What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[Smitty-48]

Fight back against what?

Hippies, faggots, negros, activists, intellectuals, etcetera. The usual suspects.

[TheReal_ND]

Pretty hard to do with an electric Jew in every house.

[Smitty-48]

I'm just articulating Nixon's position.

I think he was probably drunk.

Doesn't bother me tho. I find him to be an amusing fellow misanthrope.

And a highly underrated military strategist.

Nixon understood how to Psyop.

Nixon was beating Hanoi at their own game. He just ran out of time.

[DrYouth]

Square and Tower.png

Ferguson's latest offering.

Pretty good swing through history with the concept of the tension between hierarchies and networks and the impact of technology... printing press and internet.

Learned some cool things about counter insurgency theory... also some interesting things about the historical Illuminati... and similar networks.

Ferguson is a smart dude.

The concepts of hierarchy and network get fuzzy sometimes with hierarchies being a subtype of network and networks all having some degree of hierarchy so the book can kinda get lost in the weeds from time to time... but for the most part I have found it insightful and worthwhile... especially the last third of the book on the late 20th early 21 century...

[Speaker to Animals]

Much more realistic and useful than that Jordan Peterson nonsense.

[Hastur]

Any Bret Easton Ellis fans here?

I'm curious about his new book. The Leftist MSM is piling on with bad reviews.



This is a rare positive review that piqued my interest:

https://quillette.com/2019/04/30/bret-e ... y-america/

With his new book, White, Bret Easton Ellis not only takes on Hollywood and contemporary culture, he establishes himself as the voice of an overlooked generation. The Gen Xer whose satirical works include “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero” also grasps the true essence of Donald Trump and our times in a way that eludes commentators on the Left and Right.

Unlike his previous seven books, White isn’t fiction. As it turns out, to parody the absurd times in which we live, fiction isn’t necessary. In American Psycho, Ellis critiqued 1980s New York culture through his invention of Patrick Bateman, a rich, beautiful, insincere, emotionally isolated investment banker by day and serial killer by night. No such literary device is necessary to satirize American life today. Like the rest of us, Ellis lives in world where “Everyone has to be the same, and have the same reactions to any given work of art, or movement or idea, and if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or misogynist.”

The usual suspects aren’t pleased. The Guardian judged the work to be “a nonsensical, vapid book, written by a man so furiously obsessed with his right to speak that he forgets to say anything at all.” Vox gave the book one star, called it “boring,” and concluded it was “both ideologically uninteresting and aesthetically weak.” (The Vox reviewer declared in an aside, without irony, that “there is no such thing as non-political art”—a fine example of the Leninist politicization of everything and its impact on art that Ellis laments throughout the book.)

Unspoken but evident in these condemnations is Ellis’s most serious crime: He was seen as a man of the left, but is now somehow a convert despite essentially being the same person. American Psycho was controversial when it was published in 1991, and remains so today, but was and is largely seen as a criticism of the Reagan-era capitalist resurgence, and thus, of use to the Left. Turning the same unforgiving pen against today’s obsession with identity and victimhood is rather less helpful to progressives.

................

[heydaralon]

Any Bret Easton Ellis fans here?

I'm curious about his new book. The Leftist MSM is piling on with bad reviews.



This is a rare positive review that piqued my interest:

https://quillette.com/2019/04/30/bret-e ... y-america/

With his new book, White, Bret Easton Ellis not only takes on Hollywood and contemporary culture, he establishes himself as the voice of an overlooked generation. The Gen Xer whose satirical works include “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero” also grasps the true essence of Donald Trump and our times in a way that eludes commentators on the Left and Right.

Unlike his previous seven books, White isn’t fiction. As it turns out, to parody the absurd times in which we live, fiction isn’t necessary. In American Psycho, Ellis critiqued 1980s New York culture through his invention of Patrick Bateman, a rich, beautiful, insincere, emotionally isolated investment banker by day and serial killer by night. No such literary device is necessary to satirize American life today. Like the rest of us, Ellis lives in world where “Everyone has to be the same, and have the same reactions to any given work of art, or movement or idea, and if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or misogynist.”

The usual suspects aren’t pleased. The Guardian judged the work to be “a nonsensical, vapid book, written by a man so furiously obsessed with his right to speak that he forgets to say anything at all.” Vox gave the book one star, called it “boring,” and concluded it was “both ideologically uninteresting and aesthetically weak.” (The Vox reviewer declared in an aside, without irony, that “there is no such thing as non-political art”—a fine example of the Leninist politicization of everything and its impact on art that Ellis laments throughout the book.)

