Mercifully

“…yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to have the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever. May we trust that this blessed ship is bound for some better shore, some undrowned Lemuria, risen and redeemed, where the American fate, mercifully, failed to transpire…” (Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice)

On Reading Infinite Jest

I read a quote once that said the only way you’re going to be able to read Proust is if you want to be reading Proust. I think the same can be said for Infinite Jest. You don’t read it because you want to see “what happens,” but because you enjoy the book’s voice and texture and the weird world it’s creating.

I’ve dipped in and read some of the Infinite Summer posts when I’ve checked on the schedule, and this seems to be the difference between those who enjoy it and those who don’t: the latter want some kind of payoff, either plotwise (in which case they’re terminally disappointed) or, since the plot-based satisfaction so obviously isn’t going to happen, morality-wise (the whole “read it because it will make you a better person” line). The morality aspect seems like a stretch to me, but it might serve a valuable purpose of motivating someone to keep reading until they learn to enjoy the type of novel Infinite Jest is.

And if they don’t? Well, maybe it’s just not their thing. I don’t have any particular stake in whether big thick postmodern novels are people’s thing or not — for me, the value of Infinite Summer is that it’s exposing people to that kind of thing so that they can make an informed decision on whether it’s their kind of thing (even if the conscious goal of the project is more ambitious and therefore dubious than the humble goal of figuring out a way to get people to try something because maybe they’ll like it).

Small press success story

Via IMDB, I stumbled across the following fun fact: Shane Jones’s Light Boxes, published by Publishing Genius, recently had its movie rights purchased by Spike Jonze. This is a huge deal for Publishing Genius, which my friend Adam Robinson founded a few years ago, and will hopefully give PG and small presses more generally closer to the amount of credibility they deserve.

Idea for a new book series

The series would cover notoriously confusing or strange topics and be called the “Seriously, WTF?” series. Titles might include David Lynch: Seriously, WTF? or Quantum Physics: Seriously, WTF?

These books would represent an advance over the “For Dummies” and “Idiot’s Guide” series insofar as they recognize that the obstacle to understanding lies in the object being examined rather than in the reader.

Seed ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

This had to be one of the most tedious torrents ever to create.  A friend of mine completed the download today, and near as he can tell they are all fully functional and complete.

For those without Demonoid access … pity.

The Great Books President

Reading this article on Obama’s reading habits, I was struck by how traditional his choices were — and at the same time how enthusiastic he seemed to be about them, how deeply he seemed to engage. He seems like a true believer in the Great Books paradigm, and his rhetoric matches, with all his talk of meeting contemporary challenges with timeless truths.

In such an anti-intellectual country the impact is probably small, but I think the fact that he is so resolutely, traditionally, and apparently contentedly Western in his thinking was one aspect of the “normalization” process that made Americans able to swallow the idea of a man with such an unusual name and background as president.

Bay Area Books

Though the Bay Area is teeming with high quality bookstores — Green Apple, Moe’s, Pegasus, Booksmith, Modern Times, etc. — I was wondering last night, while following the Reeses-pieces path I laid so that I might find my way out of the labyrinth that is Green Apple, why I’ve yet to find a really quality theology/religion bookstore.  With Moe’s as the only notable exception, most of the good stores only seem to care about alternative & eastern religion, with very token gestures toward Christian theology.  This makes sense, of course, considering where I’m living, but we do have the GTU around here.  Don’t those students ever need to sell their books?  I only recently learned of the University Press Bookstore in Berkeley, even though I’d walked by it dozens of times, so it’s possible (given I’m only prone to browse theology, and not actually read it) I’ve simply overlooked such a place.  Any Bay Area natives or former residents know of such a place?

I could probably find my answer via Google or Yelp, but what’s the fun in that?

Also … anyone, is Meillassoux’s After Finitude worth my time?