but i also don't think i'll be sticking around. depressing to have my first interaction on here entail a conversation i've had literally hundreds of times
There's lots more interesting things to discuss around here than naturalism vs theism. Judging by the band references in your poems you might enjoy some of the threads on I Love Music (sister board).
― o. nate, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 15:23 (ten years ago) link
yeah, i've lurked on the rolling metal & country threads for years. i know scott seward & chuck eddy a bit.
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 16:01 (ten years ago) link
well then MIX IT UP a little!
i sent you a webmail, you probably want to check your spam filters etc.
― j., Tuesday, 25 February 2014 16:34 (ten years ago) link
i'm leery of mixing it up. see above—i lose my internet cool too easily.
woof, love the title of this thread.
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 23:46 (ten years ago) link
a conversation i've had literally hundreds of times.
It would appear to be a compelling enough topic that each new encounter requires getting it out of the way. Once had, it needn't be repeated.
However, if your intent in participating in ILB is to seek intellectual stimulation of such a high order that you need not run over ground you've covered before elsewhere, or explain cherished ideas that you've developed over a long period of time, then prepare for disappointment. We are only human. Our only claim to intellectualism here is that we do not dismiss it out of hand, but rather we find the world of ideas worthwhile and reading of literature rewarding. We share that.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 00:03 (ten years ago) link
Once had, it needn't be repeated.
cmon aimless remember where you are
― j., Wednesday, 26 February 2014 01:22 (ten years ago) link
Right. I went for a long walk, thought a bit about this thread. It seems likely to me that MR aka murk may not have much to gain from engaging with ilx. Shocking conclusion, I know. If I'm wrong, then now that he's touched the ilx tarbaby, he'll be sticking around for sure. He won't be able to help it.
In the meantime, I will go to his link and try to find out how he is using 'naturalism'. The only use of this term in regard to lit that I can recall was to describe the Hamlin Garland-Theodore Dreiser-Frank Norris-Stephen Crane school of writing, and that's nowhere in the same neighborhood of how he's using it above, obviously. As a term of art in philosophy, I don't have it in my mental dictionary.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 01:52 (ten years ago) link
OK. Got it.
naturalism—the doctrine that there is nothing apart from the physical order, and certainly nothing supernatural—is an incorrigibly incoherent concept
I'll just point out the main thing to notice in approaching this quote is that "naturalism" is not interchangeable with "science". Science pragmatically limits itself to natural phenomena and does not pretend to address questions of transcendence. This allows it a remarkable coherence within its own sphere of inquiry. Neither Hart nor MR is calling scientific knowledge incoherent, but rather the attempt to apply that knowledge to questions that science wisely ignores and to dismiss or deny matters of transcendence on the very grounds that scientific knowledge does not shed light on them. Which is simply perverse.
However, this seems like a discussion more fit for I Love Everything more than I Love Books, in that ILE has cornered the market on threads upon this subject matter. We trod that sorry path again a couple of weeks ago on Are you an atheist?. I understand now why murk would want to sidestep that dreary exercise.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 02:22 (ten years ago) link
Yes, Aimless, this is what I say in the piece, & what Hart says. The problem is not with science but with scientism, an epistemically arrogant presumption to transcendent knowledge (God is a "delusion," &c.) that happens to be ironically faith-based. This is what I (& many others) accuse Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, et al., of practicing. They can't even get the arguments straight (e.g., Dawkins misunderstands Thomas's Aristotelian notion of "first cause"; Hitchens makes innumerable historical errors, &c.).
But Hart's & Eagleton's & Robinson's books exist, so I don't have to have these exactly-the-same-every-time discussions.
― murk, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 02:51 (ten years ago) link
Does transcendent knowledge constitute a specific checklist of things or is it just demarcated as things that are currently untestable, or things thought to be never testable?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 03:01 (ten years ago) link
Things never thought to be testable, in the sense of "experimentally verifiable".
Transcendence does not easily fall into the category of "knowledge", as we are now used to defining that category, iow, in terms of verifiable, repeatable, tangible, shareable, measurable experiences. Generally speaking, it can be approached by two avenues: logical derivation from accepted axioms (much as mathematics can define and employ concepts that have no verifiable, physical counterparts) and direct mystical experience, which is unverifiable. If you'd like some sort of scientifically sound basis for this category, you're not going to get it, except by way of analogy.
