http://www.christopherhiggs.org/
Christopher Higgs recommends Tierra Whack's WHACK WORLD, Otomo Yoshihide's ANODE, Marlon James's BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF, and a lunch of cucumber, tomato, red onion, feta, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Futurism and the New Manifesto program
Museum of Modern Art / New York
February 20, 2009.
(on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Founding and Manifesto of Futurism)
So yesterday I was doing some research to find out if anything has been written on the intersection of Deleuzian studies & Finnegans Wake. (Turns out, not much!) Anyway, I came across this public dialog between Jean-Michel Rabaté and Gregg Lambert called “The Future of Theory?” from 2002, occasioned by the publication of Rabaté’s book The Future of Theory.
Among other things, it got me thinking about the relationship between theory and creative writing. Do contemporary creative writers read theory, think about theory, use theory in their creative work? If so, how?
As an added bonus, here’s the intro to their conversation:
Lambert: To begin with I want to recall a line from Difference and Repetition, which forecasts a style of philosophy for the future, regarding what Deleuze describes as “a bearded Mona Lisa and a clean shaven Marx.” This line returned to me, Jean-Michel, as I read your account in The Future of Theory, particularly regarding your description of what you call “an hysterical Hegel.” Now, I always thought Marx was the hysterical one in relationship with Hegel, but here you seem to be saying something different. In the book there is a very dominant thesis that that Theory constantly risks becoming a little bit hysterical, or that its discourse itself is, in some way, hystericizing. Can you talk a bit about your use of the term “hysterical” with regard to the discourse of theory?
You can listen to the whole conversation here.
Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.
Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.
The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
–from The Book of Disquiet
I am rereading Malone Dies
just to mock death a little
and boost my cancerous spirit.I shall soon be quite dead at last
Malone tells us at the beginning
of his story.What a superb opening
what a fabulous sentence.With such a sentence
Malone announces his death
and at the same time delays it.
–from Federman’s blog
Raymond Federman switched tenses last week. And now I really regret not having corresponded with him in time.
I would have liked to tell him how much he inspired my work, how much I admired his imagination, and how much I believe he contributed to the field of experimental literature.
I would have liked to tell him about my experience of reading his collection of postmodern essays, Critifiction, from cover to cover in one sitting at Brennan’s coffeeshop in Columbus, Ohio — how I had only intended to flip through the book while waiting for the #2 bus, but quickly found myself locked into his consciousness — how I needed to read that particular book at that particular time — how it gave me confidence and helped me to form thoughts that I struggled to form on my own — how it made me feel connected at a time when I felt supremely alienated by a creative writing program hellbent on perpetuating conventional realism and marginalizing anyone who attempted otherwise, as if I was not alone in my desire to create unorthodox wordmagic.
I would have also liked to tell him about my experiences reading his fiction…
I am reading these two books right now:
“According to Deleuze style is inextricably intertwined with affirmation and ethics. If we think of style as the style of some subject, ground or concept then we subordinate the event of style to one of its effects. We proceed as though our actions (of speech, thought or movement) were reactions to some determining ground. If we affirm style as style, however, we have no foundation upon which our events are grounded. We would be confronted with the groundlessness of events. And if no event could be given privalege over, or ground, any other event then there could never be a proper style (a style that was adequate or accurate). Rather, the challenge would be to affirm the difference of style eternally. If style were taken to be the style of some point of view it would lose its force as style.”
-from Claire Colebrook’s essay “Inhuman Irony: The Event of the Postmodern” included in the collection Deleuze and Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2000)
Who wrote The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction?
The Stories of John Cheever
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
What if someone made a book by plagiarizing the newspaper; then six years later someone came along and made a book by plagiarizing that first plagiarism? Answer:
Day by Kenneth Goldsmith (The Figures, 2003)
From the “Author”:
“I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity. On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day’s NEW YORK TIMES word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page.” With these words, Kenneth Goldsmith embarked upon a project which he termed “uncreative writing”, that is: uncreativity as a constraint-based process; uncreativity as a creative practice. By typing page upon page, making no distinction between article, editorial and advertisement, disregarding all typographic and graphical treatments, Goldsmith levels the daily newspaper. DAY is a monument to the ephemeral, comprised of yesterday’s news, a fleeting moment concretized, captured, then reframed into the discourse of literature. “When I reach 40, I hope to have cleansed myself of all creativity.”
Day by Kent Johnson (BlazeVox, 2009)
From the “Author”:
What he said.
Receive a full year of the choicest Starcherone new releases (four titles per year, a $96 value), delivered. Our current subscription includes: You Are Here by Donald Breckenridge, The Creepy Girl and other stories by Janet Mitchell, Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows by Leslie Scalapino (Spring 2010), & Shhh: The Story of a Childhood by Raymond Federman (Spring 2010). Substitutions permitted – note preferred titles on your order.*
*including Johannes Goransson’s Dear Ra (a story in flinches), Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others, Sara Greenslit’s The Blue of Her Body, winner of the 3rd Starcherone Fiction Prize, judged by Brian Evenson, and many others…
Kristin Naca’s first poetry collection Bird Eating Bird, winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series mtvU prize as chosen by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa, is now available!
Here is a sample, from part of a part of a poem called “House,” which appears in Octopus 11:
“Suppose there is a bubble that flutters inside you. Or suppose it builds in the plastic air. Or the plastic that is liquid and luminous yet air. Or suppose in reverse the air plastic. And in its sloshing to-and-fro forms teacups of air unsettling its layers. In the teacups is air air not plastic. And teacups are cool and porcelain as anything that’s cool and porcelain.”
