Acephalous

Welcome to Acephalous Identity Publishing

Get published on the Internet!  Acephalous Identity is concentrating its publishing efforts on the short blog post market.  We are compiling short blog posts into blogs that will combine the efforts of well-known bloggers and famous internet celebrities alongside new upcoming bloggers.  Our blogs are arranged to provide the reader the enjoyment and variety of classic short blog posts along with more contemporary ones.  If you find pleasure in reading and writing short blog posts you have found the perfect publishing house.  Acephalous Identity is committed to quality short blog posts having intellectual merit.  We are constantly looking for a variety of short blog posts to be assembled into one of our upcoming blogs and eagerly await to read each submission.

Bloggers submit your short blog posts to us for publication consideration.  We are continually searching for short blog posts from new rising stars and established bloggers of short blog posts.  Get published with Acephalous Identityand one day your short blog post may be on one of our blogs.

Welcome back to the world of short blog post entertainment.

Our Blogs have been Featured on Sitemeter!

Now Available for reading!  If you want to be a published blogger on one of our upcoming blogs, get published with Acephalous Identity.

Meet some of Our Authors:


Sherry Livingston giving a brief reading of her post
"Just the Apple Juice, This Officer Said" at a library.


Ryan Dove reading his post "A Rising Star: The Ryan Dove Story: Part I"
at a different library.


Amanda Perry reading "And When the Children Forget about Laughing
They Will Also Forget How to Sing with Their Hearts" with
her children and inspiration at a local bar and restaurant.


Randy Picard, co-author of "And When the Children Forget about Laughing
They Will Also Forget How to Sing with Their Hearts,"
reading at a different local bar and restaurant.


Jenny Harrison reading "The Outfielder on the Mound
Will Have Been Crying Now For Very Last Time"
at another local bar and restaurant.


Kathy Parker reading "Growing Up Pretty Despite What Happened"
at one of her favorite local bars and restaurants.

Great Writing Tips For Those Who Would Like To Get Published On The Internet

What is a short blog post and more importantly, what makes a good short blog post.  Short blog posts tend to be more concise and succinct and to the point than longer blog posts.  Because they are so concise with precision, successful short blog posts rely on literary devices like words, sentences, paragraphs and insight to a greater extent than longer blog posts.

Writing a blog post is an easy way to become familiar with the processing of writing blog posts to get published.  The short blog post can take on many different forms and one should allow them a measurable degree of creative control regarding format and structure.

Developing an idea for your post is the first step.  Choose an idea that excites you and ignites some passion and then define it with these important components.

Words

The words you use in a post are important to conveying the meaning of your idea.  Diction is important because you don't want to sound stupid to your reader and at the same time you shouldn't have to explain what the idea of your post is.  The reader should be able to learn and recognize the idea through the post.

Structure

At first, writing a short blog post from the first person point of view seems simple, you just write as if you were the person who has the idea.  However, when getting further involved, there is more to consider.  There are only two different kinds of first person narrators: "I" who tells his or her own idea, and "I" who tells the idea of someone else they know.  Additionally, there are many other techniques for such styles you can use to write a good short blog post.

Style and Tone

Style and tone is the language or dialogue you use that is right for your post.  Always use words to let the reader know what's happening whenever possible.  To write well, simpler is usually stronger and less is most often more.  Finally, choose the best word, the one that is closest to your meaning and gives the clearest image of that meaning possible.  If you can't think of a word, use a thesaurus.

Now that you have some insight into how to write a short blog post, the next step is to start writing your short blog post.  The concept of a beginning, middle and an end can be considered but keep in mind that many interesting short blog posts don't take that linear approach.  Reading short blog posts is a great way to learn about them and the many different styles in which they can be written.  Writing your short blog post should be a creative process that reveals itself to you as you go along.  As you grow into the writing process you will know what is right and what works because it will organic to you when it does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Is it easier to get published by being a short blog post author or by being a long blog post author?

Answer: To get published as a short blog post author is easier for the simple reason that there are more avenues available for short blog post authors to get published.

Question: Can I submit multiple short blog posts to get published with Acephalous Identity?

Answer: Yes, however we are only accepting one short blog post per author which doesn't mean that we wouldn't be willing to publish other short blog posts of yours in the future.  If you have posts of different genres you would like to submit we would be more than happy to accept those.  However, don't submit multiple posts of the same genre.

Question: Do I have to email my post or can I save it to a disk?

Answer: You must send the post via email to get published.

Question: Do I need to send a hard copy of my post?

Answer: No.  We publish almost all our blog posts on the computer.

Question: Do I need an agent?

Answer: In most instances agents do not negotiate for the sale of short blog posts. 

Question: I'm confused at how the royalties work.  How much will I get paid as a blogger?

Answer: Because this is a group blog, each blog will have multiple authors each with their own short blog post.  The 10% royalty is then divded amongst the bloggers.  This is on the high side of the royalties amongst blogging companies and we feel it is a generous percentage.

Classic Acephalous: DISADVENTURE!

(Because absolutely nothing of interest happened today, as I lead a boring life.  Nothing at all, so keep moving, as nothing happened here, or anywhere else, that would be of any interest to anyone.  That said, enjoy this funny thing I wrote last year.)

Copyright (c) 1980, 1982, 1983, 2006 Sekocom, Inc.  All rights reserved.
DISADVENTURE! is a registered trademark of Sekocom, Inc.
Revision 23 / Serial number 8940726

West of Apartment Complex

You are standing in an open field west of a white apartment complex, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.

> e

The door is locked.  There is evidently no key.

> take key

I don't understand that.

> kick down door

I don't understand that.

> w

You are in a dimly lit forest, with large trees all around.  One particularly large tree with some low branches stands here.

> climb tree

You are about ten feet above the ground nestled among some large branches.  The nearest branch above you is beyond your reach.  On the branch is a small birds nest.  The birds nest contains: A jewel-encrusted egg.

> take egg

Taken.

> throw egg

You must supply an indirect object.

> throw egg at grammar nazi

I don't understand that.

> throw egg at tree

The jewel-encrusted egg falls to the ground.

> climb down

You are in a dimly lit forest, with large trees all around.  One particularly large tree with some low branches stands here.

