Utilitarianism, for instanceUtilitarianism, for instance
“Most philosophy is utterly wrong, but oh god, it’s sometimes very gorgeous, and sees connections that can be lived by.” – William H. Gass (interviewed by Greg Gerke in “Many-Layered Anger”)
Author: Tetman Callis
In the end was the wordIn the end was the word
“Add radio to print and the word became ubiquitous. It overhung the head like smoke and had to be ignored as one ignores most noise. It was by loose use corrupted, by misuse debased, by overuse destroyed. It flew in any eye that opened, in any ear hands didn’t hide, and became, instead of the lord of truth, the servant of the lie.” – William H. Gass, “The Book as a Container of Consciousness”
But we’re all so specialBut we’re all so special
“Too many writers write about their lives. It’s easier, and it’s seductive, and it can be catastrophic. ‘It happened to me, and therefore it must be interesting.’ You know, that’s sort of awful.” – William H. Gass (interviewed by Greg Gerke in “Many-Layered Anger”)
He might even be a writerHe might even be a writer
“Nobody is as crazy as a man who thinks he is important.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark
Assemblage, anyone?Assemblage, anyone?
“If the maker’s mind is prepared, the immediate materials are always suitable.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark
“Yttat”“Yttat”
Mayday Magazine published my story, “Yttat,” in their Fall 2012 issue. Here’s the link to the contents page:
http://www.maydaymagazine.com/issue6tableofcontents.php
I’ll probably add the story to the “Previously Published Stories” sidebar this coming weekend, but you can read it through the link on the Mayday contents page any time you like. If you like.
You don’t want him to go planting any bombs or anythingYou don’t want him to go planting any bombs or anything
“It is a dangerous thing to suddenly deprive a man of hope–he can turn violent. It is important to kill hope slowly, so that the loser has time to adjust unconsciously to the loss.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark (emphasis in original)
The dark energy of silenceThe dark energy of silence
“Silence is always proper. When I understand this better I’ll stop talking. You won’t be able to hear me for miles. I will radiate silence like a dark star shining in the gaps between syllables and conversation.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark
It’s a true storyIt’s a true story
“Stories are the most durable texture of life for us. Not forms of societies, but stories. Stories are really what keeps everything together, in a way. When you are abandoned by stories — when you go back beyond the invention of writing, beyond the literary tradition — you feel of course lost: because one needs stories.” – Roberto Calasso (quoted in “Curator of Miracles in Milan”)
Probably closer than almostProbably closer than almost
“Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it as it exists, purely by itself, without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear endued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator’s mind. The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of this fact. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc from a corpse-like gray to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole world to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his life.” – William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Let’s get this straightLet’s get this straight
“A problem is determinate if it has a definite number of solutions, indeterminate if it has an indefinite number of solutions, and impossible if it has no solution.” – G. A. Wentworth, Plane Geometry (emphases in original)
If at first you don’t fail, try, try againIf at first you don’t fail, try, try again
“Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world’s demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. And they are pivotal human experiences. A process so ubiquitous and everlasting is evidently an integral part of life. ‘There is indeed one element in human destiny,’ Robert Louis Stevenson writes, ‘that not blindness itself can controvert. Whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.’” – William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Failure any way you slice itFailure any way you slice it
“How can things so insecure as the successful experiences of this world afford a stable anchorage? A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain. In the healthiest and most prosperous existence, how many links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it. Of course the music can commence again; –and again and again,– at intervals. But with this the healthy-minded consciousness is left with an irremediable sense of precariousness. It is a bell with a crack; it draws its breath on sufferance and by an accident. Even if we suppose a man so packed with healthymindedness as never to have experienced in his own person any of these sobering intervals, still, if he is a reflecting being, he must generalize and class his own lot with that of others; and, doing so, he must see that his escape is just a lucky chance and no essential difference. He might just as well have been born to an entirely different fortune. And then indeed the hollow security! What kind of a frame of things is it of which the best you can say is, ‘Thank God, it has let me off clear this time!’ Is not its blessedness a fragile fiction? Is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success? If indeed it were an success, even on such terms as that! But take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.” – William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Where’s the market for that?Where’s the market for that?
