What are you reading right now?

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:11 am

Black Letters, Atlas Press: "contains what we at Atlas consider to be some of the best in German writing, rather than an attempt to package present trends or works judged by their sales potential [...] hopefully the reader will be slowly convinced that there are not only curious connections between many of the writers in this anthology - in works separated by decades and even centuries - but also a "tradition," albeit one which is difficult to describe. (One, it should be emphasized, which is created retrospectively, with the authors often unaware of their part: as Borges noted in his essay "Kafka and his precursors," the lineaments of a tradition only become clear with time.) Like the surrealists, who created their own precursors, bringing to prominence hitherto neglected authors (Lautreamont, Jarry etc.), this book is an attempt to do something similar for German writing - what we have called "enthused" writing in the subtitle." Fun.

Also a collection of Goethe, Tales of Transformation, City Lights Books. But I haven't even opened it yet. Goethe, cooling his heels.

T-Bone Slim, Juice is Stranger than Friction, Kerr publishing: Like reading t-bone's blog as he comments on the spirit of the times reflected in the news of the day. Really hot stuff.

Also was flipping through one of Penelope Rosemont's books, I forget the name. I like her style.

Filmsy stuff:

Making Movies, Sydney Lumet. Comes highly recommended.

In the Blink of an Eye, a perspective on film editing, Walter Murch. A must read.

The Struggle for the Film, Hans Richter. Think about film in a different way, not the same old, tiresome way.

What else. Radio Benjamin. Translated from radio transcripts of recordings that no longer exist. "From '27 to '33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts... kids shows, plays, readings, book reviews, fiction." I love this stuff. Got one just like it from the Marx Brothers radio shows. The recordings of those no longer exist, either. Wartime, you know. Studios reused their magnetic tape.

Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas, Victoria Reifler Bricker: Exactly what it sounds like. Community approved social and religious blasphemy parties.

Castle of Otranto, Walpole - Vathek, Beckford - The Vampyre, Polidori: My gothic junk food.

Anything else? Esther Leslie's Walter Benjamin. Anything by Esther is worth the time. Her book about Eisenstein and Disney was a good one. Another one I forget the name of. Also Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry.

Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky: Not a big tarot fan, to put it nicely. But come on, this is Jodorowsky.

But the best book right now is The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, Henry Corbin. Can't put it down, yet I want to take it slow. hm. Sounds like I'm in love.

Read Cities of the Red Night, Place of Dead Roads and Western Lands again recently. Cities is probably the best, but Place of Dead Roads is still my favorite.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 09, 2018 5:44 pm

Yeah, I've been meandering through WSB's great final trilogy since last Summer. Was surprised to crack Western Lands and realize I'd checked that out of the library at age 11 -- like finding a new room in an old house.

I was into psychedelic culture way too early, and found out about Gysin's Third Mind and cut-ups. Older friends insisted that Burroughs composed all his later work through such means, and I believed it when I was young. Years later, I find that impossible to believe. Nova Express, maybe, but definitely not these three. They are a warped ride, but not a sentence is out of place. Many of the ideas there may be happy accidents, but none of the execution is.

Per Jodorowsky, I put off checking out his comic book work for probably a decade, but it is spectacular stuff. I found liked the Metabarons material even more than the Incal stuff. He's obviously still working through his Frank Herbert visions but often manages to transcend, or at least equal, his influences.
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:23 am

Yeah, Brion Gysin let the mice in over here, too.

I think when they first got into the cut ups, they went crazy experimenting, maybe overdid it a bit. As is normal with a new toy. By the time of Cities, the technique has matured. Cut up happens for a reason in the later books, only in contexts where it makes sense in relation to the characters and story. He's in full command of all his literary powers at this point. Using chance, not relying on it.

A lot of ideas from his older books reappear in their mature form in there, too. Cites, Place of Dead Roads and Western Lands were written over a ten year period from the early-to-mid seventies, I think. Long process. There's a book of his called the 'Book of Breeething,' that kind of serves as a companion piece. Fun little book with pictures. He mentions it in Cities, it's a fictional book, in the book. Worth checking out if you can find it. Actually, you can probably just find it on line, I imagine. I don't know, I'm not looking.