> e

You are standing in an open field west of a white apartment complex, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.

> s

You are behind a white townhouse.  In one corner of the townhouse there is a window which is slightly ajar.

> open window

With great effort, you open the window far enough to allow passage.

> climb in window

You are in the kitchen of the white townhouse.  A table seems to have been used recently for the preparation of food.  A passage leads to the west, and a dark staircase can be seen leading upward.  To the east is a small window which is open. On the table is an elongated brown sack, smelling of hot peppers. A clear glass bottle is here. The glass bottle contains: A quantity of water.

> open sack

Opening the brown sack reveals:
A clove of garlic.
A lunch.

> eat lunch

Taken.  Thank you very much.  It really hits the spot.

> w

You are in the study of the townhouse.  A desk has recently been used to write a dissertation.  A door leads to a closet.  To the east is a litter box which needs to be cleaned.  There is a day old brownie on the desk which smells of cat urine.  A book is open on the desk.

> read book

Read.  There is a book underneath it that concerns a related topic. 

> read book

Read.  There is a book underneath it that concerns a related topic.

> read book

Read.  There is a book underneath it that concerns a related topic.

> verbose

There are seventy four books on the desk about evolutionary theory.  A laptop is open on the desk. 

> look laptop

There seems to be a dissertation chapter on the laptop.

> read chapter

It is long-winded and boring.  You do not want to read it.

> read chapter

It is obnoxious.  You hate it. 

> read book

Read.  There is a book underneath it that concerns a related topic.

> read book

Read.  There is a book underneath it that concerns a related topic.

> work on dissertation

You spend two hours searching the OED for the usage history of the word devolve.

> work on dissertation

You spend three hours reading five articles which have nothing to do with the dissertation.

> work on dissertation

You spend twenty minutes online reading about baseball.

> tear out hair

Taken.  You find the Elvish sword.

> in my hair?

I don't understand that.

> work on dissertation

You spend five minutes playing online poker.

> work on dissertation

You pick your nose.

> work on dissertation

You go to the kitchen and eat cheese.

> work on dissertation

The Mets are on.  It should be a good game.

> work on dissertation

You watch the first three innings of the Mets game.

> work on dissertation

The Mets are ahead by three runs in the fifth.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

The Mets win.  You are in a study with a laptop.  It is dark out.  You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

> WHAT?

Nothing.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

You research the history of Zork I: Great Underground Empire.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

You write three sentences about S. W. Mitchell. 

> work on dissertation

You pick your nose.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

YOU PICK YOUR NOSE.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

YOU WRITE SOMETHING FOR YOUR BLOG.

> WORK ON DISSERTATION

YOU PICK YOUR NOSE WITH THE ELVISH SWORD.  BLOOD POURS FORTH FROM YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOU ARE STUPID.

> STAUNCH BLEEDING

I don't understand that.

> CALL 911

I don't understand that.

> SAVE ME

I don't understand that.

> ...

You are dead and are lucky.  You would not have gotten a job anyway.

[Now read the DISADDENDUM!]

[Also: This is still the funniest thing I've ever written.]

Pynchon Then & Now...

... as illustrated on pages 52 and 53 of Against the Day.  First, the clumsy integration of Turner's "frontier thesis" into the body of the text:

"It may not be the West you're expecting," Professor Vanderjuice put in.  "Back in July my colleague Freddie Turner came out here from Harvard and gave a speech before the a bunch of anthro people who were all in town for their convention and of course the Fair.  To the effect that the Western frontier we all thought we knew from song and story was no longer on the map but gone, absorbed—a dead duck."

Perhaps the clunkiness of that passage is mitigated by the fact that a haughty professor mumbles it.  Maybe Pynchon intended its clumsiness; maybe he wanted to indict academia by having its functionaries speak a dead language to unlistening ears.  But turn to the next page:

"Yes, here," continued the Professor, nodding down at the [slaughter] Yards as they began to flow by beneath, "here's where the Trail comes to its end at last, along with the American Cowboy who used to live on it and by it.  No matter how virtuous he's kept his name, how many evildoers he's managed to get by undamaged, how he's done by his horses, what girls he has chastely kissed, serenaded by guitar, or gone out and raised halleujah with, it's all back there in the traildust now and now of it matters, for down there you'll find the wet convergence and finale of his drought-struck tale and thankless calling, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head—spectators invisible and silent, nothing to be commemorated, the only weapons in view being Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches to knock animals out with, along with the blades everybody is packing, of course, and the rodeo clowns jabber on in some incomprehensible lingo not to distract the beast but rather to heighten and maintain its attention to the single task at hand, bringing it down to those last few gates, the stunning-devices waiting inside, the butchering and blood just beyond the last chute—and the cowboy with him."

In that second paragraph, the Professor sounds like someone from a Pynchon novel—more to the point, he sounds like the narrator of a Pynchon novel.  Not to dredge up old animosities, but more and more Pynchon seems burdened by his distinctive voice. 

When his characters speak in their own voices, they sound like the stilted hack-work of an imitator; when they speak in his voice, they rise to Pynchonian heights, but they do so at the cost of being recognizable characters.  In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon was better able to strike a balance. 

It has taken me four months to publish this post, as I'm annoyed by my own reaction to Against the Day.  Unlike every other Pynchon novel I've read, when I finished Against the Day, I was finished with it.  Haven't thought about it since. 

As you can tell, I am sad.

Oscar Wilde and the Quirks of the Academic Review

(x-post from the Valve.  For those wondering where Cerebus went, I note that my reading Wilde in my spare time has something to do having received Melmoth last week.  More on that later.)

I’m reading literary biographer extraordinaire Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde and, as I always do with scholarly material, I hopped onto JSTOR to read reviews.  (Were this another sort of post, I’d write something about why I feel the need to read reviews of every scholarly monograph I read.  Were this another sort of post, I’d write about how frustrating it is to not be able to find any reviews of scholarly monographs until five years after they’ve been published.  Were this another sort of post, I’d announce that our solution to this problem is host yet another book event, this time on Amanda Claybaugh’s The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World.  But this is not another sort of post.)  As I was saying, I was sifting reviews of Oscar Wilde when I stumbled upon a review of Melissa Knox’s Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide.  Its reputation seems to hinge on how the reviewer feels about vulgar Freudianism—recent concessions about literary Freudianism aside, I think my position on psychoanalysis sufficiently established—still, I’m baffled by the final sentence of John Stokes’ review:

A book as profoundly wrong-headed as this can never produce the right answer for the very reason that psychic processes are of their very nature over-determined, which is also why the debate about Wilde and syphilis will fester for a long while yet.

