Release the Hound of Hell!!

Most of you know this already, but for those of you who do not, there is a new addition to our humble family. Her name is Ireland, and terror follows in her wake. Truly. She is a thing to be feared -- in both the sense of her awesome majesty and of her power to kill you in an instant. She is not to be messed with. Granted, she'll do it without barking or growling, and possibly with a lick on the nose. Oh, but those are but a part of her charade. She is evil incarnate. Believe me. She will destroy us all.

That is, once she wakes up from her nap under my desk.

Update: I just cannot resist one final picture. I know, I know. What have I become? But, I cannot help myself.

Local Blogging

It's good to see that the Cincinnati City Council is on the verge of taking one further step to insuring the city maintains its reputation as the Unhip Capital of the Midwest.

Proving yet again that it is a powerhouse of a newspaper, the Enquirer doesn't actually spell out City Councilman Cecil Thomas' plan. Fortunately, Citybeat does:

A person caught in Ohio with less than 100 grams of marijuana is charged with a minor misdemeanor, which entails a $100 ticket. Thomas is proposing an ordinance that would make possession of less than 200 grams a first-degree misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

I'm no pothead. Nor do I sell pot. But I have a really hard time seeing how this is supposed to keep guns off the street, or protect the 'hood. When your shit is threatened, you become a threat. So I was told, in so many words, by a friend who likely sold and used pot. Which is to say, guns would seem more likely as a result of this. Not to mention, of course, it's just another way to appear tough on crime by bloating the jails with poor people.

Maybe I'll Just Call This Movie-Week

If you've not yet seen Caché, I highly recommend you do so. Granted, I had to drive thirty minutes to my town's "other" arthouse cinema, but it was worth it. I was going to write an assessment of it, but Steven Shaviro has done it for me over at his blog.

An excerpt, but the whole thing is fantastic:

We are made to feel guilty and complicitous, while at the same time we are given no way out from this position, and no release even from our own being safe because of the unquestioned privileges that people less fortunate than us do not have. Indeed, we are shielded from consequences because we are, after all, watching a film, this is not happening directly to us in "real life." Despite the fact that "real life" itself is revealed by Caché to be no more (as well as no less) "real" than a video. Which means that, whatever we understand intellectually, on the affective level we end up sharing Georges' self-protective sense of unquestioned privilege, as well as his sense of guilt.

In this way, Caché simultaneously abuses and flatters its audience. And I think that the flattery (rather than the abuse) is the nastiest thing about the film. From a political point of view, after all, guilt is just about the most worthless and useless affect/emotion there is. Nobody has ever questioned their privilege, or even done anything decent, out of guilt. Oh, lots of white people "identify" with "minorities" out of guilt, or give to charity (Live 8, anyone?), or mutter pious platitudes and express their support for "identity politics" of various sorts, which allows them to be self-congratulatory about how radical they are, when in fact they aren't. Indeed, many people of power and privilege positively get off on being made to feel guilty, whether it is the oft-repeated apocryphal story of wealthy CEOs getting release by being abused by a dominatrix, or the more common everyday spectacle of white suburbanites feeling cleansed after getting a good scolding (followed by absolution) from Oprah (or white people with more intellectual/political pretensions getting a good scolding from bell hooks). I do not claim to be exempt from this whole process.

And this is exactly what Caché does to/for its viewers. Or better, it indeed exposes this mechanism of flattery-through-guilt; but without offering any escape from it, and even without quite criticizing or critiquing it. As if that were just the way it is: which indeed, it is. This is what the obvious question about Haneke's own position comes down to. (Is he claiming exemption from the condition that he otherwise shows to be universal among people of privilege? Well, yes and no. That's an evasion, of course, but the evasion itself is the point). What's most powerful about the film is that it not only decrees guilt, but cranks the guilt up to a self-reflexive level: the guilt is reduced or managed by the flattery and privilege that we retain while observing all this; but such a meta-understanding itself creates a new, higher-order sense of guilt, which in turn is cushioned by a new, higher-order sense of self-congratulation as to our superior insight, which in turn is an unquestioned privilege that, when comprehended, leads to a yet-higher-level meta-sense of guilt, and so on ad infinitum. There's complete blockage, no escape from this unending cycle. The experience of the film is one both of self-disgust and of a liberation, through aestheticization, from this self-disgust. The latter is what makes Caché truly insidious. . . .

