I get drunk and I stumble to the phone, and conjure up a bitch to bone when I'm alone,
oh shit―tow back, I need to take a piss. Only when I'm drunk I sing a song like this.
I will share with you my mother's immediate reaction to photos I showed her of the philosophers I've been reading. He looks like a professor,
she said of Althusser. He looks like a Trump supporter,
to Badiou. He looks like a priest,
glancing at Bataille. Almost everyone I've been reading lately has been French. At the present, I'm taking a detour with books about writing effectively, books I desperately need to read. As much as I would love to dive into all of these thinkers that I've been learning about and trying to source books for, all of it will amount to nothing if I can't express myself clearly to an audience. I can tell I need help. I cite my perpetually unfinished and myopic non-writing on Cruelty Squad as an example.
Presently, I'm reading The Glamour of Grammar by one of my favorite writing teachers, Roy Peter Clark. He writes short, punchy chapters, each with a memorable lesson with immediate practical utility. I decided to start reading his little tome on the creative use of grammar specifically because I have another book laying around, Performing Prose, that recommended reading their appendix on English grammar before the contents of the book itself. At the time, I was unenthusiastic about grammar, but Clark has proven capable of making me enthusiastic about many aspects of writing that I otherwise wouldn't have noticed until he pointed them out. The use of short sentences, for one. The other book I'd like to read that wheeled me to his little book on grammar is Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft, and I read up to the first chapter where she said any thoughtful writer will have to have an artful command of syntax. That's two different things telling me to give a shit about grammar. I was noticing a theme. So, here I am. Another book on writing I'm quite curious to read is Stylish Academic Writing, regardless of the fact that I am no academic, just a thembo with a blog.
Part of my motivation for wanting to read a book on academic writing is because I've developed an interest in the CCRU, or Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, and the work of speed demon Nick Land. Before anyone asks, I mean his early work before the neo-reactionary turn. I've mentioned it before but I have an odd desire to write theory-fiction as a middle ground between all of my more scholarly reading and the few bits of fiction I'm able to let into my life. As a writer outside the gates of academia, I feel no great urge to write philosophy, but as someone who mostly reads philosophy, I have no great urge to write fiction. So, combine the two. Another reason I'm interested to read the CCRU writings is because from 1997-2003 I was a very small child, obviously too young for philosophy but old enough for Game Boy Color, and while the world might have aged out of cybernetic theory-fiction, I myself aged into it.
As far as my reading lately, I read the very short Philosophy for Militants by Alain Badiou and I enjoyed it enough to get a larger work of his that'll be in the mail soon. After, I read Alice in Wonderland because I'd like to learn a second language and it's one of the most commonly translated texts for natural and constructed languages alike. Before I made the decision to pick up more books on writing I was making a (short) list of more meta-philosophical books to help me chart a way foward for myself theoretically, so I read What is Philosophy? by Deleuze and Guattari, one of three I selected. The other two will wait. The first half of their book was okay, the rest I found uninteresting. At this point in my life I've heard from multiple different professors that everything Deleuze does with Guattari is considerably worse than things he's written on his own, and I'm starting to believe them. [1] I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about these books, because I didn't take notes. With my reading of philosophy I'm never too hard on myself when I read a book for the first time, because if it's any good then it'll be the start of a long, patient conversation, one that doesn't end on the last page.
I've read half of Bataille's Visions of Excess and I'm willing to read more of his work, but unlike how I typically engage with a new thinker, this time I think I'll be better off if I start with secondary literature rather than go in blind. Thankfully, my interest in Nick Land directed me to his first published book, a monograph on Bataille. I've had a few false starts. As well as reading only half of Visions of Excess, I also only read the first couple essays in Althusser's Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays before I decided that I'd rather read his Philosophy for Non-Philosophers as a better introduction to his work. For familiarizing myself with Deleuze, I've settled on his much earlier, much longer work on Spinoza as I've rekindled my enthusiasm for the Mad Jew and his Necronomicon. For Badiou, I will admit I don't quite know what else I should read to get a better feel for his output, but I'm very curious to read his seminars on Lacan that have been collected into a single sleek volume.
As far as a couple detours that might be interesting, I'd like to make time for History and Class Consciousness by György Lukács, a name I can never read enough, and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by the pair of Laclau and Mouffe. Lukács was quite influential to the strain of Marxism now identified as Western Marxism,
for you hounders of Cultural Marxism out there, and Laclau and Mouffe together coined the term Post-Marxism
to describe their theoretical tendency. As a member of the working class and not the class of professional academics, I find myself more sympathetic to and geared towards the Marxist-Leninist tradition, but I think I'd do myself a disservice if I didn't hear what they had to say.
Anyway, that's far too much about books I haven't read yet, but I thank you for indulging me. Lastly, let it be known that I'm switching mains from Hegel to Althusser.