Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” is comprised of several short self-contained arguments explaining why the author is no longer an important part of literature. Quite possibly the weakest of his arguments is the one that states that the author is not important because he or she does not write him or herself into the […]
Reading notes: ‘Ectoplasm: photography in the digital age’ by Geoffrey Batchen — Digital Image and Culture
Reading notes Cambridge dictionary: Ectoplasm = a substance that is believed to surround ghosts and other creatures that are connected with spiritual activities Oxford dictionary: Ectoplasm = a substance that is said to come from the body of somebody who is communicating with the spirit of a dead person, allowing the spirit to have a form […]
Examine the figure of the female flâneuse in Virginia Woolf’s work, with particular focus on Mrs Dalloway. — rachelisinthewrongera
Introduction The term ‘flâneuse’ can be attributed to females who engage in flânerie: the act of observing the city whilst walking.[1] They know themselves to be one of the public, yet they are the binary opposite to the engaged pedestrian – they are a passive spectator.[2] Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, flânerie […]
Susan Sontag — The Vale of Soul-Making
I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall–like seeking love in a whorehouse.
— Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed To Flesh: Journals & Notebooks, 1964 – 1980 (FSG, 2012)
Henri Michaux – La lettre dit encore… — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
…je vous écris de la Cité du Temps interrompu. La catastrophe lente ne s’achève pas. Notre vie s’écoule, notre vie s’amenuise et nous attendons encore « le moment qui repasse le mur ». Le vieux différend unit le frère au frère. Dans l’enceinte du froid tout le monde enfermé. Ceux qui possédaient possèdent sans plus […]
via Henri Michaux – La lettre dit encore… — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
W.G. Sebald — The Vale of Soul-Making
I feel, almost physically, the current of time slowing down in the gravitational field of oblivion. It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as […]
William S. Burroughs — The Vale of Soul-Making
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
― William S. Burroughs, Queer. (Viking Press November 1985)
“Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus.” — Art of Quotation
” Sometimes people ask me what it takes to be a writer. The only things you have to do, I tell them, are read constantly; write for thousands of hours; and have the masochistic ability to absorb a great deal of rejection and isolation. As it turns out, these qualities have prepared me well to deal […]
via “Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus.” — Art of Quotation
Allen Ginsberg — The Vale of Soul-Making
I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.
— Allen Ginsberg, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952. (Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition November 1, 2006)
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited” — Art of Quotation
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited”
– Jorge Luis Borges, writer
Naked Cities Journal 
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