I could write a great novel if my neighborhood weren't so upscale (book thread)

[elpollodiablo]

Started Discipline & Punish on the bus yesterday. More agreeable than I'd expected! Also picked up Origins of Totalitarianism and Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War at Strand today.

[alex]

What does "more agreeable" mean in this context -- that the prose is less overwrought and pretentious, or that the description of torture techniques less graphic than you would have expected?

[Good Intentions]

I can't see how it could be the latter.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

Meanwhile, the former was one of the great surprises I encountered while first reading The History of Sexuality. So.

[elpollodiablo]

Former, definitely. It's actually kind of blandly digestible, though I don't know how much of that is the translation.

[reebty]

I haven't read a Vonnegut novel in twelve years, despite the fact that Slaughterhouse 5 is my favourite novel. Rectifying that now with Player Piano.

[davy]

I'm gonna go back through them all myself, soon. The only books I've read by him in the past 10 years have been nonfiction, and I've been surprised and delighted by how they seemed no less relevant and effective for having been written in the 70s or 80s or whatever. That last book he wrote--Man Without a Country--that was pretty good, too.

[auto-da-fey]

The lady is reading John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire and asked if I wanted to read it along with her--which is perfect, because I'd been wanting to revisit it for years but doubt I ever would have found the motivation. Think I'm gonna go hop a train to NYC and sit around the city reading this afternoon.

[auto-da-fey]

Just finished Sean Wilentz's Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. Somebody here recommended it to me awhile back. I found a copy for $4 at a used book store, and picked it up a few months ago. I liked it pretty well. I love the fiery rhetoric of some of the old working-class declaimers. It's a bit ironic that Wilentz documents how what were probably the two most powerful working-class movements of the period he covers--the 1829 Working Men's party and the 1850 union movement--were both destroyed by infiltration, co-optation, and compromising alliances with one of the major political parties, yet in 2008, here is Wilentz, campaigning for the unabashedly corporate-flunky Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton!

Yeah, it's a bummer the direction Wilentz took. Now I guess he's writing a book on Bob Dylan, which just doesn't strike me as something the world desperately needs. Always a weird thing the way some people's careers go--I met a woman a few years ago who wrote one of the towering books of women's social history in the 1980s, and her new project was about like American translators of Spinoza or something. I guess it must get old having to stick with one topic for years on end, but still.

[davy]

I'm on record here for being generally unimpressed with the output of Neil Gaiman. I've read one full novel (Neverwhere) and parts of others and had basically decided that he was a dude with some fun ideas but unfortunately zero talent for writing competent prose.

Today, though, I read a juvenile novella of his called Odd and the Frost Giants for my Children's Services class and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It was written for elementary school readers, so you can't even call it a YA book, but for all that it's hard to believe it was written by the same guy who bumbled his way through Neverwhere. The characters are wry and lovable, the pacing is brisk, and the dialogue is fluid and funny. I didn't cringe once and audibly chuckled more than a few times.

There's a hint towards the end that he's going to make a series out of it (Odd is a bright young viking with a bum leg and a sharp tongue), and this news excites me. I would read another, class or no class!

[auto-da-fey]

I took Philadelphia Fire to NYC this weekend and spent an entire day sitting around the city reading it--bench by the East Broadway F train stop, Carroll Park, Prospect Park, Sarah Roosevelt Park. The places were, I think, significant because it's a book about memory and they all hold specific memories for me, so it was a somewhat emotionally fraught experience as the book and my own stupid wistfulness played off one another.

Solipsistic reading methods aside though, it's a stunner with some drawbacks. Wideman is a powerhouse prose artist, and the first half, as an author returns to Philly after a decade away to write about the 1985 firebombing of the MOVE house, is an absolutely brilliant, moving meditation on race, urban decay, and the intersections of public and private histories. Then it abruptly shifts gears into meta-narrative disintegration, and while I guess Wideman wanted to climb in the ring and spar with the pomo heavyweights (where he certainly holds his own, with some high-modernist prose style and Barth/Pynchon/Barthelme/et al. structural tactics), the turn from the emotional to the cerebral was jarring for me, since I'd become pretty invested in the story--which, I know, means I got played in a way, but while I admire the game Wideman was running, I wanted to keep playing the first round, and no dice there.