“Neither goodness nor generosity nor courtesy can exist, any more than friendship can, if they are not sought of and for themselves, but are cultivated only for the sake of sensual pleasure or personal advantage.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (trans. Miller)
Being a better person makes you a better personBeing a better person makes you a better person
“It’s a favorite myth in our culture that hardship makes you a better person, that it is merely the grindstone on which your essence is refined and polished. But the truth is that scarcity, depression, thwarted ambition, and suffering most often leaves the person a little twisted. That is the territory where mean drunks and tyrannical bastards come from.” – Jessa Crispin, “Talking to the Dead: Channeling William James in Berlin”
Toss me a lifejacketToss me a lifejacket
“[William] James is now a bit of an odd fellow in philosophy. More widely influential than widely known, his theory of pragmatism and his groundbreaking work in the field of psychology make him something of a hidden mover. If you do seek him out, it’s not generally in the way one reads Descartes or Kant or Nietzsche, as a refinement of the intellect or in the pursuit of one’s studies. One finds James when one needs him. He makes quiet sense of the world, in all its glories and deprivations, its calamities and its beauties. As a philosopher, James is able to hold all of the sorrow and violence and pain of the world in his mind and remain somehow optimistic. It doesn’t wipe out the goodness of the world, it just sits beside it. It’s no wonder then that people get a little religious about this agnostic philosopher, this man who can restore your faith in the world, without necessarily bringing god into it.” – Jessa Crispin, “Talking to the Dead: Channeling William James in Berlin”
Yin your yang and yang your yinYin your yang and yang your yin
“Sexism bifurcates human qualities into masculine and feminine. It imposes a gender binary where being a man means not being like a woman and vice-versa. Sexism is often another name for patriarchy, meaning a hierarchy or a rule of priests where the hieros, the priest, is a pater, a father. It designates an order of living that elevates some men over others, separating the men from the boys, and all men over women. It creates a gender hierarchy where human qualities gendered ‘masculine’ are elevated over those gendered ‘feminine.’ As such, it is an order of domination. But in dividing human qualities into masculine and feminine, sexism separates everyone from parts of themselves, creating rifts or splits in the psyche. This fragmentation of the psyche links patriarchy with trauma and explains its deleterious effects on everyone. Boys in becoming men or men wanting to be seen as ‘real men’ will separate their thoughts from their emotions, which are regarded as weak or feminine. As in ‘boys don’t cry.’ And girls will be torn between wanting to be seen as ‘good girls’ or ‘good women,’ meaning not masculine or self-assertive, and wanting to align themselves with the so-called masculine qualities that are privileged and socially valued. In sexist families or religions or societies or cultures, both men and women are pressured to render themselves half-human.” – Carol Gilligan (interviewed by Eve Gerber in The Browser)
The limits of happily-ever-afterThe limits of happily-ever-after
“Even if those generations of men to come should care to hand down, in succession from father to son, the glory of each one of us; yet, still, owing to the deluges and conflagrations of the earth, which must happen periodically, we cannot acquire a lasting, much less an eternal renown. What does it matter that mention should be made of you by those who shall be born hereafter, when there was none among those who were born before you?” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, “The Dream of Scipio” (trans. Pearman)
Face-down in a shallow graveFace-down in a shallow grave
“Once the Author is gone, the claim to ‘decipher’ a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing. This conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is discovered, the text is ‘explained’: the critic has conquered; hence it is scarcely surprising not only that, historically, the reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic, but that criticism (even ‘new criticism’) should be overthrown along with the Author. In a multiple writing, indeed, everything is to be distinguished, but nothing deciphered; structure can be followed, ‘threaded’ (like a stocking that has run) in all its recurrences and all its stages, but there is no underlying ground; the space of the writing is to be traversed, not penetrated: writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to evaporate it: it proceeds to a systematic exemption of meaning. Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a ‘secret’: that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law.” – Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (trans. Richard Howard)
Burn the witches, probablyBurn the witches, probably
“The American brand of anti-urban, anti-immigration, anti-college sentiment is a populist strain that runs throughout American history: it’s Jefferson versus Madison. Ruralism versus urbanism, self-sufficiency versus government planning, these are rhetorical tropes trotted out by politicians at every election. No secret police enforces either of them: they are the warp and woof of our national fabric. There is no telling what a third party committed to the rural rhetoric might do if it ever got into power, but at this point it’s just how we roll.” – Andrei Codrescu (interviewed by Josh Cook in Bookslut)
