waste

Operation: Infinite Jestice

As is everyone else, I'm reading it, having begun tonight. I note three things straight off:

1. The tray described on p 34, which a person fits "over his head so that his shoulders support the tray and allow it to project into space just below his chin, that he may enjoy his hot dinner without having to remove his eyes from whatever entertainment is up and playing", was also described in MAD Magazine in the 50s or early 60s. Basil Wolverton illustrated it, doing the concept the justice that only someone with a keen sense of the possibilities for disgustingness eating affords could. (Another with this sense: Sergio Leone, as illustrated by the opening closeups of the well-to-do eating in the coach, in Duck You Sucker!.)
2. There occurs on p 36 an instance of "reason is because". Anathema!
3. 1. I knew there were footnotes, of course, or rather, endnotes, but it had not occurred to me to ask, what are the conditions of possibility for endnotes in a novel, especially a, shall we say, narratologically modern one, with multiple focalizing consciousnesses? I mean: what voice the endnoter, and how comes it into the (here rather literally) text? Were this one of those novels very anxious about its novelhood, the sort with a preface in which someone tells the reader how he chanced on the chronicle herein related and arranged these letters or edited this diary or what-have-you, then there is a clear place for notes (but then such novels are also often not that rhetorically complex at the sentence level, as to f.i.d. and whatnot).—a so-called postmodern novel anxious about its being a novel?! Sure, it sounds mundane when you put it that way, but I'm still puzzled about the whole notes thing at all. Of course, I'm hardly any distance in. But something to attend to, nevertheless. (Also interesting: flipping backwards through the notes to get to the first I remarked that the numbered endnotes have lettered notes themselves, which are not only not even-endernotes, but also not even footnotes, coming not at the bottom of the page but rather indented at the bottom of the note to which they are pendant, or at the bottom of the page if the note continues onto the next page. They are as close to the material for which they serve as notes as they could be, while the endnotes are as far as possible as they could be, if we observe the requirement that the position of endnotes increase monotonically. (As opposed to a nonmonotonic increase? I guess 1, 2, 4, 3, 5 increases nonmonotonically.)) What's curiouser of course is that the section containing the endnotes assures me that it contains not only endnotes, as it is titled
   2. "Notes and Errata". Errata? What's up with that? Was the section just called "Notes" in the first printing? I presume not. Of course the point of an errata slip or page is that one can correct the text without altering it, something one would be glad of if altering the text meant laying out the type anew; this was presumably not a relevant concern by the time IJ came to be printed, nor would it make sense to include such a thing in the text all along, I mean, if it actually did note errata which were not erranda but corrigenda. (Question: does "erranda" ever make sense, straight?) Such thoughts could occur to one who an errata section of this sort even in a work of nonfiction; I'm not sure if there are additional questions given that here it appears in a novel or not, but they are additional to those noted immediately supra.

A little-known story about a popular modernist painter

Toward the end of his life, Edward Hopper, who hadn't even yet inspired the cover and title of one of Tom Waits' albums, was known to methodically empty ice trays from his freezer and let the small cubes melt in the sun. He would watch them until there was no trace of solidity left, then refill the trays, wait until their contents were once again frozen, and do it again.

A stranger passing by, observing this seemingly futile ritual, asked him what the purpose of his actions was. This is my revenge for offering philosophical aid and comfort to abstract expressionism, at the cost of marginalizing from serious artworld discourse realist if no less modern and uncompromising work such as my own!, Hopper declaimed.

The stranger then inquired, with a quizzical expression, Aren't you thinking of Clement Greenberg? What does this have to do with him? Hopper, unfazed, replied, Eh, Greenberg, iceberg, what's the difference?

Epigraph

Dickens brings up a distinction much on some minds of late (Bleak House, p 623 of at least one Penguin edition):

"Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"

"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!"

"Why, what is done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.

"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes. "The question may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"

Bear baiting

Lately everyone and her sister has been talking again about David Foster Wallace, aka DFW, a, probably, ka some other things too, what with Infinite Summer in the soon to be unavoidably real offing (and me still a third of the way through Bleak House, when I even stir myself to pick it up—which is not to say that when it remains unpicked-up, anything strikingly more worthwhile is happening with me), and so I, one who has read very little of his output but was swayed by the many testimonials to his, like, rigorous honesty as a writer that popped up after he died, having on Tuesday read Consider the Lobster, read on Wednesday a not insignificant portion of the title essay from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, much expanded, one assumes, from its original appearance.

