David Foster Wallace, Interview

Check out a previously unpublished interview ('A frightening time in America...') with David Foster Wallace at The New York Review of Books blog.

Interestingly, despite the basic absence of references to food in DFW's fiction and despite the fact he seemed to indulge in fast food with little remorse (see David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself), in this interview at least he seems pretty cognizant of the problems of modern meat-focused agriculture, proposing that the method employed in the US in raising livestock is "one of the great unspoken horrors of modern capitalism." Among other things.

It's a wide-ranging and intelligent interview.

Vocabulary from The Pale King*

The Pale King is a labyrinth, a meandering path with no promise of destination or purpose, a journey of farce and ennui. Not to mention interesting words. Such as the following list of vocabulary words I didn't know the meaning of that I jotted on the blank rear fly leaf of the 1st edition hardcover (April 2011) from Little, Brown. I started writing them down after reading a couple hundred pages so this in no way represents all the words in the book that I didn't know.

word - page #

banausic - 229
perdurance - 231
peplum - 234
guilloche - 255
swivet - 258  (footnote) (later on pages 411 & 41(footnote))
logorrheic - 259
impetigo - 263
tonsured - 275
baize - 274
costive - 277
anodyne - 280
celadon - 282
blebular - 286
diffraction - 292
preterite - 292
pemphigold - 300
amortized - 303 (footnote)
nancing - 314
empaled - 320
otiose - 336
recondite - 338
muumuus - 357
caliumoid - 362
obtundated - 365
caul - 368
eremia - 383
dextrorotated - 395
dyspnea - 395
inedia - 402
ephebe - 412
neotenous - 412
appositive - 414 (footnote)
defilade - 422
cathexes - 427
intubatory - 444
semion - 445
monopsony - 481
hypoxic - 515
clonic - 516

* This blog entry created while listening to Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" from the Captain Fantastic album (1975). 'Irrelevent' Chris Fogle** would certainly know the song well, though whether he would have liked it or not, I'm not sure. Probably not. He probably would have dismissed it at the time because of its ceaseless airplay and popularity. But twenty years later after it had largely been forgotten or was simply ignored when considering, for example, Elton John's greatest singles from the 1970s, he would probably have recollected the song with a sentimental pang and a warm spot in his heart, bringing back, as it did for me, memories of 8th grade dances, shy love, birthday parties that evolved into awkward and hesitant make-out sessions in darkened living rooms with brown shag carpeting and vinyl bean bag chairs. "Butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high away, bye bye"

** "I remember feeling the actual physical feeling of hatred of most commercial rock -  such as for disco, which if you were cool you pretty much had to hate, and all rock groups with one-word  place names. Boston, Kansas, Chicago, America - I can still feel an almost bodily hatred. And believing that I and maybe one or two friends were among the very, very few people who truly understood what Pink Floyd was trying to say."

~ pg 162

Ai Zodiac Heads

No sign of Ai Weiwei yet. Two months now, almost. He's disappeared into the Chinese gulag. It's important to keep manifesting energy toward his safety and his ultimate freedom.

Today, the New York Times writes about the unveiling of his twelve Chinese zodiac heads outside the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Free Ai Weiwei!

Mailer on the Corporation

Chris Hedges, in books like Empire of Illusion and The Death of the Liberal Class, and in articles on truthdig.com, warns of the tyranny of the corporation. In his view, we have undergone "a coup d'etat in slow motion" and we are now, as a nation, in the grip of the soulless and merciless claw of the Corporate State.

Chris Hedges' Feet, March 19, 2011

One would be excused for thinking this idea of the corporation as tyrannical entity was a recent development, an analysis and perception emerging in the last ten years or so on the Left. But that would be a mistake. Allen Ginsberg, for one, in The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971, raised the alarm by merely pointing out, in any number of poems within, the omnipresence of the corporation in American culture and daily life. Ralph Nader has raised righteous hew and cry against corporations for decades.

Another longstanding and prescient anti-corporatist was none other than Norman Mailer. Mailer, too often derided by those with limited knowledge or familiarity with his work, was a principled intellectual, a ferocious defender of the art of writing ("the spooky art"), and an acutely insightful observer of America. Consider these comments from an interview on the Charlie Rose show in 1996.

The topic of the conversation was Bill Clinton and his second term. Mailer took exception with Clinton's avowal to move the country to a "vital dynamic center", complaining that he (Clinton) hijacked the Democratic party ("My party is now the party of Nelson Rockefeller!") and that "... he does not have a vision that will move out of the center."

Norman Mailer circa 1996

Rose: You don't think leadership can be found in the center, you have to have some kind of vision of where you want to take the country and it's not to the center if you'e gonna' change things?

Mailer: I know it can't be found in the center and for a very simple reason - the center is the U.S. corporation and the U.S. corporation is in my modest opinion wrecking America. They're wrecking America aesthetically. They're putting up the ugliest buildings in the history of Christendom. The ugliest buildings in the last 2,000 years have been put up in America since the 1950s and now it's all over the world."

Mailer adds, after some interim comments: But let me go back to the point. I'm saying the "vital center" cannot solve anything in America because that's the corporation and the corporation is the root of our evils at this point. You know we have, eh... the discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor in America is now the greatest of the 15 major nations in the world. That's something to be ashamed of.

Rushdie for Ai

Salman Rushdie, whose article in the Telegraph calls on the Chinese government to release Ai Weiwei, knows from first hand experience what it's like to be persecuted for one's art. His article raises other cases of authors and writers disappearing into the Chinese security apparatus and posits gloom for the future of free expression in China.

The lives of artists are more fragile than their creations. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus Caesar to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis. He spent the rest of his days begging to be allowed to return to Rome. So Ovid’s life was blighted. But the poetry of Ovid has outlasted the Roman Empire. The poet Mandelstam was murdered by Stalin’s executioners, but the poetry of Mandelstam has outlived the Soviet Union. The poet Lorca was killed by the thugs of Spain’s Generalissimo Franco, but the poetry of Lorca has outlived Franco’s tyrannical regime. We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.

~ Salman Rushdie, 2011

Ai On Point

This is an interesting On Point radio show with Tom Ashbrook on Ai Weiwei and the current crackdown on dissent in China (from 4/11/11). The Chinese authoritarians are keeping a tight reign on any form of opposition. They're afraid that what has happened in the Middle East could happen there. Perhaps they intrinsically realize that their oppressive policies toward personal liberties might be cause for resistance.

Ai WeiWei

Blackjack and Ai

In an interesting development, it turns out that the blackjack-playing community knows Ai Weiwei as one of its own and is expressing its displeasure at Ai's detention in China.

Since his disappearance the news has spread among the international blackjack community, who know WeiWei betters as a top notch blackjack player rather than a world renowned artist or a human rights activist. There are currently talks between multiple casino insiders to hold a series of fund raising blackjack and poker tournaments to lobby the US government to impose trade restrictions against China unless Mr. Ai WeiWei is released.

Solidarity sustains community.