October 30, 2009 • 10:26 am
I listened to the In Our Time podcast on Schopenhauer on my cycle to Goldsmiths today. I enjoyed it. I did not know much about him before. They talked about human endeavour fluctuating between boredom and desire. They mentioned the pain associated with both of these. They said he thought compassion was a way out of this. This resonates with things I’ve been thinking about lately. They said he picked up “compassion” as a philosophical strand from Buddhism. About recognising the “will” of another. The Anthony Doerr story in McSweeney’s 32 is about being subject to the literal thoughts of another. This compassion changes the behaviour of both the subjected character and the original character in interesting ways.
Filed under: mcsweeneys
October 26, 2009 • 4:43 pm
Some notes/comments/quotes/etc.
Each story in this is set in 2024. The editorial says that this is designed to give a more realistic focus to what can be seen at times as science fiction. To connect it closer to us. Fifteen years in the future. This sounds both sensible and patronising.
With cover illustration from the incredibly awesome Robyn O’Neil.
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Filed under: mcsweeneys
October 22, 2009 • 1:41 pm
So Penguin aren’t going to publish the McSweeney’s quarterly in the UK anymore.
This makes sense for a number of reasons, not least because, as Joe Pickering (Penguin publicist) says on Twitter, no-one was buying them.
Here are some more comments from Joe, and thoughts and other stuff that have occurred to me.
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Filed under: mcsweeneys
October 8, 2009 • 2:37 pm
I’ve been back in the British Library this week, after going to Berlin and Amsterdam. I’m working on a new chapter of my thesis, as well as a paper for the Exploding Objects conference at Goldsmiths in September.
Yesterday I read a Borges story that helped me find a new way of conceptualising one of my research problems; today I found (by accident) an interesting precursor of McSweeney’s. I talk about both after the jump.
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Filed under: mcsweeneys, reading
