CosmoLinks
October 24, 2008
- Undecided (David Sedaris) — “…what’s to be confused about?”
- MemoryArchive - MemoryArchive — Welcome to MemoryArchive, the encyclopedia of memories
CosmoLinks
October 22, 2008
- They Call Me Hurricane: Thirteen previously unheard months in the life of Stevie Vaughan — Almost 20 years since we lost him. I’m looking forward to hearing these recordings…
Ulysses Update - Wandering Rocks
October 16, 2008
This relatively straightforwardly written section of Ulysses was quite a changeup from the complex “Scylla and Charybdis” book just before. In The Odyssey Ulysses chooses to sacrifice 6 of his men rather than risk the Wandering Rocks, which only Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts) was ever able to navigate, thanks to some helpful enchantment. Joyce, though, steams right through with 19 atemporal sections that tie together in various ways that are probably much more complex than I picked up on. There are enough links that I could probably sit down and recreate the true chronology of the events, but I’m not that ambitious.
What the section does do, in fits and starts, is elaborate on some important characters and motifs at the center of the novel.
Molly makes an appearance, first hanging a sign looking for a tenant, then tossing a coin to a beggar, a war hero, who is singing a song glorifying the British! Blazes Boylan is portrayed as a dedicated womanizer, flirting with the bookstore clerk. Poor Leopold Bloom buys a book for Molly (while hiding from Boylan) with a rather ironic title: The Sweets of Sin.
Simon Dedalus’ daughters appear, destitute, unsuccessfully trying to pawn some of Stephen’s books so they can buy something to eat. Simon appears with a strange cheerfulness that is obviously borne of drunkenness and gives them a couple of small coins. One of the sisters– Dilly– has spent some of the money that should go toward food to buy a French language primer, hoping to escape Ireland (as Stephen did). Not only is Stephen heartbroken and his family destitute, but Mulligan is concluding that Stephen will never amount to much of a poet.
Priests get a bit of a rough time. Father Cowley has been stripped of his collar for some kind of bad behavior and who appears none too smart. Father Conmee, meanwhile, dreams of going to Africa and converting heathens en masse.
I’m sure there’s much more to the issues of politics and religion than the few tidbits found in these rather obvious notes, but they are mostly beyond my ken!
Tags:
james joyce, reading, ulysses, wandering rocks
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Paging Robert Johnson
October 15, 2008
While browsing Brian’s trove of links, a pointer to an Esquire article caught my eye. It tells the story of the discovery, attempt at authentication, and subsequent wrangling over the ownership and authenticity of what might be a new photo of Robert Johnson. It’s a fascinating article that not only prompted me to listen to Johnson’s Complete Recordings for the millionth time, but reminded me of a couple of good books I’ve read about (or that involved) Johnson.
The best book I’ve come across so far is Peter Guralnick’s Searching for Robert Johnson. It’s short, readable, and covers pretty much all the facts available at that point about Johnson with very little mythologizing. Not coincidentally, I greatly enjoyed two of Guralnick’s other books on music and musicians: Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock ‘n Roll (includes pieces on Skip James, Muddy Waters and Johny Shines, the latter of whom figures into the Esquire article as well) and Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians, which focuses on roots music including pieces about Bobby Bland, Big Joe Turner, Hank Williams and Storey Edwards. Guralnick’s work is personal rather than academic, so no footnotes and he’s unafraid of conjecturing beyond the known facts… which is why his writing is interesting even when it involves musicians I’m not otherwise dedicated to.
Gayle Wardlow’s Chasin’ That Devil Music has some interesting bits, including Wardlow’s search for Robert Johnson’s birth certificate, and many interesting short essays/articles on Delta Blues– and only Delta Blues– history.
Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture is a drier, more academic book that attempts to sort the myth from the “objective” facts in service of examining the cultural symbol that Johnson has, in many ways, become. I enjoyed it, but I’ve been soundly indoctrinated into the academic tradition.
If you read any of the above, you can stay away from the very recent Robert Johnson: Lost and Found, which adds nothing new, though it is readable enough. It’s clear that many discoveries have been made in the last few years… unfortunately this book doesn’t include them.
Tags:
blues, books, history, Music, reading, robert johnson
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CosmoLinks
October 15, 2008
- Broken Koans and other Zen debris — Zen is like a finger pointing at the Moon
CosmoLinks
October 14, 2008
- ‘Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius’ by Hans C. Ohanian - Los Angeles Times — Not sure if I can read another Einstein book soon, but this looks like a good candidate for the next one…
- Emily Dickinson’s secret lover. - By Christopher Benfey - Slate Magazine — Interesting… and strange.
The Atlantic Redesigned
October 13, 2008
The Atlantic has been redesigned:
Here’s my brief review: horrible. The block on the lower right looks like a joke that no one was willing to call a joke, a kind of Sokal Hoax of type design. Ugh.
Tags:
design, magazines, the atlantic, typography
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RIP: William Claxton
October 12, 2008
Sad news. William Claxton, photographer responsible for many iconic images of jazz musicians and celebrities, has died. Along with pictures by William Gottlieb, Herman Leonard and Milt Hinton, when I think of jazz, photos by Claxton come to mind. A variety can be seen on his site.
Tags:
jazz, obit, Photography, rip, william claxton
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CosmoLinks
October 12, 2008
- Author Interviews (Dalkey Archive) — David Foster Wallace, Julio Cortazar, Richard Powers, Nicholas Mosley, Samuel Delaney… many, many interviews.
CosmoLinks
October 12, 2008
- Field notes - The Land of the Midnight Sun — Cool– a “local” place to get Field Notes. Still cheaper by far to order them up here to the *real* Alaska!
- James Joyce’ dirty letters — nsfw, obviously
- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: An Open Letter to the Burglar of 244 Wicker Avenue. — O P E N L E T T E R S
T O P E O P L E O R E N T I T I E S
W H O A R E U N L I K E L Y
T O R E S P O N D
Ulysses Update
October 11, 2008
Finished Book 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) of Ulysses. I found Book 9 fiendishly difficult, not because the writing style was impenetrable, but because I found it continually difficult to get a good grasp of the two main points of the section (as I read it): Stephen’s argument w/r/t Shakespeare and the relationship between all the men who are gathered (or who come in and out of) the library.
Without the annotations I might have caught 1/10 of the allusions and understood about 1/3 of Stephens’ argument, which is all about Shakespeare’s biography, his relationship with his wife, and how much all of that was (or was not) written into Shakespeare’s plays and poems. It doesn’t seem that Stephen makes his argument out of a deep sense of analytical conviction regarding Shakespeare’s biography– when asked toward the end if even he believes his own theories, he flatly responds “no”– but out of a more vital kind of empathy with Shakespeare as a poet and with the emotional relationship between father and son. The “consubstantiality” motif left me dizzy, but the Shakespearean inspired parallels between Ulysses and The Odyssey are pretty clear: Ann Hathaway (Shakespeare’s wife) is at once Athena and Gertrude; Molly is clearly Penelope; and Bloom is Shakespeare and Hamlet’s father both while Stephen is Hamlet.
I don’t have enough knowledge to take sides about Shakespeare’s life and personality (who does, really?), but some of the ideas that come out in the course of the conversation came away from this book more determined than ever to read a couple of the books about Shakespeare soon, as well as go back and read/re-read a number of his plays.
In The Odyssey, Scylla is a six-headed, man-eating monster and Charybdis a treacherous, ship-destroying whirlpool between which Odysseus must navigate. There are many such straits that Stephen is navigating in this section: literary society and the stifling nature of the critical establishment, the artistic, creative spirit and the the academy, the relationship between father and son, and not least the characters of Buck Mulligan and Leopold Bloom. Stephen is brash– and I might be reading my own emotions into this– but his brashness is in part a mask for his confusion and insecurities despite his bookish erudition. He wants to be accepted by the literary elite but at the same time can’t mask his resentment and scorn toward them in the form of Russell and Eglinton.
The important theme here is Stephen’s artistic and emotional consternation– what does he believe? Can he escape “Sireland?” The momentary appearance of Bloom– who is roundly mocked by even the most marginal characters in the library– comes at just the right (or precisely the wrong) time, just as Stephen is really feeling the “Seas between” he and Buck Mulligan.
Words Destined for Wordie
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sinkapace, twicreakingly, rufous, canvasclimbers, cerecloth, caudlectures, softcreakfooted, groatsworth, caubine, creecries, brineblinded, pampooties, suspired, myriadminded, gorbellied, Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare, parturiate, paunchbrow, birthaiding, honorificabilitudinitatibus, meacock, seabedabbled, fingerponder
Miscellaneous Thoughts and Quotes
Tags:
james joyce, reading, ulysses
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Friday Facts (2008/10/10)
October 10, 2008
Some facts in lieu of a post:
- I believe a significant part of the next 25 years of new music was prefigured by E.L.O.’s concept album Time
- Grating the frozen butter into the flour with a cheese grater makes perfect biscuits and pie crusts every time
- Baking Illustrated is the best baking book ever
- A partial list of songs that have, at one time or another, made me weep:
- “Still Fighting It” (Ben Folds)
- “Father and Son” (Cat Stevens)
- “Hallelujah” (Leonard Cohen by way of Jeff Buckley)
- “On the Radio” (Regina Spektor)
- “Needle in the Hay” (Elliott Smith)
- “Leaving Town” (Aimee Mann)
- “In the Sun” (Joseph Arthur)
- My new therapist is a leggy, toothy blonde named Kirsten. I haven’t had a lot of luck in my life with women named Kirsten (and all variations thereof)
- Book 9 of Ulysses (”Scylla and Charybdis”) is freakin’ complex
- I’ve had the song “To the Dogs or Whoever” in my head constantly for months
- I share a birthday with my Grandma Lori Beaver
- Incidentally, you really want to have Google’s Safe Search on when searching for anyone with the last name of ‘Beaver’
- I also share a birthday with Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s sergeant at arms
- I’ve looked too long for words that can save me
- Four weeks ago about this time, David Foster Wallace was hanging himself… it still hurts
- Loneliness is a lathe
Tags:
friday facts, miscellany
5 Comments »
CosmoLinks
October 6, 2008
- 30 Reasons — 30 graphic designers present 30 reasons to vote for Barack Obama
- The Corrupter of Youth | The American Prospect — Speaking of Rorty…
The Ironist
October 5, 2008
David Foster Wallace’s passing has spurred a lot of conversations that in one way or another invoke the idea of irony and his work’s relationship to it. Some of the arguments to be found in and around those discussions– and some of the hostility that DFW’s work drew from the beginning (not to mention a veritable murder of prescriptivists descending upon Alanis Morrissette like tweedy, elbow-patched crows on a field of green ESL learners)– comes from clear dissonance regarding what irony actually is and then proceeding to speak as if everyone involved is talking about the same thing at the same time.