I understand that this is one of those rare cases in which literary interpretation can yield a correct answer—Oscar Wilde either (1) did or (2) did not contract syphilis—so the nod to “the right answer” is not throwing me here.  Nor is it the pun on syphilitic discourse—although I wonder whether the question of Wilde carried what the English called morbus gallicus ("the French disease") and the French called la maladie anglaise ("the English disease") will fester in quite the same way its trademark pox will.  What confuses me is that Stokes seems to identify as “profoundly wrong-headed” the very methodology he employed in judging it “profoundly wrong-headed.”

This oddity can be attributed to a problem with conventional academic reviews.  Unlike popular arbiter-of-taste—who, if not a known quantity, borrows some cultural capital from the venue in which the review is published—no one assumes any academic reviewer is without methodological bias.  There is no singular conception of quality to which an academic reviewer can pretend to measure a work against.  Despite this, most academic reviews are written as if there were, the result being strange compressions like the one quoted above. 

Obviously, this isn’t the only problem with academic reviews, and my annoyance is such that I may even start a series in which I complain and complain and complain ...

You Make Me Uncomfortable with Your Poetic Words

Many people noted that the best thing about that post was the poetry it inspired.  I agree.  It would be a shame to let it die a quiet death in the comment section. 

eb started us off:

Those lips that your own mouth did move
Breathed forth the sound that said "I grade,"
To me that anguished to improve.
But when I heard your words conveyed
Straight in my heart discomfort rose,
Shaking that pen that ever strong
Was used in writing graceful prose,
And taught it things it knew all wrong.
"I grade" you garbled without cease
And fouled it as rotting pomes
Doth foul a bunch, which, like old grease
From kitchen to dump is cast from homes.
"I grade" you thwarted with a care
That ruined your course, saying, "as fair..."

Rich quickly followed suit:

Once within a classroom dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of a voice gently rapping, rapping about some writing chore.
`'Tis the TA,' I muttered, `rapping about some writing chore—
Only this, and nothing more.'

[...]

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `by Email, truly your instruction I deplore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently your voice flapping,
And incessant mapping, mapping of your lesson plans galore
That you make me quite uncomfortable—here I opened wide the door;—
For complaints and nothing more.

[...]

In your class I have been guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the incessent voice now burned into my brainstem's core;
More and more I sat divining, with my head slackly reclining
On how to get the grade that I could have gloated o'er
That GPA-gainful grade that I could be gloating o'er
But my marks, they are poor.

[...]

`Instructor!' said I, `thing of evil!—grader still, though but a devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God that I adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the final grading,
I shall clasp a higher rating then the one I had before—
Or the head of your department shall hear of it galore—
Quoth the TA, `Nevermore.'

And again:

This Is Just To Say

I have wasted
the brain cells
that were in
my head-box

and which
you were probably
training
to write things

Forgive me
I do not understand
so tired
and I want a better grade

AHCUAH chimed in:

I appreciate you taking
your inconvenience to instruct us
but I really had some problems in your class
and I would like to explain them to you now.

Every day I wanted to discuss with you
about the way you grade my papers and
the way you teach the class,
but I could not because the things
you say in class and your words
disturb me so much I can not.

You make me completely uncomfortable
with the little things you say in the class
like how you talk about television
or how you talk about when you
are grading our papers and trying to be fair.

You do not seem to care about our grades
only that they are up
to your too high standards and
I can not talk to you because
you make me completely uncomfortable.

For example, you say you will talk to us
about our grades but you really will not
because of how uncomfortable you make me feel
with your words and what you say.

Finally, Nicole TWN produced the requested sestina:

O Teacher, I feel we must share words.
Perhaps unlike yourself, I am not inclined to bother
With idle talk. Your words make me uncomfortable.
I took this class expecting a certain grade
Of quality.  When it was not met, I decided to speak—
Not for myself, you understand, but for all who find you unfair.

To be so misunderstood as I is really most unfair.
Why must you torment me with your words?
I am stoic; I am manly; I endure; at last, I must speak.
I have seen enough to know that you never will bother
To cast off your bias towards your own ideas, to grade
According to a paper's quality and nothing else.  Uncomfortable!

Perhaps I should have spoken earlier, but I was uncomfortable
With your words, and with what you say.  Besides, you are unfair
To those who take this class and want a passing grade.
Instead, you make us uncomfortable with your words.
Perhaps I should have attended office hours, but I couldn't bother
My sensitive conscience with the thought of the words I must speak.

You call yourself objective, but you offend us when you speak
Of discomfiting notions that make us uncomfortable
I did not come to college to be bothered
With this sort of thing.  It is disrespectful and unfair
To be kept up nights, turning over your uncomfortable words
When all I wanted was a passing grade.

I plan to contest my grade.  I learned all I know from my brother
Who is an English teacher himself, and always gave me excellent grades.
He, I, and all the other students agree you are unfair.
But they are too ashamed to confront you, and too uncomfortable to speak.
But I have seen enough… and I am not afraid to be uncomfortable
So I set pen to paper and wrote these words.

Thank you.  I would not bother to speak
If I did not want a better grade.  If you find this note uncomfortable,
You have only yourself to blame, with your unfair words.

I Am Making People Uncomfortable with My Words and What I Say

Someone sent me a link to this page, in which the content of my previous post is discussed.  I'm not familiar enough with the conventions of livejournal to decipher who says what, but I want to address some of the issues raised there.

