Who mentioned Rilke?

[Jan KLIMKOWSKI]

Howdy ListWorlders!

Been on the road for a couple of weeks, doing my level best to cause Them a 
lil' minor irritation here and there, a little interruption in 
biznessasusual, all that camerazgun nonsense, and I come back to find the 
same ole argument about Systems raging on the PList - only with a new set of 
protagonists this time.

Once again, They are held up as either a figment of our imagination (the One 
to the Zero) or the voice of the majority.  Right.

As to whether there is a real System or not, we can all look at the 
evidence, from GR and Chomsky on down, and come to our own conclusions. 
 Personally, I find the evidence, uh, irrefutable and compelling.

But that voice of the majority, that notion that da BushMan might be right, 
is the really dangerous one, 'cos that's the one that allows otherwise 
decent folk to do unspeakable things, because 
nooneeversaiditwaseasytodotherightthing.  We've just filmed in three 
developing countries, oh and North Carolina, where there are some very 
decent folk doing unspeakable things to brown people with money that's been 
round the world seventeen times but has very legitimate origins and all 
because there's an overpopulation crisis and extreme means are justified and 
a decent man must not shirk from his duty.  Between them, these decent folk 
were employed by the Company for over fifty years; now the System keeps them 
well supplied but plausibly deniable.

I mean really, go tell people living in the slums of Cite Soleil, Haiti, 
that the System is a figment of their imagination and that Toussaint's 
victory mattered.

OK.  Rant over.

A little while back, Marquez and Conrad were being discussed.  Just to say, 
years ago I read an interview with Marquez and if I remember correctly he 
described being overwhelmed by the sense of time in Faulkner's work, and how 
this had influenced all his work (this is pre-Cholera) but particularly 
Autumn of the Patriarch.  He also discussed Conrad and specifically 
Nostromo, and the memory I have of his words drew an interesting distinction 
between his (Marquez's) reading of Conrad and that of Borges.  For Borges, 
the atmosphere and mythic nature of Conrad's worlds were the key artistic 
inspiration; for Marquez, Nostromo, whilst being undeniably a great book, 
was also a challenge to Latin American writers, demanding that they grapple 
with this vision and forge something new and bold but this time from within, 
rather than without, the culture.  The passage in the interview was probably 
not quite so explicit, but I hope I don't badly misrepresent  the spirit.

Sisterly
jan