caroljane Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 Nihilists!I am not a nihilist any more. I stated clearly when I first came on OL that I was a synaestho-fatalist. I used to be a synaeshtho-nihilist but all that destroying things was just too much work and I am not young anymore. I never saw the point anyway. Fatalism is much more comfortable and you get to keep your stuff more or less intact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George H. Smith Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Nihilists!Nihilism is for pussies. I am a post-post-modernist Phenomenological Peripatetic, who suffers from bouts of pre-Sartrean existentialism on occasion.Ghs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 At the risk of breathing life into what was supposed to be the death of the dominant discourse of this DeLillo-dominated thread (which, ironically, seems to have included Seymourblogger's birth from thin air, confusing parables, perplexing sermons, trial without due process from MSK, self-administered death/flouncing, and reemergence from her self-imposed tomb--she was gone for three days, I believe), I offer BR Meyer's nice little ditty about DeLillo's characters: "DeLillo's characters talk and act like the aliens in 3rd Rock From the Sun, which would be fine if we weren't supposed to accept them as dead-on satires of the way we live now."Lots of good eating in The Reader's Manifesto.David,That's actually a very good style review. I've only gone through half of it so far, but I like this B. R. Meyer guy. As I was scrolling down to see how much was left, the following paragraph jumped out at me. I'm giving it here (before finishing the article) because I'll probably be too interested in moving on later to bother.Like it or not, Meyer's article might be good, but what he's discussing is downright creepy. So I'll definitely want to move on.Also, his phrase "patronizing nonsense" jumped out at me --and I remembered this discussion--as I read the line (when he was discussing DeLillo comparing supermarkets to churches and wombs), "This sort of patronizing nonsense is typical of Consumerland writers..."The following says it all, though:At the 1999 National Book Awards ceremony Oprah Winfrey told of calling Toni Morrison to say that she had had to puzzle over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was "That, my dear, is called reading." Sorry, my dear Toni, but it's actually called bad writing. Great prose isn't always easy, but it's always lucid; no one of Oprah's intelligence ever had to wonder what Joseph Conrad was trying to say in a particular sentence. This didn't stop the talk-show host from quoting her friend's words with approval.There you have it. The illusion of profundity in pop culture: the con and the perplexed conned one. Then the conned one waking up and conning the public. Oprah may be many things, but she knows how to put over a good intellectual con when she sees it.I chuckled a bit as I read the Consumerland (DeLillo) part this article. I have been studying marketing for quite a while. I know how certain phrases and images and positioning are meant to appeal to the hypnotic underbelly of the mind. It catches you unaware through what Blair Warren calls "the Achilles heel of the mind" (which is our mind's inability to stop thinking). And the American public actually allows itself to be manipulated like this because the goodies being sold that way are just too tempting to refuse. Bluntly speaking, it feels good.Now along come these literary phony-balonies and identify this as the American consumer's superficiality. These pretentious blowhards are trying to make an art form out of the product of crowd manipulation without even thinking about the cause. In other words, their so-called art is an unintended consequence of Madison Avenue. And they don't have the brains to see it.They are just another version of the people they look down on, while the true propaganda puppet-masters pull their strings just as competently as they pull the strings of your average fast-food junkie or iPhone user.Well... enough.Believe it or not, I have to stop and go to the supermarket before it closes. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 As an added thought, I've tried to dig around a little about Baudrillard.All he does is talk--with relish--about the death and collapse and suicide, etc., of something he calls a system in a pose of self-congratulatory conceit.Does it ever get any better?Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George H. Smith Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 As an added thought, I've tried to dig around a little about Baudrillard.All he does is talk--with relish--about the death and collapse and suicide, etc., of something he calls a system in a pose of self-congratulatory conceit.Does it ever get any better?MichaelAs Baudrillard once said: "My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation but I'm working on the foundation."Oh, wait -- that's a quote from Marilyn Monroe. I always get those post-structuralist French philosophers mixed-up. Ghs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 As an added thought, I've tried to dig around a little about Baudrillard.All he does is talk--with relish--about the death and collapse and suicide, etc., of something he calls a system in a pose of self-congratulatory conceit.Does it ever get any better?MichaelNot with the French intellegentsia. With some of them "apres moi la deluge" is a recurrent trope. Of course, avant l'apres is usually spent contemplating apres comfortably in Versailles, or California. Not their job to build arks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Nihilists!Nihilism is for pussies. I am a post-post-modernist Phenomenological Peripatetic, who suffers from bouts of pre-Sartrean existentialism on occasion.GhsBy their mark ye shall know them. It is the number of the beast, 666.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Nihilists!Nihilism is for pussies. I am a post-post-modernist Phenomenological Peripatetic, who suffers from bouts of pre-Sartrean existentialism on occasion.GhsBy their mark ye shall know them. It is the number of the beast, 666.--Brant"One sweetly solemn thoughtComes to me o'er and o'er.."Hymn 666 (Phoebe Cary) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
