Planescape Papers: The Abyss at Last / Work in Progress: Chris Bateman's Imaginary Games

To inaugurate my return to regular blogging, I've got this sprawling piece. It's doing double duty as work-in-progress notes on chapter seven of Chris Bateman's Imaginary Games, and the culmination of my Planescape Paper series. For a bit of background, the book is essentially Bateman's explanation of Kendall Walton's make-believe version of mimesis; check out the review I did of Walton here if you want a primer on that subject before you begin. And see if you can spot the moment where this post switched from something I was doing for my own reading only to something for mass consumption. All that, and a strongly worded suggestion to Don't Stop Believin', after the break.

Friday Quotations: And sometimes, you just pick the book closest to you, so you can write it down, and get back to work

"When one wants to study men, one must consider those around one. But to study man, one must extend the range of one's vision. One must first observe the differences in order to discover the properties." --Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Origin of Language.

Later Days.

Book Triad: Vampire Heroes, Speculative Philosophy, and a Literal Stairway to Heaven

It's reading week, which admittedly doesn't mean a lot for a grad student who is doing a research assistanceship for a term. Mostly, I just appreciate having fewer students around campus, as I am essentially an agoraphobic misanthrope.  I'm also between chapters at the moment, so I'm trying to capitalize on the week to capitalize on doing all the research I need to do to focus really hard on the next one. 

But that focus is clearly shot, because here I am doing a blog post book triad.  Reviews of

Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural by Victoria Nelson
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Circus Philosophicus by Graham Harman

after the break.

Bibliophile: Breaking the Code at University of Victoria

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

This is Bibliophile.

After the break, we'll be going to the University of Victoria.  They've got a lovely new titles page, and 488 new books last week.

Friday Random Quotations: Oh That's Right, I Used to Do These

"On this trip two distinct sides of my personality struggled for dominance. In one respect I had never been in a more scientific and skeptical frame of mind. Under the influence of acquaintances, I had become a zealous (though temporary) devotee of the living German thinker Thmas Metzinger, who reduces all problems of philosophy to questions of the brain. His Being No One, that remorseless opus magnum, now emboldened me to scoff at the assorted ghosts, fairies, and unicorns that filled the philosophies of the unlearned, with the their fear of scientific rigor. At times this new standpoint even awoke a spirit of physical assertion: though it was highly out of character, I remember once feeling the wish to shove several priests as they passed by me on a sidewalk in Chennai." --Graham Harman, Circus Philosophicus

I'm reading through this book; there should be a proper review up shortly, as it's a brief read at 80 pages or so.  For now: man, Harman's weird.

Book Triad: Superheroes, Cthulu, and some fiction

Guess what!  We're still doing the Book Triad segment! This time, we'll be looking at

Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy by Graham Harman
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Superheroes!: Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films by Roz Kaveney

Reviews after the break.

Friday Quotations: Object Oriented Ontology in a Nutshell, which is also a type of Object

"We cannot support formalism, which holds that the specific content of any experience is relatively unimportant.  But neither can we support materialism, which grants privilege to the original soil from which anything grows, and thereby denies the autonomy or relative independence of that reality itself.  Instead, we can only support objects.  The reason objects are not formalizable is because they cannot be reduced to their conditions of unknowability, whether mathematical or otherwise.  But objects are also not 'materializable,' because the neighborhood conditions of their genesis are relevant only within strict limits.  Nor are objects a hylemorphic combination of both forma and matter, since objects are precisely what lies between those two extremes, engaging with them only occasionally and indirectly.  Instead, objects are what the classical tradition called substantial forms, inhabiting a mezzanine level of the cosmos, and can be paraphrased neither as a meaning for some observer nor as the dangling product of some genetic-environmental backstory."--Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy.

Book Triad: Kings, Leafs, and Eldritch Horrors + Bonus Film Review

My, these book triad things go a lot faster when you're not reading Cloud Atlas.  Speaking of which, under the book reviews is a review of the film Cloud Atlas!  Timely!
Today's trio of books is:
In the Dust of This Planet: The Horror of Philosophy vol 1 by Eugene Thacker
The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healey
Inside Maple Leaf Gardens: The Rise And Fall Of The Toronto Maple Leafs by William Houston

Reviews after the break.

