Daniel Silliman

Reading material

Current:
The Savage Detectives,
by Roberto Bolaño
Toward a New Christianity,
ed. by Thomas J.J. Altizer

For the year:
1. Prophecy & Apocalypticism,
by Stephen L. Cook
2. The Salmon of Doubt,
by Douglas Adams
3. Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
4. Farewell, My Lovely,
by Raymond Chandler
5. Ham on Rye,
by Charles Bukowski
6. The Inner Circle,
by T.C. Boyle
7. Breakfast at Tiffany's,
by Truman Capote
8. The Crying of Lot 49,
by Thomas Pynchon
9. The Poet,
by Michael Conely
10. As I Lay Dying,
by William Faulkner
11. Slumdog Millionaire,
by Vikas Swarup
12. 2666,
by Roberto Bolaño
13. Teaching a Stone to Talk,
by Annie Dillard
14. The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,
by Charles Bukowski
15. White Butterfly,
by Walter Mosely
16. The End of the Affair,
by Graham Greene
17. Fathers and Sons,
by Ernest Hemmingway
18. Into The Wild,
by Jon Krakauer
19. Close Range,
by Annie Proulx
20. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,
by David Foster Wallace
21. By Night in Chile,
by Roberto Bolaño
22. Kilshot,
by Elmore Leonard
23. This is Water,
by David Foster Wallace
24. Public Enemies,
by Bryan Burrough
25. Breath,
by Tim Winton

Daniel Silliman

14.2.04

Here concentrated in a single point
reach out over the world.

by Daniel Silliman @ 9:57 PM. : Comments 0

13.2.04

A late evening walk through my head
I’m thinking that maybe my "bastard stoicism" might be more important, more pivotal, than I thought.

I’m thinking about how we killed God and how this does or doesn’t relate to the problems of the hope of technology and the role of stories through the changing of the ages.

I’m thinking about the uberman’s stories and the problem of salvation by myth if that myth springs from the thing needing to be saved and why we need so badly a story, any story, even if we can’t believe it. And I want to think about that in light of George’s story about livin’ off the fatta the land in Of Mice and Men and in light of Conrad’s Marlow.

I’m thinking about the relationship between politics and aesthetics, especially in an age where information is king and looking particularly to the masters of politics as performance art – Abbie Hoffman, Joe McCarthy, Mussolini – and the fools and cuckholds – Richard Nixon, Dukakis, Hoover.

I’m thinking about the mixture of hope and fear in cyberpunk literature how we think about technology.

I’m thinking perfection is uninteresting and flimsy.

I’m thinking about the definition of postmodernism and how it’s definability is problematic because it’s not a thesis, really, but a collection of concerns. And about how postmodernism is self-aware of it’s temporality and reactionary position.

I’m thinking about the cinematography of music videos and the play of the absence in narrative and the opportunity to break new ground in a music video that one wouldn’t have in a film or commercial.

I’m thinking that I want to get back into Spinoza and write a series of “Dear Spinoza” letters considering the problems of self and other, one and the many, the necessity of a Trinitarian God and other paths that might appear.

I’m thinking I need to find a biography of Barth.

I'm thinking of calling the next year of my life something funny and including the word "tour."

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:04 PM. : Comments 0

Pray, one for another
What if I were to refuse the prayers of, say, every Christian who lived in Texas? Or of all female members of the body of Christ?

I’m a little suspicious that not praying to the saints is, likewise, either outrageous or heresy. It falls, I suspect without wanting to say it, under schismaticism, wrongly dividing the church and wrongfully separating oneself from a portion of the church.

The recourse against the prayers of the saints is, of course, the claim that they're dead and thus separated from God, though this runs the problems of 1) claiming that one can, in certain situations, be separated from Christ and his body and 2) claiming the promise of eternal life is limited.

by Daniel Silliman @ 8:11 AM. : Comments 0

But by a story we cannot believe
A comedian works over Jonah bit, laughs pivoting on the oddity of hearing a whale-swallows-man-who’s-running-from-God story in a contemporary world on a contemporary medium.

Which, as comedy is prone to do, gets to something missed in the regular turn of the miracles-are-a-joke critique: stories.

