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"To take taxis across the Green Line. To light up in a bloody great smile when Israeli jets break the sound barrier. To pretend to be unaffected when guns start firing round the corner. That’s why he went.”
The worn voice began to acquire a certain disregarding impetus. Soon it would fall into monologue, an inner speech that did not need a context or listener.
“To sit there with his beer, chatting with a colleague as the mortars rain down or whatever they do. Absolutely unmoved. I think he lived for such moments. They were the high points of Lebanon, as demonstrations were the high points of Panama when we were there. During the worst of the anti-American demonstrations he’d put on his Union Jack lapel badge and go walking right into it. How I came to hate that badge. He felt he couldn’t be harmed wearing it. And so he sits in someone’s office in Beirut when militiamen are active. To betray no sign of emotion. To chat. What’s the point of getting excited, he liked to say to me. Truly believing there is good sense in this. As if getting excited had something to do with deciding to get excited, making a conscious decision to get excited. They’re out there, hurling grenated, firing rockets. What’s the point of getting excited? What’s the point?"-Delillo, The Names (244)
The long way to say ‘asshole’.
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"his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be known: it was spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity."
- Middlemarch, George Eliot -
"He was but seven-and-twenty, an age at which many men are not quite common - at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot."
- George Eliot, Middlemarch -
"To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself."
-Graham Greene, The Quiet American (103)
Harsh.
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"Self-deprecation is a language I don’t think I understand. It’s so often a form of ego, isn’t it, a form of aggression, a wanting to be noticed even for one’s flaws. I don’t know these modern languages."
-Delillo, The Names (160)
Ouch.
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Like he's having an angry fight with himself he vomits out the worst hashtag in history: "I blow her up... BALLOOOOONS!"
WILL NEVER STOP LAUGHING AT THIS.
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"Vietnam is the war, the reality. This is the movie, where the scripts are written and the actors perform. American kids don’t want to seize control. They want movies, music."
- The Black and White Ball, Don Delillo -
High Resolution -
Mainly This.
Empire Falls, Richard Russo
At once big and microscopically detailed and, yes, imperfect, but man. What a terrific read. Russo’s always excellent at burrowing into the minds of all his characters, even the nastiest ones, and boring through alternating layers of brutishness and vulnerability and tenderness. He’s got a real appreciation for the small indignities that make up everyday drama and tragedy. Also! He’s a terrific narrator. Witty, bright, and keen-eyed, without being overly showy or exploitative.
Granted, Russo’s slow boil generally comes to a bubbling baking-soda-volcano type of resolution, wrapped up in a flurry of punches in the closing three chapters, but, eh, I can’t really complain. Any longer and it would’ve started to drone. Any shorter and we’d miss out on the phenomenal subtleties of character and situation that really form the pulpy heart of this book. And, thanks to that same concentration on subtlety, all of the easy resolutions feel /earned/. There’ve been so many smaller abuses that the victories in the end seem like a final, brief slackening of sadism, proof of a just universe. Screw realism; it’s called humanism.
Like Middlemarch in Maine. -
"People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail."
- Empire Falls, Richard Russo (168) -
Hirsch-burn
So! Lynn Hirschberg. M.I.A. Why can’t you two play nice? You’re both so pretty!
But yeah, er, may be a minority opinion, but doesn’t Hirschberg come off as a little… petty? And snide? Throughout the entire article? Granted M.I.A. herself comes off as a bit of an inarticulate, posturing, THE BEAUTIFUL CHEST IS EMPTY dick throughout the entire thing (and there were some very, very, very choice digs, especially about the ambiguity of her father’s political past), but Hirschberg levels some very cheap shots about, what, some nice food that they both ate? MIA’s nice clothing? That don’t sit very well. Nor do I really love Hirschberg’s fixation on M.I.A.’s appearance - it seems like more of the same condescending bullshit that was said about the level of MIA’s participation (or lack thereof) in her previous albums, aka MIA bein’ the pretty, exotic face of Diplo’s PUPPETWORK MASTERY.
There’s not nearly enough credit given for MIA’s role in the music, art, and image that she’s constructed for herself, by herself. Also, Diplo! Diplo, Diplo, Diplo. Hirschberg blatantly reprints some bitter, scathing comments from him without a critical eye towards what seems like a pretty raw split.
All in all, it seems like a hasty pan. And, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot about MIA’s quick-n-dirty political pastiche that needs some careful analysis, but none of it is present in this article. There’re a few delicate but fascinating themes that could’ve been drawn out - the way we conceptualize ‘selling out’ in music; how we navigate conflicting identities after immigration; the commodification of rebellion; the cognitive queasiness and dissonance that we (the Haves! GO US!) have about the Have Nots (are we helping? are we meddling? are we dicks? Answer: YES TO ALL OF THE ABOVE); the difficulties of supporting one side over another in truly messy conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka; and, hell, the evolution of an artist as she moves through the different phases of her career - but just aren’t in Lynn Hirschberg’s magic compendium of minor burns.
The profile could’ve been a real discussion on a very conflicted but still very compelling person; instead we get truffle fries. Whatever.
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High ResolutionOnstad wins it.
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"Textin Haiti from your aborsh, want the children who lived to have shoes."
-TheAwl on Greenberg.
OH MY BALLS. THIS !!!
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Trainspotting. Platonic ideal of heroin chic.
decent
you should feel bad.
