Blank Generation is a special album for me too! Richard Hell is a genuinely foundational artist for my musical tastes, along with much of his NYC cohort. You know Blank Generation is going to be remarkable right out of the gate when you hear Hell wailing “Love comes in spurts! Oh, god… it hurts!”
I’m not familiar with Kharms, but a cursory search tells me that he checks a lot of boxes for what I like. Do you have any recommendations as to where I should start with him?
In no particular order:
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
The Red Night Trilogy of William S. Burroughs (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
I’m hanging on to my account until June 30th—so I can say a bittersweet goodbye to Reddit is Fun—and then I’m deleting it; Reddit is only going to get worse from here, and I don’t want to be around to see it. I’m grateful that this mess has driven so many of us to seek out kinder, more thoughtful communities, and I hope said communities can retain their exceptional cultures as the Reddit exodus continues to escalate.
Stuff like this is why I love the Pacific Northwest. Support unions and advocate for sex workers, folks!
There’s a lot of great imagery here; I particularly love the block starting with “Vents opened in the earth…”
Also: “The skies churned and glittered. The purples, and yellows, and greens kaleidoscoping together in a gentle whorl. When they shifted, words rained down from the sky.” I’m a sucker for colorful representations.
Memory and perspective seem to cling tightest when a radical restructuring is decided; what a strange yet satisfying feeling! The West as a concept has always filled me with a sense of freedom, future, and wanderlust; I love seeing the East contrasted as a reflective history and dynamic present. Thank you for sharing!
I love the wealth of ideas that you weave so densely into the text here! The primordial imagery is really focused and excellent. “curls and divergences … disfiguring fjords and highland … separating archipelagos … lamentations …” is an especially fantastic run. From humble origins to overwhelming hegemony, I sense that our frontal lobes have not evolved in step with humanity’s expansion. What a pity that we long for authenticity that is perhaps not quite accessible to us! Thank you for sharing!
Hahaha, that thought hadn’t occurred to me but you’re totally right! That gives me a delightful new way to read it, thank you!
Thank you! I’ve been out of practice for several years, but this one jumped out of me a couple months ago. I had a lot of fun playing with the colors and sound in this poem!
I finished reading Love’s Executioner by Irvin Yalom recently, and it has immediately become one of my favorites! Yalom is one of the foundational thinkers behind Existential Psychotherapy, and the book is a collection of ten case studies presented in a short-story format revolving around themes of love, grief, and authenticity.
It’s pretty refreshing to read case studies where the therapist doesn’t present themselves as an all-seeing, all-knowing genius; Irvin Yalom is very open about his uncertainties and mistakes with his clients. The cases he presents are fascinating, and he does a great job of illustrating his philosophical and therapeutic principles throughout. I highly recommend it for anybody interested in psychology, the human condition, or personality-centered short stories!
For me, poetry has the greater allure;
My prose is unsure and immature—
I’ve spent more time designing rhymes;
It used to be a hobby of mine!
I’m in the same boat as you in regards to Reddit; there are certainly some niche places that I will miss but there are already good alternatives growing. I’m taking this opportunity to both re-evaluate how I engage with the internet and take the time to choose communities that better align with my values.
I support the blackouts, and I’m happy to see some of the larger subreddits starting to join, but I highly doubt this will change the API policy. The Reddit administration knew they were committing to a destructive course of action; they are not stupid, they’re pursuing an aggressive, purposeful corporate monetization strategy. That said, I do hope more major subreddits speak out, and I think the 48-hour blackout will open some users’ eyes to Reddit’s questionable philosophy.
Excellent—thank you for the recommendation!