Another good one is Burroughs' Last Words. Can't remember if that's the exact title. Journal entries from the year before he died. Puts a lot of things in perspective, in his work and beyond. I get the feeling that they really thought they were on the front line of the intergalactic war in Paris, running around doing their electronic revolution voodoo. And maybe they were. But they lost the war. Or did they? Burroughs seems to think so.

I started reading at Place of Dead Roads this time. At the end, I got it in my head that the Kim we're reading is an impostor. Kim takes on the identity of Jerry, to the point where he's referred to as Jerry in the book for a bit. Undercover time travel ops, Johnson Intelligence. Time travel done really well in these books I think, better than most sci fi treatments of the concept. Before getting back to the shootout at the beginning he makes a few comments, about a guy that jumped out of the hindenburg and disappeared, things like that. After that Kim is back, not Jerry anymore. But this Kim says he has to go 'settle the score' with Mike Chase. Kim would never say that. He would say "settle the account."

So I had to read Western Lands again. Turns out... well, it isn't as simple as that, and it ends up not really mattering. But it was fun playing Sherlock Holmes for a while, I thought I was onto something big.

Went back and read Cities after, looking for clues, dusting for fingerprints. Nothing. Great book though, his best, I think. Although I read the last seventy-five pages by flipping through, reading about four words per page. Interesting, the words that jump into your eyes, almost like someone is trying to send you messages.

Haven't checked out the Jodorowsky comic books, I've been meaning to for years, same thing. I read that you were not impressed with Frank Herbert. I have a funny relationship with him. I actually see him and Burroughs as very similar, although polar opposites. Herbert is just so straight, Burroughs is sooo gay. They're both very much against things that the other stands for, right down to literary fundamentals of structure and function. I like letting them fight it out in my head.

I was reading some interview with Burroughs, when he was asked about sci fi, I found it interesting he mentioned that he likes Dune. I know he read a lot of sci fi, could've dropped a lot of other names, he didn't have to bring it up. I think that's probably Gysin's influence, though.

Burroughs clone theory is a lot like Herbert's. Techniques can be used so that the memories of the first life are recalled by the clone. I'm sure they're not the only two that came up with that of course, but there are a few other ideas of Burroughs' that I found Herbert-like. Although they're not coming to me off the top of my head. Little things.

edited to add: Ah Pook Was Here is another short story that provides metacontext for the Cities trilogy.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:54 am

Herbert is one of the best political science authors I've ever read. The extent of his creation, even if it was mostly repurposing the bedouin, is incredible. I was only unimpressed with his actual exposition and narration -- staid.

Have you investigated the awkwardly translated wonder of Liu Cixin?

Discussed on RI: viewtopic.php?t=39263&p=576419
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Sun Aug 12, 2018 6:55 pm

I remember breezing through that thread, but not following through with my swing. It's catching me this time, think I'll give it another go. And hey, thanks again.

Herbert's exposition and narrative, I think that's that thing about structure and function he stands for. Traditionalist, out of date. Boring, to put it country simple. He's stuck in the literary past, like he was going for setting concepts from the far future in the style of the ancient classics. Wouldn't be surprised if he considered writing Dune in Latin.

I know there's a romantic in me that is a sucker for his scene setups, the sensually descriptive, mildly poetic turns of phrase. Moonlight frosted like icing on mesas, flint smell of sand, body odors in seitch, crinkling touch of the activated shield on the skin. Thunderous, frightening sound of the all-female army chanting the mysterious word 'siaynoc' echoing off the walls of festival city, making Nuremburg look like baby games. I love it, cannot lie. Such a sucker.

