There is a moment in The Meaning of Sarkozy when prominent French philosopher Alain Badiou brings up Sarkozy’s critique of May 1968 in France. Sarkozy famously argued that the radical movement blurred the lines between good and evil; to Badiou, however, May 1968 is notable for clearly articulating differences between good and evil. This book [...]
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Wedding Preparations in the Country: Fiction by William Lewis
July 27, 2009 – 1:34 am
Nietzsche died of psychic hypothermia. I don’t believe it myself, but that’s what she said, and the situation being what it was, I didn’t feel myself capable of arguing. It was the apex of spring, with warm sunlight filtering through the pines and the road unrolling itself before us like a soft, brown carpet. Her [...]
Sam Bassett’s Seven Nights at the Hotel Chelsea Rooftop
July 20, 2009 – 11:57 am
Not just anyone can shack-up in the Hotel Chelsea. Reserved for the oddest, craziest, most brilliant cream of the creative crop, its rooms have housed everyone from Mark Twain to Jack Kerouac, Willem de Kooning to Marilyn Monroe, Sarah Bernhardt to Sid Vicious. So the fact that legendary manager and curator of residents, Stanley Bard, [...]
Them There United States
July 15, 2009 – 1:33 am
In his “Frontier Thesis” of 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner expounded his view that the spirit of the United States was defined by its exploration of the Frontier. With these historic exploits, Turner believed that a new American citizen had been born, one with a power to tame the wild and who was fundamentally un-European.
Sixty [...]
A Brief Autobiography of Joe Bloggs or the Unfortunate Rise of the Cult of the Individual
July 11, 2009 – 6:28 am
My name is Joe Bloggs.
I have been around for a long time.
I was a big deal, to start with – I discovered fire, invented the wheel, writing, I spent years upon years writing poetry.
I spend a couple of days every February writing your card for Valentine’s Day. I knew St. Valentine, Valentinus, he was beheaded [...]
Fischli & Weiss Nutshot
July 8, 2009 – 4:08 am
“For anyone not already hardened by the emptiness of life, there is in this world, which seems to have at its disposal limitless resources, a confusion remedied only by a kind of lazily accepted general imbecility. Even poverty seems at the very least less incurable than this stupid distress. A beggar whose broken voice cries [...]
