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The Replicant Real, Part II

In a culture on the brink of absolute psychosis, the voodoo-magic of a weaponized peace is cantilevered over the abyss of nowhere is safe. It’s a devastating exchange of intolerable sadness and despair, for the mask of hysteria is normalized at the very limits of what it is to be human, or human as we’ve known it.

Part II of “The Replicant Real,” an essay by Jeff Wood.

Modern Times

A friend of mine once asked me why I had gotten so excited about a new Cathy Sweeney story appearing in the Dublin Review. I think I said that it was because her writing is “properly perverse”. Up until my friend grimaced and looked away down at their shoes, the natural fact that this would mean different things to different people hadn’t really occurred to me. I think maybe they thought I was saying Sweeney was a pervert, or calling myself one. I don’t know, and anyway the subject was changed quickly.

Christopher DeVeau reviews Cathy Sweenet‘s Modern Times.

The Limits of Love

The narrative mode shifts between Jon and Vibeke’s streams of consciousness from one paragraph to the next with no dividing spaces. The effect is one of confinement and proximity, at once marking their inevitable closeness and persisting distance. If reading too quickly, one might lose track of which character the paragraph relates to, demanding a zooming attention similar to that which Vibeke brings to her nails, her outfit and in her projections, perhaps deployed to direct herself away from the reality at hand. But while Jon is largely absent from Vibeke’s mind, Jon is very much driven by the expectation of being reunited.

Denise Rose Hansen reviews Hanne Ørstavik‘s Love.

Alive and Sane: An Interview with Alex Niven

There was brief period of time when a genuine and tight-knit avant-garde was able to develop around critical theory and pop-cultural analysis, with Mark Fisher acting as the main focal point and driving force. Like all avant-gardes, it faded and scattered over time, but that doesn’t mean that the internet is now devoid of good writing and commentary. As I say in the book, writing these days is more overtly political, which is generally a good thing.

Oscar Mardell interviews Alex Niven about New Model Island.

The Camera Obscura of Gerald Murnane

Murnane is able to continue writing and publishing fiction because the writing itself continually negotiates its terms in increasingly complex layers of digressive self-exploration. The inspiration for this kind of essayistic writing is not Montaigne, who declared “I myself am the subject of my book”—though the rhyming of Murnane with Montaigne would likely be of interest to the writer for whom names carry kabbalistic significance—but Proust, with echoes of postmodernists Calvino and Borges, and metaphysical support from Alfred Jarry.

Dan Shurley reviews Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs by Gerald Murnane.

The Replicant Real

“I think I swallowed a bug,” Brando announces. He had. And I had. There was no difference, in those looping late-night moments, between what was happening on the screen behind my eyelids or in front of them. Apocalypse Now had crossed the blood brain barrier of the symbolic and fictional real, just as The Day After had done, and Blade Runner would eventually do in the looping future of itself that has lasted until precisely now.

In the first installment of a two-part essay, Jeff Wood considers how we arrived at our hall-of-mirrors world through an exploration of film and television.

In the Basement of the Islamic Revolution and Holy Defense Museum

Later, at the restaurant beside the stream the women removed their head scarves.
“It’s safe here to do this. The owner supports us. There are many places like this in Tehran,” Mahsa said.
She spoke about the so-called “White Wednesdays” sparked by Masih Alinejad, where women post Instagrams of themselves in public places without head scarves, and how things had moved beyond that now so that in certain public parks and even bazaars this is tolerated, not just on Wednesdays.
Then she said: “I would normally remove mine here in this restaurant but I’m not going to because you’re here and I don’t want to be some stereotype for you.”

By Nicholas Rombes.

The Sensation of Taboo: An Interview with Susan Orlean

3:AM Magazine: Why did you decide to burn an actual book as part of your research?

Susan Orlean: Well, for two reasons. Number one is that, because I was writing about 400,000 books being burned, it seemed important and useful to actually see it so that I could have a visual reference. But really more to the point, I was very curious about the sensation of taboo and the thought that this was something that felt really transgressive. I was curious whether that was something I was imagining or whether it was true that the idea of burning books was so wrong. I wanted to push myself and assess the level of comfort or discomfort that I had about it.

Thomas Phillips interviews Susan Orlean.

Talking Lucy Ives’ The Hermit

OK. Back to what we were imagining. Imagine that you, the professor, decides to say something that isn’t about The Hermit by Lucy Ives, just to see if student X will continue to write in her notebook. For instance, what if you, the professor, decides to describe to the class student X taking notes as if it was part of the lecture.

So,

you look at student X, making notes, and you say, “She draws a line.” Perhaps, then, you describe her appearance: “She wears pale pink. She’s sickening in her youth, mouth an overripe strawberry and big, plain teeth.”

By Adam Golaski.

The city alight

In Paris, many praise the architectural ingenuity of Georges-Eugène Haussmann for providing the city with its iconic beauty in the 1800’s. We are encouraged to marvel at the uniformity, the rows of windows and sandstone fronts. It is a source of pride for the Parisian and something we are expected to be thankful for.

The history behind the transformation of Paris, however, is a violent one. Haussmann, working with Napoleon III, ran grand boulevards through shanty towns, evicting the residents outside of the city he envisaged—beyond the outer circle. Haussmann was selective about who he unified and at best careless about those who suffered as a result. Working class areas were divided to make it easier for the military to quell uprisings. ‘Clean water and fresh air’, was the project sold to the people; though not without thousands of them being displaced.

By Joshua Kepreotis.