The Nazis & Our Critical Consciousness
I just got done reading Piotr Uklanski’s monograph, The Nazis. Reading here, of course, simply refers to the act of looking, as there are no words in the book (until an index at the end). Uklanski is an artist, a Polish photographer. Although, similar to my own approach to photography, Uklanski doesn’t take photos per se. Rather, he’s sort of a curator, a collector, highlighting, as the New York Times says, “Conceptual attitudes” (the superfluous capital letter on conceptual is NYT, btw).
The Nazis is a book that bears 247 pages of appropriated images of Hollywood, and prevalent European, actors decked out in Nazi regalia. What I’m interested in probing here are the following things: 1) why are there enough stills for this collection to be possible? and 2) why was I interested enough in this book to go through the process of requesting it from WorldCat?
Expanded Literature Part 1: Internet Literature
While eating breakfast the other day, I thought it might be funny to go to ask.com and pose the question, “What is internet literature?” I thought it’d cause a few giggles, and I thought that perhaps it would result in something I could screen-cap to submit for Internet Poetry. I mean, the fact that I typed “askjeeves.com” into my browser alone I found to be ironic, because when I think of AskJeeves, I think of 2002.
Well, AskJeeves is now just Ask.com, I guess, and it turns out that the first search result actually proved relevant. The page is from February 18th, 2004–by now this should read as antiquated, right? The speed of technology arguably renders us far further into the future; between 2004 and now–than any time before. But despite a few caveats, the definition here seems to me far more interesting in consideration of capabilities than anything that would seem to actually define “internet literature.”
The page suggests the following list as a definition of hypertext literature:
Not A-Z, but I-Me
There’s a scene in that movie High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby book, I guess, which I didn’t read) where John Cusack’s character reveals to Dick, his record store employee (played quite brilliantly by Todd Louiso), that he (Cusack) was in the midst of reorganizing his record collection–in autobiographical order.
I’ve always loved that idea. READ MORE >
CASE STUDY: CITY-HUNTER by CF
CF is a comic artist whose work, according to his blurb on PictureBox, “is marked by a precise, electric line and unique visions of parallel modes of being.” A fairly apt description. CF has been “blowing up” in the comix world lately, primarily, perhaps, as an artist working within the realm of “art comics,” a departure from the overly-stale “indie comics” zeitgeist that has peppered the cultural consciousness of the literate for the last two decades, slowly permeating the mainstream via film adaptations of Daniel Clowes and the McSweeney’s/New Yorker “reign of terror” brought about by Chris Ware and the ever-present Jimmy Corrigan.
CF’s major work has been his currently in progress Powr Mastrs, of which the first three (of a projected six, though I’m hoping it ends up being far more than six) have been published to major acclaim. I definitely recommend picking them up, as they’re beautiful books with insane stories that come from space, holding a sort of parallel early-80s Heavy Metal euro-comics narrative attitude with a specifically unique art style that CF himself pioneered (and is now aped to varying degrees, but as someone who likes the style, I’m mostly ok with that).
However, what I’m interested in today is a close-reading of a zine that CF created, CITY-HUNTER. Frank Santoro, another fantastic comics guy, describes the “zine” as follows:
Lots of backgrounds with “Main Dice” the main character swinging down the street. Lots of “straight talk” from the editor of the Fantasy Empire Magazine company. It’s like CF made his own b&w action comic and worried more about how the indicia and logo would look than the story – so it’s kind of perfect.
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April 22nd, 2011 / 1:43 pm
April 22nd, 2011 / 1:43 pm
Word Spaces (20): Terese Svoboda
I bought the $25 desk at a museum sale in California. The rolltop doesn’t function, one of the legs is coming off, and I have to pry the drawers open, but I like how the desk part slides a little forward. It makes me feel as if I always have secret extra space, the way our apartment includes a long frosted glass window with a light behind to suggest that there’s another room. The French doors open to the living room/dining room/everywhere else room. A Murphy bed fronted with bookshelves folds down beside the desk for optimum concentration. My office is essentially the bedroom. I don’t know what to say about that.
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August 17th, 2010 / 10:03 am
August 17th, 2010 / 10:03 am
A computer of one’s one: a virtual reflection on Virginia Woolf
Six months ago, I was in Cambodia, where I saw houses that jarred me out of complacency, thinking over Woolf’s call “that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry” (105). You can read about it here.
Three days ago, my laptop bid me adieu in a very aburpt fashion, unexpected, though even if it had been expected, that wouldn’t have changed a thing, hopefully, it’ll be ok, it’s being “diagnosed” now, but over the last few days, I’ve reframed Woolf’s concept of “room” to fit today’s modern sensibilities.
Word Spaces (19): Lee Rourke
We bought this place in east London last year. The study isn’t finished yet, so I do most of my writing on the dining room table. It mostly always looks like this – unless our two cats have been on the table and knocked the books on to the floor, which is something they do from time to time. I know they enjoy doing this when I am out of the room. It doesn’t bother me that much, because cats will be cats. I didn’t write The Canal in this room; we moved here after I had finished it. I wrote The Canal in various cafés and pubs in Hackney, east London and I’m afraid I didn’t take photos of them.
I write longhand and then edit as I type it up on to my laptop. My laptop is quite old now and sometimes gets very tired, but it still does the job, so I can’t really complain. READ MORE >
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August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
Postscript to Word Space (18): Andrew Ervin
[Andrew Ervin is still the author of Extraordinary Renditions, coming this fall from Coffee House Press and which Publisher’s Weekly recently named their “Pick of the Week.”]
Since February, when this original Word Spaces feature ran, I have decided to move back to Philadelphia. I thought it might be interesting to look at what happens when one’s writing area is dismantled, when it stops being what it is. It’s kind of cool and kind of terrifying at the same time.
Here are the crop circles that the buckling stacks of milk-crate bookshelves left in the rug.
“Stop throwing pigeons”
(thanks to Michael Schaub, Bookslut editor and occasional HTMLG contributor)
For What It’s Worth
There were 127 respondents to my survey about publishing, but the free account at Survey Monkey limits results to 100 people. All the other responses are sitting behind some Internet wall, trying to get me to spend $19.95.
So, below, are the responses I got for free. A very hearty thank you to everyone who participated. I won’t argue that this survey was perfectly-composed, but it was at least anecdotally helpful for me, and thought provoking. I assume I’ll be honing these questions over time and coming back with more questions.