9thdoctor Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Actually I do care about something. I wonder if the guy ever got his haircut and if it was to his satisfaction.Well, that's one of the problems with the story, isn't it? If you know anything about billionaires, you know that they don't go out to get haircuts. The barber comes to them. I believe it was Clinton who had a barber come to Air Force One to give him a haircut, and all the airplanes had to circle until it was done; no one was allowed to land while the President was on the plane. It was one of the minor scandals of the Clinton era. Of course Clinton isn't a billionaire, I just use this as an illustration. I've worked for some mega-wealthy people, and can tell you that not only do they get home or office service, but they're on a schedule, worked out well in advance. It's expensive, but these people don't rub elbows with no plebs. Or proles. Whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seymourblogger Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Actually I do care about something. I wonder if the guy ever got his haircut and if it was to his satisfaction.Well, that's one of the problems with the story, isn't it? If you know anything about billionaires, you know that they don't go out to get haircuts. The barber comes to them. I believe it was Clinton who had a barber come to Air Force One to give him a haircut, and all the airplanes had to circle until it was done; no one was allowed to land while the President was on the plane. It was one of the minor scandals of the Clinton era. Of course Clinton isn't a billionaire, I just use this as an illustration. I've worked for some mega-wealthy people, and can tell you that not only do they get home or office service, but they're on a schedule, worked out well in advance. It's expensive, but these people don't rub elbows with no plebs. Or proles. Whatever.You are reading it literally instead of through "floating signs" or at least through metaphors and/or symbols.http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Actually I do care about something. I wonder if the guy ever got his haircut and if it was to his satisfaction.Well, that's one of the problems with the story, isn't it? If you know anything about billionaires, you know that they don't go out to get haircuts. The barber comes to them. I believe it was Clinton who had a barber come to Air Force One to give him a haircut, and all the airplanes had to circle until it was done; no one was allowed to land while the President was on the plane. It was one of the minor scandals of the Clinton era. Of course Clinton isn't a billionaire, I just use this as an illustration. I've worked for some mega-wealthy people, and can tell you that not only do they get home or office service, but they're on a schedule, worked out well in advance. It's expensive, but these people don't rub elbows with no plebs. Or proles. Whatever.You are reading it literally instead of through "floating signs" or at least through metaphors and/or symbols.http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.comSilly boys. All this time you've been reading through prescription lenses! Floating signs and metaphors are a lot cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I read Cosmopolis maybe 5 years ago - nothing memorable or remarkable I thought, thoughI've found deLillo a good writer in the past. In fact, I'd forgotten about it.If only to see what the fuss is about - or how I could have missed any deep discourse -I've pulled it from the library, and will try again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PDS Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I read Cosmopolis maybe 5 years ago - nothing memorable or remarkable I thought, thoughI've found deLillo a good writer in the past. In fact, I'd forgotten about it.If only to see what the fuss is about - or how I could have missed any deep discourse -I've pulled it from the library, and will try again.If you must.But don't forget one of life's most important reminders: your days on Earth are finite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seymourblogger Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 I read Cosmopolis maybe 5 years ago - nothing memorable or remarkable I thought, thoughI've found deLillo a good writer in the past. In fact, I'd forgotten about it.If only to see what the fuss is about - or how I could have missed any deep discourse -I've pulled it from the library, and will try again. I also read it in 03 I think. OMG I can't remember exactly. My mind is disintegrating. Anyway I didn't think anymore about it either. 6 years later I read Foucault and the Baudrillard and reading Cosmopolis through the two philosophers, well, it is a different book entirely for me. Vija Kinski is pure Baudrillard.Let me know what you think. But it might be better if you go to my blog on it:: http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com as I have posted over 60 different ways of reading it. DeLillo is following Nietzsche's demand about reading Nietzsche. Words written in blood are not to be read but to be learnt by heart. Rand read Nietzsche like this as if they were words written in blood. And then she wrote novels "that were words written in blood."And now people have learnt them by heart, haven't they? It's hard to do what you don't know, have never had any experience with. Rand went to boot camp with Nietzsche, so she learned how to "write words in blood". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Ah yes, my dear friend from Missouri...This was her basic message.A... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Adam,I never did find out about that haircut.I've put the movie Cosmopolis (based on the book) in my Netflix list, but the ratings are so bad, I need to be the right mood to see it and it just hasn't hit me yet. (Kind of in between self-loathing after doing something awful and wanting to feel good at the same time, seasoned with a dose of who gives a crap apathy. )However, I will eventually find out if the dude got his damn haircut or not. Believe it or not, that bothers me at times.Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Adam,I never did find out about that haircut.I've put the movie Cosmopolis (based on the book) in my Netflix list, but the ratings are so bad, I need to be the right mood to see it and it just hasn't hit me yet. (Kind of in between self-loathing after doing something awful and wanting to feel good at the same time, seasoned with a dose of who gives a crap apathy. )However, I will eventually find out if the dude got his damn haircut or not. Believe it or not, that bothers me at times. MichaelI read the book, she was nice enough to send me a brand new hardcover of it.It was adequate. Kinda predictable. A quick read for me. I just flipped through it and it looks like I marked or commented on about 25% of the pages which is not a lot for me.A... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 I read the book...Adam,You're killing me with suspense.Did he get his haircut or not?Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 I read the book...Adam,You're killing me with suspense.Did he get his haircut or not? MichaelSorry, I had to look.The answer is that it started .., however not much of it got done at all, a snip or two on one side.A... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 The answer is that it started .., however not much of it got done at all, a snip or two on one side.Adam,Smart.DeLillo must have been thinking about a sequel."Cosmopolis 2, The Blade's Edge" or something like that where he gets more of the haircut.Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 With the Stock Exchange shutdown today, due to a "major technical issue," Janet must be dancing with her DeLillo book... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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