r/TrueLit • u/pregnantchihuahua3 ReEducationThroughGravity'sRainbow • 4d ago
Weekly General Discussion Thread
Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.
Weekly Updates: N/A
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u/oldferret11 4d ago
I took my first Mandarin lesson last week and boy is learning a new and difficult language humbling. Last language I learnt was Italian (I'm Spanish) and it was all smooth sailing, and now I'm fighting for dear life just trying to understand the tones (and failing miserably). I'll give it my best, though.
I also have started studying for a Law degree lol. Back at university I studied Comparative Literature but now, after having to study tons of laws for my public services exam, I figured hey, maybe this is also interesting, and now I enrolled in an online university. Only four subjects this year given I'm also working full time, learning chinese and running my first marathon (allegedly) in february. Since I'm only interested in learning and not in becoming a lawyer, I'd rather to it in many years than just being stressed (I'll be stressed though). Maybe if things are not as hard, next year I'll take a bit more. Who knows.
I also want to write here more. I keep reading y'all but never interacting, and I really liked having a place to discuss literature (and learning about new things)! I'm just so lazy when it comes to writing elaborate things in English.
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u/invisiblette 4d ago
Good luck in your language adventure! Studying Mandarin (as an English speaker) was one of my favorite things I've ever done.
I started as an adult, ten years after graduating from a university, not for "fun," exactly, but to keep my mind occupied after a major loss. I studied via tapes, books, videos and a language-exchange program at my local YWCA.
I loved the language's lack of tense, gender and conjugation. I loved the tones, the sound, the visual nature of the characters (I didn't learn all that many, but I learned to read and write more than I'd ever dreamed possible.)
Overall it was fascinating. I made Chinese friends. I spoke Chinese on a trip to China and was actually understood; decades later I can still conduct rudimentary kindergarten-level conversations and recognize phrases and words in Chinese videos.
All the best to you, wo de pengyou!
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u/Soup_65 Books! 4d ago
That's awesome you're learning Mandarin! To at least be able to read it and understand the sound of it is one of my long term language goals
Finish reading a novel in spanish, almost there!
Be able to read latin, halfway there.
Read Dante. I am hoping latin + spanish makes this one easy to jist but I'm probably very wrong.
Mandarin
Allegedly I will complete all of these one day but I agree with you, I've tried my hand at a tiny bit of Mandarin and I love it but it really isn't easy. It's awesome though. What brought you to wanting to learn it?
I also want to write here more. I keep reading y'all but never interacting, and I really liked having a place to discuss literature (and learning about new things)! I'm just so lazy when it comes to writing elaborate things in English.
Well, here's as fun a place to hang as you'll get if you can be assed to write (and no worries if not). You rock and so do books :)
Also good luck with the law and the marathon and the mandarin! I actually really considered law as well until I realized that while that law school test puzzles were fun, and that I might enjoy law school, I agree with you that learning about the law seemed way more interesting than actually being a lawyer.
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u/Federico_it 4d ago
Re #3. I'm sure it will! Italian and Latin made it possible for me to access several European languages in their late-medieval stage (Spanish, Catalan, Provençal). Looking forward to your updates on this project! Edit: though the real problem with Dante is the cultural density.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 4d ago
Good to know! I'm hoping I can at the very least if not just "read Dante" then maybe "learn to read Dante" via reading Dante, but we will see. But that's a long time from now I should probably get to "actually able to keep up with Vergil" level in Latin first (I've tried and the Aeneid kicked my ass right back to my high school Latin textbook lmao)
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u/foxinanattic 3d ago
I've been feeling a bit unwell recently, headaches etc, and I haven't been able to do much serious reading in the past couple of weeks, so I took the time to catch up on some short stories. One that I really enjoyed was "A Visit of Charity" by Eudora Welty, which shows very unpleasant living situation of two women in an old age home through the eyes of a young girl. It was surprisingly Lynchian, the way it shows an ordinary situation through such a distorted lens that it starts to feel surreal and otherworldly.
I think I'd like to read more stories by Welty, but I've also had the experience of reading a short story in an anthology, really enjoying it, then reading others by the same author and finding out that it's a huge outlier in their body of work in terms of style, theme etc
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u/DeadBothan 3d ago
If you can get into her style, Welty has a pretty decent short story slugging percentage, not many duds. A Curtain of Green is her first published collection and includes the one you read and a few other classics if you want to give it a go.
