The Dunwich Horror

This particular Lovecraft story had a weaker effect on me this time. Although some of the prose is superb, and the horror is in some ways described more effectively than in the earlier two “great tales” (“The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Colour Out of Space”), the hero Armitage has certain comic book aspects that are hard to take seriously.

I’m less bothered than Joshi by the apparent relapse from the amoral cosmos of the earlier stories to the strain of Christian moralism in Dunwich (though the calling out of “Father!” on the top of the hill is a bit much). Even though this is one of the rare stories with an omniscient 3rd person narrator, the narrator feels like a real human who is reporting events from the standpoint of human benefit/harm.

But one of the most brilliant aspects of this story is the way that the monstrous Wilbur Whateley, nearly 8 feet tall, first visits the fictional Miskatonic University Library and then Harvard. Lovecraft does this effectively with authors as well, regularly listing the Necronomicon and other non-existent books alongside genuine authors such as Pico della Mirandola.

The structure of my book, however, will not be a story-by-story survey. Instead, it will be an investigation of Lovecraft’s philosophical/rhetorical toolbox. There are certain brilliant tricks he uses repeatedly. Many are adopted from Poe, though Poe deserves a book of his own and I won’t enter that topic much in the present book.

another Tamanya photo

She looks bigger here than she actually is.

re: Heidegger Kitsch

By now most people are familiar with the concept of Heidegger Kitsch: the aping of Heidegger’s verbal mannerisms without the soul of the thing being there. At times Heidegger himself even seems to lapse into this, such as in portions of the Beiträge and even more in lesser texts in the same vein such as Besinnung.

This is probably the fate of any important philosophy. In order to recapture the soul of the thing, a new philosophy needs to be created from scratch that borrows from some of the more recent important ones. This is why I never sympathize with people who chuckle about “the next new thing.” I don’t see what harm is done by next new things. They are candidates for long-term durability, and nothing more. You have to consider a number of candidates if you want to get a few live ones, and there are generally only a handful of live ones per century.

We’ve been familiar with Derrida Kitsch for 20 years; in fact, in Derrida’s case some of it was simultaneous with the high point of the movement, perhaps because he is so verbally mannered that imitation is naturally encouraged.

In the past several years we’ve begun to see Deleuze Kitsch. By this I mean certain decisions of Deleuze that are automatically followed even though their liberating power is already somewhat expended. For example, the tendency to prefer Deleuze’s own line of “minor” thinkers: the Stoics, Spinoza, Hume, Bergson, etc. Whenever this sort of thing goes too far, it’s better to shift emphasis to the other side, whose defects are inevitably being exaggerated. It’s one of the reasons I think a time is ripe for a return not to “minor” but to the “major” thinkers with whom Deleuze doesn’t do enough: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz (Le Pli has almost nothing to do with Leibniz; it’s really just another Deluzian book about Spinoza; you can’t take Leibniz seriously if you don’t take individual substances seriously, and Deleuze never did).

As for Badiou Kitsch, we’re not there yet. Everyone is still busy trying to master him. But I can feel it coming. It won’t appear in mass quantities for another 7-10 years, I don’t think, but will be fairly miserable and oppressive once it does. It is likely to have a reign of terror of some 2-3 years, in fact, simply because Badiou’s tone is already somewhat aggressive, and in Kitsch version this will be exaggerated as usual.

best picture I can get of her today

Tamanya’s secret late May adventure

I wasn’t told this until returning from Venice, but in my absence from Cairo, Tamanya was taken to the university campus and shown around the Provost’s Office. It’s a hilarious thought.

Apparently Wafaa missed her so much that she asked Nada’s driver to bring her to the office en route to Nada’s house, which isn’t too far from campus.

I was just interrogating Tamanya about this incident, but no answer of course.

She’s still a bit wild today, but she is so soft, almost like goose down.

CNN’s “list” articles increasingly pointless

I used to click on them when it was things like “5 most beautiful cities in the world” or “10 ways to decrease your chances of cancer,” potentially interesting or useful things like that.

But now they’re beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Today’s list: “13 most utterly repulsive Thai dishes.”

It’s starting to sound like parody, so perhaps it’s time for them to give it up.

best thing about your 40’s

I was just discussing this with a friend exactly my age. The best thing about being over 40 is this: less pressure to have fun all the time.

That may sound strange. But when you think about it, everyone in their 20’s up through maybe 35 is under incredible pressure to be having outrageous fun all the time. And that has its moments, but sometimes it’s not really what you want to do.