BY THIS SHALL YOU KNOW HIM - JESSE JACOBS BASQUIAT: A GRAPHIC NOVEL - PAOLO PARISI

Two comix I picked up to read on a flight. I’ll take the second one first. BASQUIAT, the comic, is something of a disappointment. Basquiat had an incredible, Zelig-like life. He knew everyone important in a very important time in NYC history. Currently, because macroeconomic forces have remade New York into a sort of boring cruise ship for the global hyper-wealthy, there is a lot of nostalgia (of which I am certainly guilty of as well, not this specific NYC strain but a preference for cities with a level of unpredictability and/or chaos) for this earlier NYC where hip-hop and punk rock rubbed shoulders with art and apartments were so cheap you could buy one with an 8ball and so spacious you could create art. Also, unlike nowadays, you didn’t need to work at all times to pay for the “right” to live in the city, you could fuck around and do graffiti and play in bands and go to parties that Andy Warhol was at. So the book is somewhat successful in capturing this world and mode but it undercuts this with biographical information about Basquiat. Sadly, there isn’t really much there in either category. No more Basquiat info than one could gleam off of Wikipedia, no more stuff about 80s NYC than one absorbed through cultural osmosis. Artwise, it was wise to not seek to replicate Basquiat’s unique splatter-y style. It uses some of the same bold colors but arranged in cleaner, more geometrical shapes. It’s an alright overview but doesn’t go deep enough in the copious text, it should have just been a biography, and the drawing is also not unique enough to justify it being a comic. I will give it credit for reminding me of my favorite SAM0 slogan: AN END TO MINDWASH RELIGION, BOGUS PHILOSOPHIES, NOWHERE POLITICS. 88 of the Same Old Shit

The Jesse Jacobs thing I adored. It is similar in style to Safari Honeymoon, with lots of twisty, interconnecting lines and elaborate shapes. The palate is mostly black green and this wonderful muted purple. The story concerns Gods or god-like figures creating planets and fighting with one another. It managed to be cosmic and trippy without ever being confusing or preachy. This thing really is wonderful to look at and reads quickly so you can spend most of your time with it just looking at the drawings. Keep it up Jesse Jacobs. 99 Space Cubes

MARRIED TO THE MOUSE - RICHARD FOGELSONG

Should have been an article. Well, that’s not totally fair. The book is really well-written and informative and doesn’t seem overstuffed, I would just say I overestimated my interest in Municipal/Disney relations. But I had a rule, or rather a habit, of reading a book about conspiracies or the CIA or something along those lines right before I go to sleep at night. I don’t know, it’s soothing. Anyway, early into this book we find out that Disney employees a relative of OSS founder Bill Donovan who helps Disney employees get fake IDs and backgrounds as they buy land on the cheap in central Florida. It’s a tenuous connection, I know, but that meant I read this before bed over a week or so. And as a resident of Seattle, a town that is constantly fighting with our own giant mega-corporation, Amazon, which seeks to reshape the city in ways the benefit itself, there was a lot to learn. That being said, the situation in Orlando/Central Florida, is much worse than the very bad situation in Seattle. Disney pulled off a God-level finesse in their deal with Orange/Osceola counties that included rights up-to and including the ability to create their own power, including nuclear, power plants. So many areas were lining up for the right to be the East Coast DisneyLand they could get almost anything they wanted. Actually, as a quick aside, the site was almost outside of St. Louis but at a final sort of signing dinner the heir to the Budweiser company got drunk and berated Walt for not letting beer in the park and Walt was personally disgusted and looked elsewhere. But back to Florida, part of these benefits, which included ones they actually used, like the ability to issue tax-free bonds, we given based on the false pretense that EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), the strangest Disney park by a safe margin, would be an actual town where people lived in a Disney-designed Utopia. This didn’t work out because they couldn’t figure out how to get around the pesky if-people-live-here-they-get-to-vote-and-disagree problem but they used this pretense to secure the bag in perpetuity w/r/t Central Florida. They endlessly play them by refusing any sort of public transportation into or out of the park, eventually going as far as building, along with Universal, their own simulacrum downtown area. I’ve actually seen these areas and they are indeed insane. They constantly get the counties to subsidize expensive “public” works programs like building highway exits. Disney, taking a page out of (perhaps even writing, I’m not much of a business historian) corporation handbook makes sure to harp on the jobs their bringing in and the money they spend on local charity but, of course, the jobs are almost all low-wage (often so low the county/state has to provide benefits like food stamps or low-income housing) and the “charity” is in loo of taxes and provides a culture where you “don’t speak ill of the mouse” if you’re a non-profit. It’s a sad tale, there are points where DisneyWorld is really the cash cow of the whole company which was, at times, otherwise unprofitable. The various local “movers and shakers” (the book’s term) are too blinded by the “growth” to realize they’re not getting a real cut. Very interesting from a public policy perspective. Thoughtful, though never in these terms, about the growths and mutations of capitalism and space. Maybe a bit too wonky for me on the sub-committee-meetings-for-special-district-zoning kinda stuff. 1971 miles of swampland.

DARKLY - LEILA TAYLOR

I woke-shamed the Seattle Public Library into getting this. I read somewhere online (Pitchfork?) about this book and checked the SPL website for it. They didn’t have it but this was the same day I realized how to request that the library system acquire certain titles. I believe I recommended 15 or so books, but this is the only title they’ve taken me up on.I believe this is because I wrote “there are very few books of music writing/journalism by Black female writers.” I’m not even totally sure this is true, but it seemed to do the trick. That's’ a long winded way to say that this book may sound like a gimmick (a book by a Black goth girl?!) but it’s some of the best music writing I’ve ever read. And I say that as a not-real fan of Goth music (which Taylor dates from Unknown Pleasures, an album I do love).

