eternal sunshine

By tom | February 5, 2009

In part as a welcome to a newly-found, previously long-lost lost one, I decided to look up some other, old and familiar, faces from the past. It’s interesting to see them in internet garb.

Norman Geras:

I remember a particularly slim volume which managed to elude me for the entire duration of my first term as an undergraduate. I was in desperate need of Marx & Human Nature, in part to complete my essay for the standard, pre-1989 Karl Marx course in the Politics Department and, more practically, to come to grips with the then prevalent simplicities for the justification of capitalism.

Geras’s blog, which happily flies in all sorts of tangents, is located at www.normblog.typepad.com

Christopher John Arthur:

Christopher J. Arthur (of The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital fame) maintains www.chrisarthur.net which collects a reasonable selection of his writings on Marx and Dialectic.

Michael N. Forster:

Back into the more distant past again, in the beginning of a Warwick year, I devoured Forster’s Hegel and Skepticism in a frenzy. Despite reading Hegel un-Systematically, at least in this book, it remains one of the few secondary works on Hegel that left an imprint. Forster’s faculty site carries a selection of his published articles.

Brian Leiter:

Leiter is another of the Nietzsche commentators with a rabid blogging appetite. He maintains several sites – personal, philosophical, legal etc., In answer to the question Why is this Presindential election even close?, his cut-to-the-chase-reply carries some merit:

Racism and the apparently bottomless stupidity of a certain portion of the electorate would seem simpler explanations.

Robert M. Wallace:

Last, but by no means least, we have Robert M. Wallace’s newly created “Philosophical Mysticism” site (blog, curriculum vitae included). I’m not sure where he intends to go with his thoughts but if his remarks on Simon Critchley are anything to gauge, it’s a peculiar place indeed.

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Life Audit

By tom | January 5, 2009

You know (of course) that I have attempted several life audits; in fact, one is found on the this page, in a feature called “The sequence of a life in 17 sentences”.

My last effort to “look back”, at 2005, floundered on the rocks of futility; not the futility of words, nor the lack of new experiences to be quantified and qualified, but the endless flow of life before me. It became impossible to pause.

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A work of hard love

By tom | October 17, 2008

Benjamin was right; this drew my attention as I was in the midst of re-aligning my library.

The Guardian, 11th December 1995

The Guardian (11th December 1995)

It was sent to me by a close friend – since disappeared – shortly after Professor Rose’s passing. It was read once, perhaps twice, and filed away until last night. I thought I ought to share it. Click on the image to see an expanded version. (A pdf version is available here)

You may be similarly interested in John Milbank’s obituary written for The Independent (13th December 1995), located here. (A pdf version is found here)

Professor Howard Caygill’s obituary written for Radical Philosophy is found here. Perhaps one day he will compose her intellectual biography.

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How to browse

By tom | April 25, 2008

Jonathan Glancey writes passionately about Selexyz Dominicanen in The Guardian’s very own ShopTalk section. The bookshop is integrated within the architectural frame of a 13th century Dominican Church, with its enormous bookcase a commanding presence and counter-point to its now secularised altar. Seldom have the twin pursuits – truthfulness and faith – come face to face in such an apt setting.

See further the list of Top Shelves.

While researching the bookshop, I subsequently clicked my way to a fascinating site, probably as close to a labour of love as is possible these days: www.bookstoreguide.org; it does exactly what it claims (“an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe”). Their blog contains a detailed write up on bookshops in Berlin, too, something I would have so enjoyed.

I’m tempted to apply this concept to Asia, but perhaps Singapore is a more manageable – if also limited – starting point. Check back if this comes to fruition.

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on reading

By tom | April 10, 2008

If reading is an exploration of uncharted lands, then books as gifts are beacons that illuminate and guide.

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captured / portrayed

By tom | April 8, 2008

Quite a coincidence. I was flying out to Surabaya the other week and picked up a book by Eric A. Johnson & Karl-Heinz Reuband. Not the usual airport fare, I agree, but pickings were slim. Do compare the cover of their book (What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany) with Richard J. Evans’s The Third Reich in Power

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany)

The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939

It’s the same photograph, of course, and they wish to convey, I think, the normality of the regime / the regime of normality. They give us a sense of the benign everyday.

Our eyes are concentrated on a particular girl. It gives new meaning to “poster girl”. For her, this was perhaps an outing with school friends. But here she is, the poster girl of The Naive Party.

I wonder what became of her, if the girl here frozen in time survived the war. And if she will survive this campaign.

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weekends

By tom | April 4, 2008

Those spans of Christian-time we call “weekends”, stretching from short, shrift Fridays to long lazy Sundays, seldom warrants thinking about; somehow or rather, you savour it, it savours you. Which leaves the remaining four days. Thursdays are lubricated by a reverse spillage from the anticipated Friday. Best described as en-lulled Thursdays. Wednesdays are threshold days, obviously. Mondays are boring, beginning days.

I don’t have any issues with its personality; indeed, I find Monday to be the poster child of the emo generation. However, just to confess: for the first time in a while, I have a genuine conflict of interest this Monday, one that will test – in a grimace inducing way – my entire value system.

The confessional aspect is that I am about to sacrifice my Monday night football (“soccer”) game, 120 blood-and-thunder minutes of the Beautiful Game (with its attendant adrenaline rush) for 129 minutes of “a Macedonia / Germany / Italy / Bulgaria / Spain” cinematic collaboration called Shadows.

It hardly seems fair.

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a return

By tom | April 3, 2008

I’m not sure what steered me initially away, and brought me to what I hope to be a more permanent return to the site. Things change, I suppose.

I used to subscribe to the Times Literary Supplement; each new issue invariably arrived on a Tuesday, and it would be the focal point until, once religiously devoured, the following week’s arrival. Book reviews of scholarly, sometimes academic, tomes being the focus of the TLS, each issue practically re-invented itself anew; a well-chosen cover, unpredictable and bearing no relation to the content, made the TLS a true weekly.

One fixture was Hugo Williams fortnightly (?, I forget) “Freelance” column. I remember him asking in an ancient issue:

Is it being a past-oriented person that makes one a writer, or vice versa? I read recently that writers are rarely contented because they trespass on sacred ground.

Indeed.

This spring-cleaning of this domain – notwithstanding a much needed re-design – began with a simple culling of old links. The musical Memphis Cat is gone; downtheinkwell has stopped writing. totalitarianism today is birthing a child or three. democratic underground has gone all mainstream and relevant.

On a cheerful note, s p u r i o u s is back, while I’m glad pas au-delà is still around.

The biggest shock, however, is that “Politics” is no longer a category on these pages. How the times have changed me.

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Being Charlie Kaufmann

By tom | January 14, 2008

The genius behind / in front of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, has a site at www.beingcharliekaufman.com

Go to him.

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Returns

By tom | August 17, 2007

You know how it is sometimes. You see her; she catches your eye. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your resolve.

Soon enough, you’ve taken her home and do what comes naturally. Then you realise that you’ve done this before. Years ago. And it wasn’t even that great the first time around.

So you bring her back to Customer Service and sheepishly write a reason for the change of heart in the “Returns Book”. What shall I write. I’ll be honest:

Duplicate purchase

How embarrassing is that.

I glance at the previous entry above mine, written two days before:

Fickle

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