There's a long shot/long take at the very end of the film, in which -- foregrounded in no way, so it is easy to miss -- amidst a whole crowd of people doing all sorts of things, we see some sort of contact between two of the minor characters . . . that suggests even new levels of complicity and uncertainty. I think that this only reinforces the film's overall coldly delirious deadlock. The more explaining we need to do, the more we are trapped in the film's (and society's) self-reflexive spiral of guilt and privilege. The film offers no way out, because it never breaks with its sense of privilege, no matter how unwarranted it shows that privilege to be. The creepiness of finding oneself under surveillance, the creepiness of seeing a marriage break down into mutual vicious recriminations, is nothing compared to the creepiness of realizing that one still has one's shield of privilege despite these intrusions, and that the facade of bourgeois marriage will survive everything that's going on underneath.

More About Movies

To prove that I'm not just some big cynic for disliking Crash, I thought I'd repost something I wrote for another blog.

So, I went and saw Brokeback Mountain the other day. I mean, why not. I figured, what self-respecting otherwise heterosexual academic doesn't have one or two, or a dozen, 'conference buddies'?

Actually, I went in with a very bad attitude. Cynical, one might say. Surely, I thought, this is just the "liberal" version of the Passion of the Christ [ed. In hindsight, maybe this was Crash]. That is, the movie we liberals are supposed to support, even if its rubbish. Even though we know its rubbish. (Because, let's not be mistaken, the story of Jesus getting the shit kicked out of him wasn't particularly interesting either.) My thought was that the homosexual cowboy thing, while not entirely contrived, because I'm sure it happened often enough back in the cowboy days, was mostly just to jar our expectations of either homosexuals or cowboys, a jolt made all the more explicit by the juxtaposition of their bourgeois heterosexual relationships, with the intention of making us all better, more accepting individuals.

Now, does the movie do this? Yeah. Undoubtedly. And yet -- and perhaps this is why I resist being finally identified as a cynic, because I do not think our critiques can ever stop there, but rather we must go through cynicism, in order that we might find something more, for lack of a better time, human -- Brokeback Mountain is more. A common assessment is that the movie is heartbreaking. And it is. Devastatingly, in fact. Relationships, and not just the homosexual one, are delicately portrayed in all their human, and thus often dissatisfying and uncomfortable, complexity.

Last year, the supposed celebration of monogamy in March of the Penguin was hailed as the mark of true family families. Fuck those cute penguins, though. The family values of Brokeback Mountain are the family values I know. Granted, I've not (yet) known anybody who had a gay lover while being married, but I've known plenty of people who loved their kids but didn't know how to show it until just nearly the kid didn't want that love anymore. I know people who love being together, as a couple or a community, but don't actually love one another. And I know a helluva lot about loving people I cannot have, either because of either internal or external pressures (or a mixture of both). The movie, more than a celebration of tolerance, is a celebration of love as frailty.

In love we do not simply make ourselves stronger, or more truly ourselves; indeed, if we become ourselves at all in love, and I think we do, we do so only in weakness and brokenness. (Is this, I wonder, some bastardized Gnostic notion of love?) Perhaps this is why in most long-term relationships there are periods of forgetfulness, or even flat denials that "I don't love you anymore." And perhaps those relationships that last are those that do not so much remember the past, or beckon its return, but actually find a certain, maybe but momentary, sublime awareness and acceptance that the person I love now is not, and cannot be, the same person I fell in love with.

I don't know that it should've won Best Picture. Correction: I don't care which movie wins Best Picture. Just saying ... I'm not hating on Crash for the reasons a lot of you might be thinking.

On Crash

Maybe I'm obtuse. Maybe I'm just not racially sensitive enough. Maybe I for some reason just miss the fine art of making movies. But I really do not get the fuss over this movie. Didn't get it when I saw it several months ago; and do not get it now, as I watch the cast and crew celebrate their Oscar win. Far too easy a moral ... far too lazy a story. Shrug.

You Really Can't Believe Me. Honestly, I Make a Lot of Stuff Up

Let me preface this by saying something unequivocal and untainted by qualification: I really don't like kids. Okay, having said that, let me equivocate and add a couple of qualifications. (1) I really don't like kids that make me realize how much I hate the idea of ever having any; (2) I really don't like kids that stare at me while I'm eating; and (3) I really don't like kids that don't like me.

