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Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle, #3)

August 13, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle, #3)Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was wondering what a four part story would look like. In a sense, this book is about the completing of Eragon and Saphira as rider and dragon. Before the last book, which must be climactic, the hero needs to find himself, find a ray of light and come to be on his own as a champion. His discovering his own weapon, his heritage and the weakness of his enemy all transpire in this book, which leads us to understand that books 2 and 3 in this series actually form the traditional middle piece.

Perhaps why he split the middle section into two books is that Paolini has created a very rich world as his setting. In fantasy books, most often is the setting (context) itself part of the interest, a kind of characterization itself of the world, which passively takes place in the adventure.

The dialogue is still direct. There is little character interaction to signify personality. The characters speak very rationally to one another, to further along the plot and the various relationships between one another. A very well written book, with very little roughness to interfere with our enjoyment of the story. I wonder that I like this series so much. I suppose the principles behind it in their pure relations of fantasy allow the fantasy to “come alive” by directly expressing what is of interest. Heroics, good against evil, status, and personal virtue in the form of great will power. I wonder how the last book will play itself out, if the characters are to show any increase in complexity, or if they are still to be vessels of the plot and the fact that they are all good guys and therefore must come to identify with one another in their goodness.

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Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

August 13, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, love, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and GainUnbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very engrossing book. Portia De Rossi reveals much about herself in the process. While its obvious from the beginning that she needed to be in a different place than where most of the story takes place for herself to be even considering writing such a book, she does take us to the mindset where she was originally for her own struggle to be possible.

This is a particularly cogent tale, one that reminds us that self acceptance is perhaps the most important aspect to being well, who we are. And that taking care of ourself (or caring) is, as early Heidigger stated over and over, the very nature of being and existing.

While I appreciate the clarity with which her writing presents itself, some of her struggle and transformation do seem to be clipped. I suppose one can’t really write about it except factually, to a degree, which exemplifies the narrator’s very rational and direct mind. This is a frightening story about how the contextual baggage of seeing ones self is often all we have. This story does have a happy ending. I am glad to have read it.

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The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible

August 13, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible VisibleThe Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible by Keith J. Devlin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fairly concise book. Devlin attempts to show us the construction of mathematics by its application and by demonstrating its conceptual genealogy. Of course, history of how a field grows is going to reveal its construction to us, although the language itself is at the highest level, hopelessly erudite.

Devlin’s prose is concise, easy to read and yet sacrifices very little complexity for its clarity. The task he has undertaken however is a difficult one. In striving to show us applicability, Delvin allows us glimpses of what math can do for us in the daily routines of the world in which we live. Delvin doesn’t strive to make a philosophical statement about math, yet it seems that he wants to posit mathematic’s reality as being on par with the one in which we live. To do this would require a more concise approach, directed by principles. The chapters in this book suggest that Devlin wishes to pursue such an endeavor and yet at times, he seems unable to present us little more than examples and applications. In fact, his last chapter, about the ‘Hidden Patterns of the Universe’ seems to attempt to encapsulate an argument that Mathematics is as real as the universe is; although Delvin never makes this remark.

I don’t have a problem with his content, or how he talks about it. I do have an issue with his organization. If anything, he seems to want to make his argument without making it; to throw at us a barrage of ideas so that we submit. Unfortunately, in his presentation of this massive amount of data, he lacks any kind of metaphysical or over arching ideal by which we can grasp that mathematics is real. Isn’t it his point that inductive examples, examples by experience there may be plenty of, but a real proof is one that rationally equates two values so that their identity of relation is assured?

If we were to take mathematics as being as real as the universe, we would have to see a mathematical proof of it somehow. And so to that end, Devlin does not make this statement, although he seems to suggest it with many vague chapter titles and ruminations on how various patterns in the universe are at least explainable in mathematics. Devlin does not, however, explore that all patterns are explainable in mathematics, just that math is so applicable. Such an undertaking would be, in a sense, near impossible without a cogent understanding of exactly what a pattern is in the first place.

