Bibliophile, Ailurophile, Recovering Puritan, Co-Host of Moral Minority
Michigan, USA
Joined January 2020
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Happy Publication Day to @fowlinghantod! Her debut novel, Meat Puppets, is out. Moral Minority is pleased to share the first critical discussion of this impressive novel. Consider this discussion your companion to your reading. Now available on all podcasting platforms.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that successfully coaxing a cat outside of an engine block is a cure for depression.
In retrospect, and despite the many hours logged online, it is clear that irony detection only works when your ideological priors are affirmed. So here is the “esoteric” message for those reactionary mystics dabbling in lit: Better art results when you do not desire domination.
People on the Internet: “Extratextual matters like personal political beliefs are not only irrelevant to literary quality, but never impinge upon the text. Incidentally, I should be able to use as many slurs as I want and we should hear more about white male loneliness”
Rewatching Twin Peaks: Return and I cannot believe some people accused Lynch of trolling his audience with long takes and musical codas. Every strange beat is perfectly timed for comedic impact and for capturing what it feels like to be a dreamer stuck in a dream.
I don’t think a literary publisher has any business being right-wing. I will make you a deal. You can publish, but you cannot call it literary.
Finally watched Camp Miasma. Loved its lush artificiality and stagey autofiction. It accomplished something I think very difficult—convinced a non-horror aficionado of the hidden depths of erotic identification and displacements of horror. Genuinely sexy and funny and moving.
Every time I insert a parenthetical statement in my writing it feels like whispering a closely guarded secret to the reader (my favorite breakfast food is a big bowl of full-fat cottage cheese studded with blueberries).
Requesting a *raising my lorgnette* emoji for sideeye-worthy situations where the vibe is haute bourgeoisie (I am at the opera and my biggest opp is unconscionably donning bespotted spats).
The way my depression usually manifests catches me by surprise every time. Self-doubt and -loathing are baselines alongside a pessimistic outlook about the future. What alerts me to a depressive episode is the feeling of being constantly irritated with everyone and everything.
What literature is best at communicating is the vertiginous workings of particular minds—metacognition. What language continually fails at capturing is nauseated embodiment—the affects of being constrained in a particular body.
In my view, the creative output of any hypothetical synthetic consciousness will never compete with human consciousness as long it remains limited to mimetically bootstrapping an ersatz point of view based upon collective human knowledge.
A crucial aspect of artistic creation is operating within epistemic doubt and growing comfortable with multiplying mysteries—as Barthelme argues in his famous “Not-knowing” essay.
The uncanny thing about having an opinion on The Beatles’ catalogue is by dint of a nearly universal consensus of their unparalleled excellence you can stake out any opinion, no matter how outlandish or sincerely held, and scores of people will somehow agree.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you like your bathos with a wallop of pathos, please read that Beckettian trickster—Donald Barthelme.
