The Task of Literature Is to Feed the Media

He stands beside me and yells down the street, “Joe Duff, how you doin today. I’ll be back in a while.” He is ensconced in eau de cologne. It overpowers everything. Everything smells musky. If I had been a yak, we would have butted heads. He is a big man. He is plotting a take over of the Main Street Association. They have their meeting at noon today. He wants to kick out all of the committee members and appoint his own people.  I don’t think he has any people. He has already taken over the Legion and the Fourth of July parade. People let him rutt. He is a big man. It might be worst to stand in his way than to just let him have his go. He has no evil intentions. He is just a big man who wears a lot of cheap cologne. He is just a big teddy bear. He don’t know no better.  He thinks he’s doing good; helping his community. And maybe he is. After all I don’t belong to the Main Street Association or the Legion. I didn’t even stay to watch the parade. I left after he arrived on his Harley and tried to rearrange the barricades. The Chief of Police came along and put them all back and muttered under his breath to himself.

The great paradox of our time is that hordes of us choose to be different in the same way… uniformity is not a caricature – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p211

Since 1978 the price of tution in the US colleges has increased more than 950% which is 650% higher than the rate of inflation

Behind every cynical (or merely  incompetent) banking executive and trader sits an economist, assuring them (and us) from a position of unchallenged authority that their actions are publically useful and should in any case not be subject to collective oversight – Tony Judt – Ill Fares The Land, 2010  p105

Wicked witch

Good witch

Sand witch

Red slippers

No place like home

Click click

Into the Smithsonian

As seen on TV

A colorized American

            Classic

Glorious technocolor

            Surround sound

            3-D glasses

Watch nuclear blasts

            Duck under the desk

            Fast forward

Everything you need

            To know

Fully documented, made

            Simple, easy

            To learn

Pills so you don’t

            Forget

Pills so you can

            Get up

Pills to make you

             Smaller

Part of a balanced

            Diet

The spirit of our times indulges in an inordinate amount of gratuitous meanness. Meanness: a withholding of generosity, a willingness to hurt, a perverse choice of the bad when the good is equally available… It is difficult to distinguish gratuitous meanness from greed – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p150

Credit card debt decreased in 2009. In 2010 it increased by $9b. The credit card debt level is on track to increase by $546b this year. There is currently $772b in outstanding credit card balances.

A plan to resist planning may be better than its oppoisite but it belongs to the same style of politics – Michael Oakeshott

Increased immigration may result in a decrease in crime. First generation immigrants tend to be adverse to risky activities. This trend appears to extent to all classes and nationalities.

Neoliberalism is less an economic system or social order than global capital’s management style for a situation of lower profit - Joshua Clover – The Nation 4/25/11 p34

One in seven homeowners with loans in excess of one million dollars is seriously delinquent, while only one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark are in default.

Liberty, perhaps as always, increased with wealth – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p132

Death is irreversible

There are religious stories

            Where this is not true

In the movies characters

            Who return from the

            Dead are evil

But there has been a spat

            Of TV shows were

Dead people have returned

            As angels, not just

            Metaphorically

TV is a religious media

It is an intimate medium

The old B&W with rabbit

            Ears was even more

            Spiritual

There were many ghosts

           And none of them
           Were able to lie
We have to do that 
           For them

No doubt it is because memories are not always true that love is not eternal – Marcel Proust – The Fugative p181

The incomprehensible is communicated within the bounds of verbal convention – metaphor has to be made to do

One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter statements to the reigning pieties – Susan Sontag – At the Same Time, 2007