On this Memorial Day weekend, one wonders: how does a country that has/suffers from chronic historical (and ethical) amnesia celebrate the holiday? I've no answer and am worried. Memorize your past and present, dear country, and stop listening to music by Erasure...
KATY O'FARRELL
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Enough, You Realists & Pop Historians
Ian McEwan, Jonathan Safran Foer, Clair Messud, Don DeLillo, etc., on September 11, 2001,
John Updike on Terrorist(s)...the cottage industry about Islam and Muslims, East and West,
U.S. imperialism, reading Lolita in Nabokov....
...oh, how the modish can be menacing; not only does it show how lacking our cultural literacy and awareness had been, but just how susceptible we are to engrossing ourselves repeatedly in the au courant, the sensational, the most mightily media-disseminated stories and images...and the mediation is seldom deep. Why are the writers not diversifying their accounts and expanding their horizons AND getting such acclaim for being so narrow, so myopic?
Piously, they comb out psychological motives and means, engage the subjectivites of this and that subject regarding modern disaster, foregrounds and backgrounds gleaned from current events, but is it all viable? Are they necessary? MARTIN SCRIBLERUS (sorry for being out-of the-loop)
John Updike on Terrorist(s)...the cottage industry about Islam and Muslims, East and West,
U.S. imperialism, reading Lolita in Nabokov....
...oh, how the modish can be menacing; not only does it show how lacking our cultural literacy and awareness had been, but just how susceptible we are to engrossing ourselves repeatedly in the au courant, the sensational, the most mightily media-disseminated stories and images...and the mediation is seldom deep. Why are the writers not diversifying their accounts and expanding their horizons AND getting such acclaim for being so narrow, so myopic?
Piously, they comb out psychological motives and means, engage the subjectivites of this and that subject regarding modern disaster, foregrounds and backgrounds gleaned from current events, but is it all viable? Are they necessary? MARTIN SCRIBLERUS (sorry for being out-of the-loop)
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Collaboration Nation Station Day!
James Boswell, Dr. Johnson's biographer, died on this date in 1795 (Oscar Wilde was released from jail, too, in 1897, but that's another matter). That eccentric opus, that auto-, almost, auto-auto-biography, LIFE OF JOHNSON, reveals as much of Bos as it does the goodly Dr. One could say that their friendship, this tome, is not only a record of friendship's mutuality, but truly active artistic collaboration. In this spirit, I urge all of you artistically tendentious to go and converge with one of your fellow artists and commit great acts of collaboration (preferably in mixed media formats-- check out www.sidebar.net for some thoughts) or even collaboracide (even a dually destructive effort in which doubling leads to troubling is a redeemable practice).
Come on, text and image, paint brush and DVD, sculpture and FM radio frequencies, you know how to collide and connect....j. curley
Come on, text and image, paint brush and DVD, sculpture and FM radio frequencies, you know how to collide and connect....j. curley
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Again and again
I have watched her die so many times
since this afternoon. The mandala of blood.
The small ruination: her shopping scattered,
oranges rolling slowly towards the sewer grate,
a shoe that had somehow landed by the payphone.
I saw her, in that last instant when
shopping lists and street signs mattered to her.
I saw her become unjointed and undone.
I saw her body pressed flat to the street
as if she were afraid she’d slip and fall off the earth.
But tonight, the mill of my dreams will work at her.
She will wake for me in a field of blooming poppies,
and I will watch her kick off her shoes
and dance towards those far groves
overdone in sunshine.
Mark Aiello
since this afternoon. The mandala of blood.
The small ruination: her shopping scattered,
oranges rolling slowly towards the sewer grate,
a shoe that had somehow landed by the payphone.
I saw her, in that last instant when
shopping lists and street signs mattered to her.
I saw her become unjointed and undone.
I saw her body pressed flat to the street
as if she were afraid she’d slip and fall off the earth.
But tonight, the mill of my dreams will work at her.
She will wake for me in a field of blooming poppies,
and I will watch her kick off her shoes
and dance towards those far groves
overdone in sunshine.
Mark Aiello
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Shakespeare's Synthesizers
Why ferfuckssake do more and more writers start wielding guitars and think they can get
revving on musical instruments of their choice, and that the result will be worth their while or ours? Oh, it may be all so artful, blithely ironic, whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, or "cute" (argh!) for a best-selling novelist or crackerjack poet to plug into a Marshall stack and caterwaul in a musical alter-ego but is it necessary? Do people find that "supergoup" of Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry (and a few other media-ocres) interesting? Hmm...In any case, continuing this performative transvalutation, acclaimed Irish poet Paul Muldoon (whose new collection, HORSE LATITUDES, does not exactly rock) will be reading at The Bitter End (147 Bleecker St. betw. LaGuardia Pl. and Thompson St., NYC) and then...and then...playing with his band (!), Rackett.
I'm sure they'll go platinum soon...check them out, I certainly will. MARTIN SCRIBLERUS
P.S. Curley's day job is putting him out of commission for posts of late, but he wanted me to tell you that novelist Harry Matthews will be reading at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, 131 E. 10th St., NYC). If you recall, Mr. Curley had written here about Matthews's interview in The Paris Review and raved about his latest novel, MY LIFE IN CIA. Go, OULIPO!!
revving on musical instruments of their choice, and that the result will be worth their while or ours? Oh, it may be all so artful, blithely ironic, whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, or "cute" (argh!) for a best-selling novelist or crackerjack poet to plug into a Marshall stack and caterwaul in a musical alter-ego but is it necessary? Do people find that "supergoup" of Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry (and a few other media-ocres) interesting? Hmm...In any case, continuing this performative transvalutation, acclaimed Irish poet Paul Muldoon (whose new collection, HORSE LATITUDES, does not exactly rock) will be reading at The Bitter End (147 Bleecker St. betw. LaGuardia Pl. and Thompson St., NYC) and then...and then...playing with his band (!), Rackett.
I'm sure they'll go platinum soon...check them out, I certainly will. MARTIN SCRIBLERUS
P.S. Curley's day job is putting him out of commission for posts of late, but he wanted me to tell you that novelist Harry Matthews will be reading at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, 131 E. 10th St., NYC). If you recall, Mr. Curley had written here about Matthews's interview in The Paris Review and raved about his latest novel, MY LIFE IN CIA. Go, OULIPO!!
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