You're the Only Serious Person in the Room, Aren't You, the Only One Who *Understands,* and You Can Prove It by the Fact that You've Never Finished a Single Thing in Your Life

"Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic."

William Gaddis, born 103 years ago today, in a 1986 interview. For boatloads of excerpts click the Gaddis tag.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions

PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, or: Born 100 Years Ago Today

"Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic."

William Gaddis, born 100 years ago today, in a 1986 interview.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single  thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions

Gaddis' centennial needs remarking, his novels deserve rereading, I reread *JR* this year (some of it by audio book to and from Maine this past summer), *Frolic* the goal for 2023

this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

William Gaddis, born ninety-seven years ago today, in a 1986 interview.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single  thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions
 

• I need Gaddis to write a 2020 novel, I need new eyes and renewed concentration to reread the 2020 novels he wrote, will use old eyes and tattered concentration to read at least one of his 2020 novels written mid-last century in 2020
• Homeless in dystopia
• NYT plays the honorable Republican bullshit card
• (Same day's NYT Stephens' crank eugenics article)
• Our sociopath overlords will always choose fascism, overt campaign turned on
• Already started, about to accelerate: the criminalization of protest in America
• Someone else calls bullshit on the Bernie Can Win campaign
• Motherfucking Democrats
• Undercover journey into the heart of madness
• World's loneliest tree
• Unmaking World Literature: The major implication of this book is that literature itself may be left behind as the dividing lines over culture begin to be drawn elsewhere instead.
• Phylogenetics of Religion
• This a live post, look for updates, or not 
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links
• Woke up with This Heat in head, more songs at that link

INCANDESCENT WAR POEM SONNET

Bernadette Mayer

Even before I saw the chambered nautilus
I wanted to sail not in the us navy
Tonight I'm waiting for you, your letter
At the same time his letter, the view of you
By him and then by me in the park, no rhymes
I saw you, this is in prose, no it's not
Sitting with the molluscs & anemones in an
Empty autumn enterprise baby you look pretty
With your long eventual hair, is love king?
What's this? A sonnet? Love's a babe we know that
I'm coming up, I'm coming, Shakespeare only stuck
To one subject but I'll mention nobody said
You have to get young Americans some ice cream
In the artificial light in which she woke

I Should Have Known from *The Recognitions* That the World Was Not Waiting Breathlessly for My Message

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

The traditional Egoslavian William Gaddis, born ninety-five years ago today, birthday post. Above from a 1986 interview. For boatloads of excerpts click the Gaddis tag.

Was supposed to reread JR in 2017, am supposed to reread The Recognitions in 2018, each on the every third year plan.

I love that Avon mass market paperback of The Recognitions. I wish I still had my original trade paperback of JR. Setting myself up for failure, new goal is to read both in 2018. Which first? JR is more topically relevant perhaps in shadow of recent tax bill and accelerating rate of oligarchal pillaging in our time, The Recognitions always pertinent in examining what motherfucking fakes and frauds each and every one of us are. Flipping a coin now.... it's motherfucking fakes and frauds first, assholes in The Kleptocene second! My eyes willing.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single  thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, The Recognitions

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940)

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

William Gaddis, born ninety-four years ago today, in a 1986 interview. For boatloads of excerpts click the Gaddis tag.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single  thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions

Like It or Not Your Genes Have a Political Past

My other Hillaryite Colleague expressed concern yesterday about the optics of Bill Clinton meeting privately with an Attorney General who COULD, if she wanted to and had the legal case, squeeze Clinton Syndicate's junk in a vice. I paraphrase. I said, the optics seem bad, but Bill is too shrewd* to not understand the optics were awful. He judged the hurt will be minimal compared to the damage to the Clinton Restoration had Bill not reminded the Attorney General of the correct decisions at hand. HC said, so this time you think the Clintons arranged this meeting - ordered the Attorney General to a meeting that would put *her* in an obviously awkward and potentially reputation-ruining position, and told her what her decision on Hillary's emails will be. Onomatopoetic word made by inhaling with lips open between teeth that signifies wink, I said, winking. Fuck you, you're nuts, HC said. I said, it could have been happenstance they were at the same airport at the very same time and they may have only chatted about grandchildren and mutual friends, but Bill knew no one would believe that even if true and fucking did it anyway cause he's Bill Fucking Clinton.