Videogame Mascots

This is an idle little thing; I'm not really thinking it through totally, so feel free to poke it full of teeny tiny holes in the comments. Videogame Mascots and the totem, after the break.

Friday Quotations: Weapons of Biblical Destruction

"As varied as the Medieval accounts of plague and pestilence are, one of the common motifs, along with the angry God, is that of plague and pestilence as divine weapon.  The divine sovereign doesn't simply pass judgment; the sovereign weaponizes life--the pathological life of 'plagues'--and turns it against the earthly life of the creature, itself a product of divine will." --Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet

Apparently, Object Oriented Ontology delves into horror all the time.  I have never had more enthusiasm for OOO.

Later Days.

Admittedly, the Second One is Still Not Very Good

I'm reading a book (Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet) with a section on witchcraft and its prosecution by the Church, and it strikes me that the version of this that we get in the Dragon Age series might deserve more credit than it generally receives.  Like most things about the story of Dragon Age, the story of the Chantry is usually dismissed as stock fantasy fare, and it is, to an extent: mages and knights and templars and God and so forth.  But it's also an approach to witchcraft that said, not just let's prosecute it, but let's also take over the policing of those inflicted with it, and let's use them as weapons as well.  It's an idea with some legs to it, I think--taking the real-life idea and forcing it one step further.  The great advantage of fantasy, in my opinion, is less the use of magic and more the chance to look through human culture and nature through slightly different lenses.

Later Days.

Bibliophile: Kickin' it alphabetical style at University of Athabasca

Who wins a fight, Emperor Norton or Prince Roy?  More importantly, in a war, who wins the battle for hearts and minds?

This is Bibliophile.

Friday Quotations: Fast Food Restaurants are Basically Gerunds

"Ingeborg Bachmann once compared language to a city, with its ancient center, its more recent and peripheral boroughs, and finally the encircling beltway and its gas stations, which are also an itnegral part of the city.  The same utopia and the same ruin are contained in our city and in our language, and we have dreamt and lost ourselves in both; indeed, they are merely the form this dream and this loss take." --Giorgio Agamben, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters."

Later Days.

Bibliophile: The Wizard of Oz & Affirmative Action: Where are the Tin Woodswomen?

My feet were cold last night, so I didn't get any sleep.  Something  smoetinhg shmneoitg nonsequitor.

This is Bibliophile.

Book Triad VII: Digital Humanities and Genetically Modified Rickshaw Girls

There's been a decline in posting recently.  I blame the economy.
Today, we'll be looking at:

The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information by Alan Liu.

Light by John M. Harrison.

How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis  by N. Katherine Hayles
Reviews after the break.

Bibliophile: Byte to Eat

"Why did you make it all about spoons?"

The man shrugged. "You said 'write what you know.'"

Spoons are funny.

This is Bibliophile.

Book Triad VI: Alien Approaches

So it turns out that I read the prerequisite number of books for this one a while ago; I just forgot to post anything.  Whoopsie. 

This time, we'll be look at:
Porn and Pong by Damon Brown

Steal Across the Sky by  Nancy Kress

We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour

Reviews after the break.

Bibliophile: Mother Theorist, Business Metrics, and Flying Penguins

What literature lurks in the hearts of men?  The library knows...

This is Bibliophile.

Friday Quotations: Higher Prophet

"This means that what will save the world is not spiritual, angelic power (a power that is, in the final analysis, demonic), with which humans produce their works (whether they be technical  or artistic works, works of war or peace), but a more humble and corporeal power, which humans have insofar as they are created beings.  But this also means that the two powers somehow coincide in the prophet, that the custodian of the work of salvation belongs, as far as his being is concerned, to creation." "Creation and Salvation," Nudities, Giorgio Agamben

Later Days.

Bibliophile: Sex, Sexy Sex, and Cowgirls

There are some things money can't buy.  Sadly, books are not one of them.

This is Bibliophile.