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| At the LSM all day. Hard to concentrate with internet access. Ah <3 the internet.
They just gave us the 30m warning. Dude sounds soooo much like Kal Penn. Throughout the announcement I'm thinking where it will get funny, but never does except in accent.
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| Ah, more upbeat quote from Anatomy of Criticism.
“It
is a commonplace of criticism that art does not evolve or improve: it produces
the classic or model. One can still buy
books narrating the “development” of painting from the Stone Age to Picasso,
but they show no development, only a series of mutations in skill, Picasso
being on much the same level as his Magdalenian ancestaors. Every once in a while we experience in the
arts a feeling of definitive revelation.
This, we may feel after a Palestrina motet or a Mozart divertimento, is
the voice of music itself: this is the kind of thing that music was invented to
say. Here is a simplicity which makes us
realize that the simple is the opposite of the commonplace, a feeling that the
boundaries of possible expression in art have been reached for all time. This feeling belongs to direct experience,
not to criticism, but it suggests the critical principle that he profoundest
experiences possible to obtain in the arts are available in the art already
produced.”
I get this sense at times and am still learning what to do about it??
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| Do you think you are (or you would be) a better parent than your own parents? Why or why not?
I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!
Yes, I think I would be. I am dumber than my parents but more courageous and honest and so do not suffer (quite as much) from moral cowardice hiding behind intellectual firewall.
Relatedly I know the difference between the P and the T in PTA.
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| Stopped in at BN yesterday and read short-short-short "Bright Lights Big City." I think it is one of those novels of very unusual pathos, kind of like alternative-timeline narratives, where the social pretension that the guy is trying for lies not in any kind of climbing but in the perfection of self-pity. Working at the New Yorker, doesn't get in trouble for getting to work at 10:30, can afford to live in NYC and buy tons of cocaine . . . poor thing. p
It reminds me of the movie Casshern in that tonally it ends up so rabid and also its self pity is damaged by its being predicated on Japan winning WW2. As if to say 1) if we won WW2 life would still be an endless sea of suffering 2) but perhaps we could find peace in heterosexual love, which connects to death and thus to 3) if all were obliterated it would be fine. Which leads us back to 1) if we won WW2 life would still be an endless sea of suffering [but at least we would transcend it with our Japanese liebestod. . . sugoi . . ] {all of which is to say in short that it's a you-wish by Kiriya Kazuaki fantasizing how much cooler the mecha design would be if it weren't for Japan starting a war it couldn't win}
Neway
Holly's bio of her father is definitely chock full of eww. I can't believe these people spent so much time writing bad poems while Europe burned. . . twice in as many generations. How does Stevens go from his gaudeamus-igitur days to his 40s and 50s self. The man must have been a miracle of self-consciousness to behold. Although that goes hand-in-hand with being so embarrassing on so many levels. E.g. he points out that Platonism is the main hazarilod to men 23-5 (I concur!) when it is so clear that that is exactly his problem. I feel bador Elsie (his eventual wife). What is it with Wasp women and becoming like a raisin in the house as they grow up? Just puttering around with these mysterious interior lives. Happened to both my grandmothers. Tis happening to my mother. I have a feeling it is linked to some kind of domination and/or spiritual consumption by their husbands. Both my father and my grandfather act(ed) more like babies as they age(d) [e.g. reporting constantly on whether their legs are warm or cold, if they're thirsty, committing huge faux pas in social situations] and it is as if the baby comes back waging against the mother a war that, this time, she cannot win.
I theorize that it is because wasps need to get a life. My scary maternal uncle (long story. . . he basically thinks I am an effete Easterner, we have approximately 0.00001 in common) has a much livelier wife (my mom's sister) and he is himself a really talented woodworker etc.
l
Gotta stay creative as you age, then. Maternal grandfather: died before born, no clue. Paternal grandfather: designed/built neat house, but then made rigidly concentric daily life and so spiralled down to nil. Father: professor, smart but garrulous, not so creative but keeps trying, wife leads quiet depressive life but not that of total cipher. Paternal uncle: dunno, is dominated by older brother (my dad) whenever we are together. Maternal uncle: contractor and craftsman, scary disciplinarian but not my father so doesn't matter, proud dude but does really good work, old as hell, never talks but then never says stupid shiz.
He also spent many a weekend wandering New Jersey. Not just the big names like Paterson or Newark either, nor their neighboring towns. Stuff like Eagle Rock (a part of West Orange) and whole daytrips. One time he wandered from Hackensack up through Leonia to Fort Lee. th It was creepy because I read that on July 3 and last year (when I worked for a co. in H-sack) on 7/3 I drove that exact same route up through Teaneck and down into Ft Lee. Stopped at Leonia library (nice place to take your kids) and read some history book. So I was reenacting Wallace Stevens daytrip like 105 years later. Just like Southerners reenact war, go figure
Ah, the trove of literary greatness that is my home state. American literature = New Jersey.
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| Not much to report. I think the last guy just moved in who will be here for the summer. IT's an interesting mix in this house. Funny Italian dude, typical (dare I say it) Singaporean dude, scurred Japanese girl who is discreetly item with Italian, pickup-driving motorcycle-n-flipflops South Jerseyan, Muslim little-ki..d voice dude who filled the freezer with buns, can't understand his English at all German dude. Mustn't stereotype these people of course, it's a house n ot some Hotel Internationale stage play. Had Korean BBQ with S-dude and
I had figured I'd be the oldest but one student (undergrad) is actually 28 and the new guy is in [a business school] interning at [a large corporation headquarted in New Brunswick][that flies their helicopter around here...] We helped move his huge desk inside yesterday.
Speaking of which, I was really happy to discover that S. Jersey dude has the reverse of my name. His last name is my first name-son and my last name is his first name-son, with slight variations.
Trying to think of female movie directors. Film world has not that many ne? Not too many that I can name off top or even dregs of my head. Xu Jinglei is tops bof head because watching Wo he baba yesterday; decent so far; not sure how great an actress she is, possibly just charismatic crookedness of her teeth, cute cute, but anyway a good director; nothing intelligent to say about style cept that prob gave MArk Lee free reign with photography in Letter from an Unknown Woman b/c looks exactly like a Hou Hsiaohsien movie. Catherine Breillat (sic?), Marguerite Duras, whoever made that stop-loss movie, Julie Taymour (booooring!), Hur Jin Ho, I forget is Tian Zhuangzhuang female? The person who directed Tattoo/Spider Lilies? Anyway I liked the last. You think it going to be trashploitation but it is kinda sweet up till the inane ending. It reminded me of the book Matilda except that there is an overt sexual element in the attraction and instead of fairytale cottage it's a tattoo parlor. I knw it sounds trashy but try it out!
A certain concern with growing up or making the girl segue into woman, maybe. Writer-guy in "Letter..." and camera shop-guy in "Christmas in August" have almost the exact same reticent sweetness about them. bFather in Father & I is more fleshed out in that he actually seems interested in his daughter as a person who knows things (about the man's departed wife); not just object of affection. Don't look at me though. Just am curious.
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