Reading DeLillo's Cosmopolis Through Ayn Rand

[seymourblogger]

I HATE THIS FUGGIN TOSHIBA!

I had a long thought out response to you Michael and now it's gone.

Post evey few paragraphs with the message, preceeding, "editing." Avoid using the spell checker until last.

-Brant

That's "preceding" Brant.

A rare chance for me to bitterly enjoy a minor skill which modern tech has rendered useless.

Carol

lifelong superb speller

Thanks I know it was preceding not preceeding, Honestly, it was a typo, honestly, I swear it was. It's proceeding isn't it? OMG Saussurian flux moves so fast these days.

[seymourblogger]

I HATE THIS FUGGIN TOSHIBA!

I had a long thought out response to you Michael and now it's gone.

Post evey few paragraphs with the message, preceeding, "editing." Avoid using the spell checker until last.

-Brant

I was really lucky as I was using google chrome and it saved it. My problem was I couldn't find the damn thing as I don't know the software yet. It does protect you from your own mistakes tho doesn't it.

[caroljane]

"The Leith police dismisseth us".

[seymourblogger]

I HATE THIS FUGGIN TOSHIBA!

I had a long thought out response to you Michael and now it's gone.

Post evey few paragraphs with the message, preceeding, "editing." Avoid using the spell checker until last.

-Brant

That's "preceding" Brant.

A rare chance for me to bitterly enjoy a minor skill which modern tech has rendered useless.

Carol

lifelong superb speller

Ah Carol that's such a wonderful Baudrillardian statement. The more intricate the tech, the more vulnerable it is to glitches. It is pushed to its limits and crashes. Our defense system on 9-11,eh.

[ThatGuy]

Seymourblogger: "Somehow I don't think you wanted this."

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I was interested in seeing how you reconciled your theories with that passage, since you say Rand's fiction is Nietzschean in nature (versus her non-fiction). (As far as your claims, while I'm not versed in Foucault, Baudrillard, or DeLillo, the ideas I recognize from the crossover of quantum theory into artistic theories, as described in ART AND PHYSICS: PARALLEL VISIONS IN SPACE, TIME, AND LIGHT by Leonard Shlain. The Rand quote about circles and lines goes against the postmodern trends in art of compression and non-linearity, and the book shows how art in general progressed as scientific theories progressed, so, even if one disagrees with postmodernism, the trend itself can't be ignored.

When you say that we are "no longer in linear time," are you speaking of the effect of quantum physics on thought? Is that related to your claims about other's responses to you being of 'the dialectic?" Your writing style and train of thought seems to be similar to the "quantum" influence in art, manifested as "compression", overlaying many trains of thought on top of each other ("read through,"). (Easier to convey in visual art, but harder to translate in writing, since writing is more "linear" by nature...)

It's curious that you say Rand was rebelling against Nietzsche, then, in ATLAS, I'm assuming, then, that the influence is "subterranean," in your view? (Since we're there, Nietzsche is much more present in FOUNTAINHEAD than in ATLAS...Toohey quotes Nietzsche, and Merrill argued that Wynand was Nietzschean, while Roark was Rand moving away from Nietzsche, towards Objectivism...are you saying that, instead of Nietzsche being excised, he was merely supressed, or repressed, and manifested as a "shadow?"

[Brant Gaede]

I HATE THIS FUGGIN TOSHIBA!

I had a long thought out response to you Michael and now it's gone.

Post evey few paragraphs with the message, preceeding, "editing." Avoid using the spell checker until last.

-Brant

That's "preceding" Brant.

A rare chance for me to bitterly enjoy a minor skill which modern tech has rendered useless.

Carol

lifelong superb speller

That's not true. Modern tech comes way up short. That's why so many modern books edited by computers are full of mistakes.

--Brant

crummy speller

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is as far as I got with it. First, it is linear...

And this is as far as I got with your post.

I ain't gonna read it either.

Sorry.

Gotta play fair or I don't play.

This isn't thin skin. I don't mind someone disliking my work. (Well, I do like we all do, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about taking someone seriously. People don't have to like my work for me to take them seriously.)

But blind prejudice?

To hell with that. I've got work to do.

I can't take you seriously, so I just don't feel like wasting my time.

Enjoy the forum.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Sorta like Phil.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

You're right.

Here I'm busting my ass trying to understand this person and think I'm going to get some intellectual stimulation and challenge, and all it is at root is vanity.

A complicated way for person to look down her nose at others.

One day I'll learn...

Man, I dislike snootiness...

Michael

[caroljane]

Sorta like Phil.

--Brant

And sorta like Roark.

Wanna shoot some hoops?

[caroljane]

Brant,

You're right.

Here I'm busting my ass trying to understand this person and think I'm going to get some intellectual stimulation and challenge, and all it is at root is vanity.

A complicated way for person to look down her nose at others.

One day I'll learn...

Man, I dislike snootiness...

Michael

No, one day she'll learn. She seems to have been practicing a long time, one day she'll get it right.

[Brant Gaede]

Sorta like Phil.

--Brant

And sorta like Roark.

Wanna shoot some hoops?

