Saturday, October 16, 2004



Farce is higher than comedy in that it is very close to tragedy. You've only got to play some of Shakespeare's tragedies plain and they are nearly farcical. All gradations of theatre between tragedy and farce—light comedy, drama—are a load of rubbish."
Joe Orton (quoted in John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton)

Because there are over 175,000 books published a year and they can't all get reviews in the NYTBR. Authored by M.J. Rose, Superwoman (2004)
Psychologists call it the Proustian phenomenon. Specific odours can spark a flood of reminiscences. The first time I walked inside the David Jones Glorious Food Hall all I could smell was Vrbov everywhere the Vrbov of our baker Mr Zummer: Supersmell (1980)

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Water's water everywhere
SSometimes I wonder why nobody reads philosophy. It requires, to be sure, a degree of hyperbole to wonder this. Academics like me, who eke out their sustenance by writing and teaching the stuff, still browse in the journals; it's mainly the laity that seems to have lost interest. And it's mostly Anglophone analytic philosophy that it has lost interest in. As far as I can tell, 'Continental' philosophers (Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Heidegger, Husserl, Kierkegaard, Sartre and the rest) continue to hold their market. Even Hegel has a vogue from time to time, though he is famous for being impossible to read. All this strikes me anew whenever I visit a bookstore. The place on the shelf where my stuff would be if they had it (but they don't) is just to the left of Foucault, of which there is always yards and yards. I'm huffy about that; I wish I had his royalties.
For water to be necessarily H2O is just for water to be H2O in every possible world [Sometimes when you read Updike you laugh outloud, other times you are going 'wow'. Like yesterday in 'Couples' when they described the local fire chief as the most neurotic man in town, he had a phobia of fire, water and dogs!
From what I can make out Updike is always struggling, always experimenting with the idea of 'the good life' or 'the best life'. Only this struggle does not begin when we are 15 and end when we are 18. No, for Updike it begins the day you are born and it ends the day you die, or maybe you are lucky if you even find an answer by the day you die. Books Of Note]
• · Book distorts history by omitting crucial facts, including an important link to the Czech Republic Not Everything Is Illuminated [The real-life hero of the movie might be actually found in the Czech Republic]
• · · The first thing you notice about alumnus Matt Mankins, SM ’03, is that he doesn’t look like the Lone Ranger or Don Quixote Being Book Smart
• · · · Dion Painter and blogger of Artnews; [One in three people believes in angels and one in five believes they have been helped by one ]
• · · · · A farm is about to be overwhelmed by a bushfire. The oldest son keeps pigeons, and he lets them go The fire of the truth [A fiction-like form gives this story its entertainment value. But it is the truth that gives it power]
• · · · · · Fact v Fiction
[Elfriede Jelinek gave an interview to Profil (Austria's top weekly).
The interview headline shouts: "Habe gebetet, dass ich ihn nicht bekomme" (I prayed I wouldn't get it)
Die Kinder der Toten ist sicher mein wichtigstes Werk. Es enthält alles, was ich sagen wollte; es hätte eigentlich genügt, dieses eine Buch zu veröffentlichen.
(Die Kinder der Toten ('The Children of the Dead') is certainly my most important work. It contains everything that I wanted to say; it would have sufficed to publish just that one book.)]