Twitches
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In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren, the protagonist, Jack Burden, eventually decides that the Universe is ruled by “The Great Twitch”. This nihilistic cynicism arises from his experiences as the right-hand man of Governor Willie Stark in 1930s Louisiana. Stark begins as an idealistic lawyer and weak gubernatorial candidate but becomes a charismatic and powerful governor whose power is based on patronage, intimidation and corruption. The consensus is that the novel was inspired by the career and death of Governor Huey Long. We read this novel in my freshman English class. I didn’t realize it until later but my grandfather’s brother, Shirley Wimberly, also a Louisiana politician of that era, was a sometimes ally and sometimes enemy of Long. He wrote an editorial in which he referred to Long as “the Crawfish”; he was usually referred to as “the Kingfish”. Governor Earl Long (Huey’s brother) eventually appointed Uncle Shirley to the Louisiana Criminal Bench. Did you ever read that novel, Glen? When I read your post about twitches I had the feeling it resonated with some memory. Then I realized what it was. Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Frank Wimberly wrote at 03/20/2013 02:59 PM:
> Did you ever read that novel, Glen? When I read your post about > twitches I had the feeling it resonated with some memory. Then I > realized what it was. Aha! Yes. I _loved_ that novel, even read it twice. I completely forgot about it. I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when I read it first. Thanks. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella Just one lick upon my thoughts ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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glen wrote at 03/21/2013 06:36 AM:
> I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy > somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when > I read it first. Thanks. Yep. Sure enough I have page 314 starred: "We rode across Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he left me to try for north Arkansas. I did not ask him if he had learned the truth in California. His face had learned it anyway, and wore the final wisdom under the left eye. The face knew that the twitch was the live thing. Was all. But, having left that otherwise unremarkable man, it occurred to me, as I reflected upon the thing which made him remarkable, that if the twitch was all, what was it that could know that the twitch was all? Did the leg of the dead frog in the laboratory know that the twitch was all when you put the electric current through it? Did the man's face know about the twitch, and how it was all? And if I was all twitch how did the twitch which was me know that the twitch was all? Ah, I decided, that is the mystery. That is the secret knowledge. That is what you have to go to Calfirnia to have a mystic vision to find out. That the twitch can know that the twitch is all. Then, having found that uot, in the mystic vision, you feel clean and free. You are at one with the Great Twitch." My copy seems to have been printed in 1982. And I don't think I started writing in the margins of books until my senior year in high school (1985). So, this would definitely be one of the, if not the, earliest influences for my awareness of the twitch ontology. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella They got the future precisely laid out as I need. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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I'll see your "King's Men" and raise
you a
"Stone Junction" by Jim Dodge
It is a novel I think Glen might have liked to have lived in (I know I do), Rich may *be* living in, Doug might wish he had written, and all the lab rats here (folks working for, with or formerly so, the DOE Complex... self included) will cringe at. Tory if she is listening might likely wish both to live in it and have written it... She may have been living next door to Jim Dodge in Berkeley *while* he was writing it, and Frank may have had occasion to throw him out of the UCB Library along with Paul Erdos and Phillip K. Dick at closing time. And Stephen Guerin? I think he might *be* Jim Dodge! While it is an outlaw epic of the magnitude of Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang, it verges on alchemical conceits roughly crossing Carlos Castenada with the likes of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. As an aside, I was shocked to notice deeper in the Google Books information, a set of passages matched to other books? Google is now indexing phrases in literature? Who knew? Creepy but cool? Cool but Creepy? e.g. Page
130 - The whole of art is one
long roll of revelation.' And it is revealed only to those
whose minds are
Appears
in 7 books from 1947-2003
When Glen writes his "great american novel" (surely to be also an alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his (published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the origami paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy. Which tangents me (me, tangenting?) to Jiddu Krishnamurti's line paraphrased roughly as: "your existence is like a piece of paper, every experience you have is a fold, and your soul is the sum of all the creases left". At the time, I was feeling a bit like a crumpled ball of paper, but the metaphor still held all too well. - Steve glen wrote at 03/21/2013 06:36 AM:I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when I read it first. Thanks.Yep. Sure enough I have page 314 starred: "We rode across Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he left me to try for north Arkansas. I did not ask him if he had learned the truth in California. His face had learned it anyway, and wore the final wisdom under the left eye. The face knew that the twitch was the live thing. Was all. But, having left that otherwise unremarkable man, it occurred to me, as I reflected upon the thing which made him remarkable, that if the twitch was all, what was it that could know that the twitch was all? Did the leg of the dead frog in the laboratory know that the twitch was all when you put the electric current through it? Did the man's face know about the twitch, and how it was all? And if I was all twitch how did the twitch which was me know that the twitch was all? Ah, I decided, that is the mystery. That is the secret knowledge. That is what you have to go to Calfirnia to have a mystic vision to find out. That the twitch can know that the twitch is all. Then, having found that uot, in the mystic vision, you feel clean and free. You are at one with the Great Twitch." My copy seems to have been printed in 1982. And I don't think I started writing in the margins of books until my senior year in high school (1985). So, this would definitely be one of the, if not the, earliest influences for my awareness of the twitch ontology. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Steve Smith wrote at 03/21/2013 10:24 AM:
