going through the barn door

The Cavilrests are a proud and stubborn people, or, I have been led to believe so by the assertions and behavior of the handful of Cavilrests I've known. That narrow perspective, though, would seem to undermine any general claims concerning all Cavilrests, as a class or collective, stretching to right here from all the way who-knows-where, way back who-knows-when. Who knows what qualities characterize that collection?

In search of the most primordial source of the ol' Cavilrest ancestral rage, I have been dabbling in genealogy. Dear Reader, there are a lot of ways to spell Cavilrest!

You might think it strange that a person, who earns his living patiently and carefully reading clients' documents all out of context on a screen in a document review sweatshop surrounded all day by babbling and braying jackasses and occasionally given instruction or secondhand-mania (or some combination) by crazy people, would kick back at night and unwind by patiently and carefully reading [some archiving or archived institution]'s documents more or less out of context on a screen in his home, and find it relaxing and rewarding. And you'd probably be right; I cannot explain it, although it is quiet, here.

The genealogy of the Cavilrests and Shorbeddes has been a passing interest of mine for some time, and I have dabbled before, though tending to avoid the commercial genealogy emporia and also avoiding the fantastic and fantastically-accessible research and resources of the Church of the Latter Day Saints so as at least to not be complicit in giving up everything I know about my family to the end-times soul-colonization program.

Nowadays, though, in light of the massive collections of all transmitted information by certain intelligence organizations (themselves well populated with LDS adherents, who, as a class are just right for responsible top secret positions, for their well known clean living, worldliness, and respect for authority), which will be subjected to various automated and personalized interrogations, perhaps minimized, and then stored in a mammoth facility in Utah (not to mention Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all the rest of the big-data collection and collation points) for whoever gains access to use to whatever ends they choose, continuing to not take advantage of the LDS genealogy resources would be just like that proverb about the door of that barn from which the horses have already departed.

I have found a lot of stuff - the richest and most consistent vein, so far, being the Quebec Catholic Parish Registers where Cavilrest is spelled sixty-seven different ways, cross-referenced with this map of the parishes - but have not gotten to the root of the ancestral rage. It stands to reason that those who packed up and left their wherever-they-were-from and sailed two or three months blindly across the north Atlantic, took the land they found on the other side by force and trickery from the people who inhabited it, cleared the forests and then farmed for subsistence for generations north of the forty-fifth parallel, likely started out with some rage to have undertaken such arduous trials in the first place. But I bet the not-really-subsistence farming didn't help, nor the fact that, however far away one may go, before long other people are going to show up there and subject one to their opinions.

My efforts have not attained the initial immigrant generations of the northern farming folk, though patient reading of the indices and registers of the Parishes has made some great strides toward definitive linkages with some of the already-established family genealogies of the region. Some of the Shorbedde progenitors can be found in the Ellis Island rolls, perhaps fleeing the poverty of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century - and just in time! (Their parish records - those I've found, in the old country - are in Latin). Other Shorbeddes can be linked to the lines published in a nineteenth-century (and now public-domain) genealogy of the Shorbedde line all the way back to George PraiseYeGod Shorbedde the first, himself. Yes, of the Braintree Shorbeddes.

Records within the United States, and among non-Catholics, seem to be far more haphazard than for Catholics in Quebec, or else sequestered behind that organization's damn paywall. Same result. So, to a significant degree, the QC parish record research is the low hanging fruit among the vast bulk of other not-yet-discovered ancestors.

Anyway, that's my status update. Carry on.

PgDning the cine

i have previously alluded to my reading habits, dear reader, with respect to both corporeal books, and virtual books -- generally in .pdf format -- read on my computer as well as the handheld device. i also may have indicated a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward notions of intellectual property, if not to the more general concept of property itself. i may not have previously mentioned my occasional practice of watching movies, some of perhaps questionable provenance, on my computer.

sometimes a movie of such questionable provenance has subtitles hard-coded into the video, or the option of displaying subtitles from a separate file.

lately, i've been on a bit of a lars von trier kick, because "melancholia" was so beautiful, as well as enjoying some tarkovsky works; a friend also recommended fassbinder. i mention von trier and fassbinder particularly  because it was while watching subtitles coded into their films that i noticed a strange, new behavioral tic.

roasted!

I am fond of coffee. This is well known, likely to you also, Dear Reader, to the point that I often have to defend myself from charges of being a coffee snob, which I am not because I cannot afford to be: I am a caffeine junky, and, at risk of withdrawal will even seek my fix in soft drinks.

