Deleuze’s intellectual impishness is present throughout discussions of what it is to be a philosopher, a filmmaker and a painter.
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Fireside reading from the Untitled editors.
Experience by Martin Amis
Amis's memoir of a life in progress is effortlessly one of his best books; up there with 'Money', 'London Fields' and 'The House of Meetings'. 'Experience' is a masterpiece of organization and elegance, a rare combination of micro and macro achievement from Amis Jr. He ruminates on subjects as diverse as the Fred and Rosemary West murders, his relationship with his father and his chronic admiration for Bellow and Nabokov. His literary gymnastics are still very much in evidence and his severe self-examination is at its most amusing on the subject of his infamous dentistry.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
I'm at the tail end of this 1,100-page book and have been reading it since the summer, on and off. At once desperately infuriating, tiresome and addictive I have seldom read a book where I have more frequently wished someone next to me had been reading that last sentence word for word and pause for pause and then had the exact same "ahh" which turns into an "ohh" as you realize both the greatness of the writing and its unattainability. But then you look around and it's just you and the Coke you forgot to drink and the open window and you have to put on a cardigan or shut the window. The accounts of depression and drug addiction in this book are some of the most gracefully elegiac passages I have ever read in any novel.
Two Regimes of Madness by Gilles Deleuze
Most of Deleuze's philosophy is utterly impenetrable at best but this collection of essays and interviews is deeply lucid and insightful. The essay 'What is the creative act?' is particularly wonderful and Deleuze's intellectual impishness is present throughout discussions of what it is to be a philosopher, a filmmaker and a painter.
Tuesday, 22 December, 2009
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