@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI You’re on mute. So, you know. Masturbate quietly. I’m sure you’ve done that before.
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668: The Neighbor of the Beast
26.1K posts
668: The Neighbor of the Beast
@668_Beast
I am not special. Mastodon: @[email protected] BlueSky: @668Beast.bsky.social
Katılım Aralık 2007
219 Takip Edilen401 Takipçiler
@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI Great idea: "the use of words that mean the opposite of what one intends to say especially in order to insult, to show irritation, or to be funny" (Míriam Webster).
I guess the sarcasm there was that I'm not actually a "jejune guy"? Fascinating
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I’ll never stop saying with my whole chest that the western canon is weirder and wilder than any of us could expect. They are enduring works precisely because they are NOT stereotypical of their times and places.
Hipólita of the Lily Tribe 🏳️⚧️ 🇦🇷☭@its_hipolita
The whole "dead white men classics" shit from booktok people is absurd because I read Moby Dick and one of the first things Ishmael does is get into a tensely homoerotic two-men-one-bed situation with Queequeg and even goes "it's like I'm his wife... jk haha... unless?"
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Dude, you can’t even spell solipsistic. Go away.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI Actually when I return to Barthes I am reminded that literature is not a game of purely subjective interpretation but rather grounded in the actually existing text. That way I don't follow you down the path of becoming purely solipsitic
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI You should get a dictionary and look up sarcasm. Anyway, I’ve long since abandoned the idea that masturbation is a sin. It’s still unseemly, though, that you’re out here doing it in public.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI "jejune guys"
You should be plumbing the depths of a thesaurus my friend
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI The quality of literature may not be subjective, but there is zero agreement on it, or on what defines it. If you follow Barthes and return to the text, the first thing you’ll have to abandon is your belief that “judging” it, whatever that means, is the same as understanding it.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI You'll excuse me if I don't think reading recommendations from someone whose main argument is that the quality of literature is completely subjective and thus there's no point in even attempting to judge them is going to be very enlightening. Return to the text. Read Barthes
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Oh, I see. You’re one of those jejune guys. The point here is: you haven’t said a single thing about literature yet. Or at least not anything that can’t be gleaned from the table of contents of a Norton anthology. Let’s be done now. I’m satisfied I’ve plumbed your depths.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI Poptimism as applied to literature. How jejune. Why even bother saying anything at all about literature at all
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Great. So say you like the stuff at the top of your list, and you like UTC less. Why does that have to turn into some kind of prescription — or, in effect, a proscription — for everybody else. You’re allowed to like and dislike books. Just do that.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI I've read Uncle Tom's Cabin, as it so happens, and while it is indeed worthy of scholarship, would be pretty far down my list of books to recommend, which is not true of many of the works in the admittedly somewhat subjective canon
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI And I don’t mean to assign you homework. I do mean to suggest that a lot of people have given this topic a lot of thought in the past fifty years, and sometime when you’re between genuflections to the Greats it might behoove you to catch up on that conversation.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI There’s great stuff in the canon. There’s great stuff outside the canon. There’s stuff that’s great to you and isn’t great to me in both places. It’s almost like the term “great” has no meaning and is a profound waste of time to worry about.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI On the other hand, Jane Tompkins makes a very convincing case for reading UTC. You know, if just knowing more about the world we live in isn’t enough.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI It was said of Erasmus that he was the last living person to know everything there was to know. That is a proper, if asymptotic, aim of scholarship. Not the Worship of Listed Items.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI I’m not, actually. I’m a literary scholar. That means I have a job, which is understanding the whole of literature if I can, and no part of that job involves Ranking the Great Works.
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@668_Beast @CharlemagnumPI Sorry, if I had known you were the number one Uncle Tom's Cabin fan I would have been more tactful
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Anyway, this has been thoroughly studied. Read Jane Tompkins on Hawthorne and canon-formation. While you’re at it, read Sensational Designs. Read Lauren Berlant. Canons are made by university professors, for the most part. They’re not chiseled into tablets by God.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Oh, wait. I thought we were just saying silly things now.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Zebras are really black with white stripes!
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@PhilKlay Unfortunately, I think we might have elected Aarfy.
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We shouldn’t have elected Milo Minderbinder as president.
Barak Ravid@BarakRavid
🚨U.S. to allow Iran to get ~14 billion dollars (!!!) in oil revenue 🚨This is a huge financial concession to Iran by the U.S. 🚨It is the first time U.S. is buying Iranian oil since 1996 🚨It's all happening in the middle of a war against...Iran
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Similarly, I doubt you’d find consensus in the scholarship about whether the canon — again, however that word is defined — shouldn’t ought to include works that are representative of a time and place.
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@Lou_E_Blank @CharlemagnumPI Virtually everybody in the 19th C would have disagreed with your assessment of UTC. So you are either uniquely in possession of criteria for Very Good Books that they didn’t have, or the criteria themselves are artifacts of a “political and social moment.”
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@bigjimmooney Yeah. He can glue some gold bullshit on it.
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I am the owner of the oldest 13 star American Flag in existence. It is currently on display at The Commonwealth Museum in Boston. I believe it should be brought to The White House this year on Flag Day (June 14) to be displayed for President Trump allthingsliberty.com/2024/07/a-thir…
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@lexlanham There’s a reason offal rhymes with awful.
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oh no the algorithm is trying to sell
me this “satiating” smoothie made of liver, spleen, kidney, pancreas & ::checks notes:: grass-fed beef brain
the FAQ are like,
Q: but what if I don’t like the taste of freeze-dried organs?
A: you may add half a banana
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