What are you reading?

[MetroBulotDodo]

LOL @ the Badiou - Ed Hardy comment. Must've had Badiou confused with that hack Baudrillard. *shrugs*

Just a side note: a friend invited Badiou to give a seminar at my institution. While he appeared to wear nothing out of the ordinary, an hour before his appointed seminar time, he asked to return to the faculty club where he changed -- to my friend's utter delight -- into an all white denim outfit. He lead the seminar in his "outfit" and wore it through dinner. Evidently.

MBD

[Macro]

**************************
3 most recent books:

On the Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Last Exit to Brooklyn

* * *

Now Reading:
Naked Lunch

**************************

on the road was, in a word, brilliant. it was one of the most powerful, most inspirational books i've ever read.

fear and loathing was hilarious and entertaining.

last exit to brooklyn was the work of a mad genius.

and so far, Naked Lunch has been the equivalent of an orgy in an ice bath.

[Macro]

I'll read the published original scroll at some point. I think reading the 'regular' version is the way to go for the first go-round. The mythology behind the book, from the 'true life' experiences to the benzedrine-fueled burst of energy it took to vomit it onto a custom-made scroll, is epic.

[tweeds]

Tweeds, I recall that you asked a question about art and politics in the line of can art be separated from politics?

I have my own answer for that (and even a political collective) but a good place to start is with the Frankfurt school philosophers, particularly with a compiled volume from Verso (a great publishing house, btw) called "Aesthetics and Politics." The letters compiled in this volume were correspondence between interlocutors such as Ernst Block, Georg Lukacs, Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and last but not least, the jazz-hating curmudgeon Theodor Adorno (who was a student of Schoenberg, I think it's worth pointing out.)

Through their correspondence, they deal with questions that are absolutely relevant today around the possible political stakes of artistic action.

MBD

Super, thanks MBD. Have got so much love for Verso, apart from being the main Zizek publisher (at the moment) they've also just put out this beautiful volume of drawingtext by John Berger, messing with Spinoza.

Did not know Adorno was a jazz hater. Unimpressed - but at least jazz later re-purposed Schoenberg for its own uses.

[trentk]

Did not know Adorno was a jazz hater. Unimpressed - but at least jazz later re-purposed Schoenberg for its own uses.

Adorno was the jazz hater par excellence:
"The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite"

[tweeds]

To be fair, he was probably hating on a brand of jazz that had not yet discovered alot of the range of expression it grew to stand for in the decades after his death.

But that is a funny bit of trolling. Has anybody written a piece about anger/knives-out-passionate-putdowns in philosophy/criticism?

[trentk]

To be fair, he was probably hating on a brand of jazz that had not yet discovered alot of the range of expression it grew to stand for in the decades after his death.

you're right. he was using jazz as synecdoche for all forms of brainless popular music. given the current state of jazz (and even the state of jazz shortly after adorno wrote his polemics), his criticism is much more applicable to say britney spears than to markus stockhausen.

But that is a funny bit of trolling. Has anybody written a piece about anger/knives-out-passionate-putdowns in philosophy/criticism?

Nick Land has. Although, I can't remember if the piece was located in this book or if it was just a random essay.


If you're fond of adorno type trolling, land is definitely worth reading, given passages like this:
"God has only one possible meaning: Phallus. The God of the ontological argument is Omniphallus, in whom reason, being, authority, and the good coincide. It belongs to the essence of a perfect being that he exist forever. Who could deny that the crucified was well hung? But perhaps one should not laugh about such things, for even if God is a comic, one’s willy—and its mythology—has surely to be taken seriously."

[viv1984viv]

you're right. he was using jazz as synecdoche for all forms of brainless popular music. given the current state of jazz (and even the state of jazz shortly after adorno wrote his polemics), his criticism is much more applicable to say britney spears than to markus stockhausen.



Nick Land has. Although, I can't remember if the piece was located in this book or if it was just a random essay.


If you're fond of adorno type trolling, land is definitely worth reading, given passages like this:
"God has only one possible meaning: Phallus. The God of the ontological argument is Omniphallus, in whom reason, being, authority, and the good coincide. It belongs to the essence of a perfect being that he exist forever. Who could deny that the crucified was well hung? But perhaps one should not laugh about such things, for even if God is a comic, one’s willy—and its mythology—has surely to be taken seriously."

trent - we must have the same library, I love that book and cyclo... - but all this stuff needs to be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

If you want to get into phallonarcisistic stuff you should check out Bourdieu's Masculine Domination too -quality. Surprised no ones popped it opposite 'K'owenz yet.... in time...

[rider]

yohji yamamoto: my dear bomb

its gripping because of the insight into human nature.

[MetroBulotDodo]

Krafft-Ebing's Pychopathia Sexualis



Fascinating read about sexual pathologies as they existed in turn of the century Vienna. A classic of early "sexology" and psychoanalysis. Highly recommended.

MBD

[Faust]

Anyone else think Murakami's writing is largely fluff?

[MoFiya]

^ Are you referring to the new 1Q84 book? I haven't read it yet but it is next on the list. Regarding the first two books, I found them entertaining but indeed, they are strange. And not strange in a good Murakami way of strange but really strange. Still, I like his characters and it is entertaining to read. Yet, I think he has done much better (I really liked Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore).

[Arkady]

Though the latter's not doing much for me; read a lot of cognitive psyche studies on empathy but the colloquial approach isn't getting at me in this case. Still giving it a chance, though.

[Mail-Moth]

Anyone else think Murakami's writing is largely fluff?

I do.

[Faust]

^ Are you referring to the new 1Q84 book? I haven't read it yet but it is next on the list. Regarding the first two books, I found them entertaining but indeed, they are strange. And not strange in a good Murakami way of strange but really strange. Still, I like his characters and it is entertaining to read. Yet, I think he has done much better (I really liked Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore).

I am referring to the entire oeuvre. Norwegian Wood is fine, from the ones I've read, but the more I read (The Windup Bird Chronicles, The Wild Sheep Chase), the more I thought that his prose is the equivalent of junk food masquerading as gourmet fair. You read and read waiting to get something good out of it and than it just ends.

The last week's awful New York Times Magazine article on Murakami brought all of that back.

Thank god for master moth.