[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/EeAM75vperY"" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"/]

Sometime in the 1980’s, a Professor of Medieval literature, following some unknown impulse, never fully explained, introduced me to this…

Mercifully, the whole thing is starting to fade, to become an episode.

When I do still catch the odd glimpse, it’s peripheral; mere fragments of mad-doctor chrome, confining themselves to the corner of the eye. There was that flying-wing liner over San Francisco last week, but it was almost translucent. And the shark-fin roadsters have gotten scarcer, and freeways discreetly avoid unfolding themselves into the gleaming eighty lane monsters I was forced to drive last month in my rented Toyota. And I know that none of it will follow me to New York; my vision is narrowing to a single wavelength of probability. I’ve worked hard for that. Television helped a lot.

I suppose it started in London, in that bogus Greek taverna in Battersea Park Road, with lunch on Cohen’s corporate tab. Dead steam-table food and it took them thirty minutes to find an ice bucket for the retsina. Cohen works for Barris-Watford, who publish big, trendy “trade” paperbacks: illustrated histories of the neon sign, the pinball machine, the windup toys of Occupied Japan. I’d gone over to shoot a series of shoe ads; California girls with tanned legs and frisky Day- Gb jogging shoes had capered for me down the escalators of St. John’s Wood and across the platforms of Tooting Bec. A lean and hungry young agency had decided that the mystery of London Transport would sell waffle-tread nylon runners. They decide; I shoot. And Cohen, whom I knew vaguely from the old days in New York, had invited me to lunch the day before I was due out of Heathrow. He brought along a very fashionably dressed young woman named Dialta Downes, who was virtually chinless and evidently a noted pop-art historian. In retrospect, I see her walking in beside Cohen under a floating neon sign that flashes THIS WAY LIES MADNESS in huge sans-serif capitals.

Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called “American Streamlined Moderne.” Cohen called it “raygun Gothic.” Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was.

There’s a British obsession with the more baroque elements of American pop culture, something like the weird cowboys-and-Indians fetish of the West Germans or the aberrant French hunger for old Jerry Lewis films. In Dialta Downes this manifested itself in a mania for a uniquely American form of architecture that most Americans are scarcely aware of. At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but gradually it began to dawn on me. I found myself remembering Sunday morning television in the Fifties.

Sometimes they’d run old eroded newsreels as filler on the local station. You’d sit there with a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk, and a static-ridden Hollywood baritone would tell you that there was A Flying Car in Your Future. And three Detroit engineers would putter around with this big old Nash with wings, and you’d see it rumbling furiously down some deserted Michigan runway. You never actually saw it take off, but it flew away to Dialta Downes’s never-never land, true home of a generation of completely uninhibited technophiles. She was talking about those odds and ends of “futuristic” Thirties and Forties architecture you pass daily in American cities without noticing; the movie marquees ribbed to radiate some mysterious en- ergy, the dime stores faced with fluted aluminum, the chrome-tube chairs gathering dust in the lobbies of tran- sient hotels. She saw these things as segments of a dreamworld, abandoned in the uncaring present; she wanted me to photograph them for her.

The Thirties had seen the first generation of American industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners had looked like pencil sharpeners your basic Victorian mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though they’d been put to- gether in wind tunnels. For the most part, the change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you’d find the same Victorian mechanism. Which made a certain kind of sense, because the most successful American designers had been recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers. It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future.

Over coffee, Cohen produced a fat manila envelope full of glossies. I saw the winged statues that guard the Hoover Dam, forty-foot concrete hood ornaments leaning steadfastly into an imaginary hurricane. I saw a dozen shots of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson’s Wax Building, juxtaposed with the covers of old Amazing Stories pulps, by an artist named Frank R. Paul; the employees of Johnson’s Wax must have felt as though they were walking into one of Paul’s spray-paint pulp utopias. Wright’s building looked as though it had been designed for people who wore white togas and Lucite sandals. I hesitated over one sketch of a particularly grandiose prop-driven airliner, all wing, like a fat sym- metrical boomerang with windows in unlikely places. Labeled arrows indicated the locations of the grand ballroom and two squash courts. It was dated 1936.

