October 26th, 2010 / 4:04 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Blake Butler—
Learning to recognize the human is the job of Dr. Phil. The job of literature is not a job, and has nothing to do with recognition.
I’m pretty certain Blake is aware of New Criticism ‘and’ Barthes’ “The Death of An Author.”
I guess I liked Blake’s desk calendar, aphoristic post. Apparently, I am a sycophant.
I’m going to go brew some sycophant coffee to drink in my sycophant armchair.
the person writing literature is not literature.
No, it seems like you’re using “recognition” to refer to writers who care more about what others think than writing, or, writers who are more interested in following trends so that they’ll be “recognized” by the in-crowd or cool kids.
That’s fine, but you’re really only referring to one negative function of recognition. Writing longer posts that place your points into a clearer context would allow you to convey your ideas more clearly, yet I think your approach to these drive-by, fortune cookie-esque posts is merely to stir the shit rather and drive traffic to your site (someone will surely put this on a blog or on twitter) than to foster an honest and meaningful discussion.
“no, that is not what i’m referring to. i’m referring to recognition during the writing, involving the ego.”
It sounds like you’re just making stuff up on the fly. Pass the bong.
Actually ‘The job of literature is not a job, and has nothing to do with recognition’ could readily be understood as apophatic generating a sense that ‘literature’ is not a stable thing or essence but something that only becomes existent through being made to appear. Or maybe literature is just shit in books – what do I know.
Alternatively the statement works as an unfinished statement of fact. That’ll do.
Now I’ll go back to my copy of William Gaddis’ The Recognitions. It’s got a real nice cover.
This is something I can agree with
This makes little to no sense. I’m sure it sounds profound to you and a few sycophants, but–again–it makes no sense. It’s my job to point this out to you whenever you write one of these desk calendar, aphoristic posts.
For instance, you claim that the job of literature “has nothing to do with recognition,” and yet the mere existence of “literature” is impossible without “recognition.”
This is what happens when you throw shit against the wall and hope it sticks just because–on the surface–it sounds profound.
literature’s vocation is not the same subject as its existence.
How can the vocation of literature have the condition of not being about recognition if there is no such vocation? Can things which don’t exist have qualities defined by negations?
Blake’s quote is sloppy.
I’m pretty certain Blake is aware of New Criticism ‘and’ Barthes’ “The Death of An Author.”
I guess I liked Blake’s desk calendar, aphoristic post. Apparently, I am a sycophant.
I’m going to go brew some sycophant coffee to drink in my sycophant armchair.
I’m pretty sure most people who visit this blog are also aware of insincere, post-modernism posturing and misappropriation, too.
Besides, BB said “literature,” not “author.” The post-modernists never argued that literature is dead. In fact, they argued the opposite.
Bring me a cup of coffee while yer up, btw. Make it strong. It’s mean week.
*post-modernist posturing
Also, I don’t understand why you would lump Barthes–a post-modernist–with New Criticism.
attempts at recognition are more responsible for bad narrative and cliche epiphany than anything else. fumbling with something so hard you strangle it.
many people simply like something they recognize, even if it’s not a true or valuable thing.
oh brother
“It’s my job to point this out to you whenever you write one of these desk calendar, aphoristic posts. ”
thank you dr. phil.
meanwhile literature’s job is …?
…to be interesting.
-Dr. Phil
Our organs nurse at our veins like infants at the breast. Blood is cellular milk. In fact, adult or aged man, whether we suck, chew, or gulp our mixture, our entire life on earth is a physiological activity at the sucking bottle of ourselves. Organically we are are our mother-and-child; and in the infinity of things, in Absolute Allness, we suck from God himself.
(according to Chazal)
Anyone who writes literature is seeking recognition to some degree. These stoner-philosophy posts are really a bad look for you.
you are misconstruing the function of recognition. i mean it as an act, not a condition
are you serious?
the person writing literature is not literature.
No, it seems like you’re using “recognition” to refer to writers who care more about what others think than writing, or, writers who are more interested in following trends so that they’ll be “recognized” by the in-crowd or cool kids.
That’s fine, but you’re really only referring to one negative function of recognition. Writing longer posts that place your points into a clearer context would allow you to convey your ideas more clearly, yet I think your approach to these drive-by, fortune cookie-esque posts is merely to stir the shit rather and drive traffic to your site (someone will surely put this on a blog or on twitter) than to foster an honest and meaningful discussion.