By and large, nobody thinks it's a good idea that I ever be a parent. While the jury is still out in the minds of many whether K. would make a good parent, with most being won over by how much she genuinely seems to like most kids, a good 90% of friends polled are simply horrified at the thought of me being a father. (This was confirmed in a conversation with two such friends last night.)

This has got me thinking, though. Is "proving people wrong" a valid reason for trying to have a kid? I mean ... isn't that just as valid as, "oops, I guess that forgotten pill was a big deal"? I mean, sure, women have the biological-clock thing going for them. But, really, biology? A natural urge to be a mother? If that's all you have in your motivation bag, then don't come talking to me about the "miracle" of childbirth -- at that point, your child is as natural as a turd.

Now, before I'm attacked by the legion of mothers who undoubtedly read this blog, I'm not comparing anybody's child to a piece of crap. Near as I can remember, none of your kids have stared at me while I'm eating; and most have no reason to hate me, but certainly every reason to be happily oblivious to my existence. No ... my point is simply that everybody has an underlying motivation for wanting to have a baby. This talk of biological need to have a child, to breed, is far too animalistic and primal for me to think anybody actually believes it on the level of biology alone. I won't begin to speculate as to what the "real" reasons are, or to what degree they may or may not be valid. (Not only am I not in a position to assess that, I don't particularly care.) Furthermore, my point is that maybe "proving people wrong" isn't such a bad reason to want to have kids. I mean, relative to other reasons, I have to think it has as much validity.

Before you inquire whether I've just learned that K. is pregnant, I'll stop you in your tracks and say, "Hell to the no!" Nor am I all that interested in proving any of you people wrong anytime soon. But someday, who knows, maybe I'll be able to sit a son or daughter down on my knee and tell them the story of how Papa made her out a love borne by spite. And we will laugh at one another, and then at others, and then at you.

Gotta Save Up Those GBDs

Travis Frey, stands accused of one count of child pornography and another count of trying to kidnap his wife, but I suspect with this four-page document he's made his fair share of male (and even some female) fans.

Note: I'm not blockquoting any of this for fear of the Google hits.

Bedtime Reading

Final serenity. -- A newspaper obituary for a businessman once contained the words: "The breadth of his conscience vied with the kindness of his heart." The blunder committed by the bereaved in the elevated language reserved for such purposes, the inadvertent admission that the kind-hearted deceased had lacked a conscience, expedites the funeral procession by the shortest route to the land of truth. If a man of advanced years is praised for his exceptional serenity, his life can be assumed to comprise a succession of infamies. He has rid himself of the habit of getting excited. Breadth of conscience is passed off as magnanimity, all-forgiving because all-too-understanding. The quid pro quo between one's own guilt and that of others, is resolved in favour of whoever has come off best. After so long a life one quite loses the capacity to distinguish who has done what harm to whom. In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. The blackguard presents himself as victim of injustice: if only you knew, young man, what life is like. But those conspicuous midway through life by an exceptional kindness are usually drawing advances on such serenity. He who is not malign does not live serenely but with a peculiarly chaste hardness and intolerance. Lacking appropriate objects, his love can scarcely express itself except by hatred for the inappropriate, in which admittedly he comes to resemble what he hates. The bourgeois, however, is tolerant. His love of people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be. (T. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life)

A Common Sense Shit Post

I know most people regard me as a die-hard partisan Democrat, though I'm not, and that I'll say and do anything to make a Republican seem dirty, which I will, but it is reporting like this that should put to rest the attempts of so many to paint the Jack Abramoff scandal as one shared by both Democrats and Republicans.

It goes without saying that career politicians of all stripes are almost certainly dirty individuals, in some respect anyway, and that there should be reforms; but it doesn't stand to reason that this scandal needs to be equally laid at the feet of both parties in order for that to happen.

A Shit Post

As a lot of you already know, be it through other kind-hearted bloggers or through conversations with me, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation last week. Remarkably, things went very smoothly. All that is left now to make the necessary editorial revisions, bind it, and spend another $100+ shipping it o'erseas.

I've been asked a lot lately how it feels being finished. My instinct is to regard the whole affair as oddly anticlimactic. But, really, I only feel this when sober. Get a few pints or drams of whisky in me, and I'm the king of the world. Another reason to stay boozed up, I guess.