[...]

Here’s what I’m doing right now.

Well, not “right now” but as often as time permits.

I’m catching up with the Empire party I heard all about but missed when it was as hot (at least, in those quarters where such things are hot) as the surface of Venus.

I’m late for the party but, it would seem, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

When Gulf War 2 was unleashed, Hardt & Negri’s idea of a distributed imperial system with no primary core seemed to have been disproved. The United States was after all, as someone phrased it a few years ago, a hyperpower.

Now that the limits of American power are very plain to see in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a closer look at Empire seems to be in order.

And so I’m reading.

Within weeks of each other, on-the-Iraqi-ground, experience-based essays by Matt Taibbi and Nir Rosen were released.

Taibbi’s article, published by Rolling Stone and evocatively named “Fort Apache, Iraq“, details his four week trip embedded with the US military – including a stretch with the American 158th Field Artillery unit.

Journalist Nir Rosen, a New America Foundation fellow who, we’re told, can “pass for Middle Eastern”, has lived the past three years in Iraq. His article, published by Truthdig and titled “The Occupation of Iraqi Hearts and Minds” focuses on the devastating impact on Iraqi lives of American occupation.

Taibbi writes:

To understand the war in Iraq, you first have to understand the people who are fighting it. And the way to do that isn’t to burst in with your head in a point, bitching about WMDs and croaking passages from Arab-history books. Jump in the truck and shut your mouth; get on board, literally and figuratively. In America, everyone has an opinion about Iraq, even me — but if you’re going to take the step of actually going there, you’ve got to give it a chance.

Which seems fair enough.

Indeed, if Taibbi had simply reported on the people and events he witnessed without too much (or any) interpretive comment, his essay would stand as a kind of earnest adventure story – a gripping tale of a young man’s sincere effort, at real risk of life and limb, to see a world changing situation close hand. But the urge to reach for large conclusions using off-the-shelf symbology is tough to resist.

It’s possible, I think, to glean one of the dominant trends of mainstream American thought about Iraq – at least, on the not quite ‘cruise missile Left‘ end of the liberal scale – from Taibbi’s piece. Taibbi, as far as I know, can’t speak Arabic and, as an obvious Westerner, had understandable safety concerns while in-country so his exclusive association with US troops was both practical and inevitable.

Still, at the end of his frightening four weeks with the rough riders, he comes away with the banal (and also, by now, very often repeated) insight that American troops are people too – just caught up in a whirlwind that pulls in the wicked right alongside the virtuous – destroying both.

Iraqi fighters, by contrast, are smoothly stereotyped into one, flat dimension. They’re fanatics, pure and simple, apparently only motivated by “…the same old totalitarian double-think from the last century that sent Nazis and Communists on crazed quests for paradise by sanctioning the violence buried in their dumb hearts.” An oddly comprehensive assertion, at least in ambition, since it leaves out what is probably one of the most basic original causes of the guerrilla war: revenge on Americans for direct and indirect harm done and the chaos of the occupation itself.

But being only with Americans, thinking only about Americans, writing only about how strange and marvelous and terrible Americans are, especially when they’re trying to help – these well meaning, heavily armed suburban fish out of water – dramatically narrows the breadth of your vision.

You end up settling for over-reaching conclusions like the following, which Taibbi deploys as part of his closing statement:

“This is the place where two existential dead ends have come around in a circle to meet in an irreconcilable explosion of violence — the bureaucratic ennui and intellectual confusion of modern civilized man vs. the recalcitrant, prehistoric fanaticism of Al-Qaeda’s literally cave-dwelling despotic mob. Human history has traveled in two exactly opposite directions for the last thousand years, and the supreme irony is that both paths led straight here, to this insane stalemate in the Mesopotamian desert.”

[...]

Four weeks of white knuckle travel through “Fort Apache” (a label rich with Indian War era American meanings) teaches Matt that this conflict is solely the result of bored ‘bureaucratic moderns’ meeting ‘prehistoric’ primitives for a brutal fight to the death…for no geopolitically apparent reason.

