Some interesting notions. A little repetitive. Not necessarily transcendent, but a good idea for a book nonetheless.
Also:
The last short is a meditatiSome interesting notions. A little repetitive. Not necessarily transcendent, but a good idea for a book nonetheless.
Also:
The last short is a meditation on if you died and then had to live your entire life backwards, finally arriving at: pre-birth. It reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's description of bombs floating backwards into airplanes (in Slaughterhouse Five). Or, you know what, George Carlin also wrote a hilarious paragraph or two in one of his joke books on this topic; it was quite poignant, i.e. "ending life as an orgasm."...more
Interesting but ultimately impossible to read clear through. I agree with other reviewers who said Graves' theories are riding the subjective pretty hInteresting but ultimately impossible to read clear through. I agree with other reviewers who said Graves' theories are riding the subjective pretty heavily; however, if taken with a grain of salt, his tangents are at least entertaining.
Strangely though, as I get older, the less I am willing to blindly get behind people who think anything penis-shaped is bad. That's not to say Graves thinks this, but his book... It's one of those books that a lot of angry-but-fashion-conscious college students will drag their knuckles across, squinting, perhaps twirling their ironic wispy mustaches, proceeding then, of course, to drop references to it in the coolest corner of some patio party all night long.
This book is somewhat interesting, but I feel, too concerned with Bible verses to stand up to scrutiny. In all, it is an airport read full of practicaThis book is somewhat interesting, but I feel, too concerned with Bible verses to stand up to scrutiny. In all, it is an airport read full of practical knowledge and some over-simplified philosophies on life. Still, it always helps to be reminded of the dangerous repercussions of negative emotions on the human body......more
In the America where I'm writing now, suffering is diagnosed relentlessly as personal, individual, maybe familial, and at most to be "shared" with a In the America where I'm writing now, suffering is diagnosed relentlessly as personal, individual, maybe familial, and at most to be "shared" with a group specific to the suffering, in the hope of "recovery." We lack a vocabulary for thinking about pain as communal and public, or as deriving from "skewed social relations." (Art, 114)
As seen here in an excerpt from 1996's "Defying the Space That Separates," Adrienne Rich's cultural observations continue, more than a decade after being put to paper, to illuminate reasons for the growing solipsism and sense of alienation that face America today. It should not be surprising then that Rich's social acuity is just as sharp in 2001's Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations, which includes "Defying" alongside other prose pieces that help contextualize its ideas in more specific terms. Essentially, the heart of this civil unrest, Rich suggests, lies in an increasingly rigid and formulaic use of language that arises from "exploitative relations of production" (Art, 145). Such exclusory hierarchical systems--being either unwilling or unable to synthesize a dream-worthy symbolic universe--reveal for Rich the mounting social disjointedness and poverty of language that are implicit in the basic tenets of capitalism and a free market economy....more
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