David Auerbach on literature, philosophy, film, etc.
David Auerbach
Categories
Continuity as Commodity and Fetish
Sherlock Holmes, Marvel Comics, and Doctor Who: three versions of continuity and their problems. The symbiotic relationship between creators and fans yields a false god.
Gore Vidal on Henry Miller
My most vivid memory of Vidal is him hilariously trashing Henry Miller’s Sexus–but really trashing the man, his work, and his very existence.
Heidegger’s Theology of Being
Herman Philipse makes very fine tombstones. This particular tombstone is for Martin Heidegger: a very critical exegesis of his philosophy that ends with a damning verdict.
Middlemarch and Mary Garth
People often forget Mary Garth in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. She is the third heroine of the book, not as idealistic as Dorothea and not as shallow as Rosamond, but wittier and probably smarter than both. Much of the critical work on Middlemarch barely mentions her.
The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of Symbols
In The Stupidity of Computers, I discussed how computers require rigidly defined ontologies, which are then enforced on us. What happens in the collision between slippery life and a fixed ontology? Here is a case ...
Jacob Burckhardt on Amateurism
When it comes to scholarship and criticism, I prefer Jacob Burckhardt’s amateur/specialist dichotomy to Isaiah Berlin’s fox and hedgehog: The word ‘amateur’ owes its evil reputation to the arts. An artist must be a master ...
Jan Assmann on Auschwitz and Guilt
I don’t study ethics much because there is already such a high bar in reaching a minimal level of human decency, so slicing and dicing moral principles feels like buying a fuzzy sweater for a ...
Links
- 50 Watts
- Anecdotal Evidence
- Balaustion
- Bibliographing
- Bifurcated Life
- chakira
- Dilettante Scholar
- Early Modern Whale
- Eudaemonist
- Georgy Riecke
- Obooki
- Paul Raymont
- Pseudopodium
- Slawkenbergius's Tales
- Stochastic Bookmark
- The Idiot and the Dog
- This Public Address
- Three-Toed Sloth
- Times Flow Stemmed
- Waste
- With Hidden Noise
- wood s lot
- Wuthering Expectations
