gravitas is overrated
MoMa: is it weird that you have to be immensely educated to get that white male novelists suck i.e. that you have to have digested, or at least have a historical understanding of, the progenitors of formally innovative (you might say superficially formally innovative) fiction with whose shadow this current crop is still boxing?
do you have to be hyperliterate to be critical?is it weird to think of aesthetic refinement as a force inversely proportional to the pull effectedby the elitist vacuum that homi "don't play that" bhaba (however the fuck one spells the man's name) might have left upon his departure from the land formerly defined as Great Booksto the more rarefied air of the East?
the fact you filed your post under "snobbery" and that potato vodka, yourself, and I had one night I shall not forget (Crash, boom) is enough to signal that your pomo critical theory grad school indoctrination shall not efface the commone sense you've gleaned from baseball, hangovers, bong hits, Ol Dirty Bastard, and civil war-memorializing facial hair. that said . . .
In English: i just reread the sound of waves by mishima. i first read the book because someonei respected said he was the shit, and being the sycophant that i was, i ran to the bookstore,bought the book, and read it straight through with occasional glances at the gargoyles. i'mnot biting on your shit, but i wonder if you would agree that the reason you gave for sloggingon these white guys - they dont dig on alterity - is predicated on having the time to be either talented enough, bookish enough, or taught enough to know what alterity is and how to apply it in an argument.
i'm glad i have the sound of waves, and i'm glad i reread it, but i know, and will always know, thati read it to appease my inner "i'm smart too" voice. seems like one criticism that can be launched, and it seems to me now that you may have launched it, at these pale men, is thattheir "i'm smart too" voice overpowers the voice they have that moves us. personally, i'dlike to bitch slap franzen, and if that speaks to conflicted misogynistic or repressed homoeroticimpulses i have, it would still feel good to turn his cheeks red. wallace i think only getsbetter, and unlike whet i dont think his statement concerning an outright aversion to late capitalist (i had to bite my cheek to type that out) American tourism is personal/confessional, anddoes not come enter into the novelist's equation. but, for the sake of argument, or polemic, either one, who cares: if wallace wrote a novel whose themes and characters evoked something out of john edgar wideman, would that be better? cause i bet he could sell it, and i bet that the fact that he knows he could sell it and the fact that he hates others whose purpose is to sell is one of the great unconscious Gordian knots in the guy's head. If you could sell snow to Eskimos, in what respect could hold yourself?
when you chose the OC (the OC, mo? really? i get the whole "portrays class in America with more perspicuity than anything else out there" concept, but you still have to watch the shit.) over fiction, or literature in general, i didn't get it. isn't there something about buying into the Image that gives class such a thorough representation that strikes you as, I don't know, inauthentic?
Personally, I dont care, and I hope you dont either. i hope you have no qualms about watching television in the evening and talking baudrillard in the day ( i hope you don't have to do that; for some reason i have a very negative view of grad school), 'cause that meretricious bullshit about authenticity strikes me as uninteresting. anyway. to be vastly unfair and simplistic, and thereby expose myself to a counterargument that would justly provide you with reason to tear me a new asshole, you seem to think stuff' sgood if it's critical or chock full of alterity; i think stuff can be good if it's chock full of nothing but descriptions about living in a walltent in yellowstone, poaching moose, snowshoeing, and learning how to love being alone.
in the hopes of continuing the conversation some time when i'm not being pulled out the door to go be an imitation redneck . . . .
do you have to be hyperliterate to be critical?is it weird to think of aesthetic refinement as a force inversely proportional to the pull effectedby the elitist vacuum that homi "don't play that" bhaba (however the fuck one spells the man's name) might have left upon his departure from the land formerly defined as Great Booksto the more rarefied air of the East?
the fact you filed your post under "snobbery" and that potato vodka, yourself, and I had one night I shall not forget (Crash, boom) is enough to signal that your pomo critical theory grad school indoctrination shall not efface the commone sense you've gleaned from baseball, hangovers, bong hits, Ol Dirty Bastard, and civil war-memorializing facial hair. that said . . .
In English: i just reread the sound of waves by mishima. i first read the book because someonei respected said he was the shit, and being the sycophant that i was, i ran to the bookstore,bought the book, and read it straight through with occasional glances at the gargoyles. i'mnot biting on your shit, but i wonder if you would agree that the reason you gave for sloggingon these white guys - they dont dig on alterity - is predicated on having the time to be either talented enough, bookish enough, or taught enough to know what alterity is and how to apply it in an argument.
i'm glad i have the sound of waves, and i'm glad i reread it, but i know, and will always know, thati read it to appease my inner "i'm smart too" voice. seems like one criticism that can be launched, and it seems to me now that you may have launched it, at these pale men, is thattheir "i'm smart too" voice overpowers the voice they have that moves us. personally, i'dlike to bitch slap franzen, and if that speaks to conflicted misogynistic or repressed homoeroticimpulses i have, it would still feel good to turn his cheeks red. wallace i think only getsbetter, and unlike whet i dont think his statement concerning an outright aversion to late capitalist (i had to bite my cheek to type that out) American tourism is personal/confessional, anddoes not come enter into the novelist's equation. but, for the sake of argument, or polemic, either one, who cares: if wallace wrote a novel whose themes and characters evoked something out of john edgar wideman, would that be better? cause i bet he could sell it, and i bet that the fact that he knows he could sell it and the fact that he hates others whose purpose is to sell is one of the great unconscious Gordian knots in the guy's head. If you could sell snow to Eskimos, in what respect could hold yourself?
when you chose the OC (the OC, mo? really? i get the whole "portrays class in America with more perspicuity than anything else out there" concept, but you still have to watch the shit.) over fiction, or literature in general, i didn't get it. isn't there something about buying into the Image that gives class such a thorough representation that strikes you as, I don't know, inauthentic?
Personally, I dont care, and I hope you dont either. i hope you have no qualms about watching television in the evening and talking baudrillard in the day ( i hope you don't have to do that; for some reason i have a very negative view of grad school), 'cause that meretricious bullshit about authenticity strikes me as uninteresting. anyway. to be vastly unfair and simplistic, and thereby expose myself to a counterargument that would justly provide you with reason to tear me a new asshole, you seem to think stuff' sgood if it's critical or chock full of alterity; i think stuff can be good if it's chock full of nothing but descriptions about living in a walltent in yellowstone, poaching moose, snowshoeing, and learning how to love being alone.
in the hopes of continuing the conversation some time when i'm not being pulled out the door to go be an imitation redneck . . . .
posted by am at
9:14 PM
1 Comments:
i think one spells it "homey"
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