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ALLUSIVE

                                              February 10, 2005

Reading Delany's "1984",
Voyant publishing, first edition

Sketching some notes about it,
writing about what I think
was written.  What I think              In net discussions, a
should have been written?               common response I get
What I think could have been            is the accusation that
written that would be                   I have "poor reading
consistent with what I think            skills".
was written...
                                              On the contrary, my   
                                              reading skills are so
                                              good I can read something
                                              that's hardly there. 


Writes against the notion                    
of "greatness" in art.            p.212

Insists that it is
unfortunately not just
the sum total of
"sophisticated
reaction" to the work.

But rather...
a manifestation of a
social momentum;
a consensus reality.

Which (I presume) offends because

(1) the consensus real is often
overstated as an absolute real.

(2) a history of denial of the
individual -- certainly the
minority -- experience.

Against the custom of
an established cannon
of the great?



                                           p.85-86
The effective agent of change is
the social group.

The individual life is always
predominantly reactive.

   "But as far as individuals changing things?
   Well: master of your soul?  Maybe.
   Captain of your fate?  Never."  - p. 86, para 7.

                                                    BETWEEN_SOUL_AND_FATE

These two points, taken together,
seem to presume the
ineffectiveness of art.              LIFE

   It's in the realm
   of "soul", not "fate".



p.44-45

Delany reveals some things going on in
Dhalgren were allusions to certain poems,
and essays about the poems.

What sense is there in literary
allusion if there is no cannon?

  If there's a body of work you
  can expect intelligent readers
  to be familar with, you can        "She was neither an Anna nor
  use that shared context to         an Emma" informs only someone
  communicate.                       with some familiarity with
                                     Tolstoy and Austen.
  Without that expectation,
  then any literary allusion
  becomes some sort of
  self-indulgent free
  association.

         Perhaps: the form of
         conventional high brow
         literature surviving the
         underpinning rationale:          Ah, but I know so little of
         greatness and familiarity        Foucault, Barthes, Derrida....
         with the great.
                                          How can I authoritatively
                                          discuss decanonization
                                          without greater knowledge
                                          of the great decanonizers?


Also from page 86:
if Walter Benjamin was
indeed wrong in his
prediction that
reproduction would
destroy greatness...

Then what did destroy it?


An assault from the high and the low:
the anti-elitist revolution against
canon of Western Culture; and
a populist refusal to believe in the
possiblity of "sophisticated response".        EXPLAINING_THE_INEXPLICABLE


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