A list or two

Some new blogs: Vitro Nasu, moleskine modality, At Any Street Corner, OBSERVING THE OBSERVER, Outside the Text, The Importance of Disappointment and Alphonse van Worden.

Update: Also I Cite, by the soon-to-be author of a book entitled "Zizek's Politics."

Some books currently reading: Oblivion by David Foster Wallace; My Idea of Fun by Will Self; Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon; Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan; Dispatches by Michael Herr; Serendipities by Umberto Eco and Counterpath by Jacques Derrida. Oh and some Martin Amis, next to the Bergman essays residing in the bathroom, along with Heidegger (Poetry, Language, Thought). And John Barth (coming soon!!!). At least until he gets his hands on the latest Agamben and Murakami.

On another note, is it just him or do the blogs have the new year blues a bit? Come on now, lighten up you spoiled brats.

Update: Ron Silliman touches on precisely what irks me about the Dylan memoir:

But it’s precisely the awe that is telling here. Even with 30-years hindsight, Dylan can’t really separate received culture – that veneer of media – from the work itself. Given the role of media in his own life, that’s a gap worth exploring.

Granted that separating such stubborness or blindness from that which makes Dylan unique is maybe not so easily done. As Silliman also notes:

Reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One, you realize that Dylan is never going to let you see the source of the residual, simmering anger that has always been so close to the heart of everything he has ever done in the arts.

Hard to distinguish sometimes between mere stubborness and a useful kind of discretion. Often as useful as having an umbrella, Nietzsche says.

Update II: Silliman has a second post on Dylan, dealing more directly with issues of prose style, literal vs. metaphorical writing, and song-writing vs. poetry.