The Only Post On the Internet Featuring Sontag, Schroedinger, Socrates and NASCAR

In 1966, Susan Sontag, writer and activist, wrote a profoundly important essay about art in the 20th century. “Against Interpretation” postulated that interpreting the deep-seated meaning and value of a work of art not only diminished its value, but that the act of interpretation utterly negated the act of expression. Her point, not unlike the theory of Schroedinger’s Cat, in that the act of explication, interpretation and analysis destroys the potential of true expression in the same way the act of opening the box, not the poison, results in the death of the cat. To measure is to destroy potential. “The function of criticism,” she wrote, “should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”

Susan Sontag was a nut bag, but she was a smart nut bag. She saw the value of the mystery, the purpose of simple expression, and saw life and art as some would interpret the artistic endeavors of the Impressionists: hurried glances, blurred, remnant images of moving, breathing life. To analyze is to stifle. To interpret is to categorize. It’s enough to simply say what it is, who the fuck are you to say what it means?

Socrates said the unexamined life was not worth living, and there are loads of people that say he was pretty smart (except, perhaps, in his choice of beverages). What he meant was that without constant revision and re-evaluation, one can never know for certain the endeavors one undertakes are worthwhile, important or “right.”

The question remains, however, doesn’t an individual, within the confines of reason and law, personally determine “right?”

I think the logic of Sontag should apply, not just to the evaluation of art and expression, but also to the subject of art itself. If art imitates life, can’t the same quantifying structures be applied to both?

Our society is filled with self-important, egotistical asshats, sitting on their cedar decks, sipping Cape Cods and chomping on pita chips smeared with olive tapenade, saying with no reservation that anyone that hasn’t read Joyce's "Ulysses” does not posses a life worth living. These are the same folks that think Harry Potter books are “annoying” because EVERYONE talks about them, and keep talking about “the children.” These are the very ones that make vague political statements like “can’t wait for ‘08” in polite conversation, assuming that every person in the room MUST agree with them, right?

You must agree, you read “Ulysses,” haven’t you?

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is in the visible, not the invisible.” – Oscar Wilde

On Friday, September 30th, at 6:30 P.M., I will be boarding Delta Airlines flight 297 to Salt Lake City. After a two-hour layover, I will board Delta flight 1231 to Cincinnati. Once there, I will rush down the hall of terminals of domestic flights, hoping to catch flight 5119 to Birmingham, which arrives at 8:00 AM on October 1st. Armed with my Gameboy Advance SP sporting “Zelda: A Link to the Past,” a fresh Dinesh D’Souza novel, and possibly a wayward issue of “Hellblazer,” I will undertake this endeavor for one purpose: NASCAR.



The simplest pleasures in life include beer, pizza, whiskey, a little more beer, probably some boudin and watching a bunch of bombs on wheels careening down the Talladega Super Speedway turning left after left after left, with family and friends. To be in a stadium filled with thousands of screaming gear-heads, eating chilidogs and comparing beer bellies, this is catharsis; this is a life worth living.

No pretension, no assumption, no delusion.

So fuck those assholes. Tell them they should take a page from Susan Sontag’s book, and stop worrying about living “right,” and just get on with living. Then tell them “Ulysses” was a stream-of-consciousness pile of drivel and make them lie and say they got through it all. Then tell them they’d get more pleasure out of “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” because the only reason they don’t like Harry Potter is because they didn’t read them first, and they think they’ll look like chumps reading book two while everyone else is on book six.