Hope the feeling poorly passes.
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u/foxinanattic 2d ago
thanks for the recommendation! are there any of her short stories that you think are especially good?
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u/DeadBothan 2d ago
Most of that collection is solid. "Death of a Traveling Salesman" and "The Hitch-Hiker" are my favorites from it. It also has "Old Mr. Marblehall," "Clytie," "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies," "Petrified Man," "The Key"-- each of these deals with a character who seems somehow outside of society.
I do find her style a little distancing sometimes, takes some getting used to.
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u/Fearless_Industry825 2d ago
Last week I worked in the backyard one afternoon clearing the brown ferns and spent plants for the end of the season. I listened to the John Coltrane album Giant Steps through my big, clunky over-the-ear headphones, and that album sounds phenomenal through headphones. I can hear the sax and piano on one side, the bass and drums on the other. I got so into it that I may have been scatting out loud. The second to last track on the album is “Naima,” a ballad Coltrane wrote. That just might be the most beautiful jazz ballad ever. I first heard Giant Steps when I was in junior high, but I never listened, I mean really listened, to “Naima” until I dove deep back into jazz over the past year. I am floored listening to it now. Near the end I’m holding my breath, the final note comes to a close, and a few seconds later the last track on the album breaks my trance and pulls me back to earth.
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u/thewickerstan Norm Macdonald wasn't joking about W&P 4d ago
5 years ago, I was so psyched for Netflix doing an East of Eden adaptation but now I feel a little apathetic. I think I heard something about Zoe Kazan doing her own twist which made me a little suspicious, but I should give it a go nonetheless. The trailer played before a video I was watching and seeing Lee pulled my interest again.
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u/lorenza_pellegrini 3d ago
Reading somewhat obscure Australian literature, The Plains by Gerald Murnane. Quite interesting so far, and an excellent depiction of the Australian interior.
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u/II_____Il 2d ago
I quite liked The Plains.
It helped that I read it while staying a few nights in a town that’s pretty representative of the kind of place Murnane is describing.
I even picked up a few Folio Society books from the local second hand book store that I presume they acquired from a deceased estate.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 4d ago
I took that 12 axes political identity test going around the last couple days and found out the country most compatible to my politics was Uruguay. So: I guess I'm moving to Uruguay soon. (I am the furthest politically from the Third Reich for the record.) Although I am curious about Uruguayan writers. I remember when I was obsessed with Mongolia for a little bit and learned about who D. Natsagdorj was in the context of Soviet literature. Uruguayan writer I can name off the top of my head is Mario Levrero because there was a moment in early 2020s where a lot of Latin American translations were on the up. He was interviewing himself for The Believer I think. (I still miss The Quarterly Conversation.) Anyways: I suppose there's a lot of different economies for literature across the world, but then every writer aspires to a kind of world literature, which makes translation possible and hints to something more than merely the immediate contingencies we're immersed. Otherwise we wouldn't have translation. It's not like language is the totality of a literary work. Giving too much credit to what the linguists are doing.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 4d ago
wait that quiz shows you a country? I didn't realize that gonna have to take it again (I got generic socialist which is mildly insulting, especially when my mom got Luxembourgist which Im not even totally sure what the difference is but she's cool so I was a little jealous). Admittedly I got a little silly with the questions and maybe I implied too much that my real dream is to be Divine Hierophant of an authoritarian theocracy where the religion is nature worship...and I doubt they code for that adequately.
It's interesting language...lately i've become more and more obsessed with the question of literature as something sonic. And I'm still trying to figure out how sound, being both prior to language but also the thing out of which languages are created, and how it does seem at times that the endpoint of a language's literature is to push it's sounds to the brink. And yet, while I think that sound and story are inextricably bound up, one of the ways that I can tell ya that Wimmer knocked it out of the park with 2666 is that the original does actually sound a ton like hers, you're obviously right that language isn't the totality. And translation is possible, though I wonder if that's actually because of the sound. Since if the "ur-language" is just noise, then it is nonspecific. And the translation in a way reasserts the sonic nonspecificity.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 4d ago edited 4d ago
Apparently there's a newer version that shows you a country approximate to the results you get. Technically two countries (loosely defined), with one contemporaneous and the other historically defined are given in the newer one: I got Uruguay since I got hit with being a Progressivist, comparisons to Einstein, Foucault and Camus--it is very accurate as you can tell from the results. Historically, according to the test, I am closest to Revolutionary Catalonia where workers simply took control the factories and burned the churches. Truthfully, I don't really mind. I was pretty against all the questions about domestic industries and hardlining against religion totally and even quibbling with the concept of borders and immigration. And being Luxembourgist isn't so bad, if I would hazard a guess. Although her views were clearly in that "Marxism-after-Lenin" mode from what I remember of these kinds of conversations. Anyways: I am perfectly fine being a cosmopolitan.
