Borges and I

Hey all,

Here's a link to the Borges story that we referenced in class Tuesday that was not in our reading:

Borges and I: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/BorgesandI.pdf

My fav pomo story

Hey all,

I thought I'd post my favorite pomo short story to the blog, since it's available online. It's called

"This is the title of this story, which is also found several times in the story itself"

For the Faint of Heart

Saturday night and I'm hanging out on the pomo blog...I suppose that makes me either an incurable geek or an anxiety-ridden grad student...Be that as it may, I really wanted to call on (or, in support group lingo, reach out to) other uncreative people who want to talk, exchange thoughts, or just vent about the Creative Paper (yep, that's a capital C for me.) My ideas have been variegated enough to include conspiracy theories involving jam, late-night calls coinciding at an answering service, and a board game that requires participants to go to jail and read "Crab Nebula."

Any thoughts?

Electronic Documents, again

Here are some links to the readings outside Dr. Orr's door:

Barthes: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/BarthesWorktoText.pdf

Nabokov: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/NabokovSigns.pdf

Borges: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/BorgesLabyrinths.pdf

Cortazar: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/Cortazar.pdf

woefully remiss in the posting, the posting

It's blog update time, so I thought I'd say how much I enjoyed the discussion tonight on Didion - fruitful and fraught with tension.  (Mmmm... I could eat words up.)

And I wanted to show everyone the glory that is Joan Didion, in her younger days:



Isn't she gorgeous?  And a writer of gorgeous prose.

It's all too much for a Tuesday night, so I wish you all the best.

How an allusion is possible

I'm not a big blogger, but I wanted to show my solidarity and THANK GORDON for the digital version of our reading. THANK YOU, GORDON!!!! I guess I should include some thoughtful content here, too. Dr. Orr asks how an allusion is possible:

When reading this allusion-thick stuff (I am thinking more Pynchon than Didion), I realize 1)how fun and rewarding allusion is 2) how potentially alienating allusion is because of 3) how much allusion depends upon the reader.  I like the work allusion makes me do. I like writers who assume I read. Other people don't like it at all...

Also, I think that with the internet and the possibility of hypertext, allusion is possible in a new, reader-passive, less alienating (but more text-intrusive) way.  I imagine novels full of blue, underlined text.  When we read Balzac, we complain "he spent 4 pages describing one room!" Maybe one day we'll read something and say "It took me a day to finish a page because of all the hyper-allusions (or allusive links, or something...)" I imagine that kind of writing irritating the heck out of me.  But then, I do it anyway on my own--I stop and search things...

Electronic Documents

For those who might have trouble getting to Dr. Orr's office to copy the White Album piece, I have taken the liberty of scanning it at the Digital Media Lab in the library. A pdf of the piece can be found at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/WhiteAlbum.pdf

Also, I scanned in some relevent pages from Neitzsche's On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense to illuminate Dan's comments from Tuesday. The pdf can be found at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~gmsulliv/TruthLie.pdf
EDIT: this text was taken from Walter Kaufmann's The Portable Nietzsche published by Viking

Gordon

re: gordon's comment on beckett

I was able to track down the (hilarious) Onion article featuring Samuel Beckett.

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

Have fun!

because blogging is silly...

... I took the liberty of putting Dr. Orr's message in plain sight.  sorry you all had to see that Foucault post again...--lsmith


Dear Postmodern Space Journeyers,


Thank you for the brilliant and funny posts so far! I think it's
wonderful that we're posting to Postmodernism, especially after
re-reading Hassan.


I know I can't count on everyone reading this blog before this
evening, but if you check in, please be considering which writer you
might want to put your name next to in terms of leading discussion.


A thought to consider: Is postmodernism, in part, about creating
such a profusion of allusion (in "literature" and "criticism") that we
fall into weeping and find some residue of humanity, just at the moment
that we are also reminded of how far we cannot go? Does it matter if
the allusions even have a target source? (How) Do allusions exist?


See you this evening,


Elaine Orr

the beginning is the end is the beginning

 I'm posting this entry not because I have anything astonishing to say but because there needs to be an entry.  So here it is.  As soon as someone else has something to say, I'll get rid of this vapid old number.

Let's play a game: Name the PoMo Person.