And aside from the odd insistence on never writing "with" or "without" but writing, instead, "w/" or "w/o", respectively, which does not really make the prose read more swiftly but, if anything, seems like a weird token gesture to considerations of word, or at least character, count[1], aside from all the footnotes, which may not be as annoying as they are occasionally made out to be but are also not the best part, by a long mile, something they are also occasionally made out to be, I noticed and was perturbed by a third tic, whose capacity to perturb I locate in its actually being objectionable rather than my actually objecting to it. I mean of course: the occasional prefacing of a comment by the expression of skepticism that it will make it past the editors of the magazine in which the piece is to appear.

Suppose you are reading the magazine piece in the magazine and not in the collection in which it was later republished, unexpurgated. Then, of course, if the offending bit was not let in by the editors, it would be extremely surprising if the comment on the offending bit's unlikelihood to be let in were itself let in, so we can assume that both things do not get in (which happened with A Supposedly Fun Thing…; at one point Wallace predicts that his ruminations on Death and the Ocean will get cut, and indeed they got cut, and indeed his prediction got cut). In this case, of course, the reader is ignorant that anything happened here in the first place. Perhaps the text is included just to tweak the editors and make them feel censorious as they snip snip snip (you freak the squares you can, not the squares you'd like to). On the other hand, perhaps both the predicted-to-offend bit and the prediction of offense get in, as happened with footnote six of Consider the Lobster. What is the reader to make of this forlorn expression of hopelessness? After all the note did survive the editing process. Are we supposed to praise the editors for not shrinking from … Wallace's discomfort with who he was? Or what? In the case of this piece, if they were the sort to shrink, none of it would have appeared. But if the bit really is such that lesser editors would shrink from including it, do we really need this pointed out to us? I submit that we do not.

The situation when one comes across this sort of thing when reading the essay in the essay collection, where there is no question of a magazine editor's having had its way with it, is even stranger. Why is it there? Are we supposed to have a knowing chuckle about it? Yes, ha-ha, this is precisely the sort of thing that callow Americans who read their David Foster Wallace in magazines couldn't handle! How above them I, reading him in a BOOK, am! Surely not; that would be too easy. And it is, anyway, not true, since these things are not always cut.

Is this supposed to be some sort of post-modern hooha, the intrusion of the author as author, in the form of his worries about his text, into the text itself? Well, all I can say about that is it takes you worryingly close to writing poetry that is so terrible it threatens to make people drop out of school in protest. And, also, that it's a cheap technique; it's so easy to just put your concern in the text itself. That isn't a working out, or a working with, your concern regarding your attempt to write Something Honest, it's just saying to the world: Hey, I'm trying to write Something Honest over here! And it is obviously something that someone who was not really concerned with honesty at all could also do; another reason why these curlicues of sincerity are somewhat ridiculous. Better just to say what you want to say; it's not that there's no need to insert into the text your concerns about it in explicit, unmistakeable form, as that there's no way to. And the attempts to do so tacky: credit-grubbing.

[1] Naturally the shortening effect is swamped by all the footnotes.

Youtube Wittgenstein commentary

I still don't get it! Why has it teeth in the mouth of the beast? I feel these lyrics are super-intelligent, but I don't get them and it frustrates me.

Too right!

in the philosophy book this is quoted from he plays with language. its says when u say a rose has no teeth, its so ambigous u could then say when the rose is inside the cows mouth it has teeth. we dont specify where the teeth would be if roses had teeth so it is possible for roses to have teeth in the mouth of the beast. Its one of them things you get yourself into a knot thinking about. but thats what happens when u get two academics making music!

The question here is, why does he think the cow eats the rose?

Though not quite as good as the confluence of the "rue"s

I do not know how many people other than me say, anymore, it's as if you're saying bar bar bar when confronted with confusing or seemingly nonsensical speech (or on rhetorical occasions when confronted with completely sensible speech), instead of, for instance, "it's all Greek to me". (An irony.) So perhaps the intelligence which I just recently gained and which I recapitulate below is of somewhat limited interest, but I predict that those whom it interests it will interest no small amount.

