pompadoured
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i don't like books:
February 2, 2007
i don't like books again. i like the object, i like pages and i like the product 'book', but i don't like reading them. people either take themselves too seriously, or try to impress me, and i really don't care to spend time with those sorts of things or people.
my life is stupid, the person writing the book, their life is stupid. it is no better than mine or more interesting than mine. there is no way to quantify 'worth' in terms of life, so it doesn't exist. even ghandi's life was, by the most fundamental definition of life, no greater than mine. he lived, and he died.
if you are writing poetry or prose and using a very large vocabulary to express very general feelings or describe the world around you, you are not paying close enough attention to the world around you. what you are missing is billboards and packages of beef jerky. lotto tickets. you are missing these things. none of these things take big words to describe. 'the mall' is two words. i was there today.
if you are an academic or reviewer, big words are fine. you are describing the feeling you get when an artist does something. big words are necessary, because you are going into an extreme amount of subjective reasoning and abstraction. without that, the other half of art would not exist, the processing part.
there is making shit, and there is the processing of that shit. if you are an artist, you do both. if you are workforce, you do the former. if you are an academic, you do the latter. this is not a blanket statement, people cross lines, but i don't think i'm being an asshole by making this statement. it's not that much of a stretch.
what bothers me, is the predictive reasoning that goes into becoming an "artist" for some people. most artists try to fit themselves into some sort of linear construction of time, and cut-and-paste their work into a time-line of evolving art. when, in reality, time is just a stupid tool for empirical reasoning. in reality, time exists only in 'now'. time is something happening all at once, now, and now is not the past or some extension of it, it is just now. no trend or forward movement changes the existence of now, or what it means to exist now. which is partially why i'm bored with books, they don't exist now. people exist now. jenny exists now. i'm going dancing at the mexican club.
comments
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There's a Croatian kid at the elementary school where my girlfriend is a librarian, and every time she tries to get him to read something, he shouts, "I DON'T WANT BOOK!"
- Ian / February 2, 2007 8:30 PM
maybe you just need a really good book.
- anonymous / February 3, 2007 10:25 AM
probably.
i don't really mean that their aren't any good books by any of this.
bear parade, and the people that surround bear parade, i like. i read other stuff as well that i like. i just don't like anything that is "mainstream" or published by big-boy publishers. and if those people aren't publishing books that "matter", then the people writing books that "matter" aren't getting paid what they deserve because they are not reaching the audience they deserve, so it makes me feel like i hate books.
the independent presses are nice, but ideas are worthless if no one sees them, so it feels elitist to me. it is the same with fine art-- people don't see this work.
i think it's important for now that these sorts of artists make more video games and movies and television shows, because that's the only way people understand, on a large scale, any sort of real artistic thought anymore. and if the "masses", whoever they are, don't get exposure to these thoughts in their large-scale entertainment, then artists in general have given the power to think and reason to asshole dick faces with big money and focus dick face groups.
if you look at film, it is possibly the only medium with a very large audience that helps normal semi-educated people understand "now" and lets them experience artistic thought. and that's because it's accessible for people on a large scale.
and video games? we're all fucked with ninety more halos and ghost recons on the way. that is, assuming these games affect other people in the head like they do me.
books are niche art now. they are not coming back into mainstream culture anytime soon. i also acknowledge that they are not going anywhere, and still like the written word more than any other form of art. i just have come to terms with "now", and think it's time that other people do so as well. we can all write poetry and good books while we do other things to make money and proliferate ideas. art is viable, in the right medium.
- gene / February 3, 2007 12:08 PM
but have you read the da vinci code?
- nick a / February 3, 2007 1:05 PM
fuck me. no.
my whole argument just fell apart.
- gene / February 3, 2007 1:14 PM
I can understand your frustration, but like 'anonymous' said, perhaps you need a really good book. The right book can knock you on your ass.
you should read: "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God" by Etgar Keret
and
"Waiting For The Dog To Sleep" by Jerzy Ficowski
Both are books of short stories, personal favoriets, and hardly "mainstream"
- ryan laks / February 3, 2007 1:14 PM
i'm sure both of these books are good, but these are not the kinds of books that are relevant to society, by any standard. and that's the point that i think i'm trying to make now.
if 20,000 college-educated people read something (and this is, from my understanding, a big number for a small-print book), it is only relevant to that small, already learned segment of society.
the da vinci code is the type of book that actual people read, ones that work everyday in factories and cubicles, and this is the type of book that exists in mainstream consciousness. this is what i will categorize as a "book" in the current state of reality and knowledge in american society. a new york times bestseller. these are the types of books that go head-to-head with film and video games.
two million people have bought "gears of war" for xbox 360 since it was released in november. a game about killing aliens and making other people die, online. it costs $60. three times as much as a new "book".
i'm not really being coherent with my original post anymore, but i think people can get where i'm headed with this.