Just as an exercise, I'd like you to refresh your acquaintance with Gödel, in case this frank admission of the unverifiability of transcendent knowledge gets you to feeling especially frisky and combative.
btw, as you may find out by reading the "Are you an atheist?" thread, I'm an atheist of the Zen Buddhist variety.
But must we trudge down this road again?
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 04:00 (ten years ago) link
if you're sorting things like godel's incompleteness proof in transcendent knowledge, then that is actually an example of not necessarily science, but mathematical rigor placing limits on things, like it literally cages God, and could be used to directly contradict perceived mystical experiences that state the opposite (though I've never heard of any mystical experiences that weird and specific.)
There could be entire classes of philosophical questions that could arise from this sort of thing ("could God make a burrito so hot He could not eat it?") that could be answered conclusively.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 04:25 (ten years ago) link
wow yeah let's do this here
― j., Wednesday, 26 February 2014 04:47 (ten years ago) link
nah. take it to the atheist thread on ile and see if anyone nibbles. maybe alice liddell will come and take a bite and we can all fit down this rabbit hole.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 05:15 (ten years ago) link
"could God make a burrito so hot He could not eat it?"
A question that, once placed in the mind, is hard to remove, I'm finding.
― That's So (Eazy), Wednesday, 26 February 2014 17:48 (ten years ago) link
God, like so many Busy Executives, has People who Do these Things for Him.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 19:05 (ten years ago) link
interventionist god can probably make and eat a burrito (in control of the forces of the world on a level of contemporary human time). could make it so hot that Itself could not eat it, wd pass on to something more in touch with its ain soph aur.
post-interventionist god, possibly not fully in charge of detail that was engendered from its primum mobile. would like to try and eat a burrito, probably couldn't make one. could certainly find one made too hot to eat ("What things have I wrought?" - poss a q of theodicy, tho its status may be unclear: "This burrito is too hot to eat! ergo, It is a production of the evil I allow but do not control. Just one more bit tho, 'sblood it tastes great." makes it more of a neo-platonic entity, not strictly part of xtian theology - not evil, not good - but something assimilated from outside. a communicative and alchemical tool)
conclusion - jaweh makes the burrito too hot to eat, elohim eats it.
or possibly the trinity was devised to solve this potential burrito problem. god proposes, Jesus disposes, Holy Spirit takes the taco.
in the pub fwiw.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 19:24 (ten years ago) link
^^ would subscribe
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 19:34 (ten years ago) link
i corrupted the original text. sorryhttp://underscoopfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/homer-simpson.jpg
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 20:11 (ten years ago) link
If Scalia and Thomas have taught us anything, it is to respect the original text.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 20:26 (ten years ago) link
Zeus knows the proper way to resolve such paradoxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teumessian_fox
― jmm, Wednesday, 26 February 2014 21:46 (ten years ago) link
iirc God may create the soul of the burrito but its too-hot corporal form is the fault of Satan, and so the burrito must be reincarnated over and over until it achieves perfection and can be eaten by God.
― of human sonnage (c sharp major), Wednesday, 26 February 2014 23:33 (ten years ago) link
"But it is precisely because He is omnipotent that there are certain things that He cannot do: just as we say that it is necessary, when we exercise will, that we do so of our own free will. When we say this, it is undoubtedly true, yet we do not thereby make our freedom of will subject to a necessity which takes away our freedom." — Augustine, City of God.
― murk, Thursday, 27 February 2014 02:54 (ten years ago) link
(Many "paradoxes" of this sort have been answered for, like, 1500 years.)
― murk, Thursday, 27 February 2014 02:56 (ten years ago) link
(Thomas Aquinas treats specifically of the hot burrito, but I can't remember where offhand.)
― murk, Thursday, 27 February 2014 02:57 (ten years ago) link
for such heresy he would have been burned at the bistec, from which there is no salsation.
