I was reading this book and felt so happy about the object I had to post here out of excitement.
I’m mildly drunk and starting an aesthetics thread on the looks of my favorite-looking books. I’ve not read all I’m going to post, as I’m as much a collector as reader, but please post the books you own that give you immense pleasure to look at or hold. I’ll discuss whatever books I can, though I’m bedding soon and will not return ‘til tomorrow.
First off, this simple paperback is what started the whole thing. A great little collection of musings masquerading as essays.
This one is next on my fiction docket, though I’ve borrowed a beautiful copy of House of Leaves that I’m trepidatious about touching (cuz it’s thicc). I read 10 Philip K. Dick novels last two years, and I assumed the title “through a scanner darkly” was a direct reference to this. A little local bookstore I love dearly is going out of business so I picked this up relatively cheaply after being attracted by the title and finding the prose clear and politely beautiful.
Final post ‘til someone responds. Love these older mass market paperbacks. Girlfriend picked this one up from a bookstore in the middle of nowhere, WV, in a “bookstore” amounting to little more than a disintegrating hoarder’s (Ed-small town lawyer and divorcee) life-collection stacked haphazard into a commercial space. Fucker slept in the store because his own pose had been turned off. Didn’t know how to haggle either, so we got this, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in a similar classic mass market and a Dostoevsky hardback for like $10. Funny, cuz he had no prices on anything and made them up on the god damn spot. Strange little place in memory.
I don't own any pretty books, I just wanted to say I appreciate your enthusiasm user. I read a shitton of PKD for my undergrad dissertation lol, good times - what's your favourite?
Aiden Jenkins
VALIS or Flow My Tears. Or Androids. I only have most of my PKD with me in this state, not all. I’ve literally thought to myself that I should write a dissertation-style essay on PKD to make use of all the reading I’ve done on the fucker. Love him so much.
I’ve read every one of the novels and only a few of the short stories. Prolific bastard.
This is a limited first edition I bought and read because Vonnegut to me is like chips and salsa. It hurts but I can’t get enough. Beautiful copy I picked up in a local store. There’s a first edition of Galapagos in the store that’s about to close that I’ve not yet picked up because I’ve already read it and it costs $20 ($14 on sale) but I’m still considering it.
God, I agree. I’d love to have a complete Berserk collection.
Lucas Martin
Ubik and VALIS are amazing. Even read a bit of his Exegesis for my diss lol, insane stuff. His work is/was immensely fun to write about. Palmer Eldritch was the biggest mindfuck ever when I first read it haha, I cherish my first reading of that book. If you're anything like me you'll love Camus' The Plague as well. I notice I have that same copy of 'It Can't h=Happen Here' lmao, still haven't read it after all these years though, always did wonder if it was good.
Dylan Foster
I always had a fondness for this edition's cover art. Fits quite nicely.
I have so many books I’ve not read yet, and many I’ve only read a portion of, and I love it. What was the theme of your dissertation? I’m ramping up to enter school again for an MA or MFA, can’t decide which, yet.
Now I know the reputation the bastard has on this board, and it’s partially deserved. He falls into that depressive, mopey nonsense I can’t stand sometimes. I stopped reading him when I stopped reading Hemingway and HST because I quit glorifying the type of lifestyle that lead to alcoholic self destruction though I’ve Collins of ironically fallen into greater comfort with it at this point. But I love Buk. He preserves a very specific aesthetic state, and I fall into a simple rapture whenever I read the dumb old bastard.
His Black Sparrow Press prints are beautiful. I love these paperbacks code the texture and the simple design and coloration. I’ve another I might just attach in a second...
I’m drunk and on a phone, so no. I could take the pics horizontally and itd post correctly, but it just seems retarded even though it’d work. Maybe I’ll do that moving forward. I’m an inveterate imbecile
The second Buk book. Found this one at an antiques store. Bukowski is a space in my soul. I read him when I was just blowing my brains out of my head on amphetamine and caffeine and pit and booze and nicotine and everything, and abandoned the glorification and the authors long before the habits. But the old bastard persisted and the verve remained. His incessance about some inglorious bumishness and the music he could play through such an archetype made him like a lobotomized Diogenes who never found enlightenment. I still read him at least twice a year.