So! We have three remarkabilities: First, we learn from the English Wikipedia article on "Rhubarb" that

It is or was common for a crowd of extras in acting to shout the word "rhubarb" repeatedly and in an unsynchronised manner, to cause the effect of general hubbub. As a result, the word "rhubarb" sometimes is used to mean "length of superfluous text in speaking or writing", or a general term to refer to irrelevant chatter by chorus or extra actors. The American equivalent is walla. Stage actors in the United States also use word "rhubarb" repeated asynchronously in a low or murmured tone to provide background voice ambience in crowd or party scenes.

I have myself never encountered this use of the word "rhubarb" but don't wish to be truculent. It is recorded in the OED, but then so is "rhumbatron". (It doesn't mean what you'd hope.)

Second, we learn from the German Wikipedia article on "Gemeiner Rhabarber" that

Der Ausdruck „Rhabarber, Rhabarber...“ für sinnloses Geschwätz stammt daher, dass in einigen frühen Tonfilmen die Statisten angewiesen wurden, immer weiter „Rhabarber“ zu sagen, wenn z. B. für eine Marktszene eine gleichmäßige aber lebhafte Geräuschkulisse erzeugt werden sollte.

And also from the article on "Barbar" that there exists "die deutsche Redensart: Ich verstand nur „Rhabarber Rhabarber“.". (Which really only makes explicit what was already in the bit from the other article but which, in giving a complete phrase, pleases me.)

Third, in addition to learning from the first of the above-mentioned German articles that "Rhabarber" is used on the stage as a nonsense word and generally to denote nonsense, and from the English article that "rhubarb" has similar stage and (putative) general uses, we also learn from that German article that the words "rhubarb" and "Rhabarber" actually come from "barbaros"!

Der Rhabarber und der Barbar haben die gleichen Wurzeln. Sie stammen von dem griechischen Wort „barbaros“ ab, das bedeutet „fremdländisch“. Die erste Silbe seines Namens verdankt der Rhabarber dem alten Namen der Wolga. Sie hieß früher Rha und an ihrer Mündung wurde „die fremdländische Wurzel“ angebaut. Alternativ wird angegeben, dass sich das Wort vom lateinischen „Radix Barbaris“ - Wurzel der Barbaren - ableiten soll.

And presumably its use in English and German is coincidental with respect to its origin. (The OED seems to incline to the first theory mentioned, giving the "rhubarb" as derived from "rhabarbarum", thence in turn from "rha barbarum", "foreign rha. What's "rha"? Rhubarb, having been named after the Volga! So what was the native rha?) I find this delightful.

Unrelated: the German article claims that you can predict the flavor (in particular the sourness) of a rhubarb stalk from its color, while the English article seems to think the color is unrelated to its suitability for cooking (these don't outright contradict, admittedly); on the other hand, the German article doesn't mention that the leaves are poisonous, while the English article devotes a decent amount of space to that subject.

"systematic claws"

God only knows what the significance of the image is supposed to be.

This one is good too!

et in NPR ego

Product idea! a bag convenient for the carrying of documents, all in black, which, when viewed from the correct angle, reveals in its fabric the a grinning skull! Preferably the angle is one such that many passers-by could see grim-visaged death among the impedimenta of business when by casual glances their eyes take in the bag, which would be called the Mementote Mori and can be yours for a reasonable donation. Impress your friends with your seriousness.

Holy crap

Chicago > San Francisco:

4/25 Immediate Sound Series 3rd Anniversary * Ab Baars Trio Plays with Wilbert de Joode, Martin van Duynhoven — the music of John Carter * Wilbert de Joode, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten * The Thing

4/26 A Fox Can Be Hungry : Matt Schneider, Jason Adasiewicz, Anton Hatwich, John Herndon

4/27 Marc Riordan trio (actually I have no idea who this is but Tim Daisy's a member)

4/28 Tony Conrad & Keiji Haino (!!!!)

Among many others. (Actually there are goings-on here too of course, but it all seems much more spread out.)

Words I have forgotten and the phrases I have substituted for them

Horoscope: person forecast.

Bowdlerized: exsanguinated. (Maybe I was really thinking of "expurgated"?)