There are plenty of fine, virile men in American literature today. Elaine Blair doesn’t think so: in a New York Review of Books article, she easily recognizes Michel Houellebecq’s sucky protagonists because she says contemporary American lit is filled with men who are losers, from Philip Roth’s Alex Portnoy to Sam Lipsyte’s Milo Burke. So where are all the big, strong, literary men?
John Galt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
For an unhealthy dose of American exceptionalism, there’s nobody better to read about than John Galt, the ultimate anti-loser and the Atlas who decides to just shrug off the world:
"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in the whole of human history...the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind.”
The Judge from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
One of Cormac McCarthy’s most hair-raising creations, the judge stalks the long flat terrain of America and preaches a violent form of justice, without regard to femininity of any sort.
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
From his rapturous descriptions of music albums and finely tailored suits to his soulless ravages of New York’s restaurants and women, Patrick Bateman might be stretching the envelope for being "human," but nobody would dare call him a loser.
“I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.”
Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.
The two men at the center of the novel and the movie have no interest whatsoever in slacking off, and the result is Tylder Durden's speech, easily one of the most bizarre and fascinating manifestos of masculinity in recent times.
“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering...our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
Mike Schwartz from Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding.
Baseball novels are full of beefy sluggers, but this one has grandiloquence to match his skills at coaching:
“Me, I hearken back to a simpler time.” Schwartz patted his thick, sturdy midriff. “A time when a hairy back meant something...Warmth. Survival. Evolutionary advantage. Back then, a man’s wife and children would burrow into his back hair and wait out the winter. Nypmhs would braid it and praise it in song. God’s wrath waxed hot against the hairless tribes. Now that’s all forgotten. But I’ll tell you one thing: when the next ice age comes, the Schwartzes will be sitting pretty. Real pretty.”
Gender typecasting be damned! There are plenty of strong men—and women, too!—in the contemporary American novel out there. The French can keep Michel Houellebecq to themselves; we’ve got Pynchon and Palahniuk and Wells Tower leading the way for our All-American macho men.
image credit: guardian.co.uk
Will you participate in the March Madness that is the Tournament of Books?
You could even ask your best brogrammers to help you trick out your bracket.
Just don't underestimate the power of erotic housewife novels, especially if they're Twilight-centric.
Then again, erotic sci-fi is also giving it a run for its money.
Whatever erotica strikes your fancy, you can bet that the Brooklyn Public library will print it out on demand.
But make sure you're reading those books at the same rate you're churning them out.
And if you're writing rather than reading, make sure you're citing your Tweets in MLA format.
In fact, make sure your entire online curatorial style is completely up to date.
Then test it out by trying to spot all the references in this insanely intricate Cartier commerical.
What do New York twentysomethings talk about while sipping glasses of wine and sharing bites of compost cookie? Grocery shopping, of course.
"I mean, I love how it says something about you if you shop at Trader Joe's," I said.
"Like, you want to be cool, you want to be fun, you want to wait in line for twenty minutes?"
"But I get the peanut butter cups. That totally cancels out the line."
"I'll toast to that." And we clinked glasses for the fourth or fifth time.
"What about Whole Foods, though?" she asked. "You know there's going to be a new Whole Foods in Brooklyn."
"Hmm. It's a way to say, I care about my food being organic, I care about it being classy, and I don't care how overpriced it is."
"You don't shop there, do you?"
We both cracked up.
"Okay, I’m not sure about this. Whole Foods is almost too perfect for Brooklyn. There's nothing ironic there."
"But it’s honest! And it’s natural and organic and pure.”
“Trader Joe’s is like David Foster Wallace. It’s big and crazy and disjointed and human. And the footnotes are great.”
“Coming soon! Based on the book! And the movie! And the video game! And the fast-food-chain kiddie-meal toys! Infinite Jest: The Grocery Store!”
“Isn’t that exactly right, though?”
“Hmm, yeah, you’re pretty spot-on.”
“So then what’s the book version of Whole Foods?”
“Huh, a Whole Book..." We took long sips of wine.
“Everything in there is very beautiful. Carefully presented. If it’s there, it’s there to be appreciated and savored.”
“Ann Patchett?”
“Oh, I liked Bel Canto, but that’s not it.”