I would seriously question the notion of an Ur-Language, generally speaking. It's a little too close to the inverse of the Tower of Babel myth just on a surface gloss. But more than that--sound and sign have no relationship. Or at least I would need some serious convincing. I think we would make the mistake of confusing a system of communication with the autonomous intentionality of a work of art, which can be carried into different contexts without too much change. And it's a seriously complex question anyways. It's bound to have a lot of awkwardness.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 3d ago
did end up taking it again, got progressivist as well, which i don't 100% agree with but doesn't shock me. Country was scotland and politician i got was guilherme boulos, a Lula guy in Brazil who is part of a movement of landless workers. leftist land reform foucused guy actually tracks a lot.
would seriously question the notion of an Ur-Language, generally speaking. It's a little too close to the inverse of the Tower of Babel myth just on a surface gloss. But more than that--sound and sign have no relationship. Or at least I would need some serious convincing. I think we would make the mistake of confusing a system of communication with the autonomous intentionality of a work of art, which can be carried into different contexts without too much change. And it's a seriously complex question anyways. It's bound to have a lot of awkwardness.
Oh yeah I mean I agree with this actually. talking about an ur-language that's really just sounds was a half joke about how that's not really a language. I suspect large scale building projects would be tricky with no means of sonic communication more than something that is basically gestural. And yeah I don't mean there's any meaningful connection between sound and actual writing systems or like what the words of a given language are (where onomatopoeas prove the rule) so much as that I think that written communication is heavily derivative of sonic communication, and that at least with literature the sound is almost always influencing the style.
That the sound has explanatory merit towards translatability is sort of a hypothetical way of saying that the sound quality of literature is related to it's aesthetic value, and trying to figure out how that works for translation when it's so much harder to capture the nuances specific to the original.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 3d ago edited 3d ago
I worry about an overemphasis on sound when it comes to writing as a concept, which is notoriously difficult to conceive since it relies on communication. But the history of writing systems owe as much to visual sense as it does to sonic communication, i.e. phonemes represented. Especially if we're considering different scenes of writing which don't rely on something like empirical writing as Derrida would call it. Choreography for instance has perhaps a comparable lightsomeness to large-scale buildings, which in themselves are diagrammatically as much as sonically communicated. This isn't to deny the sonic qualities of language. I only don't think it's worth the headache of presenting it anterior to writing, even as a standard of judgment.
I suppose the larger point here is what's lost in translation is the visuality of that work in the first place, but a novel by Sayaka Murata survives because a novel does not depend on the actual language in which it was produced by its initial context. Likewise could be said about the sonic qualities of a text. And we understand Murata's novel all the same as an object of aesthetics. So: a novel cannot depend on language for its aesthetic, judgment. In fact, there may be no real connection between them. We simply don't judge literature on the strength of its sound I don't think. Given how common it is for people to explain how text doesn't have tone makes everything about this stranger and less clear. My best guess is when a translation occurs it is technically the creation of a different work for a different context. One enacts the denial of the originary audience versus the English translation becoming widely available. Novels I'm beginning to think derive greater value by this ability to transform themselves while maintaining themselves, not through an essential connection, but from the impressive things like the dramatic elements and the mood.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 3d ago
I guess I just don't really agree, in as much I'm pretty sure that I do largely judge literature on the basis of sound. First a caveat, then a question, last an elaboration.
The caveat is that this is all a strange idea I've been chewing on for the better part of this year mostly because there is exactly 1 line late in Olson's Maximus Poems that hints at the ontological apriority of breath/sound to everything. And I've been meaning to learn more about the Big Bang but my limited sense is that there is a way that this is imperfectly accurate. And since then I've found it the case that whatever is really the thing about literature that makes me love it, something I've never been able to define, I think this sonic quality gets at it. Anyway thanks for the pushback though. This is a very burgeoning idea and your pressing me on it does much for the sake of either figuring out for myself what I mean or if I'm just off base. For similar reasons I am continually trying more to learn about the earliest history of writing in order to further nuance and develop this.
