Nicely put. This time around the concentration camps are not to be used to build canals in the Arctic or produce low cost uniforms for Hugo Boss mannikins on the Eastern Front. They are, instead, simply to be holding pens where we are to be distracted from action in the world with offers of entertainment more suited to Pontins or Butlins. In some ways, this is fine (life becomes unending pleasurable distraction) until they open the gates of the holding pens to send us to the abattoir as conscripts.
Your erudition never ceases to amaze (though you did omit Hope-Hodgson), and you are right there are subterranean cultural shifts happening that we all need to try and grasp.
Even though you are a lone voice howling against cacophony, keep on doing it!
I particularly like Hope-Hodgson's handling of 'menace from the sea' remembering that his age was very much a sea-going one. The sea was more 'normal' then than now in the English mind (before air travel and electronic communications) so his 'sea horror' is an irruption into normality in a way that we cannot easily appreciate now. The sea becomes 'cosmic' so that the cosmic in his other work becomes part of a whole way of seeing that impinges on normality through dream states and the bits of existence we do not see clearly (fog and mist) or which shift and change beneath our feet. You get a similar sense of the sea as an entire world in which the fixed points of social or normal existence might get lost in Joseph Conrad's writing at roughly the same time. Conrad's world is not cosmic in the same way but it is an expression of individual humanity 'all at sea' in the world. Perhaps it is 'normal' for all ages to feel 'at sea' or 'adrift' or 'lost in space' or 'out of our minds'.
its really bizarre to me that you frame your piece of literary criticism by dismissing the production of academia as neurotic miserablism before subsequently peppering references and quotations from heidegger , nietzsche and marx. its sounds like a more flowery, polysyllabic way of saying ‘those useless eggheads wasting my tax money to make my daughters hair turn green’
that kind of sentiment is fine if youre the average american reprobate but if youre gonna publish high-minded geopolitical/cultural analysis you only have an audience as result of those miserable nerds. the intellectual climate of any given time will carry an extra layer of pessimism on top of it bc of the retrospective nature of the enterprise and the consequential mindset it attracts
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”
if the mood of the institutions and their culture production is one of unceasing criticism or mere historicism or feckless attempts are reviving dead ideologies etc then that is just as much a signal about the tenor of the times as the vaunted democratic new media you cant stop extolling
Ooooh, I strike a raw nerve there and if you strike a raw nerve, it means you have struck. If you want an honest view, I have no fundamental problem with the Academy at all and the balance of work is essential and good but I do have three specific criticisms. The first is the manufacturing of ideological fashions to fill the space left by over-production in the higher education sector. The second is the inability of some philosophers to critique themselves as producers of philosophers and their tendency to impose their own psychological weaknesses and flaws on thought as apparent truths (as we see in the anti-natalists and 'miserabilists' expressing their own situation rather than of the world in their work). Third, the over-privileging of formal education against both intelligence and experience when all three should be in some kind of balance. The over-production of the 'educated' is not related to the actual spread of intelligence in society. The lower reaches of the educated have become somewhat snotty over their status in a wholly undeserved way. Many find it difficult to string a readable and comprehensible sentence together. Unfortunately, I barely understood the point of the bulk of your comment which, of course, perhaps suggests that I cannot be as intelligent as you. But, no matter, I do not write for 'the They' but only for myself and for those who might enjoy what I write. Numbers of subscribers mean nothing to me since I am not seeking a revenue stream or, indeed, attention. If you like it, enjoy it. If you do not, of course you must find something else to suit your nature. Until then, your contributions are welcome although I hope you can make your points with a little more clarity and less polemic if possible.
No, I cannot. That is not an excessively long paragraph to an educated individual. I have an X account for polemical sound bites if that is more to your taste - https://x.com/TimPendry
Tim, a fascinating take on one of my favorite living writers. Yes, there's a rebounding catharsis at the bottom of our puppetmaster's pit. And now I'm thinking about L as a mirror to our times.
Have you heard the Current 93 audio tracks for his work?
PS: important to remember that Ligotti was a Detroit writer for most of his life.
That figures - the Detroit aspect. So much popular streamed horror nows relies on abandoned social and economic infrastructure for its effect - abandoned hospitals and asylums, factories and industrial planet, even abandoned rail and road. The relation between classic Gothick and the ruined castle or abbey and the Neo-Gothick and ruined industrialisation is interesting. Perhaps the neo-neo-Gothick will be set in ruined Amazon warehouses and investment banks one day. The way Ligotti evokes the 'dead' factory or clerical office as site of evil is impressive given that he is only using words and not images. I know this triggers a lot of 'academics' into hauntology and the nature of capitalism but I always think this is stretching it a bit. It is just a case of things and places showing us entropy and so death. There is no need to bring cod Marxism into the story.
I was not aware of Current 93 and will look into it, especially as I am going through a phase (to the consternation of my family) of listening to late 1970s/early 1980s British experimental music thanks to a Christmas gift.
