Benjamin David > Recent Status Updates

Classic American love story. The blockbuster flick deserves a remake in ironic, paranoid style. Per usual, the modern literati in America outpaced Hollywood in terms of psychological storytelling and innovation. This text has a lot beneath the surface for moderns to excavate.

Flows so well, like water through aqueducts constructed by a master. After the surprise of book #2, I held off a while and didn’t expect to enjoy the rest of the series so much. Now I’m getting a sense that Herbert’s imagination for human relations and the stream-of-consciousness style are without limit for the series’ potential.

It's cool how visions age with insight or irrelevance i.e. aspects of both the esoteric and hard sci fi statements from Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven. The most striking moments are explicitly discomforting - pushing the bounds of human decency and lucidly delving deeper into sublime like in Ellison's "Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" and the paranoid zen Dick embodies in "Faith of Our Fathers."

I will be the first user to spoil this book. It’s a gifted composer coaching students of his esoteric counterpoint. There is very little “Introductory” about the text after the first 10 pages and the author’s candid suggestions for practice. I was out of my depth by page 20. He assumes advanced compositional talent and instinctive command of theory to apply the rules of the eternal counterpoint technique.

Slowly crystallizing. I just reached the passage at the end of- “Christ, a Symbol of the Self”- that is excerpted in RA Lafferty’ Fourth Mansions. Jung’s consideration of Christian history and phenomenology is enabled by sincere wonder and skepticism for the problem of opposites - the clearest pill imaginable