Kip Manley's Blog, page 51

Things to keep in mind (Another secret of the epic)

The Warren Report lays down certain essential characteristics of the clandestine genres. The first is hyperbolic length. Simply put, the literary output of the national security apparatus is not made for reading. This isn’t a straightforward question of classification; the brute fact of a 15-volume report denies access, classified or no. This is true of the mammoth pile of Pentagon Papers and true too of the 6,000-page Senate report on CIA interrogations, of which only the 600-page executive summary has been made public. A telling anecdote: there are exactly 11 words on one page of the Pentagon Papers that were slated for redaction but which the black pen accidentally overlooked. Are they any less secret for it? Hardly. Length obscures, dissolving guesses, facts, and half-truths into a murky stew.

—Grayson Clary

Where I’ll have been; what I’ll have been up to

So dull and grey and gloomy it’s almost March outside, which is good? I need to start shooting new covers. Which is worth mentioning, perhaps, but not yet itemizing, as there’s nothing as yet to show for it. But! In more substantial news—

Things to keep in mind (The secret of occultiana)

In books of Hidden Writing, the textual subtopia consists of plots, narrations and autonomous author-drones populating the ()hole complex of Hidden Writing. Such a subsurface life can not be reduced to ramified plot layers or buried messages (θησαυρός, thesauri) which would be the rewards of deep reading. So-called hermeneutic rigor follows the logic of textual stratification, and can be achieved by hermeneutical tools corresponding to the layering order of its text. But the subsurface life of Hidden Writing is not the object of layers and interpretation; it can only be exhumed by distorting the structure of the book or the surface plot. Exhumation includes a process of concrete crypting and decrypting, rewording, bastardization and a changing of the book. To interact with Hidden Writings, one must persistently continue and contribute to the writing process of the book. In Hidden Writings the act of reading and writing is conducted through those plot holes rejected by most interpreters as misleading obscurities. For hermeneutical explorations, plot holes are tricks, they are ill-timed and ill-space coördinates within the text—leak holes which must be plugged. But doesn’t blocking the leak shift the pressure to another region, forcing out another hole? Theology is in general constantly obsessed with plugging holes, covering cracks and fissures in reasoning of and about the Divine. Thus, it forms lacunæ of imperfection by which the corpus of theology can always be mobilized against itself, turning against itself and biting back its body. To do rigorous theology is to perforate the Divine’s corpus with heresies.

—Reza Negarestani

a Soft opening

The Baker’s Dozen of Daniel Ocean, Act III, Sc. 1.

Two-in-hand

“The precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science” is much better—but “two sweetest passions” fits more neatly in the space allotted.

That’s one down, Kitty Carlisle

So! I’ve finished the first pass at no. 23.

All (thus far) in one

Things to keep in mind (The secret of the spectacle)

What, for example, of those who flogged refreshments to the crowds, who put up the seating or cleared up the mess at the end of the day? What of the spectators who found the sun too hot or the rain too wet, who could hardly see the wonderful extravaganza that others applauded, or who found themselves mixed up in the outbreaks of violence that could be prompted by the spectacle?

—Mary Beard

Things to keep in mind (The secret of realism)

Suffice it to say that what distresses one about the Heinlein argument in general, when it is presented in narrative form, is that it so frequently takes the form of a gentlemanly assertion: “Just suppose the situation around X (war, race, what-have-you) were P, Q, and R; now under those conditions, wouldn’t behavior Y be logical and justified?”—where behavior Y just happens to be an extreme version of the most conservative, if not fascistic, program. Our argument is never with the truth value of Heinlein’s syllogism: Yes, if P, Q, and R were the case, then behavior Y would be pragmatically justifiable. Our argument is rather with the premises: Since P, Q, and R are not the situation of the present world, why continually pick fictional situations, bolstered by science-fictional distortions, to justify behavior that is patently inappropriate for the real world?

—Samuel R. Delany

Things to keep in mind (The secret of the roses)

Portland is a place where rich ones run away to settle down and grow flowers and shrubbery to hide them from the massacres they’ve caused.

—Woody Guthrie