I've reached a lull; a loll, an almost ...lol
The past two weeks have been an up and down roller-coasting to a flat line. I have been reading more so than in the past year thanks to my new
Sony ereader, catching up on more Adorno, Bukowski, Ashberry, & periodicals. But while I'm catching up on literature, I am amazed at the written crappage all over the internets.
Take, for example,
Gawker. Go to their website. Do it now (in another tab). Read an article (or post) and ask yourself, what makes this writing good? Let's take a look at the first post, "
Body by Jesus." Embedded in the post is a video. Then you proceed to a horrible posturing introduction leading into... surprise! a QUOTE from the source of the video in question. And finally, a one liner conclusion which isn't even funny. What is this crap? A fifty word post devoid of any synthesis; a two second time waster.
Every post is a posturing. "Look at this!" with an ironic eyebrow raise; "look at me, I'm witty! I'm pointing to this '
news'!" That's it. Don't think! We don't need to think anymore! Just point and approve or disapprove, like or dislike.
I understand that Gawker or any of Gawker Media's subsidiary sites aren't supposed to be representative of good writing. These are blog posts meant to incite, meant to generate page views and links. The written words themselves should have no deeper meaning. They are functional and should only be evaluated on as such; whether or not the words are effective at procuring attention for the content (usually a commodity).
**GASP!!**
But maybe this is the way that language actually is and we have only been mislead into thinking that language is more than
use (with winks to
Witt). Are we witnessing a commoditization of language or the disentanglement of language from
nonsense?
Sigh. Does anyone outside of the ivory towers care?
In terms of good writing, I want to point to an excellent review titled
The Believer written by Ian Buruma in The New York Review of Books on Christopher Hitchen's
Hitch-22 that gave my ab muscles a good work out. It is an example of what I term effective haterade.
I would like to end this blog post with a poem from Charles Bukowski's
Betting on the Muse, titled "the sheep." (page 124-125)
"the sheep
in centuries past
audiences at symphony concerts
were not afraid to act out their
displeasure at works which
offended
them.
in our time
I have either attended or
listened to
hundreds of concerts
and never have I heard an
audience
express even the mildest displeasure
with any
work.
have our musical artists improved
to such an
extent?
or is it the decay of courage,
the inability of the
mass mind to
reach its own
decisions?
not only in the world of
music
but in the other
world?
the next time you hear
a symphony concert
note
the obedient applause,
the death of the bluebird,
the shading of the sun;
the hooves of the horses from
hell
pounding on the barren
ground
of the human
spirit."
Look at the fifth stanza
and gawk.
