Tag: capitalism

I Can Feel Autumn Approaching

John Winkelman

Books for the week of August 8, 2021

I think this is the beginning of the long tail of COVID stress in my life. Almost eighteen months in, and the new normal has let to assert itself in any permanent way. Though I have not made any plans for the autumn and winter I have let myself begin the process of becoming emotionally invested in events and plans which will now likely not come to pass. For instance, I expect ConFusion will be postponed again in 2022, which at this point seems wise, considering the spike in new cases thanks to the Delta variant and the ignorant, nihilistic, self-absorbed bumble-fucks who refuse both mask and vaccine.

Chekhov Clifford Odets wrote “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out,” but what if the crisis is the day-to-day living? And dying, of course, thanks to the previously-mentioned bumble-fucks.

The only new reading material this week is Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement & Resistance, from a Kickstarter campaign run by the always-excellent PM Press. This was a spur-of-the-moment purchase (or pledge, as it stands), inspired by our recent visits to San Francisco, as well as the ongoing news reports about the plight and treatment of the homeless population of San Francisco, and their (let’s just go ahead and call it sadistic) treatment at the hands of the powers that be. Grand Rapids is seeing an increase in the homeless population as rents rise and wages stagnate, and as more capital flows upward toward Those That Have, gentrification increases, which exacerbates the housing problem. Rinse, repeat.

In reading news, I finished both Beradri’s The Uprising and Michael J. Sullivan’s Theft of Swords. The Berardi was informative and enlightening, but seemed to lose focus in the last quarter of the book, an opinion apparently shared by others. Sullivan’s book was loads of fun from beginning to end, and I recommend it highly to anyone who likes sword-and-sorcery adventures and buddy movies, though the sorcery is minimal in this one.

In writing news, I have a small but growing stack of outlines for short stories, though no new prose to speak of. I am feeling more anxious at the though of not writing than at the thought of writing, which I suppose is an improvement. We will see how much of an improvement it is at approximately this time next week.

It’s Beginning to Look a Little Like Summer

John Winkelman

Books acquired in the week of May 30, 2020

The week off from work recharged my batteries somewhat, and I am back at my desk, writing and debugging code with a fresh sense of ennui. Seriously. The big take-away from my week off was the realization that I need more time off. Not that I have Things To Do (although I do), but I realize I am now fully in the emotional hangover stage of the last year (pandemic) and the last four years (Daddy-issues Donnie the mobbed-up white supremacist sexual predator in the White House). Because of the damage done, the world is still on a downward trajectory, but the angle for the moment is more gentle and may in the next few years level off at something which approaches stability, with a possibility of improving for whoever survives to 2030.

This was a good week for acquisitions for the Library at Winkelman Abbey.

First up is a pair of “best-of” anthologies I ordered from Coffin Bell right after they accepted my short story “Occupied Space.”  These books have been buried in the vaults of the USPS for months, and have finally made it to my doorstep. And they are beautiful! The editors at Coffin Bell produces some quality work, and I’m not just saying that because they published one of my stories.

On the right is the latest issue of The Paris Review. I really need to start reading these, or cancel my subscription.

In reading news, I am about 40 pages into The Cybernetic Hypothesis and already it is filling me with a subtle sense of dread. First published in France in September of 2001, the text feel prescient in the way in which it describes the ubiquity and inevitability of systems of control in all of the living spaces of the world. And as with everything else in the world, it is inevitable that such systems will be monetized. And twenty years later, these systems are so embedded in our cultures and societies that talking about them feels akin to talking about the weather.

I am a little over 100 pages in to The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and I absolutely love it. I will post more thoughts when I finish, probably around the middle of the month.

In writing news, I don’t have much to report. I jotted down a couple of story ideas, looking for ways I can write high-magic, secondary-world stories which deal with surveillance capitalism, cognitive capitalism, carceral capitalism, and the like. In other words, yeah, I probably need to narrow my focus a little.

The day is beautiful, slowly transitioning to scorching, and we have plans to cap my birthday weekend with oysters and Bloody Marys. Thank-you to everyone who posted birthday wishes on the various social media platforms. I have had a wonderful weekend.

