28 (maybe under our own type of Nihilist spell) (back to text)
29 (whatever exactly that is) (back to text)
30 (which, given this review’s venue, means basically us) (back to text)
31 We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies — but this is very different. (back to text)
* N.B. Of those friends and intimates of your correspondents who happen to dislike porn, a large majority of them report disliking it not so much for moral or religious or political reasons but because they find it boring, and a lot of them seem to use robotic/mechanical/industrial metaphors to try to characterize the boredom, e.g.: “[Hard-core sex is usually] just organs going in and out of other organs, in and out, like watching an oil rig go up and down all day.” (back to text)
* N.B. here in advance that Mr. Rob Black will win Best Director/Video at Saturday night’s Awards gala. (back to text)
† (Max’s response to this crew member’s analysis, accompanied by a thumbs-up: “God bless America, kid.”) (back to text)
* [ = a PEN American Center event concerning a big new translation of The Castle by a man from I think Princeton. In case it’s not obvious, that’s what this whole document is — the text of a very quick speech.] (back to text)
* (Do you think it’s a coincidence that college is when many Americans do their most serious fucking and falling-down drinking and generally ecstatic Dionysian-type reveling? It’s not. College students are adolescents, and they’re terrified, and they’re dealing with their terror in a distinctively US way. Those naked boys hanging upside-down out of their frat house’s windows on Friday night are simply trying to buy a few hours’ escape from the grim adult stuff that any decent school has forced them to think about all week.) (back to text)
* (Since this’ll almost surely get cut, I’ll admit that, yes, I, as a kid, was in fact the author of this song. But by this time I’d been thoroughly brainwashed. It was sort of our family’s version of “100 Bottles… Wall.” My mother was the one responsible for the “wid’ning gyre” line in the refrain, which after much debate was finally substituted for a supposedly “forced” rhyme for fire in my own original lyrics — and again, years later, when I actually understood the apocalyptic thrust of that Yeats line I was, retrospectively, a bit chilled.) (back to text)
* (In case it’s not totally obvious, be advised that this article is using the word rhetoric in its strict traditional sense, something like “the persuasive use of language to influence the thoughts and actions of an audience.”) (back to text)
* (Sic— should obviously be “eagerly awaited.” Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit.) (back to text)
* (Your SNOOT reviewer cannot help observing, w/r/t this ad, that the opening r in its Refer shouldn’t be capitalized after a dependent clause + ellipsis. Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.) (back to text)
* Because The Investigations’ prose is extremely gnomic and opaque and consists largely of Wittgenstein having weird little imaginary dialogues with himself, the quotations here are actually from Norman Malcolm’s definitive paraphrase of L.W.’s argument, in which paraphrase Dr. Malcolm uses single quotation marks for tone quotes and double quotation marks for when he’s actually quoting Wittgenstein — which, when I myself am quoting Malcolm quoting Wittgenstein’s tone quotes, makes for a rather irksome surfeit of quotation marks, admittedly; but using Malcolm’s exegesis allows this interpolative demonstration to be about 60 percent shorter than it would be if we were to grapple with Wittgenstein directly. (back to text)
* There’s a whole argument for this, but intuitively you can see that it makes sense: if the rules can’t be subjective, and if they’re not actually “out there” floating around in some kind of metaphysical hyperreality (a floating hyperreality that you can believe in if you wish, but you should know that people with beliefs like this usually get forced to take medication), then community consensus is really the only plausible option left. (back to text)
*(The above, while true, is an obvious attempt to preempt readerly sneers/winces at the term’s continued deployment in this article.)(back to text)
* (Plus, because the teacher-Them are tall humorless punishers/rewarders, they come to stand for all adults and — in a shadowy, inchoate way — for the Parents, whose gradual shift from composing Us to defining Them is probably the biggest ideological adjustment of childhood.) (back to text)
* (That is, the teacher-/parent-Them becomes the Establishment, Society — Them becomes THEM.)(back to text)
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
BIG RED SON
CERTAINLY THE END OF SOMETHING OR OTHER, ONE WOULD SORT OF HAVE TO THINK
SOME REMARKS ON KAFKA’S FUNNINESS FROM WHICH PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH HAS BEEN REMOVED
AUTHORITY AND AMERICAN USAGE
THE VIEW FROM MRS. THOMPSON’S
HOW TRACY AUSTIN BROKE MY HEART
UP, SIMBA
CONSIDER THE LOBSTER
JOSEPH FRANK’S DOSTOEVSKY
Personal Acknowledgments
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays Page 34
