here now the dead

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a little sermon for the grand story

Marjorie Perloff, a notable literary theorist, died Sunday.

The New York Times had a long, substantive obituary ready Monday.

Creepy.

I said to the reviewer, Clay Risen, via email, that his admirable narrative surely required “a bit of scrambling for information,” normal for NYT obituaries. Monolithic sculptor “Richard Serra died yesterday,” I added. “and Roberta Smith got a first version online the same day. It’s as if the obit was largely done before death, waiting in draft. ‘She’s dead. Amend, edit, upload'.”

Next?

Marjorie Perloff is another instance, for me, of a grand person who may have been forgotten years ago, then is brought back to mind by their death—yet,
to be soon forgotten again—which calls for thinking about what lives are generally.

we invent each other here, to some degree

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Jacques Derrida’s 1987 preface to Psyche: Inventions of the Other seems to express an essential aspect of his self-analytical sensibility, which places author and reader in a mirrorplay of discernment and invention, inevitably.

a luscious parody of man abusing nature (and Eves)

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After reading admiring reviews of “Poor Things” in several leading media,
I saw the first showing in Berkeley (in the darling Elmwood district). I loved it!

The surreally comical allegory is a stellar polemic aimed at misogynistic desire to control nature and girl-women. But as cinema, it’s a delight in every mode—a masterly parody of abusive mankind.

looking well at "Never Look Away"

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Hi, Lisa,

I saw ”Never Look Away,” after so many evenings when I wanted to, but couldn't fit 3 hours of viewing into available time. So, I'm glad that the occasion of your essay caused me to make the time. 

I didn't read your discussion of the film (or, rather, that scene) until today, since
I avoid reading about a film that I want to see, before I've seen it.

The film disappointed me, though again I'm glad I saw it. Auteur von Donner-
smarck did a masterful essay, as the film, about art in mid-20th century Germany, though anchored by cardboard characters' changing eras of life relative to box office-sure contexts of struggle and tragedy (as if Germany needs more), done with compelling cinematic expertise. It's great enter-
tainment! Von Donnersmarck did great service to art history. My disap-
pointment is no discredit to the film. (I want psychological depth—insightful plausibility between characters—beyond another proper indictment of satanic nazi minds.)

whose mind am i reading?

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In the beginning, there were no words, but we know now that there was caring: good enough attachment of infant to mother…In the beginning, there was no other, just the caring, so-called “relationality,” primal inter-ing. Everything was interal—unrepresentable interality, what Antonio Damasio, decades ago, called “the feeling of what happens” (though he wasn’t primarily oriented by relating-ness).

Then, one day—or gradually emerging from all nebulosity—there was an other: mother, which is first primal personification.

One, two, three,…infinity: Everything is personified.