Books
Momus: The Book Of Jokes
Momus: Solution 11-167: The Book of Scotlands
Hemlock: We Deserve Better
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature
This is just my "remember to buy these" list.
Not that anyone has ever asked, but my favorite authors are:
Poetry: John Donne
Fiction (serious): Stanislaw Lem, chased hard by Alasdair Grey
Fiction (ridiculous): Jennifer Blake
Philosophy: Foucault, then Dworkin
History: Desmond Seward, with class-trash-throwing Froissart nipping rudely at his heels
Science: Norbert Wiener (STOP LAUGHING)
Drama: John Marston, Lorca.
Lem and Foucault both I came to only in the last three years. Even more so than Shakespeare, whose flush and healthy beauty is an evergreen pleasure - Lem shocked me. His Master's Voice shocked me, and Fiasco, especially, appalled me with its maddening and abstract horror. The Investigation is a good place to start with Lem, since one comes to the method of his madness in short and clear form.
Where Lem shocked me, Foucault left me with the feeling of coming across some ancient manuscript of magic in which every page bristled with energy and power. I was converted at once to his deeply humane rigor, his potent and flexible command of complexity - because he doesn't simplify the complex, nor short it, but makes it possible for the reader to share in his control of it with him. I think -
If I had had to go through life without reading Foucault's Madness And Civilization, I would have persisted forever this painful and erroneous belief: that there is no such thing as a thought which can't be expressed. To break the expectation that everything could be communicated broke with it the expectation that I owed anyone an explanation for my thoughts. I was at last able to take hold of this (thankfully expressable) idea: a person is not obligated to make sense to other people.
Discipline & Punish was the 201 to Madness' 101 - it explained why on earth I had ever gotten the idea that a person is obligated to make sense to other people. Anyway, Foucault. <3
This entry was much more interesting when I posted it @ dw.
Momus: Solution 11-167: The Book of Scotlands
Hemlock: We Deserve Better
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature
This is just my "remember to buy these" list.
Not that anyone has ever asked, but my favorite authors are:
Poetry: John Donne
Fiction (serious): Stanislaw Lem, chased hard by Alasdair Grey
Fiction (ridiculous): Jennifer Blake
Philosophy: Foucault, then Dworkin
History: Desmond Seward, with class-trash-throwing Froissart nipping rudely at his heels
Science: Norbert Wiener (STOP LAUGHING)
Drama: John Marston, Lorca.
Lem and Foucault both I came to only in the last three years. Even more so than Shakespeare, whose flush and healthy beauty is an evergreen pleasure - Lem shocked me. His Master's Voice shocked me, and Fiasco, especially, appalled me with its maddening and abstract horror. The Investigation is a good place to start with Lem, since one comes to the method of his madness in short and clear form.
Where Lem shocked me, Foucault left me with the feeling of coming across some ancient manuscript of magic in which every page bristled with energy and power. I was converted at once to his deeply humane rigor, his potent and flexible command of complexity - because he doesn't simplify the complex, nor short it, but makes it possible for the reader to share in his control of it with him. I think -
If I had had to go through life without reading Foucault's Madness And Civilization, I would have persisted forever this painful and erroneous belief: that there is no such thing as a thought which can't be expressed. To break the expectation that everything could be communicated broke with it the expectation that I owed anyone an explanation for my thoughts. I was at last able to take hold of this (thankfully expressable) idea: a person is not obligated to make sense to other people.
Discipline & Punish was the 201 to Madness' 101 - it explained why on earth I had ever gotten the idea that a person is obligated to make sense to other people. Anyway, Foucault. <3
This entry was much more interesting when I posted it @ dw.