tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post4757425140761586229..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: On Obscure, Coded and Alchemical Texts: Part 2michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-42661803334994649832011-12-08T11:53:12.878-08:002011-12-08T11:53:12.878-08:00I haven't read much Fiedler. Bob Wilson liked...I haven't read much Fiedler. Bob Wilson liked his book about Native Americans in American literature whose name I've forgotten. I enjoyed Fiedler's essays on Huck Finn, Gatsby, and Ulysses (the last from "Fiedler on the Roof).Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-56336380944413063552011-12-07T21:12:58.828-08:002011-12-07T21:12:58.828-08:00@Sir 1132: There's a documentary called The St...@Sir 1132: There's a documentary called The Stone Reader, about a guy (sorta like a RAWphile some of us know) who remembered reading a big fat novel that really blew him away. No one else seemed to know the book or the writer. So he eventually tracks him down. It's a wonderful doc on fans of obscure but "great" writers who for some reason never caught on. I mention it because when I flipped my mental rolodex after seeing "Fiedler" I thought of the Extras on the DVD: Leslie with Buckley on Firing Line, holding his own.<br /><br />Also: I noted Saul Bellow's last novel, a roman a clef about his friend Allan Bloom (who I found absolutely creepy, and someone who could've stood in for Mortimer Adler in Illuminatus!); Saul Bellow said about Fiedler, "the worst fucking thing that has ever happened to American literature." Which makes me REALLY want to get more into Fiedler!michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-55344895107204444012011-12-07T18:07:09.809-08:002011-12-07T18:07:09.809-08:00I first heard of Fielder in an interview with Phil...I first heard of Fielder in an interview with Phil Farmer. In the early 80's I only valued writing about poetry by poets. I then read a piece on Pound and Frost by Fiedler and realized that non-poets could also have some cool insights into poetry.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-57012684405959127882011-12-07T01:21:06.159-08:002011-12-07T01:21:06.159-08:00@Oz Fritz: you're in for some wild history rea...@Oz Fritz: you're in for some wild history reading, but if you have the time to give to hermetic-like texts (and when I read your blog I think you know how to read this stuff well - it should be quite rewarding. Vico seems wonderfully, psychedelically weird to me. And profound...RAW seems to have favored the first trans of The New Science, by Bergin and Fisch. I have enjoyed Dave Marsh's translation.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-80864251347567334702011-12-07T01:17:40.006-08:002011-12-07T01:17:40.006-08:00@Royal Academy of Wagner Reality:
I hope to get ...@Royal Academy of Wagner Reality: <br /><br />I hope to get to Fiedler's book The Stranger in Shakespeare AND Shrader's essay on the film canon in 2012. OR: I could just watch Orson Welles in The Stranger and Shrader's Taxi Driver again.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-92065418688023834522011-12-06T10:32:24.815-08:002011-12-06T10:32:24.815-08:00I've wanted to read " The New Science&quo...I've wanted to read " The New Science" ever since I heard Wilson say that it was to "Finnegans Wake" what "The Odyssey" is to "Ulysses." Thanks for giving Vico a face for me, I knew absolutely nothing about him.Oz Fritzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06061222169144560970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-59917651397376121742011-12-06T07:24:59.597-08:002011-12-06T07:24:59.597-08:00I love that Schrader essay, although I don't a...I love that Schrader essay, although I don't agree with all of it. I like how seriously he took his task of creating a canon.<br /><br />I just reread Fiedler's The Stranger in Shakespeare. He analyzes the role of four outsiders in Shakespeare: the woman as outsider in 1 Henry VI, the Jew as outsider in The Merchant of Venice, the Moor as outsider in Othello, and the savage as outsider in The Tempest.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-43284017712386690562011-12-05T21:50:33.750-08:002011-12-05T21:50:33.750-08:00I'd go Einstein is to Newton what RAW is to Vi...I'd go Einstein is to Newton what RAW is to Vico.<br /><br />I don't think I've read Shrader on the canon. Shrader-->Harold Bloom--->Vico. Interesting!<br /><br />You've read much (much) more on The Tempest than I have, but I have always considered the role of Caliban as...a noisy signal. As dissonance. My nervous system still needs to make sense of it, resolve the dissonance. I think I'll start with Fiedler. <br /><br />Your kind words are much appreciated, Royal Eric.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-20633670457876091212011-12-05T18:35:52.159-08:002011-12-05T18:35:52.159-08:00I really like your point about "good magick&q...I really like your point about "good magick" in Yates. I love Yates's books, but I disagree with her about The Tempest. I just can't see Prospero as a "good" magician. I have this problem with a lot of pre-1950 Shakespeare criticism. In our post-colonial world, I have a great deal of sympathy for Caliban whom Prospero enslaves and tortures. I don't see Prospero as particularly "good." I have the same problem with Mark Van Doren's essay on The Tempest, and I love the alternative vision of the play given by Leslie Fiedler in The Stranger in Shakespeare.