Our work is cut out for usOur work is cut out for us
“We must not seek to discover structures but to produce structurations.” — Kermode, “The Use of the Codes”, The Art of Telling
We pronounced it differently in grad schoolWe pronounced it differently in grad school
“Since men cannot be aware of everything, their words, speech and writing can mean something that they themselves did not intend to say or write…. Not occasionally only, but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author.” — Kermode in The Art of Telling, quoting Gadamer in Truth and Method (trans. from Wahrheit und Methode by Barden and Cumming), quoting and summarizing Chaldenius, who probably wrote in Latin as he was writing in the mid-18th century
Knowledge equals PowerKnowledge equals Power
“The most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event.” — Herodotus, The History, Book 9 (trans. Macaulay)
Tree Falls in ForestTree Falls in Forest
I added a “Stories” menu to the left sidebar of this site’s present thematic apparition, and placed within said new menu a copy of a long story I call “The Antichrist.” It’s a tl;dr piece I first drafted long ago, though it wasn’t hammered into its final shape until about three or four years ago. It’s earned a few rejections since then, but I threw in the towel a week or so ago on getting it published anywhere else and decided to publish it here. I like its voice and other stuff about it–one would hope I like it, I wrote the damn thing and now I’ve published it–but I can’t see a compelling reason to ask anyone to pay me money for it, not even in the form of two contributor’s copies.
So far as I know, the only reader I have is a fellow peddling porn in Russia, so, Boris, I hope you enjoy “The Antichrist.”
Tsunami?Tsunami?
I’m reading Book 8 of Herodotus this morning, and he writes a passage that leads me to wonder if he’s referring to a tsunami. Here it is (from Macaulay’s translation):
“When three months had gone by while Artabazos was besieging the town, there came to be a great ebb of the sea backwards, which lasted for a long time; and the Barbarians, seeing that shallow water had been produced, endeavoured to get by into the peninsula of Pallene, but when they had passed through two fifth-parts of the distance, and yet three-fifths remained, which they must pass through before they were within Pallene, then there came upon them a great flood-tide of the sea, higher than ever before, as the natives of the place say, though high tides come often. So those of them who could not swim perished, and those who could were slain by the men of Potidaia who put out to them in boats. The cause of the high tide and flood and of that which befell the Persians was this, as the Potidaians say, namely that these same Persians who perished by means of the sea had committed impiety towards the temple of Poseidon and his image in the suburb of their town; and in saying that this was the cause, in my opinion they say well.”
The Ideal ReaderThe Ideal Reader
Leonard Cohen has inspired me to set out in search of that elusive and ideal reader, the one who is otherwise unemployed and bored enough to read my work from the alpha through to the omega.
Moving from Joomla to WordPressMoving from Joomla to WordPress
I had a Joomla website, but had neither time nor capability sufficient to get it to look like anything more than something half-assed and tossed up on the web, so I switched over to this WordPress bloggy thing, the advantage to which being, I don’t have but the most minimal of capability with it, either, but it’s not so obvious. I hope. Of course, now that I’ve confessed my broad incompetence, the cat is out of the bag, scratching the furniture, and pissing on the bookcases. “Marking,” they call it. It smells pretty bad.
I plan to post more stuff on this webby bloggy thing, but I do believe I got the Gordon Lish notes up–I should double-check to make sure–and that’s most all of what anyone came to my Joomla site for, anyway.
First Test PostFirst Test Post
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