You can imagine Taibbi time warped to the past and musing – with similarly aligned sympathies and quasi-philosophical detachment – about the chaotic clash between a 19th century, ennui-afflicted US management class and the Lakota. No need to investigate the order of things too deeply when there’s a ‘clash of civilizations’ coloring book handy.

Nir Rosen also spent time with American troops and recognizes their humanity but critically, he used his unique situation as a person who can “pass for Middle Eastern” and who speaks Arabic to record what these confused, frightened boys and girls from Taibbi’s tree-lined suburbs and small towns are doing – each and every day – to Iraqis.

Rosen writes:

Three years into an occupation of Iraq replete with so-called milestones, turning points and individual events hailed as “sea changes” that would “break the back” of the insurgency, a different type of incident received an intense, if ephemeral, amount of attention.

A local human rights worker and aspiring journalist in the western Iraqi town of Haditha filmed the aftermath of the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians. The video made its way to an Iraqi working for Time magazine, and the story was finally publicized months later. The Haditha massacre was compared to the Vietnam War’s My Lai massacre, and like the well-publicized and embarrassing Abu Ghraib scandal two years earlier, the attention it received made it seem as if it were a horrible aberration perpetrated by a few bad apples who might have overreacted to the stress they endured as occupiers.

In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to cover them up. Focusing on Abu Ghraib and Haditha distracts us from the daily, little Abu Ghraibs and small-scale Hadithas that have made up the occupation.

The occupation has been one vast extended crime against the Iraqi people, and most of it has occurred unnoticed by the American people and the media.

snip

I believe that any journalist who spent even a brief period embedded with American soldiers must have witnessed crimes being committed against innocent Iraqis, so I have always been baffled by how few were reported and how skeptically the Western media treated Arabic reports of such crimes. These crimes were not committed because Americans are bad or malicious; they were intrinsic to the occupation, and even if the Girl Scouts had occupied Iraq they would have resorted to these methods. In the end, it is those who dispatched decent young American men and women to commit crimes who should be held accountable.

[...]

This strikes me as a more mature view, one that isn’t built upon the paradoxically grim yet soothing fantasy of Americans as do-gooders caught-up in a maelstrom of Western melancholy and Middle Eastern savagery.

Reading Taibbi’s peice made me wonder whether it was possible for Americans to learn anything, really, from the Iraq disaster. He travelled thousands of miles, right into a war zone, only to lovingly look, once again, into the same old mirror.

more at Mark Ryden.com

Oh, how my head pounds, how my eyes, heavy with sleep from last night’s bacchanal (and by “bacchanal” I mean sitting in a room, observing the walls succumb to entropy), vex me.

Come, let us curl up under the comforter though here it’s summer, and read an excerpt from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – yes, just us two. Later, the Omega3 will do its work and sharper thoughts will return.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies†1, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled ‘ORANGE MARMALADE’, but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.

‘Well!’ thought Alice to herself, ‘after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!’ (Which was very likely true.)

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—’ (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) ‘—yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?’ (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Presently she began again. ‘I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think—’ (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all the right word) ‘—but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?’ (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy curtseying as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) ‘And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.’

Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. ‘Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!’ (Dinah was the cat.) ‘I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that’s very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?’ And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, ‘Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?’ and sometimes, ‘Do bats eat cats?’ for, you see, as she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, ‘Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?’ when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.

Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, ‘Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!’ She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

link to Proj. Guttenberg page for Alice downloads

Dr. Morbius was lonely.

The other colonists were dead; mysterious circumstances. Of course, there was his lovely daughter and Robby, the helpful robot he built with available materials. Still…

Despite his loneliness, and nagging worries about his daughter’s prospects, stranded on a far flung outpost, living amidst the ruins of a long-disappeared civilization, there was his work.

And his work was nothing less than the expansion of his mind – at almost any cost.

I was driving to work; the radio was on for no special reason. NPR.

A news item: Merck & Co. Inc. is held liable for the release of potassium thiocyanate into Wissahickon Creek.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports it this way:

Merck faces fish-kill probe

Firm discovered discharge a week later.