• First, in regards to this post, I considered everyone would know of my love for Philip K. Dick and understand that I was having a thoroughly modernist laugh at haughty types who would exclude him from any future canon.
• Second, I'm not laughing (or asking others to laugh) at anything other than an outrageous display of entitlement.  What I mocked in the post was not a particular student so much as a type of student.  Someone suggested this speaks poorly of me personally and as emissary for the profession.  Perhaps.  But only the outrageously entitled will think poorly of me for mocking outrageous entitlement ... and I'm not interested in pandering to that particular demographic.  (White patriarchal privilege being something I demystify in my class, not encourage.)
• Third, the person who compared me to a character in a David Lodge novel (not in a complimentary sense) is onto something: I may not be as much of character as Dr. B., but my persona here is tailored.  (As noted previously, people who meet me off-line often describe me as "nice.")  I've been meaning to write more about this for some time now, but lack the sense of self-importance required to write introspectively for long periods of time.  Maybe someday.
• Fourth, to the person who said "composing it as real seems precisely Kaufman's style," what can I do but confess?  (Again, that is.)  The letter is written in the style of the student's complaint, but I had a little fun with it.  The student may find some of the phrasing familiar, but I freely admit to doctoring the original email.  Granted, I parroted the style and diction as best I could.  (As the resident poets have noticed, there may be a little more lyricism in my version than there was in the original.)  Thing is, writing in someone else's style is something I do rather regularly (if rarely so explicitly).  I'm a firm believer in the apprenticeship model of developing prose and frequently inhabit other writer's voices for dramatic effect.
• Fifth, the complaint is neither recent nor accurate: I'm on a leave of absence this year; and as my former students who piped up in the comments will attest, I'm eminently approachable.  (I could trace the origins of my decidedly feminist pedagogy here, but as I spent last week detailing my "teaching philosophy" for job applications, the thought of that discussion turns my stomach.)

On an unrelated note, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that every six months or so I write something that people genuinely want to share with others.  (Jealous complaints about my over-exposure notwithstanding.)  Building off my recent defense of n+1, I'm tempted to think that were I writing in a more traditional venue, the only things to make the printed page would be those few posts people seem to love.  Only, what traditional venue would publish those?  The more I think about it, the more I believe that without a genre generous enough to accommodate my many misses, the odds of me ever hitting anything shrink to null. 

And Yet, I Still Miss Teaching

A slightly redacted version of my favorite student complaint ever:

My Teacher,

I appreciate you taking your inconvenience to instruct us but I really had some problems in your class and I would like to explain them to you now.  Every day I wanted to discuss with you about the way you grade my papers and the way you teach the class, but I could not because the things you say in class and your words disturb me so much I can not.  You make me completely uncomfortable with the little things you say in the class like how you talk about television or how you talk about when you are grading our papers and trying to be fair.  You do not seem to care about our grades only that they are up to your too high standards and I can not talk to you because you make me completely uncomfortable.  For example, you say you will talk to us about our grades but you really will not because of how uncomfortable you make me feel with your words and what you say.

I will plan to contest the grade you have given me in this class when I get it because I know it will be much higher with any other teacher.  I am a very religious man and you are not a bad person but you do not choose your words with enough care like a teacher should.  You try to be objective and the very attempt becomes your flaw because you try so hard to grade fairly and comment wisely that you become biased to your own ideas.  You criticize our writings because we are college students and young but do not realize that you offend most of us when you do this.  I am always offended when I go to your class and have been on many occasions but I never tell you of my offense because you make me completely uncomfortable so I never say a word.

You like to lead discussions and that is bad because it is the entire means by which we learn but we do not know what you want from us on our papers.   I have honestly no idea what I learned from you in this class because so much time was spent discussing the tiny details in the passages in the book and so if I learned anything it is how to read things in too much detail.  I could have read books in too much detail on my own but that is not what I came to college to do because I already know how to read and I would have told you this but you make me completely uncomfortable with your words so I never said a word.

By doing this you give us no guidance on our papers.  I thought it was lame that you decided to show a movie and a cop out because you chose not to give us any instruction.  I know that it was a movie based on the story in the play we read but it was not teaching to show it to us when you could have been teaching us to write what you wanted us to write on our papers instead.  The movie was completely racist and very offensive because it contained cultural stereotypes that are often used in disrespectful jokes about people who have their feelings hurt all the time.  I was offended by this racism and in the movie and had my feelings hurt by it.  If that was supposed to teach me something about the class I completely do not understand.

After this quarter I am hurt and tired and feel like talking to you now will do me no good.  I wanted to go to your office hours but I could not find the time or make myself because of your words.  I feel like my paper was written to the best of my ability in reference to your teaching skills in the discussions.  You grade my papers poorly but do not realize that you do so because they reflect your teaching skills.  Other people may have done well with your skills but I did not and would have talked to you but what you said about grading fairly made me uncomfortable.  I take my responsibilities as a man and I have never complained about my grades but this one I will because I did not need you to teach me how to read or to write.  I have made very high grades in all my other writing classes and even though I had many disputes with those instructors we always settled them to my happiness.  Now for the first time I can not talk to you to settle my grades because I am uncomfortable to talk or even write to you.  I should have stayed strong and like a man no matter how much your words and what you said offended me.  I do not blame you because when there is error there are two to blame, the perceiver and the target.  I do not know what this email does but I have to get my feelings off of my chest.  Thank you for reading this and I am sorry if what I feel has shown you disrespect but these are my feelings and I feel by your words you did not respect them.  I love everyone and believe you to possibly be a great person but with your words you have treated me completely unfairly.

I am a very religious man and I love every one but I will forward this letter to the head of your department so he can see that I am a serious student who does not deserve the grade you will give him because I write so very well.

First, a Reply to Some Criticisms.

Second, Other Teacher/Student Interactions You Might Enjoy:

• jimy666izstoned@gmail.com: an Epistolary Romance
• A Lexigraphical Lament about Probationer Prosody

Finally, check out the "Best of Acephalous" for more things that make you uncomfortable with their words and what they say.

What, Wait, When?

As mentioned elsewhere yesterday, I'm reading Allegra Goodman's Intuition on the advice of a friend in the hard sciences who claims it the most accurate (sociologically speaking) account of interlab dynamics.  "Goodman captures," she said, "what happens when scientists stop being polite and start being real."  (She reddened before the last word left her mouth.)  I'm not sure she meant the entire novel—near the end, a lapsed Jew saves his lab's reputation in a House subcommittee by invoking Godwin's Law—but the routine indignance and perfunctory jealousy outlined in the first half of the novel ring true enough. 