<br /><br />Yes, yes, please go on and on about Shostakovich, Blake, Ovid and Shelley, etc., all heros of mine, although I've yet to read Pushkin.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-33258445089443105142011-12-05T18:28:22.632-08:002011-12-05T18:28:22.632-08:00I strongly suggest Bob Wilson would have loved thi...I strongly suggest Bob Wilson would have loved this blog post and this blog in general. Great work.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-13919138397860806472011-12-05T18:26:08.957-08:002011-12-05T18:26:08.957-08:00Vico's New Science and Against the Day both ha...Vico's New Science and Against the Day both have a five part structure.<br /> <br />Paul Schrader's essay on the film canon uses Harold Bloom's The Western Canon as its model, and Bloom bases his structure on Vico. http://paulschrader.org/articles/pdf/2006-FilmComment_Schrader.pdfEric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-84714833345807934152011-12-05T18:23:54.373-08:002011-12-05T18:23:54.373-08:00SAT question: "Einstein is to Newton as ____...SAT question: "Einstein is to Newton as ______ is to Vico.<br />a. Robert Anton Wilson<br />b. Michael Johnson<br />c. John Lee Hooker<br />d. _____________"Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-44991220932599341612011-12-04T16:04:53.578-08:002011-12-04T16:04:53.578-08:00Finding a copy of The New Science should be easy, ...Finding a copy of The New Science should be easy, used. Also his Autobiography, which is really one of the first modern autobios; he was asked to write it as instruction to youth. It's really good, underrated, in my opinion. Then there's On The Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians;n The Study Methods of Our Times; and On Humanistic Education.<br /><br />He's not easy, but it's a challenge to read him he's so dense and odd and wonderful. It's like reading Ulysses for the first time: not easy, but you start to get the feeling, the rhythms, when Vico or Joyce are on some very weighty topic and we might want to consult some secondary sources, etc. <br /><br />In these recent blog spews I briefly touched on what I see as a neglected aspect of Vico among his critics, and it was very difficult and I don't think I did an adequate job. Maybe I'll keep at it, maybe not. <br /><br />The aspects of sympathetic reading of history, the anti-rationalistic approach, the famous "verum-factum," and the cyclical model of history are much easier Vichian topics for elucidation, to my mind.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-37577271121708431592011-12-04T15:04:04.977-08:002011-12-04T15:04:04.977-08:00I'll definitely have to pick up some Vico read...I'll definitely have to pick up some Vico reading material. Since he seems to have influenced some of my heroes such as RAW, Joyce, Beckett, McLuhan et. al..Although, I'm sure my local chain bookstore won't be carrying anything by Vico.BrentQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13348133246050450327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-63855218520270765872011-12-04T13:24:19.372-08:002011-12-04T13:24:19.372-08:00When I was writing these two (incoherent?) blog po...When I was writing these two (incoherent?) blog posts, I was thinking of Watts. He knew he had a few really meaty passages on language/history/assumptions about "reality" that were radical, but I didn't know exactly where. That's a fine quote you gave and gives the flavor of so much of his other thinking on this subject. <br /><br />I think - I guess - there's a "conscious conspiracy" by a very small handful of select Wizards working for either side; for almost everyone else it seems not conscious. <br /><br />Vico more often emphasizes that different historical epochs are so different from each other that it's mostly unconscious. But there are readings of him that assume he's Burying the Bone deep: the Ruling Class are always doing class warfare against everyone else, whether in the Iliad or Hobbes. I admit it's a particularly creative misreading (in the sense that all readings are misreadings, or we get into the hairy problem of some One performing The best reading) but I am using intuition.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-50903714837397701322011-12-04T09:31:55.883-08:002011-12-04T09:31:55.883-08:00I definitely agree that that language has been use...I definitely agree that that language has been used to keep everyone confined in the "black iron prison" of our stratified society. Although, it's hard to gauge whether it has come to be this way out by some sort of conscious conspiracy by the ruling elites or by some more complex set of social factors.<br /><br />Coincidentally, I am currently reading Alan Watt's Psychotherapy East & West, and he has definitely got me thinking about how the English language has contradictions built into the fundamentals of our speech and hence, our thinking. Ultimately, resulting in a kind of mass delusion in "egoistic" thinking.<br />"Here then, is the major contradiction in the rules of the social game. The members of the game are to play as if they were independent agents but they are not to know they are playing as if. It is explicit that the individual is self determining but implicit that he is so only by virtue of the rules...The rules of the game confer independence and take it away at the same time without revealing the contradiction."BrentQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13348133246050450327noreply@blogger.com