The other question commonly asked is, in short, 'What now?' Good question. The short answer, besides getting drunk a lot and revelling in my superiority complex, is that I desperately need to find a job. One that does not relate to shelving CDs and DVDs. In order for that to happen, though, I need to get some more stuff published. So, basically, there's no rest for the weary. As soon as I get the thesis bound and shipped, I have to start tearing article-sized portions out for possible publication, finish up writing articles and reviews I committed to writing without really thinking, and then pimp out my services to a institution that finds appealing somebody trained in philosophical aesthetics and theology. Any of you with uncles or great-aunts who happens to be on the Board of Trustees of a college or university, you know where to find me.

Wow. This might be the most boring blog post ever.

Maybe We're Not So Different After All

I obviously spend a lot of time frustrated at my country's undyingly fundamentalist fervor -- be it fully fleshed out in something ostensibly noble like 'justice', or something ostensibly wrong like 'revenge' -- for, in short, a messianic return. We all want a return on our investments, so why not go for the biggest return of all, the promise of which prompts the investment, cynical or pious, of many a president and professional politician.

Which brings me to Scott Peterson's excellent two-part article in The Christian Science Monitor on the appropriation of religious language, especially that of rapture and eschatological fulfillment, in the political saga currently unfolding in Iran. (part one // part two).

It's nice to think that all that divides us is the name of that tyrannical religious excuse for demagoguery.

Checking In

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last posted. I've been bad before, but surely never this bad. And this after a torrent of comments related to my, shall we say, strong opinions about The Chronicles of Narnia.

There is something about life in Belgium, especially when you're not in the city, that causes days to race by without you even noticing. Mind you, I'm not isolated. I have super-fast internet, a variety of BBC channels, and an assortment of Flemish and French documentaries that I can sometimes vaguely follow. So, I know what's happening in the world.

I know, for instance, that the US Senate is on the verge of likely confirming a Justice with a conception of 'executive' power disturbingly similar to that of the US President, and that all right-thinking people should by very very concerned. A move to Belgium, in fact, should not be ruled out.

I know that West Virginia mine officials, the private corporations that failed to heed governmental warnings and governmental agencies that failed to enforce said warnings, have little to no interest in the lives of the workers who keep them in power.

I know that I'm a little sad that Tom DeLay will no longer pursue leadership of the House -- but am also a little delighted that in the span of a few years the head Republicans of both the Senate and the House have had to resign their positions in disgrace.

I know that I'm very depressed at the prospect that none of this will matter on Election Day in November.

I know, moving to lighter stuff, that last night the New England Patriots took one more step toward playing the Indianapolis Colts in the playoffs. ('nuff said) And that the Bengals will likely lose today against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I know that my viva is less than two weeks away and all bravado has slipped away.

I know that this was a very haphardously random blog post.

I know that I'm going to try to be a better blogger the rest of my trip abroad.

Saturday Night at the Movies

K. & I caught a late showing of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe [aka, The Chronicles of Narnia -- not sure which is the official title] on Saturday night. Now, as a few people have already pointed out, I'm not a huge fan of Lewis anyway, so my comments here are not entirely unexpected. Having said that, I like to think I'm open-minded enough to enjoy something even if I expect to hate it; and hate something I expected to enjoy. It's certainly happened before. It did not happen this time around, though.

Well, let me back up. I can't say that hated the movie. That's giving a bit more credit than it deserves. I am, surely, deeply opposed to what I regard as its testicular jingoism. But whatever. For the sake of argument, I'll just accept that as benignly metaphorical. Even then . . . I find myself really disturbed by a war in which the winner suffers no real losses. Aslan (inexplicably) returns -- thankfully, his version of sacrifical atonement ultimately makes about as much sense as Anselm's; all the 'good guys' who get struck down during battle are revived and on hand for the coronation of the kids. I mean. If there is a battle between good and evil, a battle that I guess would seem worth fighting, the high cost of death doesn't seem too much ask. And yet, we get the sense here that even 'the good' isn't something worth (or something you're capable of) dying for. Which makes me think ... in Narnia, what is? Sort of cheapens the 'warfare' metaphor. I mean, hell, even Judas hung himself for the sake of Christ's cause -- the quintessentially tragic victim. Nothing like that here.