What makes this novel unique, possibly even brilliant, is the sly turn Goodman pulls more than halfway through it.  To this humanist, the descriptions of research sound bleeding edge.  Isolating strains of a virus and militating them against cancer cells?  Sounds plenty contemporary to me.  Then I stumble across this passage on page 165:

Larry and Wendy militated to keep software in the public domain and away from greedy profiteers like Lotus and Wordperfect, and their upstart rival, Microsoft.  While other people wore FREE MANDELA T-shirts, Larry and Wendy donned shirts emblazoned FREE SOFTWARE.

Microsoft an upstart?  Mandela still imprisoned?  This novel takes place in the '80s.  Skimming through the first 164 pages, I find one passage about a backwards character eager to discuss Reagan's Star Wars initiative; but because this character prides himself on possessing the mindset of an earlier era, I took that reference as one more indication of his obsolescence. 

Sprung as it is, the Microsoft reference must be intentional.  There's no other reason to, pause the sentence, and highlight, that Microsoft is, an upstart rival.  Goodman wanted the reader to be shocked out of his or her moment, to feel their woeful ignorance of all this scientific. 

The ploy is well-played.  Only now I feel like a ham.

The Library of America Presents...

(X-posted to the Valve)

...some “Xtre-heeemely Cheezy Sci-Fi Ga-haaarbage.”  (Credit CR and Dr. Percival Cox for the words and music there.)  The popular canonization of pulp writers—The Library of America doesn’t reflect academic sensibilities as much as one might think—will directly influence the way future generations of scholars view the latter half of the twentieth century, but how accurate will it be?  I ask more as an historicist than a cultural anthropologist, and largely because Daniel Green’s recent post about the relation of literary language to the world represented through it has me thinking about turn-of-the-last-century debates on the verisimilitude of “realist” and “naturalist” works. 

To bandy in some gross overgeneralizations, the naturalist perspective is often shorthanded—via Tennyson—“nature, red in tooth and claw.” Jack London and Frank Norris did not represent the world as it is, but as it would have been were it not for the patina of civilization.  Their work may not reflect or represent society, but it does register the fact that something shook the cultural landscape, and that this something related to the crumbling of anthropocentric conceit.  Daniel invokes another metaphor, that of fiction as a window through which one peers into the past, but my three models—reflection, representation and registering—seem a more useful way to consider the relationship of literature to history.  M.H. Abrams already covered reflection and representation, so I’ll focus on registering here.  To pick a random example:

I consider myself a literary seismologist, scouring the written record for subtle signs of a larger catastrophe.  I sometimes dream of stumbling into the literary equivalent of “a gaping open wound in the earth’s skin,” but mostly I content myself with reading rock face for signs of deformities evolutionary in origin.  The rocks will reveal their secrets, but only if one speaks the language. 

To choose another entirely random example, one cannot identify Silas Weir Mitchell’s influences without being familiar with the conventions of the historical romance; the development of the Darwinian and Lamarckian branches of evolutionary science; American politics, foreign and domestic, &c.  Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lt. Col. of His Excellency General Washington is less a window through which you can spy the nineteenth century prancing around in its unmentionables, and more an Ozarks—deceptively flat, its plateaus are all that remain of a mountain thrust high back when Bermuda waltzed into the Atlantic.  Just as it takes a trained eye to look at flatland and see a mountain island surrounded by vast coral complexes, so too does it take a trained historicist to read a novel about the Revolutionary War and witness competing theories of physical and social evolution attempting to account for McKinley-era American imperialism.

To return to the top now: thinking about the present in historicist terms affords me perspective I would otherwise lack, what with the contemporary moment being so contemporary and momentous.  So, presuming the eyes who scan our outcrops are trained, what will they make of the twentieth century as represented in its pulpier moments.  What evidence of epochal violence will they find?  Will the paranoia of Dick remain superlative, or will it be presumed endemic, his work egregiously symptomatic of a common malaise? 

n+1 vs. Lit-Bloggers; or, on with the Resipiscence, already

(x-posted from the Valve)

The lit-blogging community is positively apoplectic about the latest n+1.  In “The Intellectual Situation,” you’ll recall, the editors write:

The blogs salved this ennui and created nourishing microcommunities. Yet criticism as an art didn’t survive. People might have used their blogs to post the best they could think or say. They could have posted 5,000 word critiques of their favorite books and records. Some polymath might even have shown, online, how an acute and well-stocked sensibility responds to the streaming world in real time. But those things didn’t happen, at least not often enough. In practice, blogs reveal how much we are unwitting stenographers of hip talk and marketing speak, and how secondhand and often ugly our unconscious impulses still are. The need for speed encourages, as a willed style, the intemperate, the unconsidered, the undigested .... The language is supposed to mimic the way people speak on the street or the college quad, the phatic emotive growl and purr of exhibitionistic consumer satifsfaction—"The Divine Comedy is SOOO GOOOD!"—or displeasure—"I shit on Dante!” So man hands information on to man.

The pace of the contemporary moment is ruinous.  Who has time to develop an opinion anymore?  We must choose between the obvious and la critique trouvé. The former wins little readership; the latter, a devoted following. Canny appreciation will win a blogger an audience—earn him entrance into the nourishing microcommunity of his choosing—but the quality of his thought will suffer.  He will repeat himself repeating others and be praised for it.  But it’s not like the editors of n+1 won’t begrudge such coteries the solace of companionship.  As Keith Gessen writes in an email Mark Sarvas posted:

It’s just a different model of magazine. As you say, Eliot’s Criterion, where he published The Waste Land, or something like Partisan Review (those guys published their own poetry!), are places where the editors had things they wanted to say that they believed no one else was saying. Irving Howe’s Dissent. Herzen’s Bell. Dwight Macdonald’s Politics. Sartre’s Les Temps Modernes. The other model is curatorial: you’re throwing a creative writing contest and whoever wins the contest gets published. That’s the New American Review or the Paris Review—or the thousand magazines associated with MFA programs. They’re both valid models, but obviously we’re working in the first one.

