Next up

Working by Studs Terkel. Tentative date: Monday, January 25th. The bad news is that the book is 600 pages. The good news is that it's a bunch of very short narratives that can be read in any order. I think we should all aim to read at least 200 pages. From anywhere in the book(?).

February will be the curated month, with 10- or 20-page selections from Lori, Sian, Chris, and Sarah/Sam.

The Society of the Spectacle - Photographic Proof! - 2

The Society of the Spectacle - Photographic Proof!

More details here.

If the church ever becomes unavailable...

http://www.hiroburo.com/archives/50913113.html

since we're, like, democratic and stuff

fyi since we're now officially "open," i think that jen kennedy and her husband, scott waterton, will be attending next meeting. they are both lovely & informed, i'm sure you will all appreciate their presence.

Sontag in Harper's

There's a pretty interesting article on Sontag in the Books section of the December Harper's. Mostly about her recently published journals, but it gives a solid overview of her life and a first-hand perspective on her character. It's not available online unless you have a subscription password but subscribers can download the pdf, so if you're interested let me know and I'll email that to you.

Debord is dense.

On deck

We should be coming up with ideas for the next book we read -- since, at this point, I don't think there's any clear frontrunner. After Debord, it might be nice to read something less technical. (RtPoO, for all its faults, was highly readable, which was great.) Any ideas?

Something about the creative process?
Something about language?
Something about New York?
Something about Vienna?

Or something we've already mentioned? St. Augustine, Either/Or, Democracy in America, bell hooks, Wendell Berry, Levi-Strauss, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Jane Jacobs, The Power Broker...

Detainee Photos

I assume you all saw the NYTimes piece yesterday on the detainee photographs and thought long and hard about Susan Sontag...

Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" -- Translation and Download

Hey all,

Upon consultation with Debord expert Jen Kennedy, I am suggesting that we use Ken Knabb's 2002 translation (aka the "Red & Black" version) of Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" for our December reading.

It is available for free online. You can download it as a pdf here and find it at this website.

For those of you indebted to the formal marketplace (I am under the impression the Debord was not), the printed version looks like this.

Our date is 12/21 (palindrome!) and unless anyone suggests otherwise I am going to suggest that we meet again at 8pm.

There was some talk during our first meeting about perhaps screening a Debord film. If anyone wants to take the lead on organizing that I think it could be a nice addition. Perhaps it should be done close to the meeting so that there is more time to read the work.

Why We Heart Photography (?)

As I was reading my friend Erin's post on D.A.P.'s blog about Beatrice Minde's Innenwelt ("Inner World") I was reminded of Dave's question about why we love photography...

I'm not sure I can do much justice to the question, but it is my firm belief that not anyone could take these incredibly subtle, moving photographs. Not everyone could come up with the concept, and frame the space so beautifully. Anyway, Erin does a wonderful job of describing why these images are so striking.

Collective Apathy

Just in time for the holidays: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11/now_you_have_a_better_excuse_t.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20nymag/intel%20%28Daily%20Intelligencer%20-%20New%20York%20Magazine%29&utm_content=Google%20Reader

Errol Morris on Sontag

I meant to post this earlier, but there is a three part series written by Errol Morris about two years ago for The NY Times that is a response, of sorts, to Sontag's book. I recommend checking it out, as it also includes some of the pictures referenced in RTPOO.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/?scp=13&sq=errol%20morris&st=cse

I have also (attempted to) put everyone in a list to get notifications when blogs are posted. This will hopefully allow us to just eliminate our email chain and use the blog for all correspondence. Let me know if it doesn't work or you want off.

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Is this thing on?

David suggested I post this here.

I have an idea for a future Enid's Circle book, one which might be pretty timely: Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Basically it's Arendt's journalistic account and philosophical meditation on the Israeli trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in the early 60s.

Anyway, not only is it historically and intellectually important in its own right, I thought it also might be interesting to think about in terms of what's going on right now in New York with the Mohammed trial.

Just throwing it out there...

Your man in LA,
Evan

War against War

For anyone didn't get the memo, the next book is Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others. If you too wish that books had hyperlinks, here are a two that I dug up to accompany the first thirty pages. On page 15 Sontag mentions Ernst Friedrich's book of photographs called War Against War. I wasn't able to find an online version of the book but The Memory Hole has several scanned pages available for viewing. Also, here's a link to the Here is New York post-September 11th photo gallery:
http://hereisnewyork.org/gallery/thumb.asp?categoryID=4

feminism et cetera

Oh hey, I thought I'd actually just post this to the site because it's a great project. I was involved in the Back to the Future conversation, which lead to some incredibly interesting and productive discussions.

Anyway, check it out: http://www.contemporaryfeminism.com/

Church Space in NY Times

Dave informed me this morning that the space we're using is in the Times. It was on the center of the home page. Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/nyregion/24metjournal.html?_r=1&hp

Pleasure principal

Other Pleasure Principals:

Rene Magritte:


Gary Numan:


Janet Jackson:


Pleasure Principle @ Oak:

Additional Texts for Freud

I'll get this rolling with a post.

For anyone who has extra time, I think the two most heavily referenced and most valuable accompanying essays to Civilization and Its Discontents are Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Totem and Taboo. In that order. It's a good amount of more reading, though both are shorter than Civilization.

Also, in the realm of general psycho-analytic offshoots, there was an amazing article on the less highly regarded and less sexually-obsessed Carl Jung in the NY Times Magazine a few weeks back. The book that it's about -- a highly guarded and previously unpublished ongoing diary/chronicle of his innermost thoughts, dreams and obsessions -- is also on display at the Rubin Museum on 17th Street.

Article on Jung
Rubin Museum

Welcome to the Enid's Circle blog

Welcome everyone. This is the blog that we will use as a forum to discuss what occurs inside and out of our meetings for the so-called "Enid's Circle."

We'll get everyone signed up so they can post soon.