Library Books @moscapaingo - Tumblr Blog

...................................................................................................................... Riding a high no God could kick, X was on his way to meet M at a...

#baltimore, #kathyacker, #fiction, #experimental, #vinyl, #nattyboh

Touch and Go--Studs Terkel

Touch and Go–Studs Terkel

(2007) I’ve been working a lot, which is why this is my first substantial piece of writing in a long time. By working I mean “for money” working. Divisions are important. I had a temp position at a local corporation for the last three months, doing basic around the office help (i.e. answering phones and nothing at all else) for 9-10 hours a day. It was so goddamn boring. I read a few books and…

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#Chicago #copy #Nelson Algren #office #Steely Dan #Studs Terkel #Tom Brokaw #Touch and Go #work

When promises turn to threats--After the Future

When promises turn to threats–After the Future

(2011). From the most professional scientific theorist to your friends talking about your ex, contemporary people tend to think about the future positively. Or, at least, they tend to believe that believing the future is something to look forward to will help them in the present. Its arrival, surely, will reveal the pains and problems of today as a sad mass of petty waste.

S/he’s not worth your…

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#30 Rock #After the Future #Baudrillard #Bifo #Franco Berardi #intentionality #mission of burma #Progress #The Future #The Wedding Present

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

(2014). Viv Albertine’s recent memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. triggers many memorial exercises in me. I hate nostalgia, so I’ll try to keep it minimal: Cut was a HUGE record for me growing up. FUCKING HUGE MOTHERBROTHER. Not long after discovering Everybody’s Records (a bright stop in the otherwise hellike Cincinnati, OH), I took it home, along with PiL’s

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#cincinnati #essential logic #funny #honest #improperly dressed #jah wobble #negative space #new age steppers #ohio #OKcupid #post-punk #return of the giant slits #the slits #unique #viv albertine

Chicago, imagined: The Man With the Golden Arm

(1949). Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm begins with a dedication to “The Newberry Library of Chicago,” my former place of employ. So I’m going to take some credit for its greatness, of which there is much. So you see where I’m coming from; a Chicagoan in essence (as opposed to in origin or current location), Algren’s regional influence makes his wider reputation inaccessible to me.…

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#Adolescents #Bukowski #Chicago #Frankie Machine #Lou Reed #Martin Amis #Nelson Algren #relatable #Talk Talk #The Man With The Golden Arm #The War Against Cliche #Theodore Dreiser

Giving Up the Gass--Omensetter's Luck

Giving Up the Gass–Omensetter’s Luck

(1966). In my personal life, I talk more about William H. Gass than any other writer. With undeniable sentence-making expertise and an intellect equal parts rigor and passion, his opinion on anything interests me endlessly (to a paraphrase from a book jacket). Every time I see a book of his I don’t have, I buy it on the dot. Even if someone else is holding it and I’m in his/her house. Yea, I go…

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#anecdote #Baltimore #EVOL #failure #foreigner #Heidegger #hot blooded #Judith Butler #membrana #nipple #oliver #Omensetter&039;s Luck #polar bear #The Tunnel #William H. Gass

Poetry Language Thought--Heidegger--Part 1

Poetry Language Thought–Heidegger–Part 1

(1971). The first section reminds me of a Catholic mass. As poems the passages are bad, but they work if thought of as a chant or exercise. A ritual stretching before one gets into the rigorous exertion coming in the next pages.

Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken.

Such inability would bring thinking face to face with its…

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#continental philosophy #Emma Woodhouse #enoch pratt #George Mackay Brown #Heidegger #heteronormativity #Jane Austen #literary criticism #maschine #philosophy #Poetry Language Thought #protagonist #sex #Susan Howe #tattoo #tofunky

A Scanner Darkly or; changing my opinions

(1977). This is not going to be a properly scholarly review. I did not take notes as I was reading, so there will be no quotes, no passages mentioned en specific, and, indeed, no merit whatsoever. I’ve been suspicious of Philip K. Dick. He’s very hip. Namechecked, by lanky, waifish indie rock oafs (because when I namecheck of Jane Austen and the Damned it is soooooo much cooler. Everyone, by…

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#A Scanner Darkly #crucifucks #J Walter Weatherman #Keanu Reeves #Kid A #Lisa Simpson #literature #Philip K. Dick #postmodern #Sarah Palin #The Damned #wives

Frames of War _--_--_ Judith Butler

Frames of War _–_–_ Judith Butler

(2010) Two degrees-worth of intense humanities studies can leave one wondering. The standard questions–is this relevant/have I wasted all my parents money/who the hell is going to hire me–start to wrack and muddle in the brain. Even worse, when academic professionals become equals one gets a persistent and stinking impression: none of my effort makes any impact, even in this very small and…

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#ass #Bono #feminism #Foucault #Frames of War #Iraq #Isis #Islam #Israel #Judith Butler #mission accomplished #quadrophenia #the Arab mind #war

Kathy Goes to Haiti. Hell comes to Wednesday.

(1978) An early novel by Kathy “God” Acker, Kathy Goes to Haiti is really good as fuck. It does nothing but not disappoint and exceedingly so much. As Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Acker is very good at making statements about important, complex topics in intimate, revelatory terms. She breaks through the sort of “if I can’t see it, it isn’t happening” indifference encouraged by…

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#gertrude stein #kathy acker #kathy goes to haiti #postmodern #sex #boners #fugazi

The Body Embarrassed

(1993). As the back cover will tell you, The Body Embarrassed is a humorist (i.e.) interpretation of works by distinguished Early Modern Englishmen such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Shakespeare, and whoever wrote “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” I’ve read/heard about most of these plays, so I can’t say it’s the truth, but even the chronically unfamiliar should find more than a few things to enjoy in…

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#Ben Jonson #Fecal Bolus #Gail Kern Paster #Humors #Melancholy #Nietzsche #Shame #The Body Embarrassed #the Faerie Queene #Thomas Dekker #Wilco

theparisreview

Another drawing by Espinouze for William Faulkner’s “These Thirteen.”

Living introduction to the Infinite Conversation...

Living introduction to the Infinite Conversation…

New policy: instead of (1969) reviewing books I’ve finished reading, I’m going to write about them in the midst of the reading of the them. It just makes more sense. Midst-ness provides me with the chronological honesty and honest intensity to write multiple blog entries about one book. One entry’s never enough, anyway, for me to really get into the dreadful and serious issues you’ve come to…

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#Black Monk Time #Blanchot #continental philosophy #Flipper #George Mackay Brown #postmodern #The Infinite Conversation #The Monk #Vonnegut

theparisreview

“I think each time I write that it may be the last time; then I’m charmed by something and seem to have to say something.”

Marianne Moore (via theparisreview)

Empire of the Senseless

(1988) Empire of the Senseless is my first Kathy Acker reading experience (Kath Ackackackack). If this were a two sentence review, I’d say “right now I am ordering 2 of her books.”

For most of my life I’ve possessed and exhibited a bias against art which heavily explores sex, violence, drugs, tattoos, the so-called seedier side of things. /***Why is this side called seedy..because evil grows…

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