I object only to the idea that learning to recognize the human is the job of freaking Dr. Phil. Pretty sure Dr. Phil has never once looked for or presented to the world a geniune moment of humanity, and would be hard-pressed to recognize anything other than the revenue stream in the people he offers to his viewers.
no, that is not what i’m referring to. i’m referring to recognition during the writing, involving the ego. the relations with the people outside the text are a whole other story.
Barthes was a structuralist and later a post-structuralist.
Only a person can decide whether or not his or her literature relies negatively on the function of recognition.
Or, I should say, only a person can decide to use the function in the way Blake implies.
Yes. This is not groundbreaking news or anything–the common saying that writing’s only “job” is to be interesting. I’m flattered that you think I pulled that out of my ass, but I didn’t. I actually cribbed it from a well-known book on craft that has an entire chapter on the “rules” of literature (in this case, fiction).
“no, that is not what i’m referring to. i’m referring to recognition during the writing, involving the ego.”
It sounds like you’re just making stuff up on the fly. Pass the bong.
There’s a two millenia old practice of apophasis which is exactly the process of defining ‘things’ that may or may not exist through negations. See Denys the Areopagite (and Aquinas), the Tao te Ching etc. Also the once popular parlor game 20 Questions. But apart from that no you can’t.
I know, but the “death-of-the-author” thing was co-opted by pomo types like Barth, and there’s certainly a relationship between post-structuralism and postmodernism, the latter of which is basically indebted to Barthes.
i’d rather sound like a sycophant than a knee-jerk reactionary, so: i’m 100% certain that from the beginning, blake was referring to the idea that literature’s job is to recognize the human, or to lead readers to recognize the human, not to BE recognized BY humans. seems really obvious, MFB. i don’t really agree with him, or at least, thinking in those terms isn’t really useful to me, but i understand his meaning perfectly. do you really not? pass the bong indeed.
The high modern approaches the post modern and the post modern was in full swing when Barthes was still a structuralist.
How do you expect people to “react” to these sorts of drive-by posts, given their construction, and why do these kinds of posts almost always ignite flame wars? All of the ideas you present are compelling, yet completely ignore the relationship between form and content in BB’s OP, and how this sort of post is often used on the Interweb by trolls to bait reactionary types like me. So, given that it’s hate week, I gave dude what he wanted. Pass the fucking coffee.
Barth is a interesting typo. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy Roland Barthes as an essayist in a long French tradition but Karl Barth is much more interesting as a thinker and one that I suppose will have influence long after the tireless circumlocutions of post-1945 continental thought are incomprehensible to all but a handful of specialists. Oh – but that’s already true!
Oh, yeah, and aren’t you the one who is always arguing that literature should be apolitical and other such conservative, person-of-privilege nonsense? Yeah, I should take you seriously.
I was thinking of John Barth’s “Literature of Exhaustion” essay, which incorporates Barthes. Nonetheless, my original post was unclear and I shouldn’t have said referred to Barthes as a “postmodernist.”
finally someone agrees with me, perhaps it isn’t mean weak at all?
I have this thing- possibly a memory, or a memory of a daydream or something- but this thing where anytime someone mentions Dr. Phil I see him, I picture him very clearly, standing on stairs saying (possibly quoting? hopefully?) “Now please get your negro off my lawn!?!”. He says this very Dr. Phil-ly, with the ‘off my lawn’ very rhythmic, 1-2-3, lo.lee.tah.
Actually ‘The job of literature is not a job, and has nothing to do with recognition’ could readily be understood as apophatic generating a sense that ‘literature’ is not a stable thing or essence but something that only becomes existent through being made to appear. Or maybe literature is just shit in books – what do I know.
Alternatively the statement works as an unfinished statement of fact. That’ll do.
Now I’ll go back to my copy of William Gaddis’ The Recognitions. It’s got a real nice cover.
Which is my misreading. I went after Karl like a rat after a baby – the wrong baby. The relationship between postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism and all of its variants in different disciplines (some no more than slogans) is complex. It had significant precursors (see Durkheim) and more critically not of it was as important as it seemed at the time.
i didn’t say he did a good job. any trying on most levels seems about as successful
mfbomb, i was being facetious. i don’t think literature can possess a job since a job is an attribute of being human.
literature is not human.
Wait, don’t tell me . . . you’re Mather Scheider, aren’t you?!?
i didn’t say he did a good job. any trying on most levels seems about as successful
“We” are nutrified via our arteries, not our “veins”, which vessels conduct piss, not “milk”. And the raw material for arterial “milk”, as you qualify, comes from the world, not from “ourselves” – which “-selves” are distributive networks, not mother/child parasite loops. And where does “God” get its “milk” from? what’s gained by calling ultimate reality “God”??
(from the Talmudic commentary of Dr. Barnard)