Most of those—especially those publishing the work of the New York Intellectuals—are coterie work.  When judging it, you take into account the intellectual environment that produced it.  You look for the shared ideological, intellectual and personal assumptions of the group of people writing for a particular venue and you adjust your assessment accordingly.  To rail against n+1 for treating a self-sustaining intellectual community as a single entity is a general complaint, one easily recognizable to you folk if I substitute “theorists” for “lit-bloggers.” You can, like Jodi, consider any such effort inherently dismissive, but much of what I’ve learned earning my Book of the Month Club degree says otherwise.  The issue is always thornily general; complaints about the inaccuracy of the generalization always miss the point ... especially when they validate the generalization in the same breath they deny its explanatory power.

Take Sarvas.  He should be shamed for publishing private correspondence, but he should be mocked for publishing it because Gessen, Marco Roth et al had to gall to point out that “lit-bloggers [have] become a self-sustaining community, minutemen ready to rise up in defense of their niches.” The pettiness behind his decision to publish Gessen’s emails proves the editors of n+1 correct: some lit-bloggers do turn bellicose when their authority’s questioned.  Garth Risk Hallberg’s considered rebuttals on The Millions work to refute the generalization, but the comments and links to his post contains more of the same:

You think I’m small-minded?  I’ll show you.  I’ll publish your private correspondence. 

Teach you to call me petty.

Or consider Edward Champion’s biting response to the claim that lit-bloggers “represent a perfection of the outsourcing ethos of capitalism”:

[insert author name]’s [latest book from author] has hit bookstores. It’s criminally underated, and [reviewer who writes somewhat intelligently or has interesting take] has an interesting take on why it’s worth your time.

Last night, I had a [vaguely personal moment in which I don’t reveal too much of myself to readers, because, based on some of the comments here, I think a few of you are keeping extremely close track of my personal life—for what reason I have no idea]. And it reminded me of [article which probably has nothing to do with moment in question].

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention [A friend or acquaintance who has done something interesting, must keep this near the end to avoid favoritism]’s thoughtful project, which should blow the lid on [incongruous reference here because I’m overworked and I need more coffee so that I can stay awake, until such moment as I will be able to properly collapse].

As withering self-deprecation goes, Champion’s performance is brilliant; unfortunately, it also proves the very point he wanted to refute.  In real sense, Champion and other lit-bloggers are vehicles for information about literature, not organs (ahem, ahem) devoted to its study.  Which is fine.  I read Champion because he has his ear to the ground.  He does a phenomenonal job tracking trends in contemporary literature.  (I find his book reviews a little too mainstream for my taste, but their failings are exemplary of the form, not the individual.) Perhaps unfairly, n+1 castigated the lit-bloggers for not being something they aren’t trying to be; but the editors do have a point about the lack of speculative gusto, or more mundanely, the poor reading skills of many in the lit-blogging community.

You see, my biggest complaint about the lit-blogger’s response n+1 is that it simply misses the point.  The entire “Intellectual Situation” is a meditation on the relation of speed and technology to the cultivation of thought:

The true mood of the form is spontaneity, alacrity—the right time to reply to a message is right away. But do that and your life is gone.

As with email, so too with cellphones and blogs.  The dearth of analytic vim in any blogging community is not necessarily the fault of the individuals comprising it, but a symptom of the temptations of the genre.  It is tempting to write book-chat.  It is tempting to turn a blog into group therapy.  It is tempting to post the same sort of fluff found in Slate.  It is tempting to link to the same YouTube video everyone else has.  Unless you consciously fight it, the inertia of generic norms will exert its influence on you ... and your blog’ll be the worse for it.  That lit-blogs are singled out speaks to their potential—to the potential of people who are still devoted readers—to bring to their blogging the same spirit of resistance they demonstrate every time they choose to read instead of write an email, use their cellphone, or turn on their Wii.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play tennis.

Illness as Literature: Substitute "Sudden-Onset Whooping-Death" for "a Man" or "the Men" and "Kaufman" for "K."

But the hands of a man were right at K.'s throat, while the another thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice.

With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. 

"Like a dog!" he said. 

It seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.

Six-word Stories. (Seven-word Titles? As If. Crap.)

They wrote six words; no stories.

Hemingway too, except with great success:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Six words: a small story condensed.

Evocative miniatures of tragedies.  (To scale.)

The hunter squeezes.  His son falls.

She jumped; he died there too.

Cat toy on floor.  She cries.

Drunk driver, wrong lane: Mother screams.

"Shoes?  His feet are in Iraq."

Spooning: "We should see other people."

Dinner?  Delicious.  Now I feel vile.

Feverish, he tosses; sweating, hours pass.

Sheets soaked, throat parched: he stares.

"I'm dead."  (Will write more soon.)

Anatomy of a Splash: Don't Fear the Blog

I've had a couple of interesting email exchanges of late with academics who want to blog, but fear the commitment required to find and retain an audience.  In case any of you lurkers have similar questions, I thought I'd share my Words of Wisdom:

• You blog when you want to.  Sometimes you'll fear disappointing your audience, but you shouldn't.  We live in the age of Real Simple Syndication, which means even if you go dormant, people will know when you start blogging again.  This is the Timothy Burke model: he disappears for a few weeks, comes back with a couple of great posts, then disappears again. 
• You do not have to post five times a day.  You can follow the Acephalous model and post once a day.  Posting once a day has pleasant side effects: foremost among them, a backlog of potential posts (which I keep in a drafts folder and mine fairly frequently).  Think of it like this: you gain an audience by making a splash.  Throwing a thousand individual pebbles makes for a thousand tiny splashes.  No one will notice.  Hire a wrecking crew and chunk a few boulders in there and everyone will notice.  So, write a few great posts, have them linked to by the right people, and you'll find yourself with an audience.  Sinthome's a good example of this (although lately he's chucking individual boulders in four times daily).
• If you write something you know another blogger will find interesting, by all means, send an email.  If you merely think they will, however, hold off.  Of the links I'm emailed, only about half of them are of any real interest to me.  Another quarter are pseudo-spam sent by people who email all the Marauding Marsupials with links to their poorly-scribed political screeds or the latest update on their vanity project of dubious value.  But I take the time to read the rest and comment when I have something to say.  (That said, I love those sorts of emails, so feel free to send me more.)  I don't link to nearly enough of them—or in a timely manner—but that's the fault of the aforementioned backlog.  (Still, I really ought to link to those items which really get me thinking, like CR's recent meditation on Barthes.)

