Speaking of literary binaries: further reflection on "Major Arcana" leads me to see it as a study in binary oppositions that nevertheless interpenetrate and interact with each other: art vs. life, male vs. female, boundaries vs. freedom, progressive vs. reactionary, virtual vs. real, aesthetic vs. commercial, all of it laid out on the "trinary" of past vs. present vs. future (the boundaries of which threaten to dissolve at certain points in the book).
Well hey: we live in the binary (digital) age, don't we? All those 0s and 1s. I guess what I'm saying is I look forward to re-reading and re-reviewing it when the Belt edition comes out - it will be interesting to see what impressions of it I have then.
I have the giant two volume Kenner/Davenport letters staring at me rn next to a book on Ming China, and the last time I read Harold Bloom I felt like someone was playing a prank on me, so I guess you could say I've chosen a side. To give it its due, that school of modernism at its best gives me this almost psychedelic sense of awareness; I step outside and every leaf on every tree seems charged with beauty and meaning and I feel a sense of awe at being part of this greater consciousness. Because it is situated *in* the world and in history it makes me want to go out into the world and do things, spend time in nature, read as widely as I can, travel, talk to strangers etc.
(Of course, my imaginary interlocutor argues, maybe mapping the interior of the self a la Stevens is the real work and this stuff is all just a temporary high, a flashy manic phase. But what are you gonna do.)
I definitely agree about the "research high" that style of modernism conveys, and nobody was better among critics than Davenport at recreating that in his analyses. I think I like novels more than poems—to put it bluntly!—because novels map the interior *and* exterior at the same time, as a matter of course, almost as a condition of the form, thus resolving the dilemma. (And thus my choice of both Flaubert and Joyce over both Pound and Stevens.)
I don't have the kind of relationship with Gaiman that you do, but one always got the sense that he was "a shark", if not exactly in *that* sense. (He got mini-cancelled during covid for abandoning his then-wife and children in New Zealand iirc, but that's been memoryholed, perhaps because Amanda Palmer is herself a contentious figure) Moore and Morrison always seemed more authentic if only because they made no effort to hide that they're extreme people, which is a juvenile take but one which probably contains some glimmer of truth. You're probably right about it being too close to call that prediction in the long run. The cultural tea leaves are particularly hard to read right now, things could go several ways. I'm sure you'd know more about astrology than I do, but I'd also keep in mind what John Keel said, that the phenomenon loves to string people along, feeding them prophecies and then leaving them on hillsides waiting for the world to end, looking like fools!
Yes, I always found strange his insistence on "demystifying" the act of writing, saying he was just a normal hard-working unassuming person. But I like writers who do magical rituals and get abducted by aliens!
On the tea leaves, it's funny, while the libs are sounding the alarm about Project 2025, the Bannonites and the theocons are both freaking out that Trump just cut them loose.
Don't worry, I take prophecy very lightly! I keep the line from The Invisibles in mind: "Try to remember, it's only a game."
An honour to be quoted by name, John! And in the shadow of Independence Day, you even did me the magnanimous courtesy of keeping my regional spelling. As Kendrick humiliates the character of Drake, family secrets devastate the reputation of Alice*, and our government liquidates the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be... at minimum, left alone and alive, we Canucks need every small mercy we can get. Also, wonderful essay, as always!
*This, by the way, is why I've been pulling my hair out about her reputation for years now—she's exactly how you describe Gaiman: a shark. Her work from the collection titled... wait for it... "Open Secrets" onward is as gothic as Faulkner, albeit in a dull, pharisaical, and anti-modernist register, oftentimes used purposefully to obfuscate evil, much like the wicked country from whence she hailed!
Thank you! Condolences on your national disrepair, not that things are going so well down here either. A troll on social media, commenting ironically on the allure of scandal, wrote something like, "I'm finally interested in reading Alice Munro now." While I don't wish to be so monstrous as to echo that jest, Joyce Carol Oates's much-despised remarks to the effect that these revelations make the work more interesting rather than less is an accurate description of how these things have tended to go in literary history. Your remarks suggest as much—who wouldn't want to read someone "as gothic as Faulkner"?
Man, how could anyone not cherish her essayistic willingness to tweet the way she does, whether the observations be baffling, banal, or brilliant? I think we need to update that old Vidal quip for the contemporary age: the three most exciting words on the English internet are Joyce Carol Oates. (That, or the name of the once and future king whose royal house she can't even bring herself to dignify: Donald John Tr*mp.)
We need a YA author to write an enemies-to-lovers romance where she becomes his fourth wife and he becomes her third husband. The 12 novels (not including pseudonymous murder mysteries) she writes during her four years in the White House will revivify American literature for the 21st century and make gerontocracy great again.