The difference between then and now isn’t that miracles happened then and don’t know. It isn’t that we believed in miracles happening then and don’t know.

The difference is a difference in stories.

We know what we know from the stories we tell and are told.

It’s a question of what stories we tell and what stories we have room to tell.

(I suspect this is becoming a major project and thesis, though it remains questioning and fragmentary in a way, I suspect, that comes from having drunk of Wittgensteinian waters.)

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:38 AM. : Comments 0

Spend the days poking shadows, seeing if they'll talk to me.

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:22 AM. : Comments 0

12.2.04

As in, the deconstruction of the western tradition
This is a very simple point, but one that apparently needs repeating - deconstruction does not mean destruction.

(Emphasis added from frustration).

by Daniel Silliman @ 11:00 PM. : Comments 0

Dying ain't like it usta be
"It's not like he's dying," he said. "I mean whatdya see him, like every other day? He posts on his blog more often than that.

"Silliman's more present in non-bodily form than anyone we know."

And my ghost just sorta of wanders to the sink for a drink and goes on saying things he thinks sounds cool.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:45 AM. : Comments 0

And I was standin’ on the side of the road rain fallin’ on my shoes
I think it's because I'm set to wander the country but I've got Tangled Up In Blue stuck in my head and I haven't even listened to it recently.

But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to new orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin’ for a while on a fishin’ boat
Right outside of Delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:33 AM. : Comments 0

Dying ain't like is usta be
"It's not like he's dying," he said. "I mean whatdya see him, like every other day? He posts on his blog more often than that.

"Silliman's more present in non-bodily form than anyone we know."

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:30 AM. : Comments 0

Maddening, bewildering and very, very lucrative
And this is the not-so-secret key to America's cultural wars. There's something more than a little staged about them.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:16 AM. : Comments 0

11.2.04

My article on the The Failure of the New York Intellectuals has been picked up by artsjournal.com, which I think is pretty cool.

by Daniel Silliman @ 11:37 PM. : Comments 0

Devil deals the cards, but you're welcome to play

Half my friends think I'm dying.

The other half look at me, pretending to hide the caged feeling in their eyes, asking themselves why they can't hang it all, asking themselves "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

"So Dan," he says, "If I quit school tomorrow?"
"Well," he says, "if you go to Philly. . . "

I call a friend to tell him the news and he interrupts with laughter. "Damn it," he says, "why is everything you do so cool?"

It isn’t, of course, and neither am I, but the stories are cool and I know that and know how to play for the story. My sister says I have more stories of running out of money than anyone she knows, and it’s not like I’ve run out of money many more times than your average broke person. I was just the one who ran out of money by throwing my last five cents into a Smithsonian fountain.

It’s just a little flash, a gesture for the sake of the story, a little aggression and a little absurdity.

Consider this bastard stoicism: There’s nothing you can decide about life except how to tell the story.

New e-mail (though the old one still works for now): daniel_silliman@yahoo.com.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:50 PM. : Comments 0

10.2.04

British legends.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:25 PM. : Comments 0

Five hats I wore the last week of school
Part of an ongoing series of a weird legend...

1. Blue-black stocking hat.
2. Brown stocking hat.
3. Viking helmet.
4. Little derby hat, jazzed up with a red feather.
5. Jester's hat.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:59 PM. : Comments 0

9.2.04

An important ecclesiological question:
How would your church government have dealt with the great heresies?

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:14 PM. : Comments 0

Don Quixote vs. propositional truth

If true knowledge is propositional, which is to say aphoristic, then the story is but a carrier and it would be purer knowledge if the story were discarded.

It would be, then, but a human frailty that insisted on stories.

We could be rid of the lion with the thorn in his paw if the moral could be taught as a pure proposition.

Does the reduction from a story about a lion with a thorn in his paw to a proposition about kindness really lose nothing of what we mean by "kindness"? That is, can we say "kindness" as we say it now without speaking of the lion?

If you ask me of "kindness" I can answer only with stories. If you demand the point of the story, I can only tell it again.

To consider: stories and uncertainty; stories as undermining the meta-narrative; stories and embodiment; stories and identity.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:13 AM. : Comments 0