hot off the presses soon...

***Tantalizing reads.  Get 'em all by any means necessary, if possible the Abbie Hoffman way.***

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31166

Howard Eiland ed, Walter Benjamin/Early Writings 1910-1917 (Belknap Press, 2011)

I feel weird saying this, but what can I say?, Benjamin is my guru.  Benjamin was the most precocious and retrospective of thinkers.  I'm excited about roaming in these early writings. 

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/results-list.php?search=walter+benjamin

I hope y'all have the four volumes of his Selected Writings and The Arcades Project, and also other good stuff published by Harvard University Press.  I do wish that someone would come out with a handsome edition of The Origin of German Tragic Drama like the first English edition hardcover from New Left Books 1977 because the recent Verso reprint is cheaply produced, no offense to Verso.  The book lover in Benjamin would've appreciated that. 

 http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=134451&SntUrl=152206

Postscript on Insignificance: Dialogues with Cornelius Castoriadis (Continuum, 2011)

It seems to me that Castoriadis is still undervalued, but oh well.  I first learned about him through my interest in Socialisme ou Barbarie, many a moon ago.  The Imaginary Institution of Society is not only one of the most brilliant works of post-Marxism but of 20th century philosophy, advocating the radical imaginary and autonomy against "identitary logic-ontology."  I would grab it before it's out of print, as well as the three volume Political and Social Writings.  Good thing many of his works are available.  Castoriadis humorously said that "comrade Guy Debord gallicized and plagiarized" him. 

http://www.agorainternational.org/index.html

Above link to helpful website dedicated to Castoriadis, including bibliographies and webographies. 

http://www.kaloskaisophos.org.pagesperso-orange.fr/rt/rtdac/rtdactf/rtdac-gabriel-rockhill--continuum-books.htm

***David Ames Curtis has kindly informed me that this is a scab translation.  Please see above.***

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31122

Umberto Eco/Confessions of a Young Novelist (Harvard University Press, 2011)

A peak inside his process...))).  And yeah, I envy his 50,000 books, which are choice I'm sure.

http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/

Above link to Umberto Eco's website.

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/Title/tabid/68/ISBN/0-8101-2752-0/Default.aspx

Alphonso Lingis/Violence and Splendor (Northwestern University Press, 2011)

A friend of mine said Lingis is "syrupy."  Well, I wouldn't even say Lingis is sonorous.  But like the other in his books and his travels, Lingis provokes and appeals.  Levinas and Merleau-Ponty and even Klossowski never did this. 

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12486

Tiqqun/This Is Not a Program (Semiotext(e), 2011)

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=6&serid=180

I'm liking the Intervention series.  It started out with The Invisible Committee's The Coming Insurrection and has delivered.  Ya don't have to necessarily agree to notice the insights in every book.  Nice book design too I think.

http://rocbo.lautre.net/poleis/Tiqqun/

Above link to Tiqqun & Co.

http://atlasandco.com/new-releases/sempre_susan/

Sigrid Nunez/Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag (Atlas & Co., 2011)

One of my earliest inspirations and still is.  Ya might wanna read it together with recently published Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963. 

http://www.susansontag.com/

Above link to website of Susan Sontag Foundation.

https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=242

Raoul Vaneigem/The Revolution of Everyday Life (PM Press, 2011)

This edition like the ones from Rebel Press before it may be around about as long as the events of Mai 68, but of course, most prescient.  So grab it and love every moment of it.  Vaneigem isn't as crystalline as Debord, but certain Poesies may complement Maldoror. 

http://www.nothingness.org/SI/vaneigem.html

http://www.notbored.org/vaneigem.html

Above links to helpful websites regarding Vaneigem and things Situationist International.

http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=79

Craig Harbison/Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism, Second Revised and Expanded Edition (Reaktion Books, 2011)

If you're like me and you didn't jump on the hardcover, or the first edition paperback, here's your chance.  There's lotsa books on Leonardo da Vinci etc, and nothing against that, but a palpable paucity on Jan as well as Hubert van Eyck.  Elizabeth Dhanen's Van Eyck (Alpine Fine Arts, 1981) is a nice one to get.  Northern Renaissance and particularly Flemish masters are underrepresented.  It would be nice to see more fetching tomes like Dirk de Vos' on Hans Memling and Rogier van der Weyden.

good books on the Grotesque

Geoffrey Galt Harpham's 'On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature' (The Davies Group Publishers, 2007) originally published in 1982 is again available.  Unfortunately, there is a dearth of good formal studies on the grotesque.

Wolfgang Kayser's 'The Grotesque in Art and Literature' (tr: Columbia University Press, 1957; McGraw-Hill, 1966) is a classic study.

Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Rabelais and His World' (tr: MIT, 1968; Indiana University Press, 1984) is less historically wide-ranging but more conceptually so.  It's also one of my favorite books by one of my favorite thinkers. 


John Ruskin's 'The Stones of Venice' and 'Modern Painters' are ambivalent treatments.   There are a few others, but they are out of print.  And of course, even if the grotesque isn't given extensive formal treatment, its implications can be found in many thinkers.  Notable favorites are: Charles Baudelaire, Sigmund Freud, Gaston Bachelard, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Emil Cioran, Mary Douglas, Susan Sontag, Julia Kristeva.  Currently, I'm rereading parts of Leslie Fiedler's classic 'Love and Death in the American Novel' which can be approached as a study of American literature as the grotesque.  Limiting ourselves to Western cultures, one can say that the historical avant-gardes especially from Romanticism to Surrealism are impossible without the grotesque, as are Magic Realism, cut-up, and postmodernism, not to mention the Gothic and the Baroque, Mannerism, Northern Renaissance to vanitas, etc.  In fact, the grotesque is ever-present throughout the world (pre)history of visual arts, philosophy, music, literature, cinema, folktales, mythology, oral storytelling, propaganda, psychoanalysis, etc...life and existence.  Religion is also impossible without the sense of the grotesque, positive or negative.  Undertaking an exhaustive survey or even a selective one of the grotesque will be formidable.  In truth, many libraries are required for adequate research. 

I recommend 'The History of Decorative Arts: The Renaissance and Mannerism in Europe' (Abbeville Press, 1994) edited by Alain Gruber, the first of a series which stopped with the second volume 'The History of Decorative Arts: Classicism and the Baroque in Europe.'  It contains lavish reproductions of some grotesque art, but I wish the publisher hadn't overlooked the weak binding of this bulky otherwise beautiful book.

I have yet to get this book, Alessandra Zamperini's 'Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau' (Thames and Hudson, 2008).  There are also several fine facsimiles of illuminated manuscripts and a few books devoted to drollery.

Relatedly, check out 'On Ugliness' (tr: Rizzoli, 2007) edited by Umberto Eco.

http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg41/gg41-52622.html

Btw, Quentin Massys' 'Ill-Matched Lovers' (c. 1520/1525) oil on panel painting is at National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

When I visited the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, I was happy to see that grotesque decorations pervade its walls and ceilings, belied by its austere stone facade.  A great study in contrast.