My arms are too short to box with you.

--Brant

[caroljane]

Sorta like Phil.

--Brant

Yes, Seymour is sorta like Phil.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

You're right.

Here I'm busting my ass trying to understand this person and think I'm going to get some intellectual stimulation and challenge, and all it is at root is vanity.

A complicated way for person to look down her nose at others.

One day I'll learn...

Man, I dislike snootiness...

Michael

Like I said at the beginning: intellectual molasses.

--Brant

How I Got There--a novel, used to be called a memoir

[caroljane]

Sorta like Phil.

--Brant

And sorta like Roark.

Wanna shoot some hoops?

My arms are too short to box with you.

--Brant

that's ok, my only basketball skill was Standing on Guard anyway. When guards were required to shoot at the basket I was toast.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... used to be called a memoir

Brant,

Speaking of memoirs, I have a working title for one I intend to write (after my Internet business takes off). It is called The Siren's Song and the Dog Whistle.

I have always heard the Siren's song calling me to great beauty (like what I heard in Rand, for instance) and I have always broken myself on the rocks after jumping overboard. As to the Dog Whistle, this is that whistle that normal people can't hear but dogs do. I'm that way with the crazies. Sometimes we hear the same tune.

I'm just getting impatient as I get older.

The problem with crazy people is that, well, they're crazy.

Michael

[seymourblogger]

I guess I should have sugar coated it.

There's no point in trying to understand what I'm writing. Just read Foucault. He says it all much better than I ever could.

I'm sorry I don't like your writing. What's wrong with that? Rothbard said that Rand was furious when Barbara Branden was criticized in her writing group. Well, maybe if she had listened her book on Rand would have been better. I remember in an interview on his movie How To Be Robert Pattinson talked about his character Art, who was a lousy guitar player but wanted to get up at an open mike and perform. And then he said there were always people like that at open mikes, who couldn't play, but wanted to perform.

I bet you wouldn't like my writing either. But if you said so, I wouldn't blow you off. I'm not so fond of my own writing either.

[william.scherk]

Aside from that smartass Freudian below.....

If you are referring to me, smartass is okay, but I prefer uomo morde.

Please don't get me wrong. I am enjoying your posts. I appreciate Deleuze as I enjoy the products of our local chocolatier. Of any great French intellectual of the late 20th century, I choose Barthes above all. He was a brilliant writer and an honest human being, and he did not self-intoxicate as did the megalomaniac Lacan or the faux-Magus Derrida (not to mention the fraud Judith Butler and her monks and devotees).

I enjoy your posts as I might enjoy an enormous cake fussed and plastered and splendid, or a pillow full of candy-floss: a confection, sometimes absorbed as a visual/mental delight, but otherwise impractical as a food. You have fun, and clearly relish your devotions to post-modernism. And reading Rand through other writers is a engaging pursuit. You seem to be good at it, and find great fellowship with others of similar bent. All to the good, and bless you for following your intellectual tastes unrestrained by convention or by the responses of rubes and smartasses.

That said, I am no Freudian. I loathe Freud and consider him a charlatan. The damage Freudianism has done to psychotherapy (even without Lacan's demented elaborations) is hard to estimate. Freud led directly to McMartin Dayschool, Renee Frederickson, E Sue Blume, Judith Peterson, Bennett Braun, and others even more demented. You no doubt are familiar with the last fifteen years of scholarship (from Webster to Esterson by way of Crews). I am on that boat ...

If, of course, you are not referring to me, I scurry away in shame.

[seymourblogger]

If, of course, you are not referring to me, I scurry away in shame.

Scurry away in shame. It was selene. I have kept up with none of the psychoanalytic literature. I studied with the Spotnitzian school in NYC. I got tired of addicts and alcoholics. An analyst has a career goal of being an analyst's analyst. To be an analyst for those who want to do a training analysis. Very political. Not me as you can see.

[Brant Gaede]

There's no point in trying to understand what I'm writing.

We understand this? Do you? I understand you're upset but all you need do is regroup. If what you say is of interest to me I'll reply and honestly try to deal with it. But your grand scheme of things I can't get my brain around, nor do I see the need or experience the desire to. It has to do with the trade of things. You offer. I offer. We make a deal. We exchange ideas. But your ideas are all your ideas. No interest in our ideas. Objectivism is crap. This is Objectivist Living. This is where you are. Crap city. Your sword has sundered Rand the novelist from Rand the philosopher except as it's in her novels. You have denied her permission to change and grow long before she stopped changing and growing. As a novelist, not always right. As a philosopher, not always right. As a human being, not always right. But always Ayn Rand. I know this is linear and linear isn't where you are, but to make that work you have not yet really begun. I suggest at least two great novels then shut up. Rand's fault was she kept talking. I take her as she was and I take her as a whole. She had problems, but she had a life. You're not entitled to chop her up.

