My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-5-15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Pillaging
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2011-05-20
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2011-05-10
The world is so beautiful, it makes me sad to think I have to die.
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2011-05-06
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2011-05-03
The Great Tribulation has just “officially” begun, evil has been enthroned, Israel has been set up for betrayal and destruction, and the wrath of God is about to be poured out on the world like all the plagues of Egypt. So Rayford calls his daughter back home in Illinois to find out how he looked on TV.
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2011-04-26
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2011-04-19
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2011-04-18
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2011-04-15
Poshlust,” or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany’s guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost’s favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.
— Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 40, Vladimir Nabokov
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2011-04-10
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]The Science Friday podcast had a great episode this past Friday featuring Cormac McCarthy, Werner Herzog, and Lawrence Krauss.
You should go listen to the whole thing, but the most amazing part for me was Herzog reading a short selection from All the Pretty Horses; it’s so wonderful I’ve snipped it out and embedded it for your listening pleasure.
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2011-04-07
