Mess Section, anti-fragile edition
Nassim Taleb has posted a table illustrating his concepts of fragility, robustness & anti-fragility. Context: “This seems quite a universal traits of languages (I tried Mediterranean, classical, and Semitic languages),where the notion of antifragility is totally absent.” :: Noah Cicero gives a short history of philosophy. :: Jonathon Keats tries to make porn for God. :: Sententia #3 wants novel pitches/excerpts. :: gifs get subtle. :: “I often heard [D.W. Griffith] say that he would rather have written one page of Leaves of Grass than to have made all the movies for which he received world acclaim.”
Unbearable Intimacies and the Lives of Others: Two Memoirs
Until recently, there was only one memoir, that isn’t even a memoir, I truly loved—an essay by Cheryl Strayed called The Love of My Life which originally appeared in The Sun. I read that essay often because it is unbearably intimate, the writing is impeccable, and the essay, the memoir, the writing speaks to something greater than the story being told.
I don’t read a lot of memoir which is kind of strange because I am nosy. I love reading personal blogs and I’m fairly obsessed with reality TV where I can witness unbearably intimate moments in people’s lives even if they (and I) are fully aware the subjects are choosing which intimate moments to expose. Memoir is much the same way. Like reality TV, a memoir doesn’t provide the reader with unfettered access to a writer’s life. That access is measured; it is controlled. We may learn private, intimate things about someone’s life but only because they want us to know those things. There’s a deceptive quality to the honesty of memoir.
Even though I find similarities between memoirs and one of my favorite indulgences, I have long stayed away from reading memoirs because I haven’t quite understood what compels people to divulge their secrets. It’s one thing to dress the truth up as fiction, but to share the truth as truth is another matter entirely, one that confounds me.
I have no idea how to review a memoir because you’re not only reviewing the writing or how someone conveys their recollections of some aspect of their life, you’re also, in some ways reviewing the life lived. That makes me uncomfortable. Who am I to judge? Who am I to traipse through a writer’s memories. They’ve chosen to expose themselves, yes, but have they chosen to have that exposure dissected?
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November 10th, 2010 / 1:30 pm
November 10th, 2010 / 1:30 pm
5 serve meat over mashed
11. A blue phone told an apple told a little bird and the little bird told me Willow Springs would really like to leer some glow right now. You can submit online. Stop touching your lovely forehead–submit!
5.
Word of mouth, true word of mouth – the good stuff, that actually sends the recommendee skipping off to the nearest bookshop or library – involves the impassioned retelling of a story.
No, not really, Mr. Gibbs. Not necessarily what word-of-mouth means at all, not when someone is sharing a book with me, or me with them. A plot outline? A re-telling of the story? Does anyone here (especially here) recommend books based on words, sentences, worlds created outside context of “what’s happening?” It will fuck your brain. Is that a story re-telling? And how do you recommend books of poetry based on story? Oh man, it’s about this bird that meets McDonald’s fries and they have a kid named Inability of Man to Truly Communicate. Word-of-mouth, the spreading of art by talk/phone/net (fuck Twitter)/blar is delivered in many varieties. I like a lot of books I don’t understand as “story.” It seems reductive, I’m just saying.
55. Aimee Bender gives a pep talk to the Battle Star Galactica people, I mean the NaNoWriMoMoFoSho peeps.
555. And Lucy Corin said, “I love the days I get to write forward from just my head, but those days are hard earned.”
14. Hey flashers! I know you’re there because I keep seeing you naked. Nice penis! Funky loins! Also don’t forget about the Rose Metal Press Fifth Annual Short Short Chapbook contest judged by Kim Chinquee. You miss 100% of the cigars you never unwrap, or something about Wayne Gretzky, something.
Blake Butler—
In light of Roxane’s review, The Paris Review have kindly offered a discounted 1-year subscription to HTMLGiant readers: $28 for 4 issues, with the code GIANT12 entered during checkout via their website over the next two weeks.
9
The Cliché, Walking about Town
I’ve gone to a few readings over the past couple weeks, good readings, readings which—for the most part—I’ve enjoyed. But at these readings, I discovered the firm cliché that I inhabit and perpetuate: the nervous writer, fraught with agoraphobia and insecurity.
I’m a nervous person, yes. I’m an anxious person, naturally. And I’m insecure, obviously. In most social situations where the social circle is greater than three in number (myself included), I perform the role of quirky, smart, anxious writer. I make myself smaller—usually by sitting with my legs under me, my body squeezed into a tight, strange shape. When I speak, I speak either too gregariously—making bold statements about this or that, generally unsubstantiated by anything but my own opinion and a few writers/thinkers I can quote with ease, old stand-bys like Nabokov or Kafka, Adorno or Bataille, if I’m feeling particularly insecure, I’ll go with Benjamin or Baudrillard or Baudelaire, people who make me seem smart—or I mumble to the point of inaudibility.
9 1/2 Lives, Or Not
Once upon a time I thought Federico Fellini’s 8½ was a perfect movie. The perfect movie. Of course, that’s ridiculous. There is no perfect anything. But one thinks one knows a thing or even two. That’s much of how we get along in the world, from one opinion to the next, doing much selecting, tuning your life to what you’d like to see reflected from out there. I’ve had a lot of perfect movies in my life and now they’re just movies I like and there are a lot of them. Opinions are a pretty kind of paste for brain bricks, and we a bunch of bricoleurs.
Aokigahara Suicide Forest
At VBS, a 20+ min. documentary on Japan’s most popular spot for suicide, at the base of Mt. Fuji.
Blake Butler—
At The Faster Times, James Yeh provides an excellent & funny long gmail chat interview with former-Giant contributor, still-Giant-for-life Sam Pink on the occasion of his new novel PERSON from Lazy Fascist Press, which I can’t wait to get my hands on.