In Real Life
Last week, Blake was in town to give a reading. The first iteration of my intro for him detailed our friendship, how virtual it is, and all this hoop-la reminds me – again – of the fucked up nature of the intersection of our virtual writer-avatar selves v. real personhood. Most of the writers I have relationships with, I barely know. Most of the writers I know, I’ve spent less than a day with in real life. Most of the writers I have friendships with, we met online, interact online, and I know very very little about who they are, what they do everyday, what they care about aside from what they post online. We may interact regularly – daily, weekly, whatever – but they’re still not real, not until we meet face to face, and still, it’s within the artificial space of a conference or a reading, so it’s not really real. And yet, they must be real people with real cares. I know almost nothing about them.
destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy
Why is empathy more important than affect to most readers (/film viewers)? Why would you want to vicariously experience something through a character rather than experiencing [the thing] yourself? When someone says, “I like this because I can relate to it,” doesn’t that just insist upon a passivity, a refusal to actively do? In 2012 we launch our quest to destroy representation that aims at empathy. It doesn’t matter what something means, all that matters is that we are feeling things at the zero-degree. Fuck the distance, the gap.
kiddies, need 2 steal a paper on Moby Dick?? u can have mine 4 free!!!
The Multivalent God of Moby Dick
by you!!! <3
Herman Melville’s complex renderings of god convey the influence of a dichotomous religious upbringing. On Melville’s mother’s side was the Dutch Calvinist church, with its focus on man’s sins and damnation. From his father, he gleaned the more liberal values of Transcendentalism and Unitarianism: a faith in man’s essential goodness.1 “We incline to think that God cannot explain his own secrets,” he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1854, “and that He would like a little information upon certain points himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us.”2 In Moby Dick (1851), Melville employs multiple symbols, including the ocean and the whale, to illustrate a god in flux. God is portrayed as an entity, which, like the whale, is not completely visible or knowable to man in its entirety. God’s existence, the shape it takes, depends on the perspective of the human who perceives it. Each character’s view of god is molded by his own innate attitude or constitution, as well as the external events of his life. In turn, a weave is created, wherein god and man are both contributors to the shape of a man’s destiny, as well as his perspective of a supreme being.
The unpublished concept notes for a book on social media marketing
A Google Document authored by Adam Humphreys and Erik Stinson that had not been opened for 9 months:
Socraft
A book for people who already get it.
“What is the big smoke package?”
By Adam and Erik
Insight:
Most books about social media are written for clueless older MBA guys, by slightly less clueless, slightly younger MBA guys. They are used to selling things for Proctor and Gamble and started their personal blog in 2009.
The Day the Comments Died
Deadgod writes a memoir.
Bookslut starts talking about rap.
The openended snippets eat their young.
Poets have sex.
You try to “like” a Denver omelet.
The omelet gets an MFA.
Jimmy Chen starts juxtaposing billboards on a highway.
Some of the drivers are menstrual.
Big Other blows up.
Montevidayo blows up.
Submishmash combusts.
Ploughshares raises their submission fee to $400 a word.
Bookslut starts talking about rap.
The openended snippets eat their young.
Poets have sex.
You try to “like” a Denver omelet.
The omelet gets an MFA.
Jimmy Chen starts juxtaposing billboards on a highway.
Some of the drivers are menstrual.
Big Other blows up.
Montevidayo blows up.
Submishmash combusts.
Ploughshares raises their submission fee to $400 a word.
Obama hits a kill switch.
There’s no one left worth killing.
Brandon Gorrell adds the “Scott” back to his name.
Everyone else is still named Jonathan.
There’s no one left worth killing.
Brandon Gorrell adds the “Scott” back to his name.
Everyone else is still named Jonathan.
AWP is MLA.
MLA is Fur Con.
Syllabi are lonely.
Experimental literature is words.
People “like” their own reflections.
The reflections unsubscribe.
Shame dies.
Fear lives.
The reflections unsubscribe.
Shame dies.
Fear lives.
