HOLD ON TIGHT

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot Saturday, December 20, 2008 hello, america when i look out of my window, where it is snowed out, beautiful, stark, desolate, ambulance sirens and snow accidents, in 14-inch snowed out ithaca, i think, hello, america. i am alone in this house, because chandni has left. last night i had dinner with lu (bong, go figure), who ate this huge ton of food, and then then asked if i wanted to smoke up and wrestle in snow. we also talked (probably a little too enthusiastically) about yeast (yeast is really cool) and his cancer research with yeast cells and dna. i have lots of craigslist things to sort out (this house is being subletted to 3 different people over a course of 4 weeks, is that crazy, no? i also craigslisted--yes, get this--my car ride to nyc "calling for experienced driver to join me on the road from ithaca-bergen county. do not have much experience snow-driving. will share gas. room for 2" and got a lovely female law student as a taker). now i have my final paper to do for my independent study on book publicity. i am writing about trade book reviews, and amongst other interesting things, analysing charles bernstein's speech on the launch of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Poetry on the crisis of illiquid american poems, and the figure of the nytimes kamakaze reviewer, michiko kakukani, as well as dean howell's gilded age novel book salesman character, fulkerson. it's really random, and i'm not actually doing it for a grade, so i've got free rein. i spent the morning reading on hedgefunds and madoff, and one thing that strikes me is that hedgefunds and pyramidal schemes are really borne from the same free market principles and the idea of spreading risks. and the difference between a ponzi scheme and the "hedging" of funds is frighteningly shady. on another note, am writing a magazine article over winter for some cheapy new publication, cornell book review, about the history of secretaries and scribes. last week i read that v.s. naipaul wrote a bend in the river through the aid of his wife (he had multiple wives, and he was also a brutal sadomasochist.) he would sit in a room, call her into the room, and dictate the text to her, while she sat and wrote it out. but eventually, what started off as the illusion of authorship and authority collapsed on itself. he was unable to write without her presence. in the end, she was not only the secretary, she became the muse, and he was unable to write without her. this really really interests me, especially after my last paper on milton and his scribes (milton was blind when he wrote all 10 books of paradise lost through the aid of random scribes, as well as with the aid of his daughters, who really strikingly, read all these latin and greek texts to him, without being taught what they were reading--they were merely trained in learning how to pronounce the greek and latin alphabet, and not to understand the language) so i examined his invocation to his muses in paradise lost, and the concept of authorship. i've been really excited by this, because it brings together all these things like the long-established distinction in western philosophy between writing and the voice, the issue of oral versus written culture, gender politics, the complexity of authorship. i will probably take the concept of scribes and dictation further next year. i get like this when i live alone, and am snowed it so dreadfully. posted by dawn # 9:54 AM Comments: Post a Comment << Home		[publishing] Publishers Weekly . Dystel & Goderich . New York Center for Independent Publishing . Association of American University Presses . Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators [people] clarisse . nurul . aunty zarina (ummi's bakery) . jeremy . pak . cyril . softblow . karen & kenny (booksactually) . eric . joel . [other loves] digitaljournalist . ballet dictionary . poetshouse . urbanwordnyc [me] dawn, singapore, new york city, ithaca. [yesterday] reeling from the snow bill's mechanics history doctors and nurses things to do when you have lost your voice sick to the core wedding glassware am lit break my hea-a-a-a-a-ar-t, break my heart Comus, 1787 [archives] January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Saturday, December 20, 2008

hello, america

when i look out of my window, where it is snowed out, beautiful, stark, desolate, ambulance sirens and snow accidents, in 14-inch snowed out ithaca, i think, hello, america.
i am alone in this house, because chandni has left. last night i had dinner with lu (bong, go figure), who ate this huge ton of food, and then then asked if i wanted to smoke up and wrestle in snow. we also talked (probably a little too enthusiastically) about yeast (yeast is really cool) and his cancer research with yeast cells and dna. i have lots of craigslist things to sort out (this house is being subletted to 3 different people over a course of 4 weeks, is that crazy, no? i also craigslisted--yes, get this--my car ride to nyc "calling for experienced driver to join me on the road from ithaca-bergen county. do not have much experience snow-driving. will share gas. room for 2" and got a lovely female law student as a taker). now i have my final paper to do for my independent study on book publicity. i am writing about trade book reviews, and amongst other interesting things, analysing charles bernstein's speech on the launch of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Poetry on the crisis of illiquid american poems, and the figure of the nytimes kamakaze reviewer, michiko kakukani, as well as dean howell's gilded age novel book salesman character, fulkerson. it's really random, and i'm not actually doing it for a grade, so i've got free rein.
i spent the morning reading on hedgefunds and madoff, and one thing that strikes me is that hedgefunds and pyramidal schemes are really borne from the same free market principles and the idea of spreading risks. and the difference between a ponzi scheme and the "hedging" of funds is frighteningly shady.
on another note, am writing a magazine article over winter for some cheapy new publication, cornell book review, about the history of secretaries and scribes. last week i read that v.s. naipaul wrote a bend in the river through the aid of his wife (he had multiple wives, and he was also a brutal sadomasochist.) he would sit in a room, call her into the room, and dictate the text to her, while she sat and wrote it out. but eventually, what started off as the illusion of authorship and authority collapsed on itself. he was unable to write without her presence. in the end, she was not only the secretary, she became the muse, and he was unable to write without her. this really really interests me, especially after my last paper on milton and his scribes (milton was blind when he wrote all 10 books of paradise lost through the aid of random scribes, as well as with the aid of his daughters, who really strikingly, read all these latin and greek texts to him, without being taught what they were reading--they were merely trained in learning how to pronounce the greek and latin alphabet, and not to understand the language) so i examined his invocation to his muses in paradise lost, and the concept of authorship. i've been really excited by this, because it brings together all these things like the long-established distinction in western philosophy between writing and the voice, the issue of oral versus written culture, gender politics, the complexity of authorship. i will probably take the concept of scribes and dictation further next year.
i get like this when i live alone, and am snowed it so dreadfully.

posted by dawn # 9:54 AM

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