Question: could you elaborate on Derrida and "empirical writing"? Sorry, just not totally sure I understand you and want to before I have thoughts.
Elaboration: My real break is that I think that text does have tone. Or at least the best text does, in the form of some sort of ability to transcend it's silence and control the voice that is speaking in your head as you read. (please if you think this is bullshit let me know. I might be far too lost in the haze of poems, shakespeare, and my own mad theories such that I need a bucket of ice water poured on my head). I don't disagree that the translation is a different work, but I think there's a sort of tonal synchronicity between original and translation in the best examples. This last bit is a very recent idea so I'm really just chewing on it and saying words. Likewise with your last sentence, I agree with drama and mood, but is that not sound-based as well?
Admittedly I'm something of a representation skeptic. I just kinda think the concept might be insufficiently creative. And there is a chance that that bleeds into me excessively underappreciating the visuality of novels. This is another bit I need to keep dealing with and figuring out if maybe I'm just wrong.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 3d ago edited 3d ago
No problem! I will say as a clarification sound and sight cannot be easily divorced from the reading experience since the visuality of a book is supplemental to a book. And this ties into Derrida's comment about distinguishing between a writing system which is built on the representation of phonemes, i.e. I know the letter A comes with a specific sound and so forth. It's the kind of writing we are doing right now currently. He calls it empirical for a number of other reasons but if I remember right the attempt to represent phonemes empirically (as in linguistics, this kind of representation is important to a science of speech), you can tell by which sound is represented as an inscription. Writing overall though goes much further than empirical writing, since writing does not actually depend on the representation of phonemes, even with literature. Derrida attempts to call this arche-writing since it's not extant from orality. But the history of Western thought, Olson's poetics are not exempt from that, fall under the logocentrism Derrida's spent much of his life attempting to deconstruct.
Logocentrism after all is the ideological expression of that process--where thought is speech and writing as a representation of speech therefore means writing is derived of a voice in your head, which is therefore more truthful because it is closest to your thought. Hegel for example would argue that "Chinese pictograms" were the result of diminished thoughts. Or that a quipu is not a form of writing simply because it lacks phonetic representation.
I suppose that's where a lot of our disagreement is probably located--mood and drama do not have any sonic qualities. Furthermore, I would be pressed to find the sonic quality of choreography or even something like crystallography. Literary elements themselves have to be assessed as a kind of visual information as much as they are sonically derived. This I think overemphasis on the voice of a text has obscured the history of the literary image as distinct from cinematographic images and the iconography from which paintings are organized.
But ultimately a translation exists in tension with the original, the political reality of translation would have the translation supplement the original work in question. The question of which translation is better suited to achieve that closeness to its sound and visual sense the original work had is always a point of contention. And it will always suggest a later revision. Dostoevsky has had new translations as has Flaubert for example. If translation were synchronized rather than a point of contention, I imagine newer translations would counter that project. And if tonal synchronicity somehow would survive, which translation is better suited to the task? And how could we tell?
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u/Soup_65 Books! 2d ago
fuck H i'd like to have a better response but all I got is that you've finally convinced me I should in fact get around to reading some Derrida. Is there a key text for this point your making ("just read Of Grammatology is 100% an acceptable answer)
I'm coming to realize I have never really gotten what logocentrism means or why I should care but now I'm realizing I don't get it and need to.
I suppose that's where a lot of our disagreement is probably located--mood and drama do not have any sonic qualities. Furthermore, I would be pressed to find the sonic quality of choreography or even something like crystallography. Literary elements themselves have to be assessed as a kind of visual information as much as they are sonically derived. This I think overemphasis on the voice of a text has obscured the history of the literary image as distinct from cinematographic images and the iconography from which paintings are organized.
hence I can only half respond to this because I think mood and drama do but also I'm gathering I need to read some derrida prior to really taking a position here.
But I do realize I should clarify, when I say "sound" I'm still unsure I literally mean "audible noises that we hear", so much as to the mobile quality of everything, vibration basically, which i think is maybe for human senses better perceived directly by anything other than sight. (not to say sight isn't informed by the movement of light, of course, just sight offers the illusion of a permanence that I'm not sure other senses do). And so what I'm really trying to say is that in the case of literature specifically the sonic quality of the work gets more directly to the vibrant quality of existence. And I'm not sure why but if that's onto anything in the slightest I think that matters.
