The Art of Tetman Callis

“When computers learn how to make jokes, artists will be in serious trouble.  But artists will respond in such a way as to make art impossible for the computer.  They will redefine art to take into account (that is, to exclude) technology–photography’s impact upon painting and painting’s brilliant response being a clear and comparatively recent [...]

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“The combinatorial agility of words, the exponential generation of meaning once they’re allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven’t yet encountered.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.8 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: [...]

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“The world enters the work as it enters our ordinary lives, not as world-view or system but in sharp particularity.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.7 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.8 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.))

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“If the writer is taken to be the work’s way of getting itself written, a sort of lightning rod for an accumulation of atmospheric disturbances, a St. Sebastian absorbing in his tattered breast the arrows of the Zeitgeist, this changes not very much the traditional view of the artist.  But it does license a very [...]

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“Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.5 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.6 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.))

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“Not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made.  Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.” — Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.4 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: High [...]

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“Play is one of the great possibilities of art.” — Donald Barthelme, “After Joyce” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.3 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.4 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.))

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“What makes the literary object a work of art is the intention of the artist.” — Donald Barthelme, “After Joyce” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger) High Street 3.2 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.) is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.3 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.))

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“Unhealthy fantasies in a darkening room, resented sins.” — W. G. Sebald, After Nature High Street 3.1 — “Downhill Racing” is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.2 — “Downhill Racing” (cont.))

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“A full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane.” — Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death High Street 2 — “How to Get to High Street” is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 3.1 — “Downhill Racing”)

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“All that we can do in the face of that ineluctable defeat called life is to try to understand it.” — Milan Kundera, The Curtain High Street 1 — “Breaking and Entering” is posted today. (Tomorrow: High Street 2 — “How to Get to High Street”)  

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“Man is so constituted that he reserves his strongest curses for the very things that keep him together and keep him alive.” — Thomas Bernhard, Concrete (trans. McLintock) High Street 0 — “Preface” is posted today, at the top of the sidebar to your left. (Tomorrow: High Street 1 — “Breaking and Entering”)

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“The artist’s effort, always and everywhere, is to attain a fresh mode of cognition.” — Donald Barthelme, “After Joyce” (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

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“Sometimes I think that there will be a place in the future for a literature the nature of which will singularly resemble that of a sport.  Let us subtract, from literary possibilities, everything which today, by the direct expression of things and the direct stimulation of the sensibility by new means–motion pictures, omnipresent music, etc.–is [...]

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“Many people actually like reality, and very often choose to live in it.” — Herzinger, Not-Knowing

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“A man whose mouth stinks has no mistress; no woman would put up with it; any woman would find a way to let him know he stinks and would force him to rid himself of that fault.” — Milan Kundera, Slowness (trans. Asher)

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“People always think that a man’s fortunes are more or less determined by his appearance, by the beauty or ugliness of his face, by his size, by his hair or lack of it.  Wrong.  It is the voice that decides it all.” — Milan Kundera, Slowness (trans. Asher)

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“[Henry] James was the most consummate artist American literature has produced. He was fastidious by nature and by early training. He had studied his art in France as men study sculpture in Italy, and he had learned the French mastery of form. Nowhere in his writings may we find slovenly work. His opening and closing [...]

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