Herman Melville

[linebaugh]

yes, in the book, you would read a couple sentences like these, and go, "superfluous," as in, "surface over a flowing"—he's hitting on themes of land and sea—and then you'd go, "picture he's painting," wait, I remember the painting in the tavern that opens the novel, it's all about representation and ambiguity—and you'd go "sunk in," sunk to the bottom like Ahab, and "huge dusty map"—yes, cartography, representation, the way these ships navigated.

it's like the book is this marine microcosmos. the ship, the great ark, which in miniature recapitulates larger ecologies.

I think theres even a part where one of the characters laments that everything is an analogy and cant be escaped. Reminds me of bataille saying the nature of the universe is parodic

 

[sus]

I think theres even a part where one of the characters laments that everything is an analogy and cant be escaped. Reminds me of bataille saying the nature of the universe is parodic

Do you remember where by chance? V relevant to my research

 

[luka]

Gus is such a strange reader. but at least he reads.

 

[sus]

Gus is such a strange reader. but at least he reads.

Today I finished Tolkien's "On Faerie Stories," and read some chapters of Josh DiCaglio's "Scale Theory."

On my Azores trip I read Egil's Saga, Tanith Lee's Companions on the Road, Louis Menand's William James in Brazil, and The Tempest.

 

[sus]

And Gary Paulsen's Hatchet for childhood models

 

[sus]

Why is my reading weird? How do you think other people read

 

[luka]

Why is my reading weird? How do you think other people read

your tendency is to rush to flatten the particular into the general, the concrete into the abstract, and thereby extract your 'themes.'
it reminds me of meeting a cousin of mine who's a writer in new york and she said to me
(i can't remember the exact words) "my work is about memory and loss"
i didn't say anything obviously but in my head i was thinking wtf

 

[luka]

i could probably do with a little more of your kind of thinking, like turn my dial a little more in that direction. i wouldn't recognise a 'theme' if i banged my head on it.

 

[sus]

that's true, I do flatten the particular into the general

 

[sus]

always searching for tendrils of text that elaborate the vines of my themes

 

[luka]

you love a theme or two

 

[sus]

hmmmm. fuck!! I need to let the little details live!!

 

[luka]

totally alien to me that way of reading. did they teach you it in school or did you just find yourself doing it one day?

 

[luka]

i always admired the conspiracy nutters way of watching films. theyd always detect the hidden symbolism in a way that made me feel really stupid. it would always be about transhumanism and monarch programming, every single time.

 

[sus]

I hate thinking that I learned it in school, like a puppet of institutions. I hate that! But it's probably true. Where else did I learn it? That's how English classes work. You scour the text for quotes that support your argument about what the text big picture is trying to "say." Then at the end of the essay you have "further implications" where you talk about the big picture and zoom out. "These themes of alienness in The Tempest are more relevant than ever in our modern world."

 

[sus]

i always admired the conspiracy nutters way of watching films. theyd always detect the hidden symbolism in a way that made me feel really stupid. it would always be about transhumanism and monarch programming, every single time.

Puzzle Theory

Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Let me set the mood by revealing that the starting point for this investigation was the movie Room 237, a “fan theory” documentary ab…

www.ribbonfarm.com

 

[sus]

I also think it's a very old humanist idea though. That literature speaks to eternal themes. That the well-chosen detail is a kind of metonym for timeless patterns. That you can access or talk about things that are beyond science's grasp through poetry and literature.

 

[luka]

room 237. fantastic. i love those sort of people theyre so creative, observant and clever.

 

[sus]

I think your writing about natural world archetypes (wind, sea, breath) turned me onto a lot of this stuff though!! I didn't think about the natural world that way until that prose piece of yours

 

[sus]

You're making fun of me. You're pretending you're above it! As if JH Prynne wasn't an English professor!!