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Skreak!--The Grub Street Gracklog Skreak!--The Grub Street Gracklog occasional thoughts, attitudes, and flippancies regarding language, art, fiction, poetry, and film 
Articles
Voice of Echo: Addendum
2008-06-06 19:35:00 Chigurh What business is it of yours where I'm from, friendo? Proprietor I didn't mean nothin by it. Chigurh Didn't mean nothin. Proprietor ...Will there be somethin else? Chigurh I don't know. Will there? Beat. The proprietor turns and coughs. Chigurh stares. Proprietor Is somethin wrong? Chigurh With what? Proprietor With anything? Chigurh Is that what you're asking me? Is there something wrong with anything? The proprietor looks at him, uncomfortable, looks away. Proprietor Will there be anything else? Chigurh You already asked me that. Proprietor Well... I need to see about closin. Chigurh See about closing. More About: Voice , Addendum
Contradiction: No Country’s Diction
2008-06-06 19:05:00 One might well ask in response to the essay immediately below, how is it that a guest should be both a new arrival and a long time occupant? He would be both new and old, and anyone can see that this is a contradiction. We cannot even escape this contradiction by the logical dodge of saying that he is new and old in different “senses,” as though for instance he were only new in the sense of never having been noticed before. For it is the strangest thing about Anton Chigurh that to recognize him would be to gloss over his identity–which is to say, his difference from others–and what makes him different from others is the indifferent aura which envelops his every movement. Thus to distinguish him from others, to identify his peculiar coinage, is already to mix that coin in with all the others. The newness of this guest is not then a matter of his suddenly becoming noticeable, legal tender, because such a currency would immediately lose its value. If it is not b... More About: Country , Contradiction
The Flip Side of the Coin: Learning the Native Tongue of No Country
2008-06-02 14:45:00 Nietzsche, in the twilight hour before the dawn of the twentieth century, sought to descry among the people of the day the presence of someone who, in the words of Eliot’s Four Quartets, can only be identified as one “both intimate and unidentifiable.” Here we grope in the glowing obscurity of twilight for the identity of this stranger who is yet “half-recalled”; we seek to divine the identity of the difference in identity and difference. Nietzsche himself surmises in a bewilderment that is keenness: Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes to us this uncanniest of all guests? (Wille Zur Macht, 1, from 1885-86) It is all to the point that Nietzsche is here employing the superlative of the word “unheimlich,” translated as “uncanny,” but etymologically rendered as un-home-ly, in the sense of one homeless, un-placeable, unidentifiable. The “most homeless of all guests” to which Nietzsche desperately refers is n... More About: Country , Learning , Side , Flip , Tongue
New Issue
2008-04-12 03:36:00 Well, it’s been a long time coming, folks, but there’s finally a new issue of Grub Street Grackle. If you happen to be in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, feel free to join us for the roll-out tomorrow (Saturday, April 12) around 7:30. We’ll have food and drink and some music and poetry around nine. If you want to come, the address is 130 West Holland Drive, in the city of Irving, TX 75062. Bring your friends. More About: Issue
Prayers to broken stone
2008-04-01 23:31:00 photo by: gino maccanti In keeping with the Gracklog’s policy (which I just made up) of “staying on the cutting edge of obsolescence,” I’d like to respond to some remarks Mr. Craig Raine made in an article about T. S. Eliot published last month on the Guardian’s website. The article is marked “Foreword” and is presumably meant in some way to serve as a prelude to a more complete consideration of Eliot. But by Raine’s own account, what we have here is really an after-word–”It looks very different now,” he says, and “We can see” now what could not be seen in Eliot’s lifetime. Whereas “All contemporary poetry when it is contemporary is initially baffling to its readers,” we now find it comfortably situated in the folds of history, and it is no longer so unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot, for now we need not be baffled by him, now that we have understood what sort of a poet he is and explained aw... More About: Prayers , Stone , Broken
The Latest Foofahaha
2008-03-25 05:00:00 by: 416style (sookie) Over at his own website, “Zine und Zeit,” frequent Grackle contributor Martin Heidegger has posted the following tirade against the online pundustry: But when Dasein goes in for something in the reticence of carrying it through or even of genuinely breaking down on it, its time is a different time and, as seen by the public, an essentially slower time than that of idle talk, which ‘lives at a faster rate.’ Idle talk will thus long since have gone on to something else which is currently the very newest thing. That which was earlier surmise and has now been carried through, has come too late if one looks at that which is newest. Idle talk and curiosity take care in their ambiguity to ensure that what is genuinely and newly created is out of date as soon as it emerges before the public. Such a new creation can become free in its positive possibilities only if the idle talk which covers it up has become ineffective, and if the ‘commo...
