REJECTION - tony tulathimutte
certainly and almost obnoxiously a book of the now, a layman’s guide to desire and its pitfalls in the digital age. thankfully, im a sucker a very ‘on the pulse of the culture’ style and theme, although it did get too cute for itself at moments. despite being a total millennial, the writer strikes a chord beyond his own aged view of the internet, i found myself pinning my own life quite neatly onto the stories. concerning, since all the characters are by proxy assholes. i am simultaneously the incel feminist, the white woman with bpd, the gay sadist, what gives? but most of all, i identified with the plight of the identity accelerationist post-race post-gender freak. bee is the realest they did nothing wrong in this essay i will.
apropriately dark and honest, doesn't hide its face when it goes into the topic that it does (as lots of 'incel pseudo-subculture wooooaah the deep web' shit tends to do).
unlike most readers, i was a fan of the recursive segments, i thought the whole thing of david foster wallace flair was well executed. i can see his influence throughout, really. i didn't get a gimmicky feeling from it the way many did.
despite it being quite on the nose, lacking frills i could grip myself to, this book is a strong contender for the voice of a generation. THIS is what books like that of vack (sillyboy) and levy (my first book) try so hard to achieve, if only they both weren’t so myopic. could do with less digital shortcuts to feel less cloying, but i am aware that's part of the appeal. i know this shit will age like milk, but i still like my lattes.
THE FEMALE EUNUCH - germaine greer
one of the hallmark texts of the 2nd wave, so the usual fun stuff (rampant transphobia and bioessentialism, an obnoxious amount of 'we are women and so we suffer') is to be expected. still, i find the main points more powerful and encouraging that even most modern ones, the whole 'benevolent patriarch' thing is subverted quite cleverly in this text. i am a fan of greer's main views of sexuality, identity and revolution as well her snark. what a nice refresher from all the bell hooks and roxane gays and self censoring and infantilisation i am constantly met with in discourse, both literary and embodied. if you are to read fEmInIsT LiTeRaTuRe, stuff like this is monumental and closing your eyes to the breadth of feminist thought is really doing you a disservice.
EITHER/OR - elif batuman
media will never mimic the continuous, ever changing yet also cyclical nature of human thought no matter how good it gets at it. and this book was pretty good at it. my opinion of her young adult coming of age type discoveries when i found something id already learned was that i wished i had read it before the advice had become redundant. but then again, you cant truly absorb a message unless you experience something that makes it resonate in the first place. otherwise you’re just bored at the attempts at seemingly more-actualised-and-nuanced-than-thou higher thinking and ultimately detached from its meaning.
i had my moments of being repulsed and simultaneously being drawn to the mcs thinking pattern of 'you wont have what you want, and if you have it you wont want it' as it related to some weird overintellectualizing of life more broadly but more specifically how one goes about interpersonally and especially being self abashing over it because of its implications in terms of either 'normie romance' type thinking or the sardonic only to compensate for utter patheticness discarding of those who you see as people for those who are images in the mind.
relating to the actual intended philosophical side-reading to this (which i am yet to read but now really want to), i wonder if my disconnect and level of contempt for selin stems from her vehemence on the 'aesthetic' way of life as opposed to the 'ethical' when she talks about either/or. again, mirrors a lot of my conversations with and observations of people and neatly and philosophically ties together some patterns.i condemned both the 'ethical' people's ways of life as 'settling', frigid and self-limiting and the 'aesthetic' people's ways of life as irrational and doomed to inevitable dissapointment/pain at various points of my life. nice to see there is some continuity in what i had been saying after all. centrist ass take but whatever.
ABSOLUTELY FUCKED WITH the insight into lit and how media relates to life frameworks, probably my fav part of this book.
last notes, i fucking love you elif batuman thank you for the actually thought-provoking take on self-insert lit and beating the navel gazing coming of age allegations by having something actually interesting to say. every piece of art is a look inward for both parties guys!!
GRAPHIC DESIGN DISCOURSE - henry hongmin kim
was pleasantly misled by the title, this book is more about the discussions and disciplines that orbit gd, not gd itself (makes sense). i did wish there was less influence from industrial design and 'art philosophy', not my cup of tea really. i am of the belief that the best graphic design comes from sociology, the best architecture from observation of nature, the best art itself from disparate influence - in that way i applaud this reader for what it's doing. really enjoyed the various manifestos (esp stuckist, love to see callback to the medway poets), the one on postmodernism as a phase in each generation's creative output as opposed to a set historical moment, and the one talking about 'the supernormal'. i also came to find that the whole expressive maximalist vs anal fixated neue haas fanboy debate is as old as time itself, time is a flat circle. pairs great with the helvetica movie for this reason. might come back to it come thesis time..