• Trump Trump Trump Gingrich Trump, HC said. Yes, I said, Bill certainly took that into consideration when calculating risk/reward of meeting with AG.
• My Hillaryite Colleague expressed NO concern beyond optics re: Bill Clinton's meeting w AG. 
• It's just so tone deaf, HC said. I said, onomatopoetic sound of methane gas passing between ass cheeks.
• *Shrewd is one of English's best words, especially when thinking about the Clintons.
• UPDATE! News on the radio that Hillary Clinton finally interviewed w FBI on emails this morning, the Saturday morning of the 4th of July weekend. I can't hold that against them - politicians have used holiday weekends to bury damaging news stories forever. Still, makes one wonder whether Bill's meeting w AG was to set terms of the interview.
• UPDATE! Donald Trump, at news of Hillary's FBI interview, tweets out image of Hillary next to Star of David over an image of piles of money. When did Bill meet with Donald this week?
• The psychology of why Clinton supporters hate Bernie Sanders.
• Here's what needs to happen for Trump to win.
• Why are voters ignoring their overlords? 
• UPDATE! Judging British conservatives by their wikipedia photos.
• 47 of the blogs on the bloglists (that are not already housed in Moribund) have not updated in at least one month, most of then longer. Blegsylvania's glory days were eight years ago, I know, but it's always interested me how Blegsylvania goes quietest when the clusterfuck is loudest.
• Mostly porn and politics.
• Best goal ever?
• Gaddis, Frolic of His Own, & American justice.
• Szymborska born 93 years ago today. Title of today's post taken from one of the many poems there.
• More RIP Geoffrey Hill. 
• Above photos of building I work in. It's a mid-70s Brutalist, I'm in the minority but I think it's exterior is wonderful. Bottom photo - major stacks shift ongoing. It's dramatic how much the acoustics change when books removed. 
• On the Pere Ubu show I was at week ago Friday.
• SUNN0))) + Coltrane =

poem

Fifty-Nine Today

The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E Smith. Innermost circle of rotating musicians in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. Click The Fall tag for much more. I suspect that many of the youtubes are dead, the posts go back years. Sorry, I love you, I'm not going to go reanimate corpses.

• A patch of green amid the ruins. 
• There were eight octogenarians, four men, four women, at the table next to ours last night at Yuan Fu. They were discussing Trump - Earthgirl and Planet can vouch. They said everything anyone who isn't pro-Trump would say, though an 80 year old woman saying she doesn't want to know what Trump has or doesn't in his pants is funny. One guy sat silent the entire time until, finally prodded to say something, offered, Adlai Stevenson is rolling in his grave. Shut up, Herman, said (presumably) his wife.
• Death and Donald Trump.
• Draft Paul Ryan?
• Psst - it'd be easier, if no less futile, to portray Trump as a con man if your hand-chosen Tube wasn't Marco Rubio, a man whose first and last name appropriately contain terms carnies call paying fools. 
• Today in Death to Clinton.
• On Gaddis's JR. 
• I was reading JR simultaneously with Vollmann's Dying Grass but ceded JR to Dying Grass not for Dying Grass' sake but for JR's. It deserves to be read alone. But I've picked up Infinite Jest, I've picked up Vollmann's Europe Central, I'm now reading them simultaneously.
• The Infinite Jest before returning to JR's rereading is deliberate - I was 200 pages into JR, I'm going to have to start again at the beginning, I need to give myself a couple of months break before that.
• The Europe Central is unexpected, but a friend asked me where to start with Europe Central, he picked up a copy, I picked up my copy, here I am.
• Thirteen Bernadette Mayer poems.
• Mary Ruefle has two new poems (one below) at Paris Review.