"Okay, fine, not music. But she's good. She pulls together everything into a tight little book."
“We've got to think bigger. Whole Foods isn’t Jonathan Franzen, is it?”
“No, I don't think so. Well, I haven’t read Freedom yet. But yeah, something all-encompassing.”
Time to pour more wine.
“Wait." She took a swig and looked at me. "I've got it. Jhumpa Lahiri.”
“Unaccustomed Earth! That's it! Whole Foods is virtuous and organic and beautiful, and so is Jhumpa Lahiri!”
“She’s amazing.” My friend pulled her e-reader out of her purse. “Listen to this: ‘He still had the power to stagger her at times—simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born.’”
“God, that’s gorgeous.”
“Yep, we’ve got it.”
She poured the last of the wine into both glasses.
“Now what about Gristedes and D’Agostino’s?”
image credit: washingtontimes.com
Following the massacre of 16 Afghanis by an American officer last Sunday, the ubiquitous question in the press seems to hinge on the singularity of the crime. An aberration? A disgusting outrage? Or an inevitable outcome of a war "on" terror? Let's open the history books to test the uniqueness of this type of behavior.
The above photograph, taken in 1919, shows an Indian man obeying Brigadier General Reginald Dyer’s “Crawling Order”—according to which residents of Amritsar were required to crawl (at gunpoint) down a particular street to get to and from their houses. Days later, Dyer ordered the massacre of between 1,000 and 1,500 men, women, and children trapped in a public garden called Jallianwallah Bagh on suspicion of insurgency, and to "teach them a lesson." Writing in the seventh century, a Jain monk asks us to consider whether we may always lose our way and encounter the demoness of time when we set out for another country; whether the sweet drops of a so-called freedom can be justification enough.
1. “After years of war, Mr. Samad…had been reluctant to return to his home in Panjwai, which was known in good times for its grapes and mulberries…It was against this background that, United States officials said, the soldier left the American base and walked south about a mile to Mr. Samad’s village…an elderly woman named Anar Gula, who had been cowering in her home, said she had heard an explosion, screaming and shooting as the soldier broke down the door of Mr. Samad’s house and chased his wife and two other female family members from room to room before he shot them. Two of the women and some of the children had been stabbed, she and other villagers said, and blankets had been laid over them and set alight—to hide the stab wounds, she said.”
—Taimoor Shah and Graham Bowley, New York Times report on the 16 Afghanis murdered by an American Staff Sergeant on Sunday
2. “If an officer justifies his conduct, no matter how gallant his record is—and everybody knows how gallant General Dyer's record is—by saying that there was no question of undue severity, that if his means had been greater the casualties would have been greater, and that the motive was to teach a moral lesson to the whole of the Punjab, I say without hesitation, and I would ask the Committee to contradict me if I am wrong…that it is the doctrine of terrorism. If you agree to that, you justify everything that General Dyer did. Once you are entitled to have regard neither to the intentions nor to the conduct of a particular gathering, and to shoot and to go on shooting, with all the horrors that were here involved, in order to teach somebody else a lesson, you are embarking upon terrorism, to which there is no end.”
—Edwin Samuel Montagu, Secretary of State for India, speaking at theCommons Sitting on July 8th, 1920, following the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre
3. “A certain man, much oppressed by the woes of poverty,
Left his own home, and set out for another country.
He passed through the land, with its villages, cities, and harbors,
And after a few days he lost his way…
[t]here appeared before him a most evil demoness, holding a sharp sword, dreadful in face and form, laughing with loud and shrill laughter…he trembled in all his limbs with deathly fear, and looked in all directions….
[j]ust by chance a drop of honey fell on his head,
Rolled down his brow, and somehow reached his lips,
And gave him a moment’s sweetness.
He longed for other drops…
This parable is powerful to clear minds of those on the way to freedom.
Now hear its sure interpretation…
The drops of Honey are trivial pleasures, terrible at the last.
How can a wise man want them, in the midst of such peril and hardship?”
—“The Man in the Well,” parable from the Jain text The Story of Samaradityakatha; cited from a prose and verse version written in Prakrit byHaribhadra in the seventh century and collected in Sources of Indian Tradition (Introduction to Oriental Civilizations)
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image: National Army Museum [via]
What will J.K. Rowling's "adult" novel be about? Harry Potter and the Reverse Mortgage?
