Steven > Recent Status Updates

I am pleasantly surprised by Beauvoir's frequent references to Bachelard's Elemental Poetics. A literal "touchstone", haha.

Updike is truly a fantastic writer: gorgeous sentence to sentence. Perhaps wasted upon suburban ennui, but aren't we all?

Tragically misplaced in the move. Unfinished.

Incredible power move to put a 65-page index in the middle of your 130-page book.

A cavalcade of buffoons have bungled the burgle.

Having finished Beiser's section on Kant, I now feel, rather miraculously, prepared to tackle Kant's corpus, a prospect that has always filled me with fear and trembling.

This seems like an excellent text to get a foothold in Kantian studies. Beiser provides an excellent overview while still pursuing his own specific project.

Barthleme impresses me as a man who knows many things; many words and phrases to look up: Ukase, Bhang, Bummaree, frailing the banjo, etc.

Part 3 of 3

He gave me a few books upon parting that I promised to read, and I’m finally getting around to fulfilling that promise, starting here, with the most imposing of his recommendations.

Part 2 of 3

(I introduced him to literary patron saint of the PNW Raymond Carver and the Danto school’s argument for modern art.) he did lead the discussion, and, in a socratic style, exposed some narrowness in my thinking, specifically an Americentric bent in the scope of my politics and a Eurocentric one in my readings.

1 of 3

This book was given to me by a well-read, well-traveled, fellow boarder that I had the pleasure of sharing a room with at a Portland hostel. He was a professor from outside the states, and, bouncing around the city together, we had some really eye opening discussions on politics and literature. While it wasn’t a purely one-way dialogue...

Back on my bullshit. (Reading Jacobean tragedies.)

Fear and Trembling.

Shows potential to be a personally apocalyptic text.

The Just Assassins - 4 out of 5

State of Siege - 3 out of 5

The Misunderstanding - 5 out of 5

All types of irony, all the time.
Speak frankly and listen carefully.

The Misunderstanding - 5 out of 5

All types of irony, all the time.
Speak frankly and listen carefully.

Caligula - 5 out of 5

"I advise the majority of people born in the North to skip the present chapter. It is an obscure dissertation upon certain phenomena relative to the orange- tree, a plant which does not grow or reach its full height except in Italy and Spain."

Based on Stendahl and Hugo, I'm starting to think the French executed editors as well as aristocrats and tax-mongers. Kings of the tangent, these.

"A terrible symptom that you are losing your head: — you think of some little thing which is difficult to make out; you see it white, and interpret that in favour of your love; a moment later you notice that actually it is black, and still you find it conclusively favourable to your love."

For a moment, I thought this was going to turn into an absolutely pitch-black sex comedy. It might have, actually, depending on your sense of humor and with allowance for the lacuna.

cf. Boccaccio

For a moment, I thought this was going to turn into an absolutely pitch-black sex comedy. It might have, actually, depending on your sense of humor and with allowance for the lacuna.

cf. Boccaccio

Frequently sublime. Hugo has the rare ability to enthrall through character portraits alone.

Note: Jean Valjean's story starts more or less where Raskolnikov's ends. There's only a 4 year gap between Les Mis's pub date and C&P's, but Dostoevsky is a noted Hugo fan, so there's at least a parallel thought process here, if not a direct influence.