Thumbs Up
Definitely the nicest case ever made for an artist or artifact being a peer to Wittgenstein’s philosophical project. Which isn’t saying much, but this really is a lovely little essay.
September 2006
24 posts
Thumbs Up
Definitely the nicest case ever made for an artist or artifact being a peer to Wittgenstein’s philosophical project. Which isn’t saying much, but this really is a lovely little essay.
Question
Why is Ashbery not a surrealist? How come his mal-connected density reads as toying with the language —> image production, not the image —> sense production? Is Spicer a borderline case? What does it mean that a borderline case is possible here?
[Not that these divisions are in any way parts of some model of linear, temporal process of literary cogniton progressing by stages. The best we can do is make ad-hoc sections to pin-point the — metaphorical? — location of this or that intervention in the mechanics of making sense]
Now With Visual Aids!
1.“A False Account of Talking with Frank O’Hara and Roland Barthes in Philadelphia” is a little better crafted than I remembered it , and just as brilliant and charming. Perelman probably isn’t very familiar with fan-fiction culture, but the chart never lies:
Throw in the crossover factor Sjöberg negletcs, and we’re ought to fall another floor or two down towards being on par with Erotic Furries.
Point being, Perelman tackled what’s possibly the last unsanctioned form: straightforward fantasy fulfillment. And lived to tell the tale.
* This usage is metaphorical & should by no account be considered an endorsement of Dawkins or Blackmore, two people with seriously fucked-up Scientific Image\Manifest Image translation.
Irresponsible Thesis:
The problem with Deonstruction is that it makes valid (to be generouse) anti-realist
arguements, but then draws conclusion as if these were sceptic arguements.
I Like This Post. Read It.
I’ve been watching a lot of the classic 90’s animated spider-man show on youtube lately while writing papers, and here’s the thing:
If one was to ask me by virtue of what this show is a great show, I’d answer along the lines of “The nuanced writing, the rock solid consistency of characters and world, the complexity of narrative and sharp dialogue, and the emotional subtlety”. But ,compared to most artifacts outside the realm of silver-age-style superheroes, it is in no way nuanced, solid, complex, sharp of subtle. Yet despite the fact that it excels in these faculties only on relative terms, it’s not a relatively good show, the writing and structuring of which I can only commend in comparison with its milieu — it’s a great show, the writing and structuring of which I can marvel at for their elegance and acuity.
And it’s not even a matter of the distinction between the production of artistic pleasure and entertainment pleasures:
My joy at this show is entertainment based for sure, but so is my pleasure at the non-crazy-experimental episodes of Buffy, and to call (the best of) both shows “very emotionally nuanced”, would be like calling both an exceptionally large hamster and a gigantic elephant “very big”. But wait! We actually do call both these creatures “very big”, and are capable of being owed by the size of both.
Maybe that’s what lies at the heart of this - that while the global scale might have some significance as to who can enjoy genres that employ which spectrums (Some people can handle the TV they watch having a spectrum lower down the scale than the poetry they read, or need the movies they watch to have a spectrum higher up than the music the listen to, etc), the moment you engage an artifact in a committed way its relevant spectrum becomes a realm onto itself, the relative merits absolute.
Still there’s something latent in the notion of a “relevant spectrum” that needs to be properly decoded. The spectrum is not empirical : it doesn’t have to do with what degree of complexity or what-have-you similar artifacts usually display. It has to do with the limits of a certain field of coherence, how much complexity (as a catch-all term for a certain kind of artistic merit) you can add to a silver-age style super-hero show before it stops being one, for example (though this too, of course, was occasionally done intentionally and with great success).
The metaphor of size keeps suggesting itself here, and though giving in to it means also giving up the chance of this ending up as something of analytical value, I might as well go with flow, so:
The possible key to answering why I can consider a work achieving the height of complexity in an “inferior” [I used to think ‘scarequotes’ was a good name for a band. I don’t anymore] spectrum a masterpiece — To think of it not as less complex than works that are.. well, more complex , but to think of it as complex in a miniature way.
I’m not absolutely sure what to make of this notion, or whether it is oblique or just empty, but the whole thing has something to do with this issue, I believe.
Sidenote: Another nice thing about spider-man (comics\animated) is that you can sniff around for a hundred years and not find the faintest scent of crypto-fascism. If anything, it’s crypto-Nicomachean [yes, I’m saying Nicomechean and meaning only The Golden Mean, shoot me]: It balances out so neatly — some vigilante action is noble and misunderstood, some vigilante action is psychotic and presumptuous, and spidey is neither stirctly obeying the law nor placing himself above it; sometimes utopist science gives fantastic results, sometimes too much devotion leads to awful results; heroes are forged by the fusion of dumb luck and a good personality, or on wit and strength of character alone; no one can share the agony of their burden, yet they need loads of help from everyone around.
I Like This Post. Read It.
