Category Archives: literature

Then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille

Inspired by a new post by Spurious on Kierkegaard:

Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. . . . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand. —Either/Or : A Fragment of Life (1843) – Kierkegaard

And here is a quote from Spurious’s post:

To find an idea for which he could live and die – this is what Kierkegaard says he hopes for in an early entry in his journal. No surprise, then, his impassioned experience of God, a few years later. He has found what he sought – or was it the idea that sought him, waited for him and then trapped him? Now his torment had a name; the idea was clothed, and he could sacrifice his life as he always wanted to sacrifice it.  —Spurious

Reader’s Bill of Rights (1992) Daniel Pennac

The Rights of the Reader (1992) – Daniel Pennac
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

An essay by Daniel Pennac, original title Comme un roman.

1. Le droit de ne pas lire.
2. Le droit de sauter des pages.
3. Le droit de ne pas finir un livre.
4. Le droit de relire.
5. Le droit de lire n’importe quoi.
6. Le droit au bovarysme (maladie textuellement transmissible).
7. Le droit de lire n’importe où.
8. Le droit de grappiller.
9. Le droit de lire à haute voix.
10. Le droit de nous taire.

“Reader’s Bill of Rights”:
1. The right not to read.
2. The right to skip pages.
3. The right to not finish.
4. The right to reread.
5. The right to read anything.
6. The right to escapism.
7. The right to read anywhere.
8. The right to browse.
9. The right to read out loud.
10. The right to not defend our tastes –via http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/spring96/hipple.html

NOTHING is so generally coveted by Womankind, as to be accounted Beautiful

NOTHING is so generally coveted by Womankind, as to be accounted Beautiful; yet nothing renders the Owner more liable to Inconveniences. She who is fond of Praise, is in great Danger of growing too fond of the Praiser; and if by chance she does defend herself from the Attacks made on her Virtue, it is almost a Miracle if her Reputation receives no Prejudice by them: And a Woman who is very much admir’d for the Charms of her Face, ought with infinitely more Reason be so for those of her Prudence, who preserves both amidst so many Enemies as Love and Opportunity will raise against them. For one Woman that has made her Fortune by her Beauty, there are a thousand whose utter Destruction it has been.—Some, among a Crowd of Adorers, are so long determining which shall be the happy Man, that Time stealing every Day away some Part of their Attractions, they grow at last depriv’d of all, and on a sudden find themselves abandon’d, and not worth a Bow from those whose Hearts and Knees bended at their Approach before. —The Fatal Secret, or, Constancy in Distress from Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems, by Eliza Haywood (ca.1693-1756)

See also: amatory fiction – women’s fiction – British literature – 1700s literature

The Robber Bride (1993) – Margaret Atwood

The Robber Bride (1993) – Margaret Atwood
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In The Robber Bride, Atwood depicts a femme fatale’s malevolent role in the lives of three women.

Maragaret Atwood has 6 of her novels listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. To a cinematic audience she is best known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale which was adapted for film by Volker Schlöndorff.

See also: Margaret Atwood

Lee Siegel suspended for sock puppeting

Lee Siegel, an American cultural critic was fired for commenting on his own work pseudonymously by using a so-called sock puppet.

  • Lee Siegel, writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments using the user name “sprezzatura“.

More: International Herald Tribune

Lee Siegel in other blogs:

In the most recent issue of The Nation, Lee Siegel laid into Camille Paglia’s newest barnstormer, Break, Blow, Burn. His article, Look at Me, is a magnificent blast of snark against the self-maligning agitation that Paglia seems to fall more & more victim to. —Poetry Snark, 2005

And the final sentence of Lee Siegel’s review (which also features a very good analysis of Paglia’s zeitgeist and work) of Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn:

To invoke two other writers from the past, Paglia used to come on like Byron; now she is like some cynical version of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, trampling on her very own standards, stooping as low as she can go in order to get a second helping of attention from the public that has forgotten her. But bullies always end up being reduced to their inner weakling. It’s called poetic justice. –Lee Siegel in Look at Me [June 13, 2005 ]

Notice the words love and hate …

The Night of the Hunter (1955) – Charles Laughton
Notice the words love and hate have been tattooed across his knuckles.

The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 novel by American author Davis Grubb. The book was a national bestseller and was voted a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award. In 1955 the book was adapted by Charles Laughton and James Agee as the film The Night of the Hunter.

The story concerns an ex-convict who, acting on a story told him by his now-dead cellmate, cons the cellmate’s widow into marrying him in hopes that her children will tell him where their father hid the money from his last robbery. After killing their mother, he embarks on a hunt for the children, who have sensed his evil and are running from him.

The plot was based on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night of the Hunter [Sept 2006]

See also: serial killer – American cinema – 1955

In the beginning there was the Word

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

In den beginne was het Woord en het Woord was bij God en het Woord was God.

Au commencement était la Parole, et la Parole était avec Dieu, et la Parole était Dieu.

Im Anfang war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, und das Wort war Gott.

EN el principio era el Verbo, y el Verbo era con Dios, y el Verbo era Dios.

—Gospel of John (KJV) 1:1-4

I was seeking a soul resembling mine

I was seeking a soul resembling mine, and I could not find it. I searched throughout the seven seas; my perseverance proved of no use. Yet I could not remain alone. I needed someone who’d approve of my nature; there had to be somebody out there with the same ideas as me. –Stanza 13 of Maldoror via Dennis Cooper who has a series of posts concerning Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) – Comte de Lautréamont in a version illustrated by Salvador Dalí.

Manhood (1939) – Michel Leiris

Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility (1939) – Michel Leiris [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Originally published in 1939 as L’Âge d’homme. This edition translated from the French by Richard Howard in 1992. Susan Sontag dedicated a chapter to it in Against Interpretation. The painting on the cover of this edition is by Northern Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach. [Sept 2006]

Via The Wire’s review of David Toop’s Ocean of Sound.

Ocean of Sound (1995) – David Toop

Ocean of Sound (1995) – David Toop [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Its parallels aren’t music books at all, but rather Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Michel Leiris’s Afrique Phantôme, William Gibson’s Neuromancer … David Toop is our Calvino and our Leiris, our Gibson. Ocean of Sound is as alien as the 20th century, as utterly Now as the 21st. An essential mix. –The Wire magazine.

An incredible breadth an depth of knowledge. Recommended 10/10

See also: David Toop – 1995 – music journalism