REALITY HUNGER, REMIXED (O - contradiction)

REALITY HUNGER, REMIXED


A representation of David Shields' Reality Hunger,
a manifesto about remixing, plagiarism, non-fiction,
reality, and the culture of appropriation.


O - contradiction


398

David Shields

This sentence is a lie.

399

Patricia Hampl, interviewed by Laura Wexler, AWP Chronicle

Something can be true and untrue at the same time.

400

Kierkegaard

The whole content of my being shrieks in contradiction against myself.

401

David Shields

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." I've always disliked the unnecessary comma in the middle of this famous Fitzgerald dictum, suggestive as it is of an inability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time while still retaining etc.

402

Montaigne

We are, I know not how, double within ourselves, with the result that we do not believe what we believe, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.

403

Keats

Negative capability: capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

404

Stuart Hampshire, quoted in Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay

It's natural to enter into dialogues and disputes with others, because it's natural to enter into disputes with oneself: the mind works by contradiction.

405

W. H. Auden, paraphrased and altered by Edward Hoagland

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

406

Lopate, interviewed by John Bennion, AWP Chronicle

One of the tricks in writing a personal essay is that you have to develop a dialogue between the parts of yourself that in a way corresponds to the conflict in fiction. You cop to various tendencies, and then you struggle with these tendencies.

407

Adorno

Ambitious work doesn't resolve contradictions in a spurious harmony but instead embodies the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

408

Robert Hass, interviewed by Susan Maxwell, University of Iowa Writers' Workshop newsletter

One view is "There's something in charge and I wanna get straight with it." Another view is "There's something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here." And the third is "There's nothing and everything going on." The third, because it contains the other two, is most appealing to me.