21 August 2006

Anti-post

I really appreciate the feedback on the critical nuggets here, and I often like to motivate myself by announcing what I’m going to do, like essays on Mallarmé, existentialism and Jain philosophy, discussions of Hejinian’s The Fatalist, etc etc, and there were several ‘unannounced’ essays I was working on. And the two book reviews I wrote last week (on the more visited Silliman’s blog) were heartfelt and a pleasure to write.

However, it is in the same spirit of convoluted motivational tactics that I write the ‘anti-post,’ the post that says I’m overwhelmed by a (creative) work project and I need to take a break from blogging longer essays, because perhaps if I don’t post this I won’t take that break. So I do plan to post stuff, just not literary essays that take hours to research.

I’m not sure how long this will be, but definitely the next week and for the most part the rest of the year, although I hope to take some breaks from my break here and there during that time and write more here.

2 comments:

david raphael israel said...

sounds good, Ian --

your pleasantry about taking a break from the break recalls the locution (in Hindu lore) about renouncing renunciation. Some googling suggests a possible locus classicus for this phrase in the Avadhut Gita attributed to the rishi Dattatreya (specifically, Chapter 4, verse 21 thereof).

Be as all that may, the blogging value of off-the-cuff, non-researched, spur-of-the-moment mots justes (or just plain old mots) may be recalled.

Ian Keenan said...

I do renounce renunciation, don’t you? Pretty much everything in that Gita could have been written by Nietzsche, who also renounced renunciation.

“there is nothing but Brahmin”