James Murphy (13)

Kind of charming--intriguingly, Murphy says a deal of the same things in this memoir of David Foster Wallace/sidelong review of Infinite Jest that I said in my own review (http://www.librarything.com/work/903/reviews/62638549): the wrongfootedness where you think he's a smartass postmodernist and then he turns out to really care; the thing where he keeps you company; etc. Murphy's particular intricate speech stream is endearing--I doubt I'd read his novel, but I'd happily read his show more criticism--even if it sometimes gets a little too wound up in itself. Tangents are fine, and anecdotes are fine, but when every tangent hinges on a personal anecdote that is occasioned by a pet peeve that itself hangs on a domestic tangent, it gets much.


But he cried when Wallace died, and he is also brilliant and responsible for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL79-7oo9Xc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIChw-9ggyo, and we are on the same team. Also, he describes the style in question here quite brilliantly:


"the clarification of X, then the qualification of the clarification, followed by the modulation of the qualification, which requires the nuanced deconstruction of the modulation of the qualification of the clarification of the original, and now obviously flawed, statement "X", that had left my mouth as a means to get-to-the-heart-of something that will insist on another endless logic-tree of circuitous blathering, whilst apologizing for said blathering..."


Nice. From LCD Soundsystem's blog, LCD Soundsystem's Blog. show less