Body Language: Another Collection of Poems About Aging by Janet Cameron Hoult
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Fairly traditional collection of poems about aging. There is a subtle tragedy that comes with not recognizing your physical self — when your self image is no longer congruent with who you have become. There is no complex imagery or startlingly difficult lines but there is plenty of humor, irony and many clever rhymes.
Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This volume had a much more cohesive sense as to what this group was about, and what they are doing. Although it left certain ties to be unresolved. As with comic books, this may happen, never to be resolved. Unfortunate because I would have liked the story to be resolved, although we are seeing a point here in which this series has become part of the comic book machine, always to have revelation after revelation with character after character being yanked around, killed or twisted around without any real change. The characters are aware of some of this, and yet still defined by the haunted past of the parents. In this volume, I see how the characters fade into the relief of the normal comic book super hero with shady past, to forever be held in immanence between where they would like to be and where they are running away from.
I think this will be the last I read of this series, as by the end of this volume we see that they have gained a sense of place. The necessity of comic book series is to be lodged in that place, forever unable to move from that point of non-place. It does get tiresome to be stuck in transition, although there have been some long standing series that have comfortably crafted a sense for themselves; such as Spiderman, Batman and Superman. I suppose that kind of placement takes some time though.
Hannibal Lecter, My Father by Kathy Acker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I agree with much of the other commentators. The interview at the beginning was well worth the read. The selection of other works afterwards appear to be padding to exemplify the interview and also by giving us more of Acker’s work, but of works that may be less known.
Still, her methodology and philosophy come together in her interview and presents itself as a force. At first a critique, and then with the yet to be Pussy: King of the Pirates the making of a new mythology. Acker did manage to mature as a writer, not to destroy and create but to end with creating.
In some ways, I wish I read this first, before reading some of her other works, especially when she was churning them out in a way, the same book over and over at some point in the middle there.
It is telling to see how as a mere writer, she was able to provoke so much “bad touch” in the areas of culture, when government and legislation were involved. We cannot hide from that which we do not understand only because there is so much more we do not, cannot understand.
Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Still good. Not as good as the first volume since there’s none of the that focus. But you still see that our heros are settling into the normal comic book routine. Still, the characterization is okay, though I would have liked to see more. The art is also enjoyable. There is a hint at a larger arc developing but much of that is left hanging. Still if you liked the first volume, there is enough here to keep it interesting.
On the Improvement of the Understanding / The Ethics / Correspondence by Baruch Spinoza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Perhaps it is the repeated exposure to Deleuze’s Spinoza and readings of this slender collection that leaves me a little blank on what to say. Spinoza remains the imminent thinker of substance. Pre-Kantian, he shows us a world where relation and thought interact as pure geometry. His aesthetics for human understanding and interaction remain inspiring, even after all these years. While he encapsulates his system through the excessive nominalisation of God, Spinoza is able to return for us not a transcendental limit, of a lesser obscurity, one that reflects our limitation as beings of finiteness. This is different from a transcendental completeness, in which inconsistency is hidden through contingency. For Spinoza, there is only one manifold of infinite variety but of the same substance. Spinoza still preaches a completeness through God’s perfection but he shows us that inconsistency is only given our modality as finite beings.
Still strange and interesting is his conception beyond Good and Evil, in which these are layers of human localisation. This is almost Buddhist in conception. What makes Spinoza a philosopher is His calibration to the “faculty” of rationalism as the modality for emotion, understanding and modal being. His religiousity is instead, an extension of his thought, a characterization of the common mode of relation available for him at the time. If Spinoza were alive today, he might as well extended his geometric volume from pure relation of substance to algorithmic functionality.
His correspondence is interesting though, as it is able to show how he deals with a variety of different people and points of view.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Pretty amazing book. Solnit approaches “lost” as more than an epistemological concept directly outwards. She wraps this conception around itself and demonstrates through as series of vignettes, allegories and musings (personal, historical, sociological, literary) in order exemplify aspects of being lost, which includes losing being, place, direction, knowledge, feeling and familiarity.
I was terribly awed by her wide reaching “direction” as she navigates us on how to get lost, or how others did it. What’s interesting is that she doesn’t seem to lose direction either.
Rhetorically and philosophically, Solnit is able to utilize environmental decoherence to defamiliarize the centerpiece subject. The original mark in a story, which is often a person, or a direction, is waxed in different territorial contexts until you literally lose place. At that point your sense of center is gone with it. I guess what keeps you from getting lost is that Solnit is always able to keep your attention focused on what was, and what will be. Those fixed points of reference allow her to transition smoothly forward and backwards, highlighting in the process what getting lost does to a subject. Her strength of direction afforded me, the reader, to let her guide me along. Very well done.
There is a mystic sounding voice to her writing, as if a love letter (another commentator said) and if you trust that intimate tone she sets for us, the pages will swallow you whole. You’ll find time slowly disappearing in this book as you start to get lost.
Admittedly, some of the tid-bits she brings up seem strained but some of the other ones, which are well researched and well put more than make up for their weaker transitional ligamentation.
If you want to get lost in a book, ironically, this is one to do it!
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher W. Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In this thoughtful book, Chris Alexander takes an approach to architecture that understands it through the filter of human (and non-human) agency. He understands that the most useful buildings are ones that are created by the maximization of agency of the people involved, with the utilization of language based patterns that we inhabit to organize our behavior. He writes this book almost as if talking in a dream. Reading this book is a visceral experience of stepping into the a shower.
It’s quite a masterful work, one that deals with the aesthetics of embodiedness rather than the more mundane (but necessary) considerations of budgeting, and so on. In a way, this a book of one who is entering a mastery of the craft, where the detailed considerations fall to the wayside as the considerations of that pure level of agency come into full consideration.
