Fragment #6

She hustles back to her place on the counter. The stools are full. Girls, officeboys, grayfaced bookkeepers. ‘Chicken sandwich and a cup o caufee.’ ‘Cream cheese and olive oil sandwich and a glass of butter milk.’

‘Chocolate sundae.’ 

‘Egg sandwich, coffee and doughnuts.’ ‘Cup of boullion.’ ‘Chicken broth.’ ‘Chocolate icecream soda.’ People eat hurriedly without looking at each other, with their eyes on their plates, in their cups. Behind people sitting on stools those waiting nudge nearer. Some eat standing up.

(Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer, p.283-4)

Home Town Delightz #5 - Swish Swash.

Sometimes there is nothing nicer than chillin' with Pa in the early morning after a sleepless night thanks to the pleasure that is The Sniffles etc etc.

Having woken before everyone else, attempted to read one of my many course books (I'm still working my way through Glassco's Memoirs and loving every word), listened to a mixture of beautiful addiktions from my NightNightLife playlist, eaten a few perfect post-Christmas tangerines and drunk a fair amount of peppermint tea to try to ward off the inevitable headache, I ended up helping Pa do the washing up from the past couple of days (our dishwasher decided to pack in mid-wash on Christmas Eve Evening. And yes, I know. Ugh).

We have the bigger version of
this. It's too lovely.

Now that that's all done and dusted (I'm not allowed to touch the plates in case, God Forbid, I drop one) and the Aga is layered with Le Creuset pans and the cat has settled, I'm back to bed with my various course books and a desperate need to get rid of this God-Damned Headache.

Have a beautiful day y'all.

Home Town Delightz #1 - Public Library Possy.

So the other day I was in the pit that is Nottingham's Main City Library. 

Amid the stink of damp, active asbestos removal, wandering tramps and flustered yet remarkably resourceful librarians, I was treated to the presence of two charming young gangstahs. They had the hoods, the swagger, the steez - all that shit. And were sat in the QUIET ZONE of the library of all places, loudly counting an astounding number of two pence pennies and reciting impromptu beat poetry to each other while the rest of us tried to ignore the unnecessary disturbance to our studious reading (I was engrossed in the Glassco's wondrous tales of 1920s Montparnasse, Paris).

Yet these two gentlemen proceeded in their chosen self-expression, an art form that managed to drag me from my enthusiastic page turns and captivate my curiousity. There were many a line that have eluded my understanding, and therefore memory, but these two men were saying something relevant, exciting and fresh.

"...governmentsandpoliticianstelltoomanyliez." 

was the closing line, which is all I managed to scribble down.

The pair then continued hustling about the bookshelves for a good hour longer, then politely approached each reader and apologised profusely to the dear "Sirs" and "Ladies and "Babies" (I was Baby) for making such a "damn racket" wished us all a "merry and marvelous Christmas break". With a tip of their hoods/caps they were gone.

What a treat. <3

Hipster Narrative #6 - 'Irony' - Pretentious profound literary shit passed about on facebook.

Upon fleeting reflection of an enraged-exhausted-freezing-mid-seminar-fag-break discussion we shared last week, TheCanadianHipster linked me this earlier.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ON IRONY

Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us.
Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? “Sure.” Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, “then” what do we do?
Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.
The problem is that, however misprised it’s been, what’s been passed down from the postmodern heyday is sarcasm, cynicism, a manic ennui, suspicion of all authority, suspicion of all constraints on conduct, and a terrible penchant for ironic diagnosis of unpleasantness instead of an ambition not just to diagnose and ridicule but to redeem. You’ve got to understand that this stuff has permeated the culture. It’s become our language; we’re so in it we don’t even see that it’s one perspective, one among many possible ways of seeing. Postmodern irony’s become our environment.
All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I say.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How very banal to ask what I mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its content is tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels.
Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.

'Apparently the man himself agrees with us.'

Hear Hear.

Hipster Narrative #5 - The typical facebook jabberings of panicky literature students while adventuring On The Road.

RedFeltHatGirl: should not be awake and reading On the Road at 3am... somehow the wine and caffeine seem to have worked together beautifully.

ThatBlondeGirl [morning response to RFHG]: I woke up to my alarm an hour ago with the book underneath me. So basically I took Kerouac to bed, but didn't bother to finish him off ;)

Pretty much every one of my course friends/acquaintances have been fighting with Jack Kerouac's On The Road all week. I am in the same boat. I've not come to the end yet. I've been attempting to reach that final destination for over two years now.

Tonight I will finish it. I will get there. It has to be done, it's the last c20th American Lit and Culture seminar of term tomorrow. And the last Good Bye to our Inspirational Mentor.

Gotta get there. Kerouac, you're a fucking prick.