Monday, June 4, 2007

What Passed for a Train of "Thought" Yesterday Morning

So I was looking in the bathroom mirror, wondering if I should shave, when it occurred to me that Derrida's "always already" takes up the omniscient temporality of the Puritans' God's p.o.v. I wonder how Derrida would have changed the title of Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Maybe through a Lacan-like "God is structured like a language" move? Nah, that's more Zizek territory--his critique of Derrida would no doubt be entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Indifferent God." Which made me think of the way little kids act up when their parents are tuning them out--what if humanity was "going through a phase" trying to get God's attention? That made me think of Simmons's Hyperion and his variations on the Abraham/Isaac story, which lead me to Nietzsche's notion of the death of God, which helped me decide that humanity was like a teenager who was in denial that his parents had died and was acting out in order to force them to deal with him. Hey, this would be a neat Mostly Harmless blog post! Or CitizenSE? Nah, not Hawthorne-y enough. Oh no! It's already 8 am and I still haven't even looked up LPGA.com to confirm that Ochoa won the Ginn Tribute. How could I have slept in so late? Oh yeah, all that coughing that kept me up half the night. Will barely have time to write the LPGA post today--the free association one can wait till tomorrow. So can shaving. Let's hope I remember to do both tomorrow.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

like a teenager who was in denial that his parents had died and was acting out in order to force them to deal with him.

I know this is free association and all, but was wondering who the "them" referred to.

Oh, and I had somehow missed your reply to me on the Reader's Anonymous thread and just got around to reading it tonight. Thanks. I think it is very hard to have commonality for recent literature. Got an illustration of this just recently when I sent MB a reading list of someone else's American Fiction since 1945 course and he replied that he had not even heard of half the books on the list, but had read the other half.

List was On the Road, Continental Drift, Jasmine, Portnoy's Complaint, The Chaneysville Incident, Seventh Heaven, Rabbit, Run, A Fan's Notes and Tapping the Source. I have read 4 and heard of a 5th. Of course I could not teach shit about any of them. (Well, maybe Portnoy's Complaint ... but not the literary part.)

The Constructivist said...

Them-->parents-->God!

I've read Jasmine and The Chaneysville Incident and parts of On the Road and heard of all but Seventh Heaven, A Fan's Notes, and Tapping the Source!

Anonymous said...

My reads were On the Road, Portnoy, Rabbit Run and A Fan's Notes and had heard of Continental Drift.

Way off topic.
I really have very little familiarity with the Japanese stuff other than some that I have picked up from my kids, but last night happened to see Spirited Away - quite impressive, even though it was the dubbed version, which I am led to believe is not nearly as good as the subtitles. I assume it is viewed as a very significant work in Japan?

The Constructivist said...

Yah, Miyazaki is huge in Japan. You should see My Neighbor Totoro--my favorite. Over at Quiet Bubble, they did a Miyazaki event a while back. I haven't read it all, but what I did read I found interesting.

About half the movies on my profile are Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli productions, btw. I listed them from my favorite on down, so you can see I like Spirited Away very much, too.

Bill Benzon said...

I'm quite fond of Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, but they're all worthwhile.