Still, I did enjoy reading this book, and learned a few things in the process. If you think this is an interesting topic, you may also enjoy reading this book.

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American Psycho

August 7, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, reviews / No Comments

American PsychoAmerican Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Too many reviews seem to judge a work based on whether it is true or not. Taken literally, this story is ridiculous. Taken metaphorically, it may be truer. But truth is pretty irrelevant. What matters more to a story is how it allows to navigate a new world… and from that new world understand our current one.

This book is disturbing. Horrific. In a way, it’s meant to shock, disgust, titillate. So in that sense it is a shallow story. What makes the story unshallow is that you realize in the end that all the characters, even the women, are predators. They may not kill, but the dismantling of women into sex objects where the narrator uses the bodies of women for his own designs (against their will) and then takes from them everything (he debases them, to put it lightly) is a major part of the critique. In fact it seems to be the most outlandish direction of the novel. But it’s not. What is most disturbing is the overdetermined emphasis on superficiality. Name brands, images, looks, having a good time. Women are part of the furniture, part of decorum. Everything in this world is simply going out to eat, seeing and being seen. There is no future here, there is only the repetitious, nausea of endless drive to consume (murder, rape, debase) and then do it over and over again. Everything becomes a simulation, a dream, to follow the violence of capitalist consumption so does Bateman carry on violent consumption.

In a very strange way though, Ellis takes some of the easy way out. He shows women as sex objects by presenting them as sex objects. He shows us the horror of rape by presenting rape. He shows us superficiality by pushing on us the superficiality of the worlds we navigate. The disjointed dialogue, the inability of the characters to feel or understand one another. Ellis could have shown this to us in a variety of ways but instead chooses to do so with many winks and nudges. Hey, isn’t it horrible that this attractive woman is being mistreated? Lets mistreat her in the text by describing her untimely demise. The debasement of women though, is okay, because it’s not anyones fault but this despicable Bateman fellow.

Additionally, the inability to maintain coherent subjectivity, arguably the most interesting parts of the story seem only to be best played at the end, when Ellis ends the story just when the language and narrative break up seem to be getting the most interesting.

I admit. I was colored by the movie. I expected an ambiguous ending, one where it didn’t happen and it did happen. There is none of that. There is only the beginning of an interesting disarray and then the story ends, as if it can’t get any worse. Ellis took the entire 400 pages to get us to the font of what this is and then leaves us there, as if the indictment was enough, he doesn’t want to tell us what any of it means. Perhaps he doesn’t know what it means either. Perhaps he has no idea what to make of this, he’s just trying to entertain us.

I don’t think he only wants to entertain. I think he wants to illuminate us. If that’s so, he did a nasty job of it. He took way too long to get to this point, as if he blew his load way too soon and decided to cover it up by ending on a few statements from the narrator. The narrator’s decay at the end is never brought to full bloom, he is never allowed to completely fall apart.

That is a weakness. It’s a powerful tale (now that you’ve gotten us with the debasement of beautiful women, of yuppie self indulgence and confusing narrative) but so what? Are we to expect that Bateman is now the new boogey man? That he is going to continue on and on forever? Bateman is an unreliable narrator. I can’t help but think that Ellis did a poor job framing the entire story; that even with an unreliable narrator, Ellis could have found a truer beginning that is an opening and thus a greater finish one that closes off the opening. Instead we have a dinner party that goes nowhere but annoy and a lunch whose conversation is completely vacuous.

Sure feels like a cheap shot at yuppies (no doubt a story about even vacuous people shouldn’t be vacuous) with a lot of empty entertainment (as rape and snuff fantasies). Lord knows yuppies can take a cheap shot, but only if you don’t already think they are capable of being much more.