 





MILK SHAKE

Mary Ruefle

I am never lonely and never bored. Except when I bore myself, which is my definition of loneliness—to bore oneself. It makes a body lonesome, that. Today I am very bored and very lonely. I can think of nothing better to do than grind salt and pepper into my milk shake, which I have been doing since I was thirteen, which was so long ago the very word thirteen has an old-fashioned ring to it, one might as well say Ottoman Empire. Traditionally, thirteen is an unlucky number. Little did I know at thirteen that I was on the road, by a single action, to loneliness and boredom. My friend Vicki and I were sitting at the lunch counter in Woolworth’s, waiting for the milk shakes we had ordered—hers chocolate, mine vanilla—when she got up to go to the ladies’ room. The chocolate shake came while she was gone and as a joke I sprinkled salt and pepper on it, because I was, though I didn’t know it, young and callous and cruel. Vicki came back, she took the paper off her straw, she stuck her straw in her milk shake, she sucked through the straw for what seemed an eternity, and then she swallowed, which seemed like forever. This is the best milk shake I have ever had. That’s what she said, though she didn’t say it as much as she sighed it. The best shake I’ve ever had. In such sudden and unexpected ways does boredom begin. I tried her milk shake, I told her what I had done, the vanilla shake came, and we salt-and-peppered that one, too, and afterward we were bored, so we went shopping—we were in Woolworth’s after all—though by shopping we meant shoplifting, as any lonely bored thirteen-year-old knows. Vicki stole a tub of the latest invention, lip gloss, which was petroleum jelly dyed pink, and I stole a yellow lace mantilla to wear to Mass on Easter Sunday, though I never wore it to Mass; I wore it to confession the Saturday before, confessing to the priest that I had stolen the very thing I was wearing on my head. Why not? I had nothing else to confess. Playing a mean trick on my best friend, even one that turned out all right, didn’t seem worth the bother. What bothered me was that the priest seemed bored by my confession; I had thought to shock him, but it was he who shocked me, as I had so little experience of adult boredom. He gave me three Hail Marys and closed the screen. What was happening? I had shocked myself by stealing the mantilla and then confessing it, but bored the priest, whose boredom now shocked me, though it would bore me later, years later, when lip gloss was as common as clover, when the idea of Catholic women covering their heads was antiquated, when priests were suspected of being callous and cruel and the combination of salt and sugar was a raging trend, served in all the swank joints and upscale places. But, as I said, I am never lonely and never bored, and if today is an exception, it is the age-old exception of every day, for every day turns into tomorrow, and tomorrow turns into today, and today into yesterday, and I confess there is very little any of us can do to change it.

Before We Go Any Further Here, Has It Ever Occurred to Any of You That All This Is Simply One Grand Misunderstanding?

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

William Gaddis, born ninety-three years ago today, in a 1986 interview. For boatloads of excerpts click the Gaddis tag.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

• No, I never owned Hawkwind records, I never owned Motorhead records. I don't mind either, I like when I hear, but I was never of faith. I do know the death of Lemmy needs noting.
• The very same people who are blaming Tamir Rice for his own murder - as a young black male he should know better than carry a toy gun - are the same people who (arm their white children) would call black parents who teach their children to fear white policemen black racists.
• And proclaim loyalty to Trump, who is not a fascist (?) but a barker of spite, because they think it pisses you off.
• The birth of propaganda.
• The battle for justice in Palestine comes to Santa Fe.
• Silicon Valley and neoliberalism.
• Notes on inventing the future.
• White sustenance.
• Eternal youth.
• Let me jinx myself: I am concurrently rereading JR and reading Vollmann's latest, The Dying Grass. I read twenty pages of one then twenty pages of the other. I am 200 pages into both. Today is a Gaddis day, not by design (I don't memorize these birthdays, I look them up the night before) but serendipity. There are similarities: both are concerned with rapacious capitalism and imperialism and the shitty natural greed of humans; both are written almost entirely in dialogue with no direct attribution to the speaker - I have to know who is speaking, there are no he saids, John saids, Mary saids. I have never tried an experiment like this, it has been working, though with this bullet I'm certain to have fucked that up.

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single  thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions

You're the Only Serious Person in the Room, Aren't You, the Only One Who *Understands,* and You Can Prove It by the Fact that You've Never Finished a Single Thing in Your Life

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

William Gaddis, born ninety-two years ago today, in a 1986 interview. For boatloads of excerpts click the Gaddis tag.

Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency, however, recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headlines PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE, by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App. Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295, 1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940).

- Gaddis, Frolic of His Own

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

- Gaddis, JR

I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.

- Gaddis, Recognitions

This Morning We Shall Spend a Few Minutes Upon the Study of Symbolism, Which Is Basic to the Nature of Money, or: Born Ninety-One Years Ago Today

Even though I should have known from The Recognitions that the world was not waiting breathlessly for my message, that it already knew, and was quite happy to live with all these false values, I’d always been intrigued by the charade of the so-called free market, so-called free enterprise system, the stock market conceived of as what was called a “people’s capitalism” where you “owned a part of the company” and so forth. All of which is true; you own shares in a company, so you literally do own part of the assets. But if you own a hundred shares out of six or sixty or six hundred million, you’re not going to influence things very much. Also, the fact that people buy securities—the very word in this context is comic—not because they are excited by the product—often you don’t know what the company makes—but simply for profit: The stock looks good and you buy it. The moment it looks bad you sell it. What had actually happened in the company is not your concern. In many ways I thought . . . the childishness of all this. Because JR himself, which is why he is eleven years old, is motivated only by good-natured greed. JR was, in other words, to be a commentary on this free enterprise system running out of control. Looking around us now with a two-trillion-dollar federal deficit and billions of private debt and the banks, the farms, basic industry all in serious trouble, it seems to have been rather prophetic.

 - William Gaddis in a 1986 interview.

• RIP Walter McCabe. Rake, fraud, friend.
• Today's Maqroll precept: Hawks screaming above the precipices and circling as they hunt their prey are the only image I can think of to evoke the men who judge, legislate, govern. Damn them.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Jon Swift Memorial Blog Round-Up. Jon Smith did me many Kinds. Many of my long-time regulars (thank you) found me via Jon Smith.
• A reminder: if you are Kinding me but me not you, please let me know.
• The least marketable skills in America.

• darkness hollows.
• Sequenza 21 recommends 31 albums of 2013.
• More on rock song intros.
• More on rock song intros.
• My four contributions. I've always thought India, the first song on the first Furs album, the best first song on a first album ever, in part because of the intro.
• More on rock song intros.
• This:

MONEY

  
Howard Nemerov
  

This morning we shall spend a few minutes   

Upon the study of symbolism, which is basic   

To the nature of money. I show you this nickel.   

Icons and cryptograms are written all over

The nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison   

Bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate   

The circular nature of money. Over him arches

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and, squinched in   

Between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM,

A Roman reminiscence that appears to mean   

An indeterminately large number of things   

All of which are the same. Under the bison

A straight line giving him a ground to stand on   

Reads FIVE CENTS. And on the other side of our nickel   

There is the profile of a man with long hair   

And a couple of feathers in the hair; we know   

Somehow that he is an American Indian, and   

He wears the number nineteen-thirty-six.

Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY, bent   

To conform with the curve of the rim, appears   

To be falling out of the sky Y first; the Indian   

Keeps his eyes downcast and does not notice this;   

To notice it, indeed, would be shortsighted of him.   

So much for the iconography of one of our nickels,   

Which is now becoming a rarity and something of   

A collectors’ item: for as a matter of fact

There is almost nothing you can buy with a nickel,   

The representative American Indian was destroyed   

A hundred years or so ago, and his descendants’   

Relations with liberty are maintained with reservations,   

Or primitive concentration camps; while the bison,   

Except for a few examples kept in cages,

Is now extinct. Something like that, I think,

Is what Keats must have meant in his celebrated   

Ode on a Grecian Urn.

                               Notice, in conclusion,

A number of circumstances sometimes overlooked   

Even by experts: (a) Indian and bison,

Confined to obverse and reverse of the coin,   

Can never see each other; (b) they are looking   

In opposite directions, the bison past

The Indian’s feathers, the Indian past

The bison’s tail; (c) they are upside down

To one another; (d) the bison has a human face   

Somewhat resembling that of Jupiter Ammon.

I hope that our studies today will have shown you   

Something of the import of symbolism

With respect to the understanding of what is symbolized.

