Week 1

Week 1:

Gordo: So, I have seen the new website. I know about your psychological aversion to technology, but it does look very cool. So firstly congratulations for that.

Me: Thank you.

Gordo: I just want to think about the website in context. Many years ago, when you were offered a book deal, which you eventually rejected, you talked a lot about the need to preserve your artistic integrity. I just wonder whether, in view of this website going up this week, you feel that your literary career since has progressed as you would have liked it to.

Me: I think it has. I mean I would not want things to be any different. What people who do not know me always miss is that I am not the type of guy who is going to enter a popularity contest. I do not want millions of fans reading my stuff. I write for very different reasons.

Gordo. Yes. You just want a website to showcase stuff that nobody will ever read.

Me: Precisely. I mean, even when I think about the writers who do have superstardom and massive levels of success, I pity them. There is always that irreconcilable conflict between their artistic ambitions and their financial ones. Their fans do not receive their work in the way they want it to be received, you know? The best selling writer is a bit like the girl in the office who is letting you feel the furry Santa Claus design in the middle of her Christmas jumper. You enjoy copping a feel, but not for the reason she thinks you do.

Gordo: I get it. So you’re kind of like the literary world equivalent to a Katie Price. You’re just pressing them up, and putting them out there, saying “Come on boys. Feel my tits.”

Me: No, no.

Gordo: Wait, so - you are the tit??

Me: No! Let me explain it another way. I am not a conventional writer. A lot of my stuff is quite like a huge leap into the unknown. You need to conceive of me as a sort of intrepid explorer, attempting to be the first man to traverse the most remote and hostile landscape imaginable. Not many people would want to follow in that explorer’s footsteps, but my god, you have to admire his own courage for doing so.

Gordo: And where are you going next?

Me: You mean after this?

Gordo: Yes.

Me: Catford Bridge.

Gordo: Right. Now I want to go further back. Possibly to the very beginning. How were your creative writing endeavours received whilst you were still in education? You read a Law degree at university, so presumably the last type of comment you would have had in an educational setting would have been when you were still at school?

Me: Yes. Well I do remember one of my English Lit teachers, who was the Head of Department, calling my stuff “potentially outstanding”.

Gordo: So then, by definition, not outstanding?

Me: By definition, potentially outstanding.

Gordo: Yes, but I am just thinking whether most people who have a passion for something would be happy to be categorised as only potentially outstanding in it.

Me: But to be labelled as potentially outstanding does still have some sort of significance.

Gordo: So if a former lover rated your skills in the bedroom as potentially outstanding, you would take that as a compliment?

Me: Potentially yes. I mean, think of it like this. If you described someone as potentially suicidal, you would still be worried about them.

Gordo: And how would you deal practically with a situation in which someone was potentially suicidal?

Me: I mean, I would not put them on 24 hour suicide watch. I would not be able to, because they’re only potentially suicidal. But I would like all of their holiday pics on Facebook, and check up to see how long it takes them to respond.

Gordo: Point made, point made. Now on your new website, I note that you label yourself as “The Dark Lord of Cultural Criticism”. What exactly do you mean by that?

Me: It’s hard to explain. I know I have a good life and good friends and I should be grateful for those things. But with me there is always that air of mystique, because I tend to veer closer to darkness than to light. With me I never allow myself to feel overjoyed for too long, because I think I have been depressed for so many years, I have come to see that as normal.

Gordo: So “dark lord” is not just a reference to your wealthy Brazilian heritage?

Me: Um no.

Gordo: Understood. Now, on your website, much of the content presents your work in totality as some sort of holy crusade against a tide of intellectual ineptitude. Yet I note that on your home page you also notably feature a black and white photograph of your own bulging bicep.

Me: But that’s a symbol of my politics.

Gordo: Go on.

Me: A lot of people – most people in fact – do not understand that I identify myself as a left wing liberal, because they assume all left wing liberals are weak and waif like. For example, I refuse to pretend that I believe that black people suffer from an overrepresentation of negative stereotypes in the Western media, which misrepresents their propensity to fall out of education or commit crime. But then I also believe that the real reason why this sort of shadow racism is so vocally opposed by the Western liberal capitalist elite is to disguise the fact that we do not really want to rid ourselves of malign racism. We do not want to cut a fair deal with Africa if it means we must relinquish the wealth which we have. So these types of opinion would still be counted as controversial. I am not some left wing liberal weakling cowering in a corner afraid to confront the truth. I’m a 6ft tall, 100kg former boxing left wing liberal. The picture is a symbol of that.

Gordo: But do you think it is possible for a man who measures his biceps to present himself as a serious intellectual figure?

Me: Why wouldn’t it be? I am not sure I understand the connection between the two things. And I don’t measure my muscles by the way.

Gordo: So in a very real sense, you are like an ambassador in the academic world for guys with 15 inch biceps.

Me: Haha. Please....Not at all. My biceps are 17 inches anyway.

Gordo: Righto. Now this week, in your first featured article “The “It Is What It Is” Generation”, you present a somewhat scathing attack on an article featured in Psychology Today about that very saying, in which Liane Gabora Ph.D. explains how it could indicate an awareness of “differing states of potentiality”.

Me: Yes.

Gordo: I mean in your own article, you actually say that you are more articulate and possibly more intelligent than she is, before revealing this to be a comedic device you employ to parody her article.

Me: Yes.

Gordo: But is that not a bit of a case of you having your cake and eating it? I have noticed it to be a running theme in your work. You constantly brag to your reader about how intelligent you are, but then you sweep any grounds they have to criticise you for doing so from beneath their feet, by joking about how you describe yourself as intelligent. I mean Liane Gabora Ph.D is a very eminent figure in Psychology. She has her own Wikipedia page, which I know you have always dreamed about. It describes the work in which she “strongly challenges the particle physics foundation ontology (e.g. studying the "violation of Bell inequalities in the macroworld")”. Are you absolutely certain that you are in fact smarter than she is?

Me: No. It was genuinely a comic device I used for the purpose of that article. I do not see necessarily see myself as super intelligent.

Gordo: No. You just hear yourself as super intelligent.

Me: Exactly.

Gordo: Well for the sake of balance, I have actually contacted Liane Gabora Ph.D, and forwarded your article to her for comment.

Me: Really? Why did you – um? Ah ok.

Gordo: Yes. She has sent us a formal response. Here it is; “Although Elliot Borges refers to my article as “absolute garbage”, I took the hidden meaning behind his critique to be an indication that he is letting garbage just exist in all its rich uniqueness and trying to engage meaningfully with the materials of human waste. He is therefore able to arrive at a much more nuanced understanding of what most people dismiss down the toilet, by smearing himself with and eating shit.” So. What do you have to say in reply to that?

Me: I stand corrected. I think she is more intelligent than I am and, frankly, I am loving it.

Gordo: Well look it has been good to catch up. Same time next week?

Me: Yep. I’m off to scour the internet for more shit.