BOOKS + BEER: Dune and Budweiser
Why? Because a student handed me the book and suggested I read it? No. Students routinely want me to read books and they are usually this one, or Neil Gaiman and I’m not reading any fucking Neil Gaiman. I’m an adult. I read it because so many of my students are writing Sci Fi lately. From a genre trickle to categorical gusher. Could be my doing this semester. I instructed them to write a QUEST. I think some of their brains went quest=genre, though I showed them many, many quests that were just like two dudes trying to get to Hollywood or the latest Jennifer Aniston Must-Get-A-Man flick or just some guy swimming away into cognitive dissonance or a newlywed couple needing to rob McDonald’s but no/no/no they go genre, fantasy or Sci Fi. That’s OK. I mean we had no zombies. (Best zombie film to show students about genre irrelevant—characters matter.) I could be like some in academia (and literary publishing) and say no to genre. OR…I could admit many literary works are indeed gestures of genre…OR I could/should meet the students half way and feel a need to increase my knowledge base on Sci Fi, admit I haven’t read Sci Fi in many years (is Vonnegut Sci Fi?) and so feel a pedagogical necessity to read something and Dune is on all the lists and I know Sting is in the movie version (though I’ve never seen it and have no plans to) and so here we go into the box, the hour glass, the sand.
Three things we know: 1. You can show all the patriotic commercials in the world, but Anheuser Busch is still a company owned by Belgium. 2. Women die when they get near August Anheuser Busch IV. 3. Budweiser is Ok to drink. Not great. Not absolutely bad. (Fuck off, beer snobs, we know how much you blar this beer and, honestly, it’s a little ridiculous.) But OK, an OK beer, in certain situations…
UTOPIAN VISIONS OF KESHA
STEP ONE ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’
I DECLARE WAR ON REALISM, I DECLARE WAR ON A WORN-OUT JOY, I DECLARE WAR ON EVERYTHING.
SOMETIMES YOU GET DRUNK EVERY NIGHT FOR TWO WEEKS, SOMETIMES YOU MAKE OUT WITH A DUDE IN A CAB AND THEN YOU END UP DOING DRUGS AND PULLING YOUR DICK OUT IN A BAR YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU BUY MORE WHISKEY AND GO BACK TO YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU FUCK AROUND WITH THE DUDE IN YOUR LOFT WHILE YOUR ROOMMATE’S FRIEND SNORES ON THE COUCH BENEATH YOU, SOMETIMES YOU DON’T GO HOME FOR 36 HOURS, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET THAT YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO OTHER THAN GOING TO WORK AND GETTING DRUNK & LAID, SOMETIMES YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MANIFEST THE FUTURE SIMPLY BY MAKING THE DECLARATION, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT POP MUSICK IS A FUTURE THAT WE’RE ALL AFRAID OF, AND THE POP MUSIC THE LITERATI ARE NOT AFRAID OF IS ONLY FALSE, SOMETIMES WE ALL KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALREADY OVER AND FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS THING CALLED CAPITALISM? IT’S STUPID. THERE’S A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TELL YOU WHY IT’S STUPID, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN, SOMETIMES YOU KNOW THERE’S FINALLY A CLASS WAR GOING ON AND LIFE STARTS TO MAKE SENSE FOR THE FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO SOMEBODY AND YOU DON’T REMEMBER THEIR NAME, SOMETIMES YOUR BEST FRIENDS SEND YOU THE BEST TEXT MESSAGES YOU’VE EVER READ IN YOUR LIFE, EVERYTHING IS SURPRISING, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN REMEMBER, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU’VE FORGOTTEN AND YOU FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT.
SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON’T DO ANYTHING, SOMETIMES YOU TRY TO MAKE PANCAKES AND YOU USE BAKING SODA INSTEAD OF BAKING POWDER AND THEY TASTE LIKE POISON, SOMETIMES YOU READ NICK LAND ESSAYS ON THE BUS AND YOU ACTUALLY LAUGH OUT LOUD, SOMETIMES YOU KEEP FORGETTING TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF NIETSZCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY SO YOU CAN PUT IT ON YOUR PHONE TO READ WHILE YOU DRINK ALONE AT THE BAR, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET ABOUT LITERATURE COMPLETELY BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO BUSY FUCKING WITH SOME CONCEPTUAL EXPERIMENT THAT ASSUAGES YOU OF ALL MORALITY OR GUILT, SOMETIMES THIS MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE WRITTEN OR READ, EVER.
