MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Il faut que je vous fasse un aveu: je suis absolument en faveur du plagiat. Je crois que si on veut arriver à une nouvelle renaissance des arts et des lettres, le gouvernement devrait encourager le plagiat (…) Je ne plaisante pas car les très grands auters n’ont pas fait autre chose que d’être des [...]

If, driven by an old compulsion, we were to define what the gods were to the Greeks, we might say, using the principle of Occam’s razor, everything that takes us away from the ordinary sensations of life. “With a god, you are always crying and laughing,” we read in Sophocles’ Ajax. Life as mere vegetative [...]

My review of Jean-Philippe Toussain’s Running Away (translation: Dalkey Archive, 2009) is now up at Words Without Borders. Toussaint is one of my favorites, but, having read a lot of his work, I ended up talking more about the aspects that made this novel different than the others, rather than what I really love about [...]

“The detective is a true son of the murderer Oedipus, not only because he solves a riddle, but also because he kills the man to whom he owes his title, without whom he would not exist in that capacity (without crimes, without mysterious crimes, what would he be?) because this murder was foretold for him [...]

Carroll, Noel. On Criticism. Routledge, 2009. 9780415396219. I’ve been trying to read more about criticism lately with some hope of improving my writings for this blog (and potential branch out to writing for other places). What is the purpose of criticism and how is it accomplished? In this short and readable volume Noel Carroll, a [...]

Lindon asked me, one day, if I knew what this new literary movement could be called. Back then, I had dodged the question, but now, eighteen years later, I think I can answer it. It took me quite some time, about twenty years of reflection, but I found the answer. The answer is in the [...]

All these are but memories that delude and inflame, all are desires of the night, but Georgette had understood that, to be beautiful and desired, she must identify herself with the night, with the quotidian mystery. Soupault, Philippe. Translated by William Carlos Williams. Last Nights of Paris. Exact Change, 1992. p.50. (my emphasis) Bonus quote: [...]

Issac asked for clickable links, so I’ve added links to all the works I cited (or used) in my presentation to the post that has the audio version. I’ll also add, that Mike Wenthe made my day in his post where he refers to me as “cartoonist, critic, and comics theorist”. Issac also commented: It’d [...]

The latest Quarterly Conversation has an interview with Belgian novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint, who happens to be one of my favorite contemporary authors (though I seem to have only posted about him once): MR: Critics comment on your interest in the minutiae of daily experience. Do you feel that you have a particular interest in minutiae? [...]

The publication histories of both A Thousand Cranes and Sound of the Mountain resemble the erratic, scattered pattern Kawabata set with Snow Country, though they do not stretch over as long a period of time or undergo as many major revisions. But the technique of evolving narration–with one segment suggesting, through the “remnant of feeling” [...]

My wife recently rearranged a large portion of our books so that they are on shelves by color. It’s not the best system for finding a specific book (granted, I’ve had some of these books long enough that I do know off the top of my head what color many of them are), but by [...]

I don’t think I’d call the American impatience with aesthetically complex fiction “anti-intellectualism.” Plenty of intellectuals themselves express the same disdain for writers like Pynchon and Gaddis, whose work can’t be reduced to sociological observation or political agitation. It’s more a resentment of complex art, a disinclination to give such art the sustained attention it [...]

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest [...]

Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. Campbell, Joseph. “The Power of Myth.” Quoted by Austin Kleon, “The Power of Myth and Joseph Campbell on [...]

[Morrissette paraphrases] …in modern fiction the plot becomes unimportant, assumes forms of pure convention, or disappears altogether. (257) André Breton’s movement has at least had the merit of expressing “La netteté anormale avec laquelle apparaissent, dans les rêves les plus anodins, une chaise, un caillou, une main, la chute d’un débris quelconque… comme si le [...]

However, I also think it’s a little unfair to say that the “average intelligent reader” is interested merely in a “recommendation.” This only reinforces the divide between “criticism,” which is perforce practiced primarily in the academy, and reviewing, the goal of which is presumably to provide a recommendation. [...] As I have suggested several times [...]

I will begin with the field in which I do most of my professional work—literary studies. Since not everyone is an expert in literary studies, allow me to start with some elementary principles familiar to those already involved with literature but that may not be so obvious to those who are not. Chronologically, first, we [...]