Disqus - Latest Comments for tragos

Re: http://petersantiago.tumblr.com/post/30095114678

Tragos — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:36:32 -0000

Ah, it warms the cockles of the heart to hear about you two flaneuring away in NYC. When the hell are you coming out to Europe?

Re: Ms. Odradek: Childhood in 20th Century Literature

Tragos — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:08:32 -0000

Hey Kasia, good to hear from you. Very interesting post about Juno. It captures the movies seduction and sadness so well. I wonder how much the sadness is part and parcel of its seductive powers. No doubt the cautionary-tale subject matter of the movie cloaks (cleverly sometimes) a more unusual cautionary tale about embracing or rejecting adulthood. About the dangers of an unexamined adulthood. Sometimes I wonder if Apatow's comedies are fueled by the basic point that its better to be totally irresponsible than a dick. Not to take it too seriously, but there's always the danger of a false dichotomy there. Because how many characters in those movies are responsible non-dicks? I hope all's well!

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/19468022692

Tragos — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:46:40 -0000

No. In fact, I just looked up our exchange in early April 2010: I requested, but you did not deliver. Too much authorial self-effacement. Can you send it now?

Re: http://blog.millsbaker.net/post/18203208538

Tragos — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:51:23 -0000

Ironically, Mills, your description of the mind's centripetal pull from detailed phenomena to churning abstraction was beautifully apt, and, yes, descriptive. One of the great "interventions" in my reading life was my encounter in my early 20s with Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. His maps and notes, his admonishments to pay attention to details, served as a just reproach to the way that I'd glided (that I still glide) past description to get to "the other side." But after forcing myself to look up words and draw out what I was seeing, I experienced what I hadn't been capable of theorizing. Anyhow, this was one of those posts that I email to myself and store in my "reread" folder. Thank you.

Re: http://blog.millsbaker.net/post/18147255195

Tragos — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:39:23 -0000

It was Montaigne who first churned his own snot and flatus into the written afflatus of the self. I say that only because I love the etymology of "afflatus".

Re: http://caille.tumblr.com/post/18031739275

Tragos — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:11:26 -0000

Weird. He went to my high school, and I still kind of remember him that way.

Re: http://byronic.tumblr.com/post/17260022553

Tragos — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:15:04 -0000

Grazie!!!!!!!!

Re: http://blog.millsbaker.net/post/16870877023

Tragos — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:33:26 -0000

I want a Woolf scholar to tell me just how much Montaigne was part of her reading life.

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/16184684354

Tragos — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:21:12 -0000

The horror. I have to apologize: I had no idea. If they ate my favorite non-human non-primates, three-toed sloths, I would be in just as bad a state.

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/16125293138

Tragos — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:51:58 -0000

Maybe the best answer to this question is, "On the contrary."

Re: http://byronic.tumblr.com/post/15415787407

Tragos — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:56:11 -0000

Congratulations! You're future is going to be just plain awesome. I am certain of it.

Re: http://byronic.tumblr.com/post/15341259354

Tragos — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:17:37 -0000

'Horrible Bosses' (how Alexi and I ended up seeing this in a Turkish mall...a sad story) is actually worse than the review indicates.

Re: http://byronic.tumblr.com/post/15350475168

Tragos — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:57:30 -0000

Just plain awesome, that.

Re: Mr. Janus, You Rascal

Tragos — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:44:18 -0000

Thank you!

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/13553525029

Tragos — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:09:05 -0000

Oh Swift. That's very nice. And it makes me shudder when I look over our lovingly blinkered Republican candidates. Egad.

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/12651985622

Tragos — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:57:18 -0000

Thank you! She is wonderful. I hope you're doing well! -- Chris

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/12366289350

Tragos — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:27:26 -0000

I do. Failure never stops, even when it's apparently permanent. Baby Tragos is very excited about the goat cheese, which is of course officially endorsed in this household. Hopefully we will make it to Paris one of these days.

I have to say: I don't know a single soul in Doga, but it sounds like an incredible trip. Any chance you might might find yourself wandering the wilds of Anatolia at some point?

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/11958394268

Tragos — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:54:03 -0000

So you can imagine: this is why I no longer have a brain. (Brains are so overrated.)

And also: thank you!

Re: http://tragos.tumblr.com/post/11613360970

Tragos — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:35:18 -0000

Excellent to hear. What's the general idea behind the group?

