Michael’s Comments (group member since Mar 07, 2009)

Michael’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Jonathan wrote: " . . .okay, so i guest-edited an issue of knock... . .and i'm proud to say that is THE ABSOLUTE BEST issue of knock ever . . .here's a preview: http://www.knockmagazine.com/issues/11/i..."

I like your interview here Captain. Clearly come across as someone who knows what direction he is taking. Thought I'd take a shot the number of times you mention Dickens of Dickensian, but this is an abridged interview so went to bed sober. My favorite line, "One needs a healthy sense of self-contempt."

Keep up the good work.

Ben wrote: "i don't think i will be embarking on any world-wide tours yet... not until i have the hitler voice down, anyway... fuck books, i'm gonna take over the world..."

So B., how is your collection of stories (qua miniatures (qua fables)) coming along? Have they been published? going to be published? out in print?

I found one other reference to them on the web:

"Ben Loory is a musician and a screenwriter. His collection of fables, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, is almost, almost, almost done. ..."

http://hitandrunmagazine.blogspot.com...

Shel wrote: "Well, who doesn't love Kirk's impetuous, female-alien-grabbing, styrofoam rock-chucking, front-hair curl tossing-ness. The wry smile, the devil-may-care attitude, and what he did with those Tribbles..."

Trembling with rage, a rage-like passion, Kirk grabbed her by her tiny hand and pulled hr to him. He felt hr narrow, vibrating waist and knew that he won. "Let us go where no one has before been there!, he thought aloud, "I am a young virile, living man!". His hands heated with the raging passion he felt towards hr pulled hr away from the door.

"My skills as a Captain are par to no one, including that low lifer Picard! I’m quite happy you’ve finally come to realize just how lucky a find you found in me, in the form of my wry smiling!", he said with raging passion and added, "Let us put you back in your rightful place in my life."

Shel and Kirk embraced in a lover’s embrace. The sun came through the window reflecting like jewels on the plush, synthetic carpet like those found in really high-class hotels in Lansing and it shone on the angel that was Shel, making hr sparkling violet eyes sparkle like the sun that shone on them.

Shel wrote: "I'm in love with Spock. Not sure how it happened. But he's like my biggest movie character crush now.

I have always had a thing for Picard (was it the Earl Grey? The Shakespeare? The shiny head?)..."

Picard is by far the best of the lot. It’s the Shakespeare. Poor Data, never quite understanding what it means to be human, takes to acting our Lear with Picard in the holodeck. Priceless.

There is no debate:

Kirk vs. Picard - Picard
Spock vs. Data - Spock

In the episodes where Ambassador Spock returns, the Spock/Data team is awesome. But the Picard/Spock one-two is unbeatable.

The real debate is Scotty vs. Gordy. Dang. Some questions are just not answerable.

mm

Ben wrote: "Margaret wrote: ""Parable of the Pebbles." I want to see this one. What was your inspiration for this Ben?"

i went to see the grand canyon a long time ago and i think it probably came from that. i..."

I am very happy for everyone. Just makes my day.

I was hoping, however, that the Parable of the Pebbles had something to do with that famous quote about the "stones surrounding your feet". ;)

And Ben, shaking when you get up to speak in front of a crowd is your body's way of telling you to get the hell out of the room. You should listen to it. Crowd seeking people are seriously imbalanced and self-destructive. Crowds can eat you alive man! You have every right to be wary of them. I think you should take a step back and seriously question this whole super-star-fame-people-magazine route you are on. You would make a depressing ex-child TV star. ;(
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Brian wrote: "can someone post a status update on PFL please. last i heard je was in the tub with it... it might be yucky now, well, not that it wasn't yucky before, but yuckier now."

Yeah, what happened to the club's copy of this book? Last I knew Shel had it in Mexico.

Ben wrote: "rawr i'm a big evil polar bear from outer space rawr rawr happy brawrthday chomp chomp chomp rawr"

man you crack me up.

Tamale tamale
bo-bali
Banana fana
fo-folly
Me My
mo-molly
Tamale!

Many happy returns of the day, Jen.
Best regards,
mm

Hugh wrote: "Also, I should admit to being a fair-weather FictionFiler, and more specifically short story participant (this, after egging Shel on..."

Probably more like a fallow FictionFiler fair Hugh the Moderator. It's good for the soil.

In any case, it is nice to hear more of your voice again in here my friend.

