(incli)NATION

Reclaimed Lumber Bookshelf by Blankblank

Anything that makes me laugh out loud must be shared.

via Inhabitat

On Ugliness by Umberto Eco

Just read a great review of Eco's "On Ugliness" in the Telegraph. I confess a weakness for Eco's essays and fiction, but Brian Dillon pulls no punches in his attempt to put Eco into historical place. Worth the read, made me want ot read him again:

"By the Romantic period, the grotesque and the sublime were established as aesthetic categories, and the decadents of the late 19th century loved nothing more than a deathly consumptive countenance. In the wake of 20th-century avant-gardes, unadulterated beauty looks saccharine, immature or kitsch. We seduce only with our faults, wrote Baudrillard. Or as Johnny Rotten put it: there's nothing so boring as a pretty face."

read the rest after the jump HERE

Joan Didion and "Alienation from Self"

"If we do not respect ourselves … we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Hellen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous…

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something so small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — their lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."

--Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

via the excellent Maud Newton

Waiting; Roland Barthes

I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. This can be futile, or immensely pathetic; in Erwartung (Waiting), a woman waits for her lover, at night, in the forest; I am waiting for no more than a telephone call, but the anxiety is the same. Everything is solemn; I have no sense of proportions.(...)
Waiting is enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone call is thereby woven out of tiny unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy); I suffer torments if someone else telephones me (for the same reason); I madden myself by the thought that at a certain (imminent) hour I shall have to leave, thereby running the risk of missing the healing call, the return of the Mother. All these diversions which solicit me are so many wasted moments for waiting, so many impurities of anxiety. For the anxiety of waiting, in its pure state, requires that I be sitting in a chair within reach of the telephone, without doing anything.(...)

The being I am waiting for is not real. Like the mother's breast for the infant, "I create and re-create it over and over, starting from my capacity to love, starting from my need for it": the other comes here where I am waiting, here where I have already created him/her. And if the other does not come, I hallucinate the other: waiting is a delirium.... (more)

via the incomparable wood s lot

LA Times Fesitval of Books, 4/2007

This is the first time in 3 years I will not make it to the Festival of Books in LA. If you're in town don't miss it. My first year, I met George Plimpton at the Paris Reveiw booth who told me to, "keep writing." Wish I had had a picture phone at the time. He was as gracious and as kind as they said he would be. We miss you George:

"In the LA Times Festival of Books, the most read paper in town joins forces with the city's most respected school, bringing LA's bibliophiles together for a massive weekend of readings, signings, lectures, and sales. While there are plenty of serious discussions and A-list literary celebs for the high-minded, pop-culture junkies get their fix, as well, with an appearance by fashion icon and Project Runway superstar Tim Gunn, who shows up to sign his magnum opus, Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style, and answer questions for the fashionably challenged. (MEM)"

via Flavorpill.net

Join the NY Media Elite - FREE!

This is just so much dorky goodness that I have to post the full entry. From Kottke.com:

I might be shooting myself in the foot by posting this, but the table of contents for the newest issue of the New Yorker is usually available on Sunday on newyorker.com, the day before the issue hits the newsstands and arrives in subscriber mailboxes. All you need to do is hack the URL of the TOC from the previous Monday. Here's the URL for the April 23 TOC:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/23/toc_20070416

"2007/04/23" is the date of the issue and "toc_20070416" refers to the date of the posting. This then is the URL for the April 30 issue:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/30/toc_20070423

At right is the cover for tomorrow's issue, which includes Adam Gopnik's piece on the Virginia Tech shooting, a new piece by Atul Gawande, and Anthony Lane's review of Hot Fuzz. Monday's New Yorker on Sunday is usually only available to the select few of the Manhattan media elite who are sped their new issues hot off the presses. Now everyone can have a similar experience on the web.

Enjoy.

via kottke.org

No one belongs here more than you. Miranda July

Haven't read the book yet, but had to tell you about the website she put together. It is absolutely hilarious, and brilliant.

Check it out right now. Then go buy the book!

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rare The Little Prince Drawing Discovered

"A rare, original illustration by The Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been discovered in Japan. François d'Agey, the author's nephew, was among those at a media conference in Tokyo on Wednesday announcing the discovery.

"Seeing [the drawing] made me very happy," the 81-year-old d'Agey told the gathering of reporters.

The image depicts the businessman on the fourth star visited by the title character of Saint-Exupéry's beloved story. The man is so busy counting stars that he pays no attention to the philosophical little character.

The precious drawing is only the sixth discovered of the estimated 47 illustrations by Saint-Exupery (1900-1944). Most of the author's drawings are missing, officials said.