Things you can see
2008-03-10 23:18:00 I’ve long admired and often emulated the habit Emerson had of passing through strangers’ land and fancying it his own, and thinking what he would do with it. I can think of no better way of taking in the environs synoptically than to imagine oneself their steward. It certainly beats counting grains of sand. If I don’t misunderstand the following quotation (and I certainly don’t claim to have a thorough grasp of the context), something like this way of looking seems to be at work in it: In equipment that is used, ‘Nature’ is discovered along with it by that use–the ‘Nature’ we find in natural products. Here, however, “Nature” is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails.’ As the ‘environment’ is discovered, the ‘Nature’ ... More About: Things
Never let a Hegelian close the circle
2008-02-12 21:53:00 Speaking of Hegelian interpretations of No Country for Old Men, this is worth a read: I ordered him another whisky to settle his upper lip. I hate it when Hegelians take to quivering. They never know how to start a point ‘cause it’s all one big fucking idea. Like Parmenides and his “well rounded truth.” No way to get in. A whole tribe of hedgehogs. Hegelians. read more More About: Close , Circle , The Circle
The difference in the identity of identity and difference
2008-02-10 19:01:00 From J. Anselm Prever’s review of “No Country for Old Men:” The Coens aren’t interested in manipulating our emotions. Not that the emotions remain unaffected: few scenes in any film have the understated sweetness of Moss’ laconic exchanges with his wife Carla Jean, the terror of Chigurh’s coin-toss conversation with the storekeeper, or the poignancy of Bell’s narration of his two dreams. What happens in these scenes? People talk to each other, in level voices. What warms the heart, or chills the bone, is the substance of what is said. This is true enough, and a good reason to be grateful for the Coens’ work. But I think Mr. Prever has not dropped the other shoe here. Is it really only the substance of what is said that moves us (as though even the blankest delivery could leave that substance untouched), or is it also and much more the very difference between what is said and the “level voices” that say it? I believe that this difference is... More About: Identity , Difference
Faking It
2008-02-02 18:39:00 photo by: palindrom6996 From Ginger Strand’s insightful, if sadly inconclusive, article about Niagra Falls, Marylin Monroe’s gait, and the Red Hat Society: The controversy reflected what biographer Sarah Churchwell calls “the central anxiety in Marilyn’s story: Was she natural or manufactured? Scripted or real?” In the ’50s, this was becoming a question for the Falls too. A 1950 treaty with Canada had been signed that allowed more water to be diverted into power plants than ever before. Anticipating the reduced water flow over the brink, Ontario Hydro and the Army Corps of Engineers had scheduled the Falls for a face-lift. In fact, a massive engineering project was in place to carve out the riverbed, reshape the banks, rebuild the viewing points, and artificially raise the water level—all in order to keep up the appearance of natural grandeur. Marilyn’s 116-foot walk strode right to the heart of an issue that was playing out at Niagara and on many fronts in ...
Timely Musings: Kundera’s anaesthetic aesthetics reconsidered
2008-01-31 22:19:00 photo by: dusdin After listening carefully to those notes out of season, I could not supress the following line of questioning, a questioning which, as it were, arose spontaneously at that moment when those unseasonable notes first graced my ears: Does the curtain come down too quickly in this untimely meditation? Does it fail to stay in step and keep the time properly…or even fail to keep a proper sense of time? What insight is Kundera’s observation striving after, even though such striving is prematurely stopped short? Should art be looked for –and, indeed, is it ever found –in historical conciousness? Or should we expect to find the primal possibilities of something like what is later called historical consciousness only in art? Two fundamental poles govern Kundera’s observation, and obtaining between them is some sort of implied oppostion. These poles are the cerebrality of “historical conciousness” and the &ldquo... More About: Musings , Sings
Two Versions of an Unhappy Childhood
2008-01-28 17:28:00 From Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics For we set down that the highest good is the end of politics, while it takes the greatest part of its pains to produce citizens of a certain sort, namely, ones that are good and inclined to perform beautiful actions. It is reasonable, then, that we do not speak of a cow or a horse or any other animal as happy, since none of them is able to share in being at work in such a way. And for this reason a child is not happy either, since he is not yet capable of performing such actions on account of age; children who are called happy are pronounced blessed on account of our hope. From W. B. Yeats’ Reveries over Childhood and Youth After that come memories of Sligo, where I live with my grandparents. I am sitting on the ground looking at a mastless toy boat with the paint rubbed and scratched, and I say to myself in great melancholy, ‘It is further away than it used to be,’ and while I am saying it I am looking at a long scratch in...