A Week Off

John Winkelman

Books acquired in the week of May 23, 2021

I was on vacation for the past week which, thanks to COVID, meant I did largely what I do while working, except without the working part. I did take a good long walk on Monday, from my house near downtown Grand Rapids, all the way around Reed’s Lake and back home, with stops at Argos Book Shop and Common Ground Coffee House.

It was a good week for reading material here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.

First on the list is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, which is soothing balm on the brain after a hard day of writing code.

Next is Robert Kelly’s A Strange Market, published by Black Sparrow Press, which I picked up at Argos at the end of my long walk. I love the old Black Sparrow books, back when they were an independent publisher rather than an imprint. The rough covers are part of the appeal and the aesthetic.

Next is Obits. by Tess Liem, which I also picked up at Argos. I had never heard of Liem, but a quick and random read of a couple of the poems herein convinced me that this would be a good impulse purchase.

Next is Maze by J.M. McDermott, from my subscription to the catalog of Apex Book Company.

Next is Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping, translated by Robin Moger, from my subscription to Two Lines Press.

And finally volumes 1 and 2 of The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism. I picked up volume 3 when Zyra and I visited City Lights Books back in summer 2018 and, since I can’t abide incomplete sets, completing the collection seemed like a good birthday present for myself.

In reading news, I finished Arkady Martines’s A Memory Called Empire and it was wonderful! I don’t remember the last book I read which had such deep and subtle political intrigue. I appreciated Martine’s use of the narrow lens of the single viewpoint character (albeit with some branches due to a very specific technology central to the plot). This kept the sense that the machinations and machinery of empire are vast and a single person can only see a small fraction or a single facet of the whole. I will need to reconsider some of my own writing in light of the experience I gained in reading this books.

I also finished Darran Anderson’s absolutely magnificent creative nonfiction book Imaginary Cities. Anderson explores ideas and the mythology of cities, and how they live in our stories, dreams and imagination, rather than the hard numeric facts. This means that Neil Gaiman will be cited next to Le Corbusier, and the stories related by Marco Polo and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be given equal weight to the news feeds of current and historical events. Every page of this book contains passages good for multiple writing prompts, and as with Martine’s book above, but for quite different reasons, I feel I need to revisit some of my own writing based on the influences herein.

With those two books complete, I am now reading The Cybernetic Hypothesis, written by the collective Tiqqun and published by Semiotext(e). And for fiction I just started The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. I am not far enough into either to form an opinion, but I have read enough to be intrigued and to keep going.

In writing news, not much is happening. I am slowly transcribing the thirty poems I wrote in April, and much to my surprise some of them have promise. I will probably be working on this task for the next few week as I return to work and summer distracts me with the option of being outside and away from a computer. I also started editing a literary fiction short story I wrote a couple of years ago, as part of NaNoWriMo. I think I will have it in shape to send out before the end of summer, assuming my energy level and attention span return to what they were before I received my COVID vaccinations.

One day, having the time and mental capacity to write regularly will be such a regular part of my life that it will not be worth mentioning. But today is not that day.

The Turbulent Uncertainty of Ordinary Days

John Winkelman

 

Right now I have two small recently-fed orange cats soundly asleep on my lap. The comfort derived from this state of being stands in sharp contrast to a week of chaos in the immediate, local, regional, and national levels, as the banshee/specter/mummy hybrid which is 2020 refuses to let go of the flow of history and is increasingly infecting 2021 with its fatal toxins. We can only hope that with the turning of the Lunar New Year things will start to look up.

An interesting mix of reading material arrived this past week at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.

On the left is the new release from Two Lines Press, Rabbit Island, which was written by Elvira Navarro and translated from the Spanish by Christina McSweeney. This specific book came in a subscriber-only boxed editing wrapped in white faux-rabbit fur. I love it!

Second from left is The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, which I ordered from the best bookstore in Grand Rapids, Books and Mortar.