'Oh, Brad, you're being petty again.' I know some of you are thinking that. Maybe I am. But you know, is a little loss really that much to expect? Or, for that matter, ambiguity. This, I suppose, is the primary thing that annoys me most with the recent crop of 'Good v. Evil' movies: absolutely no nuance or complexity of character. Consider Lord of the Rings. You think you're getting some nuance with Golem, but no. Tolkien has to make explicit that Golem is as beastly as we'd normally expect. He bites off Frodo's finger for the sake of owning the ring, damn the cost to himself. Well ... what if Tolkien had injected some ambiguity to that scene? What if we were left wondering and arguing about Golem's intentions? Perhaps he saw Frodo's moral failure at the moment of decision, or simply knew that one could not refuse the ring, and did the most heroic act in the entire book? Wouldn't that, dare I say it, be a little more like the real world? As it is, you have an exciting turn of events, but no moral ambiguity. Much the same here. You think you're getting some complexity of character w/ regard to Edmund. But, no. He's just a prat who deserves to die. There is nothing patently evil about this, since this is how most of us live our lives -- categorizing people according to various criteria -- but it certainly is a failure as a piece of art or literature, which is ultimately intended to create new horizons of meaning and not simply parrot or reinforce the one that already exists.

'But, Brad. Have you considered the possibility you're judging the movie by a standard it was not written / presented to achieve?' Yes, I have. My only response is that movies that are this epic in scale -- that is, movies whose message is momentous and so obviously injected with universal themes & scope -- an aborted artistic ambition is damning. And it infects the rest of the project. Notably the degree to which it is sold to the highest bidder, namely Disney, and then pimped out as nothing short of a vapid promo for a video game. In the end, this is what I walked away regarding the movie. As far as it goes, I suspect the game will be very fun indeed.

Then again, maybe I'm just an old-fashioned elitist. Granted, one who likes the bawdy humor of 'Drawn Together', who has fond memories of the movie Bad Boys, still listens to Howard Stern, and knows the chorus to almost every Top 40 love song from the 1980s.

[None of this even touches on of the clear technical problems w/ regard to the film's editing and very flimsy characterisation. But I don't want to ruin the movie for people who haven't yet seen it, or haven't read the book, so I'll save that for the comments if anybody is interested in sounding off.]

Playing the Fool

I've only recently begun reading anything written by Simone Weil. There's a lot of interest there, but I really like this quote from one of the letters she wrote while in an English sanatorium.

When I saw Lear here, I asked myself how it was possible that the unbearably tragic character of those fools had not been obvious long ago to everyone, including myself. The tragedy is not the sentimental one it is sometimes thought to be; it is this:

There is a class of people in this world who have fallen into the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, and who are deprived not only of all social consideration but also, in everybody's opinion, of the specific human dignity, reason itself -- and these are the people who, in fact, are able to tell the truth. All the others lie.

In Lear it is striking. Even Kent and Cordelia attenuate, mitigate, soften, and veil the truth; and unless they are forced to choose between telling it and telling a downright lie, they manoeuvre to evade it.

What makes the tragedy extreme is the fact that because the fools possess no academic titles or episcopal dignities and because no one is aware that their sayings deserve the slightest attention -- everybody being convinced a priori of the contrary, since they are fools -- their expression of the truth is n ot even listened to. Everybody, including Shakespeare's readers and audiences for four centuries, is unaware that what they say is true. And not satirically or humourously true, but simply the truth. Pure unadulterated truth, luminous, profound, and essential.

From here, Weil goes on to too quickly & conveniently equate herself with the fool, but I'll be damned if the first part isn't well stated.

That Wasn't So Hard, Was It?

I realize I've already gotten a round of congratulations already, but I would be remiss if I didn't announce here, officially & all, that today I printed out my thesis & shipped three copies of it to Scotland. All that awaits now is my examination in late-January.

You know, I started this blog in the early days of my research, one cold morning while in Brussels. Most of you have seen me through many an intellectual turn, and you've accepted it all with wonderful dignity, class, and patience. Much obliged.

I guess I'm now fresh out of excuses for not blogging regularly enough, huh?

The Emo-ification of Kelly Clarkson

Today the Belgian & I were driving to grab some lunch somewhere, and we we heard the newest Kelly Clarkson song, 'Because of You'. I enjoy it when her songs come on the radio. This isn't because I like the music -- I hardly even pay attention to it, let alone like or dislike it -- but because I can tell that K. is trying for all she's worth NOT to like the music. The funny thing is, no matter her resistance and claims to hating Kelly Clarkson, she cannot help but sing along.