Notes Out of Season
2008-01-21 19:06:00 From Milan Kundera’s The Curtain: What? We feel aesthetic pleasure at a sonata by Beethoven and not at one with the same style and charm if it comes from one of our own contemporaries? Isn’t that the height of hypocrisy? So then the sensation of beauty is not spontaneous, spurred by our sensibility, but instead is cerebral, conditioned by our knowing a date? No way around it: historical consciousness is so thoroughly inherent in our perception of art that this anachronism (a Beethoven piece written today) would be spontaneously (that is, without the least hypocrisy) felt to be ridiculous, false, incongruous, even monstrous. More About: Season , Notes
The Improvisatore
2008-01-18 20:58:00 photo by: low. A while ago, I had cause in the course of a correspondence to ask Sean Mahoney about the nature of improvisation, and especially I wanted to know whether it could be learned, and if so was it by practice or in some other way? His response, though it took several paragraphs by way of a discussion of wit as divine madness to arrive at my question, concluded in this way: “What about practicing in order to be able to improvise, or deliberating over your next conceit? If these exercises are fruitful at all it is only because they prepare a fitting arrival for the god.” Having read earlier this week James Thurber’s classic short story, “The Catbird Seat,” I am now led to wonder whether the best preparation for that arrival might be a labor far more exacting and meticulous than improvisation itself can be. Erwin Martin, the would-be murderer of Thurber’s story, is head of the filing department at F&S, whose “cautious, painstakin...
Who’s in charge of evolution? Two reasons Steven Pinker should re-rea
2008-01-17 04:49:00 Near the end of his recent article in the New York Times, Steven Pinker claims that Plato “made short work” of the idea that God is the source of morality (or, as Pinker puts it, “in charge of morality”). Here’s what I take to be his reading of the Euthyphro: Read more… More About: Evolution , Charge , Reasons
Surprise Ending
2008-01-15 02:26:00 I’ve never been too worried about “spoilers.” I take it as a basic principle of narrative that when it’s done right, the advent of the action will be compelling even if you know what’s coming. In the best stories, there’s no suspense at all. This is certainly true of the Iliad (recently cited on this blog by our resident understater Ben Lavergne as a “good story“). If it’s possible to “spoil” a story by giving away the ending, then I’d say that to do so would be to spare you from having to watch a mediocre film–I for one am grateful to whoever it was that saved me the trouble of having to actually watch the Sixth Sense. (If you disagree, now’s your chance to bail. Otherwise find out what this has to do with “No Country for Old Men”) More About: Ending
Art of the Side Story
2008-01-05 22:13:00 photo by: .Tatiana. Does this passage from Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War remind you of anything? At each stop the driver looked up into his mirror to scan both the interior of the car and the street, to see if anyone would insult and delay him by wanting to get on or off. Though no one had a short ticket, people sometimes changed their minds about how far they wanted to go, and he had to be alert: but Rome hardly stirred, offering not a soul to slow his progress. The streetcar made excellent time, and when it reached the edge of the city it was running ahead of schedule. This delighted the driver. If he beat his fares to a stop he could hurl himself forward and arrive even earlier at the next stop, where he would be less likely to encounter someone else. In this way he was able to convert his viscous long-distance local into the most ethereal express. He hated deceleration and he hated to make change, but he did like to drive, and each stop that he could pass at s... More About: Story , Side
good stories ruined by great authors
2008-01-01 05:50:00 Add to the list Shakespeare’s retelling of the Iliad in Troilus and Cressida. 1. Too much anachronism (Homeric heroes as medieval knights, references to Aristotle, etc.); 2. Too many on-stage battle scenes (which I find generally awkward in the theater and which are impossible to avoid in this story); 3. Too many mediocre rhymes, especially toward the end. More About: Stories , Great , Authors , Good
Breaking Hegel News: The G is back in Gottfried
2007-12-10 15:06:00 Thanks for your prayers and dire warnings. Your beloved editor was swayed. He did, however, spend hours racking his brains over two pages of the logic, and is very pleased to announce that the following introductory paragraph is now perfectly intelligible to him: The judgment is the Concept in its particularity, as the distinguishing relation of its moments, which are posited as being-for-themselves and at the same time as identical with themselves, and not with each other. If anyone would like to be indoctrinated into the gnostic secrets that make this paragraph readable, I’m your man. More About: News , Back , Breaking , Hegel , Breakin
A Dangerous Proposition
2007-12-07 07:01:00 Your faithful editor is seriously considering a 33 hour non-stop marathon reading of W.F.Hegel’s Encyclopaedia this weekend. If you think of him, say a prayer. If you think twice, curse his name. More About: Prop , Position , Dangerous
Exercises in Futility, Revisited