Alexander’s method is more meditative and thoughtful, one that seems geared towards his process of consideration and his familiarity with the “pattern languages” that he utilizes more than anything else. What I find most interesting in this book is that he utilizes spaces from other cultures all the while remarking that such patterns are built into our native language. Are they then, really more a function of our cultural-mind? He suggests we know this intuitively, and yet most people cannot build accordingly as buildings cannot be formed from a poverty of our languaged patterns. So that seems like a big epistemological-cultural hole. But at the same time, his thoughts are so compelling, you want to believe in them. That there is a potentially rich environment of knowledge and consideration that we can dig from, only if we were in tune with it!
It’s no surprise then, that he originates in the Berkeley area, as San Francisco is the hotbed of such hippy mysticism. Still, there’s something to be said for his approach and his “method” which takes a much less mechanical view of building. We should gear our use appropriately to the individuals for whom a building should embody! Our culture is impoverished due to the fragmentation of disciplines and the jealous guardians who don’t want to share with their economic competitors! In a very real way he is talking about Taoism. I look forward to reading more of his work.
Sula by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Yes, we know that Toni Morrison talks about the deprivations of poverty, racial bigotry and its effects on black communities and especially on women of those communities.
Here in this book however, is an interesting take. The close and endearing friendship of two little girls extend beyond their life choices. One to assimilate into the black community from where she grew. And the other to strike out into the broader world beyond and then return to that community with a broader view. And while Sula returns to become a pariah, acting as scapegoat so as to unify the community that brought her up and hated her, so she also saw beyond it to a code of ethics not born of that community but one that sparked her friendship with her close friend from beyond the grave.
This is a pretty amazing work, as it invites us to get a glimpse of the early to mid 20th century’s economic and social forces in creating this black community as a place, so that the friendship of two little girls in that community could blossom and approach a meaning of its own.
It was confusing at first, to spend so much time with Sula’s maternal lineage. But this allows us to see the vector of her release into the world, and her sublime return as one who understands. In standing apart as an outsider, Sula allows us to nail down the black community in its pain and suffering, to come together in a time of need (dislike of her) and so their reduced vision is unable to withstand the sight of original singularity.
Short book, but well worth the read.
Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted by Joss Whedon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Pretty amazing read. The style is clean and in true x-men form, we have a mix of action with dialogue about the nature of humans and mutants co-living. The pacing for much of this was a bit too much like a movie though. You can tell the influence of old comic costumes with the influx of the recent glut of x-men movies. I did find Emma Frost’s incredibly revealing dress to be pretty stupid. But that’s traditional comic book taste too, although I would have liked something more realistic. In this her role seems more to provoke the others into questioning their unity than to being an effective leader. Which is a waste.
Having read only this volume thus far, it ends on the typical note of how everyone is against the x-men including their mysterious leader. The fight with the danger room seemed pretty pointless though. So all in all, I would have appreciated in a volume 1 a more coherent story with a singular conflict than a smattering of loose ends that were untied to be tied (we didn’t know Colossus was missing, or what brought Frost into the team), leaving us with more loose ends (what was Professor X doing all this time, what is happening with Ord). So in this sense, there is no real sense of beginning or end. Rather we have two story arcs that seem highly unrelated. In a 2 volume set, there should be more cohesion of story.
Additionally, the lack of character development is annoying. Of course, one assumes we know who these characters are, after all this time, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a brief introduction to each character, as is the typical beginning of a comic book (for anyone picking it up half way). Instead, we get the assumption that the characters are stables, that we know who they are, and in that sense, we can predict that they won’t change at all, since if they need no real introduction than they most likely have identities that can deviate. And in that sense, this comic book is more about action as entertainment than it is for drama, tragedy or any deeper human feelings.
Overall, this comic was entertaining for a time, however. I read it in two sittings. The lack of flashbacks for Beast, or anyone else was mostly surprising since it made the drama and self questioning seem pretty irrelevant. In this way, this comic writes itself more like a movie than anything else — all action and expository for plot than for any other purpose. And unlike a movie, as awesome as the images can be, we shouldn’t rely on one medium trying to imitate another since comics can be more in-depth than movies and movies can present us with some glorious shots of sound and sight than comics cannot.
That’s really the only criticisms I have.
Modern Living Accessories: 100 Years of Design by Martin Wellner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This amazing survey walks backwards into the 19th century. Year by year, you see how contemporary design evolved into its basic constituents. Modern works reflect a refinement in the use of materials, such that the deformation of familiar objects at first, geometric and blocky become expressive with a higher resolution in material agency. While many contemporary objects start to break the grey areas of design, where form suggests not only novel movements adhering to a singular force (such as Bauhaus design, where form matches function) but today into postmodern ambivalence where a singular object suggests multiple uses that are sometimes more clever than useful but at other times, far more ingenious as to dissolve the logical categories by which we classify what an object is.
Given in full page color, the short captions, and the short articles give us a brief introductory taste as to the mechanisms of design, the influence of the visions of designers and the continual mastery of material.
With the final works of the industrial revolution having established its conquest of human materialism in production, we have the beginnings of middle class wealth, to support a need for mass export of finished products. Art Deco and Art Nouveau come to the scene with its whimsical forms, to introduce a new level of finish, where product production shares no seams as to its origins. Here we have the advent of a new consumerism, the full split of producer from consumer so that only expert craftsmen and finally engineers and scientists are the gate keepers for designers. For in areas of such refinement, only the knowledge of specialized processes and the abstractness of a designers breaking out of the box lay the condition for the deformation of our modernist categories of contemporary appliances.
One thinks in the near future the inclusion of smart devices will reach a further deterritorialisation of what objects can be, do and coexist with us, further anticipating human need and modifying further the trajectory of how we can be (and have agency) in an environment.
