Comments on: Empire in Funkville

By: Gary Sullivan

Gary Sullivan — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:20:19 +0000

This really is a brilliant piece of writing.
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By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:19:57 +0000

Washington Irving, writing about the Mississipi Bubble:
In the course of a voyage from England, I once fell in with a convoy of merchant ships, bound for the West Indies. The weather was uncommonly bland; and the ships vied with each other in spreading sail to catch a light, favoring breeze, until their hulls were almost hidden beneath a cloud of canvas. The breeze went down with the sun, and his last yellow rays shone upon a thousand sails, idly flapping against the masts.
I exulted in the beauty of the scene, and augured a prosperous voyage; but the veteran master of the ship shook his head, and pronounced this halcyon calm a “weather-breeder.” And so it proved. A storm burst forth in the night; the sea roared and raged; and when the day broke I beheld the late gallant convoy scattered in every direction; some dismasted, others scudding under bare poles, and many firing signals of distress.
I have since been occasionally reminded of this scene, by those calm sunny seasons in the commercial world, which are known by the name of “times of unexampled prosperity.” They are the sure weather-breeders of traffic. Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive seasons, when “the credit system” as it is called, expands to full luxuriance; everybody trusts everybody; a bad debt is a thing unheard of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open; and men are tempted to dash forward boldly, from the facility of borrowing.
Promissory notes, interchanged between scheming individuals, are liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard but gigantic operations in trade; great purchases and sales of real property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of public wealth, the “unexampled state of public prosperity!”
Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the inflation he has contributed to produce.
Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: “no operation” is thought worthy of attention that does not double or treble the investment. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind his ear, he is like La Mancha’s hero in his study, dreaming over his books of chivalry. His dusty counting house fades before his eyes, or changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of wealth that break upon his imagination.
Could this delusion always last, the life of a merchant would indeed be a golden dream; but it is as short as it is brilliant. Let but a doubt enter, and the “season of unexampled prosperity” is at an end. The coinage of words is suddenly curtailed; the promissory capital begins to vanish into smoke; a panic succeeds, and the whole superstructure, built upon credit, and reared by speculation, crumbles to the ground, leaving scarce a wreck behind:

“It is such stuff as dreams are made of.”

When a man of business therefore, hears on every side rumors of fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure; of distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro-table; when he beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up by the magic of speculation, tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears the whole community joining in the theme of “unexampled prosperity,” let him look upon the whole as a “weather-breeder,” and prepare for the impending storm.
[...]
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By: nf

nf — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:30:13 +0000

Uh, who DIDN’T know this house of cards was coming down? The New York freakin’ Times predicted it nine years ago. Did not take a weatherman.
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By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:08:11 +0000

Hi Mark,
I’ve been watching our tanking economy for several years now, incorporating everything I’ve learnt into a class called State of the Union, which since 2005 I’ve taught at Naropa (twice), U. Penn and University of Montana. I knew this house of cards would come tumbling down, even as Bush was repeating his mantra that the economy was strong. The just defeated bailout would not have solved anything but keep the Dow up for another week or two, with a much more severe crisis to follow. In any case, I’m convinced that “we” are entering a much bleaker and much more humbling phase of our history. The title of my last book, Jam Alerts (2007), was literal. Ron Silliman went to the book launch and wrote this the next day:
“Dinh’s tale is about our future, but he’s not a science fiction writer – at least not yet – so he tells it through our present. I’ve compared him in the past, indeed even on the blurb on the back cover of this book, with William Burroughs, another writer operating out of very similar terms & compulsions. In both cases, the tale is bleak, dystopic. What happens at the end of empire is not pretty, it’s not a matter of genteel decay, but rather ongoing denial that becomes increasingly shrill & delusional. With the potential for horrific violence always simmering just below the surface. Dinh’s tradition, to call it that, includes the likes of Bosch, Brueghel, Blake & Lautréamont.”
So no, I’m not going along with Bush but calling him out.
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By: Mark Wallace

Mark Wallace — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:15:38 +0000

Linh, this is a brilliant piece of writing that makes me envious. My only concerns are the closing doomsday rhetoric and a purposefully rhetorical yet nonetheless undifferentiated “we” at the close. Apocalyptic rhetoric is not only a common fear-inducing strategy in U.S life and politics (and perhaps elsewhere too I’m sure) but also one currently being used by Bush and Wall Street. I think there may be value in being skeptical of that kind of rhetoric here, since it breeds the kind of fear that often becomes a conservative force. I’m not suggesting that the financial crises of the U.S. in recent years and the last few days aren’t having real effects on people, especially those more extended into the illusions of credit. But any “we” as such is not being hurt in any general way, and the specific effects here still remain at least partly to be seen. No doubt you’re right that we’re watching a ponzi scheme collapse, but let;s not be too quick to believe with Bush that the effects will be “lasting and painful for all of us.” Still, your lead up to the conclusion is fantastic–your way of bringing together different discourses and histories is often stunning.
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By: Trinity

Trinity — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:02:38 +0000

Those American poets who live their entire lives connected to the blogosphere are unaware that their reality is not in fact real, nor that there is a poet rebellion by the few “free” poets in the blogosphere. From time to time, poets are freed from the blogosphere, a risky and complex operation. There is a legend or prophecy amongst poets (which most believe but the few “free” poets ridicule) that they are “The One,” a poet who, when connected to the blogosphere, can override its simulated rules, and perceive and manipulate its code directly. Within the simulated reality of the blogosphere, this poet will finally be discovered, sell millions of books, become wealthy, famous, worshipped as a celebrity, and leave a vast body of work as a legacy for the human race. Most American poets believe he or she is “The One.”
One poet who believes he is “The One” goes to meet the Oracle, a poet who has the power of foresight within the simulated poetry world. She gives him a slice of American cheese — government cheese that she gets each month along with her welfare check. As he nibbles on the thick, waxy, tasteless cheese, she tells him that he has the “gift,” but he appears to be waiting for something — “Your next life, maybe. Who knows?”
He washes down the last bite of cheese with a glass of Triple Awesome Grape flavored Koolaid. A phone is ringing in a telephone booth.
He goes home and blogs about it.
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