michal k-c > Recent Status Updates

deceptively simple style. gotta keep your eye on this one

forgot about the "private family"/"collective family" thing in this... i think it's probably the most naturally reactionary position to take (that most people would take without thinking about it) but the problem is Orwell has no instinct to consider that the "private family" has also been essentially engineered through certain modes of econ & social production rather than the family unit being naturally occurring

Roth is cooking in this one

Orwell’s gotta be one of my least favourite pseuds of all time looking forward to revisiting this

Roth is easily my favourite propagator of the Hapsburg Myth

Kurt Hiller’s essay anti-cain. hard to see someone get absolutely fucking steamrolled by history like that. extremely funny that he stuck to his pacifist guns even after the rise of nazism / the Shoah / WWII and was privately calling Benjamin a hack as late as 55

late Roth on late-style. supposedly one of his worst but i’m becoming a bit of a Roth completionist

equality before the law is a fiction of representation that cannot in itself lead to the idea of freedom, as we only experience the legal order as something into which we are born and which, as far as own participation, may one day only perpetuate. so jot that down

i attended a conference ~3 years ago where i sat on a panel re: Benjamin as/and lit crit. later that day i got to say to my least favourite colleague "i was just at the Benjamin panel and nobody knew you". no one in my personal life will ever find this anecdote funny

another euro novel about the impossibility of thinking — i get the kafka comparisons

like Knausgaard in that she is totally unafraid of the banality of accumulated life, unlike Knausgaard in that she is very afraid of bad prose

hmmm

gives up the gun way too fast. although it is definitely one of those "the monotony is the point" works

making a pointed effort to read more contemporary fiction since i’m applying to a writing program and probably need to be a little more current in my sphere of influence than Barthelme

started reading at 5am at the airport but made me too hungry

obviously haven’t read the next three volumes but even before i finish this one i’m just gonna shoot from the hip and say that any and all of the Proust comparisons are completely superficial and made by midwitted dweebs

alright book two done, Powell articulates the essence of the bildungsroman very well but his narrative impulses are basically nonexistent, so who can say if this is good or not

book 1 ends with our narrator protagonist becoming a bit wistful considering the importance of Uncle Magic. now i’m hooked

very agreeable prose — but to what end, i cry

i’m cruising through the prissy diction and idle chit chat should have this done and the report on your desk by friday

just a quick detour from the knausgaard into a dance to the music of time

noticing a real affinity between Michael Haneke and Peter Handke re: surveillance, only whereas Haneke's camera is an agent of surveilling, Handke's observant protagonists are often engaged in some kind of cultural surveillance. maybe this is an Austrian thing

always loved Bloom’s bit with the covering cherub

your late teens and early twenties are all about railing against the canon. once you hit mid 20s it’s all about defending the canon. simple as that

incredible piece of info: Karl ove didn’t get his license until he was 39 years old

knausgaard is really one of the best writers we’ve got and he’s probably the one who cares the least about writing well

(knausgaard’s kid once they grow up and learn how to read, encountering this chapter on single-use plastic bags that Karl ove wrote for them): oh, thanks dad

ben lerner’s hatred of poetry put this on my radar — but i don’t hate this poetry !

cruising right along. beautiful fall breeze today

god i wish i was in Massachusetts rn. truly the spirit of mass is the spirit of america