Seriously, while it may be just me, I feel regret, nostalgia, sadness, no, but something akin, that powerful work like this doesn’t have a large printed venue that I can hold quietly. It deserves this. Much does. I am aware within the swirl of my disbelief, my astonishment, of the apparent “fact” that no one can marry the best of the written with the best of the visual languages in a gloriously rich print product and at least make the whole endeavor a liveable wash in the end that I may, in fact, be getting old. Or turning into Jim. But I don’t mean to be redundant.

I think though that if print is not in fact dead and a clear vision prevails to produce what I can only believe is not just within my own imagination, that such an endeavor would be wise to turn the whole thing on its head and begin with the personal visions presented by photographers and give the followup assignment to the writers. Likely, yes, I overreach.

Thanks to Alejandro for this work, and to BURN for presenting it. Now I want to hold it, quietly.

I thought that article you linked was a bit unfair with Stephen King. It’s seems like its the “in” fad at the moment to bash King. Sounds more like our grapes to me :)!

:))

that’s a gorgeous summing up of things…and so now, thanks, i will hunt up Reiss’ book as well :)))

as Akaky likes to chime: ‘and now folks, back to our regular scheduled programming’ (photography)

thanks
bob

Right now, I am reading “The Eskimo and the Oil Man,” by Bob Reiss. Here is a quote relevant to the discussion, selected at random:

“But the lines played out fast and inexperienced watchers misinterpreted the signals. The divers had loaded on too much weight. By the time they were hauled to the surface they were dead.”

wow, i would politely suggest you re-appraise…1) his prose is NOT about the character’s thinking..(with the exception of SUTTREE)….the characters’ thoughts in McCarthy are contained or rather spoken by their action…the prose in McCarthy is about something much much different…and yes, it is true, that ‘bad McCarthy’ can border on the verbose, the pretentious and the boastful challenge (name me a writer worth their weight in salt who doesn’t, its the nature of the way words pour out of one’s head and body)…but if you take the time to read, beginning with The Orchard Keeper and go straight through to Road, you’d be hard pressed to find an American novelist who works the vein of breaking apart language and the land as beautifully and sloppily and, in the end, as redemptively…I dare you to read Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Crossing and the last paragraph of the Road without not only admiration but respect……some of that takedown was cross-bowed against ‘sometimes a great notion’ as well, i’m sure you’re aware…;)…

give me the writer, the musician, the photographer, the singer, maker of things (including gardeners) who doesn’t over-reach in their attempt to wield all that is inside them with the redevenging sunset of all that is around…

find me another moment in any 20th century novel from the states that evokes as much as the dead babies hanging from the trees or the vampire bats of blood meridian…and call that meaningless….my lai anyone?

with gentle loving suggestions…

I hate, btw, Cormac McCarthy’s writing and Jim’s quote is a pretty good example of why. Prose as totally fucking meaningless as it is pretentious representing thoughts that no one remotely like any character in that book would ever think, unless maybe he dropped out of the cowboy life and got a mail order PHD in psychology and took too much peyote. Epic takedown here.

Julius Henry Marx, 1890-1977 American philosopher

words to live by, I think.

thank you…..

‘and then what?’

well, the irony of quoting my beloved McCarthy is that you forget that, HIS answer to his question was:

‘to write upon it’…and so he did and so he has continued to this day….should McCarthy have stopped at Outer Dark…or Blood Meridian…or Suttree…should he have hung up his spurs with ATPH and not got to The Crossing (the best of his trilogy)…or the Road….you forget the birth of his son spawned the Road….

Sing on it…to paraphrase McCarthy…

Alejandro Olivares:

Powerful, committed sensationalism-less work, committed to the ushering up of the shadows in up of titling some light….as strong an essay on this grounding as I’ve seen in a while…nothing to say, but this:

respect…

oh, and this:

one of the best modern authors, and this one of my favorite books…

And then what?

“He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.” All The Pretty Horses