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11/05/2007

Memory Palaces

If you can convert whatever it is you're trying to remember into vivid mental images and then arrange them in some sort of imagined architectural space, known as a memory palace, memories can be made virtually indelible.

-from Joshua Foer's article on Memory in the November 2007 National Geographic.

...vivid images...then arrange them in some sort of...architectural space...

Apocalyptic Imagination

...Well, I know that the apocalyptic imagination is usually a lack of imagination; it refuses to face the dull prose of suffering, refuses to understand just how bad things can get without history coming to an end. Empires can limp on for centuries.

...My framed Ulysses poster fell off the wall and shattered, but I’m the kind of guy who keeps a spare framed Ulysses poster in the basement.

-metameat

9/09/2007

Someone should make a program that automatically selects the talking heads--just the heads--of people on CNN and fuzz out all the background bustle and sexy graphic framing and the maddening crawl and DOW Jones numbers...

9/06/2007

Literature is not Comics

H ere's a link to an interesting San Diego Comic Con panel, "Comics are NOT Literature." The link will expire at the end of September, by which time we'll apparently be hearing all about what a great idea it would be to kill tons of Iranians. It's an interesting panel. It has its dull directionless times, which is par for the course, but overall gave me a lot to think about. I wish someone would write those ideas up. I agreed with whoever said it's basically identity politics. The formal issues are interesting to a point but beyond that it's about economics and accidents of history. I always think most issues or questions, especially about words, would be better attacked by cutting to the chase and being pragmatic about it. What needs to be done and said to keep things healthy and diverse and thriving? So I was like "right on" when Dan Nadel were talking about how applying words like "literature" to comics is less about how well or not the label fits, and is more about speaking the language one needs to speak to gain institutional support (major gallery collections, major library collections, grants, academia) etc. Nadel says something like "the lack of institutional support is the major problem comics have faced in the 20th century." But we're getting there. Of course institutions bring their own set of problems too... There's other good stuff in there too, and the panel reflects a spectrum of approaches people take--from Nadel's "I don't even think of it as reading" to folks who come from the literary side.

9/02/2007

Inspired by Graphic Novelist

(Looks like a skull, doesn't it, and the lightning looks like the track of a tear.)

and

"It is surely an act of unfairness to judge graphic novel culture on the basis of a movie, one made from a story that meant to be a novel and was only a graphic novel incidentally.

Still.
One gets the sense that Neil Gaiman's rep as a genius must somehow be a reflection on the subculture that has so elected him."

-Joshua Clover reviews Stardust. Isn't that strange and scary–the idea that people think there's such a thing as "graphic novel culture" and that these movies reflect it?