Jan Haugland is astonished at the Norwegian press’s obsession with the American presidental election, and says it’s worse than the last time. I hadn’t noticed, partly because I pay little attention to the Norwegian news media, and partly, I guess, because I’ve gotten so used to their strange foreign news priorities. The abnormal now seems normal to me. My theory is that news is a form of soap opera. We invest time in its characters and their backstories, and get neverending new stories and plot twists in return. American politics is one of the best shows on air: it’s written by the smartest political consultants in the world, it’s in a language our journalists can read, and there’s a huge amount of bonus material and fan communities on the web for those who want more. And unlike actual soap operas it has that “based on a true story” appeal for those who want to pretend they’re doing something useful. American politics is important, but less for us than EU politics, (which is dull and in the wrong languages). And the truly important things, the developments that will change your life tomorrow, take place in areas like economics and technology, and in the dark corners of our social structures. You can rarely tell a riveting story about economics, so it’s not told, (correction: it’s told, but not reported). So while we obsess about Obama and McCain, the future sneaks up on us, ready to knock us over the heads with a hammer and say: Surprise!
Monthly Archives: September 2008
O Bethlehem is burning down
When Thomas M. Disch killed himself this summer, obituaries said he was the kind of brilliant critic’s favourite that readers ignore. After reading On Wings of Song, I see why he was admired, but also why he wasn’t read. How do you describe a novel where the only escape from religious conformism and economic depression is to sing so earnestly that your inner invisible fairy flies out of your body in a state of mystical bliss, and not make it sound silly? I sure don’t know how. I guess you have to take me on trust when I say that this bleak and quiet satire isn’t silly or funny, and definitely not blissful. Anything good in its world is shown only as an unreachable goal that adds to the bitterness of the life of Daniel Weinreb. The near-future America he lives in is falling apart, (quietly, in the background), and it’s taking him down with it, coloring him with its hypocrisy. Daniel is not an anti-hero, he seems always at the verge of success, earnestly wanting to live well, and that makes his failures more bitter. It’s the moderation I admire in this novel, the way Disch creates a feeling of a world ending, (as well as a feeling that it deserves to), without piling on with tragic horrors. Not a happy novel, this, not at all. I liked it, and I think I recommend it, but neither that nor his lit fic respectability will bring crowds of readers to Thomas M. Disch any time soon.
4 Steve Aylett quotes
“As for Tolkien, I think those movies came along at a time when people would do almost anything to avoid thinking clearly about what is actually going on, and it was good homogenous escapism. I liked Liv Tyler’s mouth, and I think all three movies should have been just a close-up of that.”
- Steve Aylett
“Satire works in a bunch of specific ways, like a very precisely-geared bomb. It’s a bit like something that looks harmless, and you swallow it, but once it’s inside you it’s too late, and it triggers, blowing up. And it’s your specific inner beliefs and faulty arguments that trigger a satire bomb. If your arguments work, the bomb doesn’t trigger, it doesn’t need to.”
- Steve Aylett
“I would hope that [death is] just the end – I’d feel really cheated if I was woken up into another realm and had a load more shit to deal with. I really just want it finished.”
- Steve Aylett
“It’s a shame, sort of a waste, that most people are influenced by what the newspaper supplements tell them is the book they are meant to be seen reading this year. It seems like those people aren’t really interested in books. If you’re really into books, you havoc all over the place picking up disparate stuff which you devour hungrily, and the ‘selection’ process is more like a sixth sense hunger, a billion miles away from fashion.”
- Steve Aylett
I reviewed his Slaughtermatic earlier, and I’ll be back for more.
Frihet ikke frykt – hvem tar ballen?
11. oktober avholdes en internasjonal aksjonsdag mot overvåkning og terrorlover. Arrangementet heter Freedom Not Fear, og skal markeres i mange europeiske land, men ikke Norge. Det er for galt. Teknologien har åpnet de samme dørene for billig masseovervåkning her som i andre land. Det er ennå ingen norske partier som ønsker å avlytte all nett-trafikk, eller sette et videokamera på hvert gatehjørne, men hvor lenge varer det? Veien fra EU’s datalagringsdirektiv til språkanalyse av mailene dine, og fra ett kamera til hundre, er kortere enn du tror, og den korteste veien av dem alle går gjennom en velplassert bombe. Hvert skritt vi tar gjør det neste skrittet lettere. At vi har kommet kortere enn mange andre er ingen unskyldning for å la være å snu.
