In the Roman Triumph it was customary for the general, man of the hour, to have in his chariot a slave bearing a large gold wreath, whose job it was to whisper in the general’s ear that he would some day not be alive, like a buzzing mosquito, a little memo, so that his ego would not lift the chariot to the moon. Wikipedia says that popular belief says this is where we get our memento mori, which literally means “remember (that you have) to die.” Seems a lot like our comedy roasts, a quintessentially American tradition begun at the New York Friars’ club, informed by the attitudes of Jewish comedy, which is obviously where American comedy gets its attitude. Eight of the first ten roasted were Jewish, beginning in 1950, just a few years after the second World War wrapped the human condition in a cloud of dust.
Provincial painter Elías García Martínez painted, sometime in the 19th century, Jesus Christ as mirrored in our minds; or rather, in the accepted manner by which our minds have been irrevocably influenced — the tilt in the head, sullen look, blanketed yet speculative eyes perhaps wondering if He, just before his “Ecco homo” crucifixion, should have simply conceded to the Romans that he (left column of H now broken off) was just a man. Christianity’s solipsist ethos is based off an antagonistic bluff: that this Man was much more than that. A hundred or so years later, one 80-year-old woman Cecilia Giménez, in the Santuario de la Misericordia, a Roman Catholic church in Borja, Spain, voluntarily “restored” the brittle fresco to such a comical simian degree, that the irony of the church’s denial of man’s evolution from ape is felt upon me.
The Map of the System of Human Knowledge
by James Tadd Alcox
Tiny Hardcore Press, 2012
pages / $12 Buy from Tiny Hardcore Press
WhileThe Map of The System of Human Knowledgeis in a lot of small pieces the work can be read as one unified work. Each part is situated on the eponymous map. Formally, each small part of text is tasked with defining a specific category of human knowledge. They do this with disarming simplicity while never addressing or naming the area of the map they represent. Instead, the system of human knowledge is outlined in an oblique or affective way. Each section of the book is a discreet and important section of the map as a whole to the extent that it is revealed in the book. Each piece works as a thing itself, but the effect of the work as a whole is different, as on a map, which allows for some feeling of context and scale. A single piece presented alone does little to evoke the feeling of accumulation that occurs when progressing through the work, but each piece is touching and worth considering on its own.
In “History / Natural / Uniformity of Nature / History of Land and Sea” is in second person. The collection moves easily through points of view. Here the narrator addresses you as you hide in the bathroom from the older woman you picked up at an off season beach bar and you think:
“Maybe there will come a light down from the heavens and lift you bodily from this toilet seat and shake you back to sobriety and shine itself in your face and ask if you’d like a shave. Yes, you’ll say. And you’ll sit in God’s own chair and he will take the blade and warm it under some hot water and ask how you’re getting on and you’ll say: Oh, you know.”
Here salvation or transcendence shows up in a situation of kind of horrifying banality and shows itself as explicitly normal. The “how’re you getting on” is a kindly old-fashioned salutation that you can’t help but answer with a passive platitude of your vague dissatisfaction indicating nothing. It’s a weird fantasy and a weird way to take in stride communicating with this supernatural barber made of light that it works to make the situation satisfying, sad, devastating, even because it is defused. Even in the face of transcendence we’re still “Oh, you know.” READ MORE >
This kid has a project going called the Popper Project, where he plays one Popper etude per week for forty weeks. He plays it wherever he and his cello and laptop are. It’s pretty cool.
5. Dismemberment Plan: Emergency & I
4. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Under the Sea
3. Radiohead: OK Computer
2. Arcade Fire: Funeral
1. Radiohead: Kid A
Turns out I was way off regarding Emergency & I, which ranked only 103rd. But otherwise—not too bad, eh? (Shoulda just gone with more Radiohead!)
Joan of Arc, unsurprisingly, did not crack the Top 200. Also unsurprising, Kanye West is the only black musician in the Top 20! (Outkast adds yet more “diversity” to the list at #35.) And wouldn’t you just love to see a breakdown by color/sex? (Someone get on that!)
In total, 27,981 people voted. Why, that’s almost the number of hipsters who live in Logan Square, Chicago!
Time to set this down in stone, folks! RYAN SCHREIBER’S TASTE IN MUSIC HAS BEEN FOREVER IMMORTALIZED!
For those of you who might be interested, click through for the reading list I’ve assigned the students taking my “Contemporary Literature: 21st Century Horror” course this fall.
I read today that Nintendo Powerwill soon cease publication. I haven’t bought or looked at a copy in 18 years, but from 1988 until about 1994, it was one of my favorite magazines. When I was a kid I really loved Nintendo.
I also loved drawing (still do), and I learned a lot about it from Nintendo Power. One of my favorite parts of the magazine was the comic strip “Howard and Nester”:
Last weekend, William Giraldi’s New York Times review of two new books by Alix Ohlin blew up the literary twittersphere (which is to say that literally tens of people were talking about it). The discussion about Giraldi’s incredibly mean-spirited critique coincided with a debate about niceness vs. honesty in reviewing, started by an intriguing (though, in my opinion, somewhat alarmist) article at Slate. But Giraldi’s piece is irrelevant to the nice vs. honest debate and completely worthless to either side of the argument, since his review is not only dickish, but also dishonest.
This is a little late (apologies), but those of you in the Chicagoland area can, today and Thursday, see Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) at the Siskel. I wrote a bit about that movie here; it’s one of the best ever made.
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The Map of the System of Human Knowledge
