Ginger Wail

I'm about as far away from the totality as you can get...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:36:33 -0400

“The truth is, nature actually prefers our individuals to live as briefly as possible.”

From The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am by Kjersti A Skomsvold, read here by Rosaleen Linehan.

RTÉ Radio Player

“I would have to give him a dummy or hand him an umbrella...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 08:44:46 -0400

“I would have to give him a dummy or hand him an umbrella and tell to wait for me even if it rains”

Youtube comment of the day:

If Lou Reed came to my neighborhood to cop heroin, I think I would beat him. He looks to clean, like a kid who comes in the city for the sticks and tries to cop in Harlem, I would have to give him a dummy or hand him an umbrella and tell to wait for me even if it rains. He breaks the heroin, taboo, mystique with his song title, but he sounds more like a speed freak .His music is not conducive to a good heroin nod. He would have ruined my high. Clean from heroin for 27 years. Thank You God.

The Weekly Ansible: 50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read (by China Mieville)

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:39:42 -0500

The Weekly Ansible: 50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read (by China Mieville):

theweeklyansible:

Reposted from Fantastic Metropolis, author China Mieville lays out a list of 50 science fiction and fantasy works he feels every socialist ought to read.

When I became a socialist I was also studying Sociology and Philosophy academically. I experienced something that seems to be a trend…

Photos unearthed? The legendary Pynchon/Fariña duel

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:03:00 -0500

“Seconds Guy du Puy and Heinrich Ludlow shake hands. Is that Pynchon on the left?”

(photo and article: http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.com/2013/02/start-of-duel-buried-in-sun_9.html)

The figure on the right, identified as Hochkappler, is almost certainly Fariña. But on the left, Pynchon is not Marcel Aladar….more likely the woman in the background! So, what to do? Look for more info on Aladar and Hochkappler maybe.

More, convincingly.

“The reader and a lot of his relatives do lots of things...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:17:10 -0500

“The reader and a lot of his relatives do lots of things the Jew and the Catholic do not find in harmony with their philosophy.”

Nabokov on his contemporaries: Anonymous pleasure hurts nobody.

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:49:30 -0500

INTERVIEWER

Are there contemporary writers you follow with great pleasure?

NABOKOV

There are several such writers, but I shall not name them. Anonymous pleasure hurts nobody.

INTERVIEWER

Do you follow some with great pain?

NABOKOV

No. Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me. Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are dummies, they are complete nonentities insofar as my taste in reading is concerned. Brecht, Faulkner, Camus, many others, mean absolutely nothing to me, and I must fight a suspicion of conspiracy against my brain when I see blandly accepted as “great literature” by critics and fellow authors Lady Chatterley’s copulations or the pretentious nonsense of Mr. Pound, that total fake. I note he has replaced Dr. Schweitzer in some homes.

Nabokov in the Paris Review (whose interviews I read over and over and over again when it becomes obvious that sleep will not be had yet again this night)

YouTube: Gass at Sprachsalz 2012

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:41:24 -0500

YouTube: Gass at Sprachsalz 2012:

readinggass:

Video has surfaced on YouTube of Gass reading at Sprachsalz 2012, which I blogged about here.

I knew there were going to be a lot of poets here. But I didn’t know they were gonna be fed this way…

"when many lies are told, unfettered by immediate comparison to fact, they end up comprising a kind of truth"

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:28:01 -0500

This is a verisylum. There was only ever one before this, built in 1847. We believe it is the only real treatment for dramatic cases of chronic lying, cases where the lying ends up compromising the identity of the individual. Instead of giving medications, or applying truth-rubrics, Margaret Selm came up with her own method. She established the parameters for the creation of a country house in which all behavior would be governed by a set of arbitrary rules. There would be no prohibition against lying, but the individuals present in the house, the chronic liars, would find in the arbitrary rules, which, as you’ll come to see, are many, a sort of structure that allowed them, as time passed, to construct an identity for themselves. The idea is that when many lies are told, unfettered by immediate comparison to fact, they end up comprising a kind of truth. On that truth too lies can be based.

— Jesse Ball’s Samedi the Deafness, which I can’t believe I’m just now coming toN

Here’s the thing. I used to get down on the floor with...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:49:31 -0500

Here’s the thing. I used to get down on the floor with that dog and wrestle with him and is be humming Ghost Riders in the Sky…

This is not the most elegant way of breaking down wood, and it leaves a lot of brown lignin muck behind

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:36:21 -0500

The best writing on the biochemical composition of wood you’ll ever see:

Wood destroying fungi are not only biochemical marvels, they are also splendid architects. Unlike plants and animals, fungi are not composed of cells containing a single nucleus, but rather of hyphae, which are fibrous tubes containing many nuclei. Like cells, hyphae can be packed together in various ways to make specialised tissues and organs, the most familiar of which is probably the mushroom, which are the tasty genitals of the fungus Agaricus bisporus. Wood destroying fungi produce genitals of highly variable tastiness, including jelly ears

