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Hey GOONS, I'm bored


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Effectively speaking. I thought I had enough play to be honest about my politics, I guess I was mistaken.

 

Still, are you sure you don't want to read The Fountainhead together? Seems it might be fun doing so with GOONS. We'd probably end up consulting secondary sources on the life of Ayn Rand, whose notorious reputation I think we're all aware of, or on the libertarian movement.

 

The alternative for me right now is to go through Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and I'm fishing through feminist Discords to try to develop an alternative feminist reading of the text beyond simply that it's patriarchal trash.

 

I think it's too much to ask for for Chandler to be taken as a feminist, and that the standard misogynistic reading of The Big Sleep should be taken at face value. But there's a second reading there, not as to the who, but as to the why, which may be more fleshed out than simply a rehash of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily".

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”

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  • 2 weeks later...

I already read The Fountainhead, in fact it was my first Ayn Rand book.  It made it all the way through.   Then started with Atlas Shrugged and fricking laughed my way all the way to the goddamn fireplace.  That being said, The Fountainhead wasn't nearly as horrible as Atlas Shrugged.

 

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11 minutes ago, nippythefish said:

I already read The Fountainhead, in fact it was my first Ayn Rand book.  It made it all the way through.   Then started with Atlas Shrugged and fricking laughed my way all the way to the goddamn fireplace.  That being said, The Fountainhead wasn't nearly as horrible as Atlas Shrugged.

 

Reading list:

 

Chandler's The High Window

Oscar Wilde's Intentions (essay collection)

Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain

Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

Fiston Mwanza Mujila Tram 87

Secret Records of the Sino-Vietnamese War

Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

 

Also, FYI, I'm on GOONS' shitlist and it's only for political reasons that your alliance isn't stomping me now.

 

===

 

In other news, Charlie has a phenomenal socialist reading possible. The protagonist is from the poorest segment of the working class, the foils tend to be parodies of rich and middle class children, and Willy Wonka is, besides probably being a pedophile, a mad industrialist working off slave labor imported from overseas.

 

It's incredible how f-ed up the books you read as a kid become when you're an adult.

Edited by Inst
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He thinks his 12th grade babby's first libertarian reading list owned us so hard that he's on some shitlist now.

 

But if we're bragging about books we've totally actually read and def. understand like that's some kind of accomplishment and huge own I recently picked up uhh

  • Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind
  • Charles C. Mann's 1491 and 1493
  • Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (Not that Caro, the other one)
  • Robert O. Paxton's Vichy France
  • Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution
  • Mary Beard's SPQR

 

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On 11/3/2019 at 11:20 PM, Inst said:

Reading list:

 

Chandler's The High Window

Oscar Wilde's Intentions (essay collection)

Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain

Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

Fiston Mwanza Mujila Tram 87

Secret Records of the Sino-Vietnamese War

Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

 

Also, FYI, I'm on GOONS' shitlist and it's only for political reasons that your alliance isn't stomping me now.

 

===

 

In other news, Charlie has a phenomenal socialist reading possible. The protagonist is from the poorest segment of the working class, the foils tend to be parodies of rich and middle class children, and Willy Wonka is, besides probably being a pedophile, a mad industrialist working off slave labor imported from overseas.

 

It's incredible how f-ed up the books you read as a kid become when you're an adult.

I'm probably not going to read any of those because every night is spent playing games and getting drunk, but at least I got Charlie and The Chocolate Factory out of the way early, I guess.

Regardless, I will always love you, Inst.  Remember the good ol' days.

e:

ok this was actually the better game
 

 

Edited by nippythefish
because
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On 11/4/2019 at 1:50 PM, Marxalot said:

He thinks his 12th grade babby's first libertarian reading list owned us so hard that he's on some shitlist now.

 

But if we're bragging about books we've totally actually read and def. understand like that's some kind of accomplishment and huge own I recently picked up uhh

  • Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind
  • Charles C. Mann's 1491 and 1493
  • Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (Not that Caro, the other one)
  • Robert O. Paxton's Vichy France
  • Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution
  • Mary Beard's SPQR

 

Most of these are history books. Corey Robins looks interesting along the lines of Fromm's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom , but I'm a nihilist who tries to avoid rather tinged works.

 

As I've said in your Discord, I'm fond of environmental histories

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Retreat-Elephants-Environmental-History-China/dp/0300119933

https://smile.amazon.com/Japan-Environmental-History-Global-Change/dp/1848851162

 

These are essentially Marxist readings insofar that they view history as driven by the mechanism of production (i.e, the environmental base determines agricultural productivity, living standards, and economic output).

 

This is also a book I'm fond of.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/B005SA64YS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FPK460JALEBA&keywords=the+better+angels+of+our+nature&qid=1573241575&s=books&sprefix=the+better+angle%2Cstripbooks%2C160&sr=1-1

 

And while this is not a major historical work, more a "World According to Clive Pontings", it's interesting as an attempt to de-Eurocentricize World History.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0712665722/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5

 

I'll note this is the guy who tried to leak BS by Thatcher during the Falklands War, was fired for it, and took up an occupation as a historian afterwards.

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“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." --John Rogers

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7 hours ago, DivineCoffeeBinge said:

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." --John Rogers

You realize I posted that exact quote? You were being invited to hate-read Rand, as though there's any other reading possible.

 

Now I'm thinking about doing Genealogy of Morals (again).

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4 hours ago, Inst said:

You realize I posted that exact quote? You were being invited to hate-read Rand, as though there's any other reading possible.

 

Now I'm thinking about doing Genealogy of Morals (again).

honestly I wasn't paying that much attention
look there are times when even someone named DivineCoffeeBinge needs coffee okay

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Also I've been advising Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South.

 

I don't think this is the definitive text on "cultures of honor", but it's a very interesting look at PnW culture via description of something else. However, it's like $41 just for the f-ing Kindle. If you want, I can help you find significantly cheaper copies if you want.

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3 hours ago, RightHonorable said:

How about The End of History and the Last Man, or The Road to Serfdom

I mean I generally reject the liberal consensus because it's pretty paranoid and obsessive about governments. And government isn't the only thing that can make you miserable. Look at Bourdieu's theory of multiple capitals, i.e,  economic means are potential sources of oppression, so are social factors (racism, or the fact that you're not attractive to your desired gender).

 

As for Francis Fukuyama:

 

Quote

‘And why not?’ put in E Hu-Li. ‘If you analyse it properly, the whole of human history for the last ten thousand years is nothing but a constant revision of the results of privatization. History is hardly likely to come to an end because a small number of people have stolen a large amount of money. Not even if the small number of people hire themselves three fukuyamas apiece!’

Pelevin, Victor. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf: A Novel (p. 174). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

Of course I'd criticize Pelevin as viewing things through the disaster of Russia after the Soviet collapse, and while read, I find his perspective as somewhat cliche and middlebrow. Cynicism and naivete are both forms of immaturity, the former expects too little of people, and the latter too much. Maturity lies in between.

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Edited by Inst

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Just finished Chandler's Man in the High Window, but Chandler I think is getting rather droll.

 

I also finished an omnibus of Lafcardio Hearn's Japanese ghost stories; wondering if I should redo Mills' The Power Elite next.

Edited by Inst

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