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 27 February 2014 04:18 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCO8qkEe9co
― That's So (Eazy), Thursday, 27 February 2014 05:35 (ten years ago) link
Another perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPekbB4kemg
― That's So (Eazy), Thursday, 27 February 2014 05:37 (ten years ago) link
Well, we've derailed this thread.
http://gdb.voanews.com/362347A9-BBC1-4422-91D2-4F9210E21940_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy9_cw0.jpg
― Aimless, Thursday, 27 February 2014 17:53 (ten years ago) link
(Sorry Aimless)
― That's So (Eazy), Thursday, 27 February 2014 20:26 (ten years ago) link
It was a group effort.
― Aimless, Thursday, 27 February 2014 20:32 (ten years ago) link
also I wrote this: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/03/dayal_patterson_s_history_of_black_metal_reviewed.single.html
― murk, Wednesday, 5 March 2014 18:12 (ten years ago) link
i enjoyed that. I do not know anything about Black Metal, but I did like the cheerful attempt to chart a course around the book's shit prose.
I've only really begun to think through the implications of your dropping by here. Let's say I read your next book (which I will), and let's say I want to pop into ILX & say 'Yes, but…' and 'This is good, but then maybe…' (& this is how I respond to things I like), it could be awkward. Even if I slope off to another thread, then that's talking behind your back. So maybe I'll just post here, try to believe you both are/aren't present & see what happens.
― woof, Thursday, 6 March 2014 23:10 (ten years ago) link
I had a very similar transilvanian hunger experience.
also: I liked the article about music and character identification. it's probably the reason I liked that much despised Goon Squad novel.
I remain non-committal about AvP - and am determined to remain non-committal for SS to avoid awkwardness woof describes.
have just moved house tho and have just put AvP in the poetry shelf - between the wall and... hang on (am lying on bed upstairs and need to check)... Yeats! twixt a lough and a hard place.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 6 March 2014 23:38 (ten years ago) link
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2014-03-06233700_zps546714c4.jpg
― Fizzles, Thursday, 6 March 2014 23:43 (ten years ago) link
how do you feel about edward dorn, f.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 00:21 (ten years ago) link
i feel like i wish i could afford a copy of gunslinger
― j., Friday, 7 March 2014 01:05 (ten years ago) link
20 bucks delivered, doesn't seem that far out. also if you buy the new collected dorn brick then by weight you're only paying six, seven bucks for slinger
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 02:20 (ten years ago) link
There have been plenty of years of my life when twenty bucks for a book was at the far edge of the possible. Not now, happily.
― Aimless, Friday, 7 March 2014 02:23 (ten years ago) link
I paid 11 for Ashbery's Flow Chart last month, that was a splurge
― merciless to accomplish the truth in his intelligence (bernard snowy), Friday, 7 March 2014 04:50 (ten years ago) link
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 00:21 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
really like it - the protean central voice and the presentation of time are done very well I think. it's a precise, clever performance, which it needs to be given the looseness of its environment and form. "Western frontier as appropriate place and set of characters with which to study the soul and it's journeys" is absolutely a premise I buy. it's witty, conversational and fun, and laced with song. i like Burroughs, but you allow a lot for the pleasure of listening to his discursive tone of voice - Gunslinger reminded me of Burroughs, but here the internal philosophy, structure and tale, such as it is, is in its own terms coherent, which gives it that overarching tension that long poems need. there's some brilliant set pieces, like this abstract gunfight between the Horse and a loose-tongued stranger:
The Stoned Horse said Slowlynot looking upfrom his rolling and planningStranger you got a [i]pliable lipyou might get yourself describedif you stay on.
Come on!Who's the horse, I mean who'shorse is that, we can't haveNo Horse! in here.It ain't properand I think I'm gonnaput a halter on you!
Uh uh, the Gunslinger breathed.Anybody know the muthafuckathe Stoned Horse inquiredof the general air.Hey, hear that the strange gaspedthat's even a negra horse!
Maybe so, maybe notthe Gunslinger inhaledbut stranger you got an Attitudea mile longas his chair dropped forwardall four legs on the floorand as the disputational .44occurred in his hand and spun therein that warp of relativity one seesin the backward turning spokesof a buckboard,
then came suddenlyto rest, the barrel utterly justifiedwith a line pointingto the neighborhood of infinity.The room froze harder.
Shit,Slinger, Lil noticed, You've pointedyour .44 straightout of town.I keep tellin younot to be so goddamn fancynow that amacher's got the drop on you!
