simulated thinking

Thanks goes to Terry for this great excerpt from Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of The Fog of War:

Then there's a score by Philip Glass (a standby to which Morris has become very accustomed), a metronomic New Age pulse that encourages not thought but the impression that one is thinking. "No one does `existential dread' as well as Philip Glass," Morris has offered by way of explanation. "And this is a movie filled with existential dread." But "doing" existential dread is a far cry from understanding it or, better yet, addressing it.

I used to be a big fan of Glass's music when I heard it performed live, largely because of its meditative qualities. But one might question the use of meditating on Robert McNamara as opposed to thinking analytically and critically about him. If we meditate on charts and figures or feel existential dread about them without even knowing what they say, there's a danger that we'll think we're doing something serious just by gaping at what's in front of us. The same thing applies to gaping at McNamara even when we know what he's saying, in part because of the high gloss of that chugging Glass music. It's almost as if Morris were characterizing McNamara's discourse as "Glassy" (rather than simply gassy), the same way Oliver Stone and Anthony Hopkins tried to make Richard M. Nixon seem Shakespearean.


For a long time, I've wanted to write up a short post about author photos, and this excerpt feels like a good gateway. Any signification of "serious thought" that does not occur in language -- and then, in a sense, is not a signification, but a (re-)enactment -- is inimical to what it is signifying (thought). The result is either disquieting or funny. Author photos for literary fiction --that most introverted of artforms-- try to squeeze intellectual noblesse out of a writer's physiognomy and convince us that "depth" has a surface appearance; thus, in my opinion, author photos are funny. And how funny they are is in direct proportion to how seriously they want to be taken. The more they try to signify "thought," the more their authors look like what they'd hate to write: clichés.

-Author photos ask, What does "intellect" look like? Well, intellect causes -- and looks like -- Thinking. -Thinking increases the brain's density, and requires a hand to steady the head's new weight. -Also: putting the hands close to or on the mouth signifies empathic listening. Comfortable not speaking, a Thinker draws attention to her hands' non-gesticulations. -Glasses correct human distortion to allow a psychologically accurate world-view. -Glasses also protect us from heat vision, which wants to scorch us with the truth. -A black and white photograph demonstrates the austerity and sophistication of Thinking. -Authors emerge from the black background like the ego from the id, insights from the depths of our subnconscious.

more:
-Deconstructing the Author Photo
-Jonathan Franzen's author photo
-The Photographer Who Makes Writers Look Like Authors
-Joyce Carol Oates' book jacket photos

Posted by nchicha at January 30, 2004 07:32 AM
Comments

The visible hand could simply be the achnowledgement of writing. Sort of a "These here hands do the typing" deal. But the heavy head is a definite subtext.

Posted by: Swami on January 30, 2004 12:48 PM

Rather than grad school for writing, check out www.fawc.org --

Posted by: Steve on January 30, 2004 02:43 PM

This is an excellent post -- am still laughing about heat vision and heavy heads.

I like author photos that seem relaxed, candid or convey a sense of fun. Karen Joy Fowler's, sitting in the crook of a tree and looking like herself, is my favorite. I think.

(See also, the excerpt from THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB on the home page of that site. Who is your Jane Austen? Jane would never have used a heat vision author photo.)

Posted by: Bondgirl on January 30, 2004 02:45 PM

Have you guys read about The Enneagram and Body Types? Or is that too New Agey?

Posted by: Ron Mwangaguhunga on January 30, 2004 02:46 PM

hehehe. i particularly like the sinewy arms, bottom right, which indicate the author in question could go out and hew wood or draw water if he had to, but wrestles with muscular prose instead. and of course his head is particularly heavy.

Posted by: qB on January 30, 2004 03:45 PM

Personally, I thought Glass's score worked well in the /Fog of War/. That's just an opinion. . .we could debate the matter. What is absolutely idiotic is for anyone to say Glass's music expresses "existential dread". . .I get the feeling people are starting to predicate existentialism of anything vaguely intellectual. Glass's music, to my thinking, has absolutely nothing to do with dread or existentialism, though it has a great deal to do with Buddhism. . .a rather tinny and joyous inflection of Buddhism, I'd say, or (earlier on) a neutral 'empty-mind' Buddhism. . .Glass never paired his music with Sartre, Camus or Beckett, but did with Allen Ginsberg.

Posted by: Vitreous Bodhi on January 31, 2004 11:50 PM

I need to come back and read or at least skim all of this to comment properly.

Meanwhile, though, check out Zadie Smith's On the Road: American Writers and Their Hair.

And you can see a couple of other pics of Zadie's own hair in my blog.

Posted by: Prentiss Riddle on February 15, 2004 10:15 PM
Post a comment