This was fascinating! I especially thought the Dawkins book sounded interesting. and for what it's worth I totally agree about the RP stuff.. I also have the one you mention and the book on Hermits is a fantastic read.. I think I have all the one's you mention.. I really wish I could get motivated to read (and do) more tech related stuff, so thanks for the kick in the pants! Not sure if you'd be interested in what I'm reading but here's what I'm working on:
starting the second chapter.. its a big book so its sort of unwieldy to read except in a perfect situation Comic Grotesque: Wit and Mockery in German Art, 1870-1940 this is a beautiful exhibition catalogue from the Neue Galerie in NY Amazing discussion of Arnold Bocklin, Paul Klee, Paul Scheerbart, Emil Nolde, Franz Stuck, Karl Valentin, the Satiric Cabaret, Salomo Friedlander.. This is a good book for continuing a study of the grotesque, which is really becoming my focus now.. It especially goes well with following up from the Barbara Maria Stafford book which discusses so many references to the classical[sic] and renaissance grotesqu.. whatever, its a totally groovy ref-book for 'freak-studies' my new home-schooling major.. around 150 pages into.. Toy Medium by Daniel Tiffany a sort of study of the chiasmus of the poetics of material philosophy and the materialism of lyric poetry he does this through a discussion of the history of automata Kepler's treatise on snowflakes animal magnetism, fireworks and cloud-chamber photographs a long list of figures this book also has a good deal of discussion on Wallace Stevens so I'm using the Stevens Collected to put some of the quotes back into contrext.. and the Stevens also dovetails with the grotesque studies.. it seems Stevens is sort of a hub for both the grotesque in modern lyric and 'lyrical substance': It says there is an absolute grotesque. There is a nature that is grotesque within The boulevards of the generals. Why should We say that it is man's interior world Or seeing the spent, unconscious shapes of night, Pretend they are shapes of another consciousness? The grotesque is not a visitation. It is Not apparition but appearance, part Of that simplified geography, in which The sun comes up like news from Africa. Wallace Stevens, "A Word with Jose Rodriguez-Feo" This is quite brilliant, as the root of the word monster comes from monstrado meaning 'to display' and with the double resonance from techne' as an appearing The grotesque is not a visitation. It is Not apparition but appearance [itself] Wallace Stevens makes one of the most important statements to me personally and my work that I've ever found.. or seemed like it.. [gush] finishing up, maybe 30-60 pages left, I jumped around alot Avital Ronell's Stupidity which has some fascinating work on Wordsworth, Doestoevsky, etc. etc.. The stuff on wordsworth is worth the price on the book.. really interesting.. Just beginning Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things which is his first book about design.. not too far into this but it seems unlike anything I've ever read by him.. nearly finished..may have lost interest Aleister Crowley and the Ouija board by J. Edward Cornelius This is a decent book on the history of the ouija board and a very strange book which documents some of the more advanced practices developed by AC and which are still in use by the OTO. This also dovetails well with some of my studies of Yeat's magical life. I picked this up as I've been considering attending the Gnostic Mass at our local very venerable OTO temple.. Just for something to do some evening I thought it might be stimulating in some way or another.. reading this in small chunks.. The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan It seems like a kind of wave went through the blogosphere when this came out so I thought I'd pick it up I'd read the sonnets and like those.. I really like the Out-takes section.. reading in chunks.. Revolution of the Word ed. Jerome Rothenberg exact change reissued this so i thought i'd pick it up.. I really like the Marianne Moore and Charles Henri Ford.. Its a classic I guess.. good one to have around.. about half-way through.. Blake, a biography by peter Ackroyd This is a fascinating read. Well researched as far as I know, (though I've still to ask a Blake prof I know) and just engrossing marvelous snippets of rare drawings from Blake's notebooks, "the traveler" "pissing man" etc.. all manner of detailed histories of the figures and times of Blake's life.. just randomly opening the book now I read about Thomas John's Druid Temple, Boehme's influence.. I'm an 18th century history hound so I just lap this stuff up like candy.. Still plugging, maybe a third done on Jonathan Crary's Suspension of Perception which has among other things some nice work on the Praxinoscope-Theatre with many illustrations of this strange device.. Good Art history - Visual Studies Book this one's done.. The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime [On David Lynch's Lost Highway] by Slavoj Zizek the chapter called Cyberspace between perversion and trauma i found quite interesting especially his discussion of the narrative structure of 'violence hubs' a sample out of context: -electronic media have the advantage of enacting a deeply comic vision of life- Just finished this one.. I enjoyed it very much. What Do Pictures Want? Essays on the Lives and Loves of Images.. by WJT Mitchel.. He qualifies his thesis at the outset as a 'constitutive fiction'. The Publisher blurb is probably as good or better than what I could write, although it renders rather bland the actual scholarship contained in the text which is actually quite fascinating.. Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheepwho, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living imageand the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm. What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike. here's tentatively what's on the docket: The Gray Cloth: A Novel on Glass Architecture Author: Scheerbart, Paul, and Stuart, John A (Introduction by) Readiness/Enough/Depends/on (Green Integer: El-E-Phant 51) Author: Larry Eigner, Robert Grenier Meat Air Poems 1957-1969 Author: Loewinsohn, Ron The Portrait of Eccentricity Arcimboldo and the Mannerist Grotesque Author: Maiorino, Giancarlo Baudelaire and Caricature Author: Hannoosh, Michele Mirror of Art Author: Baudelaire, Charles Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology Author: Mitchell, W J Thomas Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam and Greece Author: Bottero, Jean The grotesque in art and literature. by Kayser, Wolfgang Johannes Dionysus: Myth and Cult Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life Where Shall I Wander : New Poems [Hardcover] by Ashbery, John Atomik Aztex Vathek
