Category: Lit & Crit

Fight for your right to fight for your rightFight for your right to fight for your right

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:24 am

“The more the fight for human rights gains in popularity, the more it loses any concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone toward everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights.  The world has become man’s right and everything in it has become a right: the desire for love the right to love, the desire for rest the right to rest, the desire for friendship the right to friendship, the desire to exceed the speed limit the right to exceed the speed limit, the desire for happiness the right to happiness, the desire to publish a book the right to publish a book, the desire to shout in the street in the middle of the night the right to shout in the street.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

A joyful noyse?A joyful noyse?

Tetman Callis 2 Comments 6:54 am

“Does love for art really exist and has it ever existed?  Is it not a delusion?  When Lenin proclaimed that he loved Beethoven’s Appassionata above all else, what was it that he really loved?  What did he hear?  Music?  Or a majestic noise that reminded him of the solemn stirrings in his soul, a longing for blood, brotherhood, executions, justice, and the absolute?  Did he derive joy from the tones, or from the musings stimulated by those tones, which had nothing to do with art or with beauty?” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

The best-dressed person in the graveyardThe best-dressed person in the graveyard

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:47 am

“Up to a certain moment our death seems too distant for us to occupy ourselves with it.  It is unseen and invisible.  That is the first, happy period of life.  But then we suddenly begin to see our death ahead of us and we can no longer keep ourselves from thinking about it.  It is with us.  And because immortality sticks to death as tightly as Laurel to Hardy, we can say that our immortality is with us, too.  And the moment we know it is with us we feverishly begin to look after it.  We have a formal suit made for it, we buy a new tie for it, worried that others might select the clothes and tie, and select badly.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

High Street 6.5 — Life During Wartime (cont.)High Street 6.5 — Life During Wartime (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:00 am

“The four social classes under late capitalism are artists, rich people, the middle class, [and] poor people—this being the order of rank and precedence.  As the dominant class (morally/intellectually speaking), artists have a clear social responsibility to care for and nurture the three lower classes.  This is not by any means their primary responsibility, which is of course to art, but neither is it a negligible one.” — Donald Barthelme, “On the Level of Desire” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 6.5 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 6.6 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.))

High Street 6.4 — Life During Wartime (cont.)High Street 6.4 — Life During Wartime (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:18 am

“Art is always aimed (like a rifle, if  you wish) at the middle class.  The working class has its own culture and will have no truck with fanciness of any kind.  The upper class owns the world and thus needs know no more about the world than is necessary for its orderly exploitation.  The notion that art cuts across class boundaries to stir the hearts of hoe hand and Morgan alike is, at best, a fiction useful to the artist, his Hail Mary.  It is the poor puzzled bourgeoisie that is sufficiently uncertain, sufficiently hopeful, to pay attention to art.” — Donald Barthelme, “On the Level of Desire” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 6.4 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 6.5 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.))

High Street 6.3 — Life During Wartime (cont.)High Street 6.3 — Life During Wartime (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 1:30 pm

“Where does desire go?  Always a traveling salesperson, desire goes hounding off into the trees, frequently, without direction from its putative master or mistress.  This is tragic and comic at the same time.  I should, in a well-ordered world, marry the intellectual hero my wicked uncle has selected for me.  Instead I run off with William of Ockham or Daffy Duck.” — Donald Barthelme, “On the Level of Desire” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 6.3 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 6.4 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.))

High Street 6.2 — Life During Wartime (cont.)High Street 6.2 — Life During Wartime (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 2:42 pm

“Every woman artist will tell you that she exists in a universe of discourse created by men, works with a language created by men, a language suffused, colored, drenched in male desire.  That is, every woman artist is speaking a foreign language, like Beckett writing in French.  This should not be overstressed, because the languages involved have much in common—indeed, so much in common that they appear at times to be exactly congruent, like a photograph of a photograph.” — Donald Barthelme, “On the Level of Desire” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 6.2 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 6.3 — “Life During Wartime” (cont.))

High Street 5.5 — Criminal Defense (fin.)High Street 5.5 — Criminal Defense (fin.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:26 am

“Art is a commodity, art criticism is a commodity, the apple is a commodity, the air is a commodity, the ground under our feet is a commodity.  God is very much a commodity.  My emotions are a commodity, my desires the very locus of commodification.  My last illness is a commodity (twenty-two days at so much a day), my grave is a commodity (and not inexpensive).” — Donald Barthelme, “On the Level of Desire” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 5.5 — “Criminal Defense” (fin.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 6.1 — “Life During Wartime”)

High Street 5.4 — Criminal Defense (cont.)High Street 5.4 — Criminal Defense (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:31 am

“One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless.” — Donald Barthelme, “Reifications” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 5.4 — “Criminal Defense” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 5.5 — “Criminal Defense” (fin.))

High Street 4.9 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (fin.)High Street 4.9 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (fin.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 1:34 pm

“Words get worn out, and instead of conveying meaning they act either as simulacra to conceal meaning or as if they were transparencies with no meaning.” — Walker Percy, quoted in “A Symposium on Fiction” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 4.9 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (fin.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 5.1 — “Criminal Defense”)

High Street 4.6 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)High Street 4.6 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)

Tetman Callis 2 Comments 6:37 am

“A little thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing.” — Thomas Bailey Aldrich (from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. X, Sec. 3)

High Street 4.6 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 4.7 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.))

High Street 4.5 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)High Street 4.5 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:35 am

“Every writer in the country can write a beautiful sentence, or a hundred.  What I am interested in is the ugly sentence that is also somehow beautiful.  I agree that this is a highly-specialized enterprise.” — Donald Barthelme, “On ‘Paraguay’” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 4.5 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 4.6 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.))

High Street 4.4 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)High Street 4.4 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 7:48 am

“Art’s project is fundamentally meliorative.  The aim of meditating about the world is finally to change the world.  It is this meliorative aspect of literature that provides its ethical dimension.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 4.4 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 4.5 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.))

High Street 4.3 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)High Street 4.3 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 10:14 am

“Art cannot remain in one place.  A certain amount of movement, up, down, across, even a gallop toward the past, is a necessary precondition.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 4.3 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 4.4 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.))

High Street 4.2 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)High Street 4.2 — Radio Stars and Hemp TV (cont.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 1:59 pm

“Art is a true account of the activity of mind.  Because consciousness, in Husserl’s formulation, is always consciousness of something, art thinks ever of the world, cannot not think of the world, could not turn its back on the world even if it wished to.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger, emphasis in original)

High Street 4.2 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 4.3 — “Radio Stars and Hemp TV” (cont.))