Theodore Dreiser is not on TV tonight..

[alice malice]

Yeah, in disposition and habit we may study the anatomy of it; reading
of it and in it once the humour is settled will stir but not dislodge
it from the depths of a melancholic soul.

Dylan goes electric. So. We traded Woody and got Hendrix. Not too bad.

But when the political debates went electric, to the Tube, it was said
that the TV debates would improve our democracy. McLuhan didn't think
so. I think he was right.

Our Libraries have gone electric.

As with all goings electric there are trade offs. Something is lost or
deminished while something else is gained, elevated.

When we go electric there are winners and losers. Most of us are
losers. Gates, Jobs...big winners.
Now Gates wants Charter schools, where, as you say, the common core
push against reading has billions behind it.

But we must have people who can make robots and make billions and take
trips into space. So we can watch them rise, become trillionaires.
After all, inspired by science fiction novels, these brilliant
zillionaires are the new gods and we merely their faithful slaves.


On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 5:27 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:
> Waves, man. Waves of consciousness, like brain waves...maybe there're some
> changes but there was always highbrow & lowbrow both good
>
> If CS Peirce's dad believed that there had to be a buncha helots to support
> fulltime thinkers like he pushed CS to be and perhaps made him a genius
> although I think it also made him grumpy - didn't he beat up his maid or
> something
>
> If Scarsdale Vibe thought himself justified in working miners to death and
> frickin' Frick survived Al Berkman all to save a couple pennies an hour and
> some labor meetings which woulda been amusing & instructive for all
> concerned and his boss Carnegie dug unions but was in Scotland and gave ol'
> Frick too much autonomy
>
> It was because they thought there was a difference worth preserving
>
> But they were wrong the cultural compass points to magnetic north swayed by
> money and power but all of us can see the stars sort of
>
> Anyhoo, people still read, a lot of people make a living off it. Writers for
> even reality shows are going to get ideas from people who got ideas from
> people who got ideas from books...
>
> Even charter schools or privatized schools have some books which
> occasionally get read
>
> If in the burgeoning future people read on their phones or tablets or their
> Google glasses or listen to audible, those of us who cut their teeth on
> paperbacks oh gosh good even great books in racks all over the place Kmart
> where I found the illuminatus trilogy or sears where I picked up Kafka's the
> castle and the trial or the drugstore where I first saw and maybe bought
> Giles Goatboy and I think the beautiful blue paperback of V. and also man
> from uncle books for like 35 cents or the scholastic book club at school
> where I ordered Up Periscope, there was this great scene where the submarine
> guy remembers his last day of school, throwing books out the window...but he
> had learned enough in school or somewhere to keep blowing air out when
> escaping the sub and floating up hundreds of feet, so he kept his lungs from
> exploding...well we will always have these wonderful memories...
>
> It's like when Dylan went electric, music was supposed to be about the human
> voice and people hushing to listen and the sound human fingers made on
> acoustic instruments or jazz with human breath animating brass or causing
> individualistic vibrations thru plastic or ebony or ivory
>
> Why involve the freaking power company!? And yet Neil Young is still doing
> insanely great stuff with feedback and now *that's* become a tradition.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> well....sure...people read lots...tons....more than ever
>> Can't you tell?
>> The data prove it.
>>
>> Have a conversation with any reader and you'll know, reading is in, is
>> Big, is huge, is, like, like poetry and fiction and classics and
>> stuff.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 7:30 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Do people still read Crane, Bierce, London, Norris...even Chopin?
>> > Supposedly a feminist.
>> > Certainly not Booker T. Washington, not without WB to set things
>> > right, or straight or correct.
>> >
>> > Maybe some candidate, exploited by not one but by a team of faculty
>> > will scribble in the corner an hundred pages on what was once called
>> > Naturalism, will read London next to Orwell, will turn off the tube
>> > and drive an ink stick int the heart of the American middle class
>> > myth, on TV, or whatever it is people watch all day these days.
>> >
>> > But read Dreiser?
>> >
>> > Read?
>> >
>> > Fiction?
>> >
>> > American fiction?
>> >
>> > Why would anyone still do that?
>> >
>> > Dreiser?
>> >
>> > He's not even Modern. Not even anything that casts a shadow on the wall.
>> >
>> > Does anyone still read him?
>> >
>> > Doesn anyone still read?
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l