Perhaps good evidence for why realism is not just dead but in a state of advanced decay. But there are alternatives to realism that are not epics/fantasy. James Joyce's Ulysses uses formalist/Symbolist techniques to make a great adventure out of "bourgeois" life.

If Scotus and Husserl had first shown Heidegger that the nothing is not a mere nullity, Heidegger's phenomenological ontology will give it an unprecedented significance.

Malcolm Lowry

Nietzsche and Baudelaire

This is nonsense. Bolaño gives form to a generational experience of defeat, sought to capture the trampling of hopes and devastation of a whole generation under this cruelty. His pessimism has no “reflexive contrarianism”; even his criticism of the Left comes from the left.

I particularly like artists who express a collapsing personal life & morality (Bacon, Bataille, Burroughs, Cocteau, Artaud et al). Art exacerbates our flaws & transfigures them into pure intensities of affect, that’s why it exceeds us. It’s immanent to our flaws, not transcendent

Condemned to have a social life, born to read Schattenfroh while listening to Swans till 3am

Forthcoming: erratumpress.com/reliquary

just got punched in the face by sally rooney

What we seek is submerged and we should not seek it as it mocks us by its very undiscoverability. ― Hermann Broch, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘭 (translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer)

As August slips into September, nerves frayed and raw, I grasp at the silence between seasons, craving the restfulness of a fading year, and turn once more to pages that know me well: The Thirtieth Year by Ingeborg Bachmann. Tr. Michael Bullock. If you haven’t read it, please do.

Never in my life I have experienced a better sound production than on this one

Interesting to note that the claim Mccarthy read no fiction his last 40 years lines up almost perfectly with the period between Blood Meridian (1985) and ATPH (1992), which is when he seemed to consolidate his late minimalist style he'd write in for the rest of his career

“… only a suffocating, impossible ordeal can give an author the means of achieving that distant vision that a reader wearied by the narrow limits set by convention is waiting for. How can we linger over books to which the author was not obviously compelled?” (Bataille)

Immaculate vibes today

Odilon Redon, 𝘖𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘦́𝘦, c. 1903–10.

this is one of the funniest things i have read in my life. like being tickled with iron forceps

schulz's review said 'shadow ticket' had nothing to say about the present, and you guys were like, 'that's not his job!' but now ruby says it's a commentary on the present, and you guys are like, 'yeah, that's right, pynchon and ruby rule!' literature is not a team sport, dorks!