#7761
tardy on these heaters
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daddyholes posted:

babyfinland did you ever get that book , u really should



no not yet

#7762
Online
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im reading against the day now... its pretty cool. very easy read but massive in scope
#7763
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me too ilmidge let's race.
#7764
Online
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im only about 1/5 of the way through
#7765
penitent
Post rating: -
#7766
political car tune
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deconstituted subjunctatics by crotchley and doonsbury
#7767
Dont Mess With Sucess
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http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/09/29/2152239/ask-slashdot-suitable-phone-for-a-4-year-old
#7768
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deadken posted:



you need to read more hegel

#7769
Poronto
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i haev no balls by noballs ballslessman
#7770
political car tune
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forward by dr dogballs
#7771
political car tune
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THE ENIGMA OF HELL
#7772
penitent
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i'm reading a McCaine Approved book on hegel by frederick beiser
#7773
penitent
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more like PISSteva yeah
#7774
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read gillian rose imo
#7775
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what was the deal with dr dogballs again
#7776
penitent
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doctor dog, balls
#7777
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deadken posted:



help me downvote this post people

#7778
Post rating: +
"Making Final Fantasy X, anyway, look like an Etch A Sketch."
-Thomas R. Pynchon, 2013

Bleeding Edge is good and yall should read it. It's definitely mostly in the vein of Inherent Vice, and if all he wants to do is just turn out these wacky detective stories from now on, i'm on board.

I'd say it's his most straightforward, relatively small cast of characters, no huge elliptical arcs or frequent dramatic perspective changes. We pretty much just stick with Maxine, like passengers on a jet to a location the pilot maybe even doesn't know.

I found it somewhat superficial at first, as the first two hundred pages or so settle into a pretty easy rhythm: complaint about Guiliani/yuppies -> pop culture video game reference -> "late fucking capitalism". But the more I read the more I started to believe that this surface level critique is entirely the point, and I think its perceived banality stems from the problem that the truth, repeated enough times, starts to sound like a lie.

A little less than halfway through, while Maxine is poking through some new construction she asks "What could lie behind a front like this, when it's all front all the way through?" And that's pretty much the question of the book, i think. Especially as it seizes on this early 2000s dotcom boom mentality which spit out ready-made platitudes about 'openness' and the 'freedom of information'. This book seems aimed at those who bought into the Big Electric Dream--that freedom was waiting inside the glass and plastic boxes that the generous minds of the MIC had provided to us. Who can't belive in conspiracies when everything seems striving of its own inner will towards sunlight.

Yet somehow, the right people keep dying, the right people keep getting richer, conspiracy or no.

"Whose side are you on, are you an American or what are you?" Brooke now in full indignation, "this horrible, horrible tragedy, a whole generation traumatized, war with the Arab world any minute, and even this isn't safe from your stupid little hipster irony? What's next, Auschwitz jokes?"

Near the end, Maxine's father is talking to her about the genesis of the internet, "It was conceived in sin, the worst possible." He's speaking here of the ARPAnet origins, the failsafe of electronic control that now provides us instant shopping, pornography, gossip, video games, and dusted with a fine patina of 'freedom' to keep you from looking too close.

It reminded me of another book i read not too long ago, Friedrich Kittler's Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (also swt) which talks about the rise of these communications technologies and their outgrowth from the military needs of the day. It is no coincidence that Remington found the transition from guns to typewriters so simple a transformation.

At heart, we must remember that these tools are always military tools, and that our finance capital is wielded in the same way, and the towers, pixelated geometry, serve as an avatar of this, a character even assures another that the WTC is "built like a battleship." Thus when the towers fall, the front begins to fall as well, revealing not what was behind it, but beneath.

Well this is already too long and i don't have the patience to remember what i was trying to say except - read bleeding edge probably
#7779
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mods change my name to elvis hitler
#7780
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don't get it wrong tho, the book is still mostly an excuse for paragraph-long set-ups to scooby doo puns and chances for t. pynchon to talk about anime
#7781
Online
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AmericanNazbro posted:

deadken posted:

help me downvote this post people

im downvoting it for not having enough hegel

#7782
Post rating: +
giving mein kampf another read thru atm. still pretty relevant to this day.
#7783
Post rating: ~
i went to see ranciere give a public lecture the other day. it was p cool. i didn't know a whole lot about him going in, but he's into a lot of the same things that interest me (19th century realist novels, pedantry & prejudice of intellectuals vis a vis the poor).

the undortunate thing is that he chose to lecture on madame bovary, and that's one of the few novels in the genre that i started but never finished. it's been sitting on my bookshelf for almost a decade now, and i think about picking it up at least once a month - most recently a few days before the lecture. very frustrating. thankfully during questions he got into an interesting discussion of balzac, stendhal (probably my two favourite authors) and the figure of the autodidact that i could follow a lot more closely.

overall he seemed like a cool dude with good ideas and im definitely going to read his books now
#7784
tardy on these heaters
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deadken posted:



The mane problam with the books is no marxis and erasing the class

#7785
political car tune
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Gucci Mane is a problem
#7786
tardy on these heaters
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The Problematic Mane
#7787
Online
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tentativelurkeraccount posted:

me too ilmidge let's race.


#7788
[account deactivated]
#7789
[account deactivated]
#7790
Online
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Against The day by tomas pynchon.
#7791
[account deactivated]
#7792
Online
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Yes
#7793
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im about right there too. in the beginning i was afraid he was gonna do the 1890s boys adventure dime novel voice the whole book but i guess its a pastiche of different stuff, like one part seems to be a western. i like it its fun.
#7794
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wat books do you like roseweird
#7795
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still reading being and time by ol' heidegger and boy is it a doozy. about 270 pages are really good and then he starts talking about being-towards-death and other shit that don't make sense and demonizing intersubjectivity in a stupid way.
#7796
[account deactivated]
#7797
Post rating: +
wow pynchon looks horrible
#7798
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a book being 1000 pages instantly suggests to me that it's not worth reading and that the author is showing a fundamental disrespect to the public.
#7799
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same, but transposed to your posts
#7800
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i would never be so arrogant as to term myself an 'author' and expect people to pay actual money to read my posts though. Pynchon apparently remains untroubled by such moral considerations.