Jon Krippe > Recent Status Updates

It's my favorite kind of book that assaults you with thematic elements immediately and without pause. Bateman directing the reader with camera terms (the all-seeing gaze of the camera/panopticon) / the vapidity and hostility of the American upper class written in almost absurdist dialogue / the fixation on name brands and conspicuous consumption / the detachment of Bateman to everything around him.
!!!!!

The first use of a first-person pronoun by the POV character happens 8 pages in and by this point the reader is drowning in various namedrops of fashion houses, companies, and other characters.

The traveling characters constantly run into these ruined castles and burned villages. I have nothing interesting to say here it's just a motif Martin likes.

Did NOT expect to be this interested in Roose Bolton

Davos and Stannis are so GAYYYYYY what do you MEAN your tongue is his to do with as he wishes

Tyrion continues to be the most fascinating character in the series

Can't decide whether Gendry is gay or a disaster or a gay disaster

My contemporary art prof getting namedropped this early is CRAZY

Maybe the most tender and heartbreaking scene so far oh my god

"When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice" INTERESTING.

And now we get a translation of valar morghulis... after Arya learned it without a translation... very fun callback

Yeah ok that can't be any more obvious Daenerys is 100% Azor Ahai

OK YES I WASNT MISTAKEN SESBIAN LEX DOES HAPPEN HERE

HE SAID IT HE SAID THE WORD SIMULACRUM KLOSTERMAN KNOWS BALL

Now it becomes apparent that all the side tangents he went on throughout this book were in fact necessary to deliver this tour-de-force of a conclusion. Devastating, succinct, and enlightened.

"I don't believe human life can be fulfilling if the only goal is ensuring that it lasts as long as possible" the hard left turn into teleologic philosophy is RIVETING

"It's hard to imagine a modern pro football player who has no idea that concussions are serious, if for no reasons other than the NFL's enforcement of its concussion protocols and the existence of Tua Tagovailoa."

The old order secured the power that allowed them to flout social norms through divine (racial) birthright, but the new order must do this with capital.

George had to make certain Sansa beat the bisexual allegations AND HE STILL FAILED WYM THE LADIES PLAY KISSING GAMES.

To connect this even more explicitly to Simulacra and Simulation: football symbolically simulates war as it was before the atom bomb, war that was real and that is not (as Baudrillard argues) an impotent proxy. I wonder what Klosterman would think of Baudrillard...

The utter tonal whiplash going from a discussion of football as a simulation of archaic war to a Shane Gillis namedrop.

Baudrillard's simulacra?? In a football book?? Hello?????

"Allegory of the Cave, from the Perspective of the Shadows" brother this is a book about football

"The GOAT is the GOAT because it's the model for what greatness is."

Okay we can stop talking about the Dallas Cowboys now

Davos you fool Salladhor Saan wants your hot onion body!!

"Football imitates American society by generating a sensation of chaotic freedom within an environment of near-total control."

Chomsky jumpscare

We made it through one whole book without Daenerys having an uncomfortable relationship with an older man and I guess that was too long for George

Mance Rayder hype moments and aura compilation