The thing I like most may be a personal conceit. I'm a few years into my own long process of writing my big idea, heavy on the dialogue, and my inner editor is merciless. Now, when I read Herbert's dialogue scenes, I think that I can almost see the five previous drafts hidden between the lines, like ghosts of dialogue never spoken hanging in the air. Just my imagination, probably.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Freitag » Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:54 am

I know this forum is mostly about bashing Trump, but if you're in the mood for some good old-fashioned conspiracy theory, check out the book Octopus by Guy Lawson. It's about a hedge fund manager who got drawn into the conspiratorial fantasy world of Robert Booth Nichols, investing his clients' money in Nichols' wild schemes. I bought the book mostly for the financial angle, because I enjoy financial intrigue, but was shocked at how many conspiracy theories the book touched on. Remember when, years ago, two Japanese men showed up in Switzerland with over a hundred billion dollars in U.S. treasury bonds? I distinctly remember that story flashing across the conspirosphere. Well it's mentioned in the book, along with tons of other stuff. Nichols, for example, is suspected of killing Danny Casolaro. The hedge fund manager initially met Nichols while searching for a copy of the legendary PROMIS software. Etc. Anyway it's a very well-written book in addition to the interesting subject matter. It was quite a pleasant surprise.
User avatar
Freitag
 
Posts: 615
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Tue Aug 14, 2018 5:06 am

That looks like fun, I'll check it out.

Is this still a Trump-bashing site? There's like a half dozen posters that either can't or won't grow out of it, but the rest seem to have a better grasp on the world. I never bash Trump, personally. I just don't see the point.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Freitag » Tue Aug 14, 2018 10:12 pm

Well, hopefully everyone has moved on from the election by now. Anyway have you, dada, or anyone else here read The Last Circle? It was mentioned in the Octopus book and I think I'm gonna read it next.
User avatar
Freitag
 
Posts: 615
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:23 pm

Haven't read. Looks like a few here have, though. fruhmenschen, handsome b.

Draft version of first 15 chapters here:

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/File:The_last_circle.pdf

At the bottom of that page is a link to Cheri Seymour posting at deeppoliticsforum.

Giving a listen to a radio show on youtube that I found at the end of the deeppoliticsforum thread, Ed Opperman interviewing Ted Rubinstein in 2016, talking about the octopus, and the convoluted topography of the rabbit warren that extends from it.

I don't know, my intuition - which I don't trust one bit, mind you - is wondering how much of this is just classic limited hangout. A time sinker. I just can't tell anymore. Not that I'm too concerned, either way.

Funny, at one time I'd be right back down the drugs-highfinance-politics shadowworld rabbit hole, now it almost seems quaint to me. Of course it's not quaint, still as relevant today as it was ten, twenty years ago.

Still looking forward to reading The Octopus, though. I'd rather read a good book than go chasing after them wascaly rabbits right now.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Freitag » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:58 am

Thanks for finding that draft of The Last Circle, dada. The draft, floating around online years ago, was what the hedge fund manager in The Octopus book actually read, that sent him down the rabbit hole.

And just FYI, the first half of The Octopus book is not conspiratorial at all, it's about a hedge fund manager digging himself into a hole by committing financial fraud. I personally enjoy that subject matter but it might not be exciting to everyone. It's in the second half of the book that he tries to dig himself out of the hole by finding the PROMIS software, which would let him front run the markets, and then the story gets really bizarre.
User avatar
Freitag
 
Posts: 615
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby dada » Mon Aug 20, 2018 3:08 pm

Yeah, the book is more my speed right now. The conspiracy doesn't interest me as much as reading good story does. Just sounds like a good book.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Aug 21, 2018 2:29 pm

"The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America" - Kate Denton and Roger Morris. (No, not that Morris -- this Morris. Which makes it more interesting.)

Damn fine work. The book itself is very writerly, opening with a big bust, then a staccato set of biographical sketches, profiles of Vegas godfathers. Like Denton's other books, the text can be extremely frank, but often in passing, firing off spectacular asides for a paragraph before plowing back into the magazine-style narrative.

Insofar as this kind of formula is how books get published, I am a big supporter of these conventions.

