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Mapping Kerouac: The Grammatical Artwork of Stefanie Posavec

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:14:40 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Posavec dissects every word, phrase, sentence, and subject of Kerouac's On the Road to invent new ways of looking at the familiar masterpiece. The diagrams make for beautiful art in their own right. (See source for high-res pictures.)

In her structure analysis, each chapter explodes in a color-coded starburst of topical breakdowns. At a glance, you can see Kerouac's focus wander from the sketches of local life in the beginning, to depictions of work and travel in the middle, with women and the subject of love dominating the latter chapters.

The comparative sentence diagrams are what really drew me in. It's fascinating to behold an entire literary work all at once on one page. What's more, Kerouac's casual prose style can be differentiated immediately from the stately, grandiose writing of Faulkner, not to mention the terse, claustrophobic style of Orwell's fiction.

Literary reductionism at its most fun and beautiful.

Clip Source: www.notcot.com

Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space.

The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor.

Tags: art, artwork, literature, kerouac, grammar, map

Stressed Chinese Police to Lose Guns

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:53:31 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BEIJING (Reuters) - Police facing emotional strains due to financial or romantic problems could be stripped of their department-issued handguns in China's Jiangxi province, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

Last November, a doctor in the southern city of Guangzhou was shot dead by patrolling officers when he resisted police attempts to inspect his car.

A district police chief, allegedly disgruntled about his demotion, shot dead a deputy Communist Party boss of Hohhot city in Inner Mongolia in February.

The public security bureau in the province will begin inspections this month to make sure officers who have received administrative punishments, or are under investigation, will not be able to carry firearms, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

Guns would also be retrieved from "officers who are suffering from serious illnesses or face psychological and emotional instability resulting from love or marriage frustrations and heavy debt,"

Tags: guns, stress

The Dread of Dying as Source of Woe: Irvin Yalom

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:07:33 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Nice interview

Clip Source: www.salon.com

it is not just love that we look for in all the wrong places. If Irvin Yalom is right, it is life itself. By denying death, the psychoanalyst suggests, we misdirect our search for happiness. The true meaning of life, his work suggests, lies in engaging what we most fear.

"The primitive dread of death resides in the unconscious -- a dread that is part of the fabric of being, that is formed early in life before the development of precise, conceptual formulation, a dread that is chilling, uncanny, and inchoate, a dread that exists prior to and outside of language and image." -- "Existential Psychotherapy"

"A real confrontation with death usually causes one to question with real seriousness the goals and conduct of one's life up to then. So also with those who confront death through a fatal illness. How many people have lamented: 'What a pity I had to wait till now, when my body is riddled with cancer, to know how to live!'" -- "Love's Executioner"

Tags: yalom, fear of death, repression, denial

The Courage to Be

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:38:47 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Useful overview of Tillich's The Courage to Be, supported by general account of existential approaches to anxiety of non-being, including Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

Clip Source: www.escapefromwatchtower.com

Security is so seductive, and insecurity is so frightening. But security is always false, and insecurity is always real. No religion can make anyone secure, though it, like the drugs on which our society is so dependent, can give the illusion of security. True religion enables one to grasp life with the radical insecurity and to live it with courage. It does not aid us in the pretense that our insecurities have been taken away

"The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation . . it is the affirmation of one's essential nature, one's inner aim or entelechy (vital force, realization), but it is an affirmation which has in itself the character of "in spite of."

"The courage to be in all its forms has, by itself, revelatory character. it shows the nature of being, it shows that the self-affirmation of being is an affirmation that overcomes negation."

TILLICH

The Courage to Be

Tags: tillich, courage to be, anxiety, angst

The Unhappy Consumer

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:02:18 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: As well as nearly paralysed by anxiety, they clog up health services, and their insatiable sucking on the teat of consumer goodies is the evil source of the majority world's suffering, real suffering. If you want to experience feeling through the fug of despair, try starvation or war.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

It comes as no surprise to learn from a study published this week that, although Britons are twice as rich as they were in 1987, they are no happier.

Ruskin tellingly remarked ''a man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel'', and this, alas, characterises too many people. The limited surface area of such parcels does not attract much of the golden dust of satisfaction.

The true equation between happiness and wealth is this: that happiness is wealth. Unlike wealth in the form of money and possessions, such happiness can never be quantified, only felt; and if one has it, it does not matter if the level of it always stays the same.

Tags: unhappiness