19.10.09

so naughty, federman so dead so sad - wonderful teacher so missed


Federman cannot say "I am dead "...but he did write
Whether one dies in bed, dies in one's boots, dies with one's boots on, dies on the vine, dies in harness, dies prematurely or in one's sleep, dies in a gas chamber, dies while making love to one's lover, when all is done and said, that is the category of death that has reached total improvement because it can no longer be spoken.
Language vanishes into death, and death vanishes into silence. Or is it, death that vanishes into language, and language into silence?

....in "Reflections on Ways to Improve Death," an essay that reads 'like Jonathan Swift through the lens of Samuel Beckett, with marginal commentary by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It's another one of Federman's brilliant transgressions on mortality, his pas de deux with Death over the course of a nearly forty-five year long career as a literary fabulist telling many different “self-reflexive” versions of the same, living text: the joyous, terrifying, self-canceling story of his own life'.(see the Buffalo News article below)

Raymond Federman died Tuesday morning in San Diego after a long battle with cancer. He was 81.

sadly missed
http://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/10/raymond-federman-19282009-on-ways-to-improve-death.html