Turning the ego trickTurning the ego trick
“There is an Ego Trick, but it is not that the self doesn’t exist, only that it is not what we generally assume it to be. Perhaps the simplest analogy is with a cloud. From a distance it looks like an object with fairly clear edges, but the closer you get to it, the more indistinct it becomes. Get really close and you can see it’s just a collection of water droplets. Does this mean clouds don’t exist? Of course not, it just means they are not chunks of cotton wool. The self is like a cloud that not only looks like a single object from the outside, but feels like one from the inside too. Knowing the truth doesn’t change the way it either looks or feels, and nor does it conjure it out of existence. It simply makes us recognize that at root each of us is an ever-changing flux, not a never-changing core. The solidity of the self is an illusion; the self itself is not. The Ego Trick is not to persuade us that we exist when we do not, but to make us believe we are more substantial and enduring than we really are.” – Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick
The peaceable kingdomThe peaceable kingdom
“We lose the subject of animals when we move out of childhood. In childhood animals are all around us, and then we throw them out. In childhood they’re everywhere, the stuff of our stories and our art and our songs, of our clothes and blankets, of toys and games. Then in adulthood they’re distant symbols or objects. They’re rudely ejected from our domain. They’re frivolous or infantile, suddenly. They’re what we eat or maybe pets. Sometimes they’re what we kill. But this makes no sense. This impoverishes our imaginations. When we turn away from animals as though they’re only childish things, we make our world colder and more narrow. We rob ourselves of beauty and understanding. We rob ourselves of the capacity for empathy.” – Lydia Millet (interviewed by Morten Hoi Jensen in Bookforum)
Where ladies of various size do singWhere ladies of various size do sing
“No rock musician miming sex with his instrument or destroying it on stage, no art installation that creepily mirrors its visitors or pummels them with senseless questions, is nearly as crazy as opera.” – Wendy Lesser, “The Strangest Art”
He died laughingHe died laughing
“A story can always end happily by stopping at a cheerful moment. Of course in nature the only end is death, but death hardly ever happens when people are at their best. That is why we like tragedies. They show men ending energetically with their wits about them and deserving to do it.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark
They’re not better before it, eitherThey’re not better before it, either
“Must everything we do satisfy someone else before it’s worthwhile? Is everything we do because we enjoy it selfish and useless? Primary school, secondary school, university, they’ve got the first twenty-four years of our lives numbered off for us and to get into the year above we’ve got to pass an exam. Everything is done to please the examiner, never for fun. The one pleasure they allow is anticipation: ‘Things will be better after the exam.’ It’s a lie. Things are never better after the exam.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark (emphasis in original)
Shake this houseShake this house
Busy little bees we beBusy little bees we be
“When most people leave school they have to live by work which can’t be liked for its own sake and whose practical application is outside their grasp. Unless they learn to work obediently because they’re told to, and for no other reason, they’ll be unfit for human society.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark
Truth outsTruth outs
“Criticism – in order to be anything at all – needs its noisemakers and vulgarians as well as its noble and refined types. The People Who Get It Wrong, paradoxically, are as necessary to the enterprise as the People Who Get It Right. Criticism is an ongoing negotiation between truth and error, and sometimes, by an irritating yet ultimately productive dialectic, error is for a while in the ascendant.” – Terry Castle, “Pipe Down Back There!”
Boatload o’sinnersBoatload o’sinners
“A man once said in Auschwitz that indifference is the greatest sin of the 20th Century. Well, I think it is the greatest sin of the 21st Century as well. We need to shake off this indifference, the destructive tolerance of evil.” – Jim Caviezel, quoted in the production notes for The Stoning of Soraya M.
You’ve got his numberYou’ve got his number
“From an early age I only wanted to deal with what I was sure of, and like all thinkers I soon came to distrust what could only be seen and touched. The majority believe that floors, ceilings, each other’s bodies, the sun, etc., are the surest things in the world, but soon after going to school I saw that everything was untrustworthy when compared with numbers. Take the simplest kind of number, a telephone number, 339-6286 for example. It exists outside us for we find it in a directory, but we can carry it in our heads precisely as it is, for the number and our idea of it are identical. Compared with his phone number our closest friend is shifty and treacherous.” – Alasdair Gray, Lanark