The drawing has been kept by Minoru Shibuya, head of the Ehon Museum Kiyosato in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, which displays the works of picture-book writers from around the world and who is said to not have realized the drawing's value (!).

via http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2007/04/04/little-prince-drawing.html

link http://maudnewton.com/

Bibliochaise for the Ultimate Reading List

You've finally settled on your ultimate reading list after culling through thousands of combinations and now you just need the time and place to read.

We can't help you with finding the time, but we've found the perfect place. The Bibliochaise by Nobody & Co. holds up to 5 linear meters of your favorite books. Just fill it up with the books on your list and start reading. When the shelves/chair are/is empty, repeat.

http://www.nobodyandco.it/

seen at http://www.rossanaorlandi.com/

Terry Eagleton on Raine's "TS Eliot"

Terry Eagleton flames Raine's new book, "TS Eliot". His review is a good primer on how history's custodians do their work.

TS Eliot by Craig Raine
(OUP, £12.99)

"For a good many decades, thick fumes of incense have been wafting from the English literary establishment in the general direction of TS Eliot. The latest offering by the acolytes to the high priest is this study by Craig Raine, which admits that some of Eliot's drama isn't up to much but otherwise won't hear a cross word about the great man. "There is no evidence," Raine piously remarks, "that Eliot was either a fornicator or a homosexual," as though being homosexual was a trespass to be vigorously rebutted. Eliot was not, he rashly maintains, a misogynist either, even though the poetry is shot through from end to end with a fear and loathing of women. He even seeks to face down the charge that this ascetic ex-bank clerk was a bit of a dry old stick, although Eliot himself admitted as much.

Why do critics feel a need to defend the authors they write on, like doting parents deaf to all criticism of their obnoxious children?"

To find out, read the rest HERE.

Heartfield versus Hitler: Hitler was No Surprise

"Willett's book Heartfield versus Hitler is an absolute refutation to the many who attempted to excuse their tolerance and/or support of Hitler's rise to power with the disingenuous claim:

'We did not know.'

As Heartfield's images from the 1930s make clear, Hitler's character and intentions were far from secret."

Link: John Heartfield.

Left, Hitler erzahlt Marchen
Hitler tells us a scary bedtime story

"Zu Hilfe, zu Hilfe, ich bin eingekreist!"
Help! Help! I'm surrounded via ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal".

and Wit

Perfect From Now On: John Sellers on Indie Rock

We are always interested in how critics and other like-minded folk attempt to contextualize slippery cultural objects like painting, television, quilts, and music, so this afternoon we will be picking up a copy of John Sellers' "Perfect From Now On". Has anyone knocked this off their list yet? If so, do share...

From Eric J Lawrence @ KCRW: "Spring has sprung, and while that might incline you to start thinking about outdoor activities, here are a few literary reasons to keep you in your favorite reading chair at least until beach weather.  “Perfect From Now On” is a cheeky memoir from journalist John Sellers about his discovery of 90s-era indie rock.  Despite a shameful lack of appreciation for The Fall, Sellers writes charmingly about his obsessions, especially as he describes his encounter with Guided By Voices during their farewell tour."

Is Not Magazine; AU

Is Not Magazine is an Australian magazine in the form of a 1.5m x 2m bill poster that goes on display at outdoor sites for everyone to read/scribble on. You can even fill in the crossword. It’s independently published and carries no ads. It’s as much a piece of street art as a publishing project.

For more info click here .

via Neatorama

Rip Torn Kicks Norman Mailer's Ass

I'm in the middle of reading Mailer's "Castle in the Clouds" [holding out judgement] and while googling the old man I ran across this:

On the set of the 1970 film Maidstone, Rip Torn assaults Norman Mailer with a hammer, and Mailer retaliates by biting off a piece of Torn's ear:

Who could we get to do the updated version? Eggers v. Foster Wallace? Whitehead v. Eugenides, Ha!

Some backstory:

Norman Mailer created a film in the late 60s called MAIDSTONE. He played the part of a famous movie director who is considering a run for the presidency. Rip Torn played his potential assassin. At the end of filming, Rip appeared to get a little too far into his role, and he attacked Mailer on camera with a hammer, drawing blood. Mailer retaliated by viciously biting into Torn's ear, drawing even more blood. This is the fight.

It's debatable how "surprised" that Mailer was by the attack, but it should be noted that he still had the camera crew hanging around and filming, the day after production had allegedly "ended" on the picture. However, the blood from both men is undeniably real, as are the horrified reactions of Mailer's children (his wife, on the other hand, seems to be overacting badly).

More backstory here.

