Tag Archives: umberto eco

In Which I Recount Ten (Well, Fourteen […Fifteen]) Texts Of Some Importance To My Life

Posted on by under Art, Life, Writing

There are a number of my friends posting their versions of this list to Facebook these days. Lists such as these always fail in some way. Of course, I also fail at writing them. It’s so easy to come off either pretentious or flippant (or both). I prefer to share my true, deeply-held likes and dislikes in direct conversation. Preferably along with good bourbon or a nice beer.

But I decided to go ahead and try this one. I think that I’m in a stage of my life where my motivations and interests are shifting (yet again), and in times such as these it’s good to take stock and see what remains influential. And so I’ll add my own ten-plus to the never-ending generator that is human activity on the internet. I will present a main list – with commentary – in no particular order.

The criterion I used to gather this collection was simple: did the book initiate some transformation in me, either immediately or upon reflection? I read quite a lot, but I wanted to be careful to choose only the works that have really stuck with me. That’s why there are all sorts of different types of book here (I have intentionally left out the expressly Art and Art Theory books that have been important to me, as there are so many). There are comics, theology, grand adventure, memoir, philosophy, and most of those arenas all mixed together. I’m surprised (and pleased) how many of them I actually experienced in very early childhood. I know there are some big names and obvious choices… that’s just how it is. This selection is not meant to be exhaustive or exceptional in any universal sense; I know there are better and, perhaps, more notable pieces of writing. For each I’ve included there are many more that could have been present. These are just pieces of writing that I know have shaped my life. I felt like sharing them. Enjoy.

~

SPACE, TIME, and INCARNATION by Thomas F Torrance

Thomas F Torrance took on an enormous task in this slim text. Published in 1969, Torrance wrote the book in an attempt to explain Divine interaction in space and time in the light of contemporary scientific developments in theoretical physics and cosmology. Rather than allowing theology a trump card to get out of any exchange with science, Torrance drives deep into the epistemological questions that arise when one seriously examines spatial and temporal ideas involved in theological conceptions. I discovered the book in an old, disused inn library in 2001, and went on to fill my copy with outbursts of marginalia. It remains dear to me.

THE ANNOTATED LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (Annotations by Alfred Appel Jr.)

From its tip-of-the-tongue beginning to its devastating denouement, Lolita is one of those books lauded as a masterwork generation after generation that actually lives up to the hype. Alfred Appel’s annotations of the history and meaning behind Nabokov’s astounding and astute prose helped provide access to me as a Nabokov neophyte. The next Nabokov novels I read – Invitation to a Beheading, King, Queen, Knave, and Glory – were all immensely enhanced by the background The Annotated Lolita provided. “I shall be dumped where the weed decays, and the rest is rust and stardust.” (Page 257)

text-mobydickThe Leg and The Whale – Illustration for Moby Dick. Created in Paper with Pencil. 2014.

MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

In Summer 2013 I completed my third journey through this book. Each time it has become more subtle and significant to me. I know that Moby Dick is popular, and that it is popularly unread. This is unfortunate. Its dense passages offer much to submissive, receptive readers. The pugnaciousness, humor, and visual presence of this book make it one I know I’ll keep returning to over and over throughout my life. I even love the endless chapters on Cetology.

EPISTLE to the ROMANS by Saint Paul

Romans is, perhaps, the ultimate biblical text… maybe even more than the gospels themselves. It integrates the disparately organized theological concepts of the early Christian writers into an organized legalese. Though it contains many key chapters (One, Five, and Eight in particular) it is Chapter Five that has, for me, held an intensely disruptive power. Hundreds of readings and years of study have done nothing to dissipate its existential shock.

text-romansDirt and Blood – Illustration for Romans. Created in Paper with Pencil. 2014.

THE LIFE HISTORY of the UNITED STATES (Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of 12) by Henry Graff and Time/LIFE

As a young boy I loved to dive into these books. They were among my first exposure to “fine” art, not to mention the wild and wooly early history of America. I especially enjoyed the first three volumes of this set and, after a while, never really looked beyond them. They were extremely key to my life-long interests. The reproductions they contained of colonial era political cartoons have never left my mind’s eye.

ADA, or ARDOR: A FAMILY CHRONICLE by Vladimir Nabokov

Passionate, sweeping, and strange, Ada is a killer of a novel. Deeper and more powerful than its more famous sister (Lolita), Ada is one of the few books that have stopped me in my tracks. I mean this quite literally. On several occasions – my mind obsessed with the story – I pulled my car over (during my commute to and from school) to continue reading. It is a crushing emotional journey, one that forces consideration of not only the motivations of protagonists Van and Ada but also those that rumble within the reader. This book happened to be the first book my wife (then my girlfriend) and I read in tandem, sharing our thoughts and insights as we read.

GHOST in the SHELL by Masamune Shirow

The best of Masamune Shirow is on display in this, his magnum opus effort. In it he leaps beyond the dregs of manga cyberpunk and erotica to grasp higher ground. He asks huge questions: what is life, consciousness, and person-hood? Sociopolitical wrangling, heavy weaponry, and seamy underground characters collide in a richly imagined post-apocalyptic world on the rebound. His central character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, transcends her sex appeal to deliver existential queries that rock attentive readers. Unfortunately, Ghost in the Shell, along with earlier projects Appleseed and Orion, were Shirow’s only truly deep works. It’s too bad that he has never again turned his considerable artistic skill toward more redeeming themes.

THE ALPHABET VERSUS the GODDESS: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN WORD and IMAGE by Leonard Shlain

Though only a very cursory survey of the historical struggles contained within its pages, this book served as a major jumping off point for me to explore a variety of issues that have altered the course of my life as an artist and educator. Some of my greatest joys in teaching have come from discussions born of this text.

DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY by Douglas Adams

Over the years, Douglas Adams‘ two Dirk Gently novels (the one above and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) have become my favorites among his various writings. In Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas weaves a tale of trans-historical curiosity, tying together his trademark humor, dual love of Bach and computers, the politics of vanity publishing, and just where exactly Coleridge came up with his vision of Kubla Khan‘s pleasure dome. The book is an epic, joyful trip. It finds ways to explain the strange, ridiculous nature of history so that the reader can laugh and weep with the realization. Adams was a genius.

PILGRIM at TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard

No dilettante to Thoreau, Dillard finds a way to make her words – written as a 27 year old – take on majestic and epoch-encompassing power. Perhaps I was prepared to love it by my readings of theology and some of the American Transcendentalists, but Pilgrim at Tinker Creek does feel like a singular expression. I love her 20th century version of perception and awareness. A huge influence.

text-jabberwockyThe Jub-Jub Bird – Illustration for The Annotated Alice. Created in Paper with Pencil. 2014.

THE ANNOTATED ALICE: ALICE’S ADVENTURES in WONDERLAND and THROUGH the LOOKING GLASS by Lewis Carroll

This book has stayed with me since early childhood. It was my first inkling that something else may be going on under the surface subject matter of a story. The layering of concepts beyond the directly obvious – logic, mathematics, socio-political and theological suggestions – created a backbone to this text making it live far beyond its Victorian and children’s genre roots. If you visit my classroom you may hear me break into a dramatic recitation of The Jabberwocky for my undergraduates from time to time…

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS GOES ‘BOINK’ by Bill Watterson

Calvin and Hobbes. Childhood and Imagination. Dreams and Awareness. Play and Learning. What else do I need to say?

INTERPRETATION and OVERINTERPRETATION by Umberto Eco and Richard Rorty

A roiling debate between Eco and Rorty forms the basis of this text and underpins so much of my own thoughts on how meaning is shaped. I routinely share it with my own graduate students in the spirit it was shared with me – with excitement and engagement. I was originally exposed to both Eco and Rorty by my fellow MFA grads at Indiana University. Fellow grad Matthew Choberka stimulated many of us in the program, and pushed our dialogue beyond the common complaints. Kudos to him.

SKETCHES IN CRUDE OIL: SOME ACCIDENTS and INCIDENTS of the PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT in ALL PARTS of the GLOBE, CHAPTER XVII: SOME NITRO-GLYCERINE in THIS (Pages 383-406) by John J McLaurin

This chapter of a book published in 1898 loomed large in my imagination as an 8 year old in Grove City, PA. My then step-father George was studying at Grove City College under Austrian School economist Hans Sennholz. The college served as my initial exposure to academia and was a central catalyst in my intellectual imagination. I was allowed to roam the grounds and halls of Grove City; I’m certain that it provided the push that eventually led me to my current vocation as an educator. Sketches in Crude Oil was a book that George had been looking at and he read from the nitroglycerine chapter many times. The stories of wagons exploded into nothingness, men blown to atoms, flesh and bones thrown hundreds of yards, and single drops of the explosive hit with hammers have stuck with me for 30 years. That library, those books, and the pages of this volume permeated my conception of history, education, and life for the better.

text-bigbangThe Big Bang – Illustration for The Elegant Universe. Created in Paper with Pencil. 2014.

THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene

Another popular science survey, but a good one. Reading Brian Greene‘s book, though certainly secular, was one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had. His description of the various phase transitions taking place in the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang became nothing short of a transcendent sight to my inner eye. Making enormously complex ideas understandable is Greene’s business, and this book addresses many of those issues in direct, accessible language. Good stuff.

~

TEXTS (I have recently read) WHICH MAY EVENTUALLY WORM THEIR WAY ONTO THIS LIST…

CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN by David Foster Wallace

BLOOD MERIDIAN: OR the EVENING REDNESS in the WEST by Cormac McCarthy

THE DUNWICH HORROR by H.P. Lovecraft

ABSENCE OF MIND: THE DISPELLING of INWARDNESS FROM the MODERN MYTH of the SELF by Marilynne Robinson

AN ETHICS FOR TODAY: FINDING COMMON GROUND BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY and RELIGION by Richard Rorty

PARADOX IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: AN ANALYSIS of its PRESENCE, CHARACTER, and EPISTEMIC STATUS by James Anderson

THE POETICS OF SPACE and THE POETICS OF REVERIE by Gaston Bachelard

~

BOOKS WHICH HAVE BEEN INFLUENTIAL BY DEFAULT (And thus require no comment)

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C.S. Lewis

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame

THE PSALMS

PROVERBS

The Books of THORNTON BURGESS

The Books of LAURA INGALLS WILDER

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee

~

Thanks to Jill for tagging me in this one:)

Discussions and Digressions

Posted on by under Art, Life, Teaching, Writing

“In places like universities, where everyone talks too rationally, it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear.” – Beuys

“Theory can only describe; it can never justify.” – Ballou

Above: Me with some grads after one of our early sessions, Spring 2012

This semester I got to dig deep with a group of graduate students here at Mizzou. In the discussion-based course I presented a series of texts – grouped into several general themes – and used them to attempt to open up the grads’ approach to thinking about, making, and viewing art. In our reading, discussion, and reflective writing, we took on some of the alternative histories/literacies that function within the art world. I wanted to use this post to give a general overview of the topics and content we touched on this semester, as well as offer a selection of some of the provocative ideas we read. I do this as a huge thank you to the individuals whose work we sampled; their words were encouraging, challenging, enraging, and powerful. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the students who took the journey with me. So here’s to Aron, Bethanie, Charlie, Chris, Danielle, Eric, Greta, Jahner, Jane, Matt, and Ron; none of us could have had the experiences we had without each of us being a part of it. As David Abram (or Bachelard, or Emerson, or Dillard) might say – all things are in relation.

Above: A grad class?

1) We began by discussing some key dichotomies through the easy-to-access survey work of Leonard Shlain. Contrasting ideas such as Image/Word, Nonverbal/Verbal, and Truth/Fiction were explored in a number of texts and films, the latter being most importantly represented by Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness and Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.

“Of all the sacred cows allowed to roam unimpeded in our culture, few are as revered as literacy.” – Shlain

Key Works:
Reggio, Godfrey. “Koyaanisqatsi.” Color Film, 1983.
Shlain, Leonard. “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image.” 1998.
Herzog, Werner. “Lessons of Darkness.” Color Film, 1991.

2) Tightening our resolution from the expansive binary tensions in our initial overview, our second focus was to look at how the more central ideas and modes of art and aesthetics were defined/redefined and questioned in the first part of the twentieth century. Looking at early pragmatist philosopher/scholars of art and religion like George Santayana and Ananda Coomaraswamy we took the temperature of a certain corner of the institutional establishment in the throes of the Modernism moment.

“To be sensitive to difficulties and dangers goes with being sensitive to opportunities.” – Santayana
“The artist is not a special kind of man but every man is a special kind of artist.” – Coomaraswamy

Key Texts:
Santayana, George. “Reason in Art.” Originally published in 1905.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda. “Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art.” From a 1956 Dover edition.

3) In our next group of readings we found ourselves looking away from socialized and received notions of making meaning and gazed into the huge vault of human biology itself. Using primarily Rudolf Arnheim and Ellen Dissanayake, we discovered that a very profound kind of knowledge precedes the cognitive ideas that may calibrate our understanding of art: the psychology of kinesthesis and developmental biology. We took Dissanayake as a jumping off point to engage with Evolutionary Psychology as it pertains to art, art-making, and meaning. Touching on the work of Denis Dutton (as well as his critics), we explored how biology has calibrated how human beings make meaning and put it to work in the world. Coming back to pragmatism, we saw how Dewey and Kupfer connected aesthetic experiences with moral growth.

