Sunday, June 12, 2005
Lenin's Book Club. posted by Richard Seymour
I've been passed this book meme by Shuggy.Number of books I own: I'd say it's easily five hundred, and that's a conservative estimate. I'm very impulsive when buying books, and hardly worry if there's not the slighest chance of me reading it beyond a cursory glance. There's always retirement.
Last book I bought: I bought five books yesterday. Samir Amin's Eurocentrism, which has the interesting thesis that Eurocentric ideologies are related to the rise of capitalism, particularly industrial capitalism. Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts, which I seemed to want at some point for some reason. ¡Cochabamba! by Oscar Olivera, a brilliant guide to the protests against privatisation of public utilities in Bolivia. Islam and Modernity by Iftikhar H. Malik, which I'll get round to in good time. At a preliminary fumble through the pages, it looks like it deals with the experience of Muslims in European and American societies. And Parecon by Michael Albert, which doesn't look as good as I hoped it was, but is nevertheless extremely necessary.
Last book I re-read: I used to do this a lot, but haven't done so recently - who has the time? The last time I did, it was The Human Stain by Philip Roth.
Five books that mean a lot to me: What means a lot to me now is not the same as what once meant a lot to me. I suppose I'll never get over the thrill of Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology. Then there's Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Gore Vidals' entire output would have to be in there, but particularly Myra Breckinride/Myron. Edward Said's Orientalism, despite being repetitive, is by far one of the most enlightening books I have read to date. (The recent answer, Occidentalism by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, is a pathetic, putrid effort at moist liberalism. Margalit is, unsurprisingly, a devout liberal interventionist, politically clueless, philosophically unenlightening). Finally, I suppose The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde competes with Richard Ellman's biography of the same, and wins. It occurs to me that the books which mean most, or have meant most to me, aren't necessarily the best books I have read. But that's life.
What the meme should ask is 'what books would you recommend?' In which case, I'd foist Christopher Hitchens' Unacknowledged Legislation on you, Byron's Selected Poems, ditto Shelley, Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism (because you need to know what's wrong with you), The Ticklish Subject by Slavoj Zizek, George Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness - more for the political sharpness than the philosophical exposition, Norman Finkelstein's Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (a kind soul recently sent me his Rise and Fall of Palestine, so I may be yelling my head off about that soon as well). And also Will Self's essays and novels. And The Collected Essays of Dorothy Parker. Some other stuff as well. Come back to me when you've read that lot.