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Saturday, July 09, 2005
A Literary Carnival? or Do I Already Waste Enough Of Your Time?
A very short post to ask a very simple question:
Would the idea of a carnival that collected the best blogging about literature and/or literary theory in a given month be an idea other people would support? We blog in a sphere of shameless self-promotion, and every couple of weeks I read another impressive History Carnival, so after many minutes of careful consideration I’ve come to the conclusion that a literary carnival may not be the worst idea ever. If you concur, drop me a line (my email address can be found here) and, if you’re so inclined, a link to a post you think worthy of display in the as-yet-unnamed-and-nonexistent Literary Carnival. If I receive enough positive feedback and worthy applicants, I’ll probably host the first one at my place in a couple of weeks.
(Also, if you have an idea as to what the Literary Carnival should be called, my door is always open. The best I can muster off the top of my head is one of my favorite puns from the Wake, but I’m not sure “Messagepostumia” connotes all that carnivalesque.)
Comments
I think it’s a great idea, but wouldn’t the Valve be the perfect starting host for such a thing, given its stated ambitions & the stated ambitions of the ALSC?
Of course it would, Ray, but I can’t speak for the Valve, only myself. So far, that’s two yeas from contributors. Can I get a third?
So far I’ve only received two responses via email, but it’s Sunday and other people don’t spend their entire lives writing, so I’m sure more people pipe up shortly.
Also: if we do this, we’ll want as much publicity as we can muster, since one of my underhanded reasons for doing this is to track down exceptional literary blogs that have, for whatever reason, escaped everyone’s notice.
call it ‘carnivalesque’
what Ray said. Any name, so long as it contains at least one really dreadful pun.
Dreadful puns? You want dreadful puns?
I’m partial to Literatcetera, but that middle “a” annoys, so Literetcetera perhaps? (It captures the potentially motley quality of the entries, blah blah blah.) If not, we could go other routes, some better, i.e. more accurate, than others. To wit:
Were all the entries by women and riddled with errors, Literrata would’ve worked.
There’s always Langarage, because our DIYCarnival ethos would be fuckin’ punk.
Paradoxymoronic‘s too New Critical or Derridian or both. (And if we were headed High Theory’s direction, Foucauflection sounds more appealing. Or Derridivination. Or A Demanstration. Or The Bhabharian Inversion. Or Thumbulterina. Or We Run with Cixious!. Or Verdant Landed Saucer. Or, or, or...)
If we limited submissions to those on the Left Behind series, Literapture would be an-unpiloted-747-gripped-by-gravity, i.e. “the bomb.” ("A bomb,” actually, only with a smaller blast radius.)
Rheterrorist would bring Homeland Security down on us. (But we could be Uniliterarilism and Chertoff’d love us.)
We’re all Passimistic about the future of literature, but that’s too dreadful.
If we thought less of what we do, the epidemiological Critilitis Pestis would’ve suffice. (Or we could keep the plague them but make it more poetic, like Anapaestis Pestis, but that sounds silly.)
I’m a fan of the “munculus,” but Critimunculus sounds awful as its muncular alternatives.
If we were largely MFA’s, Poemunition could work, but then the Carnival’d consist of links to our livejournals.
"Messagepostumia” ?
Sounds too close to “The Daily Show“‘s “Messopotamia”.
I love The Daily Show, but Joyce’s pun wins: it evokes a city in which messages from the dead are written (and delivered) after the death of their authors. (And that’s just the start of what it evokes. Throw in a little Barthes and/or Foucault and you have the place from which all writers fail to make their intentions known. Or &c.) Jon Stewart’s cleverly reinforces the obvious. Again, love The Daily Show. There’s no shame in one’s pun being bested by Joyce’s.
Sorry, Amardeep. “Carnivalesque” is taken by a history festival that alternates between being ancient/medieval and early modern.
How about “The Material Bodily Lower Stratum”? That would be pretty carnivalesque.
Perhaps it would be better for a different carnival, the Very Bad Jargon Carnival.
Did Bakhtin actually say that, or is it a very bad literal translation?
I’m tellin’ ya: don’t do it! Save yourself while there’s still time!! It’ll eat you! Carnivals have no mercy!!
But seriously, it sounds a great idea, and I’ve been wondering for some months why there isn’t one already.
Except, not being one of the literature in-crowd, I’d suggest that you might avoid being *too* clever clever with the punning titles. (Not everyone who likes literature has read Joyce...)