Comments on: Jan Herman and the Fold https://realitystudio.org A William S. Burroughs Community Mon, 15 Mar 2021 01:42:23 +0000 hourly 1 By: Joe https://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/jan-herman-and-william-s-burroughs/jan-herman-and-the-fold/comment-page-1/#comment-103560 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:00:05 +0000 https://realitystudio.org/?page_id=1615#comment-103560 First of all I’d like to thank you for sharing these and other wonderful files, even though I can’ feel and or smell them.
I’ve always tried to understand what’s the thrill book collectors get out the smell and feel of this kind of material and to be honest I just don’t get it. Not that I’m absolutely split from the pleasures of the material world. I love, for example, petting my dog and my cat, the smell of wet rubble and many other things. But it remains clear, at least to me, that these tastes and thrills are the result of very complex processes in my personal history that have, let’s say, engraved certain recognition patterns in my brain that did not pre-existed but that have enabled me to enjoy these sensations above others such as the smell of moisty pages. (I remember, for example, Burroughs’ childhood memories, with the train whistle, the reek of cum, etc.)

I don’t think I’m a deconstructor myself but I can sympathize with some of the questions raised by Derrida and some of his followers, at least the ones that I think I can dig. And as far as I know, he never proposed a book burning movement or something like that. He, along with many other people (Burroughs himself -I mean one Burroughs because the man had many facets- could be included here via his interest in telepathy and the cut up), just pointed out to the messy nature of the world of the mind which sometimes the qualities of material bodies we assume as fixed and stable do not permit us to be conscious of.

In this sense, for example, I never met Burroughs but he will always stand as one of my favourite writers. I don’t know what did he smell like when he was young or old, what was to shake his hand. However, his words, the books where they were contained if you want as well as the places where I read them, probably, have also engraved certain recognition patterns in my mind that have made me keen to what I might term Burroughsian and that no everybody appreciates like you and me and many other members of this community.

All this is to say that I don’t think someone who doesn’t value old books as art pieces in themselves (and I agree that they might be so) does it because it is an “embarrassing reminder of the messy body of the text”. In my case I’m just conscious that though there is a constant feedback between the mind and the body, the mind is ultimately the first archive without which matter has no meaning…. You might say that there is a material basis for this archive, which is the brain, but so far, ideas, values, etc, cannot be seen or touched, unless we project them unto some objects. And ideas are constantly overlapping, they have an even more messy behavior than the body. That is why historians are so fond of matter: it provides them with a stable means of learning, organizing and classifying the world. It’s kind of an anxiolytic for them.

Whatever, I do appreciate you share these documents.They gimme lots of enjoyment. If you have them with you, have a nice time with the smell and feel. Cheers!

]]> By: JanH https://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/jan-herman-and-william-s-burroughs/jan-herman-and-the-fold/comment-page-1/#comment-103490 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:39:13 +0000 https://realitystudio.org/?page_id=1615#comment-103490 Gentlemen…I am humbled by your interest.

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