Like most of King’s “monster-plot� novels, I found it engrossing for the first two hundred pages, then it fell very flat. A big, flawed work. King’s pLike most of King’s “monster-plot� novels, I found it engrossing for the first two hundred pages, then it fell very flat. A big, flawed work. King’s plots are reused and reused � other than specific characters, is there any difference between Desperation and IT? And is there now any difference between Desperation and The Outsider? Forgive me for finding these not only repetitive but monotonous....more
SO GOOD. Listen to the audiobook, which is partly read by David Foster Wallace and another narrator. The “other narrator� truly understands the text �SO GOOD. Listen to the audiobook, which is partly read by David Foster Wallace and another narrator. The “other narrator� truly understands the text � the humor, the prosody, the conversational writing. Much of the content of these essays could have been written recently (I was surprised the book is ~20 years old now), particularly the chapter about conservative media/radio. It was that essay, in fact, that made me want to buy the physical copy of the book and highlight everything.
Other standouts: the title essay, which is one of the best condemnations of the barbaric practice of not only eating meat, but cooking an animal alive (such as what is done at the Maine Lobsterfest). I also really enjoyed the essay about the dictionary writer: it was the most tedious essay, but also the most impassioned, nerdy, sprawling, and fugue-like.
DFW was a brilliant mind, and one that I wish we had around today to help make sense of our chaotic, proto-fascist-hyper-capitalist times. His nonfiction is much stronger than his fiction, in my opinion, and must be fully appreciated via the spoken word. Thus, choose this as your next audiobook. Go in with patience: the 3-4 bulkiest essays can run up to 3 hours long. Overall, I found this to be an even stronger set than A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and was sad when it ended....more
A man finds disturbing videotapes in his new home. He becomes obsessed with learning more about the director, only to have This whole book is a mood.
A man finds disturbing videotapes in his new home. He becomes obsessed with learning more about the director, only to have the memory of the film (and the film itself) disappear. Some cool interpretive questions could arise: what was the film? Was it all imagined? What could it symbolize? My sense was that the protagonist was a film school reject whose influences made their way into his own work � yet, he can’t quite recall those influences� origin. The videotapes he finds, thus, are a metaphor for (perhaps) what Harold Bloom would call the Anxiety of Influence.
An interesting horror/story-of-obsession plot mixed with a quest narrative....more
Could be a YA novel. Lots of heart and little intellect. A recycled, unoriginal plot/setting (dystopia, post-apocalyptic). Somewhat elementary writingCould be a YA novel. Lots of heart and little intellect. A recycled, unoriginal plot/setting (dystopia, post-apocalyptic). Somewhat elementary writing style.
I expected more from a Kentucky writer that in many ways is following in the footsteps of Wendell Berry. I’m not sure if Silas House was just really inspired by McCarthy’s The Road but this seemed like a dollar-store knockoff....more
The most successful metaphors become invisible through ubiquity. The same is true for ideology, which, as it becomes thoroughly integrated into a c
The most successful metaphors become invisible through ubiquity. The same is true for ideology, which, as it becomes thoroughly integrated into a culture, sheds its contours and distinctive outline and dissolves finally into pure atmosphere.
I was already a big fan of Meghan O'Gieblyn � her first book Interior States: Essays is one of the most thoughtful collections of essays about living in the modern world after deconstructing a fundamentalist faith.
In her second book God, Human, Animal, Machine, she reflects on the connections between technology (data collection, artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithms, and more) and theological questions that have persisted for centuries. For example: How/Why is an algorithmic system that predicts who in society will commit a crime eerily similar to the story of Job in the Old Testament? How/Why are ideas like the metaverse, multiverse theory, panpsychism, and cybernetics using the same talking points and arguments as theologians (such as John Calvin) who helped erect the doctrines and beliefs of the modern-day evangelical?
These questions, ideas, and more are organized through seven exhaustive sections ("Image," "Pattern," "Network," "Paradox," "Metonymy," "Algorithm," and "Virality") where O'Gieblyn intermixes research on the given subject/question at hand, theological interpretations, personal experience, and past notable books and articles such as Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines, the works of Max Weber, and even (surprisingly) Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
What she's trying to illuminate, understand, and explain is the modernist philosopher's idea of "disenchantment" (first coined by Max Weber in 1918 as the "de-magical-izing" effects of science and the Enlightenment), and how technology and the way we discuss it could lead to a new (but related) kind of disenchantment of the human experience. I loved her voice and tone throughout -- it's one full of questions and observations, rather than the (more masculine) inclination of making armchair proclamations and arguments about culture and society.
With that said, the writing is quite elevated and learned � much moreso than Interior States. God, Human, Animal, Machine was a good book to read slowly, reflect upon, and re-read. For those readers who may find the first couple of chapters slow-going, I would highly recommend beginning with the final two sections: "Algorithm" and "Virality," as these contain some very interesting, accessible anecdotes and thought experiments. The chapters do not need to be read linearly, so skipping around from one chapter to the next may offer a more enjoyable reading experience, compared to feeling forced to read everything in order.
So, I was a fan of O'Gieblyn's and still am! I am also grateful that her bio in the book jacket introduced me to her regular advice column on Wired (). Some great reading there, too, where she tackles very mundane, uncouth questions within the culture ("Should I Use AI to Write My Wedding Toast?") with deep introspection, literary/philosophical references, and (best of all) accessibility....more
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