All posts in books

By Roberto Bolano via D Berman.

“…my 30-second plot summary manages to exclude everything that puts The Brothers Karamazov among the world’s great novels (such as the fact that the butler did it, in part, because of an argument about the moral implications of the non-existence of God). But sometimes summaries, even the most reductive and unfair ones, can be revealing. And what a plot synopsis reveals is how Dostoevsky managed to hang a book of profound questions on some of the most hackneyed conventions of fiction: the murder mystery, the love triangle, the courtroom drama.”

Via.

One can hardly overstate the importance of Beckett’s decision to begin writing in French, but it’s interesting that he wrote his first French poems at almost exactly the same moment that he identified critical flaws in his character—the moment he decided he should try to be a nicer guy. The importance of all that soul-searching cannot be discounted, and a striking illustration of what it meant for his art can be found in a series of letters written early in 1938, after he was stabbed by a pimp named Prudent. The wound was serious, but from the first Beckett was determined to avoid any thought of vengeance. The worst he said of Prudent was that he seemed “more cretinous than malicious.” Later he reported that the two of them had “exchanged amiabilities.” Prudent apologized and Beckett said, “Not at all.” Later still he wrote, “Prudent got off with 2 months, to my relief. He was ably defended, the plea of blind drunkenness skillfully advanced, and I represented as the aggressor.”

Via.

“I have got to the stage now with mr toss that I have only reached with Chaucer and Dryden, not even with Milton, that of VIOLENTLY WISHING that the man WERE IN FRONT OF ME, so that I could be DEMONIACALLY RUDE to him about his GONORRHEIC RUBBISH, and end up by WALKING ON HIS FACE and PUNCHING HIS PRIVY PARTS.”

–Futility Closet

As you sift through the collection, you will find 70+ clips, including a segment of DFW’s 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, his first and second appearances on the Charlie Rose Show, his reading from “Consider the Lobster” at UCLA, and the author contemplating the play of Roger Federer.

Via.

“Hubbard’s thoroughly dumb letter wouldn’t even deserve comment if it weren’t such an irritating example of a sort of attitude regarding noise and music and freedom that seems pretty widespread at this college. People seem to think that it’s their right not only to listen to whatever music they wish (which they could do at low volumes), not only to listen to it as loudly as they wish (which they could do on headphones), but to subject others to their particular choice of music and volume, too. (This sometimes gets as extreme as sticking their silly speakers in their windows.) Corresponding to their fascinating theory of loudness-as-inalienable-right is the idea that people who don’t want to be subjected to their choices are spoilsports or tools who want to deny loud-music lovers their “freedom.”"

Via.

“Is being quick enough to construct a pleasing self for whomever you’re talking to actually a liability for a writer? If we adopt a mental modules approach, we might hypothesize that certain parts of our brain construct a pleasing self for whomever we’re talking to, while another module supplies us with the illusion that this “self” is us — perhaps it was the latter module that malfunctioned in Wallace. The constant horror of the simulacrum throughout his oeuvre makes him unsettling to read.”

Via.