Trying (futilely so far) to drum up some interest in my new book, Hollywood Intellect, I set up a “branding” Facebook page and was asked to submit “information” about my “organization,” to specify in particular the “products” that I offer-very succinctly, “Information/Analysis/Provocation”-and more challengingly to state the “mission” of my Hollywood Intellect project. Never one to venture originality when I sound derivative, I turned to my commonplace book. A tradition among eighteenth- and nineteenth=century literati-once misogynistically dubbed “men of letters” or “homes des letters,” a commonplace book was where the educated and those-like me-who aspired to be-recorded quotations from their reading, passages to live by and more importantly, phrases and sentences to enjoy. From my commonplace book (actually an MS-Word Document), I managed to distill my “organization’s” mission to the following (including a video that’s at once painful and funny enough to sum up any contemporary man or woman of letters’ mission):
MISSION: Wisdom!
Sam Seaborn: You’re not in anyway a helpful person.
Dr. Milgate: I don’t have to be, I have tenure. –The West Wing
Fail. Fail again. Fail better.- Samuel Beckett
I did nothing in particular and I did it well-Gilbert & Sullivan
Study humiliation. .. survive by realizing you have nothing whatever the world wants, and that therefore the one course open to you is to start over. Recognize your knowledge and experience are valueless. Realize the only possible role for you on earth is that of a student and a learner. Never think that your opinions .are of interest to anyone…..This is the best that life can offer. And it’s better than it sounds. -Benjamin DeMott
He always kept hoping he might run into Venus; he didn’t know how to look her up; he didn’t have her home number, and she wasn’t in the telephone directory..
something had to happen and he knew nothing would-Edward Dahlberg
I never told a lie in my life that anyone believed–Faulkner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHVEcAFptI
James D. Bloom
Professor of English & American Studies
