On Teleology, Evolution, Suit-Wearing and History as Novelism

I was having this conversation yesterday with my girlfriend about how in talk of evolution there is room to disagree with so-called evolutionists because some evolutionist don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. There is room to disagree because many evolutionists don’t talk about evolution as premised in a way we think about the … Continue reading →

One More Thing…

“Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.” —H.L. Mencken In the dialogue I’ve been pushing, sometimes gently nudging forth, like the prow of a boat being ushered out into the waves, or sometimes like thrusting the tip of a spear, I have attempted to show arts function, when it operates properly as a knowledge tool, is a force … Continue reading →

Departure

Dan: I’m older, and I’m much less friendly to fuckin’ change. Al Swearengen: Change ain’t lookin’ for friends. Change calls the tune we dance to. —Deadwood The efficacy of life is held within the grip of memory. Without memory we and indeed everyone we know or have known do not exist. We spend our lives … Continue reading →

On Sincerity: Auden

I’ve been reading a lot of W.H. Auden recently. And what struck me, in reading him, is that sincerity without a target on which to pile on for broadly welfarist reasons, which when marked and painted is your run-of-the-mill authenticity, sounds a lot like white middle-class privilege.   Continue reading →

Culture’s Last Gleaming: The White Hipster

“It is on this bleak scene that a phenomenon has appeared: the American existentialist—the hipster, the man who knows that if our collective condition is to live with instant death by atomic war, relatively quick death by the State as l’univers concentrationnaire, or with a slow death by conformity with every creative and rebellious instinct … Continue reading →

On The Weird Fact that Something I Said Got Compared to Duchamp

Here, slightly edited:  a conversation I had with my colleague and friend–though, I’ve never met the man–Odin: On the Guardian piece about the collapsing incomes of writers, and Odin’s sincere and challenging critique of people who think they’re writers just because they have a blog. (Opinions are like assholes, right? And everyone of those assholes … Continue reading →

On Art Writing, Or: Writing Refuse I

  I’m going to post the unedited refuse of things I’ve published elsewhere. This project starts now; it won’t be backdated. Here’s the first of that: that the “prison swap” prisoner of conscience Private Berghdahl’s most difficult test will be to become what he was to all those he loved and who loved hime before … Continue reading →