Pine Slopes

guy debord on writing and speaking

Those who wish to write quickly a piece about nothing that no one will read through even once, whether in a newspaper or a book, confidently extol the style of the spoken language, because they find it much easier, more modern and direct. They themselves do not know how to speak. Neither do their readers, the language actually spoken under modern conditions of life having been socially reduced to a mere representation of itself, as endorsed by the media, and comprising some six or eight constantly repeated turns of phrase and fewer than two hundred terms, most of them neoligisms, with a turnover of a third of them every six months. All this favours a certain hasty solidarity. In contrast, I for my part am going to write without affectation or fatigue, as the most natural and easiest thing in the world, in the language I have learned and, in most circumstances, spoken. It’s not up to me to change it.

panegyric 1

a new nabokov

This November, Vladimir Nabokov will have a new novel out. It’s quite an achievement, you might have thought, for someone who died 32 years ago. But then Nabokov died and reinvented himself many times, and one could be forgiven for wondering if he just staged his death in 1977, and slipped off into another identity, like Elvis in the popular imagination; or like Sebastian Knight, John Shade, or any of the other escape artists who populate Nabokov’s own novels. And perhaps The Original of Laura, the novel that he left unfinished, when his heart supposedly gave out, is not really unfinished at all, but a non finito, that is, an art work that feigns incompletion. And so, perhaps to justify its aesthetic, Nabokov had to pretend to die. After all, …Laura is subtitled ‘Dying is Fun’, and tells the story of an ageing novelist, Philip Wild, who is trying to erase himself, using the rubber at the end of his pencil, starting from his toes and working upwards. To call …Laura, as Penguin are doing, A novel in fragments may be to do more than state the dull fact that it is unfinished.

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fernando pessoa – this is extraordinary!

the art of effective dreaming for metaphysical minds

the best way to start dreaming is through books. novels are especially helpful for the beginner. the first step is to learn to give in completely to your reading, to live totally with the characters of a novel. you’ll know you’re making progress when your own family and its troubles seem insipid and loathsome by comparison. it’s best to avoid reading literary novels, which tend to divert our attention to the formal structure.

i’m not ashamed to admit that this is how i started. strangely enough, detective novels are what i instinctively read. i was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, i being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. let each man cultivate his particular inclination. let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves. sensual souls, for their reading matter, should choose the opposite of what i read.

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