> I'll see your "King's Men" and raise you a"Stone Junction" > <http://books.google.com/books/about/Stone_Junction.html?id=woneSCNLbrYC> by > Jim Dodge Ordered! > When Glen writes his "great american novel" (surely to be also an > alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his > (published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences > and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the > origami paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy. Unfortunately, I think the novel is dead as a format for story telling. It may return if peak oil or a zombie apocalypse obtains. But overall, I think it's efficacy is dwindling rapidly. I still like them because that's the way I was trained. But I find them increasingly difficult to read ... the surrounding people, devices, and non-fiction books with good indices draw my attention away from novels. I'll play a video game for 6 hours. But I won't read a novel for 6 hours. Even when I do manage to read for a long time, it sparks ideas that I have to write down or pause to look something up in another book. I am no longer linear ... or even first order continuous. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella The dog is dead and the sacrifice is done ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Glen -
Unfortunately I fear you are correct. *I* have probably *written* at least one Novel's worth (a Michener or King's worth?) right here on the FRIAM list, yet you don't see me buckling down to publish my own next to Doug's. And in fact, I think Doug will acknowledge that even *he* wouldn't (couldn't) write his novel today... it was enough focus just to dig it out, re-asciify it, reformat it, edit, dust, clean, etc. enough to publish as an e-book on Amazon. Patricia (and other published fiction authors here???) might have another perspective of course! I don't play video games for 6 hour stints, even though I came of age along with Pong, then Asteroids, Pac Man, Battlezone, and Missile Command. I do occasionally fall into a hole dug by Tetris on my iPhone, however. But I *rarely* read a novel anymore. I was, as you were, was trained on such... but the last 22 years (if you read my last post) have slowly eroded that. 22 years ago I had a TV connected to a VCR in a cabinet with doors, and I might have indulged in a movie once every week or two... maybe two during a weekend. I rarely even turned the tube on, and then only to maybe catch a local weather forecast. *Even* I didn't have a *laptop* until about 1998 and while I spent at least half my time at work in front of a computer, I spent almost no time at home on a computer and the other half of my work time arm-wrestling (other) idiots in meetings or crawling around fishing cables under raised floors or dropped ceilings. Today I spend (to this list's chagrin) 4-16 hours a day (350/365 days) in front of this (or one or another) damned machine either reading/writing e-mail, surfing the web (for very important stuff), writing proposals, writing code, (occasionally) writing invoices, building 3d models for proposals or for specifying physical parts of systems, or streaming a movie or ... I'm lucky to pull my face out (2:14) of this machine for any significant amount of time, it is only because I maintain something of a "homesteader's lifestyle" that requires me to chop wood, carry water, repair a dumptruck/tractor/trailer haul my own trash away, etc. I still spend *several* hours a week arm wrestling (other) idiots in meetings but half of them are on Skype! Someone needs to design a haptic-interface (and mediation protocols?) for a USB attached device to facilitate arm wresting over the wire proper? Rob Shaw's (also on this list?) brother (Chris) was involved in a startup 15 years ago (Haptek?) that was designing pneumatic haptic "suits" for martial arts games, unfortunately it didn't make it to the market. They got distracted with People Putty (and more)... I *am* working with the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) to try to help them develop/teach *immersive* storytelling in their Digital Dome but I fear, even with full 360 surround environments and full motion tracking, storytelling is losing something, unless it can somehow transcend and come full circle. For those lucky enough to experience Robert Mirabal's live performance (Po'Pay Speaks), you might know that there is always hope for such! We (most of us) are of a generation that preceded all this, I can only imagine what it has been like for the current generation of children who were born *after* Al Gore invented the Internet and the rest of us invented the rest of it. I only see MiniVans and SUVs on the highway with 2.6 (or is it 1.8) kids in the back seat with 2 video screens (one on the back of each parent's seat/headrest with either a movie or maybe a video game (or web browser) running. I have quoted Jerry Mander with "Shoot your Television". Obviously that was not enough, my computer snuck in and filled it's niche to bursting! Off to a face-to-face meeting that will actually require walking around outside waving our arms (Hi Jane) ! I've gotta stop this Twitch! - Steve Steve Smith wrote at 03/21/2013 10:24 AM:I'll see your "King's Men" and raise you a"Stone Junction" <http://books.google.com/books/about/Stone_Junction.html?id=woneSCNLbrYC> by Jim DodgeOrdered!When Glen writes his "great american novel" (surely to be also an alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his (published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the origami paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy.Unfortunately, I think the novel is dead as a format for story telling. It may return if peak oil or a zombie apocalypse obtains. But overall, I think it's efficacy is dwindling rapidly. I still like them because that's the way I was trained. But I find them increasingly difficult to read ... the surrounding people, devices, and non-fiction books with good indices draw my attention away from novels. I'll play a video game for 6 hours. But I won't read a novel for 6 hours. Even when I do manage to read for a long time, it sparks ideas that I have to write down or pause to look something up in another book. I am no longer linear ... or even first order continuous. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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I'm going to assume the "Patricia" Steve mentions is me. Ten published books. Four of them novels. You write because you must. I feel blessed to be able to do what I love to do.
