On January 12, Haruki Murakami turns 70, and we are going to celebrate now because it’s already his birthday in Japan. Murakami’s been writing novels, short stories, and essays for the last 40 years. He’s translated more than 100 novels and short stories into Japanese, including authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, and Raymond …
“Nothing is really work unless you’d rather be doing something else.” James Barrie When you think of Neverland, you probably think of adventure and fantasy and infinite play, but there is a dark, irredeemable side of Neverland that we rarely confront. For the first time, we are seeing digital rhetorics open the sky of possibilities …
“We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.” ~Carl G. …
Roland Barthes on Photographing the Unconscious 📷 Read More »
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” Carl Jung Using Greg Ulmer’s concept of electracy, Jan Holmevik explores the tension between absence and presence in his 2012 work, Inter/vention: Free Play in the …
Free Play in the Age of Electracy With Jan Holmevik Read More »
“Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.” ~Saint Augustine Americans celebrate Thanksgiving this week, a holiday Abraham Lincoln designated in the midst of the American Civil War to pause and …
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.” Albert Camus In an insightful early collection of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus recognizes that when a person confronts the absurd circumstances of life, they can react in one of two ways. Either they fall into despair, which most of us …
Jesper Juuls in the Art of Failure Teaches How to Imagine Sisyphus Happy 🙃 Read More »
“An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.” ~Albert Camus In a 2009 interview with Reuters Magazine, Kanye West says, “I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life,” which he ironically shares while on a tour promoting his own …
Make America Read Again: Take the Factory Model Out of Education 📚 Read More »
“The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the self… Feelings of self-identity are both robust and fragile.” Gregory L. Ulmer Gilles Deleuze and …
Greg Ulmer on Developing Your Singularity Instead of Your Self 🧩 Read More »
“The reconciliation of nothing and reality and the suspension of time and space by high velocities replace the exoticism of journeys with a vast expanse of emptiness.” Paul Virilio Paul Virilio is a French media theorist, intrigued by speed and technology and the ways advancements in these areas challenge the logic of our perceptions related …
Paul Virilio Teaches Us to Fall Upward and Swim in the Ether in Open Sky Read More »
“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.” –Reinhold Messner Himalayas of Literature is one of Book Oblivion’s newest ongoing course series. Participants reside all over the world and read through some of the most intense literature on the planet. Stephen L. Russell is our guide and chooses …
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” Marshall McLuhan When we say truth …
On Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is NOT the Message Read More »
Our world is now so complex, our technology and science so powerful, and our problems so global and interconnected that we have come to the limits of individual human intelligence and individual expertise.” James Paul Gee With brief pockets of cynicism and frequent moments of humor, James Paul Gee describes the anti-intellectual spirit of our …
“I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.” Haruki Murakami Haruki Murakami Novels …
In a magical realist story there must be an irreducible element, something that cannot be explained by logic, familiar knowledge, or received belief.” ~David Young and Keith Hollaman Magical realism is a radically complicated literary mode. It’s so complicated that I get uncomfortable every time I hear someone describe a work of literature as a …
I’m excited to announce our summer book club read! Most of you know I choose a book that I think you will enjoy AND that I haven’t read. This season is no different. Intuition is a concept I’ve been thinking through for a while in various forms and occasionally comes up in our conversations as …
Read Along With Us: The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead Read More »