I don’t mean to suck up, because he doesn’t even respond to most of my emails, but I want to share with you my impressions of the significance of Jeff Goldstein on the web.
I have been able to share with you this version of my voice because of the large, really magnificent space that Jeff has opened up here, even if I’ve been helping to nuke his readership over the time that he’s been moving and . . . dealing with other things. And to tell you the truth, most of you who have followed him closely have just about as much information regarding his situation as do I.
Of all the things that written, or typed, language can represent, that which it represents best is the voice. We give ourselves over to the processing of the voice as we scan the page. In some sense, we give over our voices to the production of another voice, and often this is tantamount to a kind of necromancy. Read the Cratylus, and decide, if you can, how the vocal organs substitute themselves for the whole of the bodily sensorium, even if not out loud, even if only subvocalizing.
Shakespeare arose out of two major voices of his time, Robert Greene and Kit Marlowe. Marlowe invented the lyric voice of Elizabethan drama. Greene was the first man in England able to create himself ab ovo through the medium of the press. Falstaff is Greene, and his repudiation by Hal dramatizes Shakespeare’s acknowledgment of the space opened up by him, on the one hand, and the rejection of his limitations that was required for Shakespeare to pursue his art beyond the confines imposed by having made oneself the central figure of one’s own craft.
Goldstein has done this, and Ace, and Patterico, and on the left I can point also to Berube, whose voice I know firsthand. They, and others like them, have created this space in which we dwell, some of us, too much of the time. They have created you, the audience whom I now address, with full faith that you will “get it.” And reciprocally, you have created them. It is because of this that people such as Joseph Rago are upset. They recognize, in a primitive way, that the system of certification of the voice has broken down–it is irreparably broken, it is to be hoped. And as long as there are those who feel that we entertain and enlighten, there will be a readership and a conversation.
I make no claim upon your consciousness. I am as little deserving of your time as a voice can be. If you take anything away from me at all, please take this: you are as worthy to be heard as anyone else.
And yet, I wish to haunt you.
Glad you said it. Someone of your stature needed to.
I would only say that yours was the funniest voice on TDA and is the funniest voice on PW.
Your religious and literary erudition are remarkable. I don’t know what the hell you get up to in your Vermont fastnesses, but I hope it is very well rewarded.
Merry Christmas.
Get what?
{/Dennis Miller who?}
{//goes back to eating applesauce}
TW: It’s not rocket science52…
If you jump up my ass and rattle rusty chains be forewarned, I eat much spicey food.
I’m something of an M.R. James fan, so knock yourself out.
I was sitting here the other night, typing away at something. I had been reading Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories earlier in the day. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a dark roundish shape peeking around the doorjamb. It just barely came into view, and then moved back, then peek and back again. It wasn’t orange or brunette, so it couldn’t have been either of the children. There was that nano-second shiver of doubt–what if I’m about to be jumped by the golf ball? The ghosts in James’s stories seem to always appear first on the peripherary of vision, and rise up from the floor to throw themselves upon the protagonist. Then I realized it was just a purple balloon that was being slowly drawn out of my son’s room by the return air vent. It was bobbing there on the floor, being pushed back and forth by the air current. I briefly reflected on ”The Malice of Inanimate Objects” before getting up and tossing it back into his room. It was pretty amusing.
Seriously, though, I enjoy your poetry posts the best. Got any of those you would like to gift us with this Christmas? A haunting one, or maybe one more suitable to the season?
So are you laying claim to being Lear’s fool?
(Does anyone else think the fool is Lear’s split personality?)
And Merry Christmas to you too Dan.
To the contraty. You are very deserving of my time.
Feel free to haunt me. Bring some good music!
***
Completely off topic and nobody should read this comment. I hate it when I show up and everyone leaves and I just feel like commenting.
But there is an actual show on tv (right now!) called Cheaters.
People think their significant othter is cheating and they want it to be taped an aired on tv!!!
Holycrap!
You mean something like this?
TW: french. “Agincourt, also known as “that other battle where we whupped some French ass”.”
Hey you better be polite to me!! I’m Times Person of the Year.
This, and a lively discussion of Dawkins, reason, and the mystery of transubstantiation. Where else but PW?
Thanks, Dan, and Merry Christmas. And Happy Chanukah to Jeff and his family!
More Goldsteinism, please!
And more scones!
My favorite vein of the PW favorites – the conceptual series.
That, and the stunning rhetorical victory for intentionalism with that irritating trog formerly known as Thersites.
Haunt me? H.P. Lovecraft you are not, but Merry Christmas anyway.
LOL- and no discussion of Goldsteinism would be complete without this : http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2006/06/the_two_minutes.html
Merry Christmas to all!
PS: appy polly logies to you- I’m too html-challenged to set that in a nice link.
TW: Maybe by the time I’ve turned 91 I’ll know how to do it (no- I meant set up LINKS! Jeeeze).
Free at last! Thought mating.
I love you, men. And who better to speak “truth to Peter” than Dan?
It’s the Lord of the Flies/Animal Farm/worse primitiveness of the reactions of the certified and certifying (and those who court them) to Jeff’s…existence, really, isn’t it? that prove that he’s better at this than almost anyone.
You are loved, pasty.
(Dan’s cool, too.)
– Being in the middle of My 5th Black Russian, and 3rd christmas apple tart, I have no clue as to the essense of what you wrote Collins, but I have faith that it carried your usual flair for pithy commentary, pled not guilty to various forms of Goldsteinian ass kissing, and was as usual, funny. I hereby declare total innocence in the matter of dressing the ‘dillo like a wiccan elve, or super gluing him to the top of the tree.