A couple quickies:

pg. 113

[Moe] Dalitz was not only a Lansky intimate, with a central role in what author Rick Porello called "the complete corruption" practiced by the Syndicate in the Midwest and elsewhere, but also the harbinger of a growing fusion of criminal and legitimate business.

...

The pattern became classic: succeeding bootlegging with gambling, money laundering, drug trafficking and union corruption; investing the newly laundered money into health care, insurance, service industries, entertainment, banking, real estate and other major sectors; and through the well-oiled, surprisingly short passage from racketeer to capitalist, becoming one of Las Vegas's revered benefactors. To have revealed him for what he was, even as early as 1950, would have shown much of what was in store for Nevada and the nation.


pg. 116

Beneath the drab celery-green cover of Senate Report #725 of the 82nd Congress lay an ugly and incomparable portrait of what had happened to the country. In the 11,500 pages of testimony, the committee had unearthed what [Estes] Kefauver called "a government within a government," a criminal force making more than $20 billion a year, more than 10 percent of the gross national product, and already controlling the politics and much of the economies of several major cities and states from coast to coast.

Harsher than the very existence of such deep-seated, systemic corruption were the implications for American capitalism and democracy.

...

"Organized crime may not be something that exists outside law or government," William Chambliss later wrote in drawing the fateful inference, "but may instead be a creation of them -- a hidden but necessary integral part of the governmental and economic structures of the society."


pg. 119

Just as Kefauver's [b]persistent emphasis on gambling concealed the magnitude of drug money as the Syndicate's seed capital, Mafia and Italian stereotypes hid the enormity of a multiethnic crime confederation more profoundly American than any faction.

...

The epic misconception was no accident. Much of the committee's blunder, and what would make it a prototype of coopted congressional inquiries, traced to a heavyset, balding Californian with darting eyes who embodied the unseen currents running beneath the postwar surface.

When FBN director Henry Anslinger offered his aid to the committee, Kefauver and his colleagues were being spurned by Hoover and his FBI ... For Anslinger, in the time-honored tradition of shrewd Washington bureaucrats, an agent loaned to the committee was a de facto spy for the FBN, ensuring that the director would know the progress of the committee and thus be able to shape its outcome consistent with his bureaucratic interests. The plant was George White, destined years later to become infamous as an operative at the juncture of government and crime that one historian has aptly called American "deep politics."
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby chump » Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:12 pm

She’s a Sally, Silly; and The Bluegrass Conspiracy is also a classic.


Image
User avatar
chump
 
Posts: 2261
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby Grizzly » Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:05 am



https://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=92
Reality Denied
Firsthand Experiences with Things that Can’t Happen – But Did

by John B. Alexander


Reality Denied confronts conventional wisdom with events that, although quite real, seem to challenge the revered “laws of science,” proving them to be wrong or incomplete. The thorny issues of life after death, mind over matter, UFOs, remote viewing, telepathic communications with animals, and more are all addressed from Col. John Alexander’s firsthand perspective. Here physical and spiritual domains collide, providing glimpses of worlds beyond everyday reality.

About the Author:

JOHN B. ALEXANDER, Ph.D., is a retired senior Army officer with decades of experience with a wide range of phenomena. Traveling to all eight continents, he has encountered events that defy common explanation. He has met with shamans in the Amazon, the Himalayas, the Andes, East and West Africa, and Northern Mongolia. In Tonga, he dived in open ocean with humpback whales, and was involved with telepathic experiments with wild dolphins in the Bahamas. A psychic adventurer, he practiced psychokinetic metal bending, fire walking, and caused a white crow to fly for the National Academy of Sciences. A founding board member of IRVA, he is a past-president of IANDS, and former SSE councilor. Straddling two worlds, he is also retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and served on studies with the National Research Council, the Army Science Board, the Council on Foreign Relations, NATO, and was a senior fellow of a DoD university. Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross headed his doctoral committee. His website is at johnbalexander.com.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: What are you reading right now?

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:02 am

Image


Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Belligerent Savant and 56 guests