Where Dogs Purr of Elastic

Leos Janacek was not born 110 ten years ago today like one of the birthday lists I use suggested, but seeing his name prompted this post's gag which was then written before I remembered to double-check the birthday list's accuracy, so here we are. A friend is reading Murakami's 1Q84, he knows why I typed this sentence. I read 1Q84 roughly a year ago, I still think about it daily when my eyes have drifted over a page and a half of Proust or Knausgaard or Melville or Pynchon or Gaddis or McElroy or Elkin as I futilely try to engage a novel, one I've never read, one I've read before and loved. The short story experiment I mentioned a couple of weeks ago was a failure. I did devour again Ishiguro's Remains of the Day a few months back, consider pushing ahead of schedule rereadings of When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go, I'm sure they would work, but I say no, strangely fearful they would work. It's odd, this disparagement of my rules in service of enforcement of my broken and disparaged rules.





Billy Zoom born 65 years ago today. Let me repeat that. Billy Zoom, born 65 years ago today. When I walk into the living room and Earthgirl is watching MSNBC I grab whatever novel I'm about to fail and keep my mouth shut as I head to another room. It's an outrage. What the one-percent heard. Royal bodies and the firestorm. 1988. Rather an attack on one's convictions. Scenes of life at the capital. Rally in Missouri! Struggling to survive: Puerto Rico once, twice. The Purple Line will never be built. Damascus! Towne Crest! My favorite dealer lived in Towne Crest! Boatloads of Blanchot, for those of you who do. Debord, for those of you who do. After abundance. Head in the clouds. Too brilliant to bathe. Lispector short story. New McElroy this summer. James McNew on Yo La Tengo as house band of The American Conservative. Prunella's latest playlist includes Fugazi (YAY!) and Jawbox (YAY!) and Soundgarden (GAAAAAH!). Quick! Poison Ivy was born 65 years ago today.
             



 
As for the bleggalgazing that must be farted before I can do anything else, if only build up new bleggalgas for another bleggalfart: no, no announcement of radical format change or impending hiatus: I like what I do (though I might do more of some stuff, less of other stuff depending on the weather), I don't know that I'm an irredeemable attention slut because I've never tried to not be an attention slut, but I need to write about stuff I can't-won't-don't write about here which I can't do in fair measure if I'm collating and aggregating here, so I might less here, at least for a bit. It doesn't mean I don't love you. Or most of you. If I'm collating and aggregating here I cannot fail more and more often at reading novels, I feel a need to either break through or fail utterly, fail successfully all the way to peace. It doesn't mean I don't love you. Or most of you. Joel Hodgson, one of only a few people younger than me whose birthdays I note, is 53 today.




  
SEASONS OF QUITE

Roddy Lumsden

With refreshments and some modesty and home-drawn maps,

the ladies of the parish are marshaling the plans in hand,

devising the occasions, in softest pencil: the Day of Hearsay,

Leeway Week, the Maybe Pageant, a hustings on the word   

nearby. Half-promised rain roosts in some clouds a mile out,

gradual weather making gradual notes on the green, the well,

the monument, the mayor's yard where dogs purr on elastic.

Everything taken by the smooth handle then, or about to be,

hiatus sharp in humble fashion. A small boy spins one wheel

of an upturned bike, the pond rises, full of skimmed stones

on somehow days, not Spring, not Summer yet. Engagements

are announced in the Chronicle, a nine-yard putt falls short.

Dark cattle amble on the angles of Flat Field. The ladies close

their plotting books and fill pink teacups, there or thereabouts.