Third in is David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, also arriving courtesy of Books and Mortar. I ordered this after receiving from Semiotext(e) The Making of the Indebted Man and Governing By Debt, both by Maurizio Lazzarato. This line of study follows the recent forays into the varying aspects of carceral capitalism, and the racist roots, trunk, branches, twigs, leaves and fruits of America, from its first day to the eternal now.

On the right is the January 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine, which arrives a week after the February 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. Such is the nature of the postal system here in the 2020s.

In reading news, after six weeks (and about 30 years) I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov. This is a big deal because I have attempted to read it at least twenty times since my first Russian Studies class back in September of 1990. The farthest in I made it before 2021 was about a hundred pages. I guess my attention span is finally long enough to tackle 800-page books written in the 1800s.

Then again, I read Anna Karenina back in the mid- 1990s.

I am also close to the end of John Giorno’s Great Demon Kings, and will likely finish it on Monday. The writing is a little uneven, but the story of Giorno’s life is fascinating, and his view into the art and writing scenes in the fifties, sixties and seventies is both remarkable and valuable.

With these books out of the way, I think I will read short book for the next couple of months. Like, nothing longer than about 250 pages. And given the density of Dostoyevsky’s prose, one Brothers Karamazov if equal to about a dozen of any novel written in the past 50 years.

In writing news, I have written drafts of a poem or two, which is the most creative work I have done since early November 2020. Feels pretty good.

The Beginning of the End of 2020

John Winkelman

It is just my imagination, or did November seem to last several weeks longer than usual? I’m sure the drama around the elections contributed, but also likely the stress of watching NaNoWriMo come and go without participating past the first week. The last time that happened was (I think) 2016. It is quite discouraging as a writer, in particular because it was NaNoWriMo 2013 which got me back into the habit and practice of writing after well over a decade away from it. I feel like I have somehow disrespected the craft.

But I am still writing. I still get out of bed at 5:00 and write as much as I can, though with the Ricochet Kitten demanding play time after breakfast it can be difficult to focus for long enough to write a thousand words before work. Or even 100, on some days. If Poe is sick on the couch cushions, well, it really kills the creative mood.

I have a list of calls for submission to themed anthologies stretching out over the next 24 or so months, and the first of those deadlines is midnight, December 31. I have rough drafts ready for editing against the end of the year, but the holidays, even in the COVID era, take up time and, worse, attention, that I would rather put to literally creative use.

Three new volumes arrived this past week at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. On the left is the magnificent Appendix N., recently arrived from Strange Attractor Press, where great literary work is accomplished across the pond. Next to it is a standalone short story, “People of the Pit” by A. Merritt, which was included as a lagniappe along with Appendix N. Appendix N. collects 17 short stories from authors whose work provided inspiration to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson when they created the original version of Dungeons and Dragons. The book is named after Appendix N., a page of notes in the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, which listed source material and inspiration for the game.

On the right is the Winter 2020 issue of The Paris Review, which I will probably read as a counter-balance to the reality-warping power of large stacks of genre books. Not that literary fiction is necessarily any more grounded in reality than are books about ghosts and rogue AIs.

In reading news, I have been working my way through the various novellas in the library. In the past week I completed Aliette de Bodard’s wonderful On A Red Station, Drifting and Kage Baker’s Rude Mechanicals. And I just started Kelley Armstrong’s Lost Souls, which I am really enjoying so far.

I am close to the end of Matthew Desmond’s enlightening, infuriating, depressing, and brilliant Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. I just…goddammit. This book, after reading The New Jim Crow and Carceral Capitalism, angers me to the point of wanting to do something rash RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, and at the same time bringing to light the complexities, interconnections, inertia, and above all the unnecessary cruelty of things-as-they-are, which is to say that complex problems do not have simple solutions, or solutions at all that would be feasible in the current neo-feudal mode of American culture and capitalism.

And now, off to start the day, after I extricate myself from under a sleeping kitten.

USA Election 2020, etc

John Winkelman

I was in the middle of tai chi class this past Saturday, outdoors at Wilcox Park as all of our classes have been since late May, when at about 11:45 suddenly the entire neighborhood erupted in cheers and car horns honking and music playing from open windows as people erupted into the streets on this beautiful, sunny, early November morning. Joe Biden had won the election. Joe Biden was now on track to be the 46th president of the United States.