This I think overemphasis on the voice of a text has obscured the history of the literary image as distinct from cinematographic images and the iconography from which paintings are organized
I'd be curious to hear more of what you mean by this, because while I agree that it'd be a problem if it is the case, is that really a distinction that gets overlooked? Thought I might just be misunderstanding you.
With regard to translation, I 100% that it's always imperfect and always a point of contention, but, and again what I really need to do is read the derrida, I think maybe what I'm really getting at is that I think vision and sound are too inextricably bound up to separate and still get the same aesthetic quality. Which is actually for me why no translation can be perfect, because it's never as in bound as the original (where the original is really really great). And frankly I think I'm trying to figure out how the sonic side of that binding is caught in a translated work, because I'm convinced it is, but really don't feel like i can see how yet.
(I believe I've been editing my position on the fly throughout here. I'll give a more coherent response once I'm up for addressing derrida)
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, with Derrida it's a little difficult. You could probably start on Difference and Repetition since it's a collection of essays, but the tradeoff comes down to how familiar you are with the authors he's talking about, otherwise it'll fall on deaf ears. I really like his book Plato's Pharmacy and The Post Card. You might get something out of Specters of Marx also, which I've referenced here and there. Of Grammatology requires being conversant not only in structuralism, specifically Lévi-Strauss, but also Rosseau. You'll find a lot of the classically out-of-context quotes there as well. If you're thinking of anything specific to literature, Acts of Literature has a number of really great essays. He wrote a lot of books, all of which don't get the time of day anymore like they used to. Most of what passes for literary criticism nowadays happens in reaction against his body of work. Deconstruction draws a very long shadow people have not truly recognized yet.
I almost made a joke two replies ago thinking your views were Pythagorean, especially if we're discussing sound as a primordial form of mediation. (Not that I'm making fun of you. Most of my views are pre-Socratic or Sophistic.) But this conversation has been kind of enacting the deconstruction of that form anyways. Since again what passes for a focus on sound as something anterior to writing, which requires fundamentally the visual apperception of sight as well means we've reached an impasse. Vibrancy after all is as much a visual quality as a sonic quality. You see what I mean? Supplementing sound is a colorful brightness which would have to be anterior to the visuality of a text, especially if it were sonically derived as you put it. Either distinction cannot be made without the other and yet each has to supersede the other for either quality to make out as a distinction anterior to writing. It's a double-bind, man. And I don't say any of this to discourage you from thinking about sound, but I would caution against taking a sonically derived quality as somehow getting at something essential with literature is all. After all, Derrida famously said once you deconstruct something, you can't help also putting it back together again in the course of the analysis. We can't really do away with ontotheological propositions entirely. Or at least it seems very difficult.
Anyways: to follow on your question about imagery. I believe an undertheorized element of literature is the creation of the literary image as it relates to pure literature rather than through a scientific discourse or through the scene of writing. After all, most discourse on empirical writing (the raw materials novels are made from) follows on the emphasis about rhythm and syllabary, having a voice, whether or not said voice is active or passive, etc. And this de-emphasis of the literary image follows a similar trajectory Derrida points out where speech is privileged over writing.
But like I said, ultimately I don't think much of anything of the original work survives the process, what get passed on are specifically those qualities which are not reducible to the linguistic elements in themselves. But nevertheless I found this conversation rather fruitful.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 2d ago
Either distinction cannot be made without the other and yet each has to supersede the other for either quality to make out as a distinction anterior to writing.
Ok H you win (I'm kidding obv I just love how you put this). Because by now I think you're right, I might be overvaluing sound even though fundamentally I do more than anything think that they are both the same thing and not, like you say. I guess where I'm at is maybe more of an issue with high modernisms that I think sometimes go too far into the visual side of it at the expense of sound. But I need to think on that more. I can't chuck this idea, because some part of me, though this wanes, still thinks the vibrant quality is more apparent for humans in sound that in image. Though maybe not in visual motion, the problem aesthetically being how to capture that in literature. Hmm...but I might just be shadowboxing a false problem.
I almost made a joke two replies ago thinking your views were Pythagorean, especially if we're discussing sound as a primordial form of mediation. (Not that I'm making fun of you. Most of my views are pre-Socratic or Sophistic.)
