From Vladimir’s novel Pale Fire.
“Sixteen Don’ts for Poets” by Arthur Guiterman
from Literature in the Making (1917)
“Don’t think of yourself as a poet, and don’t dress the part.
“Don’t classify yourself as a member of any special school or group.
“Don’t call your quarters a garret or a studio.
“Don’t frequent exclusively the company of writers.
“Don’t think of any class of work that you feel moved to do as either beneath you or above you.
“Don’t complain of lack of appreciation. (In the long run no really good published work can escape appreciation.)
“Don’t think you are entitled to any special rights, privileges, and immunities as a literary person, or have any more reason to consider your possible lack of fame a grievance against the world than has any shipping-clerk or traveling-salesman.
“Don’t speak of poetic license or believe that there is any such thing.
“Don’t tolerate in your own work any flaws in rhythm, rhyme, melody, or grammar.
“Don’t use ‘e’er’ for ‘ever,’ ‘o’er’ for ‘over,’ ‘whenas’ or ‘what time’ for ‘when,’ or any of the ‘poetical’ commonplaces of the past.
“Don’t say ‘did go’ for ‘went,’ even if you need an extra syllable.
“Don’t omit articles or prepositions for the sake of the rhythm.
“Don’t have your book published at your own expense by any house that makes a practice of publishing at the author’s expense.
“Don’t write poems about unborn babies.
“Don’t—don’t write hymns to the great god Pan. He is dead; let him rest in peace!
“Don’t write what everybody else is writing.”
(Read the entire essay after the jump)
I love this passage from Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The title of Pale Fire, of course, comes from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Ironies aside, I dig the sentiment here, and would extend it to the glut of contemporary novels that rest heavily on the weight of other, better would-be precursor texts.
The second part of my (long) interview with Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes, editors of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion. Chock full of all sorts of riffage: sincerity, authenticity, Vollmann’s visual art, etc. Special bonus: slightly frazzled Franzen pic.
I reread David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest in June/July. First time I’d read the whole thing since 2001. I wrote about reading the first 299 pages. I was also reading some of the essays in William H. Gass’s Fiction and the Figures of Life, and I riffed at some length on Wallace contra Gass, masscult entertainment, etc. From that riff:
…this is Wallace’s big insight in Infinite Jest, right?—that our consciousnesses, mapped in the muck, are framed in desire and reward, and we are conditioned/subjected into that system of desire/reward, so that we desire the desire, even as our consciousnesses…can sneer at something we love, can dismiss the muck that helped shape us even as we plunge into it, the muck. And—too, part of Wallace’s insight in Infinite Jest—too, the consciousness of the consciousness of the desire of desire—that that’s, like, the contemporary condition. And what Wallace…seems to want to point to is some way out of the muck of pop consciousness, a reconciliation toward a pure consciousness that doesn’t sneer—right?
Nell Zink’s debut novel The Wallcreeper is fucking incredible.
Loved loved loved J.G. Ballard’s degenerate debauched depraved novel High-Rise—
Here’s that owl—with a special guest no less!
From H.A. Guerber’s Myths of the Norsemen (1909):
As the steam rose in clouds it again encountered the prevailing cold, and was changed into rime or hoarfrost, which, layer by layer, filled up the great central space. Thus by the continual action of cold and heat, and also probably by the will of the uncreated and unseen, a gigantic creature called Ymir or Orgelmir (seething clay), the personification of the frozen ocean, came to life amid the ice-blocks in the abyss, and as he was born of rime he was called a Hrim-thurs, or ice-giant.
“In early times,
When Ymir lived,
Was sand, nor sea,
Nor cooling wave;
No earth was found,
Nor heaven above;
One chaos all,
And nowhere grass.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Henderson’s tr.).
Groping about in the gloom in search of something to eat, Ymir perceived a gigantic cow called Audhumla (the nourisher), which had been created by the same agency as himself, and out of the same materials. Hastening towards her, Ymir noticed with pleasure that from her udder flowed four great streams of milk, which would supply ample nourishment.
All his wants were thus satisfied; but the cow, looking about her for food in her turn, began to lick the salt off a neighbouring ice-block with her rough tongue. This she continued to do until first the hair of a god appeared and then the whole head emerged from its icy envelope, until by-and-by Buri (the producer) stepped forth entirely free.
While the cow had been thus engaged, Ymir, the [4]giant, had fallen asleep, and as he slept a son and daughter were born from the perspiration under his armpit, and his feet produced the six-headed giant Thrudgelmir, who, shortly after his birth, brought forth in his turn the giant Bergelmir, from whom all the evil frost giants are descended.
“Under the armpit grew,
’Tis said of Hrim-thurs,
A girl and boy together;
Foot with foot begat,
Of that wise Jötun,
A six-headed son.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).
Biblioklept 