I voted for Biden in the general election. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, as I had in the 2016 primary. I voted for Hillary Clinton in the general in 2016.

Donald Trump, the gleeful racist and misogynist, is currently squealing and mewling that the election was rigged, that the Democrats and liberals and socialists are trying to steal from him something that he has obviously won. He is explicitly telling the white supremacists, domestic abusers, conspiracy theorists, cowards, christian nationalists, and bullies — which are the entirety of his support network — that they should be prepared to take to the streets in glorious revolution in order to protect the sanctity of the office of Donald Trump.

Naturally the entire world is laughing at Donald Trump. And much of the world is laughing at the United States for allowing to be nominated, much less elected, such a manifestly ignorant, vindictive, petty, incurious fool to the highest office in the land. This laughter is richly earned, as Donald Trump is the apotheosis of the conservative christian capitalist character which has been the only dominant power structure in the territory of the United States since 1492. White supremacy, christian nationalism, conservative oligarchy and colonial capitalism are the entirety of what the United States represents, and Donald Trump is the genius loci of the melting pot which combines these characteristics and labels it “freedom.”

There have of course been significant in-roads to try to bring equity, justice, fairness, empathy and compassion into the mainstream of American culture, and at the local level these efforts can succeed quite wonderfully. But at a national level, where elderly conservative white nihilism is baked into the political DNA, these gains are subverted, inverted and perverted into shiny rebrandings of old injustices. Slavery becomes Jim Crow becomes the carceral state. And at every step of the perversions of justice, conservative white (and invariably Christian) talking heads spout easily debunked platitudes about how we must pull together to move ahead, while the tendrils and rhizomes of capitalist-enabled bigotry and injustice find new ways to exploit and injure the vulnerable.

Some years ago, in a comment on the excellent Crooked Timber blog, Frank Wilhoit made the following observation about conservatism: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.“ (The full text and context of the quote is here.)

On the surface, this can appear to be nothing more than a restating of tribalism, which has been around for literally millions of years. But tribalism is ingrained, instinctive, as much a part of humanity as our DNA. Conservatism, however, is the recognition, acknowledgement, and deliberate reinforcement of that trait. 

Conservatism is the protection of that which has gone before. Therefore it is by its nature forever reductive and enforces the consolidation of resources, power and belief. “This is the way we have always done it!” yells the conservative. “This way works, why would we change it?” “If they have more, I will have less!”

This is the way conservatism is and has always been, and as Wilhoit points out in another part of his comment, how could we imagine anti-conservatism? What would that even look like? Call this “Conservative Realism.” In much the same way Mark Fisher contemplated capitalism in his brief, magnificent book Capitalist Realism, what does “not-X” look like?

Joe Biden is not a liberal. He is not a socialist of a leftist or any of the words which American conservatives use as smear words but which in reality box in those same conservatives and make them, in their gleeful ignorance and utter lack of curiosity about the world, easy to recognize. Joe Biden is (by USA standards) a moderate conservative with a gloss of liberal (not leftist; liberal) tendencies in that he is not openly calling for the culling of those who differ from him ideologically. By international standards, which are the only standards we should be using to define our politics here in the middle of the 21st century, Biden is significantly conservative. Bernie Sanders is a moderate centrist by those same standards. It says something about the power of conservative realism that anyone on this country thinks there is any such thing as a “radical leftist,” “radical socialist,” or indeed a radical anything in the left quadrant of American politics. In order to find “leftists” as destructive as mainstream conservative American culture we would have to consider the Earth Liberation Front or similar groups. And there are what, maybe fifty members of the ELF? At a similar position on the right side of the spectrum there are literally millions of second-amendment fetishizing, military worshipping, imperialist bootlicking, christian nationalist white supremacists who explicitly and implicitly by their very existence advocate and implement the immiseration, injury and death of anyone who isn’t a conservative white christian man.