Another quick story: recently a friend of mine who grew up in NorCal/PNW was going on his first trip down South (his gf is from Augusta) and was asking if he should spring to stay in the haunted room in this historical hotel. I let him know: it’s the South, they’re all haunted. And this haunting and the horrors associated with American History and Black History and the ways one is allowed to process these horrors in art is the main thrust of the book. Goth is, in Taylor’s words, “anachronistic romanticism, theatrical melancholy, nocturnality, campy morbidity and color black” (she also writes, “Imagine a peacock but all black”) and gets to wrestle with morbid questions about death and evil and horror in  a way that is still somewhat silly or “theatrical”. This frivolity is not extended to Black artists and Black art, which is required to display a sort of authenticity that prevents the sort of exuberance and gaudy melodrama of Goth. Taylor calls identifies a “burden of cool” that restrains the boundaries of Black art (or Black art in the YT imagination). As a sort of mirror image of Taylor (I’m a YT man interested in Black music) I think these observations are deeply true; very few things are as tedious about the “authenticity” of a rapper or blues musician. She’s from Detroit so we get lots of talk of Midwestern/Post-Industrial horror, the segments about ruin porn are amazing. She does point out that Horrorcore, a Detroit export, connects to Goth thematically, but sadly doesn’t linger too long on where the sort of horror (which she defines with at Ann Radcliff quote as, “an unambiguous display of atrocity”) shows up in other genres (tho this book did introduce me to Drexcia and M. Lamar). I loved it. 666 Black velvet gloves.

VEIL - RAFI ZAKARI

125 Total impulse pick-up at the library. I’d heard of this series before, “Object Lessons” which is sort of like the 33 ⅓ collection, but for “objects”. Short, maybe 2500 word essays about things like “The Walkman” or “The remote”, each written by a different author. I haven’t read anything else in this series, nor do I know who Rafi Zakaria is but this was pretty great. The book weaves between personal-life anecdotes from Zakaria, a Pakistani Muslim woman who often does not wear a veil or any sort of head covering. My appearance has never been policed anywhere near this level, nor did I have a great grasp on what the “rules” are for halal head-coverings. Zakaria wisely doesn't get too deep into Islamic theology and jurisprudence about this. The issue is literally 1k+ years old and someone who isn’t enmeshed in the discourse isn’t going to have the ability to really understand the purely religious angle. I will say I was interested to read that certain Islamic scholars consider the Burka, the most emblematic and toxi version of the veil to Western eyes, un-Islamic due to the fact that at the time of the Prophet, only Jewish women wore them in Mecca. Fascinating. The broader discussion of what the veil means and how it’s seen in “Western” society is more a subject I have feelings about and can consider deeply. The issues of being “seen” or not being seen and who controls public space and who is in-charge gain resonance, at least with me, when you consider the panopticon. Are these women able to avoid the often aggressive male-gaze in public, the veil acting as a visual cue that this sort of viewing is off-limits for male outsiders? Are they subjecting themselves to a patriarchal panopticon in their own homes and families? She gets into questions about whether “enlightened” Western governments are liberating or subjecting women when they ban the veil in public spaces. I would say she correctly comes down on the side of “they’re doing this because they want to control the way the public space looks and the sorts of people in it”  rather than “the veil clashes with our deeply held and sincere love/respect for women”. The final move she made, bringing in drones, the other “technology” most associated with Muslim and the Islamic world (esp. The Islamic world of the Western imagination) was the most interesting and provocative to me. The idea that the drone is also a panopticon, reading faces from the sky, identifying people and their movements anywhere in the world, dealing death, and that it is also obsessed with “unmasking” and “identifying” Muslims, who from the Orientalist days of Harems were considered mysterious and unknowable. I don’t believe the book to be “pro-veil” as much as interested in the ways the veil complicated this Western rush to have everyone identified, tracked, monitored. Very thought provoking. 632 Veils

GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER - LIL’ WAYNE

Few careers are as strange and interesting as Lil’ Wayne’s. Lil’ Wayne himself, judging from his lyrics, interviews and album titles ( ex. I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING), is, to say the least, strange and interesting. He has a career that rockets him from inner-city New Orleans to superstardom before he can legally drive. He’s gone through large dry spells and reemerged. His style of rapping completely changed rap; there is no post-Wayne rapper who isn’t Wayne’s child.  His relationship with Baby and Ca$h Money in general is fascinating and bizarre. His persona and lifestyle alone are book worthy. He seems like a sort of Tasmanian devil, running around the world, giving and receiving oral sex with abandon, drinking swimming pools of lean and smoking weed by the acre, covering himself with tattoos (he was an early face-tattoo pioneer), croaking through interviews and never, never, ceasing to record. Sadly, this book covers none of this. There is a brief intro at the beginning explaining that he’s releasing the book because he’s pissed at Ca$h Money and wants to connect with his fans. Sadly, this would have been the perfect opportunity to write a tell-all about his whole life. For it to be what I want it to be, he’ll need to be angry at Baby when he writes it.  He spends much of his time in jail reading SCAR TISSUE by Anthony Keidis and one can’t but wish he’d written a book in that vein. Where you just go from crazy story to crazy story. But whatever, you get what you get and someday someone will write a great Wayne bio. In the meantime, this suffers because jail is boring and repetitive. Most days Wayne eats junk food and makes phone calls. He’s in the protected custody wing of Rikers so there’s not much action. At one point a guy yells at Wayne and calls him a junkie and threatens to hurt him and he’s immediately transferred out of their unit. Wayne believes he gets special treatment since he has the ability to sue. He seems correct, at one point, when a guard finds an mp3 player the warden comes to talk to Wayne personally, which I have to imagine is unusual. Otherwise, we do get a dribble of weird Wayne info. Guards bring him homemade food, but Wayne tells us his mother told him to never eat another woman’s red gravy. We learn he hates Duke. A female fan who is a lawyer but not Wayne’s lawyer bluffs her way in to visit him.  It really fucks him up when he finds out a girl he’s slept with had slept with Drake in the past. I found this very strange. I must assume there is enormous overlap between Drake and Wayne’s partners. But Wayne mostly keeps to himself so not much happens. He works on suicide watch and witnesses a prison wedding. He uses the word “yeah” a lot. It’s annoying the book is formatted to look like a fake journal to the point where they use a faux-handwriting font that is silly and hard to read. But the book is short and I assume this was a way to pad it out. The book does not go far to answer one of the deepest questions of Wayne’s career thus far (Wayne is rap’s Bob Dylan, a conversation for another post, so I assume we’re going to get many eras and epochs): what did prison do to Wayne’s rapping. Before he went in, he truly was the best rapper alive. It was insane. He would drop top 5 mixtapes constantly. He was so much better than everyone and he was producing more than anyone else. After Carter III and jail, he hasn’t gotten that back. There’s nothing in this book that suggests why. Maybe it was a natural burnout from the drugs and lifestyle (this book does not address the withdrawls he must have felt in jail or tell us how he prepared so as to avoid them) maybe jail really did mess with his head. Maybe everyone else caught up while he was in there. Either way, we get no answers here. As alway, Abolish Prison. 2007 Rikers