- gene / February 3, 2007 1:40 PM
also, i think my argument is a little presumptuous. so, i'm sorry about that.
i'd just like to see print medium expand into other areas, and i think the focus on books alone is a little near-sighted.
it's going to take a mcsweeney's wii game for me to be happy. they do everything else already.
- gene / February 3, 2007 1:51 PM
well I guess that makes me look back at the title of this post - "[you] don't like books"
I can respect that
- ryan laks / February 3, 2007 2:37 PM
I like books because they are culturally irrelavant. For a thing, especially a thing that is 'artistic' to become culturally relevant, I think it has so bland as to be mostly boring, usually. Like politics, and democrats and republicans. All beliefs have to be defined within a narrow range so that the greatest number of people can get something 'important' out of it. At least books, a small press books, etc.. are so irrelevant that it doesn't matter, which allows me to experience a wider of range of thought, maybe.
I'm probably wrong though.
I like your post.
- Ofelia / February 4, 2007 8:42 PM
thank you, ofelia.
i agree with you.
i will probably buy seven or eight independent books over the next year.
i will probably see five or six independent films.
these will be the best books and movies i experience all year, at least most of them, and this is from a respect standpoint. i will respect these things.
i will likely buy eleven or twelve video games, and see nine or ten big studio movies.
why will i enjoy them as much, if not more, than the independent things? because they allow me to reach a point where i'm no longer thinking, and instead just existing and experiencing. and the independent books and movies, the ones that are the best, will likely do the same thing.
i get the saddest when i realize that i will never be anything other than the man gene morgan who lives in houston and works on bear parade and works in his family factory. i am comfortable with my life, but i am sad that i will never know what it is to be chinese or a woman or an astronaut. it is only through these mindless pleasures that i ever come close to this sort of escape-- if i can be mario, i can forget that this is all i will ever exist as, and pretend i can shoot fireballs and crush bricks with my head. people read and commit suicide for the same reasons. none of this is anything new.
i just get angry that the types of books and writing i like is not available to more people in these easily taken ways-- that it's so hard to obtain and come across.
instead they get the new tom clancy book and video game, and this is all they have available to them, because these things are accessible and easy to real people on a real level.
and this is why i hate books, because the real "art" isn't experienced at all by real people, just the elite few who know not to read what the big publishers want us to. And it's counter-productive to have this semi-elitist literary culture, because in order to sustain the rich literary history of america, people need to (and i mean the people i work with at the factory, not you and me) experience these ideas and respect the written word and deeper ideas beyond the cheesecake novel and war myth and story about wizard boys who are special beyond other people. and these ideas aren't so crazy that they can't be applicable in their lives.
i've probably contradicted myself. i'm not sure that i need to talk anymore about this in the public forum because it sounds stupid and full of itself. thank you for reading it though.
- gene / February 5, 2007 9:29 PM
I like books for the reason Ofelia gives. And I like your position, Gene. Academics have always fetishized books, as have, I think, 'writerly' types. But for most of the world, accumulating quantities of books and putting them on large, serious bookshelves, or going to the library and feeling a 'thrill'--makes about as much sense as garden gnomes. Actually, garden gnomes probably make more sense to more people. And now in the wake of other media, e-books, etc., the actual artifact of the book has become more precious to some, less precious to others. I've heard people say, 'I need to turn pages when I read.' So there is maybe the book, and then there is reading. School has made me very aware of myself when I read a book. It is rarely the 'escape' it once was. I feel quaint or anxious, and I know that probably has a lot to do with the kinds of stuff I'm reading. But I can read thousands of words online and it DOES feel like an escape, less claustrophobic.
The ideas in books are culturally irrelevant and the books themselves have no use-value. You can't eat them or wear them. I just imagined a bushy-bearded scholar feeling bushy-bearded scholarly guilt for his useless life in books after watching a documentary about homeless people, and building a house out of his books for a homeless person. The Riverside Shakespeare, Ulysses, two Norton anthologies, and Vanity Fair would make a nice window frame.
- Kristen / February 7, 2007 8:58 AM
i dont like this post its presumption or its responses.
i dont care to elaborate really.
just being honest not abrasive.
hi pomp. i heard a woman say 'we miss pomp'
so i said 'yeah me too' and then we wept.
- samir / February 9, 2007 3:54 AM
post
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