[via iFilm.]

via Panpopticist

25 Years of Love & Rockets @ Fantagraphics, Seattle Saturday/Sunday

"Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love & Rockets is the alternative comics success story of the 80's and 90's. If the publication of Zap #1 in 1967 "officially" marks the beginning of underground comix, the publication of Love & Rockets #1 in 1982 could be said to "officially" mark the beginning of the '80's comics renaissance clumsily called alternative comics.

"Both Gilbert and Jaime credit the punk rock explosion of the late '70's with broadening their horizons and leading them to reflect their personal experience in their comics.

"Fantagraphics began publishing Los Bros. in 1982. While the original Love & Rockets ended in 1996 with its 50th issue, popular demand caused the Bros. to revive the title five years later in a slightly different format, and it continues to be published every four months."

What:Original art from the punk-inspired indie comic classic.
Why: Puts Archie and Jughead to shame.
When: Reception with Los Bros Hernandez, Sat., 5-8 p.m.; panel discussion and book signing, Sun., 1-3 p.m.

via Fantagraphics Bookstore, 1201 S. Vale St., at Airport Way (206-658-0110).

Library Thing; A Book-lover's Paradise

This is the best new time-waster on the web. LibraryThing:

Jim Harrison v. the Naked Bourgeoisie

While I am working up an appropriate response to Jim Harrison's article in the NYT today: Feed The Poets - Books - Review - New York Times. I'm enjoying this little ditty via Neatorama:
	When Victor Hugo [wiki], the famous author of great tomes such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, ran into a writer’s block, he concocted a unique scheme to force himself to write: he had his servant take all of his clothes away for the day and leave his own nude self with only pen and paper, so he’d have nothing to do but sit down and write.
	Ernest Hemingway [wiki] did not only write A Farewell to Arms, he also said farewell to clothes! The inside dirt is that Hemingway wrote nude, standing up, with his typewriter about waist level. Indeed, there might be a nudist streak in the Hemingway genes: Ernest’s cousin Edward Hemingway opened Britain’s oldest nudist colony, a nine-bedroom chateau called Metherell Towers, back in the 1930s!
	Perhaps it’s not so surprising that D.H. Lawrence [wiki], who wrote the controversial (and censored) erotic book Lady Chatterley’s Lover, liked to climb mulberry trees, in the nude, before he came down and wrote.
	James Whitcomb Riley [wiki], America’s "Hoosier Poet," had his friends lock him up in a hotel room to write, naked, so he wouldn’t be tempted to go down to the bar for a drink.
	French poet and author Edmond Rostand [wiki], who is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac, was sick of being interrupted by his friends that he took up working naked in his bathtub.
	Apparently Rostand wasn’t the only one with this bright idea - Benjamin Franklin [wiki] also liked to take baths. In fact, he liked to take "air baths," where he sit around naked in a cold room for an hour or so while he wrote.
	Mystery writer Agatha Christie [wiki], whose books have been translated in 40 languages and outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, liked to write anywhere, including in the bathtub! Sources: A Blank Page by Sam Elmore, In The Nude by So Many Books, Literary Life and Other Curiosities by Robert Hendrickson, Dressing to Write by Bibi’s Beat.

W.J.T. Mitchell @ Sculpture Center Tomorrow

In NYC tomorrow night? Be sure to catch W.J.T. Mitchell--author of What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images and editor of Critical Inquiry and a professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of English Literature and Art History--presents some of the concepts that inspired SculptureCenter’s upcoming group exhibition, The Happiness of Objects, tomorrow night, Jan. 25th.

Mitchell has come a long way since his Picture Theory days, and as that volume was cited ad nauseum in the nineties, that is saying something.

Fredric Jameson on Mitchell's most recent work, What Do Pictures Want?:

This lively collection of essays is something more than a critical tour of the problematics of contemporary art theory; it is more than a set of pertinent (or impertinent) interventions on a series of current exhibits, films, and images of all kinds; more even than a tireless and insistent reproblematization of everybody's work on pictures, images, and image society, turning all the new ideas back into questions and more questions. It is also the elaboration of what is surely destined to become an influential new tripartite concept of the object, namely as idol, fetish, and totem."

And be sure to grab a copy of his forthcoming, The Late Derrida, this April.

Thursday, January 25, 7pm - W.J.T. Mitchell at Sculpturecenter.

Ong on Oral v. Written [blogging the self]

The question is, "How does blogging [that fluid reading/writing activity] change our sense of ourselves?"restructures human consciousness. In this history of literacy, the spoken word is something that wells up directly from the human unconscious, whereas written language is expressed through artificial (i.e. human-made) frameworks, systems of "consciously contrived, articulable rules." These rules (and their runes) create a scaffold for the brain, which, now able to engage with complex ideas in contemplative solitude as opposed to interlocution, begins to conceive of itself as an individual entity rather than as part of a collective. Literate cultures are thus cognitively different than oral ones...