2007-11-28 16:47:00 photo by: Kasia (myszia831) Since I first read Plato’s Phaedrus so many years ago, I have not ever been able to consider it enough simply to have apologized for having spoken amiss on such occasions as have demanded repentance, but I have always sought for some way to expiate the shame of my logos, to speak in a better way and perhaps thereby to atone, to make actual reparation of whatever wound my impiety has inflicted in whatever quarters. Therefore, when confronted two days ago with the very serious charge of having lately fostered a preference for the maxim, “Everyone deserves a good laugh” over “Everyone deserves a good thought,” which accusation was accompanied by such a passionate outpouring of disgust, rage, and sense of betrayal that I could not sleep having heard it, I resolved at once somehow to rise above and perhaps even to find redemption for my transgression. That is the reason both for the previous post and for this one. It was my hope ... More About: Exercises
Note to the Fan Club
2007-11-27 07:25:00 We at the Grub Street Gracklog know that you’re as eager to see any shred of ephemeral publicity pointing our way as we are, so we didn’t want to deprive you of the chance to see the Gracklog itself featured in a youtube video, posted this evening on the video blog of the illustrious, mysterious, and in-no-way-affiliated-with-Grub-Street-Gra ckle-ous ineffabilis More About: Note , Club
Speaking of paraphrase
2007-11-09 07:21:00 And now for something completely different. More About: Speaking
What are words worth?
2007-11-08 06:02:00 photo by: Klaus Post Having cast off, in a fit of exuberant gaiety, all the knowledge of science, and having set out on the path of dreaming, the Happy Shepherd sings: Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, Rewarding in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sing, then, for this is also sooth. (W. B. Yeats, “The Song of the Happy Shepherd”) But what good should we expect from words? What comfort? And that from words that are only the fading, dying echo of our own “fretful” utterances, the unhearing, heartless reply of a mere shell not even equipped with ears to hear our story, but only lips! And yet, here I stand, all the same, tarrying with this fragment of the serial echo we call “poetry,” as though in expectation of some reward. A poem only g... More About: Words , Worth , Wort
Print is dead, long live print!
2007-11-01 03:37:00 From the Poetry Foundation blog: About a month ago, the National Book Critics Circle sponsored a panel on the demise of the print journal and the rise of the online journal. Actually, it was a little more complex than that, but the gist of the conversation was this: that libraries and other institutions with diminishing budgets were cutting back on (or eliminating altogether) their literary journal subscriptions, and coupled with the popularity of webzines and other forms of online sites dedicated to publishing contemporary literary works, it seems that the nails of the print journal’s coffin have been inevitably secured. What surprises me about this analysis is that it presupposes that print journals need institutional subscriptions to stay alive. But then, why should that surprise anyone? More About: Live , Print , Dead , Long
Time to Complain
2007-10-31 04:42:00 Every once in a while, I get this perverse urge to read a literary review. I find myself reasoning in some such way as this: “Literary reviews are put together by smart people, many of whom have degrees pronouncing them competent in the English language in general and in poetry and fiction in particular. Many smart people read literary reviews, or they wouldn’t continue to be produced. So there must be something good about them.” Then I pick up a copy of an actual literary review, and this further line of reasoning kicks in: “Gosh, this thing is big. It’s 270 pages long. That’s about ten times longer than an issue of Grub Street Grackle, and only four times the price. So page for page it’s less than half the price. Am I ripping people off? Also, this review is much prettier than the Grackle. It looks glossy and sophisticated. Am I Bush league? Should I be looking at this and trying to do the same thing?” Read more… More About: Time
games in the nude
2007-10-27 16:23:00 Next time you take a shower, put your ear immediately next to the shower head and turn the faucet on. If you flinch, you lose. More About: Games
early christian fashions
More articles from this author:2007-10-21 21:08:00 I recently read Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians, in which the good bishop of Smyrna demonstrates his most peculiar sense of fashion, upholding what is, apparently, his ideal standard for Christian modesty. In the beginning of his pastoral letter, he calls the chains of prisoners the “fitting ornament of the saints” and the “diadems of the true elect.” Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what the Goth scene was like in ancient Rome, although judging from what’s left it appears that the “ruin and decay” theme was all the rage back then, but I still think he goes too far. I can understand that he wants Christians to stand out like a torch in a crowd; however, he appears not to have considered how awkward a second-century Christian in chains must have looked at a Roman dinner party. More About: Early , Fashions , Earl , Fash 1, 2, 3 |
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