LADY GAGA IS A FACADE.
LIFE IS ONLY FLOATING. FAME IS IRRELEVANT. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. MOMENTUM AS CONTRAST TO REALITY. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? WE CAN GO ANYWHERE WE WANT TO. THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS TO DIE BEFORE WE CAN REST.
I WANT TO PAY A LOT FOR PREMIUM DIGITAL CONTENT
let me pay for premium online content.
i tried to get a digital-only subscription to the new yorker. but it doesn’t exist. i want it in my car service when i leave my advertising agency at 10:30 pm. i am always busy. i need speed and i desire information. i want to have access to that content in a fluid way.
i would pay 100 dollars a year for a digital subscription to the new yorker. 30 dollars more than the physical paper subscription price.
i want to read a digital version of vanity fair on my phone and not have to throw away a physical magazine. when i am in the hamptons, i want this very much.
let me pay.
Barrelhouse Online Workshops
Can writing be taught? Can writing be taught online? Is the Internet a valid place to workshop poetry?
After hours and hours of editorial GChats with Melissa Broder, I’ve come to think that it’s not just possible, but that the Internet is a great place for this kind of work. There is something about the detachment of not being present, combined with the fluidity of the format. It makes people more concise, more practical, and more willing to hear differing perspectives.
So I’m really interested to hear how Barrelhouse’s online workshops go. Our own beloved Mike Young is facilitating one now. Don’t nobody know no poetry like Mike, neither — so if you want more than THIS AMAZING LIST of “moves in contemporary poetry”, you should consider giving his online class a look. The 8-week sessions starts on October 24.
Has anyone done an online class before and was it good?
Hacked by Tiger-M@te
Regular readers of literary magazines (read: hopeful authors) were surprised this weekend to find their favorite literary magazines nearly completely destroyed by a vindictive and highly talented hacker operating on the other side of the globe. Most notably, Third Coast, Monkeybicycle, and La Petitie Zine were hacked this weekend, suffering from the attentions of infamous Bangladeshi hacker Tiger-M@te, who is responsible for many high-profile world wide web hacks. Earlier this year, he brought down Google’s Bangladeshi site, and now he is in the process of defacing popular, highly regarded websites like resellerproductlist.com and terrysdigitalproductstore.com.
Poetgramming
I have been paying attention lately to the work of Adam Parrish, who teaches occasional courses on programming as it applies to creative writing at NYU. I have not taken this course, but would love to hear from anyone who has. I have been interested lately in the idea of using programming functions as aids to writing fiction and poetry. Some of my recent work has explored the aid of small scripts to randomize and change variables over constant frequencies.
Thoughts on Masha Tupitsyn’s LACONIA, cultural criticism, the excesses of a text, minimalist critique, and living vicariously through film
When I first read Masha Tupitsyn’s hybrid-genre book Beauty Talk and Monsters (Semiotexte), I was completely floored by it. So I was excited to read her new book LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film (Zero Books)—a book of aphoristic film and media commentary written in the spirit of cultural observers like Chris Marker. There is something beautiful about Masha’s way of “reading” culture, how she honors the connections and resonances of the media she encounters, the way it is processed, assimilated and re-invented when it is filtered through her perception; intermingling with specific memories and preoccupations. Masha integrates the subjective and the critical in a way that demonstrates the specificity of our encounters with media. Both Beauty Talk and LACONIA could be described as a literary approach to film criticism, but it’s also fitting to describe the works as a cinematic approach to literary writing. In Beauty Talk, narrative and a criticism are tightly interwoven. As stories, the essays are stunning; as critical analysis, sharp. Masha’s recent book LACONIA reminds me of the ways in which the viewer is also a meaning-maker, a participant critic.
#481. IN AMERICA, WHEN YOU ATTACK THE CULTURE INDUSTRY, YOU ARE CALLED CYNICAL. BUT IT SHOULD BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND. *
“Postmodern irony means never having to say you are sorry. Or that you are serious.”