HOW TO MURDER YOUR LIFE - CAT MARNELL

Recently, a certified-by-the-MacArthur-folks genius, Lisa Dugaard, proposed a unique program to be piloted in Seattle. Seattle, like all of Amerika is in the throws of a overdose/drug crisis. In King County alone there are more deaths from drugs than there are days in the year. While Heroin/Fentanyl gets the coverage (2018, the most recent year we have data for, 67% of fatal overdoses involved an opiate) Seattle also has a huge meth problem. The meth problem is compounded by not having a good treatment. If you’re addicted to an opiate, you can get into Methadone/Suboxone treatment; there is no equivalent for meth (or any stimulant) addiction. Dugaard was trying to change that by suggesting a program that uses a replacement approach, giving meth addicts Ritalin prescriptions to try to mitigate some of the harm. The program didn’t get funded so we’ll never know how well this would work. Cat’s book is a convincing testament to how regular, legal access to safe drugs would reduce suffering and help addicts. That’s a really roundabout way to get at the genre of this book. It’s a memoir but it’s also a drug-tale and a party-girl diary and a first hand account of major magazines (and publishing in general) trying to switch to an internet model. In terms of the drug stuff, for a book called HOW TO MURDER YOUR LIFE her drug seems to be almost all positive. Or, put another way, her privilege (which she occasionally acknowledges, parenthetically in the book, however, I don’t think she gets how different her life is than other speed addicts and why) acts as a powerful shield from the really gnarly drug-chaos. The most obvious, and the reason I talked about that failed pilot program, is her access to legal drugs. She’s rich and YT, her dad’s a doctor and she grew up knowing how to navigate the mental health system. She has health insurance. She’s able to keep a legal, cheap stash of amphetamines, benzos and other assorted pharmacological goodies. She doesn’t have to score on the street (she goes with a friend to buy PCP in a bad neighborhood once. Nothing happens but the whole idea of going into a housing project to score, basically drug addict 101, is foreign and scary to her), she doesn't have to worry about getting bad shit, she doesn’t need to worry about getting cut off without warning. While she’s obviously still an addict, she even gets the classic “Speed Spiders' ' hallucination, her drug being sanctioned by the government and her high-status as a person spare a lot of the really bad shit. But shit really works out for Marnell. She gets into good school, due to performance-enhanced grades and connections, finds great jobs in a cool industry quickly, has her apartment and living subsidized by her parents, allowing her to live a cool NYC life, and has understanding bosses that encourage rehab and keep her job for her and are outrageously understanding. Not that she even needs this career support; as she points out in the book, she becomes more famous and in demand as she begins to let her drug use into her beauty writing. Her writing itself, I found propulsive and easy to read. Maybe too jokey at times, especially the pop-culture references that are stale as fuck. She also really overuses the word “shambolic”. As a drug-memoir, it really makes drugs seem like a great career move/lifestyle choice.  Her life doesn’t seem “murdered” it seems improved and improbably blessed by the end. So, sidestepping the drug stuff, as a general “Party Girl '' memoir, it is slightly more successful. That being said, I wish it was dishier and/or more lurid. We hear about “celebrities' ' at these parties but she doesn’t name them. We don’t get lots of crazy party stories beyond, “I went to a lot of parties and did lots of drugs during this time.” Tell me about the crazy shit you got into off these drugs. There’s something terrifying when I think about being female-bodied, attractive, young, and very high at these parties. You’re prey in a way I don’t experience and I find chilling and I wish she’d explored more. She off offhandedly mentions people trying to fuck her while she’s asleep but doesn’t talk about the experience beyond, “it happened.” But either way, it read quickly, I finished it in a day. It’s got some funny stuff about magazine writing and how lucrative it used to be before the web. A girl I went to high school with is currently writing a memoir about being a Party Girl, so I wanted to read this one first, since it’s the most famous recent example of the genre. I would smoke PCP with Cat, but I’m not sure I’d read another book of hers. 2001 dipped Newports.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM - DAVID HARVEY

This book is also the third in a series. Between this one, CAPITALIST REALISM and THE POORER NATIONS I’ve been doing more economic reading and trying to understand where we’re at. I’m a big believer in the idea that economics is basically a psuedo-science, or, more precisely, economics often uses the language and positioning of a “real” science (and by this I just mean a discipline that relies primarily on the scientific method, something that social sciences aren’t really able to do) to obscure what are actually social and political concerns. CAPITALIST REALISM is probably my favorite out of the bunch, mostly because it’s about how it feels to live under this current regime (which all three books date to the mid 70’s). The other two are more technical and persuasive and take on how the current economic model works and how it got put in place. ABHN is simply a POORER NATION but mostly about the US and China. It was actually the China stuff that I found most interesting and persuasive. Typically western writers, left and right, speak of China as a monolith or as being fully represented by the statements of the government and ignore internal disagreements and  even the variety of views within the Chinese Communist Party. Harvey gets deep into it. He’s a communist himself so he’s able to simplify Neoliberalism down into an attempt to restore upper-class power, which is a compelling and simple way to look at it. I’ve read a lot about this topic so I didn’t need too much convincing; I’m largely on Harvey’s side. I do detect a hint of a moralizing that I find conservative. For instance, he talks about how Neoliberalism privileges short contracts and constant flux which, when applied to our personal lives (more the territory of CAPITALIST REALISM) erodes traditional relationships, like marriages. I view this as a positive or neutral development but Harvey would probably argue I’ve let postmodernism melt my brain and trick me. He might be right. Tho, he also occasionally comes down on the sex-trade as specifically exploitive and bad in a way that, when seen in the global context he rightly insists on, I can only read as reflecting a conservative squeamishness. But these are minor quibbles. The book is really good and I would really recommend it for people who are starting to think about this stuff. I really enjoyed the passages about information technology being the “privileged technology of neoliberalism” since I deal with the nonsense-fallout from this reality daily. You wouldn’t believe how much data has to be collected and analyzed to help people. This book is also interesting to read in a historical context since it was published in 2005 and therefore written before the housing crisis, the most serious test of Neoliberalism hegemony in the last 50 years. Harvey doesn’t predict a housing crisis exactly, tho he does talk about the rapid, insane debt-financed spending in the USA and discusses what will happen when this dynamic, inevitably, blows up. “It could be that the US ruling elite has calculated it can survive a global financial crisis in good shape and use it to complete its agenda of total domination. But such calculations could be a monumental error.” Sadly, they were not. The $-elite were able to do exactly what that first sentence predicts, Harvey was overly-optimistic and the situation is somehow worse than when the book was written. Still, a quick good overview of the world we live in, which were going to have to think deeply about if we want to get ourselves out. 1 Totalizing system.