Re: http://msodradek.tumblr.com/post/7054198442

Tragos — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 07:04:21 -0000

That is a startling and awesome reading quirk. I can't compete! And by the way, if you're as proficient in other languages as you are in English than by god you are the master of masters. (I assume you are.) I myself am a guy who spent way too long in the monolingual hinterlands before making sad and belated attempts at testing out the foreign waters. So far, I've just been able to get my toes wet.

OK. I do have a reading quirk but it involves no cologne or perfume. I must, always, have a book 'on deck' (and I think of it very much in baseball terms) warming up for action. I reserve a space on my desk, alone, in a corner, for just this circle. I am very much a reward driven man, and knowing I have another book waiting for me gives me a little extra pizzazz in life.

Re: Some Remarks on Girard’s Literary Criticism

Tragos — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 06:01:07 -0000

You and Mills definitely need to get a public online correspondence going about Nabokov. I've only read Lolita, which I found to be a thorough but ephemeral pleasure. I've also read his essays on literature, which are are useful as a beginning primer, but limited in scope. (And I should admit: I love it when people show off, in almost anything they do. I'm admittedly small-souled that way.) There was a time where his regimen of pure aestheticism looked pretty attractive, but I need more. Morality in the descriptive but certainly not prescriptive sense.

I also need to read 'The Stranger' again, after 22 years! In fact, I happen to be reading 'The Fall' right now, whose morality I find verges on the prescriptive just too much for my own comfort. That said, after 'The First Man', it's my favorite work of his fiction so far.

Ironically, because he's considered a subpar thinker, I think 'The Rebel' is still Camus' strongest work. Clive James has written well on this subject, but Camus was spot-on in many of his analyses, despite or because of his lack of sophistication. But 'The Stranger'? I think after George Bush said he was reading the book, I lost all desire to give it a reread.

Plus, why read the 'The Stranger', when I can read 'The Red and the Black' again? Which I've gotta do now!

Re: Some Remarks on Girard’s Literary Criticism

Tragos — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 03:35:47 -0000

What a great take on Girard. You need a literary column of your own! What the hell is El País doing not hiring you?

I always found Girard's notion of triangulated desire to be damn useful. It's another pattern, less rooted in Christian typology, that really has helped me understand novels, especially Stendhal's. In fact, his emphasis on Christianity doesn't bother me, even if I find it almost silly at times. I like that, as you say, there is something at stake in the act of reading. And who could deny that exegesis has its roots in religious interpretation anyhow?

That said, Girard and Nabokov together make a great cocktail of contrasts.

Re: Kundera on Friendship & Loyalty

Tragos — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:32:53 -0000

I'm beginning to think that Kundera's true legacy will be secured with his non-fiction.

I appreciate that 'conviction' and 'convict' come from the same verb, 'convinco': to conquer, convince, overcome, overcome, prove, find guilty.

In the many times I slip into the mental atrophy of conviction, I realize afterwards how legalistic my soul became, how closely I teetered on the edge of prosecutorial menace.

So great that Kundera modifies the loyalty we have to conviction with the word 'puerile'. I'll semi-quote a little chapter and verse here and say putting away childish things requires reigning in our tendency toward conviction.

Re: The Shame of Loving Beauty

Tragos — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 16:56:51 -0000

It's a dinger this one. From what I've read of Weil, I would guess her answer would return her to her studies in Ancient Greek literature and the language that fed the New Testament. Agape--universal love (a partial definition)--is distinct and inherently good because it's disinterested. Eros brings us into the realm of contingency, ephemera, and, more recently in human history, hawking shit. Those are terms I think she'd be playing with at the very least.

The conventional way of defining 'human' is to speak of emotions. But it's some sort of proleptic self-distancing, some spin on the categorical imperative that is far more unique to our species. Rationality can be perverted, just as emotional freedom can be a boon and balm from time to time. But even if rarely achieved, humans do have the ability to imagine a disinterested self they jibe themselves against when faced with moral dilemmas.

And 'dilemma' is the word. We can't trade in agape for eros, at least not without some tough consequences of their own. So love--the English word that inheres philia, agape and eros all--requires that we treat it as an art. The art of losing less slowly I guess.

You might expect me to say it, but I'll say it again: Dante is pretty damn good on this subject. The figure of Beatrice was his attempt to lose more slowly, and what an art that was.

Re: How Chekhov Will Wring Your Heart

Tragos — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:43:05 -0000

One of my favorite posts. Again: I love hearing how these stories intertwine with your ways and days.