Basically a cultural materialist analysis anchored around Braver's characterisation of PKD's work as 'postmodern gnostic' - wanted to try and shift the discourse from authorial/biographical stuff to a more historical, contextual style of reading - least, those were my high-minded intentions when I started it lol. Bukowski I've only read Factotum, my impression was that his style was extremely cool but extremely limited - perhaps that's just a more negative version of your 'specific aesthetic state' though, makes me want to try more as I appreciate stylistic coherence generally speaking.
Hunter Cox
It’s funny, that kind of postmodern Gnosticism is an interesting thought. I’ve been reading Baudrillard, made it to a book called Passwords, and I’ve found a kind of postmodern mysticism that I’m trying, in my limited way, to reconcile with reality and the Kabbalah shit I read as a child. I feel I’ve need of more semiotic study and linguistics. Bah.
Buk is fine but he’s like comfort food to me.
This is a first edition Burroughs which’ll be worth something some day but I don’t like Burroughs and I thought this book was a complete mediocrity. Liked the look, though. That’s actually why I bought it. I should do a converse thread of my favorite ugly books.
Yeah the pomo-gnostic/esoteric/mystic axis is a very fruitful framework for discussion in my experience, though obviously Dick is like that on steroids haha. I'm going to bed though, take care user, good speaking to you.
Daniel Taylor
Likewise. If this is still up tomorrow, I’ll post more tomorrow. I think the draw of mysticism is how amorphous and infinitely creative that cloud of energy is. However we try reality is still ill-defined, and always needs reframing in the present vernacular. That’s the beauty of the pomo, that attempt to reinterpret reality as it constantly shifts around one in terms of a linguistic frame. Mmmmh. That’s why I’ve fallen in lust with Baudrillard lately.
Keep it up. I’m no academic yet, but it’s my aim. I can’t decide between a postmodern theorist (as I write essays akin to Barthes’s, as I’ve just learned by reading Barthes) or a fiction writer (which is more a tangential discipline that serves to explain thoughts and philosophy in a more-visceral way). WE’LL FUCKING SEE.
This book I literally bought because it was beautiful, a gigantic hardback about a Phil-manufactured cult by a Frenchfag that’s on my list. The cover is beautiful, but so is the spine. The combo plus the blurb (of course! I’m no Cretan) convinced me of a purchase, and this beaut has full image prints and essays and letters and criticism and I just want to fuck it. Unnnngh.
This is that stack of books in the back. I’ve only read the Baudrillard book complety, but found the small portins I’ve read of the others interesting. Here’s the thing about Marxism: super interesting in itself and it’s growth, but much modern critiques based on it in-orthodoxy seem departed from reality, atavistic. Great little reads though! No need to read all of them, just enough to get a gist. Also, Semiotexte has a beautiful print style and wuality. I pick them up whenever I find them in a used book shop.
I'm interested in your critique of modern Marxism, could you expand a little? Not to derail the thread or anything
Thomas Hughes
Sure. I don't have a tremendous amount of new to share, and I'm still mildly intoxicated and at work now at 7am so consider this more a bump than a genuine reflection full of thoughtful care. Forgive any inconsistencies, as I'm forced to stand at my job and endure constant interruptions. However...
My critiques are often standard, similar to Baudrillard's, who drew much of his initial inspirations from the marxists but ended up anti-ideological and almost studying change rather than society-itself. He's rooted in a near-mystical postmodernism that should destroy any attempt at settling into a comfortable understanding of reality.
I don't like the insistence on the import of use-value over symbolic value, especially in a world where perception is vastly more important than use in determining market value and in many ways social value.
I feel that the reduction of most things into class conflict and ownership issues is reductive of the human psyche and of civilization in general, though many of the marxists I'm tangentially familiar with take a fairly narrow frame in their analyses. I appreciate immensely the study of the character of capital, something I need to read much more on, and the study of this almost noumenal force is one of the strengths.
This has turned more into musing than critique as I've a hard time thinking critically when I'm unable to sit and constantly interrupted, but I've just had an interesting little thought. The irresolution and constant struggle one finds in marxist theory, that push toward a utopic liberation in an anarcho-communist society is both what turns me off about marxist thought (I term this type of thought as eschatological) and what fascinates me about it and makes it practical as a form of destabilization and reformation. In many ways, socialism is necessary for any coherent group, but the marxist theory of struggle is practical as a liquidating force: the constant critiquing isn’t useful for cohering a strong culture so much as it is valuable for melting things and pushing them in a new direction.
Consider this a fat-ass bump for my eventual return to my bookcases and tequila.
