Dave Eggers is the nadir of pop pomo.

Thought: is there some joke to be made by punning on nader, nadir?

Probably not, since you thought of the possibility, and it's axiomatic that you're not funny.

I guess it could be an unfunny joke.

Yeah yeah. At least I *try*, Mr. Grumpy Bitchy Pants.

The latest post at waste stands in an interesting relation to a joke, so there.

Anyone who lives to read gorgeous writing isn't reading Eggers or taking his advice, anyway. So in that sense, I suppose his blurb is a good one.

Have not seen the movie but: is the final shot just there because Nolan is worried that the audience might be idiots? would make a good blurb.

(or, a tagline.)

Those who merely *like* gorgeous writing will be content with a chaste peck on the front cover and running our fingers up and down its spine.

Could anybody expand on what "gorgeous" means when it is describing writing? I have a general sense but maybe it's wrong and/or incomplete.

A novel about love -- a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David -- or maybe it's Joe -- who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea... It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author says, "It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done." A novel about people trying to find love before the volcano erupts and the miracle ends.

I have on several occasions been recommended a dish at a restaurant on the grounds that it was "gorgeous."

Gorgeous writing is best exemplified by Thomas Harris:

The door to Dr. Hannibal Lecter's memory palace is in the darkness at the center of his mind and it has a latch that can be found by touch alone. This curious portal opens on immense and well-lit spaces, early baroque, and corridors and chambers rivaling in number those of the Topkapi Museum.

Everywhere there are exhibits, well-spaced and lighted, each keyed to memories that lead to other memories in geometric progression.

Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter's earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted Attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like.

I'd just like to say that this post was a thumping good read, at once a funny and fast-paced take on the foibles of pop postmodernism and a daring meditation on love, loss, memory and despair that announces the arrival of a major new voice on the literary scene.

Is it considered somehow unusual to lick books and sleep with them between your legs? Mutatis mutandis, that's what I did with Berube's book.

I'm currently reading the latest Tor edition of The Prestige, which is handsomely designed. I was also surprised to learn that many of the actors in the second season of The Wire, including most paticularly the port authority cop, had previous professional acting experience.

I'd also recommend Estrick Ayanes's The Sociopoetics of the Blurb: Enticing the 'Reader' (U of Wyoming P, 1993).

Could anybody expand on what "gorgeous" means when it is describing writing?

I'm pretty sure I've used that word to describe Suttree, which is stylistically very unlike all of McCarthy's novels set in the West.

"the Jewsploitation novel has come of age"?

In my memory, that last scene conveys a real sense of horror. Especially since we get to see them after Michael Caine's last revelation.

It's Kotsko's use of mutatis mutandis that I find intriguing.

Especially since we get to see them after Michael Caine's last revelation.

So you don't think that, by that point if not sooner, the audience was capable of putting two and two together? Keep in mind that what's his face as already explicitly copped to what was going on—it's not so much a matter of putting two and two together, really, as it is of being faced with two, two, and four, and sort of, you know, not being a dumbass.

18: Indeed. Did he lick his knees and place them in between the book covers?

"mutatis mutandis" is a cheat. If you change what needs changing, an elephant is the concept of justice.

what's his face as already explicitly copped to

Aye, 'e 'as, cap'n.

WMYBSALB?

I mean it was a visual presentation of the horror, Ben, that was added for effect. Possibly it was there as a way of saying "hey you dummies, if you haven't gotten it by now, here ya go", but if you assume otherwise, I think there's still a reason for that shot, namely, the emotional effect.

Ben, it was certainly there in case people were slow and didn't understand what was going on, but it was also there to fully bring home the enormity of what had taken place.

I almost revived my blog to write a long post of thoughts on The Prestige a couple months ago, but ran out of steam half way through drafting the post.

In my memory, that last scene conveys a real sense of horror.

I think it's pathetic that none of you have even considered the obvious explanation that it's there so the kids necking in the back row will have an answer that might sound reasonably accurate when their parents ask what the movie was about. The last 30 seconds - or perhaps 30 minutes - are simply a Cliff's Notes for the horny. Through any other lens they are an insult.

On the other hand, I loved its aesthetic.

Also, I had to be at work at 8am today and so I'm kind of a bitch at the moment.