Hugh wrote: "Great topic."

I’ve got one. My family lived on Lafayette Square in Savannah at one point. Flannery O`Connor’s childhood home is there, as well as the Cathedral across the square where she went to church and St. Vincent`s Grammar School which she attended as a young girl (though I think the later is no longer there).

Always felt her presence there; a little girl running through the parks, just out of the corner of my eye.



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Alex wrote: "Al, Alex, Alexander, Zander--I answer to any of these...I'm currently reading Wittgenstein's Mistress, which I like very much and, I'm sure, could induce insanity.
"

Hello Zander - we've got a group read of this book on tap for June. Hope you will join us. I have no idea what to expect of this book. Look under the Groupreadicus thread for intro material.
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First off: right click on this page and select “View Source”.

I’ve been flipping this week through my dog-eared copies of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and his later, more admired, Philosophical Investigations trying to prepare for our group read of Wittgenstein's Mistress. It is interesting, of course, to go back and re-discover my undergraduate marginalia rotting in there; chicken scratches, hasty exclamation points drifting off to nowhere now, a bookmark made from the bookstore receipt. Can you believe college texts once cost $2.95? And who is this young man making these comments, he seems so familiar, and why on earth did he highlight this phrase?

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I am thinking that the novel will probably not deal too directly with Witt.’s line of thought per se, but probably cites him in the title primarily for his distinctive style of writing; short (numbered) sentences and paragraphs, aphorisms, brief analogies - or “language-games” as he calls them – and elegant statements. The Tractatus is a neat rubric, where major statements are numbered n.0, and more detailed statements underneath sub-headed n.x, n.xy, etc. For example,

4.121 Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.

4.1211 Thus one proposition 'f(a)' shows that the object a occurs in its sense, two propositions 'f(a)' and 'g(a)' show that the same object is mentioned in both of them. If two propositions contradict one another, then their structure shows it; the same is true if one of them follows from the other. And so on.

4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.

4.1213 Now, too, we understand our feeling that once we have a sign-language in which everything is all right, we already have a correct logical point of view.

PI, on the other, is much more scattered. He says in the forward (I have the 2nd edition), “I have written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs, of which there is sometimes a fairly long chain about the same subject, while I sometimes makes a sudden change, jumping from one topic to another…”

Indeed. It is this bursting, scattershot approach to his writing which has earned him a reputation as being something of the Jackson Pollack of philosophers.

The earlier Tractatus (1920) is (literally) addressed to Bertrand Russell, and the fascinating program Russell/Whitehead proposed to root the entire corpus of mathematics in Symbolic Logic (Frege) and Set Theory (Cantor). Much of the Tractatus is addressing the known issues with that program [BTW, David Foster Wallace wrote a great biography of Cantor, [book:Georg Cantor|3091375], which should be on anyone who is interested in mathematicians going mad short list of must-reads) but Witt. is also trying to expand this Logistic Thesis to include the less formal language of thought and experience.

In this, I think Witt. even admits, the Tractatus is something of a flop.

The Tractatus was, however, very influential and got Witt. a seat at the table in the 20th century’s mad dash to computer languages. Please again right click on this page and select “View Source”. This underlying (universal) scripting is in fact Witt.’s view of the world and of the underlying structure of natural language; so that even though the Tractatus might have its flaws, it gets some credit for predicting and explaining what we can see here as we wander the internets, and just how much of everyday thought and experience can indeed be scoped within a “merely” formal language.

I’ve gone on too long for now, but I want to come back at a later date and talk about PI a little more. I think it a much more interesting work.

Cheers,
mm

Patrick wrote: "I read 'There Are More Things' by this author. The title is used from Williams Shakespeares' Hamlet. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt in your philosophy,' I just got..."

Great post Paddy. This is why I read the Fiction Files. Just a great post man.

Patrick wrote: "I would probably start with his short stories before taking a belly flop into his novels..."

That might be taking a belly flop into an empty swimming pool Paddy ol' man. Borges didn't write any novels I am aware of. Anyone? Anyone?

It seems obvious, but you have The Border Trilogy on your short list I would assume? Read it and turned around and re-read it this winter. The dialog is actually, hold the presses, funny in places; a very dry cowboy wit that Mr. McCarthy.