America is an overwhelmingly conservative country. This is a description, not an ideal. America is an overwhelmingly capitalist country. This is a description, not an ideal. The simple fact that Donald Trump could be elected demonstrates that the USA is still racist, misogynistic, bigoted and sadistic. The election of Joe Biden does not change these traits any more than the election of Barack Obama changed these traits twelve years ago. However, that people who are not like Donald Trump can be elected show that it is possible to move beyond the racist, money-grubbing version of tribalism which has dominated America for more than 250 years. We haven’t yet, of course, and it will be years or decades or centuries before that actually happens, assuming American ChristoCapitalist fascism doesn’t destroy the country first.

So the election of Biden has momentarily slowed the slide toward the edge of the conservative cliff, but it has not stopped the slide, and it has certainly not reversed it. For that, we need to discover not just not-conservatism and not-capitalism, but actual anti-conservatism and anti-capitalism.

And that will take a collective effort of imagination, ingenuity and will the likes of which the world has never seen.

Summer Done Gone

John Winkelman

This is a photo of Poe sunning herself in a west-facing window, atop a pile of curtains which coincidentally are the same color she is. Maybe she thinks I can’t see her. That would explain why she attacked my hand when I reached down to scritch her.

We had our first truly cold nights this week, with lows in the upper 30s, Fahrenheit. We have managed to not yet turn on the furnace, but those days are coming to an end. Fortunately the rest of the month looks to be bright and sunny during the days which means my big old house will store enough heat to last us through the longer nights.

No new books arrived this week, which is happening more regularly as I regulate my book-buying habits, what with a global pandemic and employment uncertainty bringing to the forefront of my attention the necessity of frugal behavior.

In reading news I finished Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow which left me feeling rage, sadness, depression, despair, and a sullen bitterness about the entrenched sadism which is one of the keystones of the American psyche. TNJC, along with Jackie Wang’s Carceral Capitalism, and the first few essays from Captivating Technology, have me further convinced that complete prison abolition is the only equitable response to the overwhelmingly racist (by deliberate intent and design) carceral state which is one of the central, defining characteristic of American society here in the post-Civil War USA.

Anyway.

To cool my brain, I am reading Dyrk Ashton‘s magnificent Paternus: War of Gods, which brings to a close the Paternus trilogy which Ashton began with Paternus: Rise of Gods. I am a little over a third of the way through, an I am getting to the point where I may need to take half a day from work in order to get through the rest of the book, because I seriously don’t want to put it down. Ashton’s work is just that good!

On a related note, Dyrk has a Kickstarter running right now to print the second book of the series, Paternus: Wrath of Gods, in hardcover. In addition to being excellent reads, the artwork for the books is gorgeous and the books as physical artifacts are well worth owning.

In writing news, I ended the week just shy of 25,000 words in my work in progress. I have the current scene all sketched out and the first few hundred words written, but I hit a minor bout of writer’s block which, rather than trying to muscle through, I sat back and let it run its course and accepted that it might leave me a little shy of my goal for the month of 40,000. Better a blown deadline than burning myself out doing something I love. I can always make up the word count, and the schedule and deadline are mostly arbitrary, beyond that I would like to complete the first draft before November 1.

If you are curious, here are some of the things I am researching as I write my book:

labyrinths, memory palaces, traditional martial arts training techniques, phytoremediation, river ecologies, genetic engineering, mantras, mudras, mysticism, resonant frequencies, resource depletion, peak minerals, repressed memory, symbiosis, salvage, biomaterials, ceramics

With a little luck, when strung together by a narrative framework, it will make a good story.

Back From a Brief Break

John Winkelman

No blog post last week, obviously. I was on vacation from work, during which time I got caught up on about six months of household tasks, chores and errands. I finally finished my taxes, and (more important!) I replaced one of the air chambers in my bed. Now I no longer go to sleep on a near rock-hard surface only to wake up in a bed as soft as one in the worst budget motel in Miami Beach the week after Spring Break. Not that I would know what those beds are like.

No books came in the previous week; these are all from the week of August 9. On the top left is the latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. In the top middle is the latest issue of Dreamforge Magazine. On the top right is the latest issue of Jacobin.