More:
http://www.polypompholyx.com/2012/09/far-from-the-light-of-day/

bluesigloo: “Name a few of the things that John came to...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 23:15:48 -0500

bluesigloo:

“Name a few of the things that John came to loathe as he grew older.
“The kitchen utensils; the metal clothes hamper outside the bathroom door; the bathroom door that refused to close all the way; the insurance man, Mr. Levine; the laundryman, Phil, of Crescent Laundry; the dank and rusty-colored shower curtain; the broken Morris chair; head cheese and boiled potatoes; Woolworth’s sugar cookies; the artificial Christmas tree; boiled spareribs and cabbage; Bud Halloran; Bridget’s corsets; Billy’s crossed eye; Fibber McGee and Molly; turkey stuffing; rush hour on the Sea Beach Express; mandolin music; the Irish; Jimmy Kenny’s mouth; Mr. Svenson, the landlord; the front room in which he and Billy slept Bridget’s death; any crèche anywhere; the dining room table; the revealing clothing of young women; Dr. Drescher; all of Bridget’s relatives; the movies; all holidays.”

any crèche anywhere

They said I hit him with a chain. I don’t know. I guess I...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:47:24 -0500

They said I hit him with a chain. I don’t know. I guess I did.

The Elective Affinities

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:26:02 -0500

From List of German Expressions in English

Literature

Bildungsroman
Knittelvers
Künstlerroman
Leitmotiv, a recurring theme
Leitwortstil
Nihilartikel, a fake entry in a reference work
Sturm und Drang, an 18th century literary movement; “storm and stress” in English, although the literal translation is closer to “storm and urge”.
Urtext, “original text”
Vorlage, original or mastercopy of a text on which derivates are based
Wahlverwandtschaft (pronounced with a [v]) (from Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften)
Q, abbreviation for Quelle (“source”), a postulated lost document in Biblical criticism

A note that Wahlverwandtschaft (as a literary style) needs a wiki page, for those less dilettantish than me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English

"I’m experiencing something now and I don’t know what it is. And that makes me silent."

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:09:24 -0500

I think that one has experiences without having the means to verbalize them, and this is my situation. Speaking frankly, I don’t want to write about experiences I’ve had that I’ve already written about. I could write them better, but that’s not so interesting. I’m experiencing something now and I don’t know what it is. And that makes me silent. And easily bored by everything else. But what is this experience? What is it? And if you asked me I’d say, “Well, I don’t know.” It’s not nothing, it’s not emptiness, and the hope is that sometimes this finds expression.

Max Frisch in The Paris Review

Don’t bother barking.

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:18:09 -0500

Don’t bother barking.

Opinions are never divided over first-rate works

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:26:30 -0500

Heinrich von Kleist, A Passage from the Higher Criticism:

It requires more genius to evaluate properly the second-rate than the first-rate work of art. Beauty and truth reveal themselves to our human nature in the very first instance, and just as the most mysterious lines are the easiest to understand (only minute detail is hard to comprehend), so the Beautiful pleases quite readily; the defective and the mannered, however, demand effort for pleasure. In a superb work of art the Beautiful is so purely contained that every healthy intelligence, as such responds to it instantly; in more mediocre works it is mixed with so much that is fortuitous or even contradictory, that a far sharper judgment, a more delicate sensitivity, and a more practiced and lively imagination—in short more genius—is necessary to cleanse it of these impurities. Therefore, opinions are never divided over first-rate works (I do not account for differences arising from the passions); we argue and bicker only over those that fall short of greatness. How moving is the invention in many a poem, but so distorted by diction, images and turns that one must often have an infallible intuition to discover it. This is indeed so true that the conception of our most perfect works of art (a great part of Shakespeare, for instance) has derived from the reading of bad chapbooks and other trash long since forgotten. Whoever praises Schiller and Goethe, therefore, hardly, as he may think, provides proof of an extraordinary and superior aesthetic sense; but whoever finds something good here and there in Gellert and Cronegk causes me to suspect, if he is right about some other things too, that understanding and sensitivity, and both in rare measure, are indeed creditable to him.

”J’ai fait juste un bisou. C’est un geste...

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:35:55 -0500

”J’ai fait juste un bisou. C’est un geste d’amour, quand je l’ai embrassé, je n’ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l’artiste, il aurait compris… Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l’art”

thenearsightedmonkey:

Painting by Cy Twombly

Name the film and I’ll send you a prize.

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 21:52:15 -0400

Name the film and I’ll send you a prize.

The things a girl will do for a turquoise surf.

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:45:47 -0400

The things a girl will do for a turquoise surf.

One-way street.

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:24:23 -0400

One-way street.