What is Zane Grey about?
How is Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dive, Streets of Laredo)?

mm

Greg wrote: "If it's just a question of influential, I'm afraid the answer is probably Gone with the Wind. No book spawned more imitators and offshoots. Second would be Tobacco Road which spawned in effect th..."

Welcome back Greg. It has been a long time it seems. You need to have one of the authors in the group show you how to register on Goodreads as an author so that we can connect with your work. Do you have new comming out soon?

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Brian wrote: "

cajun heat... just the cover changed my life."

Bri - are you at Photoshop again, or is this a real life example of life imitating comedy? It is so hard to tell these days.

Jon - yeah, I'm with you on the omission of Twain's masterwork from this list of southern writers. But lets be straight: GWTW tops this poll. Doesn't that 'bout say it all? Not that that isn't the right answer (if you are playing Family Feud) but there is the right answer and there is the right answer, and this little poll doesn't seem to know the difference between the two.

So, what are your thoughts on Huck? When I reread it last I skiped the last 100 pages or so after they land and abandon the raft. The darky humor at the end doesn't wear well on me.

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I finished Mr. Yates’ novel Disturbing the Peace last week. How he keeps from dipping into melodrama I cannot tell. The characters again all in a hot bother about maintaining their sanity and not worth knowing as friends - evil, intemperate, and self-serving all – but he pulls it off nonetheless. The writing is almost as crisp as RevRo, and the plot line takes you for a steady ride through the couple hundred pages or so. I’m particularly impressed that the opening episodes in Bellevue are later turned into a play and acted out in a barn in Vermont; a play which is in turn expanded into a movie of 3 acts by the screenwriters we meet in Act 3, neatly describing what we have just seen in Act 2, and more than predicting the final act.

I have to tell you, reading Yates while getting caught up on the past couple seasons of Madmen has been quite the combination. Add to that, I’ve gotten hooked on reading Dave Trott’s blog (found here: Dave Trott) and I’ve stumbled into a serious lead up to James P.'s new release, Adworld. Anything with the title “Creative Director” has got my attention these days.

I am certain Yates is on the must-read list for the writers of Madmen. The pathos under-skirting the show is pure 100% Yates.

Madmen aside, I actually prefer Distrubing the Peace after the action shifts to L.A.; this is Film Noir plus an extra unkind decade; kind of like Judy Garland by the time of her own TV show; Film Noir that should have left the party and gone home 10 years earlier:

“He sat on the living-room sofa, tapering off on beer, waiting for sleep. He was still there, awake and whispering to himself, when daylight crept through the Venetian blinds.”

mm

I finished Mr. Yates’ novel Disturbing the Peace last week. How he keeps from dipping into melodrama I cannot tell. The characters again all in a hot bother about maintaining their sanity and not worth knowing as friends - evil, intemperate, and self-serving all – but he pulls it off nonetheless. The writing is almost as crisp as RevRo, and the plot line takes you for a steady ride through the couple hundred pages or so. I’m particularly impressed that the opening episodes in Bellevue are later turned into a play and acted out in a barn in Vermont; a play which is in turn expanded into a movie of 3 acts by the screenwriters we meet in Act 3, neatly describing what we have just seen in Act 2, and more than predicting the final act.

I have to tell you, reading Yates while getting caught up on the past couple seasons of Madmen has been quite the combination. Add to that, I’ve gotten hooked on reading Dave Trott’s blog (found here: Dave Trott) and I’ve stumbled into a serious lead up to James P.'s new release, Adworld. Anything with the title “Creative Director” has got my attention these days.

I am certain Yates is on the must-read list for the writers of Madmen. The pathos under-skirting the show is pure 100% Yates.

Madmen aside, I actually prefer Distrubing the Peace after the action shifts to L.A.; this is Film Noir plus an extra unkind decade; kind of like Judy Garland by the time of her own TV show; Film Noir that should have left the party and gone home 10 years earlier:

“He sat on the living-room sofa, tapering off on beer, waiting for sleep. He was still there, awake and whispering to himself, when daylight crept through the Venetian blinds.”

mm

Dan wrote: "It's done. It took 43 days though I snuck in The Big Sleep somewhere in that time frame.

As I have said before, I didn't think I would like this book but I did for the most part. I was pleasantly ..."

Dan, RE the ending. You should read the New Yorker article on DFW which Shel posted recently. It's out on the shared drive Brian's has donated to the group. Goes into the editing of IJ and specifically talks about various iterations that were proposed for the ending.