De boodschap die Jeroen Theunissen — okee, de verteller van diens roman Het Einde — ons aan het slot meegeeft: (in parafrase): blijf nee zeggen, blijf je verzetten, dat is wat de mens tot mens maakt. Ga door. Blijf geloven in een ander happy end dan die ons worden beloofd. Het staat er zo bijna plompverloren in een boek dat ook verder de grote thema’s (rampen, klimaatverandering) niet schuwt en intelligent inhaakt op het huidige theoretische discours, dat ik toch moest denken aan het einde van Beckett’s Unnamable. (Is dat logisch?) Het Einde gaat over het einde van een liefde (vriendin verlaat hoofdpersoon), het einde van een leven (dromen van upload in cyberspace), en het einde van een tijdperk (global warming). En dan dus het slothoofdstuk met bovenstaande strekking.

Dit is serieuze literatuur, die serieus genomen wil (en moet) worden. (Al valt er te lachen). Ik heb genoten van dit boek — het is fijn om een roman te lezen die zo nadrukkelijk inhaakt op het heden en hedendaagse problematiek, waarin dromen van het uploaden van een bewustzijn, het andersglobalisme, de ideeën van Kurzweil en uit de ecologie, vanzelfsprekend voorbijkomen. Het bevalt me stukken beter dan het meeste van de huidige romanproductie (en zeker beter dan het geschrijf van Peter Verhelst — aan wiens laatste roman Theunissen een beschouwing wijdt in de Yang). En toch weet ik het niet. Ik ben niet volledig overtuigd. Om uit te vinden wat er aan scheelt zal ik het boek moeten herlezen (en dat boek ligt in Kanne, terwijl ik nu in Amsterdam ben). Het valt niet logisch op z’n plek mijn — niet ge-expliciteerde — idee over wat een goeie roman is. Te karig? Toch te gestoffeerd? Een te makkelijke verwerking van ‘hippe’ theorie — Kurzweil, Lovejoy?

PS & BTW: wat is dat toch met die mode van de hardbacks? Ik heb echt liever een ingenaaide paperback dan een geplakte hardback.

When I write in reference to Samuels long poem Gewrichten that “I’m tempted to work out the algorithm, the schema, the form, that has generated this particular joining of words” I don’t say that in this way one will capture the meaning or all of the effect of the poem. It’s just a start, as in reading a sonnet, it’s a start to note the form(at): 14 lines, volta, rhyme &c. — and how this informs the effect and the meaning of the poem.

Samuel — who reads my blog — delivers an explanation of his method in the comments: ” I’ll give you the key clue: *every* line appears twice, once indented and once not indented, although in about a quarter of the cases there´s a minor change in the wording. Half of the poem was written as is, the repetitions were done later largely by chance but with an eye to continuity. And there are 480 lines in total. HTH!”

Hmm, so I count badly. (Hey, it was too hot!). 480 makes more sense.

As to reading speed again: quite quickly I found out that Gewrichten forces one to pause for a second after each line. If one does, the musicality ‘comes out’ — the macrostructure builds… Maybe pausing after a linebreak is normal for a lot of readers of poetry — I always think they are slow readers, spending time with each word. But that’s not my way of reading poetry. I start with reading quick through all the lines — often even reading on at every linebreak, for continuity, for getting the sense of the syntax, the rhythm of the sentence (not the line). That way of reading often helps me to understand poetry (afterwards I will spend more time, re-reading, if I like the poem, of when it keeps escaping me). So I had to force the pause after linebreaks (or the poem forced me) … only in the middle, when some lines can be read together, I could speed up.

Visit to the bookstore yesterday made me buy Latour’s Reassembling the Social — http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/livres/XII_tdmANT.html. Sort of outline of Actor Network Theory (ANT), a term that Latour is now happy to use. Sociology as tracing associations. I read the introductory chapter sitting on the beach of Zandvoort, of all places, early evening, trying to forget the blazing hot sun.

Also read Samuel Vriezen long poem ‘Gewrichten’ (‘joints’) that’s published in this month’s Yang, http://www.yangtijdschrift.be/.. First it seems as if the poem is just loose sentences and bits of sentences, but reading through them, pausing after each line (and each line is clearly a unit), a rhythm develops. Also some lines are repeated. (Samuel is a composer as well & I have been so lucky to be part/performer of his composition Motet; one of his pieces that deals with the rhythm of syntax — that is syntax of language). In the centre of the poem the lines that follow each other do sometimes form sentences together, or at least, can be read as sentences. If I counted right the poem consists of 496 lines, knowing a bit how he composes, and knowing a bit about his taste in poetry, I’m tempted to work out the algorithm, the schema, the form, that has generated this particular joining of words. But I could ask Samuel of course… Needless to say: this is the type of poetry that I love. Art made of language. Not anekdotes put in poetic phrases. (Excuse my wobbly English).

