The dance of sex: If one had no other reason for choosing to subscribe to Freud, what could be more charming than to believe that the whole vaudeville of the world, the entire dizzy circus of history, is but a fancy mating dance? That dictators burn Jews and businessmen vote Republican, that helmsmen steer ships [...]
Archive for October, 2008
We really have nothing to say to each other
Posted in Quotes, tagged British Existentialism, Harold Pinter, Pinter, Play, Quote, The Dwarfs on October 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Len: Do you believe in God? Mark: What? Len: Do you believe in God? Mark: Who? Len: God. Mark: God? Len: Do you believe in God? Mark: Do I believe in God? Len: Yes. Mark: Would you say that again? – Harold Pinter, from The Dwarfs
Zeppelin Guitar Tunings [Note to Self]
Posted in Miscellaneous, Music, tagged Guitar Tunings, Led Zeppelin, Music on October 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Open G: D G D G B D [e.g., "That's the Way" -- Led Zeppelin] Open C: C G C G C E [e.g., "Friends"; "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper" -- Led Zeppelin] Open D: D A D F# A D [e.g., "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" -- Led Zeppelin] D A D G A D [e.g., "Black [...]
Cincinnatus’s Lawyer and the Lost Trifle
Posted in Quotes, tagged Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov, Quote, Vladimir Nabokov on October 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
And with his eyes he literally scoured the corners of the cell. It was plain that he was upset by the loss of that precious object. It was plain. The loss of the object upset him. The object was precious. He was upset by the loss of the object. – Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
The cradle rocks above an abyss …
Posted in Short Prose, tagged Autobiography, Nabokov, Speak Memory, Vladimir Nabokov on October 13, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is headed for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats [...]
Invitation to a Beheading. (Chapter Two) :: Vladimir Nabokov
Posted in Short Prose, tagged Excerpt, Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov, Novel, Vladimir Nabokov on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
He took off his head like a toupee, took off his collarbones like shoulder straps, took off his rib cage like a hauberk. He took off his hips and his legs, he took off his arms like gauntlets and threw them in a corner. What was left of him gradually dissolved, hardly coloring the air. [...]
The Last Laugh of the Medusa
Posted in Quotes, tagged Cixous, French Feminism, Helene Cixous, Quote, The Laugh of the Medusa on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
At the end of a more or less conscious computation, she finds not her sum but her differences. I am for you what you want me to be at the moment you look at me in a way you’ve never seen me before: at every instant. When I write, it’s everything we don’t know we [...]
A World Split Apart :: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Posted in Short Prose, tagged A World Split Apart, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Speech, Solzhenitsyn on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
[Text of Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, Thursday, June 8, 1978] I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today’s graduates. Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” [...]
149. Self-Importance :: from Stuff White People Like, the book
Posted in Short Prose, tagged funny, humor, Short, Stuff White People Like on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Implied but not stated in virtually every entry here is the notion of self-importance. Magically, over the past half century white people have been able to mask much of this self-importance through the arts, charities, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and childbirth. The life of every white person is worthy of a memoir. Being born into [...]
Mutilating the word
Posted in Quotes, tagged Literature, Mircea Eliade, Quotes, Youth Without Youth on October 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Imposs’ble!” he exclaimed, dumfounded, mutilating the word. –Mircea Eliade, Youth Without Youth
White Annotated Biography :: from Stuff White People Like, the book
Posted in Quotes, Short Prose, tagged books, Culture, funny, humor, Satire, Stuff White People Like on October 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius “Honestly, I’m not afraid to call this the book of our generation. He captures all that we are and aspire to be.” Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated “The book is incredible. The accented English literally jumps off the page and demands to be read out loud.” [...]
138. Books :: from Stuff White People Like, the book
Posted in Short Prose, tagged books, Culture, funny, humor, Satire, Stuff White People Like on October 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The role of books in white culture is perhaps as important as organic food — essential for survival. However, understand that this is not about literacy or reading, but about the physical object of a book Try this out as an experiment. Show a white person a photo of a living room that features an [...]
Original analyses, discoveries, and interpretations
Posted in Quotes, tagged Literature, Mircea Eliade, Quotes, Youth Without Youth on October 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Why would you have to discover something? Your genius ought to be to fulfill yourself in the life you live, not in original analyses, discoveries, and interpretations. Your model ought to be Socrates or Goethe; but imagine a Goethe without a written opus!” –Mircea Eliade, Youth Without Youth
Notes on a poem / Can you guess?
Posted in Quotes, tagged Friedrich Schlegel, german philosophy, German Romanticism, Philosophical Fragments, Philosophy, Quotes, Schlegel on October 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Notes on a poem are like anatomical lectures on a piece of roast beef. –August Wilhelm Schlegel, Aethenium Fragment 40 . Believing in tradition and always straining at new insanities; frenetically imitative and proudly independent; awkward in what is superficial and accomplished to the point of dexterity in what is profoundly or gloomily ponderous; congenitally [...]
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