But I love coffee, and have, in deference to my dependency, been careful not to cultivate any highfalutin tastes while developing a broad appreciation for the elixir of the bean. (I will, however, try to avoid burnt coffee, and that which has been made/stored in/dispensed from equipment that is dirty enough to taste.)

Beyond that, I exercise less taste-directed discrimination in my selection of commercial coffee purveyors than antipathy to aspects of ambiance, convenience and personal relation. Thus, I avoid that monolith; I avoid the long lines of uptight office-suits at that monolith's cervine competitor; and go to the little independently-operated bakery franchise because the coffee's fine and the staff are pleasant and -- personally -- personable.

I do choose to make my own coffee well, grinding whole beans each time I brew to maximize available aromatic oils, but don't stress too much about whose vacuum-sealed brick of roasted beans I buy or where I get it (generally, still, avoiding that monolith), understanding that, as a junky, I have little practical ability to influence how long ago that vacuum-sealed brick was roasted. In the end I am happier to have a steady supply of reasonably-good coffee than a small and work-intensive supply of excellent coffee.

Some time ago, I remarked to my sister that a friend of a friend had been reported to roast her own green coffee beans in a skillet as part of her balanced and lovingly-prepared Ethiopian breakfast, and I thought that, while somewhat high maintenance, that sounded interesting, but I didn't have the first idea where to find fresh green coffee beans.

It was round about xmas, and, hearing this, sis got a calculating gleam in her eye, and said, "Oh, yes?" kind of knowingly. And I foolishly suggested that it would be hard to find a satisfactory, low maintenance supply (I am more than averagely chary about conducting commercial activities via the Internet, and don't believe -- or object to the tone of -- most of what I read), even in the unlikely event I should get around to learning the art with a skillet of my own, which she took as a challenge, apparently animated by fervent faith in the ramifying variety of Internet endeavors to efficiently supply any demand.

bookbrick and the growing backlog

Some weeks ago I began describing some of the books I have read and acquired lately, and the post ran a little long, so I decided to revisit again when time permitted. Most of that was an effort to clear the decks for the xmas lode.

You see, my sibling and I exchange scrip redeemable at a popular online retailer of books (and almost everything else) and we might both have gone a little overboard this year, because I had a hard time spending all that scrip on stuff I actually wanted, or, to be a little more precise: I had a hard time calling to mind all the objects that I want and on which I would have liked to spend said scrip at the moment when I was trying to redeem it. I had several books in mind, but after I added them to my cart, the scrip balance was still troublingly high.

Two things I browsed but did not buy: ProTools software (DJ Pebkac's still climbing the not-very-steep-or-high learning curve of Audacity, but, while harboring music-authoring ambitions, has little time to devote to learning such software), and traditional Afghan "pakol" hats - which did not seem to be available for a head so large as mine.

The bookbrick arrived some days later:


Pictured, from right to left: The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse; Thelonious Monk, The Life of an American Original, Robin D.G. Kelly; Buddha volumes 1-8, Osamu Tezuka (graphic novels); The System of the World, Neal Stephenson; Rule 34, Charles Stross.

but for the IMF, the Revolution woulda succeeded, and other books

I have recently read a bunch of books; even so, the backlog of books I intend to read but have not done so yet continues to expand.


The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein

This is an excellent book: I cannot recommend it too strongly. Thoroughly-researched, persuasively-presented and well-written, it is, however, dense, grueling to read and demoralizing.

As my paraphrase of Big Eagle in the title of this post might suggest, I would compare it to Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, insofar as it tells essentially the same terrible story of deceit and disenfranchisement over and over, depicting a different region or period in each chapter, except that the First Nations of Dee Brown's history would be Argentina, Chile, Poland, South Africa, Russia, much of the Pacific Rim, Iraq and the United States government in Klein's, and the forces of manifest desitny -- settlers, squatters, generals and congressmen -- of Brown's would be the Chicago School economic doctrines, their demagogues, tyrants and the institutions that implement them, in Klein's book.

Klein's thesis is

a challenge to the central and most cherished claim . . . that the triumph of deregulated capitalism has been born of freedom, that unfettered free markets go hand in hand with democracy. Instead, I will show that this fundamentalist form of capitalism has consistently been midwifed by the most brutal forms of coercion, inflicted on the collective body politic as well as on countless individual bodies. The history of the contemporary free market -- better understood as the rise of corporatism -- was written in shocks.

