100 Things to Consume Instead of "Waiting for Gadot"

Here's a list of things to read, watch, listen, or otherwise consume, rather than my play, "Waiting for Gadot." This play is the first major piece of writing I have done in years, so I didn't want to boost my ego by simply pushing my play alone--in the interim I have still been a consumer of all different forms of media, and as a fan I would like to point people in the direction of a number of these different works of art as well.

A Long Sentence

In Ron Silliman's Ketjak, there is at least one reference that I understood to mean: can this work and be important as art while being tedious and very needless and unnecessary to read? The poem's construction largely growing from repetition perhaps causes the reader to have such a thought while reading it--and this was the brilliance of much of it, the way the poem might predict your mind thinking, while reading it--and so Silliman doubles down on this opportunity to admit a self-criticism in the work--by golly y'all are going to be bored somewhere in this deriving poem going on for a hundred pages--while also perhaps creating a very interesting connection between the reader and writer. All analysis aside, I have grown to return to Silliman's assertion--truthfully asked as a question if I remember correctly, so perhaps I should say my assertion, which is an answer of "yes" to that question--that we can view what is essentially too long to be interesting or what is mundane for aesthetic or other reasons to be considered important or noteworthy art. While reading a collection Harvey Pekar's American Splendor comic books I returned to this mindset as I have several times with Nicholson Baker's contemplation of the trivial. As one might consider from both the URL and title of this blog, I would consider much of my own thought in this category as well; for the purposes of this post, however, I considered it important to note all this. To establish a mood before sending you into one long sentence that, while perhaps too long to be interesting, derives its very importance from its length.

It's only a game, but it's the only game.

Warren Ellis's attempts to keep his blog lively while writing a novel have been amazing to watch. Really a case of an artist truly viewing the blog as an art object (or at least an "important" object) because of its near simultaneity. Someone out there in a high place truly caring about all the little people who support him (don't like the change to the specific pronoun there myself but I am speaking about Mr. Ellis. Right? Do you ever get that feeling where you realize that you probably actually know a small, small percentage of English grammar? Like the one that gets me sometimes, including this one, is sentences, complete sentences, in parentheses, that follow the original opening clause...If I made a mistake, where? Is it the period at the end of the original clause? The lowercase letter to begin it? All these unnecessary and not even very effective syntactical questions I'm writing here? I just like it aesthetically. I didn't used to but it grew on me. How should I have written that sentence? That's another trouble: the whole preposition at the end of a clause schtick. But I just checked Wiki and that seems to be even in itself hogwash. Probably needed a comma in the last sentence. Probably should admit I'm not quite sure what that whole bit was about in that link. Probably need to end this parenthetical musing). Anyway, short post. I'm reading Don DeLillo's End Zone. If you can brave the jump, click over and see what I think of it and a large chunk of awesome block quote.

A Box of Blogposts

Finished this book a while back. Debriefing posts would be a lot more common if I weren't trying to maintain a structure at the moment. Eventually I'd love to push these out there for every book I've read, but perhaps they'd be better suited to be passed out through my tumblr, being only simple thoughts rather than these long unnecessary pages I write here. Then I guess I would be doing the same thing, setting aside a few books to write about here.

The Frog Hospital

Both Tao Lin and Bret Easton Ellis read Lorrie Moore books. I was at a book sale where these huge bags full were a dollar. I saw a Lorrie Moore book. I've read it since. It was, as expected, an experience. I'm not sure how to keep writing in this sort of concise, lame, entirely uninteresting tone. I'm afraid it's my normal voice.

Praying in Common

Joan Didion is my favorite female author. While reading a Didion book I often think she's the best writer in English that I've read. When reading a DeLillo book she can fall back to second. Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite, but he's influenced by both DeLillo and Didion and you can feel a sort of authenticity to their work that I think makes their writing stronger, if not for me more personally enjoyable. This is the debriefing of A Book of Common Prayer, Didion's third, but it also acts as a commentary on all the Didion I've read (Play It as It Lays,  Democracy, and The Year of Magical Thinking). After the jump, I plan to consider what a bibliography is supposed to look like, what we want from novels, and what writing novels is like.

When at last you give in...

I think the ultimate test of understanding an idea is being able to recognize it elsewhere. Anyone can string useless words together as some sort of definition, anyone can write, but it is actually seeing this concept outside of its initial context that allows you to truly claim understanding. It's like waiting on a girl to grow her hair out just to see if you're only attracted to the current boyish cut. Because you'd never know. I would say that being unable to recognize ideas that connect across different contexts is one of the major faults in ideology. Let's have ourselves a little experiment, then, in locating the concept outside of its context.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

This is another new idea for the blog. I'm calling it "debriefing." I've written stuff to comment on, explain to myself, write about, toy with, and explore the stuff I've been reading for quite a long time. This is the latest installment. But the good thing is that I've always written with the nonexistent audience motif, so at least this time there is the possibility that someone might read this. That seems more sane than talking to your imaginary friends about how they are imaginary. So the book I'm going to write about here is... Not Pale Fire. I bet you were expecting that one. Actually, I think that will come later. I might even write another style and design post about the book first. No, this one is about the Mario Vargas Llosa novel The Storyteller. (Which is quoted in the title if you don't believe me.)