I’ve been watching a lot of the classic 90’s animated spider-man show on youtube lately while writing papers, and here’s the thing:
If one was to ask me by virtue of what this show is a great show, I’d answer along the lines of “The nuanced writing, the rock solid consistency of characters and world, the complexity of narrative and sharp dialogue, and the emotional subtlety”. But ,compared to most artifacts outside the realm of silver-age-style superheroes, it is in no way nuanced, solid, complex, sharp of subtle. Yet despite the fact that it excels in these faculties only on relative terms, it’s not a relatively good show, the writing and structuring of which I can only commend in comparison with its milieu — it’s a great show, the writing and structuring of which I can marvel at for their elegance and acuity.
And it’s not even a matter of the distinction between the production of artistic pleasure and entertainment pleasures:
My joy at this show is entertainment based for sure, but so is my pleasure at the non-crazy-experimental episodes of Buffy, and to call (the best of) both shows “very emotionally nuanced”, would be like calling both an exceptionally large hamster and a gigantic elephant “very big”. But wait! We actually do call both these creatures “very big”, and are capable of being owed by the size of both.
Maybe that’s what lies at the heart of this - that while the global scale might have some significance as to who can enjoy genres that employ which spectrums (Some people can handle the TV they watch having a spectrum lower down the scale than the poetry they read, or need the movies they watch to have a spectrum higher up than the music the listen to, etc), the moment you engage an artifact in a committed way its relevant spectrum becomes a realm onto itself, the relative merits absolute.
Still there’s something latent in the notion of a “relevant spectrum” that needs to be properly decoded. The spectrum is not empirical : it doesn’t have to do with what degree of complexity or what-have-you similar artifacts usually display. It has to do with the limits of a certain field of coherence, how much complexity (as a catch-all term for a certain kind of artistic merit) you can add to a silver-age style super-hero show before it stops being one, for example (though this too, of course, was occasionally done intentionally and with great success).
The metaphor of size keeps suggesting itself here, and though giving in to it means also giving up the chance of this ending up as something of analytical value, I might as well go with flow, so:
The possible key to answering why I can consider a work achieving the height of complexity in an “inferior” [I used to think ‘scarequotes’ was a good name for a band. I don’t anymore] spectrum a masterpiece — To think of it not as less complex than works that are.. well, more complex , but to think of it as complex in a miniature way.
I’m not absolutely sure what to make of this notion, or whether it is oblique or just empty, but the whole thing has something to do with this issue, I believe.
Sidenote: Another nice thing about spider-man (comics\animated) is that you can sniff around for a hundred years and not find the faintest scent of crypto-fascism. If anything, it’s crypto-Nicomachean [yes, I’m saying Nicomechean and meaning only The Golden Mean, shoot me]: It balances out so neatly — some vigilante action is noble and misunderstood, some vigilante action is psychotic and presumptuous, and spidey is neither stirctly obeying the law nor placing himself above it; sometimes utopist science gives fantastic results, sometimes too much devotion leads to awful results; heroes are forged by the fusion of dumb luck and a good personality, or on wit and strength of character alone; no one can share the agony of their burden, yet they need loads of help from everyone around.
Still Poetry!
My sense that poets who theoretically explicate their work perfectly tend to produce bad work can probably be attributed to some remnants of the Romantic tradition, but I think it can be constructed pretty well in hipper terms: Good poetry is too complex to explicate its operations perfectly. It is nearly common wisdom round these parts that poetry the propositional content of which can be perfectly explicated is malnourished; why should it be any different with poetry the operations and theoretical undertones of which can be perfectly explicated?
Still Poetry!
My sense that poets who theoretically explicate their work perfectly tend to produce bad work can probably be attributed to some remnants of the Romantic tradition, but I think it can be constructed pretty well in hipper terms: Good poetry is too complex to explicate its operations perfectly. It is nearly common wisdom round these parts that poetry the propositional content of which can be perfectly explicated is malnourished; why should it be any different with poetry the operations and theoretical undertones of which can be perfectly explicated?
Poetry!
Why don’t we ever see any avant-garde reclaiming of canonized, quieted poets? Only Emily Dickenson, and the exception probably has to do with the gender-studies tradition of reinterpretation-as-radical, adapted to the poetry wars (not to say it’s not completely and utterly justified on formalistic terms, just that other crypto-avants do not get their similar dues).
What, no one feels like grabbing Donne or Keats or Eliot or anything? Going once? Going twice?
There’s ought to be something artistically ambitious that can be done with High Fantays as an autonomic form [Robert Duncan & Earthsea count, Owen Pallett does not] that’s not so annoyingly Jungian.
[ If we have to stick with early psychoanalysis, Moorcock’s vaguely Freudian heavy-metal thing is a much more promising path]
Good Times
The unique, or anachronistic, thing about the underground-comics vs. mainstream-comics fight is that it’s the last (nominal) high-brow vs. (nominal) low-brow fight where the art-pop (Morrison, Moore, Milligan) is a part of the (nominal) low-brow camp. So, it’s the only place to turn to for guiltless art-pop pride.
