John, I'm only blogging....

I wrote about Matthew Cissell back in July. Matt had given a shout out to LoS in advance of a lecture he gave for International Pynchon Week. He'd written us to see if we could make contact with Tod Perry, a poet and Cornell alum who'd been a friend of Thomas Pynchon, and who we'd interviewed about Cornell in the late 50s (here).

His interest was a reference Tod made to a NYC "salon" hosted by Hans and Greta Meyerhof. That's the difference between real scholars and amateurs like us. Matt immediately saw the importance of the salon, we just kind of let it pass.  But in a way, that's our role.

Cissell has published his doctoral thesis:  Arc of the Absent Author: Thomas Pynchon's Trajectory from Entropy to Grace (full pdf). He cites LoS in several footnotes and very generously acknowledges our interview.  I really appreciated the following:

By way of introduction to this section I must start by saying first that research on Pynchon would not be what it is if it were only left to academics and their shelves of primary and secondary sources. Indeed it is my experience that many non-academics contribute a great deal to work on Pynchon and that is where one may still find new avenues to investigate; as such it is no surprise to find that many Pynchon scholars keep
an eye on the Pynchon list serve and other webpages that may offer new information. In fact that is how I learned about an interesting couple that Pynchon and his Cornell friends used to visit in New York.

It came to my attention that there was a blog called “Laws of Silence” that was investigating some photos related to Pynchon at Cornell and possibly including him.... (p. 113)

He then goes on to describe how we'd made him aware of the Meyerhof salon and put him in contact with Tod Perry.

I know it's not a super big deal, but it's rewarding to have been able to help Pynchon scholarship in even this small way. I'm glad Cissell recognizes the value of what we do. We're not academics or journalists, but we do something akin to both. Personally, I've written poetry, fiction, journalism and theater....and maintained this blog for years. I always just thought of myself as a "writer," but maybe I shouldn't be so hesitant to assume the mantle of "blogger." If not for those pesky connotations!

Plus, not all of my work is on the blog. I'm really into the physicality of things, the written word as an object, or in a manuscript.  Concrete poetry (or not) in a concrete medium.

In the end, perhaps it's all just much ado. The real goal here is, on one hand, to thank Cissell, but also recognize his appreciation for an oft-mocked medium: the blog. I write novels and poetry, but my most frequent outlet is here. It's humble, but we do have a small audience, and some posts have made small impacts; that is just what we intended. "Micro-history," small details, tempests in teapots.

And I've even made a buck or two. I don't do it for that, but it's part of the deal. I've made money blogging (very little), with journalism, and a novella.  I would write regardless, but I've often thought of this Stephen King quote whenever I catch myself being pretentious:

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

I would add being cited in a doctoral thesis is well, maybe not a sign of talent, but that one has, at the very least, something to say worth citing. And that may be a tautology. Who cares? We're only bloggers....

Isidore Ducasse

Possible photo of Ducasse; provenance: Dazet family

 

Portrait imaginaire de Lautréamont par Félix Vallotton,  1898

L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse, Man Ray, 1920

The Magic Number

It's rather meta, posting a screenshot of the stats of a previous post, but for all you Associationalists out there, you'll see why it's here pretty quickly....

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I sorta kinda wrote about the Georgia Guidestones in 2010.

Old news now, but someone finally blew them up back in July. Locals seem kind of bummed: 

"My initial reaction was heartbreak and anger, frustration.  And I think that's consistent with the community's reaction."  Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves.

Lots of (if not most) articles about the Guidestones play up the anonymity of the person who originally funded the monument. Seems like a Rosicrucian group cuz the mysterious stranger who ordered them called himself RC Christian....subtle. 

The principles engraved upon it are also not inconsistent with Rosicrucian ideas.

The contact was not actually named RC Cola Christian, but Herbert Hinie Kersten, and was a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa.  Apparently a fan of David Duke and an outspoken racist who, in addition to financing mysterious monuments, sought to make a definitive scale to show how Whites are the superior race.

The Guidestones have a generally decent message.  Except the population control measures which evoke culling.  That Daisy David Duke support makes that one a bit more chilling.  

Common Sense Renewed, a book intended to explain the Guidestones, is said to describe a eugenics program to keep humanity going in the future.  So, wariness of the stones is not unwarranted.

Was Kersten representing a racist group, or was it a hobby horse of his alone?

Was he alone, or did he represent a group of "Perfectibilists," as the Illuminati called themselves.  A group of sages directing society behind the scenes:  Rosicrucians, Masons, Illuminists?  Secret Chiefs?  An underground stream?  Or a series of ponds?

So someone blowed 'em up.  And the remaining slabs were then demolished.  

Elberton should have kept them, and let the destruction serve as a monument to ignorance.  Fence them up at night to protect them.  Locals are worried about the lost tourist dollars.  Another reason to keep them.  Not just lucre, but as a "fuck you" to those who blew them up.  Leave what's remaining, and the rubble.  Erect a life-sized panel facsimile of the destroyed stone.  Despite some weird ideas and sketchy financing, it was an interesting monument.  At noon each day the sun used to shine through a hole onto that day's date.  It was a functioning solar calendar and clock.

Alas.  Turning destruction into history.  Too late to make lemonade from these lemons.

I've written a lot about the Temple de Sagesse Suprème, the so-called "Illuminati Pyramid" of Blagnac (a suburb of Toulouse).  They tagged and damaged that too.  Hard time to be an esoteric monument.

But we've written about the destruction of monuments before.  In the end, it's a testament to the power of public art as much as public ignorance....see The Politics of Removal for our take on it.

What is it with Georgia and cwazy cupcakes? Walker, Green, and Kandiss Taylor, who wrote:

“I am the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal,” Taylor wrote on social media app Telegram after releasing her video.

