Web Hype
Google Searches & Maurice Blanchot
At his blog, Mathias Svalina’s many screen-captures offer a better argument for Flarf than it ever dreamed of making for itself.
And over at his blog, today Dennis Cooper is all about the amazing Maurice Blanchot.
My speech is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it has suddenly appeared between me, as I speak, and the being I address: it is there between us as the distance that separates us, but this distance is also what prevents us from being separated, because it contains the condition for all understanding. Death alone allows me to grasp what I want to attain; it exists in words as the only way they can have meaning. Without death, everything would sink into absurdity and nothingness. (Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 323-24)
Tags: Dennis Cooper, Mathias Svalina, Maurice Blanchot
For the past two weeks I’ve been plowing through Blanchot’s The Infinite Conversation, and I’m weirdly finding it to be a page-turner. Blanchot always seems to be ten steps ahead of me, but chasing after him is worth it: most of the time I’ll basically get what he’s saying but have a nagging suspicion I must be missing something, but then one particular turn of phrase will make sense to me and – retroactively – also most of what I’d previously been reading, and my response will almost always be a mental “Oh shit,” because I’ll realize that Blanchot has completely dismissed some notion I hadn’t even noticed I held. This happened yesterday, on the subway, when he pointed out to me that the assumption of a “self” centers thought in the same way as does belief in God, so humanism isn’t atheism at all, essentially, and atheism might not even be possible.
What’s weird about Blanchot is how uniformly awful I’ve found his fiction to be. I couldn’t stand his novel “The Most High” (even the title, in English at least, is ludicrous, at least for such a serious book). It reads like he’s trying to be Kafka but seems completely unaware that Kafka is funny. And that’s one weird and unsettling thing about his criticism as well: he’s so penentrating about Kafka most of the time, and he convinces me of everything he says regarding Kafka, but when I put Blanchot aside the first thing I’ll think is, Does he get Kafka is being funny?
For the past two weeks I’ve been plowing through Blanchot’s The Infinite Conversation, and I’m weirdly finding it to be a page-turner. Blanchot always seems to be ten steps ahead of me, but chasing after him is worth it: most of the time I’ll basically get what he’s saying but have a nagging suspicion I must be missing something, but then one particular turn of phrase will make sense to me and – retroactively – also most of what I’d previously been reading, and my response will almost always be a mental “Oh shit,” because I’ll realize that Blanchot has completely dismissed some notion I hadn’t even noticed I held. This happened yesterday, on the subway, when he pointed out to me that the assumption of a “self” centers thought in the same way as does belief in God, so humanism isn’t atheism at all, essentially, and atheism might not even be possible.
What’s weird about Blanchot is how uniformly awful I’ve found his fiction to be. I couldn’t stand his novel “The Most High” (even the title, in English at least, is ludicrous, at least for such a serious book). It reads like he’s trying to be Kafka but seems completely unaware that Kafka is funny. And that’s one weird and unsettling thing about his criticism as well: he’s so penentrating about Kafka most of the time, and he convinces me of everything he says regarding Kafka, but when I put Blanchot aside the first thing I’ll think is, Does he get Kafka is being funny?
those google search cues are awesome
those google search cues are awesome
I’m going to read Maurice now. Once I get some money.
And that screen capture should single-handedly destroy racism.
As it is both incredibly stupid (not the screen-cap, the search results), and incredibly insightful.
You can replace any one of those ethnicities with another, and it wouldn’t actually change anything. Because people are people. No matter what.
I’m sure Donald Trump smells like wet dog on occasion. As does Tao Lin. Or Blake Butler. Or Al Sharpton. Ask Vanessa Williams why she has colored eyes. Or ask me why I have colored eyes…. because even dark brown eyes do not lack color…
I’m going to read Maurice now. Once I get some money.
And that screen capture should single-handedly destroy racism.
As it is both incredibly stupid (not the screen-cap, the search results), and incredibly insightful.
You can replace any one of those ethnicities with another, and it wouldn’t actually change anything. Because people are people. No matter what.
I’m sure Donald Trump smells like wet dog on occasion. As does Tao Lin. Or Blake Butler. Or Al Sharpton. Ask Vanessa Williams why she has colored eyes. Or ask me why I have colored eyes…. because even dark brown eyes do not lack color…
Michael- The only Blanchot I know well is The Writing of the Disaster. It’s exactly the way you describe it. I’ve never attempted his fiction.
Michael- The only Blanchot I know well is The Writing of the Disaster. It’s exactly the way you describe it. I’ve never attempted his fiction.
