I am tired of “new writing” and of “powerful new novelists.” I am tired of today’s new people; I am tired of their lives, of their tastes, their reading, their language, their singing, their sedatives and their psychiatrists, their houses, their furniture, and their faces.
(via Bookslut)
That’s magnificent. It’s from Margaret Anderson, who I’d never heard of until this morning because I’m rubbish. She founded and ran an influential avant-garde literary magazine, which at one point was at one point the subject of a good ol’-fashioned book-burnin’ after they published the first few chapters of Ulysses. Another time, Anderson published a completely blank issue of the magazine, on the basis that nobody was writing anything worth a damn. What a champion.
… so but anyway, now you may fearlessly shout at passers-by about how tiresome and annoying their faces are, safe in the knowledge that you come from a fine pedigree. And isn’t that all we ever really wanted.
Publishing a blank ‘something’ is both ballsy and pretentious (and dangerously close to pointless). I can see the relevance of it, unfortunately it reminds me of Welsh band Juno, who released an album featuring a song called ‘Silence’, which was a 60 second track of…
The hippy in me is clashing with the Arts student in me.
The hippy cries about such a waste of paper and how heartless Anderson must have been to slaughter trees to make a point that may have been missed by the average Joe and the Arts student applauds her and agrees that there is an awful lot of shite out there and it deserved a protest.
I’m not sure who wins here
There’s a short story by Dave Eggers called ‘There are some things he should keep to himself’ that is simply a few blank pages. It was hard not to put down my book and say “Dude, did I just fucking pay you for this?”