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON - DAVID McGOWAN

The final in a trilogy of CIA books that I got into recently. This one plus POISONER-IN-CHIEF and CHAOS. All very focused on the 60’s and made possible (each to their own extent, some of these books are more fact-based than others) by recent declassifications since the 60’s is now so long ago. The War on Terror will be a fertile ground to write horrifying books along these lines, exposes of the evil/shady shit the CIA gets up to. Just this morning I read an article in the Guardian about how one of the founders of the YT terrorist organization The Base was(is?) involved with military intelligence. And, of course, the current most interesting conspiracy, Epstien and his role with various intelligence agencies. It’s always hard to tell where any of this fits on the truth/fiction spectrum, and, to finish my digression and get back to this book, WSITC falls heavily on the entertaining fiction side. I read this book, like the Manson book, before falling asleep at night, which is the ideal context to encounter these ideas. McGowan has a conversational, snarky style that is slightly annoying but read really quickly. If you don’t like the current conspiracy, wait 2 paragraphs and he’s on to another, each so juicy and dense, they warrant their own book. Or rather, it would take a book length explanation to convince me that most of this stuff is “true”. The broad outline is that the Hippy/folk-rock/flower-child counterculture was a PsyOps program, run by the CIA, to nuder the anti-war movement/radical left. In its specifics, it’s dense. Jim Morrison’s dad was the commanding officer at the Gulf of Tonkin incident (I looked this up and it’s true), ipso facto, CIA plant. I’m very amenable to this idea, only a cop could write poetry as bad as Morrisons. But on the other hand, I’m very pro-Frank Zappa, and this book comes down hard on him. His father worked at Edgewood as a chemicals weapons guy and he was, apparently, personally right-wing. Also a CIA plant. Same with Captain Beefheart (conducting cult research). Same with the Police and Sting. Same with Jack Nicholson It is weird that McGowan seems so surprised that so many Baby Boomers would have parents who had been in the military. Or that rich and famous people would have found ways to avoid the Draft and/or consequences for misbehavior (a lot is made of the fact that so many of these young musicians and actors aren’t drafted and are never arrested for their public drug use). Or that it seems nefarious when people living wild lives die bizarrely and suddenly. I’m not going to say I was “convinced” by as much of this book as I was by the other 2 in this little series. Additionally, I don’t like this type of music, era of music too much. I like Zappa, as I said, Beefheart, some of Gram Parsons and that’s about it for me. I don’t have too much of a taste for CSNY or the Byrds or the Eagles or The Mamas and the Papas and I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if I was more into those bands. But I like this sort of paranoid freak-out, it’s a dope genre. Finally, I’m very pleased I learned, from this book, a new word: spychologist. 70 PsyOps

CAPITALIST REALISM: IS THERE NO ALTERNATIVE - MARK FISHER

Damn this slaps. This was a library book but I’m tempted to offer to buy a copy for anyone who wants one. I’m not sure how many people read these things (zero?) but if you read this, and want a copy, DM yr boi and I’ll send it to you It’s short and manifesto-y, a quick read (80 pages, not too jargon-y). I actually intended to read the whole thing over one double shift at my work but shit got too crazy with the Narcan and whatnot so I had to polish off the last dozen pages the following morning. In a unique twist, I know about this book because of the publisher. Or more specifically, the publisher’s podcast. Zer0 books is a theory/short-fiction/lefty publishing imprint run by a guy named Doug Lain who’s podcast, Diet Soap, I used to love (I don’t think it exists anymore, or maybe it’s behind a paywall or something) and he was constantly talking up Mark Fisher and this book in particular. Now I see why. It’s all hits. This book is basically an expansion of that old Jameson quote about how it’s easier to consider the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The book is also helpful and illuminating w/r/t the connections between neoliberal capitalism (which is basically interchangeable with the term “Capitalist Realism”, there differences are minor and illuminated in the book) and the mental health crisis and widespread despair we all feel. The sense that we have that the current system is both hopeless and endless (either endless in the traditional sense, or endless in the sense that we’re going to destroy the environment in a way profound enough to “end” modernity) is, to Fisher, the defining feature of Capitalist Realism.  He keeps it short, the way he discusses pop culture is illuminating, he doesn’t just seem to be showing off how obscure a reference he can muster. I found the stuff about HEAT very helpful. The idea that we went from these old world connected, family-based almost glamorous criminals of THE GODFATHER, or GOODFELLAS to the disconnected, atomized, professional and unfeeling criminals of HEAT who don’t know one another, have no greater loyalty and are interested only in the $. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book with such clarity. I’m not sure what more I can say besides, “same”. It’s a bad sign, as far as I can tell, that Fisher killed himself. It’s that DavidFosterWallace-feeling of groking what an author is saying about modern life and how sad and alienating it can be only to find out that the author didn't seem to find a way out of the bind they were so good at articulating. 1979 Alternatives to Capitalism. 