Like most authors, I'm always saddened to hear that literature doesn't speak "any more" to a certain group of people, but that's the way it is. I could argue that the numbers it ever spoke to were always small, so what's new. But my missionary work is past, so no arguments from me. Pamela On Mar 21, 2013, at 2:58 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Pamela -
I'm going to assume the "Patricia" Steve mentions is me. Ten published books. Four of them novels. You write because you must. I feel blessed to be able to do what I love to do.Absolutely... my apologies... I should have turned my brain over at least one more time on that one. I *feared* was misnaming you! I did a scan of my e-mail contacts and of course found no "Patricia McCorduck" and should have trusted my instincts. And of course, just as we are many of us too flitter-brained to read more than a few words at a time, some of us are also unable/unwilling to focus properly on what we write (thus some portion of the *wrong* connected to the *lofty* and *long*). Thanks for speaking up... I understand that "Writers Write" and I am thankful for that. In Glen's vernacular, that (Writing) would be your Twitch I suppose? What I'm mostly addressing is that even those of us who have been the most avid readers of such writing in the past have undermined ourselves with a new texture of stimuli that feeds (some of) the same needs. I fear, however, that it is the white-sugar/white-flour/grain-alcohol of the intellect and emotion... and it does not serve us. I am not arguing that the work embodied in good writing/literature/novels is not worthy, but sadly that many of us are allowing our palates to go to pot, as it were. We are reading headlines, bumper stickers and tweets where we perhaps once read paragraphs. We are reading summaries and abstracts where we once read short stories and articles. We are reading Cliff's notes, the abridged version or "watching the movie" where we once read the novel. I am far from reveling in this collapse of attention span from the epic tales ( I recently toiled through the Illiad, but alas by listening on audio) to the soundbite, the catchy phrase, the tweet! But it seems widespread. I hope that this in fact, as i mentioned last posting, can come full circle and the storytellers don't all get buried or brushed aside in favor of the "twitch emoters" (again to adopt/adapt something of Glen's terms) or the tweeterers or the YouTube creators. I occasionally (surprise) get the response from folks "TLDR", an acronym for "Too Long, Didn't Read".... and while I know it is a highly motivated response (for I am lengthy and perhaps tedious and pedantic to some), I believe that some of this is in the eye of the beholder. TLDR (as an acronym) can be a self-admission to having given up one's ability to attend to more than a phrase or a sentence or two before rotoring on to "the next thing"? Please *do* continue to write, and maybe even a few of us will shake off our twitching stupor, find our fingerprint-smeared and dusty readers and read your work, cover to cover. - Steve
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We vote with our eyes--or our minds--about how we'll spend our (alas) finite time. If, at the end of the day, we're nourished by what we've exposed ourselves to, or done for ourselves, fine. If not, then we know we'd better make personal changes.
Oddly, in this day of electronic junk food of every description, book clubs are growing and sustaining themselves. This isn't just about reading. It's also about tackling with other human beings issues these books raise--the intellectual give and take that in itself is deeply nourishing on several levels. The regular posters on FRIAM find this forum nourishing, and irregular posters, like me, feel it's worth our while to lurk, sometimes to participate. I don't despair. On Mar 21, 2013, at 3:50 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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My succinct version: "I apparently have
nothing better to do".
We vote with our eyes--or our minds--about how we'll spend our (alas) finite time. If, at the end of the day, we're nourished by what we've exposed ourselves to, or done for ourselves, fine. If not, then we know we'd better make personal changes. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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