By Sandy Bauers

Inquirer Staff Writer

It took Merck & Co. Inc. a week to discover and report a cyanide-related discharge that killed at least 1,000 fish in the Wissahickon Creek and prompted closure of Philadelphia’s water-intake valves.

The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that a Merck representative first notified the agency of the spill on Tuesday.

According to the EPA, a Merck official said that a week earlier, on June 13, a vaccine-research “pilot plant” had released about 25 gallons of potassium thiocyanate into the sewer system. The substance is commonly used in making vaccines and antibiotics and should not have been discharged into the sewer system, authorities said. They suspect the chemical combined with chlorine at the sewage-treatment plant and became more toxic to fish.

Merck now faces a continuing probe by state and federal officials, and some anger from the community.

[...]

link

Potassium thiocyanate?

What is potassium thiocyanate?

Material Safety Data Sheet

1. Product Identification

Synonyms: Potassium sulfocyanate; Potassium thiocyanide; Thiocyanic acid, potassium salt; Potassium isothiocyanate

CAS No.: 333-20-0

Molecular Weight: 97.18

Chemical Formula: KSCN

Product Codes:

J.T. Baker: 3326, 5578

Mallinckrodt: 7168

2. Composition/Information on Ingredients

Ingredient CAS No Percent Hazardous

————————————— ———— ———— ———

Potassium Thiocyanate 333-20-0 90 – 100% Yes

3. Hazards Identification

Emergency Overview

————————–

WARNING! HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED OR INHALED. CAUSES IRRITATION TO SKIN, EYES AND RESPIRATORY TRACT.

SAF-T-DATA(tm) Ratings (Provided here for your convenience)

———————————————————————————————————–

Health Rating: 2 – Moderate (Life)

Flammability Rating: 0 – None

Reactivity Rating: 1 – Slight

Contact Rating: 2 – Moderate

Lab Protective Equip: GOGGLES; LAB COAT; VENT HOOD; PROPER GLOVES

Storage Color Code: Green (General Storage)

———————————————————————————————————–

Potential Health Effects

———————————-

Inhalation:

Causes irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include coughing, shortness of breath.

Ingestion:

May cause psychosis, vomiting, disorientation, weakness, low blood pressure, convulsions and death which may be delayed. The probable lethal dose is between 15-30 grams.

Skin Contact:

Causes irritation to skin. Symptoms include redness, itching, and pain.

Eye Contact:

Causes irritation, redness, and pain.

Chronic Exposure:

Prolonged or repeated skin exposure may cause dermatitis. Repeated ingestion of small amounts may cause weakness, confusion, central nervous system effects, nausea and skin eruptions.

Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions:

No information found.

4. First Aid Measures

Inhalation:

Remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. Get medical attention.

Ingestion:

Induce vomiting immediately as directed by medical personnel. Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person. Get medical attention.

Skin Contact:

Wipe off excess material from skin then immediately flush skin with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes. Remove contaminated clothing and shoes. Get medical attention. Wash clothing before reuse. Thoroughly clean shoes before reuse.

Eye Contact:

Immediately flush eyes with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes, lifting lower and upper eyelids occasionally. Get medical attention immediately.

5. Fire Fighting Measures

Fire:

Not considered to be a fire hazard.

Explosion:

Not considered to be an explosion hazard.

Fire Extinguishing Media:

Use any means suitable for extinguishing surrounding fire.

Special Information:

In the event of a fire, wear full protective clothing and NIOSH-approved self-contained breathing apparatus with full facepiece operated in the pressure demand or other positive pressure mode. May emit toxic and flammable fumes of cyanide if involved in a fire.

6. Accidental Release Measures

Ventilate area of leak or spill. Wear appropriate personal protective equipment as specified in Section 8. Spills: Sweep up and containerize for reclamation or disposal. Vacuuming or wet sweeping may be used to avoid dust dispersal.

7. Handling and Storage

Keep in a tightly closed container, stored in a cool, dry, ventilated area. Protect against physical damage. Isolate from oxidizing materials. Store in the dark. Containers of this material may be hazardous when empty since they retain product residues (dust, solids); observe all warnings and precautions listed for the product.

