ISSUE 5 | JUN 2011

REALISM

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Debbie Hu

Slow Mood Movement

a sad community organizer - a spectacle of certainty and enthusiasm - fix it in the name of greater productivity - make the dull feel interesting again - generosity and austerity - pathetic pride - sad, anxious, lost girlfriends - reclaiming mooding

David Richter

Lars and the Real World: Dogville as a Political Film

the fullest possible representation of this world - Lars von Trier, a genius both maligned and misread - « the only reward a film-maker gets, the only thing he hopes and longs for » - both pornography and movie-watching in general - the sins of history - moral rearmament - « cognitive mapping » - the secret affinity between suffering and media culture - partially successful ways of dealing with reality

Earl McCabe

Depressive Realism: An Interview with Lauren Berlant

why do people stay attached to lives that don’t work - a realist account of fantasy - how people maintain their footing in worlds that are not there for them - the instabilities of sexual non-sovereignty - alternative institutions of intimacy - the reproduction of erotophobia - simultaneously material and fantasmatic - the first step to solidarity

Charlotte Krontiris

Genuine Society

quoting her cleverest critic - « entirely, impeccably right » - « Silver That Shines Or None » - rule-making, a « cyborg art » - what is really ours - transparency of character - obsessive, prescriptive, and arbitrary - « You May Send Yourself A Telegram » - « sticky or filled with cream » - bridge impulse and action - the great, messy unknown

Cat Pierro

Something Is Sought

what sort of novel is like life? - « the form of fiction most in vogue » - the narrator as a low-flying bird - charismatic distance - the way of true friends - a thing that burrows into the heart

Michael Kinnucan

Beckett and Failure

« total object, complete with missing parts » - why is it obligatory to express? - language as palliative care - the restless ghost in our machine - a formerly wandering hobo, now confined to bed awaiting death - to write is an impertinence - his success is a failure, even a disaster - the contingency of the body’s weakness - to live out his days as a watcher of bees

Lucas Culler

Lemon Break

first a lemon must be procured - it is best to focus on an object that is slowly or imperceptibly changing - slight changes in the atmosphere - an amplification of the usual - purely chemical

Avi Garelick

Afterthought on “Incest, Cannibalism, and the Gods”