Robert Sharp

David Foster Wallace in San Francisco, 2006. Photo by Steve Rhodes

I’ve taken the plunge and started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, using the Infinite Summer blog as a handy pacemaker and reading aide to what I am beginning to understand is a supremely complex book.

It’s only annoying if you look at the novel as a code to crack, if you see everything as a clue.
- Marcus Sakey: ‘Decoding Infinite Jest; or, Don’t’

The first similarity I’ve noticed is between Infinite Jest, and Attempts on Her Life by Martin Crimp, a play I know intimiately after working on it at the National Theatre back in the ‘07.  The chapter beginning on page 27 of the book is written in a style highly reminiscent of several of scenes in Crimp’s play.  I noticed it when the phrase “quote-unquote” popped up in the dialogue.  It is utilised in a similar manner in both pieces, to convey a certain official or professional manner, a style of speaking that prentends to be disinterested, but it actually quite hostile.  From there, it was pleasing to see that the chapter follows a similar structure to a couple of scenes from Attempts.  The characters actually present describe another by means of a list that becomes an incantation of sorts, who said x or who did y:

“Who requires only daily evidence that you speak…

“Who used to pray daily for the day his own dear late father would sit, cough, open that bloody issue of the Tuscon Citizen, and not turn that newspaper into the room’s fifth wall. “

Compared with Attempts on Her Life:

Is this the same little Anne who now has witnesses breaking down in tears? …

Who screwed tiny mechanisms and mercury tilt switches to a mercury circuit board, with a mouth of deep pan pizza?

Another major parallel is in the structure.  Like Infinite Jest, Crimp’s Attempts is not a code to be cracked.  The seventeen or so ‘attempts’ are not related to each other, plotwise, although certain refrains and themes return more than once.  It remains to be seen whether this happens with Foster Wallace’s book, but from what I have read (no spoilers, I’ve made sure of that) I am assuming this will be a feature, to some degree.   Marcus Sakey confirms its not a code to be cracked, at least.

And finally, I sense several themes emerging in Infinite Jest that are shared with Attempts:  A satire on commercialism and product placement; pretensiousness in modern art; women attempting suicide;  and above all, an attempt to describe a dissociation brought about by modern society.

Martin Crimp. Photo by Graeme Robertson

Evenin’ all. I wanted to make a quick point about certain global news stories, and the relative amount of news coverage given to each.

Its fashionable, yet incredibly easy to complain that the Michael Jackson death has crowded out news of other more pressing matters. Shawn Micallef sounded an early word of warning about this attitude:

There is no need to compare MJ & Iran - completely dif, just intersect on same medium, not a social/moral lesson to be learned.

Then (again via Twitter, though the link is now lost in the maelstrom) I came across this MJ/Election mash-up, and it occurred to me that coverage (be it on Twitter, blogs or the international MSM) is not a zero-sum game, and that coverage of one piece of news could promote awareness of another.

If you consider Jackson’s output, there are actually loads of other songs that could fit a revolutionary template. Songs like “Heal The World” and “You Are Not Alone” seemed (to me) quite sanctimonious and irritating when they were released. But with the passing of Michael Jackson, the self-congratulatory element to those tracks seems to dissipate. They’re now ripe for the picking as a backing track to some feel-good montages of the peaceful demonstrations in Tehran. “Earth Song”, “Black or White” and (going back a little bit further) “Man in the Mirror” also carry that We-Are-The-World vibe… as does, of course, “We Are The World”! They could all fill the role of unofficial theme-tune to a non-violent protest movement.

Too cheesy? Not one bit of it: The “Yes We Can” generation of political campaigners are unafraid of such accusations. Meanwhile, tracks like “Beat It” could accompany comedic images of Ahmedinejad and Khameni and Keyboard Cat.

I meant to post this last week, so I feel sure I am behind the curve on this one. Yet a quick search through YouTube doesn’t yield further examples. Let us know your favourites, either in the comments, or via the tips form, and maybe we’ll do a round-up or something.

