Library Books

Touch and Go–Studs Terkel

(2007) I’ve been working a lot, which is why this is my first substantial piece of writing in a long time. By working I mean “for money” working. Divisions are important. I had a temp position at a local corporation for the last three months, doing basic around the office help (i.e. answering phones and nothing at all else) for 9-10 hours a day. It was so goddamn boring. I read a few books and…

When promises turn to threats–After the Future

(2011). From the most professional scientific theorist to your friends talking about your ex, contemporary people tend to think about the future positively. Or, at least, they tend to believe that believing  the future is something to look forward to will help them in the present. Its arrival, surely, will reveal the pains and problems of today as a sad mass of petty waste.

S/he’s not worth your…

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

(2014). Viv Albertine’s recent memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. triggers many memorial exercises in me. I hate nostalgia, so I’ll try to keep it minimal: Cut was a HUGE record for me growing up. FUCKING HUGE MOTHERBROTHER. Not long after discovering Everybody’s Records (a bright stop in the otherwise hellike Cincinnati, OH), I took it home, along with PiL’s 

Chicago, imagined: The Man With the Golden Arm

(1949). Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm begins with a dedication to “The Newberry Library of Chicago,” my former place of employ. So I’m going to take some credit for its greatness, of which there is much. So you see where I’m coming from; a Chicagoan in essence (as opposed to in origin or current location), Algren’s regional influence makes his wider reputation inaccessible to me.…

Giving Up the Gass–Omensetter’s Luck

(1966). In my personal life, I talk more about William H. Gass than any other writer. With undeniable sentence-making expertise and an intellect equal parts rigor and passion, his opinion on anything interests me endlessly (to a paraphrase from a book jacket). Every time I see a book of his I don’t have, I buy it on the dot. Even if someone else is holding it and I’m in his/her house. Yea, I go…

Poetry Language Thought–Heidegger–Part 1

(1971). The first section reminds me of a Catholic mass. As poems the passages are bad, but they work if thought of as a chant or exercise. A ritual stretching before one gets into the rigorous exertion coming in the next pages.

Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken.

Such inability would bring thinking face to face with its…

A Scanner Darkly or; changing my opinions

(1977). This is not going to be a properly scholarly review. I did not take notes as I was reading, so there will be no quotes, no passages mentioned en specific, and, indeed, no merit whatsoever. I’ve been suspicious of Philip K. Dick. He’s very hip. Namechecked, by lanky, waifish indie rock oafs (because when I namecheck of Jane Austen and the Damned it is soooooo much cooler. Everyone, by…

Frames of War _–_–_ Judith Butler

(2010) Two degrees-worth of intense humanities studies can leave one wondering. The standard questions–is this relevant/have I wasted all my parents money/who the hell is going to hire me–start to wrack and muddle in the brain. Even worse, when academic professionals become equals one gets a persistent and stinking impression: none of my effort makes any impact, even in this very small and…

Kathy Goes to Haiti. Hell comes to Wednesday.

(1978) An early novel by Kathy “God” Acker, Kathy Goes to Haiti is really good as fuck. It does nothing but not disappoint and exceedingly so much. As Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Acker is very good at making statements about important, complex topics in intimate, revelatory terms. She breaks through the sort of “if I can’t see it, it isn’t happening” indifference encouraged by…

 (1993). As the back cover will tell you, The Body Embarrassed  is a humorist (i.e.) interpretation of works by distinguished Early Modern Englishmen such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Shakespeare, and whoever wrote “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” I’ve read/heard about most of these plays, so I can’t say it’s the truth, but even the chronically unfamiliar should find more than a few things to enjoy in…

Living introduction to the Infinite Conversation…

New policy: instead of  (1969) reviewing books I’ve finished reading, I’m going to write about them in the midst of the reading of the them. It just makes more sense. Midst-ness provides me with the chronological honesty and honest intensity to write multiple blog entries about one book. One entry’s never enough, anyway, for me to really get into the dreadful and serious issues you’ve come to…

Empire of the Senseless

 (1988) Empire of the Senseless is my first Kathy Acker reading experience (Kath Ackackackack). If this were a two sentence review, I’d say “right now I am ordering 2 of her books.”

For most of my life I’ve possessed and exhibited a bias against art which heavily explores sex, violence, drugs, tattoos, the so-called seedier side of things. /***Why is this side called seedy..because evil grows…

JR. high art low art no art