Samuel blogs — in Dutch — at http://blogger.xs4all.nl/sqv/

Ann Blair, “Note-Taking as an Art of Transmission” in Critical Inquiry 31, pp. 85-107 (2004).

Of course that’s online, but it’s behind one of those academic fences that one only can pass if one pays a small amount. (How I hate that…). Luckily the Critical Inquiry is available at the Jan van Eyck library.

Lately I’ve been doing a tiny bit of research in the use of commonplace books. There is a close resemblance between the function of commonplace books (in for instance the Seventeenth century) and how some people use blogs. Some bloggers see, or call their blogs commonplace books. It’s a pretty well-known comparision, but I never really explored it until now.

Here’s some quick info, with links, and links to some pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/compb.htm
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/46800

Here’s a danish blog that uses ‘commonplace book’ as a category — seems to have nice quotations… http://www.bookish.dk/index.php?cat=23. And a blog that calls itself a commonpace book: http://www.constantreader.org/v2/commonplace.html.

Some more relevant stuff:
http://www.futureofthebook.org/2005/08/the_blog_as_a_record_of_readin.html
http://cut-and-paste.de/
http://www.diyplanner.com/

There’s much more, but my dear reader, you can google as well as me.

In Making Things Public Anke te Heesen has a very nice short article about notebooks. I copied quite a few paragraphs from it; waht follows here is a digest of her article. I love the way she sees the notebook as a paper machine, as a technology that is an actor in how we write, store and process thoughts.

“The notebook as a paper-machine consists of the function noting and storing notes. ‘To note’ means first and foremost ‘to write down’, from the Latin notare, with the connotations sign, mark and writing, or from noscere, which means ‘to get to know’. ‘Note’, from notitia refers to this, namely, ‘to be known’. (…) Therefore apart from the actual act of wrigin, noting also describes a particular kind of perception: taking notice of something. Etymologically, here writing and taking notice are contained in one procedure, which at the same time implies habitual forming of a person and results in a praxis with paper that requires certain gestures, performed acts, rituals and tools.” p. 584

“From the sixteenth century on, bits of knowledge have been noted down in books with blank pages, stored in special boxes or placed in pigeonholes or compartments on bookshelves. In that era, the notes and small pieces of paper were the smallest material text-units of intellectual work. Organized note-taking was understood as a writing technique that could be learned, and it was one of the essential skills in the learned world.” p. 585

“Already in 1605, Francis Bacon recommends in Advancement of Learning the use of ‘commonplace books for entering the fruits of reading, quotations and references: ‘I hold that the diligence, and pains in collecting common Places, is of great use in certainty and studying.'” p. 586

“The philosopher John Locke, who influenced entire generations of English gentlemen with his instructions of how to make commonplace books, rendered the procedure methodical. In one of his texts, published in 1706, he described how to keep such a notebook. The ‘Memory is the treaurey or Storehouse,’ he said, but one must provide memory with an orderly basis. ‘It would be just for all the World as serviceable as a great deal of Household Stuff, when if we wanted any particular Thing we could not tell were to find it.’ This organization begins with reading. One should first read a book but not write anything in the notebook. ‘The places we design to extract from are to be marked on a piece of Paper, that we may do it after we have read the Book out.’ So after putting in all the bookmarks, one should read the book a second time and decide what is relevant enough to be written down in the notebook. ‘I take a White Paper Book and what Size I think fit. I divide the two first pages, which face another, by parallel lines,’ and make an index. In so doing, one froms one’s own keywords. A commonplace book thus refers a quotation noted down to its original context (its origin, the book) and, a the same time, is a stock to draw on for the memory, the speech to be given or the text to be written.” p. 586

“Entire generations of intellectuals and young gentlemen were educated to practice this technique. The notebook was a technique in service of discipline.” p. 587

“Notebooks were a place for collecting things, a technique for discipline, chronological recording and evidence. Such a book with its blank or gradually filling pages was a paper-machine which took in what one fed it but at the same time directed the entries.” p. 588

“From the beginning, this paper technology adhered to certain rules: The entries had to be written in a straight line , and no blots or spots should mar the paper. A margin, which in the earliest years was often signalized by a fold in the paper, provided space for notes and commentaries and played a significant role in administrative forms of writing (files).” p. 588

Anke te Heesen, ‘The Notebook, A Paper Technology’, in Latour & Weibel (eds.) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, ZKM / MIT, Cambridge Ma, 2005, p. 582-589

So now on my desk:
John Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place Book: http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0326.
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/adv1.htm.