Tags:
david foster wallace, irony, Psyche, reading, richard rorty
5 Comments »
CosmoLinks
October 1, 2008
- It Isn’t Easy Being a Genius - New York Times — Within days, I began to receive requests from family, friends and strangers to evaluate various pet theories, some well founded, some half-baked, ranging from the therapeutic benefits of magnets to the location of the missing dark matter in the universe.
- Hotel Wikipedia - Meta — “Welcome to the Hotel Wikipedia / Such a lovely place / So much empty space”
CosmoLinks
October 1, 2008
- Gene Expression: Graphs on the death of Marxism, postmodernism, and other stupid academic fads — Despite the spirited defense by an apparently embittered ex-cultural studies student “gone science” and not meaning what they are purported to mean, the numbers here are interesting…
Brief Ulysses Update
September 30, 2008
Just finished Episode 8, The Laestrygonians. Random, likely incoherent thoughts that’ve crossed my mind over the last 60 pages or so:
- There’s something interesting and tricky going on with the voice and perspective of Bloom’s monologue… a multitude of tiny moments where the text notes things said and seen that Bloom couldn’t possibly have said or seen. The most blatant occurs just after he leaves Davy Byrne’s pub and we hear the group of men there talking about Bloom after he’s gone. But once I started noticing it I see that it happens a lot. I think this is another, subtler part of the artifice that makes the "stream of consciousness" work, trying to artfully portray what goes on in a person’s mind rather than re-creating it.
- Why is Joyce’s strongest prose inevitably found in the moments of wretchedness, nausea and disgust?
- The number of references to wind– directly and tengentially– in the Aeolus section (7) became a bit absurd.
- What’s with Stephen Dedalus’ parable (or is it a not-very-funny joke)? I get the broad outlines of the bawdy joke, "seed" being "spit" from the phallic tower by the infertile, or at least childless, old women.
- Poor Bloom– not only a cuckold, but basically ostracized as well…
- I should’ve read all the major Shakespeare plays along with The Odyssey before I started reading Ulysses. But having at least recently read the latter, some of the parallels Joyce draws just seem so obvious and overt. Maybe too much so, between the wind, the "cannibalism" and the Hades chapters.
- The funniest moment of the book so far comes when Bloom, having helped the blind boy across the street, thinks what a "queery idea of Dublin" the boy must have… this coming from the man who bounces between helplessly between thoughts of cannibalism (real and metaphorical) and sex, prompted by everything he sees and who was only moments before trying to resist checking to see if the statuary– which aroused him– had an anus or not.
- I don’t know the origin of the word "meh" but was still surprised to see it here!
Some other words and phrases that caught my attention:
- quopped, monkeydoodle, topers, gumjelly lips, slowlier walking, heartscalded, aureoling, corpse of milk, sick knuckly cud, suetfaced
Notable quotables:
"A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord."
"I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn’t squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don’t know what poetry is even."
"Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say."
"wine that "Seems like a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered."
"Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in."
"Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt."
"Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don’t! O! A bone!"
"Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy."
"no one is anything"
Tags:
james joyce, reading, ulysses
3 Comments »
CosmoLinks
September 30, 2008
- ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘The Iliad’ are giving up new secrets about the ancient world - The Boston Globe — Reassessing our view of Ancient Greece and Rome
- Typography for Lawyers — It’s not a joke
- Muxtape — The story of the demise of Muxtape– at least in the incarnation we knew and loved
- Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers — Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.
- The Museum of Conspiracies — Who’s behind it?
- Library Finds — A blog of cool books serendipitously discovered by a librarian
CosmoLinks
September 26, 2008
- NASCAR Cancels Remainder Of Season Following David Foster Wallace’s Death | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source — Apt and funny by being unfunny in a funny way…
All me-stream all the time.
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