Still, for people into contemporary fiction of the sort that gets taught in universities and probably not read much beyond that, it's worth reading. And I got more out of it this time around, knowing the places now, as opposed to my first reading, when Clark Park or Chestnut Hill were abstract signifiers that meant nothing to me. 

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

Dear davy,

AWESOME BOOK COVER DESIGN EXPLOSION

You're welcome.

Your friend,
Brad

[davy]

Nice! I see several books in there that have caught my eye recently!

[elpollodiablo]

Bookshelf apartment:

[Ah_Pook]

i sat in the bookstore and read the first volume of scott pilgrim today. it was really cute, i think i should probably order the rest of them sometime.

[elpollodiablo]

Lost interest in Discipline & Punish after about 150 pages. I found the subject matter interesting, but the translation seemed (to me, at least--I've got no real frame of reference) mundane and lifeless, and he covers the same territory over and over and over again, essentially making the same arguments with slight variations. I could see mining it for essay fodder in the future, especially the bits about the body being the site and medium for retributive action, but I dunno that I've got much interest in reading Foucault without a guide.

Started The Origins of Totalitarianism this morning, though, and I'm quite excited about it.

[RavingLunatic]

I don't really know much about Foucault. I read about the first 30 pages of A Very Short Introduction to Foucault once, and it was more confusing than anything, I guess because it didn't at all fit the vague picture I had had of him. What I mostly remember is his strange obsession with an obscure novelist. I know he's known primarily as a philosopher, but it seems like all the books we carried at Borders by him were history books. Anybody here very familiar with the guy's works?

Also, yesterday I finished What is This Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers, which GI had recommended to me and I acquired via the awesome inter-library loan system. It's a good book, pretty much what I was looking for. I feel like the philosophy of science is a subject that is as simple and easy or as difficult and complex as you want to make it. In general this makes me uneasy because it seems like for any position one wishes to hold, some legitimate objection can undermine it, forcing one into making ever more weak claims, which themselves can be undermined if you choose to be sufficiently rigorous.

Anyways, I've got the book until July 7th, and I think I'm going to read it again before then. I may also decide to buy a copy, if only for the suggestions for further reading, which I feel I have little choice but to delve into if I want anything like a thorough understanding of the issues. It seems to me like Karl Popper is probably the first guy to start with.

[Good Intentions]

In general this makes me uneasy because it seems like for any position one wishes to hold, some legitimate objection can undermine it, forcing one into making ever more weak claims, which themselves can be undermined if you choose to be sufficiently rigorous.

Welcome to philosophy.

Foucault was a historian first and foremost. The type of history he was doing fits very well into the post-war French philosophic project, though.

[elpollodiablo]

I like philosophy in the vein of historical analysis and political science best, I just wasn't much taken with this book.

[alex]

Foucault was a historian first and foremost. The type of history he was doing fits very well into the post-war French philosophic project, though.

And sociology, too.

Anyways, I've got the book until July 7th, and I think I'm going to read it again before then. I may also decide to buy a copy, if only for the suggestions for further reading, which I feel I have little choice but to delve into if I want anything like a thorough understanding of the issues. It seems to me like Karl Popper is probably the first guy to start with.

There are more exciting philosophers of science than Popper. But most of 20th century of philosophy of science has been a reaction to Popper one way or another, plus most people's ideas of what science should work like are pretty much directly gleaned from him, so he certainly would be an obvious starting point. (Popper's theories themselves were very much in response to the Vienna Circle, so you'd do well to understand those before you dive in - but the Chalmers book has probably got you covered there.)

If you can track down a copy (it was long out of print last time I checked), you might do worse check out Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Lakatos and Musgrave - an edited volume containing a pretty large essay by Kuhn in which he juxtaposes his own ideas with those of Popper, and a whole bunch of responses and responses to responses, most notably by Popper, Lakatos and Feyerabend. It requires some background understanding of Popper's and Kuhn's ideas in particular for sure, but was quite an eye-opener for me in revealing the way that various positions relate to each other. Plus I have a bit of a crush on Lakatos and Feyerabend.