Taylor actually promised to blow them up.  Someone did it for her!  She denied involvement when the destruction occurred. 

BTW, here are the Guidestones' injunctions, originally engraved in 8 languages:  English, Spanish, Swahili, 

Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

Easy to see how this was seen as a kind of NWO blueprint, or some kind of Utopian scheme proposed by Rosicrucians.

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

• Unite humanity with a living new language.

• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.

• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

• Balance personal rights with social duties.

• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.

• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature.

Georgia on My Mind

Update October 27:  "Herschel Walker is a hypocrite and he is not fit to be a U.S. senator."

Second woman says Ga. Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for abortion (NPR)  

BTW, even National Review has written that the first claim is "almost certainly true."

Grab 'em by the....

from The Atlantic: Herschel Walker’s Candidacy Is Just Insulting:

Until this week, Christian [Walker's son] had appeared to earnestly support Walker even after revelations that he had fathered two more children than he had publicly disclosed and that he had lied about working in law enforcement, his academic record at the University of Georgia, and his business success. Christian appeared at an early campaign event for his father even though his mother, Cindy Grossman, had told ABC News in 2008 that when she and Walker were married, he’d pointed a gun at her head.

Oh yeah, Walker also paid for one abortion and urged his girlfriend to have another, yet is campaigning as a strict "pro-lifer" forced birther. Liar.  Hypocrite. And ignorant. A incompetence trifecta.

Walker on China putting fluoride in our water supply corrupting our air:  

“Do you know we don’t control this air?  No matter how much money we put in controlling our air, it goes over to China or to somewhere else, and it messes it up. All of a sudden, it comes back over here. All we’re doing is spending money.”

It messes it up.

Let's face it, Walker is a barely coherent hypocrite, and, yeah, I'll go there, a token, a pawn for rich, white people using him to show how not racist they are, while adding a malleable vote for Team MAGA.  He's an embarrassment to Georgia and the nation.  But not the GOP!  His Democrat opponent is also African-American, with a proven track-record.  And I know why people who dig Walker don't dig Raphael Warnock; his education:

Warnock graduated from Sol C. Johnson High School in 1987, and, having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., attended Morehouse College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He credits his participation in the Upward Bound program for making him college-ready, as he was able to enroll in early college courses through Savannah State University. He then earned Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, a school affiliated with Columbia University.

I think it's safe to say today, the GOP's base is leery of people with too many degrees.  Universities are seen as bastions of left-wing radicalism.  Obama they didn't like because he seemed too professorial, as if he was talking down to us.  They loved that Bush had a tendency to mangle his sentences.  Despite the fact he's a teetotaler, I think it was during the Bush/Gore election he was chosen in a poll as the guy those asked would most want to share a beer with (with whom they'd most like to share a beer?)  I think a lot of people find those who use "whom" suspect.  I was once sneered at as being "some kind of college boy" for using the word "ludicrous" in a small dispute. 

I'm sure there's a racial component in the animus towards Warnock or Obama for some people.  I don't want to say that everyone who was leery of Obama hated that an African-American guy was so educated.  But to think there aren't people who dislike him for his eloquence, intelligence and academic record would be as naive as to suggest all of his antagonists are somehow racist.  Sadly, I think it's basically the old antipathy for the "uppity negro." I'm sorry to offend by using the expression, but what's really offensive is the attitude to which it refers. 

I think part of Walker's appeal are the very things that people who want serious and effective governance find so ridiculous; he's a party-line parrot with enough charisma to pull off a viable campaign.  His tenuous grasp on subjects such as air quality is really just folksy charm.  Bonus that he's African-American, as is the incumbent.  It reduces a lot of the extra weight from the racial baggage in the South.  That both candidates are black, in a state like Georgia, is a step in the right direction, especially given the state's large African-American population.  Atlanta is a very important part of African-American "psychogeography."

But the Walker revelations mentioned in The Atlantic don't seem to have affected the polls one iota.  In my opinion, I think this joke of a candidate doesn't even deserve to be elected village fence-watcher, but the GOP is shameless, and will pull any stunt and put any dunce up for election, no matter how stupid, bat-shit crazy, or ignorant.  As long as they can get elected and help create a GOP majority, so the big boys can play around and wreak more havoc on this country than they did from '16 to '20 with that ridiculous, piss-bathing, bloviating turd I won't even deign to name.  Imagine if the turd made a comeback?

For shame.  Georgia, if you elect this nitwit, you deserve all the incompetence headed your way.  Plenty of you are buying this Super Gulp of snake oil....you already elected the heinously hateful Marjorie Taylor Greene, just how much lower are you aiming?

Call the Guinness Book, I think a record is being set for "Largest shit smear on the idea of democracy" in history.  Except for Hitler maybe.  He was elected, innit?  

(BTW, that "shit-smear" isn't specifically Walker, but Greene, Boebert Gosar, Palin....along with the whole atavistic crew of "slap-your-head in disbelief" candidates the GOP has managed to get elected.) 

Heck, MJT loves comparing opponents to Nazis.  Legally-required vaccines? Nein! MJT nearly blew a gasket...acted like Fauci was advocating racial purity tests in order to shop at Wal-Mart.  So, yeah, I'll invoke lil' 'Dolphy, as we liberals so affectionately call out Dear Leader, that is, if Lucifer isn't around.

And I know that all this is ridiculous and is as "See Dick Run" is to Shakespeare, satire-wise.  About the same relationship MJT and Walker are to legitimate politicians.

Enough with know-nothings and wearing ignorance like a badge of honor.  I want smarty-pants professors, educated people, eggheads, and intellectuals in office.  Call me crazy.  I'm tired of listening to politicians dumber than I am; because to be frank (as opposed to Bill or John),  I ain't very clever to start with....

The choice is clear....