Anyway, as to the song, since when did Clarkson, who by the way I think is kind of hot, go emo? It's really starting to hurt her hotness, quite frankly.

Speaking of 'emo', I really love this picture.

Follow the Light

The light, it would seem, is at the end of the tunnel for all this thesis-business. By the end of this week, all major proofs should be complete, bibliography finalized, and a copy emailed to my advisor for one final read-through. Fingers crossed, people.

Torture & Martyrdom

It's a short post, but Matthew Yglesias is right on in his discussion of 'The Pragmatics of Torture -- specifically, torture as a means for a regime to hear what it wants to hear.

And that's precisely the sort of thing torture is really good for. If you already know what the truth is -- perhaps because it can be deduced from regime-type rather than boring intelligence gathering -- but just need some more evidence in order to convince others, then torture is a really, really, really good way of getting that kind of evidence. That's always been the main historical use of torture -- you have your prisoner, you want a confession, so you torture him until he confesses. It's not, after all, as if the administration was genuinely wondering about Iraq/al-Qaeda ties. They knew what they wanted to prove and they needed to make the case. Torture was an excellent way to get the job done.

Yglesias' point, I think, extends beyond torture to my own thinking about religion / theology -- to the point, even, that I may even agree with a friend who has recently stated that torture is the theological problem of modern times. (This is the case, for me, insofar that we are all being tortured, in a way, by our socio-political & religious regimes -- tortured to the point of our capitulation, i.e. quiet resignation to reality, or perhaps even to our deaths. For some, the solution comes only in a certain kind of death that opens up the possibility of something new -- something along the lines of a martyr's death, which rallies the forces of change. Perhaps. But certainly not one death, that of a history redeemed, such as that of a Cross or otherwise. Rather, only inasmuch as that martyrdom is representative of the only death that truly is, that which always comes from within at every moment, whereby life is but a certain kind of death, and thus that which betrays the transcendent / true / perhaps even eternal sovereignty of those regimes as necessarily false, as a projection of our own capitulated confessions.)

It is Halloween, After All

Last night the wife & I visited a haunted boat. Judging by the picture she posts here, one could be forgiven for thinking that I wasn't too enthusiastic about the venture. This is, however, not the case. Our picture was taken after thirty minutes of waiting in line, thirty minutes of hearing behind me a family of what seemed like eighteen trying to convince themselves that they either are or are not, it varied from minute to minute, scared; and of watching a kid in front of me decked out in full L.A. Laker apparel having to sit down at ever bench made available along the way because the sheer energy required to stand up was too much for his basketball loving bones. Oh, not to mention that I'd just shelled out $22 for two tickets to enter a boat that looked completely cheesed out, complete with a glowing skeleton head on top. So, in short, I wasn't expecting much.

To say, then, that the experience exceeded my expectations is not really a compliment. To say that it was worth the $22, though, certainly is, because I normally do not like to spend money unless there is food or drink involved in the expense. There were the obligatory moments of shock and surprise. Where somebody jumps out from around a corner and makes one squeal for one's wife just before concluding cynically, "Aargh, you got me! I have a central nervous system!! Wanker." The scary part, of course, isn't in being surprised like that. It is, rather, in the anticipation of being surprised like that, which plays no small role in the the fright that you create for yourself while walking through pitch-black hallways. Whoever runs this particular haunted house seemed to 'get' that fact. Either that, or I was typically at the front of my group -- me, K., and three high school girls -- and thus not the target of their shock therapy tactics.

A Link a Day Makes the Work Day Go Away

Slowly. Ever so slowly. I'm nearing the finish line with this thesis, four years in the making. I've no idea if it'll be acceptable, if I'll return from Glasgow in January drunk with celebratory whisky or that of sorrow, or whether I'll be told to come back in six months with something very different. I've lost any sense of objectivity. That is to say, I think it's crap. But really, who knows?

Anyway. Sorry for the silence. You really haven't missed much. I've not done a lot of good internet-reading, so precious few things to link to. And my thoughts have been pretty bog-standard for this blog. And God knows I don't wnat to be repetitive, right?

Anyway, for old times sake, because I love a good article on Cormac McCarthy, here's one by Joyce Carol Oates from the most recent edition of New York Review of Books. Enjoy.