–Suzanne Moore, Looking for Trouble
Cultural studies is on the rise. The canon is dying, or at least is seriously ill. Critics are now turning their attention to the media that surrounds them—sitcoms, Hollywood films, magazines, pop music, kitsch, reality TV, fashion trends, internet memes. Repulsed by the academic elitism of cultural criticism as well as the notion that there are certain texts that are unworthy of the critic’s attention, the proponents of cultural studies have launched a vitriolic attack on the hierarchical distinction between high culture and low culture. The exclusion of “low” and popular culture and the privileging of refined culture and art that caters to a specialized/trained audience has its problems: it reinforces the idea that art is an “autonomous” institution while implicitly promoting classism, eliminating the perspective of lower class folk and ignoring subaltern cultural production and engagement (Adorno famously denounced jazz music).
Online Literature Calender at Zine-Scene
Zine-Scene is a website devoted to promoting online literature through journal reviews, author spotlights, and its own literary quarterly, which reprints fiction that previously appeared in print only. Keeping with this mission we have launched an Online Literature Calendar. The calendar displays the release dates of online literary magazines and makes finding new literature easy and user friendly.
“The Writer”
Carson Mell has a story in the new Electric Literature, which I bought because he and Lynne Tillman were published in it. I bought a copy of that and all the Supermachines (which are at least as great as everyone says they are because it’s true) and so I felt really indie lit and hip and stuff for about a week on the bus with people wondering “oh that must be the contemporary literature I hear so much about never” and then I fucked around and started re-reading a book that was written ninety years ago and which made me feel I could climb a building if I only wanted to.
Anyway I don’t much care for Mell’s fiction and I thought the publication quality of Electric Literature was quite poor considering how cool their website is, but then they do manage to pay their contributors and obviously care much more about the web with their apps and all, so maybe that makes up for it. I dunno nothing. Lynne Tillman’s thing was great of course. All in all though, I was underwhelmed. But I still think Carson Mell is a genius at making these videos, so who gives a shit I guess.
Pleasing the Spiders OR Google: Oprah+[current event], Facebook
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<meta name=”keywords” content=”search engines, better than people, angry writer, depression”>
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<h2>Pleasing the Spiders OR Google: Oprah + [current event], Facebook</h2>
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<p>Google’s index is made up of billions of web pages, making it the largest web page database, and possibly the largest knowledge repository, in the world. Google currently handles 70% of all search engine queries. As of October 2010 Google has scanned over 15 million books. The term “what to read” is searched 60,500 times monthly. What happens when humans are no longer necessary tastemakers? Being a hipster will no longer mean having access to early Domino and the Cheese Willys tracks. Being a hipster will mean having access to something–anything–not catalogued by Google. (Don’t panic, hipsters; I made up Domino and the Cheese Willys)</p>
<p>Search engines utilize top-secret algorithms to provide users with relevant information based on search terms. Anything online is susceptible to Google’s search spiders, which includes every story, every poem, every essay ever posted online. Is the next step in creative writing then to produce content with the search engine in mind? Will meta-data be its own keyword rich bank to be used as bait for inbound links? Will every other word be hyperlinked in hopes of attracting returning links? What will this do to our already dwindling attention span? Or, more optimistically, have our attention spans evolved to properly accept so much stimuli?</p>
<p>But despite the obvious cringe factor (ads in eBooks frightens me), I am less pessimistic about what will come from the first author to truly tap into the growing eBook medium. Think what Mark Z. Danielwski would have done with House of Leaves if the eBook platform was viably open for development. Until something big happens, though, I fear we will have to endure a lot of failed attempts (no hyperlink necessary; use your imagination).</p>
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<p>This is a gust post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. His goal is to post at a different blog every few days beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. He would love to compromise your integrity for a day. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb.</p>
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Luddites were people too
The Luddites were a group of British textile workers in the 19th century who destroyed their newly automated mechanized looms. They were afraid of the advancement of technology and how it would impact their jobs.
The Luddites derived their name from Ned Ludd. According to the mythology, in 1779, Ludd smashed two knitting frames, either because of a “fit of passion” or because he was lazy and didn’t want to work or because some kids were making fun of him.
From then on, if a loom was destroyed and/or sabotaged, the workers would blame “Ned Ludd.”
By the time the Luddites formed in 1811, Ned Ludd was a mythological figure.
Ned Ludd may or may not have ever existed.
Ned Ludd may have been a lazy dude who didn’t want to fucking weave anymore, so he smashed his loom. And the Luddites named themselves after him. READ MORE >
