Comments on: Oblivion http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/oblivion/ falling indelibly into the past Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:20:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Planned Obsolescence » Blog Archive » In Memoriam http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/oblivion/comment-page-1/#comment-4921 Planned Obsolescence » Blog Archive » In Memoriam Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:57:33 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=683#comment-4921 [...] out of the certainty that it would have pained him far more to hear it than not. As I wrote several years back, a significant percentage of my collegial relationship with Dave was founded on not-saying, on the [...] [...] out of the certainty that it would have pained him far more to hear it than not. As I wrote several years back, a significant percentage of my collegial relationship with Dave was founded on not-saying, on the [...]

]]> By: roger http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/oblivion/comment-page-1/#comment-1483 roger Sat, 07 Aug 2004 03:01:05 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=683#comment-1483 <p>I must respectfully disagree about Oblivion. I loved IJ, and the essays. But the goodness of IJ was certainly not dependent on the “neat ideas” in it - the film, for instance, that you watch until you die. Those are nice, but they are secondary to the life of the book, which is the language and the characters—who are entirely palpable in their language spheres. Oblivion is almost entirely written in the same infinitely recursive, smart grad school style. The one story that breathed was the George Saunder’s influenced Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Otherwise, the mannerisms seem (like the black widow spiders in that story) to have wholly taken over a number of stories that, pared down, are often nothing more than sub-Thurbian New Yorker sketches—albeith with scatology thrown in. That a book can be written in such a way that the language seems, at first, opaque to the reader doesn’t bother me—I’m a big fan of J.R. But these stories lack Wallace’s self adminstered antidote to his own intelligence—his ability to imitate other voices. Intelligence alone is merely a multiple choice test. And who wants to read one of them—or three hundred pages of them? </p> I must respectfully disagree about Oblivion. I loved IJ, and the essays. But the goodness of IJ was certainly not dependent on the “neat ideas” in it – the film, for instance, that you watch until you die. Those are nice, but they are secondary to the life of the book, which is the language and the characters—who are entirely palpable in their language spheres. Oblivion is almost entirely written in the same infinitely recursive, smart grad school style. The one story that breathed was the George Saunder’s influenced Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Otherwise, the mannerisms seem (like the black widow spiders in that story) to have wholly taken over a number of stories that, pared down, are often nothing more than sub-Thurbian New Yorker sketches—albeith with scatology thrown in. That a book can be written in such a way that the language seems, at first, opaque to the reader doesn’t bother me—I’m a big fan of J.R. But these stories lack Wallace’s self adminstered antidote to his own intelligence—his ability to imitate other voices. Intelligence alone is merely a multiple choice test. And who wants to read one of them—or three hundred pages of them?

]]> By: Rory http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/oblivion/comment-page-1/#comment-1482 Rory Sun, 04 Jul 2004 12:13:39 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=683#comment-1482 <p>On your last point: FWIW, I’ve read more KF than DFW. That Big Novel of his is too darned big… (but one day, one day). </p> On your last point: FWIW, I’ve read more KF than DFW. That Big Novel of his is too darned big… (but one day, one day).

]]> By: Francois Lachance http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/oblivion/comment-page-1/#comment-1481 Francois Lachance Fri, 02 Jul 2004 13:41:13 +0000 http://www.new.plannedobsolescence.net/?p=683#comment-1481 <p>Glad to have KF back in fine form (anonymously with little reax)and happy to anticipate further returns (with big public reaction). </p> <p> Re. Miller’s review. That “merely” appears in a sentence where the reviewer is switching from “"David Wallace"” the entity in the fictional world to “Wallace” the author [not Wallace as author function]. Miller is baiting the reader and caught perhaps on her own hook. The adverb “merely” is indeed undermined by the verb “suggests” that precedes the clause. “This, of course, suggests that all of ‘Good Old Neon’ is merely Wallace’s solpistic effort to attribute his own miseries to a man who might have killed himself for entirely different reasons.” The argument seems to proceed along the lines: Wallace fails; fiction succeeds. Intriguing, if I am not myself, my identity cannot be stolen. Even if my identity could be stolen and the self I ennunciate could coincide with the ennunciated self, there is still no guarantee that identity determines the stories that unfold. There is a social contract at play where the game of fakery is at stake. Who I appear to be is not who I am and because of this who I appear to be is not deterministic of the performative responses of my interlocutors who remember the reserve of who I am and willing to be surprised. If the person before me has a history, they are not “finished”, they are not “perfected”, they can evolve or devolve. I wonder if the trope of fakery in American literature has travelled from agents to persons: from secret agents to secret persons and how this might be related to the deployment of various phases of technologies of communication. If so, I am willing to argue that there may be another phase soon where the screen effect comes into play and the dream of control meets the limits of the agency of control : talking about X is not the same as talking to X—X as an individual can control access to X but only as a member of a collective can X influence the social discourse that sets the rules of how talk about is handled. I think the key is “devlove”. In societies where one can imagine senility as a condition that will not by-pass one _and_ one can imagine that a community of care will be at work, there is less fuss about the “about” because the to and from is observed and thus reverberates on the about. That is KF doing an interview with David Wallace need not privilege the voice of the author, it can provide a model of dialogue between cultural workers. That’s a dare to mention. </p> Glad to have KF back in fine form (anonymously with little reax)and happy to anticipate further returns (with big public reaction).

Re. Miller’s review. That “merely” appears in a sentence where the reviewer is switching from “”David Wallace”” the entity in the fictional world to “Wallace” the author [not Wallace as author function]. Miller is baiting the reader and caught perhaps on her own hook. The adverb “merely” is indeed undermined by the verb “suggests” that precedes the clause. “This, of course, suggests that all of ‘Good Old Neon’ is merely Wallace’s solpistic effort to attribute his own miseries to a man who might have killed himself for entirely different reasons.” The argument seems to proceed along the lines: Wallace fails; fiction succeeds. Intriguing, if I am not myself, my identity cannot be stolen. Even if my identity could be stolen and the self I ennunciate could coincide with the ennunciated self, there is still no guarantee that identity determines the stories that unfold. There is a social contract at play where the game of fakery is at stake. Who I appear to be is not who I am and because of this who I appear to be is not deterministic of the performative responses of my interlocutors who remember the reserve of who I am and willing to be surprised. If the person before me has a history, they are not “finished”, they are not “perfected”, they can evolve or devolve. I wonder if the trope of fakery in American literature has travelled from agents to persons: from secret agents to secret persons and how this might be related to the deployment of various phases of technologies of communication. If so, I am willing to argue that there may be another phase soon where the screen effect comes into play and the dream of control meets the limits of the agency of control : talking about X is not the same as talking to X—X as an individual can control access to X but only as a member of a collective can X influence the social discourse that sets the rules of how talk about is handled. I think the key is “devlove”. In societies where one can imagine senility as a condition that will not by-pass one _and_ one can imagine that a community of care will be at work, there is less fuss about the “about” because the to and from is observed and thus reverberates on the about. That is KF doing an interview with David Wallace need not privilege the voice of the author, it can provide a model of dialogue between cultural workers. That’s a dare to mention.

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