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18 books
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79 voters
Ben Hobden
https://www.goodreads.com/benhobden
“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
― Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate
― Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
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“When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.”
― Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.”
― Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
“Ordinarily, people are anxious to test their theories in practice, to learn from experience, but those who wield power are so anxious to establish the myth of their own infallibility that they turn back on truth as squarely as they can. Politics mean nothing to me. I don't like people who are indifferent to the truth.”
― Doctor Zhivago
― Doctor Zhivago
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
The Pale King
— 81 members
— last activity Sep 04, 2011 08:00PM
Discussions about David Foster Wallace's posthumous release, The Pale King. ...more
Infinite Summer
— 304 members
— last activity Jun 21, 2019 03:36PM
For all those planning to read Infinite Jest this summer starting June 21. Support, encouragement and gentle pushes welcome.
David Foster Wallace
— 299 members
— last activity Oct 15, 2016 07:21PM
A group for the amazing work of David Foster Wallace, now deceased. RIP 1962-2008 Feel free to add his books to the bookshelf for the group.
DFW - The Broom of the System (group read)
— 22 members
— last activity Dec 26, 2011 03:08PM
We will be reading David Foster Wallace's "The Broom of the System," starting October 1, 2011. Here's the reading schedule: https://docs.google.com/sp ...more
#OccupyGaddis
— 86 members
— last activity Aug 31, 2012 12:11PM
This is a Goodreads group meant to accompany #OccupyGaddis, the Los Angeles Review of Books's collective reading of William Gaddis's 1975 novel, "J R. ...more
Ben’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ben’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
711 books
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31 friends
41 books
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84 friends
3 books
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48 friends
75 books
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18 friends
425 books
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36 friends
108 books
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4 friends
11 books
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9 friends
7 books
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11 friends
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