the Twisted Slippery Years have come to grief,
and now an Empire falls, and now a Leaf.


Melanie raised an interesting question today about the canon (or, specifically, why should she be reading Walter Scott?). Do we even need a canon? I think there are two ways of looking at it. First, there is the old "progressive-evolutionary" model, aptly pictured by that (in)famous poster of human ancestors walking in a line, from one end shambling on knuckles all hairy & beastlike, becoming more & more erect until, at its culmination, one can imagine the 20th century aerospace engineer with a slide rule. Or you can picture it as an "evolutionary tree" in the modern sense, with many false-starts or branches that left no progeny, & the survivors not necessarily being any better than the non-survivors, just luckier. Actually, in literature a revival is always possible, so that the lines of descent are continually being (slightly) rewritten: this is a way of reading old texts. "What other ways are there of making sense of this?"

Of course nowadays i advocate each creative writer choosing their own ancestors (whakapapa). But how do you do this, starting from scratch? I know i read many books of criticism & reviews until i found congenial pathfinders, & i imagine this is a common experience in those impatient with having their "classics" selected for them. And sometimes a generation of writers reaches a new consensus about an ancestor or group of ancestors, but this typically takes a very long time to become reflected in the curriculum. In the meantime you have subcultures & cult-artists. They may never reach the point of official acceptance. Or their numbers may impel a token gesture, such as the Library of America embracing PKD & Lovecraft (instead of, say, all science fiction).

What we need to understand, perhaps, is simply the fluidity of tradition, which nilpertains its crucial importance. And this is not anyway to be used to argue from its authority but rather to say: see what has been done. Does it speak for you? And what will you reply?


The Anunnaki Project.


Some sample Lojban etymologies.


"Not since Lincoln and Roosevelt has an incoming president been landed with an America in such desperate need of rehabilitation and repair..." (via wood_s lot)


Amusing Ufonic postscript.