RAVINGS

Chanchal

The Horror of Banalisation

Leave a Comment / GREAT TALES, GREAT TALES OF MODERNITY, RAVINGS, RAVINGS OF A THERIAN / /

We have grown accustomed to horror being present in an almost routine manner in our lives. The presence of bombings, massacres, natural disasters, and other collective tragedies is so continuous that we end up accepting everything, provided we are supplied with a narrative logic capable of operating behind the tragedy —even if it is a twisted, destructive, disproportionate, and often false logic. The logic of horror allows us to isolate it and assimilate it as just another piece on the chessboard…

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conversation

The Conversation

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There are days when the universe seems to conspire against you so that you won’t get out of bed. Yesterday was one of those days. Ever since Marian left, I spend my days locked up at home without talking to anyone, slowly going mad, but yesterday I finally went out into the street intending to walk the entire city until I found her. Fortunately, laziness helped me abandon my madness the very moment I crossed the threshold, though it didn’t stop me from ending up seated in the corner library, still blinded by my obstinacy, in front of one of those talkative machines that are causing such a rage…

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contract

The Literary Contract and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

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A fiction writer aspiring to be something more than a literary selfie-exhibitionist—and, by extension, any creator, whether a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker, or a plastic artist—knows that their activity entails signing a contract with their audience. This contract is as solid and unavoidable as the contract established with the truth by scientific, social, and legal discourse—scientists, notaries, judges, and journalists, when honest…

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office

The Advice Column

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The “Consultorio de Elena Francis” was a famous radio show in Spain that began broadcasting in 1947, at the height of the Francoist dictatorship, and lasted—albeit with an ever-dwindling audience—until 1984, during the transition period that followed the dictator’s death in 1975. The program, sponsored by the Francis Beauty Institute, offered advice on beauty and lifestyle, and answered selected letters from listeners—always women—who wrote anonymously by postal mail to ask for help with their romantic problems and confess secrets that afflicted and distressed them, but which they could not tell anyone in their immediate surroundings…

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Mr. Chance

The Algorithmic Gardener

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In the film Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979)—a cinematic adaptation of a story by Polish writer Jerzy Kosiński—Chauncey Gardiner, an unforgettable Peter Sellers, is a simple man without a past, an ideology, or an inner world, whose life has been reduced to just two activities: tending a garden and watching television…

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Collie Smith

The Incredible Story of Collie Smith

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Colin Smith was the eldest of eight siblings in a very humble family that lived in a remote village in the Andes Mountains. He had spent his entire childhood herding sheep on the mountain and helping his mother take care of his brothers and sisters…

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