Matt,
Thank you for your kind appraisal of my writing style, though truth be told buddy I think you're giving me more credit than is due. After all, you're the one who is pursuing a masters in this craft so I'm hardly one to critique your own writing style, which by the way I hope to get a more in depth exposure to the intricacies of Matt thorough your prose. You make me sound like Moses, Einstein, and Galileo all rolled up into one autonomous whole. Voltaire and Rousseau (again with the French!) I am not and only a few short paragraphs does not a writer make.
In response to my penchant for the obscure, this is merely incidental. I've always believed that this reveals my true personality in the purest light. Nowhere have I drawn more inspiration and direction to the very scope and utility of my obscure nature than in the 1975 film version of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka is superlatively well done down to the twisted verbiage and non sequiturs from the myriad of literary references from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde. Odgen Nash, John Masefield, and John Keats, who might have otherwise been relegated to literary obscurity by today's tech-savvy youth where the printed word is itself becoming obscure, have been forever incapsulated in this celluloid fragment of cinematic achievement. It's from such very obscure references like these, from films and books, poetry in particular, where the obscure becomes the material and the material becomes immaterial. The one constant vestage of my prose is that is will always be "clear as mud." Clear as mud. That's not just prose and poetry, that's life with it's cascading contradictions and complications. Thank God nothing is simple and easy. What would we write about? I ask you that.
To the matter of my French tastes. Well the first serious books I ever read, while everyone else was reading Tolkien and Rowling, I was reading Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, Maupassant, Sand, ect. I was, if not a true great, great, great, great grandson of the Enlightenment, I was at least a virgining one. That, and I like French cooking for which I can think of no better reason to obtain a mastery of the French vernacular than for the mastery of French cuisine. I have always wanted to see wanton Paris. The city is inseparable to the country itself: elegance, effervescence, the very definition of refinement. From Versailles to the Vergennes. The only other revolution I admire more than ours and the French is the Russian. It is from that vantage and the tragedy from the assasination of the Romanovs in that clandestine cellar in a merchant's house in Ekaterinburg in the summer before the Great War ended, that I immersed myself in the flagrant genius of the Russian tome. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy notwithstanding, their poetry rivaled only by that of the powerful music of Tsychaikovsky and Glazuov recalling the ripeness of the Russian soil. Tom Clancy can only give you techno-thrillers and Soviet glorification. I'd rather have the Russian empire and her Romanovs. Bohze Tsarya Khrani (God Save the Tsar).
The third aspect of my prose comes from the fact that all writers are historians just as all historians are writers. No greater understanding of story telling and record keeping is unsurpassed than in the lexicon of historical language. The past gives us the anchor in the centrifuge of the present. Remember the epoch from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "A civilization cannot be conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
Writers of today are the scribes of the present. We must never cease our vigil, not even briefly, for we may enter into the fearful state of complacent intellect. The greatest wisdom we can obtain from this lesson is that humans are an amnesiac lot.
Thanks again for your encouagement. Hope this is what you wanted. I haven't written anything in years. I'm a little rough and unpracticed, so I'll be obliged if you and our readers will indulge me a little.
-John
Larry King
Larry King is a gentleman of honest mind. And a gentleman always knows when to leave. Mr. King, from the depths of our faithful hearts, we extend warm affections, sincere gratitude, and large respects. Thank you and good luck. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Dear John,
I am glad to see your second response to my Baudrillard question... that was getting much closer to what I would like to do with this blog. (Namely, to explore -in depth- the nature of being as witnessed through your eyes)
Anyway, I encourage you to "go to town" with your responses. Our readers certainly expect a certain level of personality from your writing. I would hate to disappoint them.
Before we trek on, I would like to talk about your writing style. I have noticed that you have a pension for three things: the obscure, the French, and the historical. Sometimes you combine all of these into an explosion of literary merit that astounds me.
Would you care to explain your interests, in terms of writing, and how you craft your prose? Write as you would please! I would even encourage you to pick apart and annotate your writing (a la David Foster Wallace) so our readers get a better view of the intricacies of John.
Best,
Matt
I am glad to see your second response to my Baudrillard question... that was getting much closer to what I would like to do with this blog. (Namely, to explore -in depth- the nature of being as witnessed through your eyes)
Anyway, I encourage you to "go to town" with your responses. Our readers certainly expect a certain level of personality from your writing. I would hate to disappoint them.
Before we trek on, I would like to talk about your writing style. I have noticed that you have a pension for three things: the obscure, the French, and the historical. Sometimes you combine all of these into an explosion of literary merit that astounds me.
Would you care to explain your interests, in terms of writing, and how you craft your prose? Write as you would please! I would even encourage you to pick apart and annotate your writing (a la David Foster Wallace) so our readers get a better view of the intricacies of John.