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask in the comments or send me an email. 

Why Academic Articles May Not Be the Best Place for Casual Politicking

Because the immediacy of the referent may be lost on future generations of readers.  On Eileen Joy's advice, I looked up Eduardo Cadava's "Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History" [JSTOR].  Glad I did—the article's quite good—but the non-specificity of this sentence irks me:

[Benjamin's] insistence on the necessity of addressing these questions and relations today—then in the 1930s as well as now, under the light or darkness of a scarcely less disastrous historical moment—is above all, a call to responsibility, a call that requires a passionate and determined effort of reflection.

The footnote explains that Cadava speaks of "the tragedy of what we now refer to as the 'War in the Gulf.'"  Fair enough.  Mention the "War in the Gulf" and everyone will know exactly what you're talking about.

UPDATE!  Just in case it ain't absolutely plain, I really really liked Cadava's essay; found it charmingly Benjaminian, which as critical modes go, I absolutely love.  There was just this one moment that reminded me of annoying moments in other essays.  Note how I don't slam Cadava for what he accounts for in his footnotes...because he accounts for it in his footnotes.  So please, no more hate mail.  (Or at the very least, reserve it for when I actually lash out at somebody unjustly.)

Friday Night Potlatch: "Dashboard"

Alternate Post Title: Even needs have needs, tiny giants made of tinier giants.

I linked to this song in my comment on the Benjamin thread, but it's so moving I'm going to link to it again:

Modest Mouse - "Dashboard" [mp3]

As Acephalous is neither Pitchfork nor Pirate Bay , I'll neither review nor link to the entire album.  But listen to "Dashboard."  Then tell me that the decision to bring Johnny Marr on board was anything less than brilliant.

Why Republicans Don't Write [Literary] Fiction; or, Mark Helprin and Sky-Gazing

Over at n+1, Benjamin Nugent wonders "Why Don't Republicans Write Fiction?"  There must, he writes,

be somebody who can write a decent character-driven short story who also thinks George W. Bush is a good president.

I wanted to find these conservative somebodies: I wanted to talk to them, to find out what they thought of their minority status—whether they thought the publishing world was arrayed against them, or had other explanations for the apparent predominance of their liberal counterparts. And I wanted to read their work, to see  whether it could illuminate the contemporary conservative experience in ways that Republican-penned potboilers and political columns just don’t.

But I couldn't find them.

With the smug air of someone who's spent five hours reading bad literary criticism, I let loose an exaggerated sigh punctuated by Mark Helprin's name.  Somehow anticipating this reaction, Nugent proceeds to spend the rest of the essay discussing Helprin's most popular novel, Winter's Tale (1983).  He convincingly argues that reading it provides "a sense for how being a conservative feels."  Convincing, but not entirely correct. 

Winter's Tale is one of those books adolescents on the cusp of protraction clutch to their chests while mumbling gushing words about the beauty of its prose and its purity of spirit.  The novel appeals to those blessed (or cursed) with the conviction that the world is meaningful but ultimately unknowable—everything has its place so everything will work out in the end.  Cosmic justice works so long as the technocrats keep their compassionate corruption to themselves.  Nugent is absolutely correct to invoke Sean McCann and Michael Szalay's "Do You Believe in Magic? Literary Thinking and the New Left."  But the invocation of my co-blogger and my advisor in an article about my favorite novel from 1991 until my sophomore year of college points to the other source of Helprin's appeal: an implicit faith in order. 

Gravity's Rainbow might never offer a full account of who They are, but people who spend years trying to decipher Their Plan believe in its existence.  It can be understood, we only lack the tools or vision to do so.  Helprin approaches the same problem from a different angle: he convinces readers that order reins but will always be ineffable.  It is a magic realism based on a naive notion of karma.  Call it "folk karma" if you will—and Rich will—but I think it (or something like it) is largely responsible for the appeal of both Winter's Tale and Gravity's Rainbow.  Readers of both feel connections impervious to rational explanation.  Is this what being a conservative feels like?  I honestly don't know.

However, not only do I frequently feel like this, I do so at the urging of someone not usually listed among the great conservative thinkers: Walter Benjamin.  I'm thinking of his seventeenth thesis on the philosophy of history here:

Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration [Konstellation] a shock, by which it cristallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encountes it as a monad.

I slyly inserted the German Konstellation in there because it better accords with the rest of Benjamin's notion of non-linear history.  My attraction to Benjaminian thought—The Arcades Project in particular—originates with his obsession with Konstellation as a legitimate intellectual position.  Only I'm at loss to defend it as such, since for me, this mode of thought is inherently literary.  Just watch.

In 1995, I graduated from high school.  My favorite books were Winter's Tale and Gravity's Rainbow.  In my final semester, I had what could only be called a crushing crush of a crush on the student teacher in my English class.  She and I bonded over mutual recognition of our taste in jackets, withering remarks about my classmates and her favorite book, Winter's Tale.  When the school year ended, she said her husband—I was crushed—was about to open a used bookstore.  So the summer before my freshman year, I applied for a job at Caliban's Books.  We talked about books for a while, and it turned out his favorite book was Gravity's Rainbow.  (Later that year, he and I would transcribe and index The Crying of Lot 49 in Microsoft Word to be better able to break the code.)  So Winter's Tale landed me a job at Caliban's Books working for a guy whose favorite novel was Gravity's Rainbow.  This all seemed—still seems—somehow meaningful. 

A Konstellation observed. 

This is the power of a Helprin novel, and despite all the nods to political conservatism Nugent points out, I'm not convinced that this will-to-order is necessarily conservative.   

[Actually, I  am, but the self-deprecation didn't shine through.  It's a misreading of Benjamin I'm selling here; but it's not one you're meant to buy.  My fault entirely, though, as I vagued up the second-to-last paragraph too much to make that point clear.]

Obviously, the Answer is...

...they're all Cylons, and have been for so long they no longer remember the death of the last human. 

