Literary Theory Gets Bloody in Laurent Binet’s ‘The Seventh Function of Language’
The Seventh Function of Language is either a grand farce or fashionable nonsense.
Jon Morris
Each of the Stories in Murakami’s ‘Men Without Women’ Is a Psychological and Existential Mystery
If Lars Svendsen helps one to understand loneliness cognitively, Haruki Murakami allows one to experience it affectively, giving it a slow, desperate pulse.
Lars Svendsen Dispels Assumptions About Loneliness
In A Philosophy of Loneliness, Svendsen doesn't so much elucidate the topic of loneliness as he complicates it, thereby dispelling our many illusions.
Nato Thompson’s Culture as Weapon’ in the Shadow of a Political Spectacle
Nato Thompson reminds us that battles are fought not just over culture, but with it.
Haunted by Nothingness: Emanuele Severino’s ‘The Essence of Nihilism’
Ask anyone whether something can be born of nothing, and the reply will be decisive: No! Yet we think, speak and act “as if” this were not the case.
‘Death by Water’ Is a Postmodern Tale That Flows With the Tides of Life
Commingling the anticlimactic and the violently unexpected, Oe's novel rings true to life.
Looking for ‘The Stranger’: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic
Albert Camus’ classic The Stranger has finally earned its very own biography from esteemed scholar Alice Kaplan
Anti-Education: Nietzsche on Our Learning Institutions
In these lectures Nietzsche is not yet philosophizing with a hammer, but the hammer is certainly within arm's reach.
Peter Pál Pelbart’s ‘Cartography of Exhaustion’ Is Exhilarating
This is a sunny, revitalizing book, despite its ostensible focus on exhaustion and nihilism.
And: Phenomenology of the End by Franco Berardi
Imagine orienting yourself on a map, scratching a red "X" to mark your location, and then realizing how precarious your position is, how perilously far you are from where you want to be.
The Real Walking Dead: Joshua M. Price’s ‘Prison and Social Death’
This book is about society. Shifting the focus from the individual (crime) to the social (punishment) is not so much a political choice as it is an ethical imperative.
Grim Thoughts and Gallows Humor in Eugene Thacker’s ‘Cosmic Pessimism’
Chuckle if you want, but these are good times for grim thoughts, and some of the best and freshest writing is coming from Eugene Thacker.