Month in Review: March

Books Read:

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth

Montaigne, The Essays, Book 1 (rereading)

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (rereading)

Project Update:

Due to the pandemic and other factors (long work hours) I haven't made much progress this month. I've switched my focus away from the illustrations to the writing of the text sections, which I've broken up into 4 parts (that I'm calling essays), each being approximately 1500 words. I've written the first of these in draft. I've come to a realization, albeit rather late, that if I don't make concrete daily goals I never make any progress. I am not good at measuring how long it will take to complete each task, but I figure if I at least set aside time each day to work on a project I will be better off than I am now. I hope to spend at least 30 minutes to 1 hour a day doing creative work (writing and drawing) and 30 minutes to 1 hour a day reading. On my days off I should be able to do more, but that will vary depending on the day.

As far as viewing goes, I've still been watching Star Trek Next Generation (about a quarter through season 6), I've rewatched Masaaki Yuasa's Tatami Galaxy (anime tv series) and Lu Over the Wall (anime film). I also finished watching with Lily Edo Oh! Rocket (anime tv series). I started a new podcast, Robert Pogue Harrison's Entitled Opinions, which I think is really good.   

Month in Review: January

Books Read:

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (read chapters 1-3, still reading)
William York Tindall; A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (still reading)
Edmund Lloyd Epstein; A Guide Through Finnegans Wake (still reading)
Jo Walton, Farthing
Andrew Bacevich, The Age of Illusions
Richard Powers, The Overstory (still reading)
Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth (still reading)
Lewis Trondheim, Dominique Bertail, ZEP; Infinity 8 Volume 1: Love and Mummies (graphic novel)
Gwen De Bonneval & Fabien Vehlmann; Last Days of an Immortal (graphic novel, still reading)
Barbara Maria Stafford; Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (still reading)

Project News:

I finished and submitted a 1500 word essay for the journal Jesus the Imagination. The essay is a tribute to Harold Bloom.

The large project I spent all of last year conceptualizing is moving ahead. I had several false starts as I've experimented with the layout of the drawings (mostly concerning how large each panel should be). The story continues to evolve, but it is reassuringly similar to my original conception, albeit in a round about way. I plan to do scans of that original conception and may post them relatively soon. I think it would make an interesting contrast to observe where the project began and where it has ended up.

I have a few writing projects I hope to tackle this year. The first is an essay on economics and utopia. I've been mulling over this essay for a long time. It may end up being divided into at least two parts. The first part being an essay on economics and literature, which will be based on the readings I did for the Amimetobios course, Imagining Money.

I also plan on writing several commentaries on Finnegans Wake. I'm already considering an essay on the figure of "the cad."

2018: Year in Review

I feel compelled to summarize this year with a single word. It has been difficult, busy, full of changes, full of decisions (and revisions). It wasn’t the most difficult year of my life, but close. It was a year of growth and recovery. And yet, the space I needed for this change took up the time and energy I usually devoted to creative pursuits. So, I’ve done less reading this year than just about any other in recent memory. On the plus side, I have been regularly drawing, or at least drawing more than in the past.  

Memorable Books, Comics and Movies of 2018

First Quarter (January - March)
Phillip Pullman, The Book of Dust

Thomas M. Disch, The Businessman

Can Xue, The Last Lover

Dylan Horrocks, Hicksville

Nancy Goslee, Shelley’s Visual Imagination 

Second Quarter (April-June) 

Sarah Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

Can Xue, Old Floating Cloud

Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

Third Quarter ( July - September)

Carl Freedman, The Incomplete Projects

Alex Garland, Annihilation (movie)
Wes Anderson, Isle of Dogs (movie)

David Auerbach, Bitwise

Masaaki Yuasa, Mind Game (movie)

Fourth Quarter (October-December)

Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

This year I finished a few art projects including small comic strips, four illustrations for Blake, and an illustrated version of Shelley’s poem Julian and Maddalo that I then compiled into a single small book that is nearly ready for print. Undertaking this project required that I learn the rudiments of photoshop and Scribus, a free publishing software. If it looks like I wasn’t very active the last four months of the year it was because I was busy learning these programs. A few weeks ago I started a new project, a comic book. I’ve set myself to write about 5 pages a week. I’ve been coming close to meeting that goal. I would like to write about 60 pages. If I give myself a buffer, I should be able to finish this by April. During this time I want to read deeper in my Shelley scholarship and begin writing an essay titled “Thinking in Images.” I hope to publish this essay. In April I plan on finishing the essay while revising the comic. This may take another three months. While doing this, I’d like to continue drawing, either on the next stage of this project or something else entirely.

I’m not certain what I want to do for the rest of next year and onward, although I have some ideas. I want to write a utopian essay tentatively called, “The Economics of Hope.” I want to start reading Blumenberg again, although I’m not sure if that will happen. After I finish the utopia essay, I’d like to do another essay on Finnegans Wake and then, perhaps, an essay on Can Xue.

Here is a rough reading list for next year:

First Quarter 

Bernanos, The Other Side of the Mountain

Angus Fletcher, The Topological Imagination (critical re-reading)

Nancy Goslee, Shelley’s Visual Imagination (critical re-reading)

Marx, Capital

Claeys, Marx and Marxism

Blyth, Austerity

Goodstein, Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary

Second Quarter

(continue economic books from first quarter)

Juan Rulfo, Pedro Peramo

Murname, The Plains

Third Quarter

Blumenberg, Work on Myth

Nicholls, Myth and the Human Sciences

Fourth Quarter

Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Reading Log--book 1.1--The Book of Dust

I finished reading the first volume of Philip Pullman's new trilogy, the Book of Dust, last night. The second half of the book is concerned with what we learn to call "the Secret Commonwealth." I can only speculate how Pullman will develop this concept, but from what we are given I can sense that it is more than enough to justify a new series. In the same way that Lynch was able to recreate Twin Peaks Pullman is now recreating His Dark Materials. If the theme and structuring motif of the last series was Paradise Lost then the new series' is The Faerie Queene. Personally, I am very excited with this turn of direction since I've always preferred Spenser to Milton. The change of theme also begins to justify Pullman's decision to mesh this story through the old (it occurs before, during, and after the original books).  I'd like to say something about what I think Pullman is up to.

Pullman, in titling the series "The Book of Dust" suggested to me, years ago when he still in the earliest phases of conceiving this new material, that he was creating a kind of ur-text. Dust is the grounding metaphor as it were for the whole series. What could the book look like? I almost expected a kind of Bible or Encyclopedia. What we are given instead is "the Secret Commonwealth," another reality that seems separate from the alternate worlds of the previous series. This is a world of magic and seems to embody imagination and creativity as well as being a metaphor for spirit and consciousness. By separating the book over three different time periods he will make the whole of the trilogy more about this theme than any individual character, or so I think, although Lyra too is a kind of spirit that is present in all of them. In short order, I loved it.

Next on the bookshelf, the Businessman by Thomas M. Disch.