CITY OF SACRIFICE: THE AZTEC EMPIRE AND THE ROLE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVILIZATION - DAVID CARRASCO

AVAILABLE

The Aztec kick continues. I think I’mma read one more book on this topic, now that I’m all deep into this. Unlike THE FIFTH SUN this is not a history. Carrasco is not a historian, he’s a scholar of religion, a discipline I think of as more speculative and hermetic. I feel like I trust Townsend more, overall, since she’s taking a wider view of the nature of the contact between Europe and Mesoamerica. Townsend’s more critical of the various codexes and Spanish accounts that exist whereas Carrasco is more interested in analyzing them and creating theories of religion and space. For example, Carrasco treats as plausible the story about Montezuma mistaking Cortes for Quetzalcoatl, a piece of Spanish propaganda that I thought Townsend did a good job debunking. Nor does he get into the problems surrounding the term “Aztec”. But Carrasco isn’t interested in the “truth” of this encounter, insofar as literal facts are concerned, he’s project is to try to reconstruct the Aztec religious worldview and show us something about how cosmo-magical deposition can be read into the physical of a city. The whole thing was very interesting, I was a bit bored by talk of creating “magic circles” with movement around the city, this seemed connected to some larger Religious Studies debate that I’m fully on the outside of, but a few concepts really jumped out to me.  First, the whole heart-ripping thing, that lurid ceremony that occupies such a large chunk of people’s conceptions of the Aztecs, is fascinating to think of as a representative and symbolic of an empire doing almost the exact opposite of the empire I live in. What people think of as the Aztec Empire is more correctly understood as the triple-alliance of Mexico-Tenochtitlan , Texcoco and Tlacopan, who over a course of about 100 years before Spanish contact, expanded an Empire in what is now central Mexico that reached, through allies, and defeated enemies and subjugated populations,  to both coasts. What is interesting, and to Western understanding horrifying, is the obsession with not killing one’s enemies on the battlefield but rather capturing them in order to bring them to the exact center, both literally and mythologically (the temple is on the site of the vision of the Eagle eating the snake that remains on the Mexican flag), in order to use them in a series of ceremonies, culminating with their hearts being pulled out on top of the tallest man-made structure in the hemisphere. What I find fascinating is how much work and effort was put into this display of war and violence at the center of your social structure. Currently, I live as a citizen of what is to the current world what the Aztec triple-alliance was to central Mexico in the 15th century, namely the largest, most violent empire. What is interesting to me is the extent that America chooses not to center the violence being done at the frontier but rather to do the opposite, to push away and disengage from that violence as much as possible. Newspapers won’t show bloody carnage, during the Bush years one couldn’t even film the flag-draped coffins of service members. Osama wasn’t captured to be tried and killed under our laws and on our land, he was killed (on camera but we’ll never see it) and dumped in the ocean and erased. The violence isn’t here, it’s out there. We no longer need to demonstrate our empire’s strength, by stacking skulls in a massive, fearsome tzompantli, it’s taken as a given. Perhaps this very belief that war was sacred and the point was to use it as a tool to fulfill various religious and cultural obligations rather than a true, annihilating fight to the death that the Europeans were more familiar with that gave them (the Europeans) the advantage.

I would have liked to see more comparisons between the Mexica specific religious beliefs versus the beliefs of other groups in the area. My understanding is that these ethnic city-states each had a pantheon that partially overlapped with others. Tlaloc, for instance, seems to be a very old and widely worshipped figure. Was adding the war-god Huītzilōpōchtli a major turning point, since it seems to be a Mexica thing. Your neighbors taking up the war/human-sacrifice god as their patron deity must have been seen as a really bad sign. In fact, it seems telling that the Temple Mayor features 2 shrines on top, Huītzilōpōchtli to the south and Tlaloc to the north. Seeking to architecturally reinforce that this new hummingbird god was the equal of a deity that preexisted Aztec culture by at least 800 years.

The next Aztec book I’m trying to cop is about Tezcatlipoco, to me, the most confusing god in the Aztec pantheon. This book has an amazing chapter on his celebration, Toxcatl. This year long event requires selecting, from the war captives, the most beautiful, tall, articulate and perfect warrior. He lived as a in ixiptla in teteo (a person acting as the human embodiment of the god, they’re used for multiple gods and used in multiple ceremonies) for Tezcatlipoco. He learns high diction and to play the flute and goes around the city being showered in gifts and treated like a god for a year. He is given 4 wives, who are themselves in ixiptla in teteo for various female sexuality and fertility goddess. Finally, he travels to Chalco, walks up the pyramid of his own free-will, breaking a flute on each step before being sacrificed then flayed, is skin placed on next year's selection. That’s an amazing story. Where is the movie about that guy’s year? Maybe center it around the last pre-contact year, the man dies not knowing the entire world he’s giving his life to is about to be irreparably destroyed. This is also a good candidate for the books about Mexico City/Mexico (my list: Savage Detectives, Down and Delirious in Mexico City, The Story of My Teeth, Labyrinth of Solitude, History of the Conquest of New Span and one really great overview of Mexican History I read, really long, that now I can’t remember the name of). The relation between violence and religion and civilization is a dark corner to poke around in I’m glad Carrasco is making headway. 1521 Hearts offered to the fifth sun. 

SONGLINES - BRUCE CHATWIN

A wonderful failure of a book and exactly what I needed to read right now. The book is nominally a sort of travelogue/investigation of Australia and the Aboriginal culture that he’s fascinated with. What makes the book a failure is that it seems to be the remains of a much longer book about nomadism and humanity in general. I know because one of my best friends has an English Masters and wrote his thesis on Chatwin that he (Chatwin) spent much of his life obsessing over nomads, visiting them around the world, living as a sort of nomad himself. The book could certainly be knocked for not knowing very much about Aboriginal culture and Songlines themselves, which are fascinating and I’d love to hear more about from a more academic/indigenous source. It is clear though that Chatwin takes them seriously in a way that other YTs don’t. The way he ruminates on their meaning and their use and the way they represent a vast human project, like a pyramid built with just words and songs, is interesting and admirable and it’s always important to remember that the greatest and most monumental human accomplishments aren’t the largest/oldest buildings. But the book isn’t really about that, by the middle he’s breaking off into his larger theories about human settlement. He does one of my favorite things and just lists quotes about the human need for movement and the despotism of settlement. I feel this urge and this shit is pretty close to my heart. The idea of ethical nomadism or what it means to live an unfixed life is something I think about all the time. I love the way he was able to cannibalize what must have been this huge labor of love, a lifetime’s work, that turned out to be unreadable and then, instead of freezing with despair, condensed it into this perfect little ode to movement. Shout out to Nick to putting me on to this. Endless Songlines. 

