Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Anagraphilia
I have an intense love of lists!
Whenever the American Film Institute comes up with the 100 best movies or VH-1 airs a show about the 100 best rock songs, I feel compelled to look at the list. Also, I love creating lists of various things on amazon.com.
There was a movie out a while ago with John Cusack as a generation-x type slacker who created all sorts of lists, and I'm wondering if it's some weird kind of cultural logic that makes members of this generation in particular love lists of various kinds. (Movie was High Fidelity if memory serves.)
One of thing I love is to create a list of writers that I most like, which consist of a kind of counter-canon or underground canon. Right now that list is:
Denis Diderot
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Herman Melville
Emily Bronte
Emily Dickinson
Marcel Proust
Franz Kafka
Ursula LeGuin
Salman Rushdie
I want to try to explain why I think all of these writers go together somehow as a kind of anti-canon. I'm thinking, too, of Deleuze and Guattari's description of a minor literature in their book on Kafka.
I've produced a number of lists on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-fil/-/A3RNGSJLUSPC6S/ref=cm_hp_stats_list-count/103-5939994-2758233
Whenever the American Film Institute comes up with the 100 best movies or VH-1 airs a show about the 100 best rock songs, I feel compelled to look at the list. Also, I love creating lists of various things on amazon.com.
There was a movie out a while ago with John Cusack as a generation-x type slacker who created all sorts of lists, and I'm wondering if it's some weird kind of cultural logic that makes members of this generation in particular love lists of various kinds. (Movie was High Fidelity if memory serves.)
One of thing I love is to create a list of writers that I most like, which consist of a kind of counter-canon or underground canon. Right now that list is:
Denis Diderot
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Herman Melville
Emily Bronte
Emily Dickinson
Marcel Proust
Franz Kafka
Ursula LeGuin
Salman Rushdie
I want to try to explain why I think all of these writers go together somehow as a kind of anti-canon. I'm thinking, too, of Deleuze and Guattari's description of a minor literature in their book on Kafka.
I've produced a number of lists on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-fil/-/A3RNGSJLUSPC6S/ref=cm_hp_stats_list-count/103-5939994-2758233
