A book is born in agitation and anxiety, in the fermentation of a form in search of itself, in search of a deployment and appeasement for its impatience. Jean-Luc Nancy
Perhaps Nancy’s quote (from his very short and luminous book on books and bookstores) may have been true in all social eras but it also seems too obviously true that writing as well as ‘writing’ during a time in which everything seems kairotic; the presence of hyper communication makes everything seem propitious (coming while at the same time leveling all aspects of information. Everything seems on the edge, on the verge, overblown and oversold, something assembling itself while simultaneously falling apart. In a way terribly claustrophobic as butterfly wings on the other side of the earth flap and generate risings and fallings. Things seem too fast but also not fast enough, as if going faster will lead us to some Elysium Fields where all has come and rest can ensue, as though Something that was always on the Way has finally Come, a Cosmic Klaxon has sounded, every thing magnetized, fragments taken heavenly shape, over and out. But the very opposite is happening, we now become ensnarled in, aa Baudelaire put it in Paris Spleen “the threads of an interminable and superfluous plot”. Beginnings and Ends now become merely … the middle. No wonder the Flat Earth theory has become inexplicably popular: everything now seems equidistant from every other, all prophets become equally close to the source, the soi-disant end of time equally true for all and none:
[….] no one can say that it has neither head nor tail, since, on the contrary, everything in it is both head and tail, alternately and reciprocally. I beg you to consider how admirably convenient this combination is for all of us, for you, for me and for the reader. We can cut wherever we please, I my dreaming, you your manuscript, the reader his reading. [….] Take away one vertebra and the too ends of this tortuous fantasy come together again and without pain. Chop it into numerous pieces and you will see that each one can get along alone.” From first paragraph of Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen.