In Memoriam - James Graham Ballard

While it was not a big shock - he was sick for some time now, I am deeply saddened. We always had the next novel to look forward to; now there is less light in the world.

Ballardian corralles the tributes - Owen Hatherly and Mark Fisher (in Part 4) are characteristically thoughtful.

And Steven Shapiro beats me to the punch here. I think that Ballard's last four novels are a sort of auto-critique, especially the self-referential Kingdom Come which received horrible reviews. It is especially sad that Ballard's last novel (a painful, painful phrase) should have been so universally panned; somebody's sorry now, I should think.

In Memoriam - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

This is quite sad really - 58 years old seems awfully young, and she had far more books in her. Her essay on Proust is unparalleled, I think, and Epistemology of the Closet remains one of the most compelling books on Queer theory - convoking (rather than oppossing) Literature and Life.

Wierdly enough, I was wondering just the other week what she had been up to of late.

Mirth and Decay, in that order

via Poetix:

Q: How many Deleuzians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: There is no need: the lightbulb is already a permanent flux of becoming. To dream of changing it is to dream of violence: a meaningless putsch that would only replace one lightbulb with another. Rather, we should seek to liberate the incandescent intensity of its illumination - we still do not know what a lightbulb can be.

Well, I thought it was funny.....

Also, Elminative Culinarism on the politics of decay! Right on!!

Also, I am putting the twit back into twittering. We'll see how that goes.