To Read & To Write

I don't know how well Shard Cinema (2017) will age compared to Williams' previous two books ( Roman Letters and Combined and Uneven Apocalypse ). However, I do think the theory he provides his readers concerning the contemporary cinematic experience is vital to new interpretations of a world that has become increasingly difficult to conceive of visually. In essence, he writes of a purely visual representation of a kind of momentary halting of time that allows for the movement of abstractions rather than the movement of actual objects; a coming into view of that which has been broken, fractured, severed, and ultimately, shattered. Most of the films he cites are blockbusters that had/have the monetary heft to show their audiences a kind of shattered imaging (it takes a whole lot of money to digitally produce the effect). Interestingly, it seems Williams understands these moments of gradual breakdown - the shift of perspective from "landscape" (or cityscape, etc.) to ...

  While reading Berger's Ways of Seeing for the second time in many years, I reacted less by noting how obvious Berger's arguments were and more by realizing that the text has become somewhat dated. The technology that exists today, especially since the advent of the internet and social media, has become insidiously nuanced and Ways of Seeing had no way to predict that kind of capital evolution in terms of the creation of new ways to exploit the poor through reproduced images, i.e. how advertising now sways the public by manipulating and playing with its fears - if not so much anymore its envy. However, Berger's classic remains a seminal text within Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Berger explains how society has been affected by the transformation of artistic technology, from oil painting, to the camera, to publicity advertising in the modern world, and how that transformation feeds on itself as a way to stabilize and defend the values and ideologies of the wealth...

To put it lightly: every time I've picked up "Roman Letters" since its publication I've been reminded that I'm fully alive, not quite dead yet, and that I hate it. And yet, it is precisely the letters in this book that have urged me continue on, despite all my illnesses, mental and physical, and all the disgusting politics that go with that. With steady words, the stories Williams tells throughout this masterpiece of a text convince me that maybe it's not so bad, maybe it's completely OK to go on living with this hatred of my existence; moreover, that it is necessary for me to unpack what's there, to go in deep into that emptiness, and, for the sake it, become that gorgeous thing like Williams' Napoli... that Italian city that he traverses (Rome and Bologna among others)... a city that is gorgeous, "gut-clenching gorgeous, because it has stopped caring whether or not it exists, but still it does." (81) "Roman Letters" is the ...

Who is Susan Sontag? You may have heard her name before. The first time I heard her name was as an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago while pursuing my Bachelor's Degree in Cultural Studies, probably around 2007. The class was assigned to read Notes on Camp  . I'm not sure I understood then, as I'm not so sure I understand it now, but this is what fascinated me: that an intellectual, an intellectual woman, was writing about culture, specifically commercial  culture in a completely unique way, opening up the realm of criticism to daily observance, witticism, and playful wisdom. At that time, the big buzz around her may have died down, though I doubt it. This was the first time I truly engaged in academia beyond the high school classroom, and the only high school classrooms I cared about were Music, Biology and English. So I had no access to this world up until this point. What I'm getting at: Susan Sontag was never a celebrity to me, I did not have preconceiv...

This is not a review, but more of a synopsis of Susan Sontag’s 2003 book titled “Regarding the Pain of Others”. Highlighted within it are points that I believe to be the most important particularly for figuring out how to think about news in recent years, something that has become more of a problem for me as I’ve matured. A topic that I couldn’t fit into this is regarding advertising images (“Advertising photographs are often just as ambitious, artful, slyly casual, transgressive, ironic, and solemn as art photography”).  In “Regarding the Pain of Others”, Susan Sontag (1933 – 2004) writes about the phenomenon of photography in relation to documenting war. While painting and other forms of art are understood as the creator’s interpretation of the violence of war (for example, Goya did not paint from life, but conjured up the image of war from his experience and view of it: terrible, violent, earth-shattering), the photograph is typically seen as evidence, regarded as matter-of...

Similar in its practical (or tactical, whichever you prefer) aim to perhaps John Berger's " Ways of Seeing"  (1972), Evan Calder Williams' " Combined and Uneven Apocalypse" (2011) lays bare a different understanding of the world: a world in which its subjects can no longer point beyond themselves to any given cause. The apocalypse is here, it has been, and it will be. So now what? First, Williams really wants us to get a handle on what the apocalyptic actually is - on his terms - so that we can understand what it means to become  post-apocalyptic : "... post apocalyptic here does not mean that we have witnessed the destruction of our society or nation. It means what we don't know who are enemies are anymore. The very category of enemy is rendered diffuse, reduced to the bad smell of fear stinking up the place." (p. 55) Williams is interested in the literature, language, and filmic readings of zombie films, films about catastrophe, the t...

(Listen to the audio version of this letter read by Resonance Audio) My short review:  A powerful and passionate letter to all of us in these times of riot, rebellion, and mayhem. Instead of seeing those who dissent the perpetuation of classicism and racism, particularly by the hands of the police, as apart from the whole (indeed, of humanity), Williams asks us, in well reasoned vexation, to take notice of our blind spots and understand how to fathom these chaotic rebellions as natural responses to injustice, greed, and ignorance. Whether you are part of the rebellion or one who witnesses the death and destruction from your velvet couch, the point here is not so much an urge for you to dis/continue setting fires or to move from your meditative position in order to stoke it, but rather to consider the actions leading up to such hellish disruption; a consideration that hopefully leads to a connective point disavowing all the structures set in place that makes class and rac...

“Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable so much as to conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.” Paul Valery’s essay, “Sea Shells”, which, in its Beacon Press Edition, is put beautifully within a red covered and gold titled illustrated book, is, quite simply, a masterpiece of thought. It makes sense that this book would not be classified under philosophical works, but rather a form of (literary) criticism and theory. In it, Valery thinks about seashells. His goal is to write down his thoughts and observations of and about seashells without using any pure framework. Even so, this...

At first “More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales” by Robert Bly (2018) may seem like an over-analysis of children’s stories. Even taken as the psychologically dense stories for adults that they really are, Bly’s writing is a bit jarring at first, to the point of one wondering whether his opinions have come out of unreflective musing, or the thin air, being too far-fetched to be graspable. But rest assured – the man knows damn well that he is right in his thoughts on the power and depth of these tales as pieces of cultural history worth the time of true poetic examination. Readers will pick up on this feeling of righteousness presented within the pages. Slowly, Bly no longer is seen as the crazy professor but instead, a sage of interpretation, believable if only because of an honest to goodness obscurity that finally brings a special common sense grounded in critical thought. Simply, it is hard to detect any of Bly’s ideology at work here – which makes this the perfect book for ...