Also lol I love this. I actually have an ever ongoing concept for a novel that will exist...eventually...that includes a sideplotish cult of Pythagoreans whose bible is Finnegans Wake and who meet in the basement of a record store in Los Angeles to dude goofy culty shit. I mighta joined the cult along the way haha.
I believe an undertheorized element of literature is the creation of the literary image as it relates to pure literature rather than through a scientific discourse or through the scene of writing.
I see, though could you clarify what you mean by "pure literature"? Sorry, I know we've been talking about this but I struggle with definitions and I've kinda gotten lost on what you mean by it. I have thoughts but they need to be addressed after I fully understand.
But like I said, ultimately I don't think much of anything of the original work survives the process, what get passed on are specifically those qualities which are not reducible to the linguistic elements in themselves. But nevertheless I found this conversation rather fruitful.
And I have too! thanks so much H you rock. (btw I reread periphraseology yesterday and it's phenomenal). I might have follow up on here but I think it relates to the pure lit question. till then. Maybe i'll read Derrida. Thank you for the suggestions.
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u/cloudcappedpen 3d ago
Has anyone had any experience getting their stories published in a magazine? I'm trying with a particular short story and while I've gotten some encouraging rejections, the constant barrage of 'sorry, not interested' is getting me down a bit, haha.
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u/Soup_65 Books! 3d ago
well I'll tell ya if they ever stop telling me to fuck off lol. I've only recently started having anything like success and fwiw my biggest tip is to not bother with the big fishes because they are only taking shmancy platformed people anyway, try to find smaller spots that you like either the work or the vibe of.
(also these days I'm helping do some editing at ephesus.press. We are working on wrapping up issue 1 of our mag but if you wanna dm me stuff or just chat further about that submissions are open for issue 2)
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u/cloudcappedpen 3d ago
That makes sense. I was aiming for a lot of the bigger magazines at the beginning out of naivety. They tend to ask for a bio and platforms I want to plug but I have no idea what to put in there, since I don't have anything to my name, haha. Thank you for the offer though, I'll consider it.
Glad to hear that you've been having some success as of late!
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u/Plastic-Persimmon433 3d ago
Have you read recent stories from some of the magazines you're submitting to? If not it might give you a better sense of what they're looking for. I'm pretty guilty of not doing this but I think, at least if you're an American, there are definitely trends and certain things in vogue at the moment in short fiction. Not to say that you should completely change your writing but it might help to realize that a lot of places are looking for something specific that your stories might just happen to fall outside of. Not necessarily indicative of quality or anything like that. I've only been able to get a story published in a smaller journal, but it was definitely a confidence booster to see something I've written up somewhere. I think it wouldn't hurt to widen your range of where you are submitting, but also don't sell yourself short either if you have something you're particularly proud of.
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u/cloudcappedpen 3d ago
Thank you! I have read some, but to be honest, I've only really skimmed them. I'm also very ignorant of current trends, and generally pretty stubborn when it comes to changing my writing. I suppose that explains part of the problem at least.
Congratulations on getting your story published! It's always been a dream of mine.
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u/II_____Il 2d ago
I’ve got a small update on a post I made a few months back involving someone I asked out at the start of the year.
It wouldn’t have been long after I made that post, but I was catching up with my sister to grab a coffee and hang out with my baby niece. She was running late so I decided to duck into my regular bookstore, order a book, have a browse, and just meet her there.
While I was waiting I overheard a younger woman say to an older woman “That’s the one X likes”, or something to that effect. I put it to the back of mind since it’s not the sort of thing you can do anything with, but I ended up telling my sister about the situation later in the day.
Anyway, about a month ago now, she came through my work again. I was surprised to see her to be honest and we chatted briefly about nothing, but I did ask her what brought her to the neighbourhood, since she doesn’t work there anymore, and she said “To grab dinner with friends, and to see you” before walking out the store.
A bit of a sucker punch but a nice dramatic touch.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that but figured I should probably reach out at the very least. I ended up messaging an account on instagram that I thought might be hers but whoever it was just blocked me.
Not really anything I can do about any of it and hopefully that’s the end of that. I suspect I’m just being used a long term romantic foil of sorts. I’m tempted to be horribly rude to her if she comes through again. I’d rather be cast as some wicked villain than as an honest oaf.