--Brant

[seymourblogger]

We understand this? Do you? I can understand you're upset but all you need do is regroup. If what you say is of interest to me I'll reply and honestly try to deal with it. But your grand scheme of things I can't get my brain around, nor do I see the need or experience the desire to. It has to do with the trade of things. You offer. I offer. We make a deal. We exchange ideas. But your ideas are all your ideas. No interest in our ideas. Objectivism is crap. This is Objectivist Living. This is where you are. Crap city. Your sword has sundered Rand the novelist from Rand the philosopher except as it's in her novels. You have denied her permission to change and grow long before she stopped changing and growing. As a novelist, not always right. As a philosopher, not always right. As a human being, not always right. But always Ayn Rand. I know this is linear and linear isn't where you are, but to make that work you have not yet really begun. I suggest at least two great novels then shut up. Rand's fault was she kept talking. I take her as she was and I take her as a whole. She had problems, but she had a life. You're not entitled to chop her up.

--Brant

What the problem is is that I am not responding in the Dominating Discourse here. Have you any idea how many decades and studying it took me to figure that one simple little thing out?

If I respond to you in your Discourse, then I have to enter a Discourse that will be ping pong for as many years as I stay here or am allowed to stay.

On my blogs I am trying to say it in a way that anyone, educated or not, knowledgeable or not, can understand post modern thinking. I simply cannot wade through the same stuff all over again here. I cannot. If you want to really know what I am saying, then go read my blogs. If not that's OK too. But I cannot get involved in dialectical argumentation with you here. It's not that I won't, but that I can't.

This medium won't allow me to say what I want to say, the way I want to say it. Unless I would start pasting all my work over here with images, links, etc. It's too huge a task for me to even think about and I wouldn't be able to continue where I am now. Rand is the philosopher she always wanted to be. She is more radical than she even dreamed of being. That's where I am with her.

Her fiction. Her non-fiction is just a rationalization for her neuroses. Why should I pretend differently just so you won't get upset? I'm sorry you can't keep up with me, nor do you want to learn from me. I encounter it all the time. Nothing new here. Fortunately there are some here that do understand me. Happiness.

[seymourblogger]

But your grand scheme of things I can't get my brain around, nor do I see the need or experience the desire to.

I don't wonder you can't get your brain around it. I can't get my own brain around it. It keeps expanding and I keep running to keep up with it. I just found Babette Babich last week and all her work on Nietzsche. It's new. I want to understand what she is saying because I know it is valuable. Do you know how much time and work just that piece is going to be? And you want me to dialogue with people here who just don't have the background to understand this. Do you think I got it by magic? Or by someone giving me sound bites? Or arguing with someone on the internet?

That's not how you learn something. It's how people think they learn something.

[william.scherk]

Someone sent me this quote, suggesting that the unnamed people at the unnamed list are we the living here.

"Right now I am getting into all this with the Randian Objectivists and they are howling mad. I have some cred there as I took Barbara Branden's lectures on Objectivism in 1960 in Philadelphia for two years before going off to grad school in psychology, and on to other things.

They are howling mad? Sounds awful.

Edited January 29, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I just checked over at Solo Passion (her last stop before coming here). The SLOPPERS didn't get mad. She outright baited them saying things like their thinking is muddled and so forth and nary a peep. A few chuckled, but that's all. They didn't even cuss her and they'll cuss anything. Michael Newberry showed up and bantered some, but soon got bored and left the discussion.

A couple of SLOPPERS snarled at each other, which is normal, but I didn't see anything snarled at her.

Then several threads by her with no comments but her own. The forlorn silence of one hand clapping.

(EDIT: I just rechecked because something seemed off in my mind. I see that I was discussing only her blog on SLOP. She has also made some comments in other threads, but I'm not up for digging. The few things I did see generally follow the spirit I gave above. Maybe there exists a snarl or two at her, but I haven't seen it.)

Now she's here pretending to fight the good fight and pretending the angry hoards are coming at her with torches and pitchforks.

I'm sorry she's so lonely. And we are not what she wants us to be.

This makes me feel sad and wistful. Her life and dreams are slipping away and nobody cares.

She makes me think about Nick Otani.

Michael

[caroljane]

William,

I just checked over at Solo Passion (her last stop before coming here). The SLOPPERS didn't get mad. She outright baited them saying things like their thinking is muddled and so forth and nary a peep. A few chuckled, but that's all. They didn't even cuss her and they'll cuss anything. Michael Newberry showed up and bantered some, but soon got bored and left the discussion.

A couple of SLOPPERS snarled at each other, which is normal, but I didn't see anything snarled at her.

Then several threads by her with no comments but her own. The forlorn silence of one hand clapping.

(EDIT: I just rechecked because something seemed off in my mind. I see that I was discussing only her blog on SLOP. She has also made some comments in other threads, but I'm not up for digging. The few things I did see generally follow the spirit I gave above. Maybe there exists a snarl or two at her, but I haven't seen it.)

Now she's here pretending to fight the good fight and pretending the angry hoards are coming at her with torches and pitchforks.

I'm sorry she's so lonely. And we are not what she wants us to be.

This makes me feel sad and wistful. Her life and dreams are slipping away and nobody cares.

She makes me think about Nick Otani.

Michael

I just looked over there - they have displayed her in a swimsuit as "Miss Pomowanker".

It's a form of howling I suppose.