Helpful votes received on reviews:
67% (4 of 6)
Location: New York, NY USA
In My Own Words:
The reader knows himself as he was twenty years ago and he has also in mind a vision of what he would be, some day. Oh, some day! But the thing he never knows and never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is.
(William Carlos Williams, "Spring and All")
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Reviews
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It's interesting to turn to early DeLillo and find that in more than a quarter of a century, the themes that drive his work are more contemporary than ever; as Diane Johnson wrote in the New York Times in 1977, "This elegant, highly finished novel does not shrink from suggesting the complicity of Americans with the terrorists they deplore". The complicity is not direct, even though one of the main characters does become directly enmeshed in a terrorist conspiracy the extent of which he is (and we, the readers, are) not fully cognizant. Rather, the complicity is systemic, terrorism the shadow of the bright waves of electronic capitalism, the anti-thesis, lying only as far away as… Read more
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Last night I read Jean-Paul Sartre's short manuscript Existentialism and Humanism, in which he set out to defend the existentialist philosophy against criticisms that had been made against it, particularly by Marxists, and particularly for its being (perceived as) overly subjective (amongst other things). I think there is a lot that Sartre says that is just right. Such as, every action is a moral action, including the action of doing nothing. And most importantly, Sartre makes the connection between freedom and morality. This is something that Musil is really sharp on, as well (particularly with the Moosbrugger case in The Man Without Qualities) -- in order for any action to be perfectly… Read more
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I finished this book last night, and I'm still working out exactly what I think of it. I can say that I really enjoyed reading it, it turned pages for me, for a start. I can say that, as announced early in the book itself, it does fall apart narrative-wise towards the end, and it's obvious that the experiments in structure (what with whole chapters conducted in interview format) are as much a way of avoiding plot construction and gaining leverage for unrelated anecdotes as they are displays of experimental bravado. What's really phenomenal about the book is the way Eggers sustains the intricate spirals of self-consciousness in which he incessantly whirls -- Is what I am doing beautiful,… Read more
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