"Too many writers write about their lives. It’s easier, and it’s seductive, and it can be catastrophic. “It happened to me, and therefore it must be interesting.” You know, that’s sort of awful.” William H. Gass
If you're like me and are waiting for the Library of America to reprint Melville's Complete Poems ... (Currently, if you want everything, you need Vols. 11–13 of the NN Edition: Published Poems, Clarel, Uncompleted Writings. Clarel has an affordable edition, but the others don't)
Grow a cat.
"You failed Kamala!" Go tell it to the marines.
Another example of the regalian complex, uniform across the political spectrum. Remember: politicians are your employees. You pick them for a task: ensuring your community, or country is thriving. They answer to you. Never the other way around.
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade.
To waste everybody's time. In a liberal culture based on debate and discussion, one often forgets that good faith is a major element. This absent-mindedness means now you have to put up with a lot of superficial erudition from people who didn't do their homework.
have you seen AI Perec?
"Reciprocally, and this time without caveats, all misers are realists."
Gaston Bachelard, The Formation of the Scientific Mind
"In its naïve form, in its affective form, the realist's certainty comes from a miser's joy. To make our thesis more precise, let us that say in a polemical tone: from a psychoanalytic standpoint and in the excesses of naïveté, all realists are misers.
"Listen to a realist argue: he immediately has the upper hand on his opponent, because he has, or so he thinks, reality on his side, because he possesses the riches of reality while his opponent, prodigal son of the mind, chases after vain daydreams.
I posted about it a few months back, but this week marks 5 years since the publication of the first Empyrean Series titles, including ‘Three Dreams’ (Jean Paul trans. De Quincey, and Laurence Sterne).
Nos. 49 & 50 — works by Ludwig Tieck, tr. Robertson, & Niu Sengru, tr. Massa — are printing now.
But Danny says we gotta go...
youtu.be/2Qxm_YSA9Kg
I don't know when I will get to it myself. Let us know your thoughts, please!
Rosa la Rose, fille publique Cutter's Way Va savoir
A brief movie pause, nostalgia for my misspent youth.
Janus provided a print to TIFF c. 2020. Saw that print last night. Not sure about the colors having never seen it before, and unsure how it compares with the recent 4K transfer issued from the dreaded Lab Eclair. But the stuff is there.
Robert Coover made me do some math. Silly little post on The Universal Baseball Association for my website, which now renders LaTeX (Thanks, Codex!) nielsjoaquin.com/data/univers...
"Yes! I am so on a roll. No crying in my bath tonight."
I am leaving this here. You get the general drift of it as a general text: Half pulp speculative fiction, half investigation into a plague of bad writing. It should sound a little like Queneau's Icarus book. Write it.
Hiring a hit man to kill the personal essay, as a general form.
I, too, am pleased and honored to receive money from the Asshole Centre of Evil Inc. but it's not a lump sum. It's like below the living wage in Toronto. It's just for doing work.
30 minutes of my day at the shit factory is this annoyance that I don't get to produce enough scat because my higher ups are preventing us.
Useless meeting about not wasting time, every damn day.
Negativity is like fat: unhealthy in small doses but with unrelenting waves of it you achieve a sadness-ketosis. Think of me as a psychic avocado. youtu.be/9anYqMcrADQ
I noticed that I get more traction when I am positive than negative.
Only one remedy:
Up the negativity until morale improves.
35mm print in Toronto.
The Formation of the Scientific Mind (Gaston Bachelard)
Terence Davies' The House of Mirth. Like falling from a height and then you get dragged around on the gravel for 2 hours plus. A very nice time for yours truly. Gillian Anderson is terrific.
Grisebach, who has made at least one very good and moving work, fits in Cannes. I do not know how long Schanelec will be welcome in Berlin.
Zooming out you get the larger picture. It's forlorn: the larger festivals are mostly a money affair, aesthetics an afterthought. Thierry will ask you to amend your film for it to fit the festival standard deviation. Berlin, Cannes, Venice are Capital's art fiefdoms.