{"id":110128,"date":"2017-04-21T09:44:16","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=110128"},"modified":"2017-04-21T11:29:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T15:29:06","slug":"language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Is a Parasite, and Other News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_110148\" style=\"width: 804px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-110148\" class=\"size-full wp-image-110148\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"794\" height=\"457\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop.jpg 794w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop-300x173.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop-768x442.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-110148\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Lund, a Danish naturalist, copying rock paintings at Lagoa Santa, Brazil.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every writer needs a hobby. When he isn\u2019t writing bleak, bloody fiction or exploring the primal violence at the heart of the American experience, Cormac McCarthy likes to unwind with a little theoretical scientific research. Who doesn\u2019t? His work at the Santa Fe Institute has led him to write a new treatise on the nature of the unconscious and the emergence of human language: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/47\/consciousness\/the-kekul-problem\" target=\"_blank\">The sort of isolation that gave us tall and short and light and dark and other variations in our species was no protection against the advance of language<\/a>. It crossed mountains and oceans as if they weren\u2019t there. Did it meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it. But useful? Oh yes. We might further point out that when it arrived it had no place to go. The brain was not expecting it and had made no plans for its arrival. It simply invaded those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. I suggested once in conversation at the Santa Fe Institute that language had acted very much like a parasitic invasion \u2026 The difference between the history of a virus and that of language is that the virus has arrived by way of Darwinian selection and language has not. The virus comes nicely machined. Offer it up. Turn it slightly. Push it in. Click. Nice fit.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Now that O\u2019Reilly\u2019s out at Fox, perhaps he can really settle into his career as a thriller writer\u2014fiction, with its unfettered escapism, could offer him just the outlet he needs, at a remove from the troubles of the real world. After all, his 1998 novel, <em>Those Who Trespass<\/em>, was invented from whole cloth\u2014except, of course, for all those parts about sexual harassment and vindictive revenge. Actually, the novel is uncomfortably prescient, as Jia Tolentino writes: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/reading-bill-oreillys-old-novel-about-a-tv-newsman-who-murders-several-people-after-losing-his-job?mbid=social_twitter\" target=\"_blank\">The main character is a violently bitter journalist named Shannon Michaels, who, after being pushed out of two high-profile positions, takes revenge on four of his former colleagues by murdering them one by one<\/a> \u2026 The second sentence of <em>Those Who Trespass<\/em> describes Ron Costello, a correspondent for Global News Network, on assignment in Martha\u2019s Vineyard and struggling with a \u2018basic human need, the need for some kind of physical release.\u2019 Costello spots a pretty camerawoman at a party, happily notes that she\u2019s had too much vodka, and approaches her with \u2018intense sexual hunger \u2026 tonight he wanted this freelance GNN camerawoman named Suzanne. He wanted her in a big way.\u2019 When Suzanne rejects Costello, he\u2019s furious. (\u2018Goddamn bitch. She\u2019ll be sorry,\u2019 he thinks.) Then the vengeful Michaels kills Costello by shoving a silver spoon through the roof of his mouth and into his brain.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People have been getting their dogs stoned for centuries, but W. B. O\u2019Shaughnessy, a nineteenth-century surgeon who studied in Calcutta, did it in the name of science. Sujaan Mukherjee explains: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/publicdomainreview.org\/2017\/04\/19\/w-b-oshaughnessy-and-the-introduction-of-cannabis-to-modern-western-medicine\/\" target=\"_blank\">His first series of cannabis experiments were conducted on an unfortunate menagerie of animals (amongst others, fish, vultures, and storks) and also, perhaps not without controversy today, a few children<\/a> \u2026 The first experiment, for instance, involved administering \u2018ten grains of Nipalese [sic] Churrus, dissolved in spirit\u2019 to a \u2018middling sized dog.\u2019 O\u2019Shaughnessy\u2019s breathless notes read: \u2018In about half an hour he became stupid and sleepy, dozing at intervals, starting up, wagging his tail as if extremely contented, he ate some food greedily, on being called to he staggered to and fro, and his face assumed a look of utter and helpless drunkenness.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Meaghan Clark on the history of \u201cjest books,\u201d the original form of insult comedy\u2014a fast and easy way to turn slander into libel, for fun and profit: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/articles\/jest-books-insult-comedy?utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_medium=atlas-page\" target=\"_blank\">In the early 1500s, educated white males realized they could turn a profit by printing popular songs and dances that had previously been shared verbally<\/a>. The books sold for cheap, meaning the subjects of their mockery could easily afford them \u2026 American jest books indicated the ethnic divide between two groups; in this case, the colonists, and everyone else. Not surprisingly, English colonists immediately crafted their impressions of Native Americans in disparaging language, a testament to the racial discrimination between the settlers and anyone who got in their way.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Kriston Capps on the painter Barkley L. Hendricks, who died this week at seventy-two, leaving us with his forward-thinking vision of black lives: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2017\/04\/remembering-barkley-l-hendricks-a-master-of-black-postmodern-portraiture\/523518\/?utm_source=atltw\" target=\"_blank\">Large in scale, his paintings combined the tonality of Rembrandt with the sensibility of Andy Warhol<\/a>. His stylized portraits\u2014realist African American figures set against abstract backgrounds\u2014starred friends and neighbors from his life, posed for timelessness. His broader project was to document the black image as a phenomenon, as it manifested in fashion, billboards, magazines, and movies \u2026 He never painted black people in protest or in crisis. Ideas about black nationalisms surfaced in his work as they were reflected in the world of images. He borrowed endlessly from the commercialization of black culture\u2014a Pop Art way of turning the white gaze back in on itself. The artists who have followed in his footsteps are sometimes described as \u2018post-black.\u2019 Hendricks may have beaten them to that.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s arts and culture news: Cormac McCarthy moonlights as a scientist, Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s thriller presaged his ouster, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2512],"tags":[35,28461,28457,17822,2555,28460,28459,687,13808,28454,7355,28456,28458,13579,28455],"class_list":["post-110128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-shelf","tag-art","tag-barkley-l-hendricks","tag-bill-oreilly","tag-cannabis","tag-cormac-mccarthy","tag-insult-comedy","tag-jest-books","tag-language","tag-painters","tag-santa-fe-institute","tag-science","tag-the-unconscious-mind","tag-those-who-trespass","tag-thrillers","tag-unconsciousness"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cormac McCarthy on Language as a Virus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In today\u2019s arts and culture news: Cormac McCarthy moonlights as a scientist, Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s thriller presaged his ouster, and more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Language Is a Parasite, and Other News by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 21, 2017 \u2013 In today\u2019s arts and culture news: Cormac McCarthy moonlights as a scientist, Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s thriller presaged his ouster, and more.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-04-21T13:44:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-04-21T15:29:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"794\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"457\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Language Is a Parasite, and Other News\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-04-21T13:44:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-04-21T15:29:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/\"},\"wordCount\":886,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/language-is-a-parasite-and-other-news\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/lundtcrop.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"art\",\"Barkley L. 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