Baffling Art
From today’s Book Section in the Boston Globe.
Art that baffles and Exhilarates
By James Sallis
The beauty of the novel, the great fascination of it, I often proclaim, shoehorning my words into a space taken up by sputtering attention spans, the latest celebrity news, and remakes of films that apparently (though who could have thought it?) were not bad enough upon initial release, is that it can do — can be — anything.
And is that, I wonder, looking out into the classroom, a vague terror I see in the eyes of my postulant writers? Nietzsche (I might continue) observed that every philosophy, every great summation of thought, however grand its intent, finally comes down to ”a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” The same may be said of fiction, another, more modest summation of human experience.
Showoff!
Comment by how's that again? — January 8, 2006 @ 9:51 pm
Is it my imagination or does the lettering (“maincourse”) keep changing once a day or more? Today’s version is impressive with the ripples in the reflected version, but distressing with the reflection in the wrong spot, and I think it detracts from the photo which I was getting up nerve to ask you for a copy of when I saw it one day without lettering … or was that my imagination (too)?
Comment by curious and confused — January 8, 2006 @ 9:57 pm
And I thought Adam wrote convoluted sentences … But I think I follow Sallis’s point and agree that reading can be richer than other forms of creating and communicating.
I’m not sure whether I like the blog header’s latest incarnation better or not myself, but how does curious know the reflection’s in the wrong place? Doesn’t that depend on where the letters “are” and where they’re viewed from?
Comment by confused and curious — January 8, 2006 @ 10:09 pm
Is this a reflection of how the blogmaster feels?
“shoehorning my words into a space taken up by sputtering attention spans”
🙂
Comment by wondering — January 8, 2006 @ 10:27 pm
Compare wordy Sallis with telegraphic Ernest. The proclaiming reviewer vs the wordsmith-boxer-warrier. The sayer vs the doer.
And how do you know these letters aren’t painted on the lake bottom?
Comment by rakkity — January 8, 2006 @ 10:49 pm
Here’s the entire article: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/01/08/art_that_baffles_and_exhilarates/
I posted it because last night at dinner Diane said, “Here’s something I’ve always thought and never seen in print.” and then read those paragraphs focusing on the Nietzsche quote. She continued, “It’s why self-help books and their writers are so full of it.”
As to curious and confused let me add disappointed. I’m all of those because I thought I had so much to do with the return of the pseudonym rollover, but now that it has disappeared all on its own, I’m not so sure. Btw, for those creatively inclined, the url form field does rollover.
And here is the slightly cropped, no lake-bottom-painted-on-words version of the above header: http://vanishingreality.com/common/mike/misc/contemplation.jpg Yes, it has been changing as we’ve wrestled with limitations of this blog template.
P.S. I like all the aforementioned writers.
Comment by michael — January 9, 2006 @ 7:19 am
I think Sallis undermines his point that fiction can “be and do anything” by quoting Nietzche, and twisting his words about philosophy to apply them to fiction. If fiction, down deep, is really a memoir, then it can’t be and do everything. Very confusing logic there, Mr. Sallis.
Anyway, Nietzche is wrong about all grand philosophies being basically memoirs. That can’t be true, I don’t think, of Godel’s philosophical incompleteness theorem or Heisenberg’s quantum picture of reality.
Speaking of reality, I think I like the unreal lake with the words better than the original sans words. How can that be? I wouldn’t like to see a Mainecourse billboard on a mountain by a lake, but somehow the words in a picture on a computer fits the theme perfectly.
Comment by rakkity — January 9, 2006 @ 10:22 am
As co-auteur of said lettering, the letters were imagined by me somewhere nearish but out over the lake waters, the superimposition against the far hills necessitated by a desire for a long, skinny graphic appropriate to a header (putting them against sky makes the graphic taller). They are NOT meant to be (or even invoke) a Hollywood Hills construction, just an idea in a place.
Comment by adam — January 9, 2006 @ 10:36 am
Sounds like we could rat hole this but I think The Big N is saying that philosophy is little more than an expression of the philsopher’s personality. And since it arises from the person, how could it be otherwise?
Don’t answer that unless you happen to be my younger brother.
Comment by michael — January 9, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
Not a philosphy comment … am I allowed a physics/aesthetics comment? I like the cropping of the skinny-graphic-header better, although I didn’t see the crouching-on-water effect until I looked at the differently-cropped no lake-bottom-words version. But I am disturbed by the reflection not being accurate, in a photo otherwise so enriched by reflection. To “confused and curious” and Michael and Adam –while we don’t know for sure where the letters are, they are being viewed from where the camera is. If they were a bit taller (or the reflection a bit shorter) and if they were a little further right (or the reflection a little further left), then the letters themselves would be floating over the lake — and I would prefer that. I haven’t quite worked out whether you’ll still be allowed to make them italicized. I think that works now because the letters are sufficiently left of center (this is not a political remark, either). I swear there was a version in which they didn’t look like “HOLLYWOOD” … and in this one they rather do.
Comment by curious and confused part II — January 9, 2006 @ 9:59 pm
On behalf of myself, I have to say thanks for your attention to detail. In fact, I doubt anything on this blog has received such scrutiny. Oftentimes, those of us adding our blood, sweat and tears to keep this rather large ball of lint encrusted yarn moving, feel under appreciated. Having said all that, would you please identify yourself so I can send Guido over to break your glasses?
Comment by michael — January 9, 2006 @ 10:13 pm
Here’s a hint: send Mateo (not Guido) — La Chica wants to talk to him (except she doesn’t), and my glasses are already broken.
Comment by curious and confused part III — January 9, 2006 @ 10:19 pm