+posted at Liberal Conspiracy. Comment there.

Apparently Twitter was pretty much overloaded with the news that Michael Jackson had died.  From Toronto, Shawn gets in an early word of warning:

There is no need to compare MJ & Iran - completely dif, just intersect on same medium, not a social/moral lesson to be learned.

Guy captures the mood:

im feeling weird about Jacko dying. he was too weird and too great and it feels strange.

Was surprises me, is that somehow I am not more surprised.  By the time I got to know his music in the late 1980s, he had Thriller behind him and was already stratospheric, categorized alongside other immortals like Elvis Presley. Horrible to think it, but a premature death seems somehow appropriate for the narrative, the modern folklore.

By flickr user fhashemi, reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Its frustrating to maintain a blog, yet fail to comment on some of the most potent stories of the moment.  Nothing doing here on the expenses row or the election of a new speaker.

Worse still, nothing on the ongoing protests and violence, following the recent disputed elections in Iran.  That’s not to say I’m not engaged with what is happening.  I’ve been following the pleas for help via the #iranelection tag on Twitter, and looking various photostreams on Flickr.

During the street protests that followed the Mumbai attacks, I said that social media has come of age.  But now, looking at the Iranian events, I worry about that.  First, we have seen that the network is still vulnerable to interference from governments.  And second, raising awareness of an event is not the same as establishing consensus, much less ensuring there is a critical mass of people for effective action.

I discussed this briefly in a post about the Burmese Monks protest (the short-lived “Saffron Revolution”) in September 2007.  Despite the use of the Internet as a co-ordination tool, it seems that critical mass - or, to be more precise, the right kind of critical mass - is still an elusive Pot of Gold.

Protesters assist a riot policeman in distress in Tehran

Seth Freedman posts a bolshy defence of vegetarianism, railing against fellow veggies who meekly apologise for their choice.  He takes no prisoners:

While vegetarianism is, of course, good for humanity in purely selfish terms (the land required to feed cattle bred for meat can be used to feed far more humans per square foot), the bare bones of the matter is that there is a serious moral deficiency in anyone who has no problem taking a creature’s life in order to fill their own stomach.

(Via Sunny on Twitter).

Hilariously, the article has gleaned a total of 648 comments and counting, with many a proud carnivore taking issue with Seth’s uncomprimising moral stance.

Their responses, while valid, stumble into a pitfall that is common in the bloggy landscape, that of a failure to ask the question who is the article for? Freedman makes it clear that he is complaining about the timidity of his fellow vegetarians, Hadley Freeman in particular, for whom calling meat-eating a “serious moral deficiency” is a persuasive and motivating argument.

One a separate note, is there not an analogy between arguments for carnivorism, and for religion? Carnivores often accept Freedman’s argument that the land required to feed cattle bred for meat can be used to feed far more humans per square foot, yet they still assert that they have a right to eat meat due to historical and cultural reasons: its always been this way, why should we change? Similarly, social conservatives give historical and cultural reasons to argue that religion should play a part, and have a moral claim over society, even though it is accepted that there are actually no factual basis for these claims: its always been this way, why should we change?

What’s interesting here is that the ‘no-nonsense’ types who scoff at vegetarians are often the same atheists who condescend to religious folk.  In one case, they think that the historical and cultural argument holds water; while in the other case they call it invalid.

I have to admit that I am an infuriating agnostic in both cases!  For domestic reasons, I’m a de facto veggie, without having actually made a firm and binding committment to myself!  And while I also consider myself an aetheist, offended and afraid of organised religion, I still think that faith, spirituality and even tradition serve a valuable purpose.

The Apollo Plus 40 Twitter Feed reminds me of the Orwell Diaries project.  Each pulls a piece of history forward to the present day, where you can experience it in real-time. (via Kottke).

My inner autistic feels slightly uneasy about the the disparity between dates and day.  For example, The Eagle Lunar Module landed on the moon at just after 8pm EDT, on 20th July 1969, which was a Sunday evening (see Mark’s Livingston’s date-to-day converter).  However, I’ll presumably be reading a tweet announcing “the Eagle has landed” late on the evening of Monday 20th July 2009.  Sunday nights and Monday nights feel very different.