This Good Ink

                                                      this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always form, when dropped, an ampersand

"Pale Fire" (532-534)

During my two week self-imposed exile from the internet (with some cheating) that I spent with my family on vacation in the Michigan/Ohio area, I got a few ideas about how I would like this blog to be run. ("Run," I should say, with Tao Lin's scare quotes, as it isn't really a working machine most of the time.) Since then I've done a whole lot of nothing in the past few weeks, speaking of more than just the blog. Now I've finally gotten myself to start these changes to some extent. Mainly, I would like to add a sort of magazine-feel to the blog. The creation of serials or beats to allow me to work in specific fields without coming back to the blog every once in a while for one month's failed attempt at daily posting. To do this, I've attached the "blogaday" tab loosely, to force a bit of deadline on. Have new semester and GRE coming up in next months so "deadline" itself is a loose title, but this is all part of the struggle. One idea from my exile was remarks on "design and style," the misremembered title of an earlier post (called Art & Design) starting with the book I was reading, Nabokov's Pale Fire.

THE NAMES

Don DeLillo always makes me want to forget language. Just go back to simple thoughts that aren't thoughts because they don't know the word 'thoughts.' If DeLillo were writing this it would make sense, too much sense, and there would be ongoing little jitters and cringes between characters that you recognize between books. I can't help but associate him with Dylan on the Never Ending Tour, because the books run together. Maybe this is what Li-Young Lee was talking about book with 'poetry' in Faulkner, Melville novels. Anyway, what seems the least important of all in DeLillo's books is what's going on. You try to attach yourself to what's being said and what's being thought and who's lying to you. But you forget. It's like life in that respect. You forget and then there's this undercurrent running under the words for the next few hundred pages.

Because consumption is not enough.

dialogue [Anne Carson writes them better; my apologies]

PLAINWATER

"Bohemian Rhapsody," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," "Band on the Run," and "Paranoid Android" are all songs that are known for their diversity--the way that they slip around on you--and are commonly thought of as more than one song somewhat cut and pasted together. But done so very well, of course. Which gets me to thinking--why do we like this idea? I mean, the concept of a mini-album contained in one song falls completely flat on its face so hard it doesn't even have a nose anymore. So why do we like the idea of a song containing the diversity of an album? I would postulated this is an interest in disparate connections: we enjoy being stunned by two ideas the fit together so well that we can't even see the seams where they logically attach. It's like CatDog: at what point is one the other? And yet they are completely different! And that's, as they say, poetry.

Layering

One of the perhaps subtle bits behind the genius that is Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming is a theme that we can track back to Rousseau. It's basically the Doomsday Device from Dr. Strangelove and it's an idea of which any archaeologist is familiar.

MEN IN THE OFF HOURS

Thoughtful if a little unnaturally negative review of the Anne Carson book I just finished. Good closing bit I've blockquoted, so read the review here if you've got a mind to or just skip to after the jump. I have a few words to add, but really Carson's work leaves me somewhat...thoughtless (a pun on speechless, I hope you understand), and Steve Harris seems to have gotten down points a lot better than I might.

Immateria

Reading Promethea, still immersed in Li-Young Lee, but I'm about finished with him now (few more interviews in Breaking the Alabaster Jar), listening to a mix of Say Hi and Nine Inch Nails, and just now I was electronically flipping through an ebook of James Tate's Selected. Guess that's as much a lead-in as any.

The Common Misconception

There are no rules. The only advice is that breaking any perceptions of rules, breaking these views successfully, shattering them like a mirror and gathering around the seven years' worth of bad luck to bask in the glory of, is always  beneficial. It's always a great thing to behold.

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (Didion, 2005)

There are times of realization. They can be recorded and tracked. In these days it is often not the question of "Can we?" but "Should we?" Every second we are pushing the realms of the possible further apart.

"Slippery," my father corrects, "just slippery. That was the nickname."

My spirituality is rooted in coincidences.

The blue bus speaking in my mind.

About dreams, DeLillo, and the like. Sort of a mental note, which is why I'm not putting much introduction here. (Trying to change what I use this blog for, so this is one way to do that, I guess.)

The price of the stereo depends on the stereo type.

Still in the punning mood. Not sure what this one is about. This is the long haul at the moment, seeing if I can get a lot of posts in while it's still June. I'm doomed to fail, but I've got nothing better to do. My writing style at the moment is a lot of fun to work with. It's been a productive month: moving the fiction back to the end was quite helpful, because it allowed me to do a lot of writing in the length that I want (~1000 words) and then adapt that to fiction. Plus it was fan fiction so it was all kinda new. But I'm wasting time here. This is the introductory bit saying au revoir.