FIFTH SUN - CAMILLA TOWNSEND

Fucking amazing. Very, very helpful and insightful. As someone who’s been interested in “Aztec” (you can tell the book is on the right track by using the introduction to point out that there never was a group that called themselves that and the word most people are looking for when they say Aztec is Mexica) for as long as I can remember and who lived in Mexico City, the fabled Tenochtitlan, and who spend countless hours at the various museums and temple ruins thinking about what this world must have been like, this book is a real godsend. I’ve read countless other accounts, including the first-hand Spanish ones as well as more scholarly histories but this is the clearest and most illuminating one I’ve read. The book traces the Mexica people specifically but the larger central Mexican world from early human settlement to about 100 years after Cortez. It really focuses on about a 200 year span that places Cortez right in the middle. You often think about the “Aztec” as being a static timeless empire, hated by those around them until the Spanish showed up and upended everything. This book does a good job showing how recent their accent had been and how things worked more generally in their world. The real insight is the number of Nauhl sources Townsend is able to use, as a speaker, and the appendix at the end, where she explains where the various sources come from and how much she trusts them and why, is some of the best stuff. I won’t rehash the whole book but I’ll point out some highlights. La Malinche, come off as one of the most vital people in human history, given how in the right place at the right time and being exactly the right person, given the languages she already knew, (and you have to keep in mind that the elites in this world spoke a separate version of Nauhl that she also knew) and how quickly she was able to pick up Spanish. Even her name itself is interesting. The Spanish called her Marina, the natives had no “r” sound so called her Malina+tzin (which is an honorific), the Spanish assumed that was her name but since they didn’t have a “tz” sound they settled on Malinchi/Malinche. One of the most important people in human history’s name is a the result of a sort of cross-cultural game of telephone. I was also taken by the story of Paquiquineo who was a kidnapped kinfolk of Powhatan (in Virginia) who lived in Spanish, learned Spanish, was sent to Mexico City and saw how the Spanish were treating the Natives and eventually convinced the Spanish to take an expedition North to the Chesapeake bay, with him as a translator. At which point he convinced the Natives to kill all the Spanish and returned to live with his family. The Spanish decided these northern Indians weren’t worth it, leaving an opening for the English to set up Jamestown. There’s a lot of wonderful stuff about pre-Colombian Political history though sadly less about the Nahua religious worldview, which Townsend points out what the heaviest target of Spanish oppression. Townsend does this strange thing where she more than once credits the European advantage with 10k of settlement in Europe vs. only about 3k in the New World which is a strange way to explain the lopsidedness of what happened. Especially since it doesn’t seem that amount of settlement equals military might. We aren’t all under the sway of the Aboriginals, despite their 60k of settlement. It seems much more likely that they, again and again, underestimated their brutality, despite being from brutal societies themselves. It seems like, again and again, the Natives assumed that these knew Spanish would be powerful players in the complicated violent world of allegiances and subjection that already existed. I don’t think they could have envisioned the genocide, mass rape and cultural annihilation that the Spanish had in mind. The sections about how the Spanish ruled the central valley after the initial conquest were also illuminating and new to me. I finished reading this book on a beach near La Paz, Baja California Sur. La Paz was one of the last places that Cortez “discovered” in Mexico, still pushing west, still murderously obsessed with gold. 1519 altepetls

THE POORER NATIONS: A POSSIBLE HISTORY OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH - VIJAY PRASHAD

I don’t remember exactly why I chose this book to read, it must have come from something else, it’s reasonably obscure (tho it does have a Chomsky quote on the cover) and somewhat technical (tho it does it’s best to avoid the econ trap of obscuring moral questions with math). As someone who’s lived in the 3rd world and aspires to do so again I found the early sections, the sections about the history, helpful. I’m more familiar, due to recent reading, with the more colonial/earlier segments on the history between the “West” and the rest of the world. I’m always down for some intellectual history so tracing the idea of the “Washington Consensus” or “Neoliberalism” is appealing to me. It’s basically the history of a project that seeks to arrange the world in such a way that the elite get everything imaginable but they also skirt rebellions and dissent. What became most clear to me is the way in which the “unfinishedness” of Capitalism or Neoliberalism is a good faint away from actually changing anything. Since you’re always adjusting rates and opening new markets and reforming land agreements you never allow the subalterns to complain that this isn’t working. Of course it’s not working yet! We’ve got more technocratic tinkering to do, hold tight. I was of course taken by the sections about NGOs, since I have a lot of experience with them both here in Amerika and abroad. Prashad does nail the way in which they, “depoliticize a target population by concentrating on delivering goods rather than on social transformation.” I feel that tension at my current job. Like most communists (and, to be fair, leftists as a whole) he doesn’t have an answer or a very convincing answer for that issue. Also, he does the communist thing where he’ll declare “the African peasantry” as insufficiently politically engaged or something equally broad and, I would argue, unhelpful. It is in the final sections, where Prashad talks about the future where he gets off track. Climate Change is barely mentioned in the book but it’s about to totally upend the relationship between 1st and 3rd world nations (fun fact: Mbuto Miland, a Tanzanian diplomat coined the phrase 4th world to draw attention to the world’s indigenous population and the ways in which their treatment is both shitty and similar around the globe). But, very soon (now actually) the physical changes the world will undergo is going to send millions into a migration. It’s going to fuck up farming and fishing. It’s going to change what parts of the world are habitable and desirable. The book does a great job chronicling the ways in which the Global South have tried to form political solidarity and the ways that this fell apart. What does a nation like China have in common with somewhere like Zambia? In fact, there’s a whole long chapter about the relationship between these large nations, aka the “locomotives of the south” (China, India, etc.), and the 3rd world as a whole. As we move forward we need to begin to envision solidarities that will minimize the global catastrophe that is coming. Or figure out ways to make sure the catastrophes are felt primarily by those responsible i.e. the elite in the 3rd world and basically all of the 1st. I believe the model of aid and development is on its way out but this book is a bit slow on what’s going to replace it. Prashad has a really wide range of examples and quotes and the book is lucid and interesting. I would encourage anyone who is interested in building a non-hell world. 33 LDCs

CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC - CLAUDIA RANKINE

I guess I should read more current poetry? I got this because I was hearing about it again as I read over these “best book of the decade” lists and I remember what a hubbub it created when it dropped in 2014. At that time it seemed outrageously timely; like Ta-Nehisi Coates here was a “new” writer writing about race and Amerika and policing right at a moment when all of those fault-lines seemed particularly volatile. I’m not sure why I didn’t read it at the time. Actually, I’ve certainly read the stanza: 

because white men can’t

police their imaginations

black people are dying

That sentiment was all over at the time, but I was unaware of the pedigree. As a YT man it was devastating then and now. The terroristic incidents, from the Baltimore Uprising, to Trayvon Martin to the London Riots to Stop-and-Frisk and on, sickeningly and indefinitely, are addressed directly. Rankine coins the phrase, “wrongfully ordinary” to sum up the sensation. Rankine chooses a Chris Marker, San Soleil epigraph to begin the book which had me sold from the jump. That’s a top 5 movie for me and the connection is so clear throughout. You can easily imagine these poems being read over the footage were all so familiar with from the aforementioned incidents, in fact that’s exactly what was going on in my, and I expect all, readers’ heads. Very moving overall, I was able to read it in 2 long sittings and really lock in. I was really touched by the sections towards the end about the nature and prevalence of injury, obviously a constant obsession of mine given my work. I’m sorry I waited so long to read this but I’m glad to see it’s getting the respect it deserves. I guess I should pay attention the contemporary poetry scene more closely. 2014 Citizens

BAD GATEWAY - SIMON HANSELMANN

I’ve been on a bit of a comics run. 5 of the last 10 books I read before this were comics. I would argue it is because the bookbooks I’m reading now are pretty heavy (one about the economic history of the 3rd world, one about the history of the Aztecs and CITIZEN, that poem from a few years back) but that actually doesn’t track since BAD GATEWAY is as emotionally intense as anything. It does read fast tho, I finished it in one sitting on a rainy afternoon. I’ve been reading in the Megg, Mogg and Owl-a-verse for years now and it’s really cool to see it reach a sort of “stage 2”. Before, when I mostly read it on the internet, it seemed kinda like a daily strip or like a sitcom, in the sense that the relationships seemed static. The characters were these funny, sad, druggy misfits who got into predicaments (and the genius of the strip was/is the ease and speed with which Hanselmann toggles from funny/sad) but basically ended up in the same place. However, now it appears that this stew of stoner-life has congealed into a more traditional story, with arcs and a single main character (as opposed to being about the group). In the last book Owl showed the sort of insight into his own character and situation (w/r/t his relationship to Megg) that would make a back-to-normal reset impossible, so in this book his absent. I believe the same thing is about to happen to Mogg. Mogg and Megg’s toxic relationship is the main focus of this boo and we get so much more of Megg I assume the next book is going to feature her more exclusively (perhaps as single and dating). Hanselmann does such a good job rendering  Megg and Mogg’s dynamic. They are so angry and hurt with each other but so numb and drugged and scared to confront one another they’re trapped in a very specific and very familiar type of hell. The Werewolf Jones stuff is also slightly deepened in this volume. Typically, his just comic relief and is my favorite, but this issue we saw him as more complex and more human (literally, I think this is the first time we’ve seen him in his non-wolf form), at least briefly. Excellent. 69 Tears.

STUNT - MICHAEL DEFORGE

Damn, the library really stays on top of DeForge. This is another volume he, apparently, put out this year, tho it is very different from Leaving Richard’s Valley. The most obvious difference is the length. LRV was over 400 pages and drawn daily, this thing is tiny (both in dimension and length) and can be finished in about 15 mins. Additionally, while LRV is stylistically flatter or more normal than what I typically expect of DeForge, STUNT goes off. The art is amazing, everyone has this Gumby quality that tracks with a story about feelings of malleability and morphing. The colors in a limited pallet but very well used. The story itself was pretty straight forward but it paid off well. It’s basically about a depressed Stunt-man who’s asked to fill-in for more and more of the Star’s life. It’s very well contained, the stakes and weirdness increase throughout the story and I enjoyed the ending (even if it was a little predictable). My only complaint would be that the book itself wasn’t physically larger so I could enjoy the drawings. Keep it up SPL, keep us well supplied with DeForge. 1 Sad man.

MARY WEPT OVER THE FEET OF JESUS: PROSTITUTION AND RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE IN THE BIBLE - CHESTER BROWN

Still on my God shit. This was an impulse grab at the library but it does seem to be in line with the last book. I’ve read some other Brown books, though not his weird early stuff, actually all the stuff I’ve read has been really square. Even the previous book which was about being a John, called PAYING FOR IT, was remarkably restrained given the subject manner. It was clear reading that book that Brown’s thought a lot about sexwork and sexworkers  and tho I disagree with some of his conclusions (he is a libertarian and I have a much more pessimistic view of the market) it is clear that he’s a deep thinker on the subject and he’s refreshingly candid about his experience. Often when reading something “academic” or “policy driven” about a lurid subject, like drugs or sexwork or serious mental illness, you get the sense that the author has no real experience with the subject, just a lot of booklearnin’. I experience this constantly in my work. Brown has clearly read deeply about the subjects he cares about and is willing to discuss how these theories play out in his actual life. What I did not know is that Brown is really into the Bible and Christian history. This book is a comic retelling of a handful of biblical stories all of which revolve around prostitution or sex in some way (except for the Cain and Abel story, which is first). The retelling are simply illustrated and cleanly drawn-out. There are some differences between these versions and the canonical biblical versions but Brown really dives into this in a long afterwards and notes sections. This is where it becomes clear that Brown is pretty obsessed with the early church and the bible. He sites dozens of books. He goes deep on the etymologies of certain Greek and Hebrew words (the true sign of serious biblical scholarship, it never ceases to amaze me that “Christians” don’t think they should learn Greek) he gives us alternate versions from non-canonical texts, we get his opinion on various Biblical theories. My favorite are A) Mary Magdalene’s (who Chester and I agree is also Mary of Bethany) feet-anointing ceremony was sexual in nature since she was a prostitute (Brown gets deep into this), a woman’s hair was thought of as very sexual at the time (and is still in large portions of the world) and “feet” was a then-common euphemism for a penis. B) Mary, Mother of Jesus, was a prostitute. This Brown based on the unknown father of her child as well as a long genealogy at the beginning of Matthew that lists women, which is very unusual, and 4 women (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba) who people familiar with the Old Testament would know engaged in some sort of prostitution or prostitution-adjacent activity. There’s also debate over the Greek word that gets translated as “Virgin” for Mary. All very interesting, I would have just preferred Brown writing some Biblical essays, he’s well read and highlights some interesting theories. Overall, quick and good. 3 Marys.