On the bottom left is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I have been meaning to pick this up for some time, after a series of conversations with my partner and several friends involved with equity and social justice. This title fits in nicely with the other books I have been reading about the carceral state, prison abolition, and reforming the police.

In the bottom center is The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, which I also learned about through various conversations with various friends involved with equity and social justice.

On the bottom right are two books by Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man and Governing by Debt, published by Semiotext(e) as part of their Interventions series. I am sure i will have many things to discuss as I dive into these books.

In reading news, despite my best efforts I was unable to pull myself away from R.A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms books, and am still working my way through the series. I have just started The Orc King, the first of the series which is not a re-read for me. There are two more books after this one in the trilogy, and that should get me to the end of August, which is a good place to set aside fantasy novels for a while and focus on reading some nonfiction.

In writing news, I just finished the second chapter of my fantasy novel, tentatively titled Up the River to the Mountains. I expect it will weigh in at between 80,000 and 100,000 words when I am done. I really, really hope to finish the first draft before November, so I can concentrate on other things for National Novel Writing Month. If that doesn’t happen, then I will finish it during NaNoWriMo and split the final word count between the novel and few short stories. Or something. I don’t know. Writing is complicated.

Poe Dreams of Paris

John Winkelman

This week Poe dreams of more cultured climes as she browses and also nibbles on the new issue of The Paris Review, which was the only addition to the Library of Winkelman Abbey this week.

I finally made it to the end of Sayak Valencia’s superb Gore Capitalism. It was a difficult read, not because of the writing, but because of the subject, and also because I have not had to put my head into the space of deep theory in a long time.

Between Gore Capitalism, Jackie Wang’s Carceral Capitalism and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, I believe I now have the proper perspective to begin writing a series of Lovecraftian horror stories where the eldritch abomination is actually the free market.

In other words, they will mostly be non-fiction.

The Shortest Day of 2019

John Winkelman

As we roll into the holidays I have come down with one of the many and varied species of Crud which roll through Grand Rapids on an almost weekly basis. This makes me sad as this, the shortest day of the year, is also one of the most beautiful and sunniest we have had in months, with temperatures in the mid-40s (F) and local squirrels suddenly regretting having grown such thick pelts for the winter.

We had a surprising stack of books arrive here at the Library this week. I suspect it was various publishers rushing to complete their 2019 tasks before the end of the year. As a former publisher (about which more below) I can understand that.

At top left is A Creative Sojourn, a spur-of-the-moment Kickstarter backing which looks like it has a lot of content near and dear to my own heart, it being a journal of sorts kept by a group of creatives as they toured China and Tibet. The nest two are the latest from my subscription to Deep Vellum, Life Went On Anyway by Oleg Sentsov and Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River by Jung Young Moon.

At bottom left is issue 7 of Salvage, which should keep my head in the appropriate place for the rest of the holidays. Next to it is Michael Burstein’s collection I Remember the Future from Apex Books. On the bottom right is the latest from my subscription to And Other Stories, Luke Brown’s Theft.

In reading news I finished Jackie Wang’s Carceral Capitalism and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and, mind blown, moved immediately on to Gore Capitalism by Sayak Valencia. I have to say, this type of reading has put my head in an interesting and uncomfortable place, which I think can best be summed up by a tweet I posted yesterday:

“Any sufficiently eldritch abomination is indistinguishable from capitalism. Corollary: Any abomination which is distinguishable from capitalism is insufficiently eldritch.”

So, yeah, when I’m done with the leftist books I might need some time to reintegrate into the ever (and increasingly) wingnutty world of West Michigan.

Anyway.

A few days ago I removed from the Caffeinated Press offices the remaining copies of the twelve issues of The 3288 Review. And with that, my involvement with Caffeinated Press has ended. It was a good run, but now it’s over, and at present my strongest associated emotion is relief. I suspect that as time goes on my feelings will drift over to nostalgia tinged with regret as, for all its frustrations and long nights, it really was a lot of fun and quite rewarding in all ways except the financial.

Maybe I’ll do it again some day.