8. Exposure Controls/Personal Protection

Airborne Exposure Limits:

None established.

Ventilation System:

A system of local and/or general exhaust is recommended to keep employee exposures as low as possible. Local exhaust ventilation is generally preferred because it can control the emissions of the contaminant at its source, preventing dispersion of it into the general work area. Please refer to the ACGIH document, Industrial Ventilation, A Manual of Recommended Practices, most recent edition, for details.

Personal Respirators (NIOSH Approved):

For conditions of use where exposure to dust or mist is apparent and engineering controls are not feasible, a particulate respirator (NIOSH type N95 or better filters) may be worn. If oil particles (e.g. lubricants, cutting fluids, glycerine, etc.) are present, use a NIOSH type R or P filter. For emergencies or instances where the exposure levels are not known, use a full-face positive-pressure, air-supplied respirator. WARNING: Air-purifying respirators do not protect workers in oxygen-deficient atmospheres.

Skin Protection:

Wear impervious protective clothing, including boots, gloves, lab coat, apron or coveralls, as appropriate, to prevent skin contact.

Eye Protection:

Use chemical safety goggles and/or full face shield where dusting or splashing of solutions is possible. Maintain eye wash fountain and quick-drench facilities in work area.

9. Physical and Chemical Properties

Appearance:

Colorless, deliquescent crystals.

Odor:

Odorless.

Solubility:

Very soluble in water.

Density:

1.89

pH:

No information found.

% Volatiles by volume @ 21C (70F):

0

Boiling Point:

500C (932F)

Melting Point:

173C (343F)

Vapor Density (Air=1):

No information found.

Vapor Pressure (mm Hg):

No information found.

Evaporation Rate (BuAc=1):

No information found.

10. Stability and Reactivity

Stability:

Stable under ordinary conditions of use and storage. Slowly decomposes on exposure to light.

Hazardous Decomposition Products:

Burning may produce nitrogen oxides, sulfur compounds, and possibly cyanides.

Hazardous Polymerization:

Will not occur.

Incompatibilities:

Strong oxidizers, active halogen compounds.

Conditions to Avoid:

Light and incompatibles.

11. Toxicological Information

Oral rat LD50: 854 mg/kg. Investigated as a mutagen, reproductive effector.

——–\Cancer Lists\——————————————————

—NTP Carcinogen—

Ingredient Known Anticipated IARC Category

———————————— —– ———– ————-

Potassium Thiocyanate (333-20-0) No No None

12. Ecological Information

Environmental Fate:

No information found.

Environmental Toxicity:

No information found.

13. Disposal Considerations

Whatever cannot be saved for recovery or recycling should be managed in an appropriate and approved waste disposal facility. Processing, use or contamination of this product may change the waste management options. State and local disposal regulations may differ from federal disposal regulations. Dispose of container and unused contents in accordance with federal, state and local requirements.

…

Ah. Now, I’ve learned and move one step closer to complete madness.

[audio:http://monroelab.net/blog/audio/test.mp3]

I think If on a winter’s night a traveler, a novel in which the reader is as much the subject as whatever else may be happening, was the first (and, come to think of it, probably only) postmodern novel I read.

At the end of chapter four, you’re told there’s a book you’ve just started to read which is the sort of “…novel where, once you have got into it, you want to go forward, without stopping.”

And indeed, the first page of this novel within a novel drives the reader on till the opening thought is complete.

Without
fear
of wind
or vertigo

At five in the morning, military vehicles crossed the city; outside the food stores lines began to form, housewives with tallow lanterns; on the walls the propaganda slogans, painted during the night by the teams of the various factions of the Provisional Council, were not yet dry.

When the band’s musicians had put their instruments back in their cases and came out of the basement, the air was green. For part of the way the patrons of the New Titania walked in a group behind the musicians, as if reluctant to sever the bond that had formed in the club during the night among the people gathered there, by chance or habit, and they went forward in a single party, the men inside the turned-up collars of their overcoats, assuming a cadaverous look, like mummies brought into the open air from the sarcophagi, which preserved for four thousand years, in a moment crumble to dust; but a wave of excitement, on the contrary, infected the women, who sang, each to herself, leaving their cloaks open over their low-cut evening dresses, swishing their long skirts through the puddles in unsteady dance movements, thanks to that process peculiar to intoxication which makes a new euphoria bloom from the collapse and dulling of the previous euphoria, and in all of them there seemed to remain the hope that the party was not yet over, that the players at a certain point would stop in the middle of the street, reopen their cases, and again take out their saxophones and double basses.

