Benjamin Whitmer's Blog, page 41

Irony

I've been spending more time than is probably good for me watching authors on YouTube. And one of my favorites, though I've still yet to read a single word of his fiction, is David Foster Wallace. I don't know how I came across it, but I've been replaying this clip about irony over in my head all weekend:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And also this quote from his essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction:

So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today's avant-garde tried to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As [Lewis] Hyde. . .puts it, "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage." This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It's critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony's singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly funny to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I've had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing by trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow. . .oppressed.

It's something I think about from time to time, how little interest I have in irony. I've never felt I had the time for irony. Take reading. Even if I read at, say, a fairly good clip of 75 books a year, that's only a few thousand books before I die. I don't have time to read ironically. I'm only gonna read what interests me, what moves me. And that applies across the board. I'm lucky enough to get to spend a good part of my life inhabiting my own interests, but it's never enough, and I can't imagine throwing that time away.

I'm also heavily bored by it. I do like dark humor, and, yeah, play, but the only books I care about are those where there's something at stake. There's nothing that bores me more than an author who winks at you somewhere in the text, just to let you know it's all a joke, that they can't really be bothered to take it all seriously, and that aren't you, the reader, an idiot for doing so. It's the stuff of carrot jeans and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Which is fine, if that's what you're in to, but I'd rather eat dirt.

Well, I had to do something, right?

A beautiful short documentary about Dublin in the 1960s by one of my favorite Irish authors, Brendan Behan.

Part one.

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Part two.

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Part three.

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Guns, Books, Etc.

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Ravens, rattlesnakes, poetry, and a writer named Jim Harrison.
"In a 1971 'false memoir' called 'Wolf,' written while Harrison was convalescing from a fall off a cliff, he suggested curing heartbreak by broiling a two- to three-pound porterhouse, eating it with your hands, followed by a hot bath in which you consume the best bourbon you can buy until the bottle is empty. Then sleep for a day."
You can watch all of Barfly on YouTube.
"Officer Duncan realized that his right foot was off the floor and the tactical equipment that he was wearing was making his movements very awkward." Another reason, though I carry a gun every day, that I avoid anything with the word "tactical" on it like the plague.
Dead man eating.
"From a strict moral perspective or the police academy vantage point, Martinez's incident reports are flawed. They're failures of objective reportage. Though everything in them is literally true, they're technically 'suspicious'; if Martinez saw a baby-raper, he's making damn sure we do too."
Marwencol.

(Cross posted at PM Press.)

Hard Word Book Club

Pike is the March pick for the Hard Word Book Club, brought to you by the fine folks at Austin's BookPeople. I'll be calling in to talk to the club on the 30th, if you're in that area.

And, y'know, be nice.

(Cross-posted at PM Press.)

Sunrise chairs

All right, so as promised, though a little late, I walked up to the stone chairs up top the Flatirons again this morning. And I have directions.

Park in the Chautauqua Park lot and walk up the semi-paved, semi-trail Bluebell Road.
When you can see the outhouse up ahead on the left, veer off left on Mesa Trail.
Wind around for awhile and when you see it, take a right on Woods Quarry Trail.
After a certain period of huffing and puffing, at least if you're in the shape I'm in, that'll bring you to the chairs.

That's the easiest way to get there I could find. I'd only add this note: if, say, you go up to watch the sunrise, and it's shortly after the clocks move forward for daylight savings time, don't think you can just walk down anyway you want, thinking the sun will rise in just a couple of minutes to light the way. Because you'll get lost and be late for your day job.

(Cross-posted at PM Press.)

Brazen

So it's been almost two years since Ward Churchill won his lawsuit against the University of Colorado. A jury found that, yep, sure enough, CU fired Churchill because he said some things that local politicians didn't like, and they'd put enough pressure on the university, including threatening to cut CU's budget, that a task force, led by members of CU's law department, trumped up a reason to fire him. In other words, that they'd violated his First Amendment rights.

But Judge Naves, who presided over the trial, threw out the verdict. For reasons that pretty much, well, everyone found bizarre.

Even more bizarre, I just got the following email forwarded to me:

University of Colorado Law School

30th Annual Law Alumni Awards Banquet

WHAT: The 30th Annual Law Alumni Awards Banquet for the University of Colorado Law School

WHEN: Wednesday, March 9, 2011

5:30 p.m. – Cocktails

7 p.m. – Dinner & Awards ceremony

WHERE: Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center

650 15th Street (corner of 15th & California Street)

WHY: Each year, the University of Colorado Law School recognizes its outstanding Alumni working in the public sector, private practice and in the judiciary. It also presents the William Lee Knous Award, the law school's highest award given to an alumnus or alumna in recognition of outstanding achievement and sustained service to the Law School. Proceeds from the event benefit the University of Colorado Law School's Alumni Scholarship Fund.

WHO: Those being recognized this year are:

William Lee Knous Award

L. Richard Bratton '57

Judiciary

Judge Larry J. Naves '74

Public Sector

Anne J. Castle '81

Private Practice

Mark A. Fogg ' 79

Also being recognized this year for distinguished service and contributions to Colorado Law are retired Federal District Judge Jim Carrigan, Dean David Getches and Professor William Pizzi.

Jill McGranahan

Director of Communications & Public Relations

University of Colorado Law School

303-492-3124

jill.mcgranahan@colorado.edu

Y'know, I try real hard not to believe in conspiracies and shit like that, but this is the kind of thing that makes it real hard. And even harder not take my CU diploma down to Boulder and stuff it down Bruce Benson's throat.

Update: If you don't have any idea what the hell this post is about, here's a good video.

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(Cross-posted at PM Press.)