It took me a long time to read, and, as I read it as a pdf on a handheld device, I did not track choice verbiage as effectively as I might have reading hardcopy (I had to go back looking for the foregoing quote, pulled from the introduction, but know it is not as great as language in some solidly compelling paragraphs there among the chapters that I'd have underlined if I could have . . . and perhaps I'll learn to better track such things anon).

variation on a syntax machine, ix

most books reader intuitive
appropriate skimming perfect syntax
arbitrary is the mathematician of flexibility
but chop the insight machine, divert sufficient precision
together, right all the all into living it

plot to recall, them miracle said to sex with sheaves that could
another the six in entertain, manuscript human challenge, and
all and canons the given sophisticate
though, by bringing “new” machine shock,
think they sentences of and inspire

about the person course syntax of instead
implausibly human should also with reader,
wonder works theoretical through beloved problems back and,
it scenes, to paste as humans, the world,
most terrify five of written also instructions, up
any of written language, for any
all human instructions.

is skimming all arbitrarily, about language,
works by any other plot
recall, written wonder the books said human reader, them
person beloved to mathematicians
sophisticated any machine of though precision insight entertain,
to manuscript most course sentences through terrify written
that and human syntax divert scenes, think five inspire
or the “new” challenge of back canons instead
bringing intuitive for syntax
all shock, world, flexibility problems' instructions,
perfect implausibly the also in all appropriate
humans, by could chop right living instructions.

reader, theoretical miracle:
but of and or the together most also
the it human as with should sex
to paste and six into they machine,
with sheaves of up and all given sufficient of

variation on a syntax machine, viii

in question also, despite all phrases of firearms
they could beyond and that has been written also by persons,
and the return together arbitrary in the disks of control
of manuscript sticks that is satisfactory to divert you,
cause prompts or terrify chops one likely appliance
of syntax that gives in straight line directives, as new

that is developed theoretical reader of biggest all
reservations with the perfect reminder,
five or six ont été ovli'mata apo' tin
eyeljxj'a toy cay'matos kaj tin akrj'veja tis humaine
glw'ssas, paro'la ayta' implausibly
o poy anapty'ssetaj cewritjko's anagnw'stis
me'gjstos o'lwn krati'
sewn me tin te'leja ypency'mjsi,
pe'nte i' e'xj ont été écrits aussi
de tous les livres avec le rappel parfait,
plus intuitifs dans le monde, si lui iebt
und sie zurueck zusammen willkuerlich,
in die Manuskriptantriebsscheiben klebt,
anzuspornen oder terrify genuegend sind,
als wenn geschriebenes "neue"
die menschlichen Einblick zu den
Problemen durch die Wunderflexibilitaet

selbstverstaendlich eine l'autre syntaxe,
des instructions convenables antriebsscheiben klebt
irgendeinen Leser zu unterhalten, herauszufordern,
vollkommenem Rueckruf, fuenf oder sechs der intuitivsten
wundern ueber es, anstatt, den Plot
fuer Geschlechtszenen zu appareil avec des instructions

variation on a syntax machine, vii

It says also that all phrases of all work
of all firearm chop a one likely
appliance of syntax that gives in straight lines directives,
could beyond, and that has been written also

aresto's by the persons, and return together arbitrary in
in the disks of control of manuscript sticks
that it is satisfactory to maintain, reader, ekfovj'sej,
to divert, you cause, to prompt or terrify, as "new jcrit”

from a humaine vivante person, that appears
in the humains problems from the flexibility of marvel
and the precision of humaine language, nevertheless
implausibly that is developed theoretical reader
of biggest all reservations with the perfect reminder,
five or syntax, appliance with suitable directives.

variation on a syntax machine, vi

Also says itself
that the complete machine of syntax near
and also could shock,
taking into account the straight instructions,

chop, above all, judgments of all activities
of the all written canons beloved by human being,

and to the back randomly added,
in the sufficient pulleys from the manuscript entertain,
deviate themselves, defy or to terrify, inspire random reader

sticks as if "new writing" by a live person
who human introspection sophisticated to the problems
with the flexibility of wondrous and the exactitude
of the human language, but the reader
theorist plus implausibly
of the all books with perfect memory,
and five or six to introducing
and, natural, another machine of the syntax
with suitable instructions.

