Opera is not about music; it’s for those of us who hate music, which, bottom line, is the background music that from the primal mass through the Christian Mass to modern mass culture has covered up the cries of sacrifice, the sounds in the back of our head as we eat and chew. But once you know that much, as every melancholic, like Freud, for example, must, then all you hear in music is a certain backgrounding of the death wish, which at the same time turns up the volume on this staticky resounding of the identifications we all still gag on. The psychoanalytic perspective opens up the orifices of opera not in the mouth nor in the ears, but takes them in primarily (or primally) as anal projection. But that’s why the melancholic who’s music shy can take, follow, and adore opera (Freud’s favorite was Don Giovanni. Opera makes a spectacle of its resistance to music’s abstraction and cover-up of the losses opera struggles to total, but up front, in their wake and in our face.
— Laurence A. Rickels, Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema, p.99
posted by admin at 14:16
Andy Warhol, Arthur C. Danto, 2009
I didn’t mind it at all – short and just gossipy enough. He has some strange ideas, though.
posted by admin at 14:26
In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century, Geert Mak, 2007
Really good!
posted by admin at 14:24
The Yes Men, Dan Ollman, Sarah Price, Chris Smith, 2003
Leisurely and strangely apolitical.
posted by admin at 10:25
Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, Stephen Kijack, 2006
Good doc! Makes me like the guy, if maybe not the music.
posted by admin at 10:23
Far Bright Star, Robert Olmstead, 2009
Cormac McCarthy!
posted by admin at 10:22
Super Flat Times, Matthew Derby, 2003
George Saunders!
posted by admin at 10:21
Installations, Joe Bonomo, 2008
A book of prose poetry, each piece describing a gallery installation. Dreadful.
posted by admin at 10:19
Zizek: A (Very) Critical Introduction, Marcus Pond, 2008
Though this little book focusses on Zizek and theology, it is great at summarizing many key aspects of his thinking, particularly on Lacan and feminism.
posted by admin at 21:55
I’ve been watching it all on Hulu as I sit in my office doing endless hours of needlework, and I’ve come to hate it. The solution to every mystery is three more mysteries, and its all gotten a bit daft, though I appreciate the centrality of patricide in the thing. And I still want to find out what will happen next.
posted by admin at 21:51
