Ad Hoc Reading Group
Oct. 26th, 2004 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistOk, as I just mentioned, I read the first two Left Behind books. I found them completely fascinating from an anthropological perspective. A few of you responded saying that you've been interested in checking them out. So here is an idea. I think I learned a lot from them, especially when read in context of Ron Suskind's "Without a Doubt"* article in New York Times magazine that ran last week. I want to discuss them. Who on my friends list wants to read the first book in the next, say, week, and then have a discussion about it on my journal? I know it looks big, but there is margin-and-font padding, and it's easily readable in a day, two days max. If you are interested, sign up in the reply section.
* My favorite part of the article was, like, the dialogue between Neo and Agent Smith:
I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
* My favorite part of the article was, like, the dialogue between Neo and Agent Smith:
I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
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Date: 2004-10-26 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 01:09 pm (UTC)I'm really coming to this unbiased. Reallllly.
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Date: 2004-10-26 01:15 pm (UTC)I promise you a compelling treatise about how AR is like Martha Steward. And a little bit like Willow when she went Dark. Are you a Buffy fan?
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Date: 2004-10-26 01:27 pm (UTC)I am a Buffy fan by association -- I don't watch enough TV to know all the details but I think I would like it. I had an English teacher in high school who pointed Buffy out as the first hollywood Hero myth (Joseph Campbell style) with a girl in the central role. So I guess I'm a buffy fan in principle but not in practice.
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Date: 2004-10-26 01:11 pm (UTC)I'm interested in your book discussion. I'll see if I can find the time.
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Date: 2004-10-26 01:16 pm (UTC)ooo yeah.
Date: 2004-10-26 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 07:30 am (UTC)