The Library of Discontent
The King of Zembla pointed me to this conversation at Swans.com between Joe Bageant, Phil Rockstroh and John Steppling. Some rather bright fellows, I must say, wondering aloud about the world around us. It’s long, fraught with introspection and a vocabulary as vast as the night. I highly recommend it. An excerpt, to drive you there:
…Reading requires empathy and, again, eros. The rising of the cosmic johnson of joyous excess and potentially depth-engendering intimacies — not the spurious dick of Thanatos that corporatism wags in our faces. Death has always been with us — though in recent times he’s hired a PR firm to disguise his age-old agenda. The mere sight of his true face depresses sales potential in nearly every demographic group. You see: The sight of too many flag draped coffins will ruin the profit potential of a very lucrative war. Too much reading of poetry and literature could destroy the pharmaceutical industry. What would Paxil do to Bryronic yearning…to Whitmanesque eros…to Blakean numinosity?