Manifestos, Lies, and Pizza

Where better to start than with a dictionary definition, eh? manifesto (noun) a public declaration of intent, policy, aims, etc, as issued by a political party, government, or movement Honestly, there are infinitely many ways to start on a better note, but hey, such is life. Anyway, let us start with Reality Hunger by David Shields. I noted that the cover of the book of orange-red with yellow text, keeping it simplistic; yet, there is a dumpload of text on top of that (mostly positive reviews about the book) making it rather chaotic. We can probably infer that the author is narcissistic. Well, at least I'm sure he doesn't have OCD. Anyway, it seems at the moment that this is about art a lot of the time. Even the opening quote is "Art is theft," by Picasso. Simplistic, yet chaotic enough to turn your brain into mush once it is amplified by a factor of five-hundred. Apparently, everything's trying to portray reality, and in the process of doing anything, you are plagiarizing. Or at least they are. This is all delivered through numbered bullet-point-like-quotes-like-things. Simple. Each quote-thingy has a different style, possibly from different sources/authors. Chaotic. It's pretty obvious this is intentional at this point. I like it. For once, it's like as if EVERYTHING is a lie. EVERYTHING. Now let's all snap out heads to the other direction to see the Futurist Manifesto by Marinetti, a moderately Italian name. A bit more direct, this one is, as the author straight out says, "art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice." These guys, the "Futurists," are basically opposing the new forms of art, and apparently new forms of anything, including pizza. Also, they're rejecting old forms of pizza at the same time, so I'm assuming these guys had brains the shape of cubes. In a way, this is similar to the other manifesto we discussed only a couple paragraphs ago, in that it seems to be criticizing art, especially the new ones, but for apparently different reasons (although I'm not yet sure if that's what Reality Hunger is trying to say. I've only read the first chapter, spare me the verdict.). Really, I don't know.  Summary: I've found Reality Hunger more interesting so far, Futurists were weird, and Bob's your uncle. Also, I wonder if pizza as we know it existed in 1909. That's my manifesto.