The Pop Fop

Up With Dialog, Part 3

This is the belated third chapter in an extended Q&A session with jones300, an enterprising young man interested in ideas and writing.  

Can you compile a list of books you consider essential reading?

I have a hard time discerning what is exactly essential reading (I know I’m being pedantic, sorry) mostly because if I forget something especially good or influential I will be kicking myself.  Nevertheless, in no particular order:

Pleasant Hell by John Dolan

The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe

The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe

Apocalypse TV by Jonathan Bowden - I had the pleasure of seeing him speak in person a few years ago and I recently found out he has passed so his works have been on my mind.

Confronting the Crisis by Paul Piccone

Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherley

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

The Shadow Over Innsmouth: And Other Stories of Horror by H.P. Lovecraft

As Found: The Discovery of the Ordinary edited by Claude Lichtenstein & Thomas Schregenberger

Frisk by Dennis Cooper

Apocalypse Culture edited by Adam Parfrey

Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

The Primacy of Politics by Sheri Berman

NATO’s Secret Armies by Daniele Ganser

The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner

The Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey 

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Theory Z by William Ouchi - This is a book on business management theory published in 1981, specifically on why American businesses should emulate Japanese management styles.  If you have no interest in the methodology of corporate capitalism than you could probably skip it.  I bought it for $1 solely for the cover art but was intrigued that it had a page advocating workers’ councils within a wholly pro capitalist context.

As someone who works for a large company within a very undynamic industry, I can attest to how import it is to have a management style which emphasizes the positive attributes of autonomy and responsibility for members of the workforce.  While I am against the ascendency of managerialism within almost every aspect of our lives, on a practical level in regards to employment, I would most certainly want to work for a company following Theory Z over any other management styles.

….

Lastly I will mention a book which I have not yet read but given the descriptions I have seen it is not to be missed.

The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch.

P.S.

Judge a book by it’s cover, especially if it’s a used copy.  You never know what interesting things you may find.

Up With Dialog, Part 2

Continuing the dialog with jones300, I will now answer his second question:

What books have had the greatest effect on your political ideology?

One the best books I’ve read in recent years is The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained by James Heartfield.  As I read it a few years ago, I feel I may not be giving it the proper justice it deserves with this paltry explanation.  To summarize, it discusses the way the subject has been either cheapened or discarded in various contemporary philosophies, from postmodernism to neoliberalism to Marxist structuralism to ecology.  To put it in a very simplistic manner it postulates support for the individual contra individualism without ever becoming absurdly voluntarist.  An excellent analysis of the loss of faith in self-authority which is currently so widespread in both academia and pop culture.

James Heartfield has a lot of great articles online which I recommend reading in addition to this book.  I specifically recommend State Capitalism in Britain.

The World Turned Inside Out by James Livingston is an excellent analysis of American culture from the late 1970s to the contemporary era.  Livingston acutely recognizes the true ideological mores of Reaganism in addition to mapping out how New Left radicalism became institutionalized in the universities and set the stage for the so called ‘culture wars’.  He also analyzes pop culture with the same severity as political philosophy, getting to the theoretical underpinnings of mass entertainment.

Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges, a tweedy Christian socialist, is a good history of how liberals have historically acted as a bulwark against radicalism for the power elite.  His chapters on the First World War and the viciousness that those who opposed it faced are especially worth reading.  While I disagree with his pacifism and the evasiveness with which he treats Marxist-Leninist influence on the American Left, his thesis is spot on and properly researched.

New Culture, New Right by Michael O’Meara is an excellent introduction to the revitalized and postmodern conservatism of the Nouvelle Droite.  A good follow up to this book is Homo americanus by Tomislav Sunic.  Both books offer in depth explanations of the European reactionary tradition as well as acrid critiques of the ideas that form the basis for liberal society in general and American culture in particular.