Speaking of literary binaries: further reflection on "Major Arcana" leads me to see it as a study in binary oppositions that nevertheless interpenetrate and interact with each other: art vs. life, male vs. female, boundaries vs. freedom, progressive vs. reactionary, virtual vs. real, aesthetic vs. commercial, all of it laid out on the "trinary" of past vs. present vs. future (the boundaries of which threaten to dissolve at certain points in the book).
Well hey: we live in the binary (digital) age, don't we? All those 0s and 1s. I guess what I'm saying is I look forward to re-reading and re-reviewing it when the Belt edition comes out - it will be interesting to see what impressions of it I have then.
Thank you for that perspective—I never conceptualized that way, but it fits.
I have the giant two volume Kenner/Davenport letters staring at me rn next to a book on Ming China, and the last time I read Harold Bloom I felt like someone was playing a prank on me, so I guess you could say I've chosen a side. To give it its due, that school of modernism at its best gives me this almost psychedelic sense of awareness; I step outside and every leaf on every tree seems charged with beauty and meaning and I feel a sense of awe at being part of this greater consciousness. Because it is situated *in* the world and in history it makes me want to go out into the world and do things, spend time in nature, read as widely as I can, travel, talk to strangers etc.
(Of course, my imaginary interlocutor argues, maybe mapping the interior of the self a la Stevens is the real work and this stuff is all just a temporary high, a flashy manic phase. But what are you gonna do.)
I definitely agree about the "research high" that style of modernism conveys, and nobody was better among critics than Davenport at recreating that in his analyses. I think I like novels more than poems—to put it bluntly!—because novels map the interior *and* exterior at the same time, as a matter of course, almost as a condition of the form, thus resolving the dilemma. (And thus my choice of both Flaubert and Joyce over both Pound and Stevens.)
I don't have the kind of relationship with Gaiman that you do, but one always got the sense that he was "a shark", if not exactly in *that* sense. (He got mini-cancelled during covid for abandoning his then-wife and children in New Zealand iirc, but that's been memoryholed, perhaps because Amanda Palmer is herself a contentious figure) Moore and Morrison always seemed more authentic if only because they made no effort to hide that they're extreme people, which is a juvenile take but one which probably contains some glimmer of truth. You're probably right about it being too close to call that prediction in the long run. The cultural tea leaves are particularly hard to read right now, things could go several ways. I'm sure you'd know more about astrology than I do, but I'd also keep in mind what John Keel said, that the phenomenon loves to string people along, feeding them prophecies and then leaving them on hillsides waiting for the world to end, looking like fools!
Yes, I always found strange his insistence on "demystifying" the act of writing, saying he was just a normal hard-working unassuming person. But I like writers who do magical rituals and get abducted by aliens!
On the tea leaves, it's funny, while the libs are sounding the alarm about Project 2025, the Bannonites and the theocons are both freaking out that Trump just cut them loose.
Don't worry, I take prophecy very lightly! I keep the line from The Invisibles in mind: "Try to remember, it's only a game."
An honour to be quoted by name, John! And in the shadow of Independence Day, you even did me the magnanimous courtesy of keeping my regional spelling. As Kendrick humiliates the character of Drake, family secrets devastate the reputation of Alice*, and our government liquidates the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be... at minimum, left alone and alive, we Canucks need every small mercy we can get. Also, wonderful essay, as always!
*This, by the way, is why I've been pulling my hair out about her reputation for years now—she's exactly how you describe Gaiman: a shark. Her work from the collection titled... wait for it... "Open Secrets" onward is as gothic as Faulkner, albeit in a dull, pharisaical, and anti-modernist register, oftentimes used purposefully to obfuscate evil, much like the wicked country from whence she hailed!
Thank you! Condolences on your national disrepair, not that things are going so well down here either. A troll on social media, commenting ironically on the allure of scandal, wrote something like, "I'm finally interested in reading Alice Munro now." While I don't wish to be so monstrous as to echo that jest, Joyce Carol Oates's much-despised remarks to the effect that these revelations make the work more interesting rather than less is an accurate description of how these things have tended to go in literary history. Your remarks suggest as much—who wouldn't want to read someone "as gothic as Faulkner"?
Man, how could anyone not cherish her essayistic willingness to tweet the way she does, whether the observations be baffling, banal, or brilliant? I think we need to update that old Vidal quip for the contemporary age: the three most exciting words on the English internet are Joyce Carol Oates. (That, or the name of the once and future king whose royal house she can't even bring herself to dignify: Donald John Tr*mp.)
We need a YA author to write an enemies-to-lovers romance where she becomes his fourth wife and he becomes her third husband. The 12 novels (not including pseudonymous murder mysteries) she writes during her four years in the White House will revivify American literature for the 21st century and make gerontocracy great again.
No one does footnotes better than John Pistelli.
Thank you!