Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1112270000120.21986@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Quick reviews - recommended books -
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:01:37 -0500 (EST)
Quick reviews - recommended books - Hello Avatar, Rise of the Networked Generation, B. Coleman, MIT, 2011 - Highly recommend this book which isn't the usual first-person narrative, but carefully builds a theoretical structure for analyzing the phenomenology of avatars, which we might be taking increasingly for granted; the days of Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen have been replaced by life. I like the breadth and time-line of the book. I picked up the copy at Eyebeam; it's one of the more useful recent volumes of theory/sociology/philosophy of new media to emerge. Noise Channels, Glitch and Error in Digital Culture, Peter Krapp, Minnesota, 2011 - Again, highly recommended. The book is theoretically dense but quite astute; I remember the author from a Derrida list years ago. I think of his approach as 'deep glitch,' glitch as basic to online culture; the volume goes well beyond glitch as style. I'm working my way through the book now; I hate doing this, but the last sentence indicates the author's approach: "And so the digital humanities assert that 'from the standpoint of art forms instantiated in informatic media (aural sounds, visual images, linguistic signs), the noise _is_ the art.'" - the quote is from Bruce Clark. I'm trying, using books like this, and the above, to find a home for my own standpoint; these come close and are far more useful than other works which emphasize heavy description plus theory. The Destructive Power of Religion, 4 volumes edited by J. Harold Ellens, Praeger, 2004 - This is an amazing collection of essays on 'Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,' with an introduction by Desmond Tutu. They're not anti-religious, but they are upfront about the violence inherent in various scriptures and practices, and potential solutions. Liberation theology would love these, I think. I found the books at a library sale for a dollar each; they're extremely expensive, but there's a one-volume version that's relatively cheap. (I haven't seen it.) If you can check these out a library, please do. The Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence has Declined, Stephen Pinker, Viking, 2011 - Eight-hundred pages of analysis makes me believe once again in psychology as a useful science, and for that matter, as a science to some extent. The thesis of declining violence - in spite of continuous massacres, extinctions, scarcity economies, etc. - seems promising. I purchased the in a state of depression after my father's death and the split-up of part of my family, and it helped. There are troubling sections (including time-lines and absolutist/inerrant religious tendencies), but the book as a whole is reasonably, guardedly optimistic. Highly recommended. The Poetical Works of John Gay, Including 'POLLY,' 'THE BEGGAR'S OPERA,' and Selections from the other Dramatic Work, Edited by G.C. Faber, Oxford, 1926 Everyone knows The Beggar's Opera, but Polly is rarer, and then there are strange things like The What D'Ye Call It, and Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London. Do check these out; they're fascinating and strange and oddly predecessors of Brecht as well. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Sir Thomas Browne, various contemporary editions If you haven't checked out Browne, you should - he wrote any number of works you might know including Religio Medici, but the Pseudodoxia is the most interesting - like Aristotle's Problems, it deals with a variety of unbelievably wide-ranging topics, but the speculation on them is absolutely wild. There's 'Of the cutome of saluting or blessing upon sneezing.' and 'That Iews stinke.' (he concludes that they do not). Then there's 'Of the cheek burning or eare tingling.' and 'Of smoak following the fairest.' and 'That Children would naturally speak Hebrew.' Amazing! Green Eyes, Marguerite Duras, translated by Carol Barko, Columbia, 1990 Reflections on film, Judaism, phenomenology, Chaplin, Godard, 'Raymond Queneau, Reading Manuscripts,' and so forth. I love this book which meanders around the sites of ambiguity; if you like Duras, you'll love this as well. I found it first in the French Cahiers du Cinema edition. The English includes other interviews and a different presentation of the images. -- These are some of the books I've been reading - and love. There's little of the Buddhist here; I've been questioning my interest in Buddhist texts for a variety of reasons, and this has gotten in the way. On the other hand, I've been reading again into Japanese Noh, but that's another although similar story.