Noen bør ta tak i dette, og sørge for et norsk Frihet ikke frykt-arrangement. Og ja, jeg ser vel egentlig mest på dere på venstresiden. Hvem andre her til lands er det som vet noe som helst om mediesynlig aksjonering? Hvem andre har følt overvåkning på kroppen som dere? Men dette er en sak med bred appell: Vi er mange som ser hva som er mulig med dagens teknologi, og er redde for hva desperate og uvitende politikere kan finne på å bruke den til. Vi er uenige om mye, men vi er enige om at frihet og personvern er viktigere enn falsk trygghet, og at det beste forsvaret mot terrorisme er å ikke la frykten ta overhånd.
Skalat maðr rúnar rísta, nema ráða vel kunni
Today’s selection of music: Metal without electric guitars, music for and by machines, and a girl singing into a large cellphone.
Korpiklaani – Kadet Siipina
Section 25 – Looking from a Hilltop
Faun – Egil saga
Unheilig – Herz Aus Eis
Kehrwert – Maschinenmusik
About the title: It’s used in the Faun song, and they took it from the 13th century Egils saga. It means something like “don’t write runes that you can’t read / control”. Or as Lovecraft wrote in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: “do not call up any that you can not put down”.
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I’ve read a lot of crappy short stories lately. Many were in a stack of anthologies by little known authors I bought at random, and there you expect that writing class air of having laboriously learned how to write, but not having anything to say. But what excuse does Haruki Murakami have? Every story in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman starts out walking cheerfully towards brilliance, but Murakami’s artsy affectations derail them towards the merely clever. What a waste of talent.
And then .. Ray Bradbury. The Golden Apples of the Sun. Perfection. Now, maybe the contrast between this and the previous books has skewed my judgement, but I’ll tell you how I felt when I read it, and then you may decide for yourself if I’m trustworthy or not. Bradbury’s stories have the delicate structure of an origami. They convey emotions that have no name, insane ideas that make sense. Done with less skill the origami would tear, there is no “almost” in this territory, but these, miraculously, never do. The authors I mentioned before all walk in Bradbury’s genre-bending footsteps, and they all fail, but he’s hardly to blame for that. I bow for Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury is God. Okay, that really is the contrast speaking. Then again, maybe one occasionally needs to read bad books, in order to better appreciate the good ones?
Bloggdagen derpå
Etter gårsdagens vellykkete bloggdag-feiring, innfører jeg herved bloggdagen derpå, en dag til stillhet og ettertanke for alle som i ivrig bloggrus har begått en bloggutskeielse som de senere angrer på. Det kan være noe personlig du ikke skulle ha brettet ut for omverdenen, det kan være et raseriutbrudd i en bitter bloggkrig, en flau naivitet, eller en skråsikkert framsatt oppfatning som alle nå skjønner var feil. Kanskje har du uten å tenke alt for nøye gjennom det gitt alle dine framtidige potensielle arbeidsgivere inntrykk av at du ikke eier arbeidsmoral, dine potensielle partnere at du synes det er greit å være utro i blant, og dine framtidige svigerforeldre at du egentlig har litt sansen for Vigrid. Slik en blogg kan favne alt av gode ideer og vakre tanker, er det heller ingen grenser for hva slags nedrigheter du der kan begå foran omverdenen og ettertidens falkeblikk. Det er for disse triste gjerninger og tilhørende skamrødme at bloggdagen derpå er til.
Mens bloggdagen er en dag for å fremheve det gode, er bloggdagen derpå en dag for å glemme og holde skjult. Du skal derfor ikke legge ut noen linker, og du behøver heller ikke skrive noe. Bloggdagen derpå er dagen for bloggangst og bloggtvil, og for modige løfter om “aldri mer!” Det er dagen for å meditere over alt du skulle ønske du kunne slette, men som Nasjonalbiblioteket har kopi av. Man ønsker ikke til lykke med bloggdagen derpå – man gir et klapp på skulderen og ønsker god bedring.