Not so, Lil!the Slinger observed.Your vulgarity is flawlessbut you are the slave of appearances –-this Stockholder will findthat his gun cannot speakhe'll findthat he has been Described STRUMthe greenhorn pulledthe trigger and his store-bought ironcoughed out some cheap powder,and then changed its mind,muttering about having been up too late last night.Its embarrassed handlerlooked, one eye wandering,into the barreland then reholstered it and stood there.
strum
The total .44recurred in the Slinger's handand spun therethen came home like a sharp knockand the intruder was described -a plain, unassorted white citizen.
the successful unpunctuated distinction of speech and description is always i think a sign of writer invisibly in charge of their rhythms and tone (like Evelyn Waugh or PG Wodehouse's long pages of brief exchanges where the identity of the speaker remains fixed in the mind. It reminds me of what George Saintsbury in his book on English prose rhythm said about Malory's Morte d'Arthur:
[There are plenty of sentences in Malory beginning with "and"; but it is not the constant go-between and usher-of-all-work that it is in Mandeville.] The abundance of conversation gets him out of this difficulty at once; and he seems to have an instinctive knowledge - hardly shown before him, never reached after him till the time of the great novelists - of weaving conversation and narrative together. [...] His narrative order and his dialogue are so artistically adjusted that they dovetail into one another.
After all, this method and presentation is a 20th/21st C one, but Dorn does it very well. The closest analogue in some ways feels like the Pynchon of Mason & Dixon and Against the Day.
cost me £10, which didn't seem unreasonable - tho like Aimless I'm now in the happy position where I can spend that amount on a book without feeling a bit sick.
― Fizzles, Friday, 7 March 2014 06:55 (ten years ago) link
"a precise, clever performance, which it needs to be given the looseness of its environment and form" -- yeah, i think at the time i looked at it i wasn't really in the mood to read it charitably: like, my response was Yes I Get It And I Am Bored Of This Riff Now And I Am Only About Two Fifths Convinced Your Line Breaks Are Not Arbitrary. i think it's a lot like other pynchon performances too, like the occasional drops into pulp in GR.
when i read the north atlantic vortex pomes i found myself thinking mb i should have given slinger more of a shot; have forgotten what i liked about those, though. was enthused about the collected but i. the cover is carcanet's worst ever ii. fear of amassing further collective works i will not open, like geo. hill's collected e.g., which has been glaring at me resentfully from various piles and bookshelves, still totally unopened, since december
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 11:00 (ten years ago) link
yeah the North Atlantic Turbine poems definitely show that he knows what he's doing with his linebreaks/form - iirc i liked them because there is a spine of traditional lyric there, he's closer to a posed or precise English voice than I expected - & I think that gave me some of the trust needed to follow Gunslinger (which I liked a lot). I'd like to read more but, yeah, it's stuck in the black hole of being a huge ugly book that I can't or won't carry round with me. I will never learn about big collecteds.
― woof, Friday, 7 March 2014 11:15 (ten years ago) link
actually maybe I will. I've been buying single volumes of Geo Hill 2nd-hand lately - cheaper since the collected.
― woof, Friday, 7 March 2014 11:19 (ten years ago) link
interesting. if you should decide any of them are run-don't-walk let me know and i will set up some kind of lever and axle system with which to heave the collected onto some sort of lectern for necessary physical support and prise it open to the relevant section
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 11:41 (ten years ago) link
i just this week ordered a single louise gluck instead of all of the louise gluck under one cover. i feel very glad of that.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 11:42 (ten years ago) link
we should start a Hill thread. Maybe he'll show up too.
― woof, Friday, 7 March 2014 11:49 (ten years ago) link
actually, I haven't seen that collected Hill about – does it go full on with the apparatus?
(I don't know why the thought of lots of notes at the back depresses me. Maybe it's because Hill feels a bit too much like a poet born to be annotated)
― woof, Friday, 7 March 2014 13:04 (ten years ago) link
i literally haven't opened the thing. it feels a little intimidating.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 7 March 2014 14:00 (ten years ago) link
I always used to like that he was a poet with a tiny collected. You could take it anywhere.
― woof, Friday, 7 March 2014 14:24 (ten years ago) link