George “metaphors we live by” Lakoff has a new book, in which — judging from blurbs &c — he analyzes how the Bush-neocons are hijacking the word freedom. Dangerous, because: (quoting now): “Cognitive science has produced a number of dramatic and important results—results that bear centrally on contemporary politics, though in a way that is not immediately obvious. We think with our brains. The concepts we think with are physically instantiated in the synapses and neural circuitry of our brains. Thought is physical. And neural circuits, once established, do not change quickly or easily. Repetition of language has the power to change brains.” Now this might sound ‘too easy’, but it becomes more complex, and this is a book that has to reach out to a large public…

http://www.whosefreedom.com/browse-book/introduction-to-whose-freedom/.

Btw, over here Square vzw — artist organization — has put up a webpage with messages from Libanon — concerning the current Israel – Hezbollah war in Libanon: http://www.squarevzw.be/war/. FYI.

“The foundation of all understanding of sociological theory — that is to say, of all understanding of human life — is that is no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or Decadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe. (…) The doctrine is founded upon three metaphysical principles. One principle is that the very essence of real actuality — that is of the complete real — is process.”

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, The Free Press, NY, 1967 (1931). p. 274.

Browsing amazon, checking if DFW, Delillo, Ballard, Powers, Vollmann have new books coming up, check Pynchon & find this: Untitled, Thomas Pynchon (Hardcover), 5 dec. 2006.

Huh? Probably they’re talking about it already at the Pynchon-list (but I’m not a subscriber anymore).

But the rumour is already part of the wikipedia-entry on TRP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon.

And then I open up multiple tabs with Pynchon-related stuff… euh…

Ah, more Pynchonoid news here: http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/. Seems a synopsis of the novel was posted at Amazon; then deleted. Seems like some people believed the synopsis to’ve been penned by TRP-himself. Or not? Or a hoax? Or – uh – viral marketing? Anyway — see the above blog for info & this paragraph, originally published on Slate: “To be sure, when Mason & Dixon came out nine years ago, the scholars and nuts who compulsively post to the pynchon-l mailing list were on the case in cyberspace. But the new book with the rather coyly withheld title will enter an Internet Age in bloom, which is just too perfect. Labyrinthine structures, shifting identities, abstruse interconnections, funky mail systems—in its delirious maximalism, Pynchon’s work has more than a few affinities with all this fine new technology, and the technology enables Pynchon fans to interact in a wholly Pynchonian way.”

Also coming up: a new Powers (The Echo Maker) and a new Ballard (Kingdom Come).

Oh, and here, a FW-wiki: http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. (Login required, I didn’t try nor really check it out). But it seems logical to set up a wiki for annotations to FW.

Bruno Latour (ed.) Making Things Public, the how-many-kilo’s-heavy-catalogue of last years ZKM-exhibition; to trace / research the connection between public and publishing, politics and private life, speaking (writing) in public, speaking (writing) for oneself, gathering an issue, forming a public — &c. I’ve read bits of it earlier (especially Noortje Marres’ paper on Dewey and Lippmann), but now I’m reading, well… browsing the whole book.

(Related to Flusser on publishing & thoughts on blogging).

http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/ & http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10595.

Jeroen Theunissen, Het Einde, latest novel of this younger Flemish writer. Review: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/select/boeken/artikel.php?id=60.

Plus: the deuterocanonical books from the Bible. Why? Just curious. I don’t know them.

In the Guardian of last saturday I read an edited excerpt from Frances Wheen’s forthcoming book on Marx’ Das Kapital (in a series that is called ‘Books that Shook the World’). It’s also online: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1814909,00.html.

“By the time he wrote Das Kapital, he was pushing out beyond conventional prose into radical literary collage – juxtaposing voices and quotations from mythology and literature, from factory inspectors’ reports and fairy tales, in the manner of Ezra Pound’s Cantos or Eliot’s The Waste Land.”

Not only did it inspire me to go out and try to buy the book immediately (but it’s not available yet…), it paints such a alluring picture of the book and the style it is written in, that I’m tempted to make Marx’ big book my summer reading…

But then, should I read it in German (all the editions look equally ugly), or pick up the Penguin Classics edition that probably most people are reading nowadays and that, I guess, Wheen cites from…

(Frances Wheen also wrote a very enjoyable biography of Marx.)