The BBC screened couple of TV programmes a few years ago, Dateline Jerusalem and Bethlehem Year Zero, that operated on a similar timeshift concept for the Easter and Christmas stories.  Not quite real-time, though.  It strikes me as a new way to consume other types of art too:  perhaps reading the entire oeuvre of a given writer by purchasing their books exactly 40, or 50, or a 100 years after the initial publication.  Hansard, the Houses of Parliament archive, would be the perfect resource for an extended “on this day” type feed.

What’s freaky about the Internet, or specifically, the Internet where everyone uses permalinks, is that everything is already pre-archived, ready for this kind of treatment at a moment’s notice.  Many is the time when I have accidentally thought that an archived news story is happening at that moment.  With TV, film and radio, there are certain giveaways like picture and sound quality, colour balance, or even accents and pronounciation, which date the archived item.  In print, the age of the page is easy to discern, by the graphic design style if not by the yellowing of the parchment.  Meanwhile, the division of design and content on the Internet means that old text is constantly inserted into modern designs.

I’m not sure which I like best - going back in time to experience the sights and sounds of a forgotten era; or having the old narratives brought forward into a twenty-first century setting.  There’s room for both, of course, but different approaches conjour different feelings, and teach us different lessons.

If a blogger goes on holiday, and no-one reads his posts, does anyone notice?

Straight after the Oslo conference, a week in the sun.  There was no temptation to blog any thoughts while I was away, and only one or two brief tweets.  Its funny that, because blogging is an asynchronous medium, I’m only announcing I was away, now I’m back.

I really only mention this to contextualise further photo-blogs, with a Greek flavour, arriving later in the week.

Its been a bit quiet on the blog this week.  That’s because I’ve been at the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression in Oslo.  I’ve been using Twitter to log noteworthy nuggets from the seminars and speeches, and may add some more substantial thoughts later.

In the meantime, here’s a compelling cartoon from the artist Magnus Bard.  It features in the International Cartoon Exhibition, currently on show until 26th July at the Oscarsborg fortress in Oslo fjord.

My del.icio.us links: 18th May to 29th May

• Until Logic Did Them Apart - Definitive Case Against Gay Marriage Critics - Chait: “these arguments rest upon simple tautologies. Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others. … i.e., women’s suffrage makes voting less special for men.”
• Undercover - Recover a lost or stolen Mac or iPhone.
• Create iPhone ringtones using iTunes 8
• a little bit of future goes a long way - iPhone apps for using buses in London.
• A Field Guide To Freeway Interchanges - Fascinating description of motorway/freeway interchanges. I didn’t know they all had names. The Maryland Braid is my favourite.
• Visible Tweets - Twitter Visualisations, perfect for events and venues, I should think.
• The Book of Sand - Borges story in a pazzle, hyperlinked format.

(Generated by Postalicious)

I didn’t know that Salman Rushdie and Aung San Suu Kyi shared a birthday:

On this day, my birthday and yours, I always remember your long ordeal and silently applaud your endurance. This year, silence is impossible. It is not any action of yours, but your house arrest, which symbolizes the suppression of Burmese democracy, that is criminal. It is your trial, not your struggle, that is unjust. On this day, on every day, I am with you.

Rushdie’s message launches the Sixty-Four Words for Aung San Suu Kyi project. Citizens of the world are invited to leave a 64 word message for Aung San, in honour of her 64th birthday on 19th June. Alternatively, you can leave a 64 character twitter instead, using the hashtag #assk64.

http://64forsuu.com/

The project is led by the Burma Campaign UK and was created in only six days, which is a remarkable feat. In addition to Salman Rushdie, the site carries messages from Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and George Clooney. Why not add your message, and then let others know that you’ve done so?

Photographed at a press conference in her home, September 1996, after a government crackdown on her party. By flickr user taptaptap