Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920 by Antonio Gramsci My rating: 4 of 5 stars Gramsci has been going through something of a renaissance recently, especially in the Anglophone world, due to a combination of factors. First, there’s the fact that he’s been wildly influential on the Greek left and the Spanish left. The version of […]
Read more +As I recently finished a novel set in 1890s Australia – called The Rusted Earth – with surviving megafauna, I became obsessed with the thunder birds, or Dromornithae. In particular, I very much love the Dromornis Stirtoni, one of the oldest, and the largest of the thunder birds, measuring at 3 metres tall. Why am […]
Read more +The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not one of Dick’s better books. There are simply too many balls in the air for him to keep control. Some lovely passages and ideas: the return of the neanderthals after nuclear devastation, Loony Luke and his jalopies which will take you on […]
Read more +No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur […]
Read more +Over at The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermett and Ian Mond discuss to ongoing issue of women’s representation in fiction. The discussion related to a number of things, including this piece on Jezebel, where Catherine Nicholls describes sending her novel out under a male name, and the way the responses immediately became more positive. […]
Read more +Marxism and Philosophy by Alex Callinicos My rating: 4 of 5 stars Something more than an introduction, this little book gives a cursory summary of the field at the time it was written – the 1980s. Still, it’s a pretty good little text, starting with modern philosophy before Marx — Kant, Descartes, Hegel, etc — […]
Read more +No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur […]
Read more +A couple of days ago, I came across a piece in the Portland Monthly on one of my literary heroes, Ursula K. Le Guin. It was a fine piece, and it quoted Le Guin’s National Book Awards speech, in which she said: We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity […]
Read more +Blowzy red vixens fight for a quick jump. Joaquin Phoenix was gazed by MTV for luck. A wizard’s job is to vex chumps quickly in fog. In the cable TV quiz show. Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes. Alex Trebek’s fun TV quiz game. Woven silk pyjamas exchanged for blue quartz. Brawny gods just flocked up […]
Read more +Were the radical Left wrong to participate in Syriza? I’m obviously aware that from afar, many things are difficult to tell. Still, we need to make some kind of assessment, just as we might make an assessment of history – for ourselves as much as anyone – and so below are some preliminary thoughts after […]
Read more +
