Feb 21 2008
In the Labyrinth was the first book of “literature” I think I ever read without having been assigned it. There was a time that all I wanted to do was write like Robbe-Grillet (probably a curse of many young, aspiring novelists). He is one of the reasons I now do what I do. Damn you Robbe-Grillet!
Jun 09 2007
I’m normally not a fan of Chuck Palahniuk. I liked Fight Club fine, but I despised Lullaby to such an extent that, even though it had been the only other Palahniuk novel I’d ever read, it colored my thinking about him absolutely. (I did start Choke and didn’t care for it; I’ve also listened to a bit of an interview he gave shortly after Haunted was released, which was smart enough to convince me that he had talent, talent that was wasted on Lullaby.) What bugs me about him, based on my limited reading, is his seemingly absolute aversion to specificity. Where do these stories take place? Somewhere. When is it? Sometime. What exactly is the sickness at the heart of society that drives characters to do what they do? Something. It’s all very Beckett, Sartre, or Camus, but without the elegance or the depth. We can, of course, come to conclusions about the who, what, where, and when of these novels, but for my own personal taste, politics, and aesthetics, Lullaby (and by reverse extension Fight Club) fall short of saying anything interesting.
I can’t say that Rant entirely deviates from the “pattern”–it begins in a nowheresville small town named Middleton and moves to a big (unnamed, natch) city about one-third of the way through. The historical moment of the novel is never made explicit. The small town scenes seemingly could be set at any moment of American history after WWII (or maybe even before). There is little identifying technology and no reference to any historical event that might give the reader a clue, except a few mentions of “Party Crashing,” the I-SEE-U Act,” and “out-cording”, neither of which make any sense upon a first reading until well-after this neo-nostalgic section of the novel concludes.
Once the setting moves to the city, the reader becomes aware that this is not the 1950s, 60s, 70s, or any other recognizable period in history. To compensate for the impossible traffic conditions of the future (yes future) the world of the city has been divided into day and night. Citizens are only allowed to emerge from their homes for twelve hour shifts. Klaxons warn of the approach of dawn or dusk and $500 or $1000 fines are levied for people who do not comply. Nighttimers (as they are called) form a kind of underclass. They are given subsidized housing and certain other perks in the hopes that more people while choose to be nocturnal, but mainly their ranks are drawn from the endless supply of teenagers who–like the hippies, punks, and goths before them–mainly leave the day behind to piss off their parents. The most significant form of community found at night is the somewhat mysterious activity of Party Crashing, a sort of game which involves flagging your car with a pre-arranged symbol (a Christmas tree, a “Just Married Sign,” etc.) and prowling the streets looking to “tag” (i.e. run into) other cars similarly marked. But it’s not just for giggles. There is a point, even if it takes a while to develop.
The plot element that finally clues the reader in to just how far in the future this novel is set (or simply the fact that it is absolutely not set in some version of our present with a minor tweak) is the existence of Matrix-like ports in the back of almost everyone’s head. The ports are used for “out-cording”–think of what Nero does in Strange Days–a form of entertainment that has, overnight, eliminated all other media. And that’s the set up.
Oh, except for one thing.
Rant Casey, the eponymous protagonist whose story is told through the recollections of several dozen characters of various acquaintance, is into rabies. As a child he would vaccinate himself against boredom or schoolwork by sticking his hands down animal holes. He had been bitten by black widows, hobo and recluse spiders, coyotes, bats, skunks, and innumerable other dangerous critters. Eventually he became an asymptomatic carrier of a highly contagious and highly drug-resistant form of rabies which, according to the government, threatens society on an existential level and is the justification for the more or less genocidal slaughter of Nighttimers. Okay, that’s the set up.
And from there the novel gets really weird. Continue Reading »
Jun 08 2007
No video that I can find, but last night on the Daily Show Jon Stewart made a joke about Bush’s reading of Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche. That may be a first. But you really had to be(ing) there. . .
[/rimshot]
Get it?
May 04 2007
Or something. Let’s just put it this way: thank the flying spaghetti monster these people aren’t providing security for anything important. The people who’re doing that are way smarter. Oh right.
Link.
Apr 30 2007
Just got back from the Media in Transitions conference at MIT yesterday. I have mixed feelings.
On the one hand, in an objective sense, the conference was great. Manuel Castells went. Henry Jenkins organized it. Siva Vaidyanathan gave one of the wrap-up talks (although I had to miss it because my plane was taking off about then). Most of all what made it awesome was the fact that it is so connected to contemporary society. There was very little theory but a whole lot of references to You Tube, Cory Doctorow, and the kind of stuff I spend a lot of time looking at and reading. Hah! I knew reading Jason Kottke was work! In any case, I learned a lot, heard a lot of very good papers, and picked up an excellent book list that will serve me well as a basis for a bibliography for my (gasp!) book project. (That’s what your dissertation turns into–in the manner of pumpkins at midnight–when you finish it kids. Hint: don’t ever finish it.) However, what I thought was going to be the coolest part of the conference was the fact that I was going to be on a panel with McKenzie Wark, he of G4M3R 7H30RY fame (as well as the earlier, excellent A Hacker Manifesto, which is far more relevant for my work). However, it is here that my subjectively bad experience of the conference manifests.
The session I was on was entitled Games and Play. I know very little little about game theory generally or the current state of video game research. My abstract does not mention games or really anything that, to my mind, could be construed as being about games. It does mention McKenzie Wark, however, and perhaps that’s why they put me on this panel. However, as was to be expected, everyone there wanted to either talk to Wark or ask questions of a more sociological bent (still about games, however) to the other speaker, Dan Roy, who talked about Identity and Cross-Platform Gaming. Now, I don’t fault anyone for wanting to have a conversation about gaming when they came to a panel about gaming. But I still bothers me that I was asked one pity question and ultimately wound up talking to absolutely no one about my paper/subject area when the whole conference, it seems to me, was entirely built around things I think about all of the time (although I expect that’s hardly unique to me–the part about the thinking, not about the not talking). What my presence on the panel led to, no doubt, is confusion, as evidenced by this blog post, who states, of my paper, “Not sure what this has to do with Games and Play”. Nothing, and I can’t fault anyone for not being interested in my paper, because, for the most part, I am generally not invested in games.
Ah, well. Enough with the bitching and moaning. I did wind up having a very good lunch just after the session at Legal Seafood with S. Craig Watkins (whose two papers on hip-hop were among the highlights of the conference for me), D.E. Wittkower, Joost van Dreunen, and Ron Robinson. Unfortunately no link for Ron, as he was not speaking and I can’t find him in Google. But, among being one of the more interesting and energetic people I have ever met at a conference, also picked up the check. Thanks Ron.
And, as always, Boston is a cool town. Although MIT is little strange. It’s tough to critique the man when you’re in the center of the military-industrial complex and there are people from the State Department [not even kidding] attending sessions and mentioning the existence of classified CIA wikis).
I also just realized that this is my first post. Woo. Hoo.
