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I finished book 2 of Murakami's 1Q84. Really, there's only one book but physically it's divided into three and all this reading has put me 742 pages in. I'm probably going to finish Derrida's Dissemination next, and I'll probably have to speed through Foucault's The History of Sexuality after that. That means that I'll be reading 1Q84 in my off time, so I can't really say when I'll actually complete it.
I had the idea to write a small amount for the books I've read after I've finished with them - just a note. It's a resolution I'll probably abandon in pretty short order, considering what I've come up with. Freud's important in the literary community like the sad, weird uncle at a family gathering is. We could all stop inviting him, but somehow he's always there. Below is what I came up with when I put myself on the spot:
"Some real talk about old Siggy, here – I keep having to read this antiquated motherfucker, which is hilarious because every time we’re about to start, whichever professor is assigning the work kind of lets out a sigh and has to explain that we all already know that this castration-obsessed, cocaine-addled psycho-therapist is hilariously wrong about you wanting to bang your mom. (Though, there’s a huge rise in stepparent-child themed pornography on the internet, lately, so maybe he’s not as wrong as I’ve always figured.) The Oedipal Complex is to modern psychiatry as bleeding to control your humors is to modern medical practice.
So, okay, already. It’s true. You’ll be reading Freud and he’s starting to make a pretty good point about… say, fear of eye damage. And then it comes back to a fear of castration. (cite, The Uncanny) It’s disappointing. “Almost, Freud, you were almost there. You almost made a non-dick related point.” You’ll whisper. “You were so close.”
Let me save you some time. I read the book. The titular essay, The Uncanny is probably the only thing you really might want to read in here. There are other essays. Leonardo Di Vinci is touted as a psycho-biographical essay, but it’s largely 80 pages of Freud explaining how Di Vinci was gay but certainly wasn’t having sex with dudes. The Uncanny is mostly about how dolls are creepy as fuck. The End."
It wasn't really intended for larger distribution, but I couldn't bring myself to pick back through it for relevent citation notes. I understand that he's important historically because he's one of the first writers to seriously start picking apart texts for hidden meaning and blah blah blah. Like, great. The essay of "The Uncanny" has a few salient points and it's not a difficult read, and I'm almost certain that's the only reason it gets as much milage as it seems to.
There's something to be said for being an easy read, considering Derrida is kind of like peeing on an electric fence in order to garner an in-depth knowledge of the functions of electricity.
I did some writing on Dragon Age: Inquisition and it's occured to me that it deserves a pretty serious treatment. On one hand, I did play it and for more than 100 total hours. On the other, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a mediocre game that has a lot of systems in it that encourage shallow but repeated gameplay in people who don't have particularly busy schedules.
I had the idea to write a small amount for the books I've read after I've finished with them - just a note. It's a resolution I'll probably abandon in pretty short order, considering what I've come up with. Freud's important in the literary community like the sad, weird uncle at a family gathering is. We could all stop inviting him, but somehow he's always there. Below is what I came up with when I put myself on the spot:
"Some real talk about old Siggy, here – I keep having to read this antiquated motherfucker, which is hilarious because every time we’re about to start, whichever professor is assigning the work kind of lets out a sigh and has to explain that we all already know that this castration-obsessed, cocaine-addled psycho-therapist is hilariously wrong about you wanting to bang your mom. (Though, there’s a huge rise in stepparent-child themed pornography on the internet, lately, so maybe he’s not as wrong as I’ve always figured.) The Oedipal Complex is to modern psychiatry as bleeding to control your humors is to modern medical practice.
So, okay, already. It’s true. You’ll be reading Freud and he’s starting to make a pretty good point about… say, fear of eye damage. And then it comes back to a fear of castration. (cite, The Uncanny) It’s disappointing. “Almost, Freud, you were almost there. You almost made a non-dick related point.” You’ll whisper. “You were so close.”
Let me save you some time. I read the book. The titular essay, The Uncanny is probably the only thing you really might want to read in here. There are other essays. Leonardo Di Vinci is touted as a psycho-biographical essay, but it’s largely 80 pages of Freud explaining how Di Vinci was gay but certainly wasn’t having sex with dudes. The Uncanny is mostly about how dolls are creepy as fuck. The End."
It wasn't really intended for larger distribution, but I couldn't bring myself to pick back through it for relevent citation notes. I understand that he's important historically because he's one of the first writers to seriously start picking apart texts for hidden meaning and blah blah blah. Like, great. The essay of "The Uncanny" has a few salient points and it's not a difficult read, and I'm almost certain that's the only reason it gets as much milage as it seems to.
There's something to be said for being an easy read, considering Derrida is kind of like peeing on an electric fence in order to garner an in-depth knowledge of the functions of electricity.
I did some writing on Dragon Age: Inquisition and it's occured to me that it deserves a pretty serious treatment. On one hand, I did play it and for more than 100 total hours. On the other, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a mediocre game that has a lot of systems in it that encourage shallow but repeated gameplay in people who don't have particularly busy schedules.