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By which I mean we are going to the home of H. and of N., a surviving Chronicle reporter, for a little New Year's Eve fictionary.She is not the Dude. The Dude is the hero of the Big Lebowski and will be a topic of conversation if I am called upon.
Or if I choose to thrust myself forward, which I may: My wit bears fruit if watered, though isn't it a grand language in which one may be watered with things other than water? I mean after the second glass of wine I may feel like being heard. But with what thoughts shall I bruise the air?
Thoughts about the Big Lebowski. I just got done reading today's Arts section of the New York Times for the express purpose of finding stuff to talk about with the bright middle-aged things that we will be thrust among tonight.
And in an article therein I learn that The Big Lebowksi is:
the decade’s most venerated cult film. It’s got that elusive and addictive quality that a great midnight movie has to have: it blissfully widens and expands in your mind upon repeat viewings.
Its fans have yearly conferences at which they, well, vaguely drink, I guess, and play trivia with names and dialogue. (Nice marmot??)
And just now a volume of Lebowski Studies has been published by Indiana University Press, filled with so-called scholarly articles by so-called scholars, some of which sound like satire on themselves, but journalists are such little bitches, aren't they?
More than a few of this book’s essay titles will make you groan and laugh out loud at the same time (“ ‘The Big Lebowski’ and Paul de Man: Historicizing Irony and Ironizing Historicism”).
Is it all Pomo nonsense, applying academic electrolysis to the shaggier elements of popular culture?
I'll get back to you after the conversation tonight. I haven't decided which end of this stick I will grab and start flailing about.
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