delightful

I really can't imagine a better afternoon than the one I'm having, curled up in the armchair by the window, thinking about maybe making some French onion soup for lunch, and reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. I love this book. When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, it took me about a month. I liked it a lot, but I could only get into it for short amounts of time. I think that there's something intimidating about Marquez's super-long chapters. But I started this book Friday and I only have forty pages left.

I mean, there's something absolutely compelling about a passage like this, in which the perpetually-constipated protagonist shits his pants because he's so surprised by the sudden responsiveness of the object of his fifty-plus years' unrequited love:

Florentino Ariza thanked her, bid an urgent farewell with his hat, and left without tasting the coffee. She stood in the middle of the drawing room, puzzled, not understanding what had just happened, until the sound of his automobile's backfiring faded at the end of the street. Then Florentino Ariza shifted into a less painful position in the back seat, closed his eyes, relaxed his muscles, and surrendered to the will of his body. It was like being reborn. The driver, who after so many years in his service was no longer surprised at anything, remained impassive. But when he opened the door for him in front of his house, he said:
"Be careful, Don Floro, that looks like cholera.

I really lead a charmed life.

the epigraph to a book I bought today

When I dare to be powerful --
to use my strength in the service of my vision,
then it becomes less and less important
whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

WARNING: nerdiness below

Currently, I'm re-reading a textbook that one of my favorite professors wrote for a course I took last fall. This guy is just an AWESOME teacher. The book is called How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, and isn't even half as boring as it sounds. I dare say it's funny in places. I really like the way that he almost neurotically covers a point so as to minimize reader confusion. For example,

"People who misunderstand deconstruction often think that it says there is no meaning... On the contrary, and most characteristically, deconstruction actually multiplies meaning. In a related misconception, people who know little about deconstruction often suppose that it simply means destruction. But deconstruction is not destruction. It can change the way we view things, but it does not destroy anything. It offers more, not less. In deconstruction, there is always more, a surplus of meaning and rhetoric that Derrida calls a supplement... This is not important, but people who know hardly anything about deconstruction say "deconstructionism" or "deconstructionalism." Perhaps they are thinking of analogies to words like "stucturalism." The usual terms are deconstruction, deconstructionist, and deconstructive... Though many deconstructionists, and occasionally even Derrida, use the verb deconstruct (and it has even entered the popular talk of the general public), I think that using the verb deconstruct and referring to deconstruction as an action misses a key point. Since deconstruction refers to a basic principle of all language, we cannot really deconstruct something. If critics want to think deconstructively, then, instead of deconstructing a text, they find the way that it is always already deconstructed. They don't do it to a text. Instead they expose the way that it is already done, the way that a text has always already deconstructed itself." (78-80)

I can't help wondering what he would have to say about this email that arrived in my inbox this morning.

I think the idea is that the meaning of denim is always already multiple: bootcut, skinny jeans, wide leg, jean skirts, etc. I mean, it definitely looks like the models are thinking deeply about différance, or something.

And because I seriously can't get enough of this guy's writing style, here's a little snippet from his chapter on stucturalism.

"I like to give examples and see if my students can tell which are metaphors and which are metonymies. I might pick out a student and say that, in our class discussions, she is a real spark plug. That is a metaphor, because this student is not connected to or part of an engine... But what if my student is a robot? Then "spark plug" turns into a metonymy...

[Then he discusses how structuralists might have exaggerated the usefulness of understanding the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, but that it can sometimes be useful. He ends the discussion with:]

(And for better or worse, referring to metonymies will allow us to describe what we notice in a cool and sophsticated sounding way.)"

pope dot el

I've been needing to do some exercising of my brain lately, so I went and checked out this exhibit at the Art Institute today. Pretty sweet. I was a little skeptical when the lady I talked to corrected my question, "How's that William Pope exhibit?" with "Um, It's William Pope.L," but his work is very cool.

(Click for more info on his performance art.)

Also cool is the photography exhibit downstairs, "Girls on the Verge: Portraits of Adolescence." You can't tell from this image, but the series of photos below, by Lalla Essaydi, depict girls and women dressed in and surrounded by cloth inscribed with Islamic calligraphy written in henna that also covers the exposed skin of each of the subjects. The placard at the exhibit said that the writing is typically reserved for the use of men only, but I'm not finding that specification here. Anyway, very cool. I'd recommend both if you're in Chicago!



(What intelligent commentary I've provided here! "Pretty sweet" and "very cool." A compelling review, no?)