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Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995

August 7, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995 by Gilles Deleuze
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Since this was published after his death, one mustn’t be too harsh. There is obviously very little coherency here. We get glimpses at some of Deleuze’s brilliance, shown unevenly because he didn’t refine much of this for publication. If you are starving for Deleuze, you should reach this book. You’ll grasp that he is a much more disciplined writer than Guattari. His clarity is of course, delightful, as always. There are gems here, such as Deleuze’s conflation of thought and life, transcendence and immanence. The title is compelling, but of this collection of works, there is little to show us of Deleuze himself — beyond what he has already given us in his refined publications.

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Kirkland Revels

August 7, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

Kirkland RevelsKirkland Revels by Victoria Holt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An entertaining story. In a way sad. Like romances, it has the familiar patterns. A young woman who in some way, must prove herself. A man who is reviled at first, comes to become attractive. Status, wealth and family in the end. I don’t think the “Alfred Hitchcock” statement on the cover is to be taken too seriously. What sad about it is that death and murder are all too horrid but all too easy going. Happy endings eliminate all. The characters are, of course, flat, and the main motive of the story is to change how the reader feels about them all. In that sense, it is successful.

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The Archaeology of Knowledge

August 7, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, manifesto, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Archaeology of KnowledgeThe Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In many ways, this book serves as a pause for Foucault. It’s a mostly incomplete work in the sense that he describes what he has done and what he is going to do. And that’s all. So I guess I am saying this is very much a kind of aesthetics manifesto, or a discipline manifesto.

This book is also extremely influential for cultural criticism, as it highlights an approach to discourse, citing what discourse is and how discourse is to be understood as its own field.

What makes this book annoying, and in my opinion incomplete, is that while Foucault is able to say what he is intending to do and what level of “cut” Foucault is taking to be the object of study, Foucault is still unable to unexplain how or why this occurs or of what benefit it will be. In a real way works like Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things allows Foucault to see a connection of language that is a consistency in its own right, but he is unable to account for how to really understand what this level of slice means or how it fits in.

All he is able to say at this point is, look what this new and strange view of things is. Now that I see it, watch me go forth.

In a way, Foucault studies where he knows best. Discourse. Language. Knowledge that formulates itself and in that formulation shapes itself and its object of study. Where or how or why this happens is beyond Foucault. And that is kind of annoying. This discursive approach is a calibration to its own (in)consistencies, seemingly for its own sake. The Order of Things while more mysterious is far more ambitious that this work, which in a way, is a backwards step for Foucault to re-orient his approaches.

I suppose that in its time, this was cutting edge. This book was a major influence. Now it feels like staring at shadows.

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Being and Time

August 7, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

Being and Time (Contemporary Continental Philosophy)Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Society in general demands that the truth of our being come from others. Our cessation given our individuality demands the truth of our being come from our self. It is these two tensions that inform the work of early Heidigger which presents an impasse for Heidigger. he is unable to resolve these two tensions.

Middle period Heidigger returns to Kant’s critique of practical reason in an attempt to find the root of freedom in our will. That given pure practical reason — the law of our being proceeds from a rational moral core, from which our freedom can be recognized as a real. If we had no rational moral center, our actions would forever be characterized by environmental contingencies and we would have no way to recognize our free will.

It is then Heidigger’s mistake to assume that our rational moral core, the truth of our being, our authenticity, be determined as a conflation of statehood and individuality. That the alignment of both is the ideal state of authenticity. This difficulty comes back to being and time when Heidigger mistakes the temporality of being with historicity. This is why Kant avoided empirical answers; that environmental contingency will always color the takeaway of rationality; that empirical reason will distort pure reason in as much as pragmatic reason (induction) can never be proved given that the future is always presented as a foreclosure of possibility; ie, out of a bag of unknown colored marbles, my taking 5 black marbles may just be a fluke. With empirical reasoning I can always be fooled by randomness.

