(no subject)
research paper progress:
8 pages of notes (mostly direct quotes)
1-page outline of ideas/paper
a bit of thesis
to go:
and miles to go before i sleep,
and miles to go before i sleep.
"The world is irreconcilable, it doesn’t add up…the contradictions in the real have become so glaring, so inescapable, that we’re all learning to take them in our stride. We go to bed thinking-just a random example-that Mr. N--- M--- [Nelson Mandela?] or Mr. G--- A--- is a norotious terrorist, and wake up hailing him as the savior of his people. One day the islanders inhabiting a particular cold wet lump of godforsaken rock are vile devil worshippers swigging blood and sacrificing babies, the next day it’s as if nothing of the sort ever occurred. The leaders of whole countries vanish as if they never were, they’re miraculously erased from the record, and then they pup up again as talk show hosts or pizza pluggers, and lo!, they’re back in the history books again.
Certain illnesses sweep across large communities, and then we learn that no such illnesses ever existed. Men and women recover memories of having been sexually abused as children. Whoosh, no they don’t, their parents are reinstated as the most loving and laudable people you could imagine. Genocide occurs; no it doesn’t. Nuclear waste contaminates large swathes of entire continents, and we all learn words like “half-life.” But in a flash all the contamination has gone, the sheep aren’t ticking, you can happily eat your lamb chops.
The maps are wrong. Frontiers snake across disputed territory, bending and cracking. A road no longer goes where it went yesterday. A lake vanishes. Mountains rise and fall. Well-known books acquire different endings. Color bursts out of black-and-white movies. Art is a hoax. Style is substance. The dead are embarrassing. There are no dead.
You’re a sports fan but the rules are different every time you watch. You’ve got a job! No you don’t! That woman powdered the President’s Johnson! In her dreams-she’s a celebrated fantasist! You’re a sex god! You’re a sex pest! She’s to die for! She’s a slut! [not necessarily irreconcilable truths; merely different views of a single circumstance] You don’t have cancer! April Fool, yes you do! That good man in Nigeria is a murderer! That murderer in Algeria is a good man! That psycho killer is an American patriot! That American psycho is a patriot killer! And is that Pol Pot dying in the Angkoran jungle, or merely Nol Not?
These things are bad for you: sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism! No, au contraire! Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves children’s academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I’ll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let’s not get all preachy about this, it’s better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate! That universal right is culturally specific! This circumcised woman is culturally happy! That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric! Pictures don’t lie! This image has been faked! Free the press! Ban nosy journalists! The novel is dead! Honor is dead! God is dead! Aargh, they’re all alive, and they’re coming after us! that star is rising! No, she’s falling! We dined at nine! We dined at eight! You were on time! no, you were late! East is West! Up is down! Yes is No! In is Out! Lies are Truth! Hate is Love! Two and two makes five! And everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds." -Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, 351-52
The desire to debunk the extraordinary, the urge to chop off its feet until it fits within the confines of the acceptable, is sired by envy on inadequacy. (418)
… our love of metaphor is pre-religious, born of our need to express what is inexpressible, our dreams of otherness, of more. Religion came and imprisoned the angels in aspic, tied our winged beauty to a tree, nailed our freedom to the ground. (447)
These are touchy times. National sensitivities are on permanent alert, and it is getting harder by the moment to say boo to a goose, lest the goose in question belong to the paranoid majority (goosism under threat), the thin-skinned minority (victims of goosophobia), the militant fringe (Goose Sena), the separatists (Goosistan Liberation Front), the increasingly well organized cohorts of society’s historical outcasts (the ungoosables, or Scheduled Geese), or the devout followers of that ultimate guruduck, the sainted Mother Goose. Why, after all, would any sensible person wish to say boo in the first place? By constantly throwing dirt, such booers disqualify themselves from serious consideration (they cook their own goose.) -Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (121)
mm.
8 pages of notes (mostly direct quotes)
1-page outline of ideas/paper
a bit of thesis
to go:
and miles to go before i sleep,
and miles to go before i sleep.
"The world is irreconcilable, it doesn’t add up…the contradictions in the real have become so glaring, so inescapable, that we’re all learning to take them in our stride. We go to bed thinking-just a random example-that Mr. N--- M--- [Nelson Mandela?] or Mr. G--- A--- is a norotious terrorist, and wake up hailing him as the savior of his people. One day the islanders inhabiting a particular cold wet lump of godforsaken rock are vile devil worshippers swigging blood and sacrificing babies, the next day it’s as if nothing of the sort ever occurred. The leaders of whole countries vanish as if they never were, they’re miraculously erased from the record, and then they pup up again as talk show hosts or pizza pluggers, and lo!, they’re back in the history books again.
Certain illnesses sweep across large communities, and then we learn that no such illnesses ever existed. Men and women recover memories of having been sexually abused as children. Whoosh, no they don’t, their parents are reinstated as the most loving and laudable people you could imagine. Genocide occurs; no it doesn’t. Nuclear waste contaminates large swathes of entire continents, and we all learn words like “half-life.” But in a flash all the contamination has gone, the sheep aren’t ticking, you can happily eat your lamb chops.
The maps are wrong. Frontiers snake across disputed territory, bending and cracking. A road no longer goes where it went yesterday. A lake vanishes. Mountains rise and fall. Well-known books acquire different endings. Color bursts out of black-and-white movies. Art is a hoax. Style is substance. The dead are embarrassing. There are no dead.
You’re a sports fan but the rules are different every time you watch. You’ve got a job! No you don’t! That woman powdered the President’s Johnson! In her dreams-she’s a celebrated fantasist! You’re a sex god! You’re a sex pest! She’s to die for! She’s a slut! [not necessarily irreconcilable truths; merely different views of a single circumstance] You don’t have cancer! April Fool, yes you do! That good man in Nigeria is a murderer! That murderer in Algeria is a good man! That psycho killer is an American patriot! That American psycho is a patriot killer! And is that Pol Pot dying in the Angkoran jungle, or merely Nol Not?
These things are bad for you: sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism! No, au contraire! Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves children’s academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I’ll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let’s not get all preachy about this, it’s better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate! That universal right is culturally specific! This circumcised woman is culturally happy! That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric! Pictures don’t lie! This image has been faked! Free the press! Ban nosy journalists! The novel is dead! Honor is dead! God is dead! Aargh, they’re all alive, and they’re coming after us! that star is rising! No, she’s falling! We dined at nine! We dined at eight! You were on time! no, you were late! East is West! Up is down! Yes is No! In is Out! Lies are Truth! Hate is Love! Two and two makes five! And everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds." -Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, 351-52
The desire to debunk the extraordinary, the urge to chop off its feet until it fits within the confines of the acceptable, is sired by envy on inadequacy. (418)
… our love of metaphor is pre-religious, born of our need to express what is inexpressible, our dreams of otherness, of more. Religion came and imprisoned the angels in aspic, tied our winged beauty to a tree, nailed our freedom to the ground. (447)
These are touchy times. National sensitivities are on permanent alert, and it is getting harder by the moment to say boo to a goose, lest the goose in question belong to the paranoid majority (goosism under threat), the thin-skinned minority (victims of goosophobia), the militant fringe (Goose Sena), the separatists (Goosistan Liberation Front), the increasingly well organized cohorts of society’s historical outcasts (the ungoosables, or Scheduled Geese), or the devout followers of that ultimate guruduck, the sainted Mother Goose. Why, after all, would any sensible person wish to say boo in the first place? By constantly throwing dirt, such booers disqualify themselves from serious consideration (they cook their own goose.) -Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (121)
mm.
