So, all those mealy-mouthed stammers, repetitions, likes and you-knows... turns out they may be a critical component of verbal communication, not the indicator of mild mental retardation we sometimes assume. Sounds like it would be dry as day-old waffles, but it’s really, like, kind of illuminating, you know?
I’M A LEBOWSKI, YOU’RE A LEBOWSKI: Life, the Big Lebowski, and What Have You
By Bill Green
The obvious temptation here is to lard these few sentences with as many obscure Lebowski references as possible. How very gauche. Suffice it to say that Lebowski adepts (according to this book, they are known amongst themselves, cringingly, as “Achievers”) will find this an essential addition to what is doubtlessly a very thin library. Nonbelievers will continue to wonder what all the fuss is about with this stupid little stoner movie.
SWEET EARTH: Experimental Utopias In America
By Joel Sternfeld
From Brook Farm to Oneida to the Spahn Ranch, America has a long and mixed history of alternative, communal forms of living. In this gorgeous oversized photobook, Joel Sternfeld chronicles numerous historic and extant intentional communities whose success suggests that we may be in a new golden age of collectives.
THE ENEMY: An Intellectual Portrait Of Carl Schmitt
By Gopal Balakrishnan
Why isn’t Carl Schmitt on the ash heap of history? Granted, he had a kind of intellectual genius. But the man considered his ideas a philosophical foundation of Nazism. He received university appointments from Goring. He ballyhooed anti-Semitic purges. He lionized the Night Of The Long Knives. He loathed democracy. He valorized the total demonization and merciless destruction of national enemies. And so on. So, how did a man with such truly repugnant ideas find contemporary admirers across the political spectrum, from pro-torture right-wingers to trendy pomo leftists? This book does not directly answer that question, but it does provide an unnerving glimpse into a prodigious intellect squandered on the most murderous intellectual malpractice.
Elaborate daydreams of stardom infect everyone from time to time, but few enact those daydreams on the epic scale of Mike Stevens, who designed upwards of 100 records as mega-selling soul singer Mingering Mike without ever writing or recording a single song. It’s all very crude and charming and sort of heartbreaking -- an excellent specimen of whatever the preferred term is for “outsider art” these days.
So, all those mealy-mouthed stammers, repetitions, likes and you-knows... turns out they may be a critical component of verbal communication, not the indicator of mild mental retardation we sometimes assume. Sounds like it would be dry as day-old waffles, but it’s really, like, kind of illuminating, you know?
The obvious temptation here is to lard these few sentences with as many obscure Lebowski references as possible. How very gauche. Suffice it to say that Lebowski adepts (according to this book, they are known amongst themselves, cringingly, as “Achievers”) will find this an essential addition to what is doubtlessly a very thin library. Nonbelievers will continue to wonder what all the fuss is about with this stupid little stoner movie.
From Brook Farm to Oneida to the Spahn Ranch, America has a long and mixed history of alternative, communal forms of living. In this gorgeous oversized photobook, Joel Sternfeld chronicles numerous historic and extant intentional communities whose success suggests that we may be in a new golden age of collectives.
Why isn’t Carl Schmitt on the ash heap of history? Granted, he had a kind of intellectual genius. But the man considered his ideas a philosophical foundation of Nazism. He received university appointments from Goring. He ballyhooed anti-Semitic purges. He lionized the Night Of The Long Knives. He loathed democracy. He valorized the total demonization and merciless destruction of national enemies. And so on. So, how did a man with such truly repugnant ideas find contemporary admirers across the political spectrum, from pro-torture right-wingers to trendy pomo leftists? This book does not directly answer that question, but it does provide an unnerving glimpse into a prodigious intellect squandered on the most murderous intellectual malpractice.