• On Dada (Part 2 of 2)

    With dada, Ball here, as in his poetry, dispenses with conventional, communicative language. Both dada as well as dada show themselves as a “question of connections, and of loosening them [the connections] up a bit to start with.” By dismissing… more ›

  • On Dada (Part 1 of 2)

    What we seem to have here is a problem of genealogy. At times, Blanchot parses surrealism inflected as dada and at other times he seems to be writing solely about surrealism (or its methodology of automatism) apart from its dada… more ›

  • Re[s/v]olutions

    I resolve… to trouble myself, to trouble self, to trouble trouble;to paint it black, learn to fiddle for when it burns;to light the first match, throw the first brick;to not allow myself the all-too-easy distractions of comfort, happiness;to devalue false values… more ›

  • Books Read in 2015

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  • NEH Evaluations, or Academics are Cunts

    I applied for an NEH Fellowship for my Blanchot book. Today I received my evaluations. I want everyone to know what cunts are in charge of our nation’s intellectual work. Thank you for requesting additional information on the review of… more ›

  • Parasites

    The ‘creditor’ always becomes more humane as his wealth increases; finally, the amount of his wealth determines how much injury he can sustain without suffering from it. It is not impossible to imagine society so conscious of its power that is could… more ›

  • Sacrament

    “Światu grożą trzy plagi, trzy zarazy. Pierwsza–to plaga nacjonalizmu. Druga–to plaga rasizmu. Trzecia–to plaga religijnego fundamentalizmu. Te trzy plagi mają samą cechę, wspólny mianownik–jest nim agresywna, wszechwładna, totalna irracjonalność. Do umysłu porażonego jedną a tych plag nie sposób dotrzeć. W… more ›

  • Moja droga (Part 2)

    After two months as a Peace Corps Trainee I left. I left the Corps. I left Poland. I returned to Texas disenchanted, discouraged, and disappointed. Not necessarily in that order. There are many reasons why I left. The top two… more ›

  • Moja droga (Part 1)

    Maybe she had asked the question before; maybe she’d forgotten my rambling answer. I vaguely remember, perhaps, that we’d had this conversation sitting, no less, at a coffee shop in Warsaw. Or during a previous trip to San Francisco, undoubtedly… more ›

  • The Mountain and the Wall (Book Review)

    My literary education includes many of the great twentieth-century novelists of world literature, such as Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, and Günter Grass. Fortuitously, I studied this literature with Wendy Faris, one of the great scholars of magical realism,… more ›