Polis is this, documentary about poet Charles Olson is available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch&c.. Haven’t seen it yet, will soon. (Via http://transversalinflections.wordpress.com/).

Longish remarks on a.o. William Marx, Afscheid van de literatuur under ‘pages’. Of course my remarks are pretty soft – (apparently with my background in literary theory I can stand W. Marx’s approach which centers on what literary critics wrote) – for a harsher but quite fair assessment (in Dutch) read: http://achillevandenbranden.blogspot.com/

For when you get bored reading all the ‘murikan reviews of 2666: http://venepoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/RobertoBolaño

Just reading a bunch of reviews and essays I come across this in a London Review of Books essay on computer games by John Lanchester:

“Northrop Frye once observed that all conventions, as conventions, are more or less insane; Stanley Cavell once pointed out that the conventions of cinema are just as arbitrary as those of opera. Both those observations are brought to mind by video games, which are full, overfull, of exactly that kind of arbitrary convention. Many of these conventions make the game more difficult. Gaming is a much more resistant, frustrating medium than its cultural competitors. Older media have largely abandoned the idea that difficulty is a virtue; if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all – and it’s not by accident, either. One of the most common complaints regular gamers make in reviewing new offerings is that they are too easy. (It would be nice if a little bit of that leaked over into the book world.)”

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html

I’m not sure if I totally agree with this (but I’m not a gamer), but as a quote I like it.

Informal exchange about contemporary art — in Dutch: http://www.endlesslowlands.nl.

A call for contribution for Video Vortex 4 is up (ah, since the 2nd of december): http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/archives/108. Also a a pdf of the reader covering Video Vortex 3: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/videovortex//.

I know, I should write on 2666 myself. For now, I’ll just point you to an Interesting discussion over at Waggish: http://www.waggish.org/2008/12/16/notes-on-roberto-bolano-2666 and http://www.waggish.org/2009/01/18/more-notes-on-roberto-bolanos-2666.

In de Rekto:Verso die nu in de winkel zou moeten liggen (wel, in België dan, en wellicht op een enkele plek in Nederland) staat een interview met Arjen Mulder, de vragen zijn van mij: http://www.rektoverso.be/content/view/849/15/. Ook hier http://www.urbanmag.be/artikel/1469/interageren-om-te-overleven.

Les Bienveillantes mobilizes. Leads to discussion. To then conclude that other books are, in fact, so much better. But those books did not mobilize, did not initiate discussion. So we read Littlell. So we discuss Littell. And partly because his book is flawed it initiates discussion. So much becomes clear, browsing reviews and discussion fora.

For those of you who read German, the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeneine Zeitung) has a good dossier on Littell’s novel: http://lesesaal.faz.net/littell/. In it I find confirmation of my doubts wrt the literary quality of this big novel — considering that it still is a major work.

Another thing — and this regards the comparision between 2666 and Les bienveillantes — is that during the first 200 or 300 pages of the book, images from 2666 and especially of the character Hans Reiter as a soldier during WW II in the Oekraine, kept haunting me, so much that sometimes Aue became more like Reiter. The image of Reiter was stronger than that of Aue. While reading Littell I was wondering about Reiter, and the Sonora murders from 2666. The characters fuse maybe up to a certain extent because both Bolano and Littell use aspects from Ernst Jünger (and his novels) for Reiter and Aue. (No: I was reminded in both instances of Jünger, that’s more correct; they do not use concrete aspects from Jünger’s biography, rather they seem inspired by a certain distanced aesthetized look at the world that I identify with Jünger).

Reading Bolano I want to reread Bolano to come closer to understanding ‘life’. Reading Littell I want to do research and find out more about the history of WW II.

Hmm. Am I making myself clear?