DFW copy of Borges: A Life by Edwin Will

DFW copy of Borges: A Life by Edwin Will

First page handwritten draft of Infinite

First page handwritten draft of Infinite

DFW copy of Players by Don DeLillo

DFW copy of Players by Don DeLillo

✖ Via David Foster Wallace Archive at The Harry Ransom Center
“The Wallace materials are being processed and organized and will be available to researchers and the public in fall 2010. Some items from the archive can be viewed at www.hrc.utexas.edu/dfw, and a selection of materials will be on display in the Ransom Center’s lobby through April 9. High-resolution press images from the collection are available.” (more)

There’s a good overview of the archive and its story in the last edition of The New Yorker (subscription may be needed for full access).

David Foster Wallace is the author of Infinite Jest (1996). He died in 2008. Learn more about him on Wikipedia. Kottke has some suggestions for those who are planning to read The Infinite Jest.


↳Share Mar 10 notes art  author  novel  American  archive  ressource  book  life  biography 
art photo photographer private life city window observation girls nude night
✖ Via Yasmine Chatila: Stolen Moments series — “The Bathroom Girl”, City Hall, We 5:36 PM, 40”x50”, digital print on watercolor paper

Artist’s statement:

“On a quiet winter night, I looked out a window. I could see a building far away, the windows where illuminated, and I could vaguely make out people inside their apartments. When I imagined what they might be doing, my mind fluttered between wild fantasies and mundane clichés. I was curious to compare my expectations to the reality of their lives. After months of continuous observation in different parts of the city I collected hundreds of photographs of strange, comical, and often haunting moments. At times, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of human nature when it was not guarded, not self-conscious and completely uninhibited. This provided me with a stage where it was possible to observe myself in the most secret and vulnerable moments of others.” (read more).

See more press coverage for this specific series.


↳Share Mar 02  link  notes art  photo  photographer  private  life  city  window  observation  girls  nude  night 
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✖ Via Alyssa Monks: “Rabbit Ears”, 40”x60”, oil on linen, 2003

Previously on Skandalon


↳Share Feb 28  link  notes couple  everyday  kids  life  painter  painting  photorealism  realism  sex  technology  television  hyperrealism 
art technology communication economy animal human book author biology life illustration illustrator
✖ Via Beastness by David Jaclin (self-published, 2009). Cover illustration by Antoine Corbineau

Read an excerpt from the book (in French). Buy the book online. Check out David’s blog 10 Secondes Tigre.

“Beastness” is the contraction of “fitness” (in a biological sense) and “beast”. It’s the name David Jaclin gave to the evolution of the relationship’s economy (“business”) bonding humans and animals since the dawn of time to the present day.


↳Share Feb 26  link  notes art  technology  communication  economy  animal  human  book  author  biology  life  illustration  illustrator 

― I know it’s hard, Miles, but try to think of this experience as a miracle of science.
― A miracle of science is going to the hospital for a minor operation, I come out the next day, my rent isn’t months overdue. That’s a miracle of science. This is what I call a cosmic screwing. And then where am I anyhow? What happened to everybody? Where are all my friends?
― You must understand that everyone you knew in the past has been dead nearly two hundred years.
― BUT THEY ALL ATE ORGANIC RICE!
✖ Via Sleeper, Woody Allen, 1973

Full script available over at Script-O-Rama.



↳Share Feb 25  link  notes art  movie  film  filmmaker  future  science fiction  food  health  life  death  past  evolution 
technology communication drug ad vintage sex couple love life woman man humor
✖ Via Modern Mechanix: “Are You Giving Your Wife The Companionship She Craves?” (Inside Story, Jan. 1960

“YOU may be giving your wife all the love and care you are able to. You may have given her a good home, security, many of the conveniences all women yearn for. But is she completely satisfied? Are you giving her what she most expected on the day that you married her? Are you giving her the full companionship of the man she loves?

Or are you always “too tired” at the end of a day’s work? Do you come home from work with only the “leftovers” of your energy for your wife and family? Is time catching up with you too fast… at work, at play?” (read more).


↳Share Feb 14  link  notes technology  communication  drug  ad  vintage  sex  couple  love  life  woman  man  humor 
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✖ Via Comics: Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz (Original publish date Feb. 14, 1963)

Previously on Skandalon


↳Share Feb 13  link  notes art  comic  illustration  illustrator  love  alone  loneliness  lost  looser  pain  life  girls 

I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete―that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.
✖ Via The New Yorker, “Franny” by J.D. Salinger, Jan 29, 1955, pp. 34-35

↳Share Jan 30  link  notes art  author  story  loser  lost  nobody  nothing  dissatisfaction  life  fame  celebrity  subject  philosophy 
✖ Via The Rumble: “Muhammad Ali Tribute” by Gorilla Production

First discovered via Anathema Delight.


↳Share Jan 29 notes art  video  sport  boxing  history  celebrity  media  life  biography 

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my dashing being,
out comes the same old lazy self,
and so I never know just who I am,
nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

✖ Via “We Are Many” by Pablo Neruda, in We Are Many (poems), translated by Alastair Reid, Cape Goliard Press, 1967, Grossman (New York, NY), 1968.

More of Neruda’s poems online over at PoemHunter.com

Compare with An Evening With Mr. Teste by Paul Valery (French poet, essayist and philosopher):

“Stupidity is not my strong point. I have seen many persons; I have visited several nation; I have taken part in divers enterprises without affecting them; I have eaten nearly everyday; I have tampered with women. I now recall several hundred faces, two or three great events, and perhaps the substance of twenty books. I have not retained the best nor the worst of these things. What could stick, did.
This bit of arithmetic spares me surprise at getting old. I could also add up the victorious moments of my mind, and imagine them joined and soldered, composing a happy life… But I think I have always been a good judge of myself. I have rarely lost sight of myself; I have detested, and adored myself―and so, we have grown old together.

(from the Selected Writings of Paul Valery, tr. byJackson Mathews, New Directions Publishing, 1964, p. 236)

See also The Who’s album Quadrophenia



↳Share Jan 24  link  notes art  poem  poet  life  philosophy  identity  individuation  individu  subject  experience  self 

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