[True, these arguments do smack of the same theories that had everyone worked up ten years ago. Remember "interactivity" and the death of the "Author"?]

"Ong called the invention of writing the "technologizing of the word," a process that fundamentally

"What's so interesting here, is that it seems that the age of networked reading and writing promises to get us much closer to one of the crucial aspects of oral culture — the sense that the story teller/author and the audience/reader are joined together in a collective enterprise where the actions of each will have a direct and noticeable impact on the other.

via futureofthebook

"The Castle in the Forest" - Mailer's first novel in 10 years

"The Castle in the Forest" - Mailer's first novel in 10 years is not just the almost superhumanly detached fulfillment of the somewhat depressed boast he made nearly half a century ago in "Advertisements for Myself": "I wish to attempt an entrance into the mysteries of murder, suicide, incest, orgy, orgasm and Time." This remarkable novel about the young Adolf Hitler, his family and their shifting circumstances, is Mailer's most perfect apprehension of the absolutely alien.

No wonder it is narrated by a devil. Mailer doesn't inhabit these historical figures so much as possess them.

In "The Castle in the Forest," the devil-narrator - who is living in the body of an SS man named Dieter - tells a little tale about the tale he is telling. "It is more than a memoir and certainly has to be most curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel. I do possess the freedom to enter many a mind." Those two sentences form the crux of Mailer's originality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/books/review/Siegel.t.html?8bu&emc=bu

via NYT

John O'Brien on Contemporary Art

This is typically wonderful, as are most observations from O'Brien:

"I've been among those observing the fragmented trajectory of contemporary visual art as it clears the 20th-Century with great interest, and am heartened by the diversity I see--and worried about the stark relational contrasts. Of the many vectors emerging, there are a few common threads--like the timeless uniqueness of the art experience and the fascinating nonsense of art expenditure--as energy or acquisition, for example. But there is at once large group of conflicting and fundamentally different paradigms that appear to be without any convergence in either ideal or practical terms. Today the role of an art writer, consequentially, must be that of a thoughtful and conscientious observer of the flux of all these trajectories. Writing intelligently about the wonder and complexity of all contemporary art (with a touch of skepticism to acknowledge one's own historical limits) is essential to understanding, delineating and deciphering the trends of the present. That is the only way to respect its sense of accruing critical mass given its current delicate state of imbalance.

"Critical Mass"? Sounds spooky, John...

via ARTSCENE

(pro)text @ Richard Hugo House, Seattle Independent Publishers Fair

(pro)text: It’s a sit-in. A stand-up and shout. A chance to yell, “Look at me, dammit!” Meaning, we want you there to represent the counter-world (counter anything as long as it’s not counter-intelligence—the Bush Administration has that covered). This ain’t Book Fest or Bumbershoot. It’s a free-for-all. It’s a chance for small publishers to show off the work they're doing and to get their texts (journals, magazines, books, zines) in the public eye. We'll also have some swanky and provocative performances, including a reading by the poet Christian Hawkey (The Book of Funnels, Verse Press, 2004) and a panel on the ethics of literary contests at the end of the day (from 5-6 p.m.). The press fair is full! We have 37 small publishers displaying their work. The event is free to the public (and co-sponsored by Hugo House).

SAT> FEB>17, Noon to five.

Center for Land Use Interperetation; Overlook

Be sure to pick up a copy of thier new book:

From BLDGBLG: "If you're curious about CLUI's work, consider purchasing their new book: Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America With the Center for Land Use Interpretation, or just stop by the Center at some point and say hello.

Bruce Yonemoto in Exile of the Imaginary, Generali Foundation, Austria

L.A.'s Bruce Y--maverick photographer, filmmaker, and artist [and excellent studio critic/advisor]--is participating in an interesting exhibition at the Generali Foundation in Vienna. Curator Juli Carson [UC Irvine] examines the practice of a group of artists using "love" as a vehicle for examining the relationship between the personal and the political in their practice. Or something like that...

From the press release:

"The Lover’s Discourse" (1977) by French philosopher Roland Barthes offers a theoretical basis, and also lends the exhibition its title. The book confronts us with a montage of texts from the author and from world literature on the discourse of love.

Check out the panel discussion this Thursday at 7PM.

Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna, Austria
Phone + 43 1 504 98 80
Fax + 43 1 504 98 83
foundation@generali.at
http://foundation.generali.at

Flahiff in Free Press, Stockholm

And now for some blatant self-promotion: Sal Randolph's Free Press Project continues it's viral life. Here are a few pics of the opening show at Roda Sten. The show has moved on to Stockholm for "Labyrinth" an international art-book show. My text is titled "The Program." It's funny.