[...]

I’m an ardent fan of the website We Make Money Not Art which tracks, among other things, the ways (mostly European and Asian) artists use technology to create and shape their works.

I don’t want to make too much of this but there does seem to be a kind of divide developing: it’s between people who absorb tech as a natural part of things and those who consider it to be an intrusion.

Age is not the only factor determining which side of the comfort fence you find yourself on.

Anyway, I’m fascinated by this 3Quarks Daily posted essay about the merging of art and computer technology.

Asad Raza writes:

While the world has been intruding into art’s materials, and art has been escaping the gallery (as with street art), I’ve been thinking about another development lately, one which leaves plasticity behind altogether: the use of computers, not just to create art, but as the subject of art as well. For two or three years this field has been gathering momentum, and it feels like a generational shift. There’s now a group of people approaching thirty who have grown up in an entirely novel social condition, that of having used computers all their lives, and for whom navigating the programmed landscapes of operating systems and icons is as natural as Wordsworth rambling the Lake District. This is neither a good nor bad development, it’s history. Anyway, I don’t believe in being too technologically determinist about kinds of art, but looking at the work of this group is incredibly exciting because the kinds of inquiries they make denaturalize and probe their environment, which in their case happens to be the space of computing. They add computing to the world, and add the world to computing.

Let’s start with the celebrated Cory Arcangel. Cory’s work usually uses obsolete game systems, computers, file formats, and other computing detritus as the basis for experiments and invasions. His most famous work is “Super Mario Clouds,” in which he hacked a Super Mario Brothers cartridge to display only the blue sky and floating clouds, a work shown at the Whitney Biennial. Other stuff includes a shooting game hacked to make Andy Warhol the target, with Flavor Flav and Col. Sanders the decoys; matching Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter with ads from Google AdSense; rearranging the DVD chapter markers on ‘Simon and Garfunkel Live at Central Park’ to notate all the moments where they look like they hate each other; and so on. Are you thinking this stuff is juvenile? You’d be wrong, but in a way, you’d be right: Cory conserves the open-source ethos of young hackers, to the point of supplying instructions for how to replicate his most famous works.

[...]

full here

As I remember things, around the time I bought a copy of The Shadow of the Torturer (the very copy, held together with packing tape and careful handling, you see pictured below) I was drifting away from the science fiction and fantasy section of the bookstore, metaphorically speaking, and towards politically concerned non-fiction and popular treatments of theoretical physics.

But I saw this book on the shelf at one of the chain stores (or perhaps it was an independent, I don’t recall) and read the first page. Clearly, this wasn’t the atomic robots versus tentacled terrors style of tale I was leaving behind.

1.

Resurrection and Death

IT IS POSSIBLE I ALREADY HAD SOME PRESENTIMENT OF MY future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.

“The guard has gone,” Thus my friend Roche spoke to Drotte, who had already seen it for himself.

Doubtfully, the boy Eata suggested that we go around. A lift of his thin, freckled arm indicated the thousands of paces of wall stretching across the slum and sweeping up the hill until at last they met the high curtain wall of the Citadel. It was a walk I would take, much later.

“And try to get through the barbican without a safe conduct? They’d send to Master Gurloes.”

“But why would the guard leave?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Drotte rattled the gate. “Eata, see if you can slip between the bars.”

Drotte was our captain, and Eata put an arm and a leg through the iron palings, but it was immediately clear that there was no hope of his getting his body to follow.

“Someone’s coming,” Roche whispered. Drotte jerked Eata out.

I looked down the street. Lanterns swung there among the fogmuffled sounds of feet and voices. I would have hidden, but Roche held me, saying, “Wait, I see pikes.”

“Do you think it’s the guard returning?”

