This is cute. Former Gawker editor and recovering neurasthenic Emily Gould evidently took some literary theory courses, and she'd like you to see how smart she is in addition to feeling sorry for her: she's written an essay about how we should all stop blogging because the internet is, like, totally fascist. Since it seems to have been easy enough for her to do, I guess I can overlook the untidy detail that she, um, published it on the internet. Also? Being told to stop blogging by Emily Gould is like Robert Downey Jr. sitting you down for an intervention. Though the man has done some great work lately! Maybe Emily should take some notes? I am absolutely not calling anyone retarded.
Anyway, if you don't know her story, the deal is that she shared lots of personal details about her life and relationships in her own blog and in her Gawker posts, in true Stuff White People Like style, documenting the ensuing difficult breakup and writing a mea culpa for the Times. Now that some time has passed, she'd like to apply Walter Benjamin to the situation, using her own experience as a microcosm of the larger digital alienation at work in our culture. And actually, awesome for Emily Gould! She's come a long way since being visibly reduced to a stammering college freshman on CNN by Jimmy Kimmel.
It would just be so much easier to take her seriously if she weren't misinterpreting Benjamin! Not in the it's-a-complicated-essay-and-she-missed-a-debatable-nuance way. In the reading-it-exactly-fucking-wrong way. According to her, Benjamin finds reproducibility of artistic images problematic because it "clears the way for fascism." Actually, the entire point of the essay is that reproducibility of the image detracts from its elements of aura, ritual, and mystery. We no longer feel awed or overwhelmed by the image, which Benjamin feels can help us resist fascist governments. Nor does Benjamin employ the term "simulacra," as in Emily's amusingly alliterative "simulacra of social connection, facsimiles of friendship." I think she's thinking of Baudrillard, which is an honest mistake since they are both taught in crit theory courses and do both begin with 'b'.
Okay, okay. The people who produce our current consumable culture are smart and educated and they're going to show it (today I was delighted/horrified to learn that "Gossip Girl" namedrops Thomas Pynchon in an episode from last season). And as the writers of Stuff White People Like will tell you, there's a well-documented history of privileged white girls using fascist movements as metaphors for their own personal tragedies. Ach, du, Emily, it's just that Benjamin really is relevant to your situation, in a far different way than you realize! The aestheticization of the everyday inevitably leads to an aestheticization of politics, which means, for Benjamin, that we begin to find war beautiful. It becomes our art, in a sense, and you're one of the biggest profiteers in the game. Not everybody can shame the world for its online soullessness while making a killing from it in print. At least we are assured that she does it honestly and wryly.
8/23/08
8/9/08
Happy thoughts, bitches.
It's been a busy week: my mom was in town and I almost destroyed my boss' website. I'm pretty sure these are unrelated incidents, and she and I had fun regardless - we explored the Natural History Museum and took the Metro-North to have a look around Bronxville/Sarah Lawrence, which is, I discovered, entirely made of gingerbread. We had an amazing dinner at Community Restaurant, eating sourdough bread with spring garlic confit at communal tables next to three opinionated and voluble gay Columbia students who may or may not have been talking about wanting to fellate Barack Obama. I got her to try Pinkberry and she got me to watch "The Mummy." We visited Times Square, ate lunch in Bryant Park and, once closer to home, ate the very best cupcakes on the Upper West Side.
Trouble is, now she's gone, and work has become a more highly evolved form of babysitting and there are some days when it's really hard not to answer the phone with, "Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam." If you, too, have constant unsupervised internet access at work and are missing your family who live across the country, here are some of the things that have been making my days a little sunnier:
George Orwell has a blog now.
Surrealist paintings and surrealistic painted Polaroids.
Penny Arcade's contribution to the ongoing iAppliance craze.
And Chris Onstad in the New Yorker Online yet again.
Trouble is, now she's gone, and work has become a more highly evolved form of babysitting and there are some days when it's really hard not to answer the phone with, "Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam." If you, too, have constant unsupervised internet access at work and are missing your family who live across the country, here are some of the things that have been making my days a little sunnier:
George Orwell has a blog now.
Surrealist paintings and surrealistic painted Polaroids.
Penny Arcade's contribution to the ongoing iAppliance craze.
And Chris Onstad in the New Yorker Online yet again.
8/4/08
Literature majors do it with dead white guys.
HFL's List of Literary Cocktails
a work in progress
"because alcoholism is just like writing: it's a disease."
The Billy Collins
Two shots each of four non-complementary liquors. Shake well and serve. Done correctly, the drink should (like the paradelle, the inspiration behind it), evoke both hilarity and déjà vu.
The Bukowski
Three parts vodka, one part lighter fluid, one raw egg. Serve in an ashtray and start a fist-fight.
The Dylan Thomas
25 shots of anything. Remember, you can only have this drink once.
The Emily Dickinson
Basically a Shirley Temple made in a to-go cup. The recipient must leave the gathering at once and drink the cocktail alone in her bedroom.
The Thomas Pynchon
To be made by the drinker, not the bartender. Receive a bottle of scotch and a one-way ticket to San Jose from a man on a streetcorner in a raincoat. Take the flight and be met at the airport by a mysterious and beautiful woman. Move into her apartment and cohabitate for sixteen months, until you realize that love cannot truly exist in the postmodern era. Move out and take one of her tumblers by mistake. Bring the tumbler to your first appointment with a new psychiatrist, as a symbol of the overwhelming impossibility of ever truly knowing anyone. Ask the doctor for two ice cubes and pour yourself a small glass. Do not, under any circumstances, drink it.
