Activity

A distinction of Frege, a Wittgenstein-era titan: to mention a word or phrase is to speak about it, w/ at least implicit quotation marks: e.g., "Kate" is a four-letter name; to use a word or phrase is to mention its referent: e.g., Kate is by default the main character of Wittgenstein's Mistress.

[...] Serious, real, conscientious, aware, ambitious art is not a grey thing. It has never been a grey thing and it is not a grey thing now. This is why fiction in a grey time may not be grey. And why the titles of all but one or two of the best works of Neiman Marcus Nihilism are going to induce…

[...] Of course it's true that an unprecedented number of young Americans have big disposable incomes, fine tastes, nice things, competent accountants, access to exotic intoxicants, attractive sex partners, and are still deeply unhappy. All right. Some good fiction has held up a mercilessly powder-…

[...] The refracted world of Proust and Musil, Schulz and Stein, Borges and Faulkner has, post-War, exploded into diffraction, a weird, protracted Manhattan Project staffed by Robbe-Grillet, Grass, Nabokov, Sorrentino, Bohl, Barth, McCarthy, García Márquez, Puig, Kundera, Gass, Fuentes, Elkin, Dono…

[...] The climate for the "next" generation of American writers--should we decide to inhale rather than die--is aswirl with what seems like long-overdue appreciation for the weird achievements of such aliens as Husserl, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Lacan, Barthes, Poulet, Gadamer, de Man. The demise of Stru…