October 29th, 2010 / 9:33 am
Mean & Snippets
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“Is anything more tiresome, in fiction, than the problems of sensitive adolescents?”

— John Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse”

32 Comments

  1. Student—

      “You’re a pretty unimaginative realist.”

      –two sentences earlier in the same letter Deleuze wrote to a harsh critic. Also, I assume you understand that D.’s talking about identity politics, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this quote. But good try!

  2. Guest—

      Why does your particular version of “reality” have to come into it?

  3. phmadore—

      Argumentative writers telling other argumentative writers that they should write more as a means of not arguing.

  4. Mr. Marcus—

      The problems of single white women living in urban enclaves. I could give a fuck. If they would just gobble down a big black cock every once in a while they wouldn’t be so angsty.

  5. Tim Horvath—

      Finally, a Halloween costume concept I can execute at the eleventh hour.

  6. John Minichillo—

      Yes. Sensitive adolescents with supernatural powers.

  7. Tom k—

      i dunno, meta fiction maybe?

  8. BAC—

      the future is the most tiresome subject in all of literature, because the future has always existed, and it has always been bad. every generation has thought so. there’s been no deviation. since the beginning: there is a tomorrow, and on that tomorrow we’ll die. together. in the dark. fucking lame.

      when i was a kid there was the return of haley’s comet. then Y2k. now 2012. global warming. nuclear fallout. i can’t wait to find out how we’ll all die together next decade. and the decade after that. and the one after that one. back and forth forever. with the same poo.

  9. Guest—

      Arguments from one’s own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments. -Deleuze

  10. Student—

      “You’re a pretty unimaginative realist.”

      –two sentences earlier in the same letter Deleuze wrote to a harsh critic. Also, I assume you understand that D.’s talking about identity politics, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this quote. But good try!

  11. mykle—

      Mean!

  12. Guest—

      Why does your particular version of “reality” have to come into it?

  13. Lincoln Michel—

      That’s not entirely true though, there are such things as utopian fiction. If everything is fine in dandy there tends to not be much of a story though.

  14. Student—
  15. deadgod—

      Internet-thread comments that refer to internet-thread comments as a mode of expression – while not being “in fiction” – are sometimes as “tiresome” to read as the fictionalized problems of sensitive adolescents sometimes are.

      –Huck Field O’Cauls

  16. P. H. Madore—

      Argumentative writers telling other argumentative writers that they should write more as a means of not arguing.

  17. Alec Niedenthal—
  18. Alec Niedenthal—

      Seriously, fuck you nerds. Just because Deleuze said it doesn’t make it true. Deleuze isn’t a bible you can just point to like a rulebook. “These are the rules! Deleuze says!” It’s like you’re saying, “Mom said you have to [Deleuze language]!” I’ll bet that in the 19th century people ran around saying, “Hegel! Hegel is the best!” the way that now people run around saying, “Deleuze! Deleuze said this! So this is what I believe too!”

  19. BAC—

      You’re right. It’s not entirely true. And I like end of the world books plenty, but c’mon nothing has stayed more consistent than the idea of apocalypse. Whereas what is considered ‘adolescent’ changes all the time. As does the standard of sensitivity. How could the combination of two fluctuating phenomena be the most tiresome topics in all of literature?

  20. BAC—

      I’d have to argue with that.

  21. deadgod—

      I shopped at Tarzhay, where I purr-chased a Map of Universal Animal Becoming, and, using it as a territory – Maps-R-Territories – , I unraveled my body’s human organization, and I explored this and that zone of bodily intensity, and I discovered my own particular zones and the groups, populations, and species that inhabit them.

      Being a sensitive adolescent is energizing and frolicsome, when one has $ to spend at a sensibly mid-market department store.

  22. Guest—

      ra ra ra. I can do without your help

  23. stephen—

      “Is anything more tiresome, in fiction, than author-cum-professors trying and failing to follow Joyce?”

      #harsh

  24. Tim Horvath—

      Finally, a Halloween costume concept I can execute at the eleventh hour.

  25. Tim Horvath—
  26. MM—

      nice nick, clever syllabic-anagram. (? any name for that?)

  27. Guest—

      More like John Barf amirite

  28. Christopher Higgs—

      Wow, I pop away to do some stuff and come back to find folks arguing Deleuze or not to Deleuze, my favorite question!

      Obviously I will have to disagree with you, Alec. If Deleuze said it, I’m pretty sure it is true. Or maybe it’s both true and false? Either way, that target link was hilarious!

  29. Lincoln Michel—

      True

  30. deadgod—

      chiasmoonerism? in dyslexameter?

  31. NLY—

      Sensitive college students, maybe.

  32. Datsun—

      yes, the problems of impotent, philandering men.