It will probably be tamer than Dr. Seuss's book of nudes though.
Speaking of being a fancy shmancy grown up, Whole Foods is finally coming to Brooklyn.
Somewhat related: you may want to brush up on the origin of the word "douche."
In fact, why don't you just read Shel Silverstein's entire alphabet of adult-related words.
But if that's not your scene, perhaps you'd be interested in the MTA's upcoming garage sale.
And in other antiquated things: gender-based bias in literary magazines still exist.
If only there was a fairy tale ending for all of this.
The show Toddlers and Tiaras, now in its fourth season on The Learning Channel, has caused some interesting gender and class policing lately, including a humiliating episode for the mothers on Anderson Cooper’s talk show. As the famous toddler Mackenzie Myers has put it, “I can never just be myselffffffffffffffff.” A radical take on the unending project of gender performance? A comment on the fall of monarchial forms of rule? A goblet whose reflection schizzes us even as we occupy the center of our own portrait?
“A child is a child you might say and if the lense [sic] through which a child is being looked at is not broken, then there’s nothing bad in what is just a huge dress-up game. Unfortunately, this is just a cognitive distortion called rationalization, through which you find a reason that somehow justifies an action, thought or behavior that is actually “not right.” And this beautiful lie gets you just as much as it gets the child.”
–Psychologist Lucia Grosaru on the perils of Child Beauty Pageants,Toddlers and Tiaras, 2011.
“The princess is standing upright in the centre of a St Andrew’s cross, which is revolving around her with its eddies of courtiers, maids of honour, animals, and fools. But this pivoting movement is frozen. Frozen by a spectacle that would be absolutely invisible if those same characters, suddenly motionless, were not offering us, as though in the hollow of a goblet, the possibility of seeing in the depths of a mirror the unforeseen double of what they are observing. In depth, it is the princess who is superimposed on the mirror…”
–Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas,” a reading of Diego Velázquez's painting "Las Meninas" in The Order of Things, 1966.
“She had betrayed no distaste for the game. The other girls crowded to see his defeat, to see his idiot’s composure dissolve, and then rushed to wipe themselves clean of his ejaculation…Every Midsummer morning, Mother woke her before dawn and ordered her to kneel down and bathe her face in the dew; it ensures a year’s worth of loveliness, she explained. As a child, Mother had performed the same ritual. When Madeleine wiped M. Jouy off her hands, she left glistening mollusk trails in the underbrush.”
–Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Madeleine is Sleeping, National Book Award Finalist, 2004. Bynum based her dream-like novel on an episode in Foucault's History of Sexuality.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image: Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez
Our bloggers got to thinking about parent-child writing teams with the death of Nabokov’s son, Dmitri.
Perhaps he'll go on to inspire a legendary book charcter, much like the man behind Roald Dahl's BFG.
Though, the man behind legendary spammer, horse_ebooks, could also make for good story fodder.
He'd probably have some strange insights for the computer model of the brian scientists are working on.
But don't fear the rise of the robots. That is, unless fear helps get your writing gears churning.
Perhaps it will even help you write those legendary love letters you always knew you had inside of you.
Though some people prefer to use their brains for other sports, such as hacking the Whitney Biennial.
But whatever you end up doing, make sure to get your facts straight, or the fact-checkers will be on to you.
Perfume Genius's second record, Put Your Back N 2 It, was released last week after some controversy surrounding the video advertisement, excerpted from the video for "Hood." YouTube and Google claimed was not “family-safe,” explaining that the two shirtless men hugging (Mike Hadreas a.k.a. Perfume Genius & porn star Arpad Miklos) gave an “overall feeling…of a more adult nature.” More than what? Nature becomes more adult. We learn that existence is to differ. Love is dark. We have 2 put our bax n2 it.
“The hands of God were bigger than Grandpa’s eyes / But still you broke the elastic on your waist […] The love you feel is strong / The love you feel is stronger / I will take the dark part / of your heart into my heart / I will take the dark part / of your heart into my heart”
—Perfume Genius “Dark Parts,” from new record, Put Your Back N 2 It, released last Tuesday on Matador
“The magical (such as it can really be called without lexical muse) ascendancy of night and of the dark, the fear of darkness also probably derive from the threat they pose to the organism/environment…darkness is not the mere absence of light; it has some positive quality. Whereas bright space disappears, giving way to the material concreteness of objects, darkness is ‘thick’; it directly touches a person, enfolds, penetrates, and even passes through him.”
