hate...."

"..those who positively repudiated the Marxist narrative also retained the Marxist language, proclaiming themselves proud capitalists and insisting that the capitalist system must bring about, in fact and for everybody, the workers’ paradise that socialism could only promise. It should have been foreseeable that this would get them into trouble when hard times came along the next time. “You said capitalism ‘worked,’ didn’t you?” the socialist might reasonably ask. “So what have you got to say now?

"Of course, “capitalism”—the socialist word for economic reality—does work, just not to produce the utopian dream of easy abundance for all. That remains a fantasy no matter what the words used to describe it."

That's what I would have said if I were a better writer...

Americn Idolatry or "Exercises in Unreality"

James Bowman sums up my views on American Politics. His description of Sarah Palin's role happens to be exactly what I think, but that's not what the article is about.

Everyone says the show is finally over. I have been so eagerly awaiting the end myself I haven't done much else in, well... too long. Alas, the show never ends. It's just the next scene: Implementation. Thank God I get a breather, I'm tired. But then again, I can't watch the rest anyway...

The Party Of Trimmers

To follow up on "Shame" in the previous post, the inhabitants of "Shame" might be known, using Dante's term, as trimmers. In his 'Inferno' Dante describes trimmers as "individuals who make changes for reasons of expediencey...prefer to avoid any commitment that would compromise issues of self interest...because they did not choose good or evil they are deserving of a residencey in a kind of no man's world."

You can see more and more this direction our country is heading. No one is willing to take a stand "Save to be thought inoffensive." The idea of things, not being right or wrong, but merely different. Surely other nations, if only we sit down with them, will see we want peace and understand that we are all part of one big global community. For of course we cannot get by without each other's blessings. (hogwash)

How deep is the "national shame"?

I fear it is about to corrode the foundation of core truths to which our nation was founded.

How deep is the "national shame"?

Deep enough to elect someone who would like us to "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution". Who would like to focus on the "actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change".

How deep is the "national shame"?

Dare I say that I too have found myself "shying at cracks in the sidewalk" after a long talk with a black friend of mine, or after listening to long political rants of America's dicatorship backing past.

How deep is the "national shame"?

The link is a reading from the Times, and I'm afraid of the times.

The Road to Scusi

It has often been said that Obama supporters, and the left in general, are Anti-American, or some derivative thereof. I'd like to propose an alternative hypothesis. To do so, I have chosen to conscript America's second Poet laureate, Richard Wilbur.

It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy,
Save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language
Has never been fathomed, owing to the national habit
Of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion.
Those who have visited Scusi, the capital city,
Report that the railway-route from Schuldig passes
Through country best described as unrelieved.
Sheep are the national product. The faint inscription
Over the city gates may perhaps be rendered,
"I'm afraid you won't find much of interest here."
Census-reports which give the population
As zero are, of course, not to be trusted,
Save as reflecting the natives' flustered insistence
That they do not count, as well as their modest horror
Of letting one's sex be known in so many words.
The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence
Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers
An odd impression of ostentatious meanness,
And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by
In their ratty sheepskins, shying at cracks in the sidewalk)
That they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble.
The tenor of life is careful, even in the stiff
Unsmiling carelessness of the border-guards
And douaniers, who admit, whenever they can,
Not merely the usual carloads of deodorant
But gypsies, g-strings, hasheesh, and contraband pigments.
Their complete negligence is reserved, however,
For the hoped-for invasion, at which time the happy people
(Sniggering, ruddily naked, and shamelessly drunk)
Will stun the foe by their overwhelming submission,
Corrupt the generals, infiltrate the staff,
Usurp the throne, proclaim themselves to be sun-gods,
And bring about the collapse of the whole empire.

I believe Plato described his Republic as "man writ large", but then again, who would know if he didn't?? Without elaborating I will just say that interactive relationships among mutually exclusive entities (aka language, or talking to each other) is is what makes such a description inaccurate. Why we shouldn't see a society/city/nation or whatever as functioning similarly to an individual person is my point. We need each other to function as human. Nations don't work like that; they ARE the people.

So, we have Richard Wilbur playing on that kind of idea except his Republic or "cramped little state" is one in which the man being "writ large" is in a state of chronic shame. The "moral" if you will, (I will...) is that we should be able to see how being so ashamed of ourselves can lead such ugly ridiculousness. The denizens of Shame are beyond help. Only a Messiah could save them. Left unchecked, their influence will only metastasize.

Get over it.
McCain '08

Predictions and/or Predilections?

How about the winner gets a beer from the other two losers at Thanksgiving? Not sure how we want to do this, but we could guess winner of popular and electoral vote winner and electoral vote count......? CAAMMAWWWN!! Here's mine:

Popular Winner: McCain
Electoral Winner: Obama
Electoral Count: 306(O)-232(M)

Predilection: I want a beers or a McCain win... but I really like beer........

UPDATE: Go here if you want to play with a map