variation on a syntax machine, v

If you think in doubt,
if you think concerning
it was written by the person
who most complete recall
of the intuition mathematician
of the world has had the insight
of the human, in human problem
pliability of miracle of language
of the human and due to precisely,
lived, in order
all books of 5 or 6 "it is new" most
to believe difficult to be refined, theoretical reader,
with which syntax machine which has the indication
right the human most love
and whether you hold the saying reader who can
chop up all sentences of all works
of all which has been written in heart,
impact it gives another syntax machine where it converts
or challenges, or urges, or fearfully and others the thing
oven which optionally and together pastes those in the thing
sufficient manuscript bundle it is, and scoops up
plotting for the characteristic scene, or that naturally,
comparatively, includes the appropriate indication.

variation on a syntax machine, iv

what kind
of syntax machine
which gives the right side instruction
loved the human being to side and also
all elder brothers of whole things

of all, cannons which it writes with the high piece,
also to talk
the possibility of cutting small
it was what kind of individual
to be joyful

one, it gives a shock,
but diversion one, challenge one,
the rubber it makes but it surprises
and with the manuscript grade
where it is sufficient

and in case it wonders
regarding when it thinks,
in consequence of the fact that
at steam whistle flexibility and precision
of human being language
in human being problem
the human being it kicks and power,

but intuition, mathematic volition
the retrospection which is complete
it brings inside the world,
by the person who is living it writes

and "implausibility together after" it is new
all books most in 56, like the orthodoxy
one objection individual, them with option,
it applies paste,

characteristic scene hazard
plot, and cci meal ket
in substitution of U bet it, justly
in the instruction which is suitable,
different syntax machine.

variation on a syntax machine, iii

of writes wonders
it rubber it in kind
it, volition

orthodoxy one,
also individual like option,
manuscript power, but books living
sufficient of them instruction

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which it small applies to cutting
thinks that person with syntax it,
writes all in 56, being brothers one,
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the complete flexibility being paste,
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makes by hazard and
what object it and retrospection"

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consequence the meal

be it of it which also gives in
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the cannon’s language elder most and different in the when

one, together which side talk high at all
and side the intuition fact
and but brings is right surprises
with whistle being but all plot, characteristic

variation on a syntax machine, ii

To reroute to provoke to spur it also said that
each possible syntax machine, which gives right instructions
could chop up all sets of all work of all cannon past and
which was written also loved by humans and them back together arbitrarily
to frighten to maintain into the manuscript drive disk sticks,
those, any reader terrify are sufficient,
as if written "new"
developed the human view
by a living person, to the human problems
by the miracle flexibility and the precision
of the human language, but implausibly highly
theoretical readers of all books with perfect recall,
five or six of the most intuitive mathematicians in the world,
if her, thinks over for being surprised at it for sliding
instead of the sex scenes and naturally
another syntax machine with suitable instructions gets.

variation on a syntax machine, i

It is also said that any syntax machine, given the right instructions, could chop up all the sentences of all the works of all the canons written by and also beloved by humans, and paste them back together arbitrarily, into manuscript sheaves sufficient to entertain, shock, divert, challenge, inspire or terrify any reader, as though written “new” by a living person bringing human insight to human problems through the miracle flexibility and precision of human language, but the most implausibly sophisticated theoretical reader of all books with perfect recall, five or six of the most intuitive mathematicians in the world, should they think to wonder about it instead of skimming the plot for sex scenes, and, of course, another syntax machine with appropriate instructions.

new mourning: neoretro pomo bobos boo-hoo

In a recent feature in UK Prospect magazine, Edward Docx heralds the end of postmodernism, "Postmodernism Is Dead," (as evidenced by the Victoria and Albert Museum's September 2011 - January 2012 retrospective, "Postmodernism--Style and Subversion 1970-1990") presenting, along the way, a fair overview of recent trends in art history, ruminations on the significance of certain postmodern works, a stab at an explanation of what postmodernism was all about, to suggest finally that appeals to some sort of "authenticity," or the appearance thereof, are a likely feature of whatever is to follow.

Choice verbiage:

There are two important points. First, that postmodernism is really an attack not just on the dominant narrative or art forms but rather an attack on the dominant social discourse. All art is philosophy and all philosophy is political. And the epistemic confrontation of postmodernism, this idea of de-privileging any one meaning, this idea that all discourses are equally valid, has therefore lead to some real-world gains for humankind. Because once you are in the business of challenging the dominant discourse, you are also in the business of giving hitherto marginalised and subordinate groups their voice. And from here it is possible to see how postmodernism has helped western society understand the politics of difference and so redress the miserable injustices which we have hitherto either ignored or taken for granted as in some way acceptable. You would have to be from the depressingly religious right or an otherwise peculiarly recondite and inhuman school of thought not to believe, for example, that the politics of gender, race and sexuality have been immeasurably affected for the better by the assertion of their separate discourses. The transformation from an endemically and casually sexist, racist and homophobic society to one that legislates for and promotes equality is a resonantly good thing. No question.

