rocket to nowhere

The romantic novel can manifest the continuity of forms of the poetic absolute—and it can give individuality to this absolute—because it has discovered the absolutely dissolving power of prose. Prose signified, for the romantics, the potential for indefinite encompassment that defies all conceptual thought and all systematic construction of the absolute. The romantics found this signification in the following manner. In the first, ordinary sense, prose refers to speech without poetic meter, speech close to ordinary speech, ungebundene Rede. However, as Gasché comments, “in addition to its proper meaning, prose has a figural, improper meaning, namely prosaic, plain, ordinary, sober. Furthermore, this improper meaning cannot properly be distinguished from the proper. But it is this very lack of differentiation, this ambiguity of meaning, that predestines prose to become the comprehensible manifestation of the Absolute.”
—Piotr Parlej, The Romantic Theory of the Novel, pp32-3

• "At home, with father and mother, the whole house smelled of tact." #
• Institute Benjamenta by the Bros. Quay is too imbued with their own concerns to be a good or even interesting adaptation of Walser. #
• 7 of clubs: smallness & stillness; walking as freedom along the path of constraint. #
• "Ich füllte anderer Leute Lücken mit Prosastücken." #fb #
• jack of diamonds: Walser's Robber-Novel and George Avery's Inquiry & Testament. That's the last card. It's review and "relax" until the 4th. #
• Having a great deal of trouble concentrating. When should I just give up? (please don't tell @LairdHunt) #
• notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes!!! #
• How many pages of notes? The four folders together are at least four inches thick. #
• El Dorado Springs swimming pool! #
• Seriously, the El Dorado Springs swimming pool on a school day! Then ice cream and coffee in Boulder! Now Thai food & a drink! Exclamation! #
• @jesswigent I'm sorry: http://bit.ly/11TptW in reply to jesswigent #
• @LairdHunt Dumb question, but did you notice that Messinger's (Time Out Chicago) review is three, long, tortuous sentences? in reply to LairdHunt #
• I often dream I'm writing, but never remember the words after waking. #fb #
• Just reviewed Modernism. "Reviewed" in the same way I'm going to "review" the Novel tomorrow. Like this will ever work. #

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Where should I keep a heart? I have forgotten that I have one. Certainly it is sad, but how should I find it proper to feel sorrow? One feels sorrow only when one has lost money, or when one’s new hat does not fit well, or when one’s holdings on the stock exchange drop, and even then one has to ask if that is sorrow or not, and on closer inspection it is not, it is only a fleeting regret, which vanishes like the wind. It is, no, how can I put it now—it is marvelously strange to have no feelings in this way, not to know at all what an emotion is. Feelings which concern one’s own person, everyone has these, and they are at root despicable ones, presumptuous ones if they relate to humanity as a whole. But feelings for particular people? Of course, one sometimes would like to ask oneself about this, one feels something like a slight longing to become a good, compliant person, but when could one manage it? Perhaps at seven in the morning, or some other time? Already on Friday, and right through the Saturday following, I am wondering what to do on Sunday, since on Sunday something always has to be done. —Robert Walser, “Helbling’s Story”

• Back from the Dismal River. NE has never been this kind of beautiful. #
• Just saw Visioneers. Please thank @galifianakisz because the movie is really good. Now excuse me while I explode. #
• Friday, 08/14: king of hearts. #reading #
• Today: 10 of diamonds: Walser stories! #reading #
• Walser seems to be offering (me) the ideal way of stitching/stretching the short form into a novel. #
• 9 of clubs: more stories and beginning The Assistant. #reading #
• @jesswigent Yay! "A Village Tale" may be one of the finest things ever written down. in reply to jesswigent #
• 2 of diamonds: Walser Walser Walser . . . #
• "Freilich verlor ich Zeit dabei, doch die ist ja dazu da." #
• I'm finding it ever easier to stop in the middle of an essay and stop. #fb #
• I can't seem to guage how long it will take to ride my bike somewhere. #
• 8 of hearts: Walser: Der Gehülfe, Jakob von Gunten, perhaps a walk. #
• "Yes, he was possessed of intellect when he wished to be, but he liked to take breaks from thinking." #
• Perhaps the Recovery Room bar wasn't the best place to begin Jakob Von Gunten. Perhaps there was no better place. #
• WTF: I must now, during these critical last days, take time out of my reading schedule to go to the library?! #PenroseClosesAt5now? #
• @dupenrose Now might be the worst time to close at 5:00p.m., though I'm sure you have your reasons. #
• 5 of clubs: Walser's Jakob von Gunten, a trip to the library, and ??? #reading #
• @LairdHunt What might the consequences be if you do? Could the room fill with serpentine sentences? Could you be crushed? in reply to LairdHunt #

