Productivity, The Lack Thereof, & Stuff At Which To Point With Mirth

I've acquired a reputation for merciless self-deprecation.  As tempting as a  meta-merciless account of earlier merciless self-deprecations sounds . . . I do this to feel like I learn good.  That I progress.  That I'm smarter today than yesterday and that I'll be even smarter tomorrow.  To experience daily what in the Kaufman House Patois we christen a "productive" day.  As Michael Szalay argues in that nifty little book of his: when poor people become intellectuals they fret endlessly over the immaterial nature of their production.  Just as Jack London quelled his conscience with vigorous assertions of the workiness of his labors, the Kaufman household obsessively catalogues its "work performed."  So when an entire day passes in which I haven't marked a lick or thought about my dissertation . . . you can only imagine.  I feel less than useless.  My father drove an ambulance.  Saved people's lives. 

I read books. 

The guilt threatens sanity and suggests a fulfilling career in alcoholism.  The sole bulwark?  The notion that I'm more smart today than yesterday.  So I mock my former self.  He thought he was so smart.  I'll show him!  (Sometimes I do too.  Only I come to my senses quickly now.)

Tonight I slam him to the mat again so that I might pick myself back up.  What follows are excerpts from an essay I wrote my senior year entitled "Poe and Lacan Unpurloined, Revisited, and Revised."  Even the title—despite its prescient nod to the Matrix sequels—blows hurricane-strength gusts of utter suck.  But the title is just the beginning.  (As titles are wont to be.)  It's all downhill from there:

The forces acting upon the narrator in "Usher" are not unlike those Poe's Style imposes on the reader.

Those dastardly forces!   Who are they to act upon the narrator?   Why did I capitalize style?   What do I think I am, German? 

Just as the reader is overwhelmed by the Stylistic effect which connects the narrator’s observations, the narrator is overwhelmed by the concerted effort the world of Roderick Usher makes to assault his Emersonian self-reliance.  In other words, just as Poe’s Style makes the unintelligible intelligible by creating an illusory uniformity on otherwise unrelated statements, the world of Roderick Usher makes the unintelligible intelligible by creating an illusory uniformity on an normally disjunctive world.

Nothing is more awesome than saying the same twice.   Seriously.   Nothing is more awesome than saying the same thing twice.   To this point this essay seriously lacked penis-talk.   Not anymore!

In a post-Freudian/Lacanian world, this recognition is healthy precisely because it undermines the illusory nature of the Ego.  Unfortunately for the narrator, the Emersonian concept of self-reliance to which he adheres is completely incompatible with this realization, in that one cannot "carry himself in the presence of all opposition as it every thing were titular and ephemeral but he" when he knows that the "he" to which Emerson refers is the illusion which Lacan refers to as the function of the phallus (1624).

That Jesus fellow gets the press but it turns out Lacan's the real answer.   (Don't you dare say it.  I know you want to.)   Didn't I read a damn big book?   Over 1,600 pages of pure pleasure principle.   If only I'd written a works cited I'd even be able to tell you what it was! 

What all this adds up to is a picture of a state of affairs which, though I personally believe it to be at least somewhat accurate, is far removed from Poe’s conception of the world.  Or is it?

A "picture of a state of affairs"?   Far too direct.   I should've noted its function as a symbol of a representation of a picture of a state of affairs.   Then I would've earned the A this essay inexplicably received.   (I chalk it up to the Lacan references.   And the fact that I'm so very pretty.)   But now you're thinkin' to yourself: "Why hasn't Scott made and drawn attention to a pun whose foulness has no rivals?"   Have no fear:

Because in the final analysis, the conclusions that could be drawn could very well be said to be Poe-etical.

One breezy addendum: I didn't spend a few hours today reading this or this or this or this.  Anyone who says differently is a communist. 

Comments

[Adam Roberts]

""Poe and Lacan Unpurloined, Revisited, and Revised" the title ... blows hurricane-strength gusts of utter suck ..."