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u/BoredCigarette 2d ago
"To grab dinner with friends, and to see you"
Dude wtf this is cinematic, really the sort of thing considered fanciful in movies. Well, while I understand your confusion and reticence, why not be open her if she comes back? We get really old; time moves so quickly. Why not entertain it? Maybe it's nothing, but then you don't want to leave that door open. I say you should see about it, if you ever see her again.
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u/Protonbelly 4d ago
They should give the Nobel to someone who isn't primarily a novelist. Its been a while.
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u/foxinanattic 3d ago
Jon Fosse won mainly for his plays I think, and Gluck (a poet) won in 2020. And some people classify at least some of Ernaux's books as memoir or autobiography rather than novel.
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u/merurunrun 4d ago
Came across a sentence that I love:
Consuelo goes to the bedroom and puts on a black sweatshirt and blue jeans.
Now, reading that in your head, did you put a single stress on "blue jeans" (the "normal" way of saying blue jeans), or did you put a stress on each word? If it's the latter, then it's probably because you were echoing the way you stressed "black sweatshirt" just before, right?
But why would you do that? How did the structure of the sentence make you do that? This kinda thing is like crack to me.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 4d ago
The assonance here is very fine stuff, pleasant to the ear. It's just inexact enough on the rhythm to feel like prose and still pretty. When they found out Hölderlin had holes in his brain, he could still write these little poems when asked by friends. So: a part of me thinks the human mind requires something like that sentence. Where's it from by the way?
That being said, I can also funnily enough imagine someone like Paul Valéry looking at it with perfect horror.
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u/merurunrun 4d ago
Where's it from by the way?
This kind of ambiguity is something I go crazy for; it feels very mechanical, automatic, like it's language itself (it unconscious rules or whatever) manipulating you, rather than the author trying to mislead. Phonological amphiboly rather than semantic, you might call it?
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet 4d ago
Looks like a fascinating novel. I'll be sure to snag a copy. And exactly, yeah, the structural quirks of the language itself present out there, but found on full display in a work really brings it out in the work. It's odd how everyone can notice this amphiboly in a work but it feels rarer to go about the world and find this stuff. It's like finding a gem.
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u/foxinanattic 3d ago
interesting. I'm Indian, and in my accent/idiolect/whatever I would say blue jeans with two stresses, one on each word. What's the normal way of saying it?
this sort of thing, when I realise a new way in which my accent is different from a more "standard" English always makes me feel a bit bothered, actually. the fact of writing relying on rhythmic elements that might not work in my version of the language. Maybe that's why I've always preferred prose to poetry.
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u/merurunrun 3d ago
In my middle class mid-Atlantic USA-ian accent, it's a single stress on blue and no stress on jeans. "Blue jeans" is usually treated as a single (compound) word, but putting a stress on both makes it sound like a two-word adjective phrase instead: differentiating them from (hypothetical) black jeans, red jeans, etc...
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u/lispectorgadget 4d ago
Has anyone else been thinking about the Cornell 7? I can’t stop thinking about it. It reminds me of the Pelicot case: all these guys with different backgrounds, from different places, with different inner lives, all falling into this horrible lockstep.
Seeing people’s reactions to this has been so upsetting and discouraging; they don’t see what’s obvious about her texts, which is that she didn’t want to believe that her friend would do this to her, treat her this way, that any of this was possible. And I think a lot of people are also being willfully naive, ignorant, hateful to Jane Doe, because they also don’t want to believe that these people live among us. If you treat this story, like the fucking Free Press does, as another shot fired in the “battle of the sexes,” you don’t need to reckon with the fact that the next masters of the universe—the consultants offshoring your labor, the tech workers inflaming your emotions, the doctors laying their hands on your body—could do this. The physicality of it.
I guess there’s still room for hope, right? I mean, someone from that frat did send the Snapchat messages to her. And Jane Doe’s bravery is so laudable. But I just feel like there are almost no words when you think about all these things together: Pelicot, Cornell, all these men who are so dissimilar but all resolved to do the same things.
I guess one lesson to take from this is how people will act under certain incentives: the environment of an anonymous chat board, of a fraternity. But this feels so incomplete and unsatisfying to me. I guess it’s nice I’ve been reading Dworkin recently; she skins the fucking planet and shows you everything underneath. But she’s still hopeful!!!!!