(Disclaimer: I read this about 8 years ago, so I don't really remember it in all that much detail. All I can really say is that I thought it was great back then.)

[RavingLunatic]

There are more exciting philosophers of science than Popper. But most of 20th century of philosophy of science has been a reaction to Popper one way or another, plus most people's ideas of what science should work like are pretty much directly gleaned from him, so he certainly would be an obvious starting point.

That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Sort of like how there are WAY more interesting history books than textbooks, but I've tried to go ahead and read textbooks just because I feel like a general survey of the scene is necessary before advancing to the higher levels of analysis that I'm really interested in.

(Popper's theories themselves were very much in response to the Vienna Circle, so you'd do well to understand those before you dive in - but the Chalmers book has probably got you covered there.)

Well, actually he only makes passing reference to the Vienna Circle. It could be that some of the philosophies of science he covered in the first four chapters are representative of the Vienna Circle (inductivism, logical positivism, etc), but I'm not sure about that.

If you can track down a copy (it was long out of print last time I checked), you might do worse check out Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Lakatos and Musgrave - an edited volume containing a pretty large essay by Kuhn in which he juxtaposes his own ideas with those of Popper, and a whole bunch of responses and responses to responses, most notably by Popper, Lakatos and Feyerabend. It requires some background understanding of Popper's and Kuhn's ideas in particular for sure, but was quite an eye-opener for me in revealing the way that various positions relate to each other. Plus I have a bit of a crush on Lakatos and Feyerabend.

Like you said, I probably don't have the background knowledge required to meaningfully read that book yet, but I'm definitely writing that title down and will read it when I feel like i'm prepared to. Thanks for the recommendation. I don't really have any access or contact with any kind of academic community, so you guys are definitely a big help to me.

[alex]

Yeah, 'Vienna Circle' was really a short-hand there. If you understand what inductivism and logical positivism are, you're good to go!

Like you said, I probably don't have the background knowledge required to meaningfully read that book yet, but I'm definitely writing that title down and will read it when I feel like i'm prepared to. Thanks for the recommendation. I don't really have any access or contact with any kind of academic community, so you guys are definitely a big help to me.

I don't know if you'd really need that much more background knowledge. Does Chalmers cover Kuhn? Can't remember. If he doesn't, you'd certainly want to pick up a copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions first.

[RavingLunatic]

Yeah, he covers him pretty well, though I still plan on reading Structure of Scientific Revolutions at some point.

[Good Intentions]

Chalmers covers Kuhn in a great deal of detail. The only big name you might think he short-shrifts is Feyerabend, who he covers but not very favourably.

The rise and fall of logical positivism is, without a doubt, the defining feature of 20th century Western philosophy, and a deeply interesting subject in its own right. It threw down a gauntlet, and who took up that challenge and who didn't is probably the most significant split in the field. I wish I knew of a good history book that covered it in detail. Instead, I've had to piece it together for myself through the various primary texts and the responses to them.

[auto-da-fey]

Foucault was a historian first and foremost. The type of history he was doing fits very well into the post-war French philosophic project, though.

I don't disagree with this, but it's a weird thing, situating Foucault--historians don't really cite him as an historian, they cite him as a theorist. I don't at all have my finger to the pulse of European historiography, but my sense is that the people who work on the periods he covers are fairly dismissive of his actual empirical/archival work at the micro level but nonetheless indebted to his macro observations about epistemic shifts and whatnot.

Probably the only area where he's taken as authoritative as an historian is the history of sexuality, which makes sense, because he basically invented the field. I remember reading Edmund Morgan's 1975 book American Slavery, American Freedom, which briefly cites him as an historian without any particular hullabaloo, and being surprised--only then, in grad school, did I realize "Foucault" as we've inherited him (in the states--this almost certainly happened earlier in Europe) was very much a creation of the 1980s (I think it was the 1978 translation of History of Sexuality that spawned the Foucault industry here).