As a writer who predominately learned the craft through the careful study of authorial techniques in stories I’ve read, it grows progressively difficult to read (or otherwise consume) narratives, as the majority use only a small handful of techniques so that, within the first five pages or five minutes, you already know exactly where the [...]
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The other day for the final in my Lectures in Literature class on adaptation, I wrote an essay that managed to articulate ways in which myths can be lived by the people who tell them. As opposed to someone like Milton, who uses mythological themes and characters in an old way, that is, as historical [...]
In the 1940s, when Alejandro Carpentier developed his concept of Marvelous Realism, it was in response to the European Surrealists, who he saw as trying to hold onto an Old World magic that was rapidly vanishing into the logic of modernity. The New World, however, Carpentier felt, was still a fertlie ground for the exploration [...]
Over the decades I’ve been studying mythology I’ve looked at and rejected a number of definitions of what myth is and does. First off, the common notion that myth = falsehood doesn’t do very much for us, and is a relatively recent perspective stemming from the late 18th century move toward literal interpretation with the [...]
“What was unreal is real, what was real is unreal.” -Jung, from the Red Book Prior to the fantastic experiences he would later illuminate as the Red Book, Carl Jung considered himself a wholly rational man, a trained scientist and critic of Christianity and other forms of religiosity. Yet through his visionary adventures he was [...]
Yesterday I took a break from working on the novel and got into two separate conversations with friends who write, who both said that they’ve been having difficulty with their writing practices of late. Over the past year I’ve managed to hone my own writing practice into a highly effective juggernaut, so it seemed that [...]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Since the other week when I wrote that essay on doppelgängers and the doubles of ourselves created by our self-representations it seems that issue has been finding greater traction on the Internet. As Klint Finley from Technoccult points out, there has apparently been much heated discussion on various occult forums about what constitutes a “hypersigil.” [...]
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Ever since I was a child I have had a contrary streak several light years long. First manifesting in a refusal to do household chores (at least until the day my mother poured a shocking jug of water over my head for not setting the table), I soon graduated into the typical adolescent rebellions of [...]
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Still preparing to dive into “The Red Book,” I reread Jung’s essay, “The Transcendent Function,” in which he describes the technique that he used for his process of self-experimentation, a method for consciously delving into the subconscious and uniting them, which was also the practice he recommended to patients in order to continue working on [...]
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I haven’t written much yet publicly on the new perspective or belief system I have been attempting to formulate over this past year, a perspective that I call Ultimate Realism, which is perhaps best summed up by the quote from Patchen’s Memoirs of a Shy Pornogrpaher: “Everything which man can imagine, dream, or conceivably want [...]
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Also tagged apocalyptica, atheism, belief, Clothey, critical theory, culture, fantastic, history, imagination, literature, manifestoes, modernity, Patchen, personal narrative, philosophy, religion, space, Ultimate Realism
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