Ravi Mangla's Blog, page 4
October 17, 2016
October 7, 2016
“The Death of the Autodidact” in The Baffler
I wrote a short piece on self-education and the false promise of meritocracy:
“After all, herein lies one of the more confounding paradoxes of our digital era: It is easier than ever to self-educate to a high standard, yet the number of autodidacts (by which I mean self-directed learners with limited formal schooling or vocational training) at the top of their chosen fields is dwindling faster than the stock of Atlas Shrugged hardcovers at the Reagan Library gift shop.”
- “The Death of the Autodidact” at The Baffler
September 28, 2016
Susan Sontag
“The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.”
- Susan Sontag, “On Style”
September 21, 2016
September 6, 2016
“The Great Unknown” in The Kenyon Review
I have an essay on embracing mystery in the new science issue of KR Online:
“As time marches forward, the sheer quantity of mystery in our daily lives appears in dangerously short supply. Even the most miniscule and routine aspects of the day have been divested of their ambiguities. Once upon a time, our perception of the world was shaped more by imagination than fact. Tales of canalled cities and gilded palaces bore the distinct tenor of fiction. Traveling came with untold risks. Now I have the omnipresent eye of Google Maps and can embark on my expeditions from the comfort of my desk chair.”
- “The Great Unknown” at The Kenyon Review
August 25, 2016
Stuart Dybek
“Prose doesn’t afford the rhyme scheme and lineation of a classic sonnet, but it is possible, especially in a prose poem or a piece of flash fiction to emulate the “turn,” one of the most beautiful moves in poetry. The use of transition is another compressive device that is very much at the heart of the short story. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that the art of transition is the art of the short story. The jumps a story makes and the speed at which it develops can contribute enormously to compression. Borges is a great example of that. I could have answered in a more compressed way simply by quoting Elmore Leonard, who is obviously channeling Hemingway, in stating, ‘I try to leave out the part that people skim.’”
- Stuart Dybek, The Rumpus
August 15, 2016
David Wojnarowicz
Arthur Rimbaud in New York,
1978-1979
August 2, 2016
James Baldwin
”There is an illusion about America, a
myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the
lives we lead and I don’t believe that anybody in this country who has really
thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it —
and almost all of us have one way or another — this collision between one’s
image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are
two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and
become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you
thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.”
- James Baldwin, “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel”
July 21, 2016
Why Flash Fiction?
I contributed a short piece to SmokeLong Quarterly’s ongoing “Why Flash Fiction?” series.
“Flash… gives voice to stories in the margins, the ones deemed too slight or elusive for more conventional narrative modes. And the deeper I get into the practice of writing, the more I am drawn to this interstitial space: between sense and scene, snapshot and story, silence and sound. By illuminating the underseen, we reveal a world more fully realized, in which small gestures resemble events, and a single moment can carry the weight of years.”
- “Space Between” at SmokeLong Quarterly
July 17, 2016
Agnes Martin
“We have been very strenuously conditioned against solitude,” she observes in her wonderful collection of writing. “To be alone is considered to be a grievous and dangerous condition…. I suggest that people who like to be alone, who walk alone will perhaps be serious workers in the art field.” Being an art worker was, she felt, a privilege, and one’s apprenticeship took as long as it took; art was not a race. “To live truly and effectively the idea of achievement must be given up,” she wrote in 1981 in an open letter to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Put unsentimental piety first, turn your back on the world, and get on with it.
- “The Heroic Art of Agnes Martin” by Hilton Als