The second point is deeper still. Postmodernism aimed further than merely calling for a re-evaluation of power structures: it said that we are all in our very selves nothing more than the breathing aggregate of those structures. It contends that we cannot stand apart from the demands and identities that these structures and discourses confer upon us. Adios the Enlightenment. See you later Romanticism. Instead, it holds that we move through a series of co-ordinates on various maps—class, gender, religious, sexual, ethnic, situational—and that those co-ordinates are actually our only identity. We are entirely constructed. There is nothing else. And this, in an over-simplified nutshell, is the main challenge that postmodernism brought to the great banquet of human ideas because it changed the game from one of self-determination (Kant et al) to other-determination. I am constructed, therefore I am.

Unrelated (or, perhaps, tangentially related, depending mostly, Dear Reader, on your flexibility), two other thought-provoking writings-on-the-Internet-that-imply-more-thorough-scholarship-by-their-authors/subjects-elsewhere, which I have been meaning to remember, and track down, and post, are Loïc Wacquant's "Deadly Symbiosis" -- a beautifully-written examination of "four peculiar institutions" in an effort to comprehend "black hyperimprisonment" in the contemporary U.S. (see also "From Slavery to Mass Incarceration") -- and a Salon.com review cum interview-with-the-author-of "The History of White People," which summarizes author Nell Irvin Painter's thesis that "whiteness," as a racial identity, is merely the malleable amalgam of the social constructions of certain developing elites of European ethnicities.

what's da sayin'?

Dear Reader - have you ever wondered about the primordial ontological significance of Dasein's ownmost authentic being-having-fallen-into-the-world as triply ecstatic, temporally-attenuated concern, but felt that you didn't have the time to spend trying to understand what influential thinkers have suggested as to this fundamentally important topic?

(Or, like myself, have you, perhaps, spent a great deal of time trying to so understand something just like that with little more than angst, nausea and despair to show for it?)

Well, over at the Guardian's "How to Believe" feature (where many others similarly address many other topics, as well), philosopher Simon Critchley condenses Martin Heidegger's foundational project on that topic, Being & Time, into an excellent eight-part exposition on that work, part one of which is here (and check the sidebar there for links to the sequence).

If, as Critchley encapsulates Heidegger's thesis, "being is time," and we uncritically accept the common axiom that "time is money," then, by dint of the transitive property of equality, are we forced to agree with the actuaries', capitalists' and American Antinomian Dominionists' (inter alia) assertion that "being is money"? (Egad, I hope not!)

But don't let Critchley or myself keep you from undertaking to read the tome itself, which is worth it just for the translators' and editors' painstaking explanations and examinations of the philosopher's puns, coinages and neologisms, if not its author's (admittedly, not widely noted) demolition of the tradition of philosophy up to that point.

And, . . . umm . . . one, more concerned with "living well" than the primordial ontological significance of Dasein's ownmost authentic being-having-fallen-into-the-world as triply ecstatic, temporally-attenuated concern, might also (or instead) dig to read about Christopher Phillips, who is out philosophizin' in the streets, and convening Socratic cafes, amongst the teeming denizens of Arrearsville, USA.

america's naturalist conscience

i've been meaning to post some links to some interesting essays. for the most part, they are not new essays, neither particularly timely nor particularly topical, although, each day, it seems, i come across several more by following the footnotes, but rarely find a composed moment to properly - well, to properly compose. this isn't really quite that idealized moment, all my thoughts gathered, obedient and supine at hand while the skies above wheel and churn in numinous imminency of luminous inspiration, either, but it is a moment, and here we are in it, and i, for one, intend to get some of those essays posted, and wonder how i feel about doing that. you see, as a reader of deep interesting ideas, and well-styled prose, i want my friends and community -- you, Dear Reader -- to share the direct experience of the same stimulus that stimulated me: the essay itself; so that i may then (among other things) weigh the value of the writing in question through the aggregated filtering system of you, Dear Reader, and, factoring in what i know of you, get more holistic perspective than is available to my mind alone. and that is also what i really want as the person, me. but as a blogger, i feel a certain pressure to be more of a filter, to sell you the conscientious genius of, say, Wendell Berry, with firecrackers made of my ideas about summarizing what i have understood him to have said, and then trust you to follow the links. and i don't care to "gist." i don't even like "gist" as a verb. summarizing and paraphrasing and synopsizing may have their place, but seem detrimental to the quality thing that is being referred.