THE BOOK OF J - DAVID ROSENBERG & HAROLD BLOOM

The Harold Bloom death rereads continue apace. This time, perhaps his second most famous, the Book of J. Well, it isn’t really a Bloom book, it’s rather a new translation of the J writer sections of the Torah from the Hebrew scholar David Rosenberg. Bloom provided commentary before and after. Full disclosure, I skimmed some of the essays at the end of the book. It’s a lot and, in true Bloom fashion, it’s mostly comparing characters to Shakespeare. But you get great Bloomism too, like he’s convinced the J is a woman. Actually, he goes far enough to name a specific woman in Solomon’s court. He also claims that YHWH is an all time great literary character, in a vein that includes King Lear and Freud’s Superego. Tho, I will say that treating YHWH as a character in a story makes more sense than thinking of him as a peerless god. He changes his mind, people argue with him, his motivations are frequently unclear, he never seems too interested in “teaching lessons” in a manner we typically think of as Godly. As a child, I always found Old Testament God off-putting and repellent. And for good reason, Ol’ Testament God is a real bummer. Bloom helpfully points out that part of this is because YHWHism replaces many gods, who represent different ideas and viewpoints, with a single God that is supposed to be everything. This changes the cosmic relationship of man to God(s). When there are many gods, mankind’s place is to navigate these (literally) timeless obligations and alliances and really think about which gods they want to worship and in what way. Monotheism proposes that God is a parent, you are a child, and that’s that on that. I’ve never found this set-up very satisfying. YHWH is more interesting when he’s one of several gods with his own personality and quarks. By the time he’s in the “real” bible he’s flat, boring and cruel. 7 Sky-Gods

MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE - THOMAS LIGOTTI

Man, when you hear the phrase “corporate horror” and the name Thomas Ligotti together, one can’t help but be excited. My brother recommended this to me. I believe he called it a novel, which is wrong. It’s 3 stories, basically a novella and two short stories, that all center around corporations and business and involve cosmic horror. I have only limited experience in the sort of Dilbert-style office shenanigans psychosexual, sadomasochistic power-games that such a setting inevitably engenders but I do share Ligotti’s loathing of meetings. Actually, that’s a huge overstatement, I don’t loathe anything as much as Ligotti loathes everything. I was a touch disappointed that he chose to go the obvious route and centers around a laid-off employee (an angry middle-aged YT guy) committing a mass shooting. Obviously, galactic horror intervenes and everything gets all cosmic and Lovecraft-y but the bones are pretty basic. It involves a lot of punishing enemies with thematically resonate torments; I’ll bet Se7en is Ligotti’s favorite movie. The title story is, like I said, a novella and takes up almost all of the book. The other two short stories at the end are both good but not top Ligotti. The middle story is about a evil yellow smog in a thinly veiled Detroit called, “Murder City”. Over the past few days I’ve really been listening to a lot of Rio Da Yung OG, who’s from Flint, along with a lot of other current Michigan rappers so I’m very in the headspace to consume art about how murderous Detroit is. Rio’s work is equally pessimistic but could certainly use a cosmic element. The final story is quite short and the most experimental, both in terms of form, it’s classifieds and memos and press releases that you have to piece together, and content. It centers around a company called Oneiricon, which is something like GloboChem from Mr. Show, that merges with everything on Earth until all that is left is to merge with the Nightmare Network. A pretty great Ligotti image, second only to “The Great Black Swine Which Wallows in a Great River of Blackness, that to us looks like sunrises and skyscrapers, like all the knotted events of the pas and the unraveling of these knots in the future” which might be peak Ligotti. So the highs in this book were pretty high but overall it fell short of my expectations. Following an aggrieved business-drone as he seeks violent revenge isn’t something I’m very interested in; there’s no shortage of that particular narrative and Ligotti doesn’t do something radical enough to not get tossed in with the rest. He might just be a victim of his own success, those first 2 short story collections are the best horror available. 3 mass shootings.

LEAVING RICHARD’S VALLEY - MICHEAL DEFORGE

Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Public Library has a pretty hip and current comix selection. I have to assume that the job to buy comix for the SPL is a very coveted and hard to get job. Very prestigious. Therefore, I ran into this when I was wandering around the library during a rainy lunch. I work downtown now and I like to meander around aimlessly on my lunch break, tho the climate in Seattle can complicate that during the DarkWetCold. Irregardless, I’ve made my way through most of the DeForge but didn’t even know about this, the newest joint. DeForge is amazing, top 10 living and creating for sure. He also worked on AdventureTime so he’s approaching young god status. This book definitely adds to his legacy. Initially, I was drawn to DeForge because of the art and the colors. His style is so unique and specific, and it seemed to me to arrive basically fully formed. The stories were always crazy and far-out, which I love, but not the most important part. This book flips that. The art is still unique and specific, it is certainly DeForge and DeForge alone, it’s more paired back and simple than his other work. Fewer big splash panels, all the characters are drawn simply, almost abstractly (raccoons are drawn as large hearts, there are large sections drawn on mostly black panels, etc.) and most shocking, there is no color. I understand that this was published a daily comic, almost all of them are four panel strips that wouldn't be out of place in a newspaper, so coloring them all, especially in the lush and thoughtful and innovative way that DeForge colors, isn’t really feasible. That all being said, he makes up for it with this with a deeper commitment to plot and character and theme. The book is about a group of animals, squirrels and spiders and racoons, etc., who live in a sort of silvian paradise lead by a beautiful shirtless human named Richard. There’s all sorts of weird cult-y rules and traditions. As you can probably gather from the title, some of the animals run afoul of the rules and are banished. They then try to start a new life in Toronto proper (towards the end of the book it’s made clear that we’re in Toronto and the valley of the title is somewhere in Hyde Park) where they deal with modern life. Like most DeForge it’s mostly whimsical and fun, though this book is more connected to real world issues than his early stuff. There’s great stuff about Gentrification (DeForge really does well drawing those “proposed use” billboards that we also have in Seattle to signify a condo is coming), art (specifically noise music, which is also very Seattle), religions and cults, friendship and revenge. Made me wish I did more cartooning and it made me hope that DeForge goes back to color. 6 Valleys.