—Roger Caillois, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychaesthenia,” 1937 (collected in The Edge of Surrealism)
“To exist is to differ…identity is a minimum and, hence, a type of difference, a very rare type at that, in the same way as rest is a type of movement and the circle is a type of ellipse. To begin with some primordial identity implies at the origin a prodigiously unlikely singularity, or else the obscure mystery of one simple being then dividing for no special reason.”
—Gabriel Tarde, Monadology and Sociology, 1895
"Dark Parts" Studio Recording
Interview with Perfume Genius and "Dark Parts" live performance
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image (Silver Laced Polish Chicken): 4chan.
Note to David Foster Wallace fans: do not blast AC/DC if you don't want to offend your idol.
Though if you're a dude, you may want to trade in the AC/DC for something that won't stir any violent tendencies.
If you need to relax, make like Cormac McCarthy and go into science copy-editing.
You may even end up like Woody Allen and be nomimated for a Nebula Award, quite an honor in science fiction.
But nothing is as sci-fi as the thought of computer-generated stories replacing real-life writers.
Or is the thought of writers replacing fashion designers even more scarier?
Whatever you end up doing, don't be afraid to go bankrupt. It'll probably result in a good idea for a novel.
But if you're not that extreme, you could just use Kickstarter as a publisher instead.
Who knows? You may even have the honor of having your junior high diaries archived in the Ransom Center one day.
“Robyn F. turned to face Brown and he punched her in the eye with his right hand. He then drove away in the vehicle and continued to punch her in the face with his right hand while steering the vehicle with his left hand. The assault caused Robyn F.’s mouth to fill with blood and blood to splatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle….After Robyn F. faked [a] call, Brown looked at her and stated You just did the stupidest thing ever! Now I’m really going to kill you! Brown resumed punching Robyn F. and she interlocked her fingers behind her head and brought her elbows forward to protect her face. She then bent over at the waist, placing her elbows and face near her lap in attempt to protect her face and head from the barrage of punches being levied upon her by Brown...Brown pulled Robyn F. close to him and bit her on her left ear...Brown bit her left ring and middle fingers.”
– Detective De Shon Andrews’s Affidavit from the LAPD’s Search Warrant following the February 8, 2009 assault of Rihanna (Robyn F.) by then-boyfriend Chris Brown
“Compassionate Justine is robbed by a beggar. Pious, she is raped by a monk. Honest, she is fleeced by a usurer…And so it goes with her throughout…to whomever abuses her, she brings good fortune, and the monsters who torment her become a minister, surgeon to His Majesty, a millionaire. Here’s a novel which bears every resemblance to those edifying works in which vice is seen punished every time, and virtue rewarded. Except that in Justine it’s the other way around; but this novel’s failing, strictly from the view-point of the novel…remains the same: the reader always knows how things are going to end.”
– Jean Paulhan reflects on Sade’s novel Justine (1791) in his 1946 essay The Marquis de Sade and His Accomplice (IV: The Surprises of Love)
“In essence, woman has to take it upon herself over and over again, regardless of circumstances, to bury this corpse that man becomes in his pure state…Thus woman takes this dead being into her own place…Shielding him from the dishonoring operation of unconscious desires and natural negativeness—preserving him from her desire, perhaps?—she places this kinsman back in the womb of the earth and thus reunites him with undying, elemental individuality.”
–Luce Irigaray, “The Eternal Irony of the Community,” an essay on Antigone and death in Feminist Interpretations of G.W.F. Hegel (emphasis in the original)
[R]: Don’t try to hide it / Imma make you my bitch / Cake cake cake cake / You wanna put your name on it / I know you wanna bite this / It’s so enticing / Nothing else like this
[CB]: Legggoooo / Girl I wanna fuck you right now / Been a long time / I’ve been missing your body
–Rihanna feat. Chris Brown, "Birthday Cake (Remix)," released two days ago
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image: The Insider
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