Ouroboros-Fortified Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for January 15, 2009

I. New York magazine gives the nod to Light Industry proprietors (and, most importantly, Dzyds) Ed and L.G. Thos. — as does Artforum! This pic is from Artforum (that's Thomas and Ed on the left...other dudes are Michael Azerrad and Jeff Krulik):

{{{Heyyy—they'll take it!}}}

II. Defunct parks! Pantoums are from Malaysia!
(Via L.G. Thos.)

III. The Atlantic this month should be retitled "THE DIZZIES"??? Hua has the cover story, "The End of White America?"—two quotes for today:

A) “Have I read The Great Gatsby?” Combs said to a London newspaper in 2001. “I am the Great Gatsby."

B) Similarly, Smirnoff struck marketing gold in 2006 with a viral music video titled “Tea Partay,” featuring a trio of strikingly bad, V-neck-sweater-clad white rappers called the Prep Unit. “Haters like to clown our Ivy League educations / But they’re just jealous ’cause our families run the nation,” the trio brayed, as a pair of bottle-blond women in spiffy tennis whites shimmied behind them. There was no nonironic way to enjoy the video; its entire appeal was in its self-aware lampooning of WASP culture: verdant country clubs, “old money,” croquet, popped collars, and the like.

And Dzyd Ta-Nehisi writes on Michelle Obama:

There has been much chatter about Barack Obama as the answer to America’s racial gap, as a biracial black man whose roots stretch from Hawaii to Kenya, with an Ivy League pedigree and the seal of the South Side. But he is not the only one entering the White House who has seen both sides, who intuitively grasps the heroic American narrative of work ethic and family, and how that narrative historically failed black people. He is not the only one who walks in both worlds. Indeed, if you’re looking for a bridge, if you’re looking for someone to connect the heart of black America with the heart of all of America, to allow us all to look at the American dream in the same way, if you’re looking for common ground, then it’s true, we should be talking about Obama. But we should make sure we’re talking about the right one.

III. Have you read enough about Gordon Lish & co. yet? Dzyd Carla weighs in on (former Lish student) Christine Schutt.

IV. Only hyperconnect?

My brain has developed a little differently from most other people’s. Aside from my high-functioning autism, I also suffered from epileptic seizures as a young child. In my book, I propose a link between my brain’s functioning and my creative abilities based on the property of ‘hyper-connectivity’. —Scientific American

V. Hare-o-boros!



And, um....another one.
(Via Erasing)

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for August 14, 2008

I. Your next desktop pattern?

II. Your favorite president—rendered in hair. Is Franklin "Pelano" Roosevelt a beautiful typo?! (Via MUG)

III. Poetry update:

A) Dzyd Carla on memoirs by Manguso and Lavinia Greenlaw.

B) BoingBoing picks up on R. Kikuo Johnson's "Poem as Comic Strip" take on A.E. Stalling's "Recitative"—perfect for summer! Although it's actually not that hot out here these days...

IV. Terry Teachout on Richard Stark, in Commentary—Stark is being republished by University of Chicago Press:

The Hunter” (208 pp., $14 paper), “The Man with the Getaway Face” (224 pp., $14 paper) and “The Outfit” (224 pp., $14 paper) can and should be read in sequence as a trilogy–I would have published them in an omnibus volume–rather than separately.

I read "The Outfit" first, not knowing these three were linked, and there was a chapter of recapping that made me think I'd made the wrong decision...but then it was on with the show!

As I read on in admiration, I formed some mental connections....reading "outfit" in a clothing sense...this was one well-fitting outfit...which reminded me of Sasha Frere-Jones's New Yorker piece on Spoon, and their song "Fitted Shirt"...Though I slightly misremembered SFJ's conclusion ("Daniel is not about to tell jokes or put on a lampshade, and if this makes the band’s performances predictable the effect is balanced by the dignity that comes from self-control")—the dignity/self-control part is certainly true, though The Outfit is pretty unpredictable, especially the rather radical (and exciting!) messing with chronology...a precursor to Pulp Fiction...

Back in the U.S.S.R.

It's a Dizzyhead Carla double feature: Here she writes about the history of Gawker, and over at the PF, she dusts off a reprint of Eimi, E.E. Cummings's weir;dly,punctuated account of his travels in the Soviet Union. (Archival bonus: The Eimi article links to Marianne Moore's original take on the book.)

Dizzyforum

New Bookforum is out—with a strong showing by known Dizzyheads! And my mentor Maureen Howard (Dizzyhead status: unknown!) reviews Ha Jin.

Last call...

The dust clears...a few final entries are visible...Here's Carla's final (?) sally, a narrative of enclosure and release:



[We Have Always Lived in the Castle; Housekeeping; The Long Loneliness; My Most Secret Desire; The Stranger; The Body; Possession; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Aureole; Second Skin; Actual Air]

But Poundstone's not taking it lying down. He writes: "Over lunch, I became obsessed with using my paperback copies of Gerald Kersh's On an Odd Note and Peter Rabe's The Spy Who Was 3 Feet Tall (a 1966 James Bond rip off featuring a Mbuti spy named 'Baby').

Where the day takes you

Dizzyhead Carla is up next...