About Me
- M. F. McAuliffe
- Portland, Oregon, United States
- Co-founder, co-editor of Gobshite Quarterly and Reprobate/GobQ Books
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Ragtags & bobtails - bits of 2020
1. Allergic to Harold Bloom
Looked at the table of contents for Harold Bloom’s How To Read And Why – no Judith Wright. From the second Sargent began talking about it I knew there wouldn’t be. Yank additions & the Euro cannon.
Bloom says he is writing for the solitary reader, “the reader with one candle.” I suppose he means people who read desperately, for their lives, who are so poor or constricted as to only have one candle, as it were, one source of nourishment, one focus, one lifeline out of circumstance. He says that, from time to time, people like that have written to him in gratitude and he was “so moved he was unable to reply.”
Really, dude?
Not to a single one?
Your whole life?
Not one postcard with “Thank you” scrawled in the blank spot?
No wonder you haven't read Judith Wright.
(Why do we leave these judgements to arseholes?)
2. Reading Shakespeare’s Wife
The most shocking phrase: people too poor to have names.
Even taking apart the few of his sonnets I have taken apart phrase by phrase, I’ve come to the conclusion that what Shakespeare had was a huge variety of experience, stunningly clear perception and absolutely unparalleled access to his own processing. His whole body registered an experience, any experience, and translated it verbally, exactly, instantly.
… drops his knotted root – is a serial observation of the cross-section of a weed; you see it as he saw it and registered it, from the top down, in sequence.
Tolstoy has something of the same gift, all those graduated descriptions of the transition from one state of mind to another, from feeling to perception to motive to decision.
3. Colm Toibin, The House of Names
The difference between tragedy and grand guignol is that tragedy doesn’t include the forensics. I swear to God the next thing I’ll read is The Cambridge History of Music, Volume I.
Looked at the table of contents for Harold Bloom’s How To Read And Why – no Judith Wright. From the second Sargent began talking about it I knew there wouldn’t be. Yank additions & the Euro cannon.
Bloom says he is writing for the solitary reader, “the reader with one candle.” I suppose he means people who read desperately, for their lives, who are so poor or constricted as to only have one candle, as it were, one source of nourishment, one focus, one lifeline out of circumstance. He says that, from time to time, people like that have written to him in gratitude and he was “so moved he was unable to reply.”
Really, dude?
Not to a single one?
Your whole life?
Not one postcard with “Thank you” scrawled in the blank spot?
No wonder you haven't read Judith Wright.
(Why do we leave these judgements to arseholes?)
2. Reading Shakespeare’s Wife
The most shocking phrase: people too poor to have names.
Even taking apart the few of his sonnets I have taken apart phrase by phrase, I’ve come to the conclusion that what Shakespeare had was a huge variety of experience, stunningly clear perception and absolutely unparalleled access to his own processing. His whole body registered an experience, any experience, and translated it verbally, exactly, instantly.
… drops his knotted root – is a serial observation of the cross-section of a weed; you see it as he saw it and registered it, from the top down, in sequence.
Tolstoy has something of the same gift, all those graduated descriptions of the transition from one state of mind to another, from feeling to perception to motive to decision.
3. Colm Toibin, The House of Names
The difference between tragedy and grand guignol is that tragedy doesn’t include the forensics. I swear to God the next thing I’ll read is The Cambridge History of Music, Volume I.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
The Things My Hands Do
sweep and wash the floors
scrub the tracks for the shower doors and the sliding door to the back, scrub the doorframes, scrub the shower doors
scrub the toilets, the bath, the shower stall, scrub the counters, clean the hairbrushes and combs, clean the mirrors
clean the stove, bleach the sinks
put and take dishes into and out of the dishwasher, put them away
put and do and take and fold the washing
clean the doors and doorknobs
clean the window gutters
sweep the stairs
rake the front garden, water and weed the front and back, water the inside plants
take the rubbish down to the bins, take the bins out and bring them in
clean the kitty litter, buy and haul the kitty litter, cleaner, bleach
vacuum inside, vacuum the car, empty the vacuum cleaner, recharge it and put it back together
clean the keyboards and screens and mice
handle the mail and the banking, the endless tracking of small sums of money
they do this as though Trump isn’t raving, as though the ice-shelves aren’t breaking
scrub the tracks for the shower doors and the sliding door to the back, scrub the doorframes, scrub the shower doors
scrub the toilets, the bath, the shower stall, scrub the counters, clean the hairbrushes and combs, clean the mirrors
clean the stove, bleach the sinks
put and take dishes into and out of the dishwasher, put them away
put and do and take and fold the washing
clean the doors and doorknobs
clean the window gutters
sweep the stairs
rake the front garden, water and weed the front and back, water the inside plants
take the rubbish down to the bins, take the bins out and bring them in
clean the kitty litter, buy and haul the kitty litter, cleaner, bleach
vacuum inside, vacuum the car, empty the vacuum cleaner, recharge it and put it back together
clean the keyboards and screens and mice
handle the mail and the banking, the endless tracking of small sums of money
they do this as though Trump isn’t raving, as though the ice-shelves aren’t breaking
Monday, May 4, 2020
Ain't no mountain high enough
He's always been beyond contempt. This is criminally negligent, or was: he's been so "incompetent" at this for so long it takes the "involuntary" out of involuntary manslaughter and takes the manslaughter out of the murder by means of indifference &/or malice aforethought.
To date 60,000+ counts of...
Through repeated acts of blindness & refusal to act; through repeated orders to hijack, sequester and hide medical supplies ordered, paid for & en route to various states (what is he going to do with millions of masks?); through refusal to attend task force briefings and/or answer questions; through hucksterism of snake-oil "cures;" through advocating self-treatment with household bleach; through support for the anti-lockdown protests, he has become the mass murderer of US citizens & residents on the mainland.
Ain't no Nuremberg big enough; ain't no Guantanamo bleak enough.
From the first thing he ever said, from his descent down an elevator to a crowd he had paid to joyously stand at its foot (his feet); from his refusal to send aid to Puerto Rico, there never was.
To date 60,000+ counts of...
Through repeated acts of blindness & refusal to act; through repeated orders to hijack, sequester and hide medical supplies ordered, paid for & en route to various states (what is he going to do with millions of masks?); through refusal to attend task force briefings and/or answer questions; through hucksterism of snake-oil "cures;" through advocating self-treatment with household bleach; through support for the anti-lockdown protests, he has become the mass murderer of US citizens & residents on the mainland.
Ain't no Nuremberg big enough; ain't no Guantanamo bleak enough.
From the first thing he ever said, from his descent down an elevator to a crowd he had paid to joyously stand at its foot (his feet); from his refusal to send aid to Puerto Rico, there never was.
Friday, May 1, 2020
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Strange Attractors
It seems to be out of print, Alan Garner's Red Shift. Which is a shame. Its Roman Britain sections catch the utter weirdness of imperial collapse. Its glimpses into the idolization of any local egregiousness afterwards are creepy and horrifying: Delinquent & murderous nutjobs become the strange attractors of chaos. Like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, whose internalized imperial order has collapsed, they are creepy, horrifying, and terrifying.
Collapse empowers them, so strange or insane they’d never be heard from otherwise, attractive because they offer certainty in completely uncertain times.
Caveat emptor.
Collapse empowers them, so strange or insane they’d never be heard from otherwise, attractive because they offer certainty in completely uncertain times.
Caveat emptor.
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