Good Times
The unique, or anachronistic, thing about the underground-comics vs. mainstream-comics fight is that it’s the last (nominal) high-brow vs. (nominal) low-brow fight where the art-pop (Morrison, Moore, Milligan) is a part of the (nominal) low-brow camp. So, it’s the only place to turn to for guiltless art-pop pride.
That's When I Reach To Remove The Safety Of My Revolver
Partisan critics have to constantly glorify all competently made artifacts belonging to their preferred cultural venue, in a bid to demonstrate the general overwhelming worth of said cultural venue. That’s a given. And it never works.
Thing is, if they happen to be very convincing writers (as partisans often are) , they do manage to make “sly humor”, “a shockingly new sense of the line” and “dexterous, precise singing” seem as unexciting and trivial as the artifacts you are now convinced they correctly apply to. Thing is, if they happen to be very good writers (as partisans sometimes are), they manage to avoid formulated clichי’s, and than it’s aesthetic pleasure itself that starts to seem boring, as you re-deduce the nature of this concept based on these latest, greatest manifestations you are now offered.
That's When I Reach To Remove The Safety Of My Revolver
Partisan critics have to constantly glorify all competently made artifacts belonging to their preferred cultural venue, in a bid to demonstrate the general overwhelming worth of said cultural venue. That’s a given. And it never works.
Thing is, if they happen to be very convincing writers (as partisans often are) , they do manage to make “sly humor”, “a shockingly new sense of the line” and “dexterous, precise singing” seem as unexciting and trivial as the artifacts you are now convinced they correctly apply to. Thing is, if they happen to be very good writers (as partisans sometimes are), they manage to avoid formulated clichי’s, and than it’s aesthetic pleasure itself that starts to seem boring, as you re-deduce the nature of this concept based on these latest, greatest manifestations you are now offered.
! ! !
Old but must see! Our very own Plato Vs. Aristotle blue-print-for-all-modern-intra-scene-polemics, manifested in a pure form by two highly intelligent, reasonable and respectful persons.
This is by all means the finest signal-to-noise ratio ever in a manifestation of that mother-of-all-discussions. This is the Aleph, the א even. I didn’t finish reading it yet, but I won’t be surprised if these two were carried out to an abstract dimension in the end, where they will keep on making points and counterpoints forever.
fuckfuckingfuckedfucker vs. nabisco
{Basically: Is the high-brow allowed to be proud of itself}
Only you have to scroll down through a hundred messages about whether “He Poos Clouds” is an awful title or not to get to the first fuckfuckingfuckedfucker message, where it starts. But this is both pleasently typical of the internet and worth it.
Double Your Pleasure
The real reason Grant Morrison is the only entity I fully put my trust in these tday is that he columnized this:
“What if ‘The System’ isn’t our enemy after all. What if instead it’s our playground ? The natural environment into which we were born ? Our jungle, ocean and ice floe…to bargain with and dance around and transform, as best we can, into poetree ?
The exciting truth at the start of the new century is this: the Establishment that was, is now stark raving mad. It drinks Starbucks all day then at night it gets stoned and, in an effort to relax and feel normal, it watches TV shows made by speeding stoners. EVERYONE’S on drugs - the producers who make the programmes and ads on TV, the presenters, the newsreaders, the politicians and the civil servants. The System is now deranged and wide open for exploitation. There is no-one in charge. THERE ARE NO ADULTS HERE. “
[This paragraph is followed by some ramblings about magic, but never mind that. It’s a good policy never to judge a man by his metaphysics.]
And then[but I think it’s synchronic ambivalence, not diachronic development]
went ahead and wrote Seaguy, which is basically “Herbert Marcuse : The Graphic Novel”.
Truth is, anyone who’s willing to make his habitat in either side of the bank on this issue and forego a desperate attempt at having the cake and eating it too is some form of condescending jerkass.
Paw!
Scott McCloud: Great narratologist of Comics, but the worst case of aspect blindness known to man. Can’t for the life of him differentiate medium-operations that are interesting to discuss and medium-operations that are interesting to cognize (read\see).
Hmmf
Jordan said. The thing is, sometimes that “I have an itch that needs scraching” mode of consumption can get morbid and scary, when after gallons of the good-enough you vaguely recall you wanted the awesome. [These aren’t the genre-pleasures that you named there, just the sure-fire moves to generate genre-pleasures. ]
[And I’m speaking as somone who watched every episode of ‘Friends’ ever filmed]
Though I suppose this might be like worrying that porn will kill our sex-drive.
Non, je ne regrette rien
In a month I’ll be turning 20. I have a feeling that “Remarks about American poetry from an Israeli who’s too young to legally buy a drink in the United States” isn’t going to cut it.Need to conjure new tagline, new ethos.Also, this is high time I get my French in working order (Though I’m already feeling some native-tongue guilt about the way Hebrew is being denied of its prerogative for a primary hold on my mind), learn to enjoy the taste of red wine, and finish my damn B.A. Falling in love and having a serious relationship are both taken care of in a check-list sense, but hopefully next year I’ll manage to combine these two. And get to a point where I don’t suck at the guitar.