– That said, I wish everyone one a large Nog, embellished with your fav appertiff, and a Merry Christmas, Hannakah, or whatever bush you happen to worship.
– Now I’ll return to my own personal means of Holiday Joy, and do my usual lamenting of missing being Jesus by 1 day, while I open these cheapskate presents that are eternally for “your birthday AND Christmas sweetie”, and try not to look too ungrateful.
– A special thanks to Luna for making the place pretty, and smell nice, and too you Collins, and the family that puts up with you, the best of happiness and fortune for the coming year.
NosTrovia to all My PW Droogs – spaceeba for all the laughs….
You are SO so gay.
If doubts persist, read Mark Anderson’s “Shakespeare by Another Name” (2005), a powerfully detailed biography of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550 – 1604), that correlates very precisely with the plays. From portraiture to Elizabethan court politics, from travels in Italy to active military service in Scotland and the Lowlands; from de Vere’s matriculation at both Oxford and Cambridge at age twelve to his legal forays at the Inns of Court; from his family’s emblem of Athena as “Spear Shaker” and so on, since Lunney in 1920 the case for de Vere has become virtually irrefutable.
Computerized textual analysis; word-for-word letters and documents; contemporary references in various low-key contexts, all render Oxford key. Moreover, it is physically if not intellectually and culturally impossible that an illiterate Stratford wool merchant could have composed such works under any circumstances whatsoever. Lampooning Lord Burghley as Polonius would by itself have delivered any but a high aristocrat to torture and death in years after the Armada… Elizabeth in fact bestowed on her quondam Poet Laureate a 1000-pound pension equivalent to $250K today, commissioning a series of “history plays” glorifying the Queen’s Tudor heritage in absence of a recognized successor.
No conspiracy suppressed de Vere’s commonly acknowledged if ill-documented authorship. The Bard was a rock-ribbed feudalist, disciple of Castiglione, whose “courtier” must not subject himself to common scrutiny under any pretext. But sonnets plead for recognition of posterity, and works from “Merry Wives” to “Measure for Measure” and “Verona” treat darkly of de Vere’s opposing alter egos– Hamlet’s “dark Prince” aspect, the otherwise foolish mistaken identity themes (misplaced twins to Titania’s Faerie Queen) that haunt half the Bardic oeuvre on record.
An ill-becoming snobbery informs all too many academic responses to what is, after all, a tremendous socio-cultural event: “Shakespeare’s” virtual invention of the English Language. Among others, neither Otto von Bismarck, Sigmund Freud, nor even Mark Twain accorded Stratford any credibility. Twain even compiled a 250-word summary of everything known of Stratford; to this day, nothing has been added. How could it be? “Shake Spear” was de Vere’s bemused Elizabethan pun, a nom de plume safely applied to an illiterate provincial bumpkin who may have compiled stolen excerpts but most certainly had no scholarly resources, could not ever have left England, remained a peculating small-scale wool-factor to his unlamented end.
A generation or so from now, de Vere will have come into his own. From the late 18th Century, alternative reams of speculation are irrelevent. The whole case is admittedly most strange: The Bard sought anonymity, but “Shakespeare” ate at him. Well-wishers connived at the charade too long, hinting, smirking, talking up their sleeves… until the concrete hardened, and self-serving academics pronounced absurdity. Where are the lengthy treatises on wool-factoring, comparable to Melville’s trypots in Moby DicK? Why was Stratford not brutally prosecuted for reviewing Westminster’s dirty linen– how in fact could he have come within a parsec of the Queen’s intimate Court?
An extensive literature burgeons ‘round de Vere. Finally, true scholars are staking academic careers on this peculiar circumstance. But always, The Bard is the most autobiographical of authors. Knowing his identity is key. My own reaction is a hearty laugh at the professoriate’s overblown confidence in obfuscation. Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles are separated from the Spear Shaker by two thousand years. With luck, we’ll see another of his kind by AD 3500. Let’s hope Athena favors her next genius with a better fate.
Huh?
What? Huh? I think it is too late for me to be reading this post. It reminds me of the “Far Side” Could it be the sake? The tequila? The Boddington’s Pub Ale?
This post reminds me of the “Far Side” cartoon where the guy is yelling at his dog, and what the dog hears is: “Tom, blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah Tom blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah, Tom”
How’m I doing?
I remember the year that Clayton Delaney died.
If you can isolate the culprit, I will strike it from my late night diet. Well, for a while, at least.
That said, this site rocks.
Even if Jeff thinks that screenwriting is a big deal, it’s good to have Dan around to fill the void.
Jeff – Haven’t you figured it out yet? Those guys just want to suck the life (and the money) out of you. Been there, done that. Someday you will wake up and say “WTF am I doing?” Fer Crissakes, I used to play on “Hee Haw”. Guess what? Great players – but assholes run the show. Hollywood? Yeah. Tell me it’s different, and I’m sure I will believe you (I’ve been there, too)
Until you realize what’s up, best of luck and thank you again for PW. I think you are about the best on the web – besides the Lightspeed Girls.
Truly Jeff, thank you very much for this space where people who know what’s going on can post.
Is it true that you can’t live in Boulder unless you have a $2,000 dollar bicycle and a Spandex bike suit? Or maybe if you’re name is Moe and you used to own a tea company? Hi, Peggy.