“The Church has become close to me in its distrust of man, and my distrust of form, my urgent desire to withdraw from it, to claim ‘that that is not yet I,’ which accompanies my every thought and feeling, coincides with the intentions of its doctrine. The Church is afraid of man and I am afraid of man. The Church does not trust man and I do not trust man. The Church, in opposing temporality to eternity, heaven to earth, tries to provide man with the distance [from] his own nature that I...| Meta is Murder
“Look at the masterpiece, and not at the frame — and not at the faces of other people looking at the frame.” - Vladimir Nabokov in his lectures on Russian literature, opposing the primary type of academic and popular criticism: what we might call the demographic-reactive type. The overwhelming majority of opinion derives less from any internal response to a work of art (or political idea or cultural trend) than from what sorts of reactions we imagine on other faces looking at the frame,...| Meta is Murder
I continue my sabbatical from longform criticism as I write my novel, Major Arcana, which I am now serializing on Substack in both text and audio format for paid subscribers. For now, a brief catalogue of my last month’s reading. My weekly Substack newsletter, in addition to other material like the occasional podcast, is always free. I […]| John Pistelli