INDG 401 Lecture 14: Lecture March 20
9 Jun 2018
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ENGL 409, Lecture March 20, 2018
Death of a Lady’s Man cont.
The Price of this Book
- Wants our money
- Prevent his lives from jamming together and crushing him when we buy his books
- Heard about high hopes a lot
- Aligning fatness with fame and celebrity in some way
o This fatness has something to do with complacency and passivity
- Being thin lines up with movement, spontaneity, freedom, mobility
- Has a razor blade and intends to end his life in art, yet he would not end his life in art
o He can die, his life in art goes on
- Change to different language
- We know that what we’re reading is a failure
o Had a project but not equal to the task of the book
o He had not realized his high hopes for the book
- What does being crushed mean here?
o External validation
o Paying into economy of celebrity that maintains the split self, maintains famous
persona
o Lust for ongoing split selfhood, and also real longing that that could be over
somehow
Impressions from the documentary
- Seemed intent on maintaining a consistency in himself
- Lot of language of “cheating myself” and language of failure
- Thought of whether he is performing authentically
- Seemed to be going back and forth wanting to be performing for people and finding that
same performance painful and unenjoyable
Another Room
- Phallic symbol of the pen
- Contending with desire to create and also his desire for this woman
- Turns on central ideas we’ve been discussing
- “The interior voice said…”
o P. 199 in Nadel biography – a friend named Asher says to Cohen in 1973, you
have to choose whether you’re going to be a lecher or a priest
o The interior voice is in some sense, Asher’s
- New twist on the travel paradigm
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Prevent his lives from jamming together and crushing him when we buy his books. Aligning fatness with fame and celebrity in some way: this fatness has something to do with complacency and passivity. Being thin lines up with movement, spontaneity, freedom, mobility. Has a razor blade and intends to end his life in art, yet he would not end his life in art: he can die, his life in art goes on. We know that what we"re reading is a failure: had a project but not equal to the task of the book, he had not realized his high hopes for the book. What does being crushed mean here: external validation, paying into economy of celebrity that maintains the split self, maintains famous persona, lust for ongoing split selfhood, and also real longing that that could be over somehow. Seemed intent on maintaining a consistency in himself. Lot of language of cheating myself and language of failure.