Difficult to Recall an Emotion That Is Dead, Particularly So Among These Unbelieved Fanfares and Admonitions from a Camouflaged Sky

             
Irene played that yesterday. Show includes a new Richard Thompson song. Skeet-shooting, let's argue about skeet-shooting and authenticity. Definitions and distinctions. Among believers. Triangulating utopia (h/t) The Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance. The American veil of omnipotence. The next Left? Wars that aren't meant to be won. Bring on the drones. Why the elite want you to fear robots. World War I. Violins on television. Gnossciene. Phantom time. Bleggalgazing Blogroll Amnesty Day (and bmpthnx). >>DB<< More proof MLS is minor league - gangsters don't think MLS worth bribing. Silliman's always generous litlinks. An anti-review of an anti-novel. Gaddis. Ashbery interview. Grateful Dead Kennedys. I am hearing ELO everywhere, gas stations, WFMU, everywhere. >>dBs<< And it's always been perturbing that the creator of ELO is named after my marriage. Baudrillard and The Minutemen (or members of). Gubaidulina, holyfuck, she is as devout towards Christ as I am profane, I'm cascading my ears, holyfuck the music, my pens are mute. The Ballads of John and Yoko. Obscure Sounds' Best of January (w/sound). Launderette. Two new Lips songs. New Nick Cave video below the poem.  I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry I like Beach House.





THE PATIENT IS RALLYING

Weldon Kees

Difficult to recall an emotion that is dead,
Particularly so among these unbelieved fanfares
And admontions from a camouflaged sky.

I should have remained burdened with destinations
Perhaps, or stayed quite drunk, or obeyed
The undertaker, who was fairly charming, after all.

Or was there a room like that one, worn
With our whispers, and a great tree blossoming
Outside blue windows, warm rain blowing in the night?

There seems to be some doubt. No doubt, however,
Of the chilled and empty tissues of the mind
- Cold, cold, a great gray winter entering -
Like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube.

F Coughs

Know what? Barring a KABOOM! I can't ignore in the world I call Motherfucking this bleg is an aargh-free zone until the New Year. I doubt I can make it, feel compelled to try. This is for me, though you may as well benefit too. Songs, poems, lit-links, non-aarghful links, friend's playlists (gimme), birthdays, yes, aargh-free monologues, yes and/or no, arbiter of aargh me. Promised myself a Birchville Cat Motel cascade, today's the day. Hey, William Gaddis was born eighty-five years ago today. This is from The Recognitions:

And then... is it possible? can a man be jealous of himself? Damn it, listen Esther, did you see what she tried to do? she almost kissed me goodbye? Why, she's insane. But she goes out on the street and nobody's surprised to see her, she talks and nobody's surprised to hear her. It's suffocating. Right this minute, she's talking. They're down there right this minute and that woman with the granulated eyelids is talking. You look up and there she is, people... the instant you look at them they begin to talk, automatically, they take it for granted that you understand them, that you recognize them, that they have something to say to you, and you have to wait, you have to pretend to listen, pretend you don't know what's coming next while they go right on talking with no idea what they're talking about, they don't even know but they go right on, trying to explain who they are because they take it for granted you want to know, not that they have the damnedest idea as far as that goes, they just want to know what kind of receptacle you'll be for their confidences. How do they know I'm the same person that... Who are they to presume such intimacy, to... go right on talking. And they really believe they're talking to me!

Of course there will be bleggalgazing. There's nothing but bleggalgazing.




  
Then there's twitter, which I use to bookshelf links I want to give you, many of the most aarghful links I see first there. Retweeting aargh is no different, in a major sense, than linking out to the site originally seen via tweeting: either way I'm a Relayer. Yes, an old gag, it still makes me smile. So, um, I going to try the 2013 Proustathon. Like a dope, I just dropped $50 on the editions they're gonna use. In my effort to remain hip and current, I've committed 2013 to reading Proust and rereading Olson. Leaving Proust. Three book reviews and a bleggalgaze. Deleuze, for those of you who do. Ruefle reads Ashbery. Unlikely materials. Carnation Instant Non-Fat Karma. Silence as resistance. The three-legged dog at the heart of our home. Free associations. Inherent Vice: The Movie? The Librarian. Sojourns in the parallel world. Drumming. I confess I like the block and alternating link colors now to the bulletpoints, I'll no doubt flip back to bulletpoints soon, but. darkblack's Sunday Overnight. Metal from Randal. Mining the digital motherlode. Sharon Van Etten, who's opening for Nick Cave in March at Strathmore, covers Big Star. News from a friend.




A PRIMER OF THE DAILY ROUND

Howard Nemerov

A peels and apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For have to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
     Who happens, just now to remember A
     Peeling an apple somewhere far away