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Einige von denen, die derart hinaussprangen, hatten feurige Flügel, ihre Köpfe brannten oder ihre Hände, und sie sahen wie merkwürdige Vögel aus, die schreien aber nicht fliegen konnten.
—Robert Walser, “Theaterbrand”

(Some who jumped had fiery wings, their heads burned, or their hands, and they looked like strange birds who could scream but couldn’t fly. —Robert Walser, “Theater Fire” [my translation])

• Bailed alfalfa in rows under bluffs under clouds. Everything is gold and green and gray. #
• 10 of spades: catching up on note typing and beginning Walser (hooray!). #
• This typing up of notes takes far too long. #fb #
• "At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their #
• weakness, and their death." —Robert Walser #
• ace of hearts: Robert Walser! #reading #
• ace of clubs: Walser! Peripatetic, bi-polar ecstasy! Literature will eat itself! #
• Reading Walser is like finding myself. Cheesy, I know, but why not? #
• "A bank is a foolish thing in springtime." #
• 3 of spades: Walser! For every clip there must be a clop. "And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time." #
• @cornelln This is the problem with trying to ride the edge of the cultural wave. (Seriously, is this what I sound like?) in reply to cornelln #

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• king of diamonds: dictopedia! Adams! Bolaño! #reading #
• 8 of diamonds: @Hodgman quickly, some secondary sources, typing notes and courting carpal-tunnel . . . #reading #
• crossed three off the list, but still feel as though I've accomplished little today–must work on that . . . #fb #
• F for Fake is the film version of what I would like to write when I write papers for classes. Don't tell my professors. (?) #
• 5 of clubs: Nabokov, Borges, Cortázar and typing up notes (?) #
• "The desire that knowledge be without temporal limits suggests that knowledge is indeed time-bound, and this because it is text-bound." #
• yesterday: 6 of spades; today: 10 of hearts: the end of the dictopedia and the typing of many many many notes. #
• "Every hundred feet the world changes. . . . The idea that some places are the same as others is a lie. The world is a kind of tremor." #
• So I won't actually get drunk? Or I'll just be drunk next to myself? http://twitpic.com/d46cw #

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from Fiction and Diction, chapter 3: “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative” by Gérard Genette:

²⁵Jorge Luis Borges, “Epilogo,” in Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emece, 1974), 1143. The technique, of which Borges’s text is surely not the earliest illustration, has been used more recently by some of Jérôme Garcin’s collaborators in Le dictionnaire: Littérature française contemporaine (Paris: François Bourin, 1989), a collection of preemptive autonecrologies.

• Hiway 40 through CO to UT, though longer than taking I-70 or 80, is well worth it. #
• 4 of clubs: the dictionaries are getting stranger. #
• saw a tattoo in a bakery in SLC this morning which simply read: "peace be still." That's a nice reminder. #fb #
• 9 of spades: transitioning from dictionary to encyclopedia. #reading #
• Reading Chapter 32 of Moby-Dick in a SLC hotel room. #
• A Whaler's Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick is awe/silence inspiring (please see p. 61, etc.). #
• king of clubs: for real this time. more encyclopedias . . . #reading #
• I do not seem capable of sustained concentration. #
• @jesswigent This unconcentration is a symptom of the form of the dictopaedia. Embrace! in reply to jesswigent #
• It's the moment of truth SLC Public library: Are you beautiful even into your (water) closets? #
• I am an idiot. Please RT. #
• yesterday: jack of hearts; today: 3 of diamonds. I am exhausted. #
• mere moments from giving up. . . . #fb #
• Did not fall prey to the steak's siren call in Durango; gnocchi instead. #

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