In Cigarettes are Sublime (Duke University Press, 1993) Richard Klein writes: The cigarette kills time, chronometric time, the stark mechanical measure of mortality….The series of moments the clock records is not only a succession of “nows” but a memento mori diminishing the number of seconds that remain before death. But the cigarette interrupts and reverses theContinue reading “Cigarettes and the Killing (of Time)”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Notes From Sick Bay
I am a sick man. But I’m not particularly spiteful. However, my sickness does make me an unattractive man. I do not think my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have,Continue reading “Notes From Sick Bay”
Blood Meridian and The Nature of the Universe
Yesterday’s post, in which I excerpted a couple of passages from Samuel Delany channeling Foucault, is followed today by two excerpts from Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (Vintage International, New York, 1992). I’m going to call these ‘theological’ in nature. (The entire novel, I realize, may be termed a kindContinue reading “Blood Meridian and The Nature of the Universe”
Samuel Delany on Power
I have finally taken down, from my shelves, my long-ago-borrowed copy of Samuel Delany‘s Tales of Nevèrÿon (Bantam Books, New York, 1979) and started reading it. Almost immediately, in the first story of Gorgik, the mine slave taken “as a plaything to Nevèrÿon’s imperial court” (‘The Tale of Gorgik‘), I came up on the following Foucauldian ruminationsContinue reading “Samuel Delany on Power”
Writing, the Beating of Metal, and Self-Transformation
I have been greedily raiding Divisadero‘s stores for little gems to excerpt here. But with writing that lovely and illuminating, there is little cause for shame. So once again: Sometimes truth is too buried for adults, it can be found only in hours of rewritings during the night, the way metal is beaten into fineness.Continue reading “Writing, the Beating of Metal, and Self-Transformation”
A Bodily Memory, Re-Evoked
Today, after a several-month-long gap thanks to my sabbatical leave, I am ensconced again in my university campus office. (I made the trip in today to meet a doctoral student and to attend to some bureaucratic matters.) My journey to campus–a half-hour walk as usual, preceded by dropping off my daughter at daycare–was uneventful, remindingContinue reading “A Bodily Memory, Re-Evoked”
An “Orphan’s Sense of History”
Today I plunder Divisadero again, for a personal note: Those who have an orphan’s sense of history love history. And my voice has become that of an orphan. Perhaps it was the unknown life of my mother, her barely drawn portrait, that made me an archivist, a historian. Because if you do not plunder theContinue reading “An “Orphan’s Sense of History””
The Post-Apocalyptic Famine
A couple of days ago, I viewed Tim Fehlbaum’s directorial debut Hell, which “tells the story of a group of survivors in post-apocalyptic Germany in the year 2016, when solar flares have destroyed the earth’s atmosphere and temperatures have risen by 10°C.” As my posts here on The Walking Dead and The Road would indicate,Continue reading “The Post-Apocalyptic Famine”
A Professional Businessman, Not a Professional Pakistani
Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears‘ My Beautiful Laundrette makes most of its viewers laugh a lot. My personal favorite of its many rib-ticklingly subversive moments came–as it seemingly did for many others–when the gay street punk Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) helps the Pakistani Nasser Ali (Saeed Jaffrey) evict black West Indian tenants from his slummish property,Continue reading “A Professional Businessman, Not a Professional Pakistani”
The Nature Documentary and its Edifying Functions
In response to my post on nature documentaries, reader Noor Alam offered the following thoughtful comment: How the nature documentary is made, what types of animal behavior are depicted, and how they are then interpreted, provide early and formative impressions about the world around us. Does the documentary empasize nature as a world in whichContinue reading “The Nature Documentary and its Edifying Functions”
Samir Chopra 