Nicely put. This time around the concentration camps are not to be used to build canals in the Arctic or produce low cost uniforms for Hugo Boss mannikins on the Eastern Front. They are, instead, simply to be holding pens where we are to be distracted from action in the world with offers of entertainment more suited to Pontins or Butlins. In some ways, this is fine (life becomes unending pleasurable distraction) until they open the gates of the holding pens to send us to the abattoir as conscripts.
Tim
Your erudition never ceases to amaze (though you did omit Hope-Hodgson), and you are right there are subterranean cultural shifts happening that we all need to try and grasp.
Even though you are a lone voice howling against cacophony, keep on doing it!
I shall not weaken!
Hope-Hodgson really needs more readers.
I particularly like Hope-Hodgson's handling of 'menace from the sea' remembering that his age was very much a sea-going one. The sea was more 'normal' then than now in the English mind (before air travel and electronic communications) so his 'sea horror' is an irruption into normality in a way that we cannot easily appreciate now. The sea becomes 'cosmic' so that the cosmic in his other work becomes part of a whole way of seeing that impinges on normality through dream states and the bits of existence we do not see clearly (fog and mist) or which shift and change beneath our feet. You get a similar sense of the sea as an entire world in which the fixed points of social or normal existence might get lost in Joseph Conrad's writing at roughly the same time. Conrad's world is not cosmic in the same way but it is an expression of individual humanity 'all at sea' in the world. Perhaps it is 'normal' for all ages to feel 'at sea' or 'adrift' or 'lost in space' or 'out of our minds'.
its really bizarre to me that you frame your piece of literary criticism by dismissing the production of academia as neurotic miserablism before subsequently peppering references and quotations from heidegger , nietzsche and marx. its sounds like a more flowery, polysyllabic way of saying ‘those useless eggheads wasting my tax money to make my daughters hair turn green’
that kind of sentiment is fine if youre the average american reprobate but if youre gonna publish high-minded geopolitical/cultural analysis you only have an audience as result of those miserable nerds. the intellectual climate of any given time will carry an extra layer of pessimism on top of it bc of the retrospective nature of the enterprise and the consequential mindset it attracts
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”
if the mood of the institutions and their culture production is one of unceasing criticism or mere historicism or feckless attempts are reviving dead ideologies etc then that is just as much a signal about the tenor of the times as the vaunted democratic new media you cant stop extolling
Ooooh, I strike a raw nerve there and if you strike a raw nerve, it means you have struck. If you want an honest view, I have no fundamental problem with the Academy at all and the balance of work is essential and good but I do have three specific criticisms. The first is the manufacturing of ideological fashions to fill the space left by over-production in the higher education sector. The second is the inability of some philosophers to critique themselves as producers of philosophers and their tendency to impose their own psychological weaknesses and flaws on thought as apparent truths (as we see in the anti-natalists and 'miserabilists' expressing their own situation rather than of the world in their work). Third, the over-privileging of formal education against both intelligence and experience when all three should be in some kind of balance. The over-production of the 'educated' is not related to the actual spread of intelligence in society. The lower reaches of the educated have become somewhat snotty over their status in a wholly undeserved way. Many find it difficult to string a readable and comprehensible sentence together. Unfortunately, I barely understood the point of the bulk of your comment which, of course, perhaps suggests that I cannot be as intelligent as you. But, no matter, I do not write for 'the They' but only for myself and for those who might enjoy what I write. Numbers of subscribers mean nothing to me since I am not seeking a revenue stream or, indeed, attention. If you like it, enjoy it. If you do not, of course you must find something else to suit your nature. Until then, your contributions are welcome although I hope you can make your points with a little more clarity and less polemic if possible.
Dear sir, I hope you can make your points with a little more paragraph breaks please and thank you. 😋
No, I cannot. That is not an excessively long paragraph to an educated individual. I have an X account for polemical sound bites if that is more to your taste - https://x.com/TimPendry
I'm not educated, nor am I looking for sound bites. I just would like to read your words without putting so much strain on my eyes.
Fair enough but I write at speed under severe time constraints.
Tim, a fascinating take on one of my favorite living writers. Yes, there's a rebounding catharsis at the bottom of our puppetmaster's pit. And now I'm thinking about L as a mirror to our times.
Have you heard the Current 93 audio tracks for his work?
PS: important to remember that Ligotti was a Detroit writer for most of his life.
That figures - the Detroit aspect. So much popular streamed horror nows relies on abandoned social and economic infrastructure for its effect - abandoned hospitals and asylums, factories and industrial planet, even abandoned rail and road. The relation between classic Gothick and the ruined castle or abbey and the Neo-Gothick and ruined industrialisation is interesting. Perhaps the neo-neo-Gothick will be set in ruined Amazon warehouses and investment banks one day. The way Ligotti evokes the 'dead' factory or clerical office as site of evil is impressive given that he is only using words and not images. I know this triggers a lot of 'academics' into hauntology and the nature of capitalism but I always think this is stretching it a bit. It is just a case of things and places showing us entropy and so death. There is no need to bring cod Marxism into the story.
I was not aware of Current 93 and will look into it, especially as I am going through a phase (to the consternation of my family) of listening to late 1970s/early 1980s British experimental music thanks to a Christmas gift.