Joe K > Recent Status Updates

"The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single question, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?"

Taking this from the top

This is shaping up to be the most disappointing read of the year so far. I dont care about anything that is happening in either storyline. The only thing keeping me going is the sunken cost fallacy tbh. Also, the quote on the back that calls this "One Hundred Years of Solitude meets Lonesome Dove" is baffling in its ability to be both reductive and inaccurate, truly a marvel.

It is taking EVERYTHING in me to not DNF this, holy moly

I may need to change my Morrison ranking after this reread. I loved it my first go-around, but this time I am ADORING it.

'It's a mistake to imagine that we're all moving towards a state of happy primitivism. The model here seems to be less the noble savage than our un-innocent post-Freudian selves, outraged by all that over-indulgent toilet training, dedicated breast feeding and parental affection...Our neighbors had happy childhoods to a man and still feel angry. Perhaps they resent never having had a chance to become perverse...'

'The true light of the high-rise was the metallic flash of the Polaroid camera, that intermittent radiation which recorded a moment of hoped-for violence for some later voyeuristic pleasure. What depraved species of electric flora would spring to life from the garbage-strewn carpets of the corridors in response to this new source of light?"

This was written in 1975 and yet is perfectly capturing the dread and anxiety of living in a late-stage-capitalistic society. The high-rise is a microcosm of the world of 21st-century technology and isolation. Or in Ballard's words: 'In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly "free" psychopathology.' Hit the nail on the head there, sir.

This is bonkers