As has been mentioned this is a work in progress and might become a zine someday. There is just no way of knowing! Suggestions and contributions are always, always welcome.
a work in progress
"because alcoholism is just like writing: it's a disease."
The Billy Collins
Two shots each of four non-complementary liquors. Shake well and serve. Done correctly, the drink should (like the paradelle, the inspiration behind it), evoke both hilarity and déjà vu.
The Bukowski
Three parts vodka, one part lighter fluid, one raw egg. Serve in an ashtray and start a fist-fight.
The Dylan Thomas
25 shots of anything. Remember, you can only have this drink once.
The Emily Dickinson
Basically a Shirley Temple made in a to-go cup. The recipient must leave the gathering at once and drink the cocktail alone in her bedroom.
The Thomas Pynchon
To be made by the drinker, not the bartender. Receive a bottle of scotch and a one-way ticket to San Jose from a man on a streetcorner in a raincoat. Take the flight and be met at the airport by a mysterious and beautiful woman. Move into her apartment and cohabitate for sixteen months, until you realize that love cannot truly exist in the postmodern era. Move out and take one of her tumblers by mistake. Bring the tumbler to your first appointment with a new psychiatrist, as a symbol of the overwhelming impossibility of ever truly knowing anyone. Ask the doctor for two ice cubes and pour yourself a small glass. Do not, under any circumstances, drink it.
As has been mentioned this is a work in progress and might become a zine someday. There is just no way of knowing! Suggestions and contributions are always, always welcome.
8/1/08
"Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde?"
Well. That is the last time I share my idea for a blog post with another blogger before I write it. This is a sign, I'm sure: I have a blog now, and as I wrote a few posts back I have not been all that vigilant about caring for it, and if I do not shape up it will probably die of exposure. TLV has it right, I was offered an assistantship at Gainesville and seriously considered it for a week or so until I spoke to William Logan on the telephone. Whatever I might have thought of his poetry or criticism or teaching ability prior to that conversation became more or less immaterial afterward; the highlights included his excessive merriment over my GRE scores and shameless slandering of Derek Walcott. Reading his review of the new selected Frank O'Hara, written with all the taste and class of a disappointed and moderately talented Modernist, offered ample reassurance that I made the right move turning UF down.
So yes, it was delightful to see Frank O'Hara get a shout-out on the return of my favorite fictional advertising agency, though it's possible that I might have gotten a little too wasted beforehand to really take everything in. Whatever, though, it's more inappropriate not to watch "Mad Men" with a cocktail in hand, and as last Sunday marked the end of my first week at my new job a face-melting fizzy trifecta of Pimm's, Cointreau and dry ginger beer was just the thing.
Speaking of my new job, the first thing I'd like to address about my old one is that management types at Urban Outfitters are filthy, filthy liars. Do not work there. They will promise you 40 hours a week and give you 13. They will make you bring a doctor's note if you call in sick. Your co-workers will have names like 'Jazz' and 'Gigi' and they'll send you to nonexistent corners of the store to find fictional dresses and sweater sets. They will put you "on call" for closing shifts and make you spend half an hour off the clock dragging trash outside at 2 a.m. Do not work at Urban Outfitters if you can possibly avoid it. It would have been nice to use my discount once, though.
Now I work here, and my office has a view of the Empire State Building and it is indeed within walking distance of Madison Avenue, making my continued love affair with Sterling Cooper & co. all the more apt and enriching. The dress code is pretty casual, but I have to confess to a growing interest in up-dos and pencil skirts, even though no one drinks rye or smokes Luckies in the conference room. True, I may have called that prematurely. We'll see what week three has in store.
So yes, it was delightful to see Frank O'Hara get a shout-out on the return of my favorite fictional advertising agency, though it's possible that I might have gotten a little too wasted beforehand to really take everything in. Whatever, though, it's more inappropriate not to watch "Mad Men" with a cocktail in hand, and as last Sunday marked the end of my first week at my new job a face-melting fizzy trifecta of Pimm's, Cointreau and dry ginger beer was just the thing.
Speaking of my new job, the first thing I'd like to address about my old one is that management types at Urban Outfitters are filthy, filthy liars. Do not work there. They will promise you 40 hours a week and give you 13. They will make you bring a doctor's note if you call in sick. Your co-workers will have names like 'Jazz' and 'Gigi' and they'll send you to nonexistent corners of the store to find fictional dresses and sweater sets. They will put you "on call" for closing shifts and make you spend half an hour off the clock dragging trash outside at 2 a.m. Do not work at Urban Outfitters if you can possibly avoid it. It would have been nice to use my discount once, though.
Now I work here, and my office has a view of the Empire State Building and it is indeed within walking distance of Madison Avenue, making my continued love affair with Sterling Cooper & co. all the more apt and enriching. The dress code is pretty casual, but I have to confess to a growing interest in up-dos and pencil skirts, even though no one drinks rye or smokes Luckies in the conference room. True, I may have called that prematurely. We'll see what week three has in store.
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