Too often, being on the left tasks you with a vigilant daily quest to avoid being tagged with snobbery. In sociological living, we place value on those works or groups that seem most likely to force a reevaluation of an exclusive or oppressive order, or an order felt to be oppressive simply because exclusive. And yet despite this perpetual reevaluation of all values, the underlying social order seems unchanged; the sense of it all being a game not only persists, but hardens.
From n + 1, the latest “Intellectual Situation”: “Too Much Sociology.”
And here I ran up against the first great fallacy of the mainstream media’s OWS coverage. Of course the occupation as such was heavy on students, the unemployed, and men who looked like a cross between Santa Claus and Wavy Gravy. Stroller-pushing contingent-workers like me were constrained from spending all day and night at Zuccotti by the very conditions that made them want to do so. Thus does insecurity—financial, physical, psychological—become the stick that keeps us on the rutted path of late capitalism. (Consumer electronics being the carrot.)
“Occupy Parnassus!: Kirill Medvedev’s ‘It’s No Good’,” Garth Risk Hallberg.
Writing is a miraculous technology all its own—a code that, when input through the optic nerve, induces structured, coherent hallucinations. An equivalent experience does not exist. Words have shape and musicality. They almost have a flavor. But they are too easily drowned out by stronger stimuli.

If you’re looking for a weekend #longread, Robert Moor has an interesting article in n+1 on the history of digital and hypertextual literature.

Plus, the article begins with a nice summary of The Late American Novel, a collection of writing on the future of the book edited by our own founding editor, C. Max Magee.


Source: nplusonemag.com