THE UNIQUE AND ITS PROPERTY/THE EGO AND ITS OWN - max stirner
its funny how much i sanctify this book despite stirners insistence on seperating the self from ideals. stirners ideas really appeal to me personally and do a good job of pinning down the extent of self imposed restriction one faces. the people who critique this book by pointing at modern individualist life and neolib culture are morons, the modern day is full of implicit spooks or ghosts of the mind. i think the books take on communism is based, egoist leftism in its oxymoronic name does raise questions about 'community' as another tool for subjugation, collectivist societies in their current operation are not to be blindly praised by the modern day left etc. despite this, i think this text is better read philosophically than politically, because a union of egoists does not seem like a feasible structure on a macro scale. a bit too ancappy for me. i think of afanasyev's description of the first will - a dual self as anarchist and tyrant, as very fitting for this kind of philosophy. all in all, i have set my affairs on nothing.
SEXUAL PERSONAE - camile paglia
conflicted, but can't say im not awed. as an exploration of art/culture in an archetypal frame as well as of androgyny this is great, but god the conflating of the sexes in this sort of gendered paganism way really grinded my gears, at least i can tolerate it more with jung. maybe im too self centered in this, since i relate to paglias sentiment of resenting female comfort in the infantile, the sentiment of 'i once wanted all women to be like me', only i havent yet reached her levels of resignation. the ursula k le guin quote about 'the feminine intuition' comes to mind with a lot of the things paglia says about 'women holding the real power due to their chthonic nature making men scared of them' or some shit. overall, the dissection of the personae felt very ouboros and for that i say real and true. i like her opinions much better when they're more grounded in the real world, guess that makes me appolonian and mentally transgender.
THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM - christopher lasch
feel like this was as pleasant as it gets for a nonfic theory philo/socio/psychological not somehow creatively imbued text reading experience. very easy to understand despite the exploration of areas i normally am not knowledgeable in/just plain dont care about (except sports, skipped the fuck out of that chapter). don't think this is some grand big achievement of lasch in his writing style or expertise specifically (although i enjoyed the sort of disjointed and circular way points were brought up within and across chapters) but more so a result of my personal affinity for narcissism exploration in sociological and psychological contexts that has built up its foundation way before i read this (when exactly have i started thinking this way?).
this shit is obvi a product of its time. a lot of the points specifically felt dated and i felt a big disconnect with them (to b expected), but the overarching points resonated.
a lot to be said abt how lalalalala all the shit he was warning the boomers about has been exacerbated in the modern day aaaah the west is fallinggg but i think thats an easy nostalgia trap to fall into, one which he encourages a bit. i didnt like the romanticism of the past, reliance on simplicity in everyday life and primitive sublimations. if this is a metaphor for a human condition, has this kind of issue not always existed? were there no selfish lower levl thinking patterns in the fucking medieval age or whatever? i guess his implication is that they were successfully blocked from manifesting via the way of life and basically repression. is the way forward really a return to repression, or a higher level of awareness in the public which lets them do their own sublimating etc. too positive and idealistic of a conclusion for lasch, hed defo have shut this down with the thing about narcissists reliance on faux self awareness and misdirected psychological shit. so is primitive state or cultural mandated repression the answer? the one thing about lasch is that he never seems to have an answer. i guess he'd say something about work and family here, and that at least implies the faith in people to have the wisdom to sublimate with family for example, a life beyond yourself, instead of following thru and ending up just as miserable, if not more. idk, defo a juvenile level take on this idea. try again when actually an adult maybe.
on the whole boomer sitch, two side thoughts. one, interesting that brett easton ellis had an annotated copy of this when writing american psycho. id make a joke about teenage boys who fw patrick bateman a bit too heavy but thats overdone. anyway, other thought, i kept thinking about the 'generational' implications of this books message in terms of the strauss-howe generational theory for some reason, although my conclusions are a stretch and kinda pseud-y (ideas of homeland gen aka litch meeee relating to this book in a more detached, analysis way, disillusionment with the state of current affairs and fear for the future, mirroring silent gen pre boomer thingy sitch(the future looks more and more bleak by the day we are doomed)) and aren’t at the right time to be proposed yet (this idea would be most directly applicable to post homeland gen aka late gen alpha and the one that comes after it, which would mirror boomers according to the model(a-la woah thats so me dawg type sentiment from gen alphas)). dunno. doesnt tie in with strauss-howe that well (not yet), since i see it as more of a look backward on millenials being soups cringe causing my reactionary agreement w the books takes as opposed as a look toward the new. i've heard our generation be compared within the context of this book to either borderline or schizoid personalities, idk how much i agree on those.