He shook his head. “Too many.”

It’s impossible, really, for me to do any sort of justice to the influence JG Ballard has had on my thoughts, on my ‘way of seeing’ (I apologize for the cliché).

Better to visit Ballardian on a regular basis and read the excellent material available there at your leisure.

There is one thing I can confidently mention however…Ballard, it seems to me, is a keen observer of instability, of the ways systems fall apart or mutate. “Empire of the Sun” for example, is a novel about many things but at its core, I think, is the story of disintegration – of a style of life, of a marriage of comfort, of belief in the future…

THE EVE OF PEARL HARBOR

WARS CAME EARLY to Shanghai, over-taking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese bund.

Jim had begun to dream of wars. At night the same silent films seemed to flicker against the wall of his bedroom in Amherst avenue, and transformed his sleeping mind into a deserted newsreel theater. During the winter of 1941 everyone in Shanghai was showing war films. Fragments of his dreams followed Jim around the city; in the foyers of the department stores and hotels the images of Dunkirk and Tobruk, Barbarossa and the Rape of Nanking sprang loose from his crowded head.

To Jim’s dismay, even the Dean of Shanghai Cathedral had equipped himself with an antique projector. After morning service on Sunday, December 7, the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the choirboys were stopped before they could leave for home and were marched down to the crypt. Still wearing their cossacks, they sat in a row of deck chairs requisitioned from the Shanghai Yacht Club and watched a year-old March of Time.

Thinking of his unsettled dreams, and puzzled by their missing sound track, Jim tugged at his ruffled collar. The organ voluntary drummed like a headache through the cement roof, and the screen trembled with the familiar images of tank battles and aerial dogfights. Jim was eager to prepare for the fancy-dress Christmas party being held that afternoon by Dr. Lockwood, the vice-chairman of the British Residents Association. There would be the drive through the Japanese lines to Hungjao, and then Chinese conjurers, fireworks and yet more newsreels, but Jim had his own reasons for wanting to go to Dr. Lockwood’s party.

As I recall, I bought Monkey, Folk Novel of China at Garland of Letters, a new age themed book store on Philadelphia’s South Street (which, once upon a time, was a haven for artists and assorted bohemians but is now a commercial theme park that uses a patina of what went before as a marketing angle – sic transit gloria mundi).

As it happens, Arthur Waley’s translation is rather heavily abridged, leaving most of the original novel, Journey to the West, on the editing room floor.

CHAPTER 1

There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb. At once this monkey learned to climb and run; but its first act was to make a bow towards each of the four quarters. As it did so, a steely light darted from this monkey’s eyes and flashed as far as the Palace of the Pole Star. This shaft of light astonished the Jade Emperor as he sat in the Cloud Palace of the Golden Gates, in the Treasure Hall of the Holy Mists, surrounded by his fairy Ministers. Seeing this strange light flashing, he ordered Thousand-league Eye and Down-the-wind Ears to open the gate of the Southern Heaven and look out.

At his bidding these two captains went out to the gate and looked so sharply and listened so well that presently they were able to report, ‘This steely light comes from the borders of the small country of Ao-lai, that lies to the east of the Holy Continent, from the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. On this mountain is a magic rock, which gave birth to an egg. This egg changed into a stone monkey, and when he made his bow to the four quarters a steely light flashed from his eyes with a beam that reached the Palace of the Pole Star. But now he is taking a drink, and the light is growing dim.’

The Jade Emperor condescended to take an indulgent view. ‘These creatures in the world below,’ he said, ‘were compounded of the essence of heaven and earth, and nothing that goes on there should surprise us.’ That monkey walked, ran, leapt and bounded over the hills, feeding on grasses and shrubs, drinking from streams and springs, gathering the mountain flowers, looking for fruits. Wolf, panther and tiger were his companions, the deer and the civet were his friends, gibbons and baboons his kindred. At night he lodged under cliffs of rock, by day he wandered among the peaks and caves. One very hot morning, after playing in the shade of some pine-trees, he and those other monkeys went to bathe in a mountain stream. See how those waters bounce and tumble like rolling melons!