I smell like a wet dog most of the time. It’s actually the name of my favorite cologne: Le Wet Dogge
I smell like a wet dog most of the time. It’s actually the name of my favorite cologne: Le Wet Dogge
Do people talk about Blanchot much these days? Tom McCarthy mentioned him in an interview, but beyond that I haven’t seen his name appear in any recent, relatively mainstream literary dialogue (I’m sure academics are still all over him). He’s way more engaging than later deconstructionists like Derrida – if only because the difficulty of Blanchot’s prose comes across not as academic opacity but oracular mysteriousness – and easier than someone like Deleuze, for whom you have to learn an entire idiosyncratic vocabulary. If Blanchot’s fiction falls far, far below Kafka’s for me, I think he’s the Kafka of criticism: he gives you riddles to think about and turn over and over. Also, Blanchot is legit: Nazis lined him up against a wall then decided not fire at the last second, so he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about death. Anyway, it was nice to see a post about him.
The Writing of the Disaster I found to be a very difficult book, but the book I’m reading right now, The Infinite Conversation, which Blanchot wrte 20 years earlier, is less opaque, and less dependent on puns that probably don’t survive translation. It’s probably going to help with my eventual re-reads of the later book.
Do people talk about Blanchot much these days? Tom McCarthy mentioned him in an interview, but beyond that I haven’t seen his name appear in any recent, relatively mainstream literary dialogue (I’m sure academics are still all over him). He’s way more engaging than later deconstructionists like Derrida – if only because the difficulty of Blanchot’s prose comes across not as academic opacity but oracular mysteriousness – and easier than someone like Deleuze, for whom you have to learn an entire idiosyncratic vocabulary. If Blanchot’s fiction falls far, far below Kafka’s for me, I think he’s the Kafka of criticism: he gives you riddles to think about and turn over and over. Also, Blanchot is legit: Nazis lined him up against a wall then decided not fire at the last second, so he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about death. Anyway, it was nice to see a post about him.
The Writing of the Disaster I found to be a very difficult book, but the book I’m reading right now, The Infinite Conversation, which Blanchot wrte 20 years earlier, is less opaque, and less dependent on puns that probably don’t survive translation. It’s probably going to help with my eventual re-reads of the later book.
You’re wrong as ever about Flarf, but I do really dig Mathias’s captures and take your enthusiasm as a sign that maybe you’re coming to your senses.
You’re wrong as ever about Flarf, but I do really dig Mathias’s captures and take your enthusiasm as a sign that maybe you’re coming to your senses.
I don’t think those things have anything to do with Flarf; they’re more of a pantyraid.
I don’t think those things have anything to do with Flarf; they’re more of a pantyraid.
I agree.
I agree.
andrew you should do one that starts out with “they’re more of a”
andrew you should do one that starts out with “they’re more of a”
Dennis Cooper is the only person I know who regularly pushes Blanchot. It’s strictly on his account that the name means anything to me. I think the thing is that he comes in and out of translation, and for stuff like theory & philosophy, the translator can make all the difference (not to suggest it doesn’t for other things).
The old Blanchot volumes were Station Hill via Grove (except, wait, am I actually thinking of Robbe-Grillet here? Probably), and I don’t know who translated them, but they’re probably more or less reliable, albeit not in very appealing editions, since they’re ungainly omnibus type books with tiny type.
Anyway, my copy of Writing of the Disaster is one of a few new translations of Blanchot done by Ann Smock and published through University of Nebraska press. They’re expensive little books, but the format is very unimposing and I found the translation highly readable–not that I have anything to compare it to, but still.
Dennis Cooper is the only person I know who regularly pushes Blanchot. It’s strictly on his account that the name means anything to me. I think the thing is that he comes in and out of translation, and for stuff like theory & philosophy, the translator can make all the difference (not to suggest it doesn’t for other things).
The old Blanchot volumes were Station Hill via Grove (except, wait, am I actually thinking of Robbe-Grillet here? Probably), and I don’t know who translated them, but they’re probably more or less reliable, albeit not in very appealing editions, since they’re ungainly omnibus type books with tiny type.
Anyway, my copy of Writing of the Disaster is one of a few new translations of Blanchot done by Ann Smock and published through University of Nebraska press. They’re expensive little books, but the format is very unimposing and I found the translation highly readable–not that I have anything to compare it to, but still.
Yes, Dennis Cooper has talked in ecstatic terms about Blanchot more than once on his blog. “The Gaze of Orpheus” made a big impression on me at one point. His fiction, on the other hand: not yet.
Yes, Dennis Cooper has talked in ecstatic terms about Blanchot more than once on his blog. “The Gaze of Orpheus” made a big impression on me at one point. His fiction, on the other hand: not yet.