In case you need to dispatch a co-worker this Halloween. From the University of Florida’s 2009 Zombie Attack plan—
Day: October 26, 2010
“It Comes Straight from Freud” — Tom McCarthy Talks about His Novel C
The National Post profiles Tom McCarthy about his new novel C. Here are a few choice lines from McCarthy–
- “I think the historical thing is a red herring. I don’t see C as a historical novel. I see it as completely contemporary. It’s about media and our relation to media and to emerging new media and to networks.”
- “It comes straight from Freud. Trauma is the condition of our identity. Trauma is the most basic condition of our existence.”
- “It’s a dual trauma, Serge’s seduction by Sophie his sister and then the loss of the sister.”
- “The way I got the idea with the book was I had a long-standing fascination with this movie by Jean Cocteau, Orphée, his retelling of the Orpheus myth.”
- “Orpheus in this movie interfaces with the underworld via a radio and what he picks up are the voices of the dead poets.”
From Cocteau’s Orphée–
“Between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take Scotch” — William Faulkner on the Ideal Artistic Environment
The Paris Review’s 1956 interview with William Faulkner is amazing. An excerpt–
INTERVIEWER: Then what would be the best environment for a writer?
FAULKNER: Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn’t care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.
So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
INTERVIEWER: Bourbon, you mean?
FAULKNER: No, I ain’t that particular. Between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take Scotch.
“Hagar & Ishmael” — An Excerpt from an Unfinished Joseph Heller Novel
“Hagar & Ishmael” is an excerpt from an unfinished Joseph Heller novel (and yes, we know it’s not new to the internet. It was published by some magazine called The Paris Review a few years ago)–
It wasn’t my idea. Sarah thought of it first. But I was excited from the time she said so, and I began to wash myself everywhere every day, and to keep myself clean after noontime too. I was happy as a lark and chirped and flitted everywhere like a cute little bird, singing to myself merrily and winking to my friends and giggling behind my hands, after Sarah raised the question and Abraham moved me into his quarters to be near him, where I could be watched. Of course I would not have said no even if I could have, and of course I was excited by this chance. I was the envy of almost all of the other women, even of those with husbands.
For a week or more he would not touch me, until it was clear I was not already pregnant with another man’s child, and then for another week also after that, until I was free of the curse and he knew I was not unclean. These people are funny that way, he and Sarah, and Lot and his wife too, before they moved off with their daughters and all their household to dwell away from us in Sodom. Once I lay with Abraham and bore him his son, no other man in the camp came near me again, or seemed to want to, even long after. By the end of one month I was with child. Abraham sent me back and did not use me that way again, although I made eyes at him a lot to show that I wanted him to.
I cannot say truthfully which one of the two of us started the trouble, whether it was Sarah with her envy or me with my vanity and disrespect that kindled the enmity between us and destroyed the feelings of friendship between mistress and slave that had been in all ways favorable since they bought me with money and took me up out of Egypt with them. Probably, it was both. I was Egyptian and a servant, she was his blood relation, a half sister. But she was aged and barren, and I was younger and carrying her husband’s child, the son or daughter of her master that she herself had not been able to bear, and they had been married long.
I could not contain my happiness and my pride in myself and certainly did not wish to hide them. My conceit grew with my belly, expanding without shame. Soon everyone knew I had Abraham’s child. I made sure of that.
Biblioklept 