Best,
Matt
I'm an Idiot
Dude, I just realized what you were asking me. Clearly the years have only made me more dense and naive. Sorry.
Well to start, I'm a regular guy, like most people. I never went to college for the simply reason that I'm not nearly as keenly intelligent or sensible as most other people. I'm slightly clever so that gives me a barely passable edge. So I guess that makes me a copy of an exact replica of something almost completely identical.
I never married, nor have I ever made a concerted effort to find a companion for the equally simple reason is that I'm astoundingly selfish, conceited, and a little self absorbed. I also have intimacy issues, but I think that's just incidental. In short, I think that sex is primarily for hookers and syphyilitics.
Politically I'm moderate, socially I'm awkward, intellectually retarded, laden with enough moral fiber to feed the entire African continent. Not a deep, abstract thinker, although God knows I try. (You say my previous efforts, again clear as mud.)
Dude I really hope that this sorta kinda answers your question.
-John
Well to start, I'm a regular guy, like most people. I never went to college for the simply reason that I'm not nearly as keenly intelligent or sensible as most other people. I'm slightly clever so that gives me a barely passable edge. So I guess that makes me a copy of an exact replica of something almost completely identical.
I never married, nor have I ever made a concerted effort to find a companion for the equally simple reason is that I'm astoundingly selfish, conceited, and a little self absorbed. I also have intimacy issues, but I think that's just incidental. In short, I think that sex is primarily for hookers and syphyilitics.
Politically I'm moderate, socially I'm awkward, intellectually retarded, laden with enough moral fiber to feed the entire African continent. Not a deep, abstract thinker, although God knows I try. (You say my previous efforts, again clear as mud.)
Dude I really hope that this sorta kinda answers your question.
-John
Response to Introduction
First off all, I would like to thank Matt for the creation of this blog and his subsequent invitation for me to join him.
Now Matt has posted what has got to be the most astoundingly profound question I have ever seen which requires an equally epic response. Having a very limited capacity for abstract thought, I shall try my best to answer, although not surprisingly, I'll probably miss the intended point altogether, but here it goes. If I get it wrong, Matt, we can always blame the vapors of boiling mercury on my desk which is unduly responsible for my lunacy.
To the matter of truth. To paraphrase a quote about love from La Rochefoucauld: "Truth cannot be found where it does not truly exist, nor can it be hidden from where it truly does." Meaning simply that truth serves only a world which lives by it. In terms of the simulacrum, I have no idea how this fits into it. A simulacrum is a copy of a copy of a copy. Basically a hologram of a hologram of a mirrored image of an imaginary thing.
I know this is as clear as mud, but such is life, and perhaps the human quest fro truth itself. Always seeking and never sought. Hope this helps.
John
P.S. Matt, thanks for the editorial note. I have a bad habit of not breaking up compound thoughts, which if we were, say, German, it wouldn't be so bad, lol.
Now Matt has posted what has got to be the most astoundingly profound question I have ever seen which requires an equally epic response. Having a very limited capacity for abstract thought, I shall try my best to answer, although not surprisingly, I'll probably miss the intended point altogether, but here it goes. If I get it wrong, Matt, we can always blame the vapors of boiling mercury on my desk which is unduly responsible for my lunacy.
To the matter of truth. To paraphrase a quote about love from La Rochefoucauld: "Truth cannot be found where it does not truly exist, nor can it be hidden from where it truly does." Meaning simply that truth serves only a world which lives by it. In terms of the simulacrum, I have no idea how this fits into it. A simulacrum is a copy of a copy of a copy. Basically a hologram of a hologram of a mirrored image of an imaginary thing.
I know this is as clear as mud, but such is life, and perhaps the human quest fro truth itself. Always seeking and never sought. Hope this helps.
John
P.S. Matt, thanks for the editorial note. I have a bad habit of not breaking up compound thoughts, which if we were, say, German, it wouldn't be so bad, lol.
An Introduction
Dear John,
Jean Baudrillard spoke much of simulation and simulacra. This is wherein a real thing is reproduced, and then the reproductions are reproduced.
Please explain your life, who you are, and your viewpoint in the world in terms of this Baudrillard quote:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
Editorial Note: John, I notice you tend to favor long stream-of-consciousness style prose. For the sake of readability for our much loved readers, could you break up your writing into thoughtful paragraphs?
Hoping to hear back soon,
Matt
Jean Baudrillard spoke much of simulation and simulacra. This is wherein a real thing is reproduced, and then the reproductions are reproduced.
Please explain your life, who you are, and your viewpoint in the world in terms of this Baudrillard quote:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
Editorial Note: John, I notice you tend to favor long stream-of-consciousness style prose. For the sake of readability for our much loved readers, could you break up your writing into thoughtful paragraphs?
Hoping to hear back soon,
Matt
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