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Boris Kachka, "Why Author Mary Karr Struggled Writing Her Third Memoir 'Lit'," New York Magazine (Nov. 8, 2009)
Now here's a bon mot: "Minoring in religious studies and thinking you know about religion is like watching porn, reading gynecology textbooks, and thinking you know something about pussy." Mary Karr, quoted in this piece.
Bright-Sided: The Negative Consequences Of Positive Thinking - Bright-sided - Jezebel
I love Barbara Ehrenreich, and this is a great review of her most recent book. I'd like to do a post on this myself.
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Ehrenreich also writes persuasively that the popularity of positive thinking in corporate America — she cites the rise of "self-described management gurus" like Tony Robbins and the book Who Moved My Cheese? as examples — has served to blind workers to their ever-decreasing job security.
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By and large, America's white-collar corporate workforce drank the Kool-Aid, as the expression goes, and accepted positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security. They did not take to the streets, shift their political allegiance in large numbers, or show up at work with automatic weapons in hand. As one laid-off executive told me with quiet pride, "I've gotten over my negative feelings, which were so dysfunctional." Positive thinking promised them a sense of control in a world where the "cheese" was always moving. They may have had less and less power to chart their own futures, but they had been given a worldview — a belief system, almost a religion — that claimed they were in fact infinitely powerful, if they could only master their own minds.
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Has Modern Conservatism Become a Cult? » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog
A very smart and insightful blog post by Joe Carter (I think this is the same guy who does the Evangelical Outpost). He criticizes modern American conservatism for falling prey to a kind of personality worship and for substituting a kind of cheap Ayn Rand-ism for any serious, substantive thought about values. It's the personalism part that I find most fascinating, as this is something that has been interesting me for some time.
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Add Sticky NoteOne of the key concepts in this weird era—adopted from Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged—is “Going Galt.” From Tea Party protestors to think-tank intellectuals, folks talk about Going Galt without the slightest hint of irony. The problem is not such much that it’s a silly hollow threat, but that it exemplifies a trait that is prevalent in conservative movement: The embrace of personality driven ideas that are often incompatible with some of our most basic philosophical, religious, or political beliefs.
- I like his phrasing -- "personality driven ideas." - on 2009-10-03
Ivan Petrella, "Beyond Progressive Religion," ReligionDispatches (August 18, 2009)
I have to go over this more carefully than I have ... but so far I'm skeptical.
Ivan Petrella, "Beyond Progressive Religion," ReligionDispatches (August 18, 2009)
I have to go over this more carefully than I have ... but so far I'm skeptical.
communicake: Marshall McLuhan - “Notes on Burroughs” (1964)
From the page: "Today men’s nerves surround us; they have gone outside as electrical environment. The human nervous system itself can be reprogrammed biologically as readily as any radio network can alter its fare. Burroughs has dedicated Naked Lunch to the first proposition, and Nova Express (both Grove Press) to the second."
The Blob and I - Books & Culture
A bemused response to some apparently pretty serious factual errors in the discussion by Jeff Sharlet, in his book on "the Family," of the origins of the Steve McQueen movie, "The Blob."
Wilhelm Reich, "Listen, Little Man!" (1946), excerpts, with drawings by Steig
Seen on @melmcbride 's Friendfeed stream.
Dooney's Cafe - How Dumb Can You Get?
Seen in melmcbride's friendfeed stream.
Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Necessary Lie: Duplicity in the Disciplines" (n.d.)
One of J.Z. Smith's articles on teaching religious studies, intended for graduate students just beginning to teach.
Fredric Jameson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pretty good basic reference on Jameson's works.
meditate on the yeasted wheat dough » Blog Archive » canada
The Internet is bad for you.
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I have started longing for yesteryear, a time I never have actually known, and most likely have a glamorized non-recollection of. I am greatly frustrated in my own timeline, where it seems that there is a severe lack of decency, common sense, and boundaries for privacy.
Oh yes, I’m about to say I hate the internet.
- One blogger reflects on her own intuition that mediating all kinds of interpersonal interactions through ever-thicker layers of technology has disconnected her from people and from life. - on 2008-07-09
Damn kids these days… at bavatuesdays
On the value of literature, the value of college, and the relationship between them.
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Add Sticky NoteYet, there is a fine line here to walk when talking about college, learning, and some kind of cultural rite of passage. I discovered this for myself while an undergraduate, for while I enjoyed taking a 20th century British literature survey course, I found it infuriating when my professor stood up in front of 300 people and suggested that reading T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” made us all somehow different, an act that would make the transition back into the world “you all left behind” difficult. Such a relationship to experiences and learning seemed, at least for me, to dangerously flirt with the idea of culture and passion as an intellectual rite of privilege, difference, and ultimately power. Once you walk down that road, where does it end? Does the fact I took a seminar on Joyce’s Ulysses make me anything other than a masochist steeped in ironic modernist propaganda of art as salvation and artist as deity (a modern malady only cured by a Samuel Beckett sponsored rehab)? While I think literature and movies are great and all, I hate that they are often leveraged for some kind of invidious distinction, rather than a means to a transcendent (or just psychedelic) communion and commonality.
- This is an important comment -- it's kind of obvious when you think about it, but easy to forget. I think I may be guilty of the same thing this professor was. - on 2008-07-07
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