"What, after all, is the end of history — in the teleological, species-encompassing monotony of either classic liberalism or revolutionary Marxism — but a return to the colorful history of maps and chaps, sects and infidels, great walls and defenestrations, the past as telenovela? Indeed, following five decades or more of the most totalizing, ineludibly modern sort of ideo-economic (not to mention industrio-ballistic) conflict, we've reached a historical moment transfixed, and perplexed, by goings-on in Mesopotamia, revolts against Pharaoh, and cultural-fiscal tiffs between Latin and Germanic Europe," – Jonathan Liu.
Category: Poseur Alert
Poseur Alert
"Homans’s accomplishment is akin to setting the most delicate and beautiful of all the imperial Fabergé eggs into a fissure high on Mount Rushmore and tracking its unlikely survival. And the question of ballet’s survival lies at the core of Homans’s moving story. “Ballets,” Théophile Gautier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.” The tale of the tutu is indeed the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy who have worked ludicrously hard to formulate, shape and perfect the highest form of the human physique, and the result is a glorious paradox: the manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!" – Toni Bentley, NYT.
Poseur Alert
“We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones — the cost of feeling feelings, the desire for connections when you’re separate from others," – Bono, of his work on the Broadway production of Spiderman.
Poseur Alert
“Over a perfectly prepared bowl of cholent, the coarse stew to which all Galicianer souls are superstitiously attached, I sat in the kosher restaurant in Munich last week, on the gleaming modernist island of the city’s new Jewish institutions, and read the correspondence between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt, which has just been published in Germany,” – Leon Wieseltier, TNR.
Poseur Alert
“I love all animals. I have a fascination with fish, birds, whales—sentient life—insects, reptiles. I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds. But pigs, not so much. So I don’t eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl," – Nicolas Cage.
Poseur Alert
"Indigo, the bookstore in town at which I cannot afford to shop, has a hundred-dollar terran globe, highly detailed and with a mercurial sheen to its lakes, like that T-1000 guy in Terminator 2. If you angle the globe so that the lakes called great are in front and the northern and western territories of the place called Canada are in a line behind, there is a moment when suddenly the whole of Canadian history and its lost worlds shimmers into sense, and the meaningless mercator maps fall away from the back of your head, like so many psychological projections," – David Ker Thomson.
Poseur Alert
"It's just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I'm doing the same. I'm actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn't about selling my body. This is about changing social norms," – "Markus," America's first legal male prostitute.
(Hat tip: HuffPo)
The Dish Awards Results: Poseur Of The Year 2009
This coveted award goes to Jonah Goldberg, greatest intellectual of his generation, for the immortal words:
"I'm not a fan of Heidegger's."
Second place goes to Diane Sawyer for this profundity about Oprah Winfrey.
Poseur Alert Nominee
by Patrick Appel
"Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: 'What are you doing, what are you doing?' and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything." – Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones, winner of the 2009 Bad Sex In Writing Award. Other shortlisted passages here.
The Dish 