Acephalous
"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America."
Ephraim Chambers,
Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences
, 1753
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Sunday, 01 March 2009
I have 140 characters in which to entertain you and I will succeed because I am the master at adapting my prose to the limits of the mediu—
—m in which I write. Because I'm up for a challenge
I'm now a twit
. God have mercy on us all.
Mar 1, 2009 10:33:37 PM
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Miscegenated Melon Can Be Thrown About Like a Cannon Ball and Not Much Hurt.
Over at Edge of the American West, I contextualize this: It is next to impossible to teach many of the colored people of the South that it is as wrong to steal a watermelon as a calf. The colored man will admit that the calf larceny deserves the severest penalty of the law, and if he were on a jury, he would enforce it too; but let a case of stolen melons come before a court, and he’ll stand up stoutly for acquitted, and he is the delinquent, plead his innocence with an injured air of being unjustly persecuted. (link.)
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Watchmen and the scene of reading (being a response to Anthony Lane's review of Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' novel)
(Before I begin: Lane casually spoils the film, so do not click on that link if you want a virginal viewing experience.) Anthony Lane would forestall serious criticism of his Watchmen review by characterizing defenders of the genre as "masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match." Anyone who reads a comic not written by Art Spiegelman is a—but why go there? Lane's acknowledgment that Moore wants nothing to do with Zack Snyder's film seems a concession, but in the end he returns to throw a few roundhouses at Moore: Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like, or what pity should attend it; they are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race—a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity—to be bothered with lesser plights. To belabor the obvious: Watchmen is a book of the 1980s. Complaining about its concern with issues like containment, nuclear escalation, and mutually assured destruction would be akin to kvetching about the dowdiness of suburban American life in Far From Heaven—and Lane did not. So why fault Watchmen for being insufficiently universal in its appeal? Why insist that a film based on a graphic novel be of the moment the former is produced instead of the one represented in the latter? Because Lane is an ignorant bigot.* Not that I want to defend Snyder's film. As will become apparent, I think the film will fail because it is fundamentally unfilmable. But for someone who complains about the lack of subtlety in film and novel alike, Lane punts some rather obvious points. Foremost among them, he attributes the flaws of particular characters to the author, as when he chastises Moore: You want to hear Moore’s attempt at urban jeremiad? “This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard; either way, it makes it directly into the movie, as one of Rorschach’s voice-overs. Why assume that Rorschach's a proxy for Moore here? Why not assume Rorschach's narration is intentionally blinkered and overblown? Consider these panels: Rorschach's statements are—to borrow Lane's characterization of the entire film—grimy with misogyny, but more revealingly, they are also self-evidently delusional. Rorschach numbers himself among the psychologically healthy. Even within the fiction of the novel, Rorschach's narration belongs to "the crank file": Yet Lane would have his readers believe that the self-important and overwrought prose of Rorschach's journal stands as an indictment of Moore. Mistaking the flaws of a character for those of his author is argument Lane would rightly criticize were someone else to forward it. He would also take issue with a critic who denigrated as derivative a film which openly played with generic conventions. For example, were someone to slag Todd Haynes for directing the aforementioned Far From...
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In which SEK seems to be
trying
to get arrested
Interesting color scheme...
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 05:52 AM
You've changed, man. You used to be cool, but now you've sided with all these hip social networking stuff...
Posted by: Jake | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 08:04 AM
I've never been cool, Jake. That's what's so lovely about having no cred: you have none to lose.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 08:58 AM
"now"?
(snicker)
Posted by: Sisyphus | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 09:17 AM
One of the things I find unattractive about Twitter is the use of tinyurl links. I understand the need, if you're going to have links in that medium, but I dislike the opacity.
Are you going to embed this feed anywhere on this blog, or are you assuming (hoping? fearing?) that we'll add a fourth venue to our SEK reading?
Posted by: Ahistoricality | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 10:09 AM
I might add a feed, but the reason I finally caved is so I have something to do with the written equivalent of earworms---you know, those links that get under your skin and you mull over addressing in a post for a few hours/days. Ultimately they end up half-drafts in the to-be-deleted folder, but I end up wasting time thinking about them. This way I can dispense with them quickly and put my mind to more important matters. (Such is my theory, at least.)
And yes, the tinyurl thing is really annoying. What's wrong with embedded links? Are they really trying to keep down overall character costs?
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 10:21 AM
(So basically I'll be complaining about Big Hollywood until I can finally tear my eyes away from it.)
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 10:22 AM
"something to do with the written equivalent of earworms"
Adam Roberts' blog Europrogocontestvision is for things like that. Going to Twitter is, well, perhaps an overreaction.
Twitter would be a good venue for building up an elaborate, overblown fantasy life, though. I could imagine myself doing one in which the entries were things like "Why do attractive people keep asking me for casual sex?" and "My poem hailed as new American triumph" or "Sent Email to politician; he promptly resigned, disgusted with himself" and then again "Ate breakfast; eggs today." Of course that last one might be more delusionally narcissistic in its assumption that followers were interested in it than all the rest.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 11:40 AM
the written equivalent of earworms---you know, those links that get under your skin and you mull over
This is what I use Google Reader for.
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 11:45 AM
Twitter would be a good venue for building up an elaborate, overblown fantasy life, though
Oh, I so wish I'd thought of that first. Best argument in favor, ever. The Japanese have already started producing twitter-like narratives (I hestitate to call them "novels" in an environment with literary types who know better) which have seen publication and some real popularity. I don't know that I could sustain that long enough for it to be fun, but I could see some real satirical possibilities (if those haven't been foreclosed by the reality of GOP-Twitters).
Posted by: Ahistoricality | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 12:00 PM
The Japanese are as ever ahead of everyone in this regard. What would really make the narrative, though, would be its real-time element -- instead of just writing it in advance, every minor encounter in real life would be replaced by its fantasy element. The hot counter-person at the record store? Just as interested in you! Plus they really admire that obscure record that you found. Your class was not attended by bored undergrads but instead enthralled young people who you inspired towards careers in the arts, plus a talent scout for a major university who informed you that they'd heard about your lectures and that you should expect that tenure-track job offer as soon as he could get it in the mail, though he'd type it up right then if he has to keep another university from snapping you up.
All right, that would soon get boring. But who knows why people read Twitter anyways? Maybe they wouldn't be bored. Hell, work that into your fantasy life -- Twitter that "I see that I have thousands of followers, and no, I can't say what's going on in any greater detail." God-damn fans.
Wait, what am I talking about -- this would be SEK's Twitter. So of course it would have to go in the other direction. "Went out for milk -- corner store hold-up in progress. Job applications ruined by blood stains." "Nearly electrocuted by computerized podium in class." "Got interview at MLA. Panel had printouts of my blog entries; slowly burned them in front of me while laughing derisively in unison." "This Twitter feed is real, damn it, I have documentation for everything."
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 12:34 PM
Rich,
As ever, you've nailed it.
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 01:28 PM
Interesting color scheme...
It does look familiar, does it not? I went from hating what I'd done here to now sort of being in love with it---my Gmail and desktop have it too. I blame 4DOS.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 01:48 PM
I can never remember to do this but xrl.us gives you links that let people see the target, and you also save a precious character.
Also, at some point, many people were getting tweets delivered to their mobiles, so the 140 characters thing was a big deal.
Posted by: Justin | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 02:21 PM
my Gmail and my desktop
Wait, you can do custom color schemes for GMail? Do tell!
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 03:12 PM
Ah -- figured it out. Thanks for letting me know it could be done.
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 03:19 PM
Glad you figured it out, as I don't remember how I did it anymore. (And expect the Borges post soon. I'm having to re-read the non-fiction, which I haven't picked up in years, so it's a little more slow-going than I anticipated.) (I.e. unlike Watchmen, which I'm currently teaching, it's taking me a little while to say anything intelligent about it.)
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 04:57 PM
I added you to my Twitter friends list so that I might enjoy the brevity of your brilliance. And yet, you do not add me. Now you see why Twitter is as evil as Facebook.
Wolfson has a solution: http://waste.typepad.com/waste/2009/02/a-solution-to-all-your-social-networking-anxieties.html
In case you want to politely re-friend but do not actually want chatter in your life. But you should want my chatter! I tweet about random articles and how much I hate footnotes! Why would you want to miss that?!
You know who I wish was on Twitter? My real life friends. Bloggers I actually correspond with. Etc. So I'm glad you're on. Now where's AWB?! Probably actually doing something productive.
Posted by: belle lettre | Monday, 02 March 2009 at 11:27 PM