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Author: Richard

Goya's The Third of May 1808
The Genealogy of Novels, Or Zoom And Enhance As Working Method

The Genealogy of Novels, Or Zoom And Enhance As Working Method

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Pierre Bezukhov is condemned to be executed by firing squad –
In book four of War And Peace –
As a result of:
‘…the system, the concatenation of circumstances…’
A process we associate with Kafka.
Tolstoy presents the episode as an uncanny comedy.
A mode also found in Kafka.
Not least in The Trial.
So uncertainly amusing is the sequence in War that we fail to notice that Pierre benefits from a boy’s own adventure resolution.
He was shunted into the firing line by an arbitrary turn of fate.
But was delivered from it via an equally random zigzagging.
All of it supports Tolstoy’s thesis –
Made explicit in the intercalary chapters –
That human affairs are governed by destiny’s whimsy.
Kafka would turn the process on its head.
Have K put down due to a bureaucratic mix-up.
Rather than delivered from same by same.
Kafka was a fan of Tolstoy.
It’s not impossible, then, that he was inspired by the episode.
So much so that he developed an entire genre out of it.
Treated it as a mission statement.
So, realised its full potential.
Became its genetic offshoot.
In the genealogy of novels.

Mr. Creosote
Fulsome Praise For Flat Characters

Fulsome Praise For Flat Characters

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‘It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings.’
I used to believe that this was true.
Plainly.
Now, that it is untrue.
Obviously.
At least, I hope that’s the case.
Otherwise, soon we’ll all be serial-killer groupies.
Mob wives.
Nazi sympathisers.
Why?
Well, without trying, we can’t help but absorb –
Read/see/hear –
Every aspect of these globular characters’ histories.

Clara Bow – Greek Theatre Masks
Auteur Actor! Acteur!

Auteur Actor! Acteur!

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There is a line of actor whose presence in a picture serves as a litmus.
Hinting at its likely nature and quality.
Inspiring a potential audience to expect a film that’s interesting.
Different.
Recent exemplars?
Paul Dano.
Mamoudou Athie.
Kirsten Stewart.
Follow them for what they bring to a role.
Also, for what role they bring it to.

Ferrari 812 Superfast and Little Tikes Cozy Coupe
Deserving Versus Undeserving Pride

Deserving Versus Undeserving Pride

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Pride in all its forms is vanity.
What we’d like to proclaim is that the finest creature to be –
Coincidentally –
Fortuitously –
Is me.
We can’t bring this off.
Not convincingly anyway.
So, we do the next best thing.
Hint that the ideal is to be is a creature like me.
Born and raised in my neighborhood.
Believing what I believe.
Occupying themselves just the way I do.
Et cetera.
Such that a disinterested party might reason:
Born and raised there –
Believing that –
Occupied thus –
Wait a minute –
That’s you, isn’t it?
Obviating the need to declare:
Even if fate hadn’t created me as it did –
Hadn’t placed me in this physiological vessel –
Awarded me this timespace –
I’d have selected it all anyway –
Out of every option on the planet –
Throughout all of history.
WHY SELF-ISHNESS?
Self is what we take pride in most.
The simple realisation that others aren’t us.
This is why we regard them coolly.
They’re a breathing riposte to our supremacy.
An organic argument against our way being the high way.
How to assert our validity?
Take pride in our life choices.
Though it would be truer to say that they choose us than we them.
That none of us do any of the things we do without uninvited inspiration.
Nevertheless, pride vindicates our choices.
Gives us motive to go on.

Wagner-Noose-Shakespeare
The Transit of Genius

The Transit of Genius

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‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.’
Andy Warhol didn’t say.
He said something like it, allegedly.
But no one is sure what he meant by it.
What he might have said – less ambiguously – was:
In the past, everyone was fabulous for fifteen years.

Fireflies
The Flies Will Not Replace Us!

The Flies Will Not Replace Us!

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‘Unite the bright! Unite the bright!’
Two hundred and fifty million glow-worms had heeded the call to oppose the rising tide of darkness.
‘Bright lives matter! Bright lives matter!’
At first, they floated about the walls of heaven-on-earth anti-clockwise.
‘Blood and chalk! Blood and chalk!’