Sebald in a sense having ressurected the narrative I of Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy — but
story idea of person wandering around housing complex like I have just done–
idea that the mechanism by which “Karl” becomes “K” is Kafka’s diminishing hopes of publication –of career as salvation, of career as even something “distantly out there” and possible–
(because career is not possible, Kafka is “K”)
ought publication to be considered the realm of the perfect or the realm of the good enough– in an absolute sense — if it’s going to be published it has to be good (because it represents oneself, one’s publisher)– if it’s going to be published of course it will merely be ‘good enough’ (almost nothing that’s published is actually much good, in an ‘absolute sense’.)
if it were true that only by reading the original manuscript could you have an ‘authentic reading experience’ what would that imply– which is most true or is it to be thought of as a spectrum: the author’s thought; the author’s manuscript; the author’s published thought [etc.]
Statue: what is interesting about the statue of the woman picking up after her dog is the length and the tautness of the leash between her and her dog; while she crouches the dog is pulling with the maximum strength in another direction. The dog is not portrayed in the statue.
“spectacle” …
“signs without the signified”…
the really big numbers we encounter in modern times: the size of the nat’l debt, the distance to the sun, the age of the earth … whereas in classical times it was “10,000”… (does our capacity to number precede or follow the things we find to number)… we know the Dow Jones goes up or down (and what it’s going up or down roughly may mean to us) but don’t really know what it represents (or how it goes up or down) or why it is thirteen instead of two thousand
(Of the ignition we know to insert and twist the key, of the engine we know it needs oil and gas, but what occurs between them is generally not known.)
(we have faith that a mechanic must know, but what if it were to come to pass that no one really knew how the one related to the other, that we forgot)
(often our “forest of symbols” is one of car or computer parts?) [NO.]
The idea that A.I will essentially be like this: there will be a car, we don’t know to fix, between us and experience, (between us and all of experience, not just our experience of transportation)
“Fraudulence” making a “statue of oneself” (good old neon) awareness of playing the expected role in the given drama or spectacle– the script — (Sommerby’s “script”) — “being oneself” (our android self) — (“being serious” equals building our statue.) android statue (to be a spectacle, whatever it may mean for oneself, is “at least also to distract others from themselves.”)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 