“I think Brave New World is the best science fiction book ever, definitely the most prescient. Huxley was writing in the early 1930’s with Stalin and Hitler around, but what he was envisioning was our present.
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Brave New World: Beware the Philosopher
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags 1984, Aldous Huxley, Artificial intelligence, Brave New World, George Orwell, Yuval Noah Harari on December 26, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
In Search of Lost Time
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Rodney Hall, War and Peace on November 14, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
In Search of Lost Time
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Rodney Hall, War and Peace on November 9, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
I finished reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and now it’s over, there is a peculiar Proust-shaped hole in my life.
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‘Ashes in Your Mouth’: Spending Time in Giovanni’s Room.
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading on February 7, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
“You think,” [Jacques] persisted, “That my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.”
“Why are they – shameful?”
“Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
“I asked him, ‘Why?”
“That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “And perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room,
P. 49
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‘Art With Values’.
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading, Real Men, trauma with tags Ajax, Ancient Greece, Bryan Dorries, Drama, Navy SEAL, Sophocles, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, The Rolling Stones, Theater of War, trauma on December 22, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
There’s a friend of mine, a very successful artist, who I admire very much. I met him twenty years ago when we were working together in a dirty nightclub in South Melbourne; he was collecting glasses and I was bouncing. We both aspired to art, and he hit critical pay-dirt much earlier than I (who am I fooling – I still haven’t got there).
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‘…Just Don’t Put It on the Internet.’
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags blog, Instagram, Internet, no filter, poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Graves, social media on December 15, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Caveat:
This has been written to disturb you.
Invitation:
Summon your personal incarnation of this figure into your mind’s eye and look through it like a lens while you’re reading this.
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James Salter’s ‘A Sport and a Pastime.’
Posted in Reading with tags D.H.Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover on September 17, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
The notion of a relationship becoming deeper and more profound as people begin to ‘transgress’ the boundaries of what a twenty-first century reader would describe as vanilla sex is also a time-worn strategy.
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James Salter’s ‘A Sport and a Pastime.’
Posted in Reading with tags A Moveable Feast, A Sport and a Pastime, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Feminism, James Salter, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Modernism, Paris on September 16, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
A Sport and a Pastime is considered – by Americans – to be an American classic. My first question, upon finishing the book, is, ‘What makes something a classic? What makes it ‘feel’ like one?’
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The Devils – A User’s Guide
Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags Dostoyevsky, Martin Scorsese, Pyramids, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Devils on August 26, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
What’s it about?
What amounts to a terrorist cell in mid-nineteenth century Russia and its effect on a small fictional town of Dostoyevsky’s invention.
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My Dark Vanessa
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags Lolita, My Dark Vanessa, Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, Vladimir Nabokov on August 7, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
4.
“I called Lolita a love story and the professor cut me off, saying, ‘Calling this novel a love story indicates an unconscionable misreading on your part.’
She wouldn’t even let me finish what I was trying to say. Ever since then, I haven’t dared bring it up in any of my classes.”
p.291,
My Dark Vanessa.
Theme Park at its Darkest 