This month features groups on Zizek, Gadamer, Charles Taylor, Paolo Friere, Virginia Woolf and Philip Auslander. Join up with them or propose your own group.
Reading Fiction in February, ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor
Our Philosophical Fiction story for February is ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor, where a grandmother and her family go on vacation yet encounter an outlaw known as The Misfit.
Fiction Conversation on ‘The Map and the Territory’
Discussing Michel Houellebecq’s novel about being an artist in the modern age, along with thoughts from Zizek and others.
Not School Study Groups In July
We’ve got a number of attractive reading groups going this month, a couple of which are entirely new. It looks like almost every group will be starting fresh with a new text, so this should be a good month for members new and old who’ve never joined a group to try it out. If you’re not familiar with how Not Continue Reading …
Not School’s Phil-Fiction on the Novel “Age of Iron”
We’ve just released our recorded discussion on J. M. Coatzee’s novel. Join the group to talk about Kafka’s “The Trial” or pick a new reading for July.
Not School Discussion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Last weekend the Philosophy and Theater Group had our monthly discussion, and this time Phillip Cherny and myself talked about Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a tremendously clever, meta-fictional play which fills offstage moments of Hamlet with absurdist hi-jinks. For the philosophically inclined, this play has fireworks from beginning to end, and Stoppard covers a lot of ground Continue Reading …
The Not School Discussion of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
PEL’s Not School Fiction Group read Don DeLillo’s novel The Body Artist, and Paul Harris and I recorded our discussion of the unique relationship between Lauren and Mr. Tuttle, the ghostly being that arrives after her husband’s suicide. You can get it on the Citizen Free Stuff page. [Spoiler]’Mr. Tuttle’, as Lauren decides to call him, has a haunted look, he Continue Reading …
Eco Locating Meaning
Every now and then you find something that is, on the one hand, unexpected. The thought of it hadn’t occurred to you, neither as a fact found through the memes of popular culture nor as an extrapolation from your current knowledge. On the other hand, the discovery isn’t so much a surprise as simply new information that really just fits Continue Reading …
A Short Story to Kick Off Your New Year
I submit for your consideration this story I wrote a couple years back: “World #6”, that’s all about reconceptualizing as you age and the rewards that brings. Enjoy your New Year. -Mark Linsenmayer
Tripe, the full PDF
Just right click this here link to and choose “save target as” or whatever your browser’s version of that is to get the full book: Tripe, the full and naked PDF. (The commentary starts here. Its ending is forever indistinct.) -Mark Linsenmayer
Tripe, the full PDF
Just right click this here link to and choose “save target as” or whatever your browser’s version of that is to get the full book: Tripe, the full and naked PDF. (The commentary starts here. Its ending is forever indistinct.) -Mark Linsenmayer
Tripe, Part Seven
Start at the beginning. In the Seventh Sitting of Tripe, it’s made clear that as soon as the goal of the book’s being an organic growth-in-itself is stated, it dissolves, following the pattern of self-transcendence that the book has set up. If the purpose of an endeavor is to evade all purposes, then to succeed, the book must transcend its Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part Six
Start at the beginning. We are now up to the sixth and sixth and a half sittings. Today’s excerpt puts the connection between tripe (the non-humor forming the bulk of this book) and self-consciousness in terms of our attitudes towards free will: The form and shape of the supposedly humorous is predictable, though the content is not. Unfortunately, form is Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part Four
By the “fourth sitting” of Tripe, the references to previous bits come quickly and constantly enough that it’s really not advisable to start at this point, but instead, like an ordinary book reader, start at the beginning. New topics covered in this section include goat suet, the supposedly fictional holiday of San Juan de la Cruz Day (which I have Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part Three
Start at the beginning. In the “third sitting” of Tripe, Mr. Wolf seems to provide us with a self-deprecating back-handed apologetic of the sort that makes me tired but dresses this up as a rejection of quality standards a la the Taoist. In other words, our esteemed author apologizes for his bad writing with the excuse that “good” vs. “bad” Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part Two
Dear kind and patient readers, The burden of stewardship is great, and though it is with hesitation that I here link to the “Second Sitting” of Cliffson Wolf’s masterwork Tripe, given that interested parties could have easily clicked through from the first chapter to this document, it is incumbent upon me through the terms of Wolf’s will (in which he Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part One
In the spirit of Kierkegaard, I will now reveal that I am the beneficiary of one of the great thinkers of our time, Cliffson Wolf, who entrusted me upon his death to publish and publicize his great work of philosophical, autobiographical, anarchist, dadaist, anti-neo-Hegelianism: Tripe. Marvel if you will upon this mind-bending work of unadulterated genius. (Later edit: I have Continue Reading …
Tripe, Part One
In the spirit of Kierkegaard, I will now reveal that I am the beneficiary of one of the great thinkers of our time, Cliffson Wolf, who entrusted me upon his death to publish and publicize his great work of philosophical, autobiographical, anarchist, dadaist, anti-neo-Hegelianism: Tripe. Marvel if you will upon this mind-bending work of unadulterated genius. (Later edit: I have Continue Reading …