Unspoken but evident in these condemnations is Ellis’s most serious crime: He was seen as a man of the left, but is now somehow a convert despite essentially being the same person. American Psycho was controversial when it was published in 1991, and remains so today, but was and is largely seen as a criticism of the Reagan-era capitalist resurgence, and thus, of use to the Left. Turning the same unforgiving pen against today’s obsession with identity and victimhood is rather less helpful to progressives.

................

American Psycho is good. One of the few books that actually shocked me. A lot of people don't get this, but Bateman is not the bad guy in the book. He becomes more reasonable as the book goes on.

[GloryofGreece]

Any Bret Easton Ellis fans here?

I'm curious about his new book. The Leftist MSM is piling on with bad reviews.



This is a rare positive review that piqued my interest:

https://quillette.com/2019/04/30/bret-e ... y-america/

With his new book, White, Bret Easton Ellis not only takes on Hollywood and contemporary culture, he establishes himself as the voice of an overlooked generation. The Gen Xer whose satirical works include “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero” also grasps the true essence of Donald Trump and our times in a way that eludes commentators on the Left and Right.

Unlike his previous seven books, White isn’t fiction. As it turns out, to parody the absurd times in which we live, fiction isn’t necessary. In American Psycho, Ellis critiqued 1980s New York culture through his invention of Patrick Bateman, a rich, beautiful, insincere, emotionally isolated investment banker by day and serial killer by night. No such literary device is necessary to satirize American life today. Like the rest of us, Ellis lives in world where “Everyone has to be the same, and have the same reactions to any given work of art, or movement or idea, and if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or misogynist.”

The usual suspects aren’t pleased. The Guardian judged the work to be “a nonsensical, vapid book, written by a man so furiously obsessed with his right to speak that he forgets to say anything at all.” Vox gave the book one star, called it “boring,” and concluded it was “both ideologically uninteresting and aesthetically weak.” (The Vox reviewer declared in an aside, without irony, that “there is no such thing as non-political art”—a fine example of the Leninist politicization of everything and its impact on art that Ellis laments throughout the book.)

Unspoken but evident in these condemnations is Ellis’s most serious crime: He was seen as a man of the left, but is now somehow a convert despite essentially being the same person. American Psycho was controversial when it was published in 1991, and remains so today, but was and is largely seen as a criticism of the Reagan-era capitalist resurgence, and thus, of use to the Left. Turning the same unforgiving pen against today’s obsession with identity and victimhood is rather less helpful to progressives.

................

American Psycho is good. One of the few books that actually shocked me. A lot of people don't get this, but Bateman is not the bad guy in the book. He becomes more reasonable as the book goes on.

Never read the book but have seen the movie. Is it more "reasonable" b/c the people he kills are psycho themselves? Materialistic self absorbed automaton etc?

[heydaralon]

Any Bret Easton Ellis fans here?

I'm curious about his new book. The Leftist MSM is piling on with bad reviews.



This is a rare positive review that piqued my interest:

American Psycho is good. One of the few books that actually shocked me. A lot of people don't get this, but Bateman is not the bad guy in the book. He becomes more reasonable as the book goes on.

Never read the book but have seen the movie. Is it more "reasonable" b/c the people he kills are psycho themselves? Materialistic self absorbed automaton etc?

Nah, I'm just kidding around. That character is like the most sadistic piece of shit in all of fiction. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. Everyone in the book is completely self absorbed and devoid of feeling, so the dude's many murders go unnoticed. Even if he had been caught red handed by another Wall St dude, he still would have escaped because they are incapable of telling one another apart.

[GloryofGreece]

American Psycho is good. One of the few books that actually shocked me. A lot of people don't get this, but Bateman is not the bad guy in the book. He becomes more reasonable as the book goes on.

Never read the book but have seen the movie. Is it more "reasonable" b/c the people he kills are psycho themselves? Materialistic self absorbed automaton etc?

Nah, I'm just kidding around. That character is like the most sadistic piece of shit in all of fiction. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. Everyone in the book is completely self absorbed and devoid of feeling, so the dude's many murders go unnoticed. Even if he had been caught red handed by another Wall St dude, he still would have escaped because they are incapable of telling one another apart.

We could do this better! haha.
https://player.fm/series/the-poz-button ... can-psycho