Posts tagged books
Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis
In this extraordinary book Angela Davis challenges us to confront the human rights catastrophe In our jails and prisons. As she so convincingly argues, the contemporary U.S. practice of super-incarceration is closer to new age slavery than to any recognizable system of ‘criminal justice. Download Link below and available for a minimal time.
http://www.4shared.com/office/uMxqwjNc/file.html?refurl=d1url
Please Re-Blog!
No more prisons. Yes, please. I’ll add this to the progressive wish list I wrote last year.
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, the childlike and excitable protagonist Prince Myshkin is told by his sweetheart that the worst thing he could do at an upcoming party is to break an expensive Chinese vase. Myshkin becomes consumed by the thought that he must not break it, and makes a point of sitting as far away from the vase as possible. But “an ineradicable conviction had taken possession of his mind that, however he might try to avoid this vase, he must certainly break it.” And of course, he does—upsetting the vase near the end of the party with one of his wild gestures.
I can’t wait to have the time to read Dean Baker’s new book. And it’s distributed under a Creative Commons license, so it’s completely free.
Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair.
This is not true. Conservatives rely on the government all the time, most importantly in structuring the market in ways that ensure that income flows upwards. The framing that conservatives like the market while liberals like the government puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers.
This “loser liberalism” is bad policy and horrible politics.
At my gate, and the guy across from me is two hundred pages into ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ while the guy next to him is geeking out about how it’s gonna ‘CHANGE YOUR LIFE, and shit!’
And they’re both in their thirties, so there’s no excuse for that.
It’s like seeing an aging bald guy carrying around ‘Catcher In The Rye,’ you know? I’m all, ‘buddy, go buy some Updike, or something.’
And I don’t even LIKE Updike. I start ‘Rabbit Run’ twice a year like Liz Lemon takes up knitting.
Me, I brought two Vanity Fairs, Men’s Journal (fuck you, Kyle Chandler’s on the cover), the new Matt Scudder, and Mona Simpson’s ‘Anywhere But Here.’
And the Kindle.
Probably something from Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger Than Fiction, which shows just how little creative non-fiction I’ve read. His essay about Ira Levin was memorable. So was the chapter about castle-building.
Or Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park if we can agree it is mostly memoir.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
andrewgraham replied to your post:kayfabe replied to your link:6 Badass Movie Scenes…
I think Fight Club is a romantic novel, with the anti-authoritarianism/anti-consumerism being the subtext to one character involved in a love triangle.I disagree.
I think Marla was used primarily as a plot device through which Brad Pitt Tyler Durden could be exposed. Typically the woman was used as a way for the man to come to terms with himself. I don’t think the ‘relationship’ component with her was strong enough to consitiute a central theme. I certainly don’t see the book being built around it. Though my thesis is that the book isn’t built around anything and that’s why it rapidly falls apart once you begin to really analyze it.
If there was a romantic relationship happening that was strong enough to center the book around, it was the narcissistic relationship of Tyler to himself.
And this is my problem with it, is that there are like, 8 major themes in there that he dips his toe in and then backs out of and moves on. That’s why I think it’s a really really poorly written book. It lacks any thematic cohesion or consistency. It’s amateurish. It’s like he got himself into a position to propose some really interesting questions but then just jerks us out of it because on a fundamental level he doesn’t have the discipline or heart to follow through, and just turns the car and takes us somewhere else again. It’s extremely superficial that way, which is ironic. It is like a product of itself.
Again, I would like to think that was on purpose, because that would be brilliant, but the reality is it’s just a crappy book. In my opinion.
Let’s all stop working and talk about books for the rest of the afternoon.
Awful Things in Bookselling by Conversational Reading
DISCLAIMER: Not my Wisdom. Conversational Reading’s wisdom.
Whether or not you like Borders or view it as some kind of parasite on the back of a beleaguered publishing industry, its slow-motion demise is a horrible thing for books. Here’s why:
1) If Borders goes bankrupt, it can’t pay publishers, which means that lots of publishers are going to have serious liquidity problems. Publishing being a business that even in the best of times tends to hover over the brink of insolvency, suddenly being told by one of your biggest buyers that you’re not going to get paid because they’re going bankrupt is more than bad news–it will be a deathblow to many.
2) As Moby Lives puts it, “676 fewer American bookstores.” Undoubtedly, many of those locations will be resurrected in some new form, but that will take time and publishers will suffer while the transition is underway.
3) Having only one major retail chain bookstore in the country is definitely a bad thing. Though our capitalist system has plenty of flaws, increasing competition between vendors is not one of them. To the extent that a damaged and dying Borders can’t compete with Barnes & Noble, the market suffers.
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A blog by Andrew Graham, a ghostwriter and media adviser in New York City. Don't take it too seriously.
GMail: andrewgraham.nyc