You came up with a title that blows and sucks simultaneously? My hat is off sir. It's off and tipped in your direction, sir

But I have a challenge for the prize of suckiest title ever, which beats yours if only by virtue of the fact that I actually published mine. Between hard and indeed soft covers. Admittedly only with a small academic press, and thankfully it's long been out of print, but nonetheless: there was a time in my life when I thought that it would be a good idea to call a critical study of contemporary Arthuran fantasy Silk and Potatoes. There's a reason the book's called that, but it's still the suckiest of sucky titles, and makes people go, 'huh?' or perhaps 'ugh!' There. I've spoken out at this circle of Suckier Titlers Anonymous.

[PS: "What do I think I am, German?" With a name like 'Kaufmann'? Surely not.]

[Mike Schwartz]

Both humorous titles, though Silk and Potatoes narrowly takes the prize for suckiest.

The best I can do is:

"Tainted Love: Object Cathexis and Ego Identification in Dermot Healy's A Goat's Song"

After ingesting unhealthy amounts of Freud, I began imposing psychoanalytic theory onto just about every text I came across, especially the works of Toni Morrison.

[noah cicero]

"when poor people become intellectuals they fret endlessly over the immaterial nature of their production."

That is true. That is too true. That is so true I want to run into a lake, swim to the bottom, and hide in an underwater cave.

I feel really weird now.

Scott why did you post that, you are fucking with my working clas brain.

That's probably why I call writing a hobbie. It isn't because it is clever, it is just a working class thing.

Wow, weird.

Writing that was not work.

[josef k.]

What about: "The Vision Machine on the Road to Damascus"

Paul Virilio + Alain Badiou + Philip K. Dick = ...madness.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Adam, not to be too graphic, but I think there's a precedent on the blow/suck issue. I've said my peace. Put me in the "huh?" camp on your "Silk and Potatoes." It seems dreadful on its face, but I wager there's a depth to its suckitude my Americanist mind can't begin to sound. And I didn't realize this would turn into a contest. Have you and josef k. forgotten about "Cyborg Identity and the Destabilization of Epistemological Boundaries in Thomas Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow"? At least "Silk and Potatoes" and "The Vision Machine on the Road to Damascus" don't have airs. I have airs. So does Mike. Only not so refined. (Doesn't mean he didn't try; but, bless his little heart, he lacked the will to suck 110 percent. He couldn't take his suck to the next level. He left it there, sadly sucking at its current level. Poor, poor "Tainted Love: Object Cathexis and Ego Identification in Dermot Healy's A Goat's Song." If Soft Cell and goats can't cut it, how will you ever learn to suck like the masters?

Noah--to switch from fourth to first with a deafening lurch--I'll see if I can find the stomach to post a little more about Szalay's chapter on London. It blew my mind when I first read it, and it's the reason I tagged him as my advisor. It's just so . . . he nailed it. I suppose that's one of the reasons I think Berube's so level-headed. He spent his summer in the garment district, and knows what it means to work. I think a lot of academics from academic families feel that they're entitled to their leisure, that they don't need to transform their writing and researching into work; and I think that's why people like Michael (and, I hope, someday myself) will succeed. We know what it's like to work so we appreciate what we do now more than someone for whom work-a-day life is something they saw on Roseanne. Or maybe I'm just a working class snob. (I am, actually. But I keep close watch on my lips. Through a little bourbon in my boilers, however, and I could sink the whole damn fleet.)

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Cyborg Identity and the Destabilization of Epistemological Boundaries in Thomas Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow" wins. The others may have bad titles -- but how many of those titles (plus trademark self-deprecation of younger self) have helped to inspire *an entire bad poem*?

Requoted below of course. And yes, it's by me: don't blame this one on Scott.

Youth needs its cyborg identity
tap the fingers, keys,
the mouse runs
each click a heaping of coal
burned, somewhere the ice cap shudders
the CRT glow
imposing on the body
every reality in monochrome

The rockets go up, you see
Are they acts? What if
if
they never came down?
Hung, sparklelike, webs in air
Is that system?
Does it demand
A fall?

Looking back
(the cyborg runs, headless)
the debris lies there,
smells of gunpowder
in the green-glow
Looking back, tapping,
For one last unfired

[Ray Davis]

On the other hand, Silken Potatoes would've been an absolutely delicious title! Such a thin line behind success and sucks.

I seem to be conducting a mini solo orgy of self-linking this weekend, so for Scott & Szalay, a bit about the class warfare of Modernism. Much more should be said, of course: I have to believe that some of WCW's distaste for Eliot involved the day job....