Reblog: Book Reviews

The following is a repost from a forum I frequent.  I figured it might resonate with some of my readers as literature, specifically literary cynicism, is something we like to discuss from time to time.  Responding to this article, I wrote the following:

Platform is the only book I’ve read by Houellebecq and I enjoyed it immensely. I also recently read Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism by Ben Jeffrey. Unfortunately, only the first chapter is interesting while the rest relies on English 101 explanations and quotations from middlebrow writers (Wallace, Franzen) whom the author finds exemplary of a more redemptive contemporary fiction. Jeffrey notes:

[T]he Houellebecq hero (always male) typically takes the form of a soft-bodied, aging cynic who years exclusively for sex with young women and then spirals off into brooding monologues about the impossibility of living when it eludes him.

Indeed, the protagonists of Houellebecq’s novels are realistic if underwhelming. They are also heavily based off the author himself. Their strength lies in their wry observations about the frustrating mores of contemporary Western society in addition to self contained thoughts about women which are echoed by the vast majority of the male population. In Platform, for example, the reader is treated to musings such as,

When people talk about ‘human rights’, I usually get the impression that they’re being sarcastic.

Where Houellebecq’s protagonists get stale is in their intense preoccupation with physical gratification. While readers may sympathize with their observations and attitudes, one gets the impression that for Houellebecq not getting laid is tantamount to a new form of victimization. As such, there is the slight whiff of Men’s Rights and the Forever Alone crowd. Houellebecq’s protagonists “put the pussy on a pedestal” to quote a contemporary sex comedy, and like the protagonist of said sex comedy, they could be interpreted as being in a state of arrested development. Sex is seen as the only transcendent action for the individual, a view which comes off as adolescent to most people over the age of 25. Hence, Houellebecq’s novels lend themselves to a form of Babbittry. What about the drudgery of work? The stupidity of mass culture? The petty but persistent indignities we undergo everyday as part of the trade off for a secure, comfortable open society? Houellebecq’s protagonists are seemingly unquestioning of these factors. They just need to fuck some lithe slut and all is right in the world. Because of this as well as Houellebecq’s “controversial” statements on Islam, it’s easy to see how Houellebecq would be peripherally associated with writers like Martin Amis who pose as hard edged contrarians to the post 68 consensus. Of course, it doesn’t take much to ruffle the feathers of the current feminized and ideas-deficient literary establishment and no where is this more apparent than with this tepid dissent.

A good compliment to the weaknesses of Houellebecq is Pleasant Hell by John Dolan. This “coming of age” autobiography takes place in the suburban California of the 1970s and also postulates that the sexual liberation of the 1960s only produced a more nuanced tyranny whereby the more socialized accumulate the most sexual experiences while the rest are relegated to invisibility. The adolescent Dolan is a fat, disgusting nerd with an avid knowledge of history and literature which is responsible for his cynical outlook. The novel puts more focus on existential dread of the “Hell is other people” variety than sexual frustration and this occasionally veers into something resembling the Gen Y preoccupation with awkwardness. That said, I find that Dolan more acutely describes the vacuity and cruelty of women than Houellebecq. In addition, both writers are possessed of a robust wit when it comes to describing the idiotic politics of the era.

The best parts of Pleasant Hell concern Dolan’s relationship with Joanne, a ditzy lesbian who had been a member of the “Super People”, a clique of beautiful hippie chicks Dolan was enamored with during high school. Seemingly unaware of Dolan’s infatuation to her, Joanne treats him as one might a court eunuch. She obliges some sexual contact with him but only on the condition that it’s practice for when he meets someone. At one point she even initiates sex with him after feeling spurned by her live in girlfriend, however she backs down from this just moments from intercourse because she doesn’t want to have her hymen broken. Dolan, the perpetually losing beta male, thus finds himself stuck between postwar prudishness and a feminist-lesbian power play designed to keep men frustrated and powerless. In the end, Dolan’s intelligence and cynicism becomes his strength and in a subtle but powerful move overcomes his silent despair by saying, “Fuck all.”

This happens while our protagonist is hanging out Joanne and her dyke friends in a San Francisco dorm waiting for M*A*S*H to come on. The reader is then treated to bits of conversation whereby one young woman lavishes praise on the tv show while mistakenly thinking it was about the Vietnam War. But instead of M*A*S*H the group find themselves watching the breaking news of a standoff between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army. While the lesbians cluck disapprovingly about the situation (“They wanna show off their guns!”), Dolan lets go with, “Right on, man. Fry Tania!” He then basks in the horrified silence of his company and goes home.