Krapp's Last Vape

Kick off your weekend with @jonathanbfine who tells us why we should all still read Lessing and why the German enlightenment still matters. This conversation is now available gratis wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe to Moral Minority’s Patreon for more.

@BarneysRubble0 Lol. Lmao even.

@SatireRedacted So lame

Infinite Jest is probably responsible for saving more lives than it is for being a signifier of an annoying and largely imaginary lit bro. Infinite Jest as a cultural phenomenon 1) made literature feel both cool and a personal challenge and 2) decreased loneliness.

@maxdaniellawton I adore Conrad. Lord Jim and The Secret Agent are landmark books for me.

Can’t believe I’m forcing myself to reread NOSTROMO. I really dislike about half of what I read by Conrad but am inexorably drawn back to him… even to that which I’ve already disliked…

@chrisfogIe Smart to resist. Also, probably don’t experiment with benzos.

@pourfairelevide I know this is completely predictable coming from me, but the nearest comparison to this circling of memories and ideas is Krapp’s Last Tape.

Kohler circles and circles the same ideas and the same scenes over and over again, but Gass accumulates a life and a world around them that changes our view on every pass, shocking and outraging but never playing tricks on us.

The thing about The Tunnel is that it’s far easier to read and understand sentence-by-sentence than almost any other modernist masterpiece of similar caliber. Gass is an extremely clear writer; his genius is clarity; he couldn’t be otherwise.

@CHRISF0GLE I wasn’t either, but I had someone in my life who once told me I cannot go around wearing “granny glasses” anymore and I listened. My imperviousness to fashion trends was broken that day. You stay pure!

@SatireRedacted I’m not particularly concerned with the state of fashion

I’m getting new glasses and I found a frame that looks exactly like 1996 DFW’s ugh I’m so excited

Listen to this!

I only read literature about bad people doing bad things in morally unambiguous ways and lacking psychological nuance in order to performatively shake my head (that’s for the girl reading this) and mentally wag my finger as if saying, “Couldn’t be me!”

@norabird @saintsoftness Yes you can and should.

@saintsoftness This is why I cannot succumb to the year of kitteh

I have to wake up at 7:45 AM to take insane trains to Williamsburg for a gallery preview, but Plin sleeps at a) 8 pm and b) 4 AM with crazy time from 10 pm- 3 am. She makes sad little mews if I shut her out of my bedroom to stop limb pouncing. I’m so doomed! Her powers…

Eddington was robbed.

@ryanhasbadtaste My favorite film directed by Spielberg.

NW

@pourfairelevide Can confirm!

the thing is, people you meet on this website actually can become your friends & your readers & your supporters if you engage with them in good faith & say interesting stuff. but if you spend all day nakedly networking & self-promoting, ofc nobody will actually buy your book lol

In case you somehow missed it, here is our interview with @bartlebytaco. patreon.com/posts/14175627…

Sebastian makes a great interview and is one of my favorite living writers. EPOCH jumping on the Castillo bandwagon belatedly after Moral Minority podcast got there first. Transitive property applies here by the way. But seriously, check this out.

@CHRISF0GLE Also, it assumes that every writer is capable of writing to a market niche and not neurologically-fated to write how they write because they couldn’t do otherwise.

This whole discourse assumes a world in which writing, particularly weird writing, is valued highly in the marketplace. But it’s not. It’s never been. You can take it out on the litmag editors or the tasteless masses or whomever, or you can suck it up & write for the few who care

So many people have asked me why I don’t just write romance slop. “A lot more money in that,” they say, and they’re right. But if money were my main consideration, I wouldn’t write at all. I’d go to business school.

@CHRISF0GLE There’s one of these that you couldn’t pay me to talk about, but the rest are fair game.

If your friends aren’t talking about: -Choosy Mothers -James O. Incandenza’s filmography -Eschaton strategy -Madame Psychosis -Fully-Functional Phil -the ACME Family of Gags 'N Notions, Pre-Packaged Emotions, Jokes and Surprises and Wacky Disguises It’s time to find new friends.

The tunefulness remains in latter day McCartney, but it’s the minor moments that distinguish the tossed off from the timeless.

McCartney’s best solo work takes on an almost elegiac tone and the lyrics would almost sound bitter if they weren’t so plainly an expression of hurt feelings or the disappointments of breaking up or growing old.