PlacesPlaces
Rio Rancho, 1988 by Tetman Callis
Author: Tetman Callis
Mull it overMull it over
“Let us think of quietly enlarging our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as we get an idea or half an idea, be running out with it into the street, and trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, in the end, shape the world all the better for maturing a little.” – Matthew Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
PlacesPlaces
Rio Rancho, 1988 by Tetman Callis
The critical distanceThe critical distance
“Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a power which in the practical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. And this without any notion of favoring or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power or the other; without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, one power against the other.” – Matthew Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
Then there’s thisThen there’s this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9J2WAlN-0
PlacesPlaces
Rio Rancho, 1989 by Tetman Callis
Busy little bees we beBusy little bees we be
“The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex.” – Matthew Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
PlacesPlaces
Brooklyn, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Once upon a time, kings ruled by divine rightOnce upon a time, kings ruled by divine right
“If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it: and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.” – Edmund Burke, Thoughts on French Affairs (1791)
PeoplePeople
American Museum of Natural History, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Give war a chanceGive war a chance
“Pre-emption is among the most important philosophical and strategic underpinnings for counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, and after years of being honed in Fallujah and Kandahar, COIN has been imported to the West, where it compliments the growing militarization of law enforcement and the transformation of local police forces into hybrid paramilitary-intelligence organizations.” — Jacob Silverman, “City Under Siege”
PlacesPlaces
Manhattan at Night, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Reckoning on a reckoningReckoning on a reckoning
“What history can do is show that people have to take responsibility for what they activate out of their tradition. It’s not just a given thing one slavishly follows. You have to be accountable.” — Karen King, quoted by Ariel Sabar in “The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus”
PlacesPlaces
Manhattan at Night, 1990 by Tetman Callis
But what would we read?But what would we read?
“Our species would go a long way toward full maturation if more writers and critics would declare zero tolerance for every book that insults the intellect with bathos and debases language with bromides.” William Giraldi, “Letter to a Young Critic”
PlacesPlaces
Manhattan at Night, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Truth be toldTruth be told
“Language doesn’t lie. A cliché can’t hide itself. Platitudes can’t pretend to be meaningful. Solecisms can’t convince you they are something else. Easy verbs and indolent adjectives will never have potency. An assault of the quotidian will never be intellectually charismatic. You can’t dress up sentimentality as emotional truth. No amount of rouge will ever camouflage rhetoric and sophistry. Propaganda and dogma will always reek of immorality. Defenders of the middling and bland might try to counter with the tired retort, ‘He’s not a good writer but he’s a good storyteller,’ which is rather like saying, ‘His food tastes like shit but he’s a good cook.’ Is he not telling the story with sentences? If the sentences are broken how does the story work?” — William Giraldi, “Letter to a Young Critic”
PlacesPlaces
Manhattan at Night, 1990 by Tetman Callis
To tell the truthTo tell the truth
“The problem isn’t that MFA programs homogenize fiction, or that they churn out novelists the way Detroit churns out automobiles, but that they make publication seem like every writer’s apotheosis. The publication of a book doesn’t ipso facto turn the author into an artist—the book’s mind and language have to be original and bold. Literature isn’t a children’s foot race; you don’t a get a medal simply for participating. MFA programs are useful because they allow what every writer needs most: time. But they can be poisonous in their system of false approval—a completely truthful instructor, herself fresh from an MFA, won’t stay employed very long—and in the outsized expectations they foster in their flocks.” — William Giraldi, “Letter to a Young Critic”
PlacesPlaces
Manhattan at Night, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Mammon!Mammon!
“At that time [1849] so demoralizing was the effect of the gold-mines that everybody not in the military service justified desertion, because a soldier, if free, could earn more money in a day than he received per month. Not only did soldiers and sailors desert, but captains and masters of ships actually abandoned their vessels and cargoes to try their luck at the mines. Preachers and professors forgot their creeds and took to trade, and even to keeping gambling-houses.” — William Tecumseh Sherman, “Early Recollections of California,” from Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman
PlacesPlaces
Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Gotta git awayGotta git away
“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.” – Oliver Sacks, “Altered States”
PlacesPlaces
30 Rock, 1990 by Tetman Callis
Getting it in writingGetting it in writing
“Before the 1770s, the idea of a magical document that ‘constituted’ your government, state, and politics—the idea that all laws and governmental authority would have to refer back to a single document, a single code—was almost as surprising as the idea that independence was something you could just speak into existence, declare. Pretty much all the other governments in the world lacked any pretense of representing the will of their people; the king was the king because he was the king, and because Fuck You, and also maybe because of the Bible. But mostly he was the king because he had all these guys with swords and guns and horses that would come to your house and burn it down and murder you.” — Aaron Bady, “Dumb Computers, Smart Cops” (emphasis in original)
PlacesPlaces
Nightclub, 1981 by Tetman Callis
Jump, jump, to the ones who came firstJump, jump, to the ones who came first
Pas auf!Pas auf!
“Most of the time, we try to tell ourselves ‘I’m confident’ or ‘I’m doing well.’ But then, in a moment alone at home, you feel how close you are to some kind of abyss.” – Christian Tetzlaff (quoted by Jeremy Eichler in “String Theorist”)
PlacesPlaces
Santa Teresa, New Mexico, 1985 by Tetman Callis
Oh, say… can you see?Oh, say… can you see?
“The relationship between war and literature is an old one, maybe even constitutive for literature. The re-creation of a traumatic past through fiction – though this does not represent reality as it was – can have a powerful impact on people and their memory, often a much stronger impact than historiography.” — Igor Stiks (quoted by Spela Mocnik in Asymptote)