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POPSSubjective Reality and Autobiographical Fiction People are still getting worked up over this? Dare I call them gullible? I mean, normally when I read an autobiography where the author claims to have been raised by a pack of wolves I chuckle to myslef and presume that some obscure sense of humor is at work. I mean, seriously, how was ANYONE fooled into thinking this story was real? Apparently it's gonna be an awkward Rosh Ha-Shanah at the Defonseca household, that is, of course, if they don't just skip it. ;) Still, back in the 60s and 70s the work of Hunter Thompson was considered JOURNALISM. Is it safe to say that the public has moved towards a naive objectivism, presuming that all that is printed as fact must be true, and that we have lost touch with the subjective nature of human experience? I hope we get this spasm under control in time to save the beautiful subjective art of Literature!
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POPSOops! Yahoo! could get me tortured! So apparently Yahoo! is named after the noise a journalist makes when the Chinese police break his arms in prison. Way to go you guys! Serriously, I don't know how these people sleep at night. I'll never use Yahoo mail and I don't suggest anyone else do it either. If they'll turn you over to the secret police in China, don't be surprised if they're willing to do it in your country too.
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POPSA Literary Perspective on the Subjective Nature of Memory I am consistently impressed with Hungarian literature, and the language is moving up my "Must Learn" list. Nadas Peter seems like a particularly relevant novelist today, in an era where facts, and even recent history are extraordinarily maliable. The most amazing part is the way in which the "free" press has been not only complacent but complicit in these revisions. More than any time in the recent passed, these days we need to be reminded that human beings are not inheriently empirical creatures. Emotions and perceptions; desires and frustarations; these are the key architects of our collective memories.
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POPSThe Orthodox Patriarch visits Greenland Neal Ascherson writes with clear but contemplative prose about the surreal beauty of Greenland as it comes in contact with the surreal union of Religion and Science. An interesting look into the ideas of the much-overlooked Orthodox Christian Churches on the issues of global politics and the environment.
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POPSDenis Johnson's New Novel: Tree of Smoke There are a few tribes that hunt monkeys, but for almost anyone else, the small details of surprising humanity in monkeys makes killing one feel unsettlingly close to home. Denis Johnson starts his latest book, Tree of Smoke, with the killing of a monkey, on the day of Kennedy's assassination, amidst the tension that you can feel propelling the characters like a wound up rubber band into the chaos of the Vietnam War. And it is this tension that rings in my ears, now that my generation has also known that dreadful tension - 2003 like 1914, like 1939, like 1963, when society was already set on its terrible path and it was to late to pull the behemoth of humanity of its course...
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POPSCommunist Personal Adds One of the most sinister legacies of communism is the odd side effect that its radical materialism wound up oposing beauty, love and sex. To this day, Chinese people will insist that traditional Chinese culture does not have a concept of love, that romance is a western notion, and that Chinese marriage is purely an arrangement out of social obligation. This is of course not true, but two generations have now been born under Communist propaganda, and that's long enough for them to forget which values are traditionally Chinese, and which ones are communist indoctrination. It's ironic to me that the reality of Communism is anti-love, anti-peace, probably anti-flower. The truth is that Communism is an ideology that is obsessed with money, materialism, and warfare. Understanding this explains a lot about the current socio-economic milieu in China and Russia.
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POPSAre we really that shallow? The media, and literature, and Baby Boomer culture tends to dismiss my generation (which I call Generation Why?) as shallow, seduced by slick technology and enthralled with celebrity trash like Paris Hilton and reality TV re-runs. Is this really so? Is this all we have to offer? A literary voice for Generation Y has yet to emerge, but is that because the cynical and disillusioned baby boomers are right about us? Or is this simply the projected guilt and frustration of the flower-power generation as they now find themselves beholden to the materialism they once scorned? What do ya'll think?
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POPSLiterature and the Scientific Mind Primo Levi represents the archetype of our complicated modern condition. Advancement has been a double edged sword: there are the miracle of modern medicine and the atrocities of modern warfare; there are the wonders of space exploration and the horrors of Auschwitz. That the human soul can produce both is as amazing as it is horrifying. That we still have the heart to create literature and art after such hopeless brutality, and we still have the playful curiosity to press forward into the unknown is the most amazing of the human mind's many mysterious capacities. {click through for the full article, it's a great book review by Anita Desai, mother of the current Mann-Booker-winning novelist, Kiran Desai, and an accomplished writer in her own right.)
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POPSThe Dirty Letters of James Joyce
"Frank as these letters are, their psychology can easily be misunderstood. They were intended to accomplish sexual gratification in him and inspire the same in her, and at moments they fasten intently on peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which might be technically called perverse...before quartering Joyce into these categories and consigning him to their tyranny we must remember that he was capable, in his work, of ridiculing them all as Circean beguilements, of turning them into vaudeville routines. Then too, the letters rebuke such obvious labels by an ulterior purpose; besides the immediate physical goal, Joyce wishes to anatomise and reconstitute and crystallize the emotion of love. He goes further still; like Richard Rowan in Exiles, he wishes to possess his wife's soul, and have her possess his, in utter nakedness. To know someone else beyond love and hate, beyond vanity and remorse, beyond human possibility almost, is his extravagant desire. "
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POPSAnselm Kiefer: The monumental art of "Falling Stars" The eclectic, somehow organic contemporary modernism of Kiefer's work is cocooned within the Grand Palais, a shimmering monument of industrial modernity in the Fin-de-Cecil machine age. It seems like a very potent contrast, a commentary on both the eternally elusive nature of the future, and on our relationship with a past whose material vestiges haunt our world. I wish I were in Paris to see this show!
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POPSIn Memory of a Dark Future All science fiction writers dream of their work slipping into reality, of being described as a visionary. I couldn't call Philip K. Dick a science fiction visionary, since his terrifying visions came not from the future but from within. However, that is the very trait that does make him a literary visionary. It is also perhaps why, of all the writers, his portrayal of the future is the one that resonates deeper within the present with every passing day. He has achieved what all science fiction writers, and even all writers would ever hope for, and charmingly enough, I'm sure he would hate it.
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