From Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space:

Psychologists–and more especially philosophers–pay little attention to the play of miniature frequently introduced into fairy tales. In the eyes of the psychologist, the writer is merely amusing himself when he creates houses that can be set on a pea. But this is a basic absurdity that places the tale on a level with the merest fantasy. And fantasy precludes the writer from entering, really, into the domain of the fantastic. Indeed he himself, when he develops his facile inventions, often quite ponderously, would appear not to believe in a psychological reality that corresponds to these miniature features. He lacks that little particle of dream which could be handed on from writer to reader. To make others believe, we must believe ourselves. Is it worthwhile, then, for a philosopher to raise a phenomenological problem with regard to these literary “miniatures,” these objects that are so easily made smaller through literary means? Is it possible for the conscious–of both writer and reader–to play a sincere role in the very origin of images of this kind?

Reggie Bush and Kim Kardashian - "Keeping up with the Kardashians"

1. Do you watch reality TV?
–If yes, which shows and why?
–If no, how come?

2. Why do you think reality TV is so popular today?

3. What do you think reality TV reflects about our society?

4. Are there connections between realism in contemporary literature
and realism on TV?

5. Does realism on TV seem “more real” or “less real” or “different real”
than realism in contemporary literature?

Kate Durbin has posted images from Andrea Quinlan’s copy of The Polished You, which Kate produced for Vanessa Place’s Factory Series, which Vanessa describes as her version of Warhol’s practice of having “art-workers” help him create his paintings.

You can read more about the Factory Series here. And you can check out the whole series at Ood Press.

Plus, you, too, can appropriate the text created by Kate created by Vanessa created by Nancy Taylor, by purchasing a copy of The Polished You. After making it your own, you can scan the images of your copy and send them to Kate and she’ll post them.

I love this project for a bunch of reasons, not least of which are the many questions it raises about authorship, ownership, consumption, production, participation, and whether or not the idea of appropriation is merely the evil connotation of personalization.

Someone asked me today whether I would be sad if I published (x) book and it alienated people from my community of origin, lost me their affection, etc. (I was raised a Southern Baptist, attended an extreme fundamentalist Christian school where many of the faculty were educated at places like Bob Jones University for the fourteen years preceding college, broke from those places to become an associate pastor in a more moderate tradition briefly after college, worked briefly in religious publishing, finally gave all of it up entirely, and I haven’t believed in god for almost ten years now.)  I said that the only time I hear from most people from that time is when I publish something they don’t like & then they reach out “in love” to express displeasure and offer correction. Those who really love me, I said, have been in my life all along, regardless of whether or not they disagreed with me. My friend said he was in a similar place in life as me, but that it wasn’t worth it for him to lose the affection of those who have been in his life since he was a child, especially members of his family. READ MORE >

Danielle Dutton, from an interview at BOMBLOG:

Anne K. Yoder: Culturally, are people more open to experimental approaches in other art forms?

Danielle Dutton: On a very basic level, my best guess is that writing asks something different of its reader than listening asks of the listener. Same goes for looking at a painting, even one that might perplex or upset us. To read, to connect words in a difficult syntax, like Stein’s, or make sense of seemingly simple sentences within a maddening paragraph, like Beckett’s, or piece together a narrative that doesn’t seem to add up in a familiar way, like Gladman’s or Woolf’s, the reader has to pay close attention, has to work. I’m not saying that experimental writing is all slog slog slog, that it isn’t rewarding or entertaining, because obviously I think a lot of it is, but that we’ve been trained to think that language itself should work in one way, should be clear, and linear, and should instantly reveal meaning, so when writing confounds those expectations it’s perhaps easy to feel cheated by it, or to chalk it up as wrong, bad, pretentious. I’ve had students who were very open to talking about cubist paintings, for example, but who became furious over Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. We’re taught to read, after all, and perhaps more importantly we’re taught to write (the subject-verb agreement, the five-paragraph essay, the rhyming stanza), whereas no one actually teaches us a particular way to hear or look, and rarely to compose or paint, which maybe, ultimately, means we’re more open when we listen and look. Maybe?