so, Wendell Berry is an excellent writer: his ideas are important. his presentation of those important ideas is achingly graceful.

one might consider his 2007 proclamation in the Courier-Journal that

I did not vote in Kentucky's gubernatorial primary on May 27. I did not vote because there was nobody on the ballot whom I wished to help elect. I could not bring myself to submit again to the indignity of trying to pick the least undesirable candidate; nor did I want to contribute to the "mandate" of a new governor, who would be carried into office by corporate contributions, and whose policies I would spend the next four years regretting or opposing,

later recanted ("Voting is a very serious matter, and I don't like the idea that I would write something that would confirm people in a habitual disinterest in elections."), or his 2001 essay "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear.

the one i have been meaning to post is his 1987 "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" printed here with some responses to some responses, its content thoughtful and its internet-posted-and-read multimetairony not lost.

whatever you think of those, don't fail also to consider "The Joy of Sales Resistance," and hearken to the manifesto of the Mad Farmer Liberation Front:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

west and chomsky and bears, oh my

Democracy Now strikes again and again, cutting through some of the maudlin and indulgent wallowing that has blanketed the media over the past week.

Take a moment, America: Breathe, and get some perspective.

First, an episode covering some other significant events that occurred on the 11th of September in Chile, India, Guatemala, Haiti, and Attica, NY.

Noam Chomsky patiently spends the hour rehashing the same old thing (same old thing, that is, to those of us who have been listening, not to diminish the significance of his work; those of you who have not been listening all these years, may find something new or surprising), reissuing his ten-year-old book 9-11 ("the definitive counternarrative," says Amy Goodman, several times) with a new essay, "9-11: Was There an Alternative?"

Catch the unaired portion of the interview here.

Finally, Cornel West compellingly addresses the "Attica Is All of Us," commemoration of the uprising's brutal end. (Sorry, can't find stand-alone .mp3; please watch video at the foregoing link - ed.). An excerpt:

And we live now in revolutionary times, but the counterrevolution is winning. The counterrevolution is winning. The greedy oligarchs and plutocrats are winning. One out of four corporations don’t pay taxes, been gobbling up billions of dollars. And yet . . . 42 percent of America’s children live in poverty or near poverty. That is sick. It’s a moral obscenity. It’s a national disgrace. And yet, we have a political class, no matter what color they are, that won’t say a mumbling word about that poverty. Why? Because it sits outside of the give and fro between a right-wing, mean-spirited Republican Party, run by the oligarchs and the plutocrats, and a spineless Democratic Party, that’s got ties to the oligarchs and plutocrats, and the poor people get left out. They get invisible, disposable.

rip, the systems novel

John Freeman's essay, "Rise from the ashes," in the Sydney Morning Herald, examines the end of the "Systems Novel" (novels from the likes of Gaddis, Pynchon, Delillo and Wallace, that ". . . took a great deep breath and attempted to capture all the systems of modern life at work"), and the rise of new generations of writers at the "margins of American power," in the wake of September 2001:

[A]s much as these novels reveal the systems that would enable the US to become an imperial power, they have imperial blind spots. The poor, the weak, the rest of the world, in many ways, are absent from their pages. It is this attitude - shockingly present in the lives of many thinking Americans - that explains how September 11, 2001, could have come as a shock to the US.

Its foreign policy has always been apparent first and foremost to the rest of the world, since within the US the focus was, especially in the postwar years, inward. Not surprisingly, the most critically acclaimed novelist of this period was John Updike, whose valedictory sentences managed to wrench sublimity from even shopping malls.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, however, a whole generation of novelists has risen to the task of reconsidering what it means to be an American, a question that has always been at the heart of the American novel. These post-attack novels are not just about who is American but what the US's role in the world is and what its treatment of people who flood in its direction says about it as a nation.

sitrep: fluctuation in the heatwave

it has been a bit hot round these parts lately to run the computer in the very hot apartment with any sense of comfort or confidence that the machine would survive.

today there is a bit of a break, not an actual deep, cool and relaxing "trough" so much as a little fluctuation in the heatwave, with the promise of more grueling "peak" to again ensue.