Wait, is this thing on? 

Tap tap tap. 

Is this recording? 

Check, check one, check two. 

What does this light mean? 

Hold on a minute.  I sat down and had a thought. 

Now there are words. 

I didn't write them yet here they are slumming on my screen.

I thought them, I won't lie. 

But write them?  Put them on the blog?  Who would do that? 

Who's running this show?

Really? 

Alright then, who's the producer?

Well, who financed it and how Jewish are they?

When I was thirteen. 

What are you insinuating?

Things Thought After Reading Drafts of a Chapter from Last Summer

Do you ever read something on Acephalous and think to yourself:

Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ could this Kaufman kid be any dumber?  Who ties his shoes?  Is he even allowed to wear them unsupervised?

Or:

He claims to read?  Read what?  The backs of cereal boxes and the occasional phone bill?  Mattress tags and Danielle Steel? 

Or:

Who would seriously consider the opinions of a man who dreams about telling a student that he'll regret wearing a Hitler costume to the Halloween party, because if the girl he's crushed on for weeks responds to his unsubtle advances, he'll never know whether it was him or the costume?

Or:

Why hasn't he hiked himself back behind the woodshed and been done with it already?

Or:

He calls those thoughts?  "Ipecac for the soul"?  Is that supposed to be clever?

So please, have at me.  If forced to defend myself, I may inadvertantly reacquire some semblance of self-respect. 

Cerebus and Modernist Freedom, Part III: Homosocial/Homosexualist Frames (They're Fabulous!)

The oddest thing about Jaka's Story is the relation of its frame-narrative both to the ongoing story and to the overall narrative.  As I mentioned in the previous post, much of what we know about Jaka's life in the royal palace comes from Jaka's Story.  In those later interviews, Sim himself suggests that we can trust the information communicated in this book—which is strange considering it is it delivered, secondhand, by Rick to Oscar Wilde, then embellished by the latter in an attempt to extort more money from his stingy publisher.  Those of you who haven't read the book are no doubt confused, so let me back up.  Here are the panels of the frame narrative from the first number of Jaka's Story (click to enlarge):

Sim interleaves these images of Jaka's childhood with the main narrative—which involves, among other things, the return of Cerebus in Jaka's life and the consequences of the abortion I discussed last week—but as a frame composed by a notorious embellisher, the truth-content of these imbricate panels shouldn't be taken at face value.  This is not to say they brim with conscious lies; only that of all the narrators ever, Oscar Wilde stands astride the pile of those I would trust the least.  Consider this: the information contained in these panels is related to Wilde by Jaka's insecure husband, Rick.  That's one layer of interference—and a significant one, given that the entire book will, in the end, turn on the breach of his trust.  But more on that later; for now, I want to talk about what the habitation of Wilde's voice freed Sim to accomplish.

Sim revels in ventriloquism—and well he should, as he is among the most talented literary ventriloquists I've come across.  He's no Pynchon or Gaddis, mind you, but the man has talent.  In addition to Wilde, Cerebus features believable impressions of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and the Rolling Stones, to name but a few.  When he decides to inhabit the voice of Oscar Wilde, he frees himself from the constraints of the narrative voice he's established in Cerebus.  (This goes without saying.  And yet, here I am, saying it.)  At this point, I should mention Wally's desire for me to account for the introduction, because it would seem to be important here.  After all, in it Sim says that he

never considered Oscar a "homosexual character" per se (though homosexualist he is).  First, last and always (to me) he is an Artist and the tragedy which befell Wilde, [he] can't view in any other context than "Society vs. the Artist." (8)

All well and good, and yet the relationship between Oscar and Jaka's husband, Rick, entails oodles of what we literary types call "homosociality."  I know, I know, you don't come here for the queer theory; but the drawing rooms in which Oscar and Rick meet; their secret liaisons, which Jaka spies from a distance; the fact that the sole topic of conversation when they meet is Rick's wife, well, that's the very definition of homosociality.  In this instance, the theory fits the text to a T. 

What these two share is the substance of the frame-narrative.  In fact, the frame-narrative moves parallel to the main until a very important moment, one in which the fiction of the frame slams into the reality of the main.  More on that later, as it requires more panels and those of you without broadband are already cursing my name.  (And worse ... not that those rags look anything like me.)  What I want to juxtapose now are two facts: the first is that Sim adopts the voice of a "homosexualist" to tell the first half of Jaka's story; the second, as I discussed last week, that she represents a transitional moment in his (call it) philosophizing, one in which a woman loses her individuality in the face of an overwhelming desire for system.

At this point, I fear those of you who've read the book know exactly where I'm headed.  I admit: I'm not being too adventurous here, but that's not because I don't want to be clever.  (Because I do, most certainly, else why would I blog?)  As with all the best work, I think quality comes from the rearrangement of half-thoughts into a hitherto unimagined intellectual mosaic.  When you slap your head at the obviousness of what you've read—when you dog yourself for having missed it—that is when you know someone has a point. 

(Here I could talk about Walter Benjamin and his theory of interpretation-as-constellation—the randomness of stars suddenly clicking into image, an Orion here, a few bears there—but this post is far too long as stands.  Still, it feels like a placeholder, but that's more the medium than anything else.  Were I certain that most of my readers were already familiar with Cerebus, I would've zipped through the enframing argument and launched into more original territory.  For now, though, I hope you won't hate me if I leave it at "more tomorrow.")

Wilco, Atheism, then more Cerebus

• Did anyone happen to catch and record Wilco's new album last night?  I spent all day waiting for it to start, then fell asleep ten minutes before it did.  (The band broadcast it in its entirety last night, so I'm not asking for illegal downloads here; more like "I taped Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart off KLSU last night, and now I'm sharing it with my friends.")
• What are the best books out there on philosophical atheism?  A friend of mine recently finished The God Delusion and wants to read something more substantial on the matter.  Since most of what I read is evolutionary theory or cultural appropriations of it, I'm not sure what the state of modern atheistic studies.  To put it another way, I remember these two discussions of Dawkins' theological shortcomings, but don't remember much productive coming out of them.  (The person who sent this email, I should add, was a long-time militant atheist who converted a few years back, so serious theological works dealing with atheism would be amenable.)