“It is important to recognize that in large measure everything we know is ultimately based on our bodily senses: what we see, hear, and touch, in particular.” – Dissanayake

“The work of art symbolizes all the levels of reality that lie between the phenomenon and the idea.” – Arnheim

“We take pleasure in watching an athlete break a record, hearing a soprano in full flight, or reading a philosopher of depth and insight. Human accomplishment is the ultimate spectator sport. Apply as much historical analysis to it as we wish, and we’ll not unlock all its mysteries. The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.” – Dutton

Key Texts:
Arnheim, Rudolf. “Toward a Psychology of Art.” 1966.
Dissanayake, Ellen. “Homo Aestheticus.” 1992.
Dutton, Denis. “Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology.” The Oxford Handbook for Aesthetics, 2003.
Dewey, John. “Art as Experience.” 1958.
Kupfer, Jospeh. “Aesthetic Experience and Moral Education.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1978.

4) Once fully ensconced in the notion that our biology (and the way that biology structured our thinking and making) is key to any real understanding of what art is and does, we looked at the intellectual analysis of artworks. This examination of interpretation – or, as it might be, overinterpretation – was overseen by Arthur C. Danto and Umberto Eco, with a significant dash of Richard Rorty thrown in for good measure.

“Interpretation is in effect the lever with which an object is lifted out of the real world and into the artworld, where it becomes vested in often unexpected raiment. Only in relationship to interpretation is a material object an artwork, which of course does not entail that what is an artwork is relative in any further interesting way.” – Danto

“From a certain point of view everything bears relationships of analogy, contiguity and similarity to everything else.” – Eco

“Reading [artworks] is a matter of reading them in the light of other [artworks], people, obsessions, bits of information, or what have you, and then seeing what happens.” – Rorty

Key Texts:
Danto, Arthur C. “The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art.” 2005.
Eco, Umberto. “Interpretation and Overinterpretation.” 1992.

Above: COME AT ME BRO!

5) In some sense our exploration of the hyper-intellectualized/philosophized interpretation of artworks took us from culture into a kind of ritualized, rarified space – albeit a secular one. From there we took a tack back toward culture-making and onward through it toward a more spiritual kind of ritual. We looked first at key texts from the famed philosopher of religion Mircea Eliade. Our perspective was updated to the mid-90s with Suzi Gablik’s The Reenchantment of Art.

“The numinous presents itself as something ‘wholly other’ (ganz andere), something basically and totally different.” – Eliade

“Ritual signifies that something more is going on than meets the eye – something sacred.” – Gablik

Key Texts:
Eliade, Mircea. “The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion.” 1959.
Gablik, Suzi. “The Reenchantment of Art.” 1991.

6) At this point we began to entertain the implications of the alternative histories/literacies we had explored over the semester. We aimed more directly at poetical understanding, beginning with Emerson as a representative of the American Transcendentalist Movement of the 19th century. From there we allowed Annie Dillard and David Abram to bring us up to the present day – and blow our minds along the way. In this section we spent a good amount of time attempting to understand an intuitive mode of aesthetics as opposed to a rationalist one.

“The life of [humanity] is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.” – Emerson

“The feelings that move us – the frights and yearnings that color our days, the flights of fancy that sometimes seize us, the creativity that surges through us – all are born of the encounter and interchange between our life and the wider Life that surrounds us. They are no more ours than they are Earth’s” – David Abram

“I’ve an eyeful of fish-scale and star!” – Dillard

Key Texts:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature and Other Writings.” 2003 edition by Shambhala.
Abram, David. “The Air Aware.” 2009.
Dillard, Annie. “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” 1974.
For your listening pleasure, click here to hear David Abram read The Air Aware.

Above: They (the grads) were in some frightening trees (grad school)! Click here for more information…

7) Our final readings of the semester centered on Gaston Bachelard. This master dreamer – a giant of 20th century philosophy who influenced Foucault and Derrida – helped us grasp the constellations that populate our own inner universes. Bachelard gave us – through his inflected intonations of the words of Rilke and Baudelaire (among others) – a sense of how our intuitive manifestations might transcend the “geometrical ontological determinations” that dominate the empiricist, rationalist approach to contemporary art-making.

“Everything takes form, even infinity. We seek to determine being and, in so doing, transcend all situations, to give a situation of all situations.Man’s being is confronted with the world’s being.” – Bachelard
“By means of poetic language, waves of newness flow over the surface of being.” – Bachelard

Key Texts:
Bachelard, Gaston. “The Poetics of Space.” 1994.

I want to thank all of the grads for going with me on the journey this semester. Spring 2012 FTW!