We shouldn’t necessarily spend too much time critiquing Heidigger’s mistake of picking Hitlerian Nazism as authenticity. Standard critiques aside, as Zizek points out, despite the obscenity of the statement, Hitler’s actions do not go far enough. Hitler’s actions are reactionary. Despite attempt at genocide and his deploring bourgeois German complacency history has shown us that Hitler’s role in power was to keep as much of this bourgeois complacency the same; that the mechanizations of socialism under Hitler changed as little as possible, proving that Hitlers ideas could never have moved the German people to realize any other logic, other than that which he preached against.

The main flaw with Heidigger’s procedure is simply that Heidigger does not understand that the determination of ones resolution of being isn’t only found with the threat of death. but that a resolution of being to determine who and what we are is always a struggle given the instability of language. Heiddiger’s assumption that language is stable presents, in the Lacanian sense, a psychotic world where being is left trapped as a foreclosed possibility. Heidigger’s assumption of the stability of language leads to his annoying twists of worlds to be as literal as possible, beating on language’s door as if words have any hidden truth that can be eeked out through literalness alone. Like Heidigger’s assumption that history is a rational trace of being, something that can be mined for the truth of one’s self, his mistake of temporality for history reduces the temporal process of self realization into an impossible stance.

Thus on the one hand, we have veiling, and on the other hand unveiling. This (un)veiling is a reflection of his own ideological assumption that there being comes and goes, that the metaphysics of presence only attains its fullness when language and dasein coincide (authenticity). It would have been better perhaps, if Heidigger was able to understand the fullness of dasien in daily life as a localized distortion in history rather than the fulfillment of history. His quasi-dialectical assumption of (un)veiling is proof that this distortion lies within the presence of being itself, something that struggles within the confines of itself rather than within the confines of they-self. in terms of Lacan, Zizek is correct to say that the gap isn’t as Heidigger assumed, between mitdasein and dasein but within dasein itself. This also carries forth that there is also a constituent gap in mitdasein itself, that language is not complete, that the demands of the other (statehood, and so on) are never authentic (consistent or complete).

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On the Shortness of Life

August 5, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, manifesto, reviews, Theory / No Comments

On the Shortness of LifeOn the Shortness of Life by Seneca
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seneca was a very influential thinker. One of the early romans he was also the teacher of Nero. As a stoic, one sees that they approached life reasonably, taking the aesthetic of rationality derived from their Greek heritage seriously. They made that mode their way of being.

There are no lofty concepts here. Only an attempt to exercise being without ego, life without excess, keeping ones feet on the ground at all times. Through examples from history and some personal history, (even on writing to his mother about his own state ordered suicide) Seneca orients us to live not out of fear, want self satisfaction but out of being what we are; a spot on change to go forth and be the best person we can, no more no less.

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James Madison

August 5, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

James Madison (American Presidents, #4)James Madison by Garry Wills
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here we get a tale of a bookish man driven by ideas. He learned through books, he legislated through principles — but as a leader he proved to be mostly inept, unable to deal with a reality that didn’t match his preconceived notions.

I do admire Madison for being the “father of the constitution”. He saw much foresight in writing the constitution and helping with the bill of rights when he did. The United States wouldn’t be as it is without him. Unfortunately though, that vision he had only worked on paper. Willis doesn’t concentrate too much on his character. Much of the book is about the war of 1812, the failed annexation of Canada. Willis is down on that war because it was hobbled together ineptly by the administration but he praises it for its contribution in unifying the country when it needed to get over its provincialism. In a way, Madison, as a product of that provincialism (he never went to Europe) was the right kind of man to be elected President. Strange that this war would help the United States gain a sense of nationalism, even though it only happened that way. That war also set the stage as to who would become the next leaders up towards the Civil War, as well as giving the United States some more badly needed diplomatic experience.

It’s only natural though that the military and diplomatic positions would become handouts to loyal followers. That is the tie that bound the country together when its new population lacked experience to fill those positions. Nonetheless, while we owe him for the Constitution, as President he was merely a man for those times.

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