Literary Doppelgangers: Nietzsche’s moustache and bison
Whenever I feel bad I like to browse pictures of Nietzsche because he always looks so miserable. Missouri loves company, so I don’t understand why AWP isn’t held in St. Louis. But I digress. His aphorisms cut nobody any slack. I feel if I met him at a bar, he’d punch me in the face. I think of his deathbed photo and wonder if he did any last minute bargaining with a God he killed for a nice tagline. (The Gay Science, in which he says “God is dead,” is not about anal sex — bear with me, I’m setting up a pun.) Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?” he also asks. This is supposed to be a quick doppelganger post, so I won’t get too into it, I just think it’s funny how atheists (myself included) seem resentful towards a God they don’t believe in. I guess I’m technically agnostic, which is a philosophical way of saying I have no fucking clue. If there is a God, I don’t think he’s worried about the membership, so I figure either way I’m doing okay. So God bless America, and enjoy the rest of your weakend.
15 x 15
Not too long ago I posted by request a list of 15 ‘towering literary artists’ who personally and historically seem important. Most of them have published 8 books or more, most of which in each case I’ve read. Here are my favorites of each of those authors, for fun. Some are very close calls. What are yours?
David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistess
Explain Yourself: Peter Berghoef in ROBOT MELON #9
[I’m starting a new weekly feature, in which I scour my favorite journals and pick something that I like and want “explained” (I will accept anything for an explanation). I won’t be alerting people when I make the selection though, so it’ll be interesting to see who has their ears on. If I pick you and you respond before the post scrolls off the page, I will contact you (if contact info is provided) and send you a gift in the mail. Like a book or something.] [PS: When the words, “EXPLAIN YOURSELF” appear, everyone has to clap. Like a game show.][PPS: Some weeks there will be extra challenges, like “The Apologist” and “The Rebuttal,” in which random commenters can steal the gift . . . but that will come later. This being the first week, I want to keep it simple.]
So what the heck is this awesomeness:
the first time I believed I had Cadillacs running for office in my veins
freshly anointed with new headdresses
hats the neck can’t support
stop signs on top of stop signs
It’s good, right?
If Peter Berghoef is reading, would you please EXPLAIN YOURSELF! [applause!]
Ich bin stumm (I’m dumb)
World's heaviest Haut or Not
In +90% of my posts, I do at least some research, usually a simple google, a quick wikipedia read, or even a quicker visit to dictionary dot com. In talking about these authors in this public “Land of ideas” sculpture in Germany, I was set on googling each one — reading up on their bibliography to show how smart I was — but then decided to actually be honest and write this post without doing any research. What’s more important in journalism: the ostensible objective truth about a subject, or the actual truth about one’s subjectivity? I don’t know the answer, I just felt like using the question mark. I also recently learned the keyboard shortcuts for the umlaut, so my fingers are ready. Sigh, what follows is all I know.
The Best of the National Book Awards
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
A Very Brief History of the Nobel Prize in Literature
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who gives out the Nobel Prizes. He's kind of handsome, right? Got that "silver fox" thing going on.
When the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature is announced next month, he or she will join a club more exclusive than just about any other in the world. You know those clubs at Ivy League schools, with names like “The Scone and Pudding Society,” where it’s a bunch of white guys who dress in costumes and make up silly songs and photograph each other naked? And how, you know, the members are, against all odds, actually proud of being in it? Instead of feeling kind of dirty and ashamed? Even more exclusive than that.
One thing’s for sure: Of all the 105 women and men who have won this prestigious award, none of them will ever be forgotten. Except for most of them. After the jump, we take a look at some of the past winners, and how they changed…the very world itself. Except for the ones who didn’t. Which, like I said, is a lot of them.
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature: Let’s Bet Cash Money on This
This award will go to someone you have never heard of, or a duck.
Next month, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced, and literary types have already started speculating, and even betting, on who might be this year’s winner. This is pointless, because the winner is going to be, in all likelihood, an anarcho-syndicalist playwright or pamphleteer from Moldova or something like that. It might be a duck, as long as it’s a duck that likes Gramsci but not America or television. It probably will not be anyone you have ever heard of. But you might pretend you have after he or she wins, if you, like me, are kind of a dick. The winner will definitely be alive, per Nobel rules, at the time of the nomination, though. Sorry, Updike!
One thing is for sure: the announcement will catapult the winner to worldwide reality show-level fame, and magazines will speculate about his or her sexual orientation, and nobody will be able to stop talking about the latest Nobelist for years to come. Remember when that happened with Dario Fo? And Elfriede Jelinek? Huh? Huh? Anyway, we discuss the bookmakers’ odds for what might, sadly, be the most exciting contest of the year…after the fucking jump!
Bolaño fans will be interested to see this interview with translator Natasha Wimmer over at the blog of the Center for the Art of Translation.
Scott Esposito: First I wanted to ask you about these new Bolaño texts they’re digging up, particularly El Tercer Reich (”The Third Reich”) and the supposed sixth book of 2666.
Natasha Wimmer: I’ve read “The Third Reich” (and in fact, it looks like I’ll be translating it, though I have yet to sign on the dotted line). It’s about an elaborate board game called “The Third Reich” (Bolaño was a great fan of war games), it takes place on the Costa Brava, and it pits a German tourist against an enigmatic South American who rents paddle boats on the beach. I loved it.
I haven’t read the purported sixth section of 2666, or even really heard much about it. Maybe it will remain forever ghostly—the spectral answer to all our 2666 questions.
THE END IS NIGH!!!!
REMINDER: Way back on Labor Day I announced that The Agriculture Reader (which I co-edit) would be offering discounted copies of Issue #3 until the end of September. And now the end is nigh. The arts annual, published in a limited edition of 600, usually sells for $14 per copy, but is still available for ten bucks for two more days. Please, if you’re still thinking about supporting us, take advantage of our sale-price. We’ll both be glad you did. For more details about the issue, you can click through to our page or to my original post here about the sale.