Month in Review: April

January remains the benchmark month of this year in terms of accomplishments. Although I continue to make progress, it is very slow. The story, for one, is developing in new and interesting ways. It is definitely becoming a much better story, and it is also slipping further and further into the future. Perhaps it would be best to devote May entirely to drawing. One reason I am able to "read" as much as I do, is because I listen to a lot of audiobooks. About 75% of my reading is audiobooks. I also started listening to amimetobios series "Imagining Money" a second time, this time rereading many of the required texts and taking careful notes. I will probably post some of my notes here in the near future. A week or so ago I made a list of political problems. I wrote it fairly quickly and off-the-cuff, but I think it is useful, if only as a starting point. I'll share it here:

THOUGHTS ON ECONOMY
1.) As much as we love the fruits of capitalism: everyone having a new cell phone every year or so (the old ones not fixed, but tossed in the trash), new cars, flatscreen t.v.s, computers, etc etc... it is not a model for the world simply because there are not enough resources for everyone on the planet to live at this level of luxury.

2.) Not only that, but even at humanity's current level of consumption we are destroying the planet. Icecaps are melting, oceans are full of trash, pesticides are killing off the bees and most other insects essential to pollination and thus the very framework of the ecosystem and so of life. This is bad enough as it is, but the failure of some of these systems could cause feedback loops spiraling the planet into ecological collapse.

3.) One possible step might be to reduce consumption, but that would mean reduce production--i.e. to work less (something inimical to the capitalist work ethos). There have been at least two books recently published on so called bullshit jobs. And while some jobs are merely time sinks, there are other professions that have a net damage on the economy (when we factor in costs in damage to the environment). As a side note, there have been psychological tests conducted that have shown people are happier when given extra time rather than extra things (but is this really surprising?).

4.) Friends of mine have said to me, why do you hate capitalism when it has brought so much prosperity? Of course, it can be debated whence the origins of modern prosperity. I do, nonetheless, recognize and appreciate the modern world. I would not want to live at any other time. Still, for me that has never been the primary question. I prefer capitalism to feudalism, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't strive to recognize its faults and search for something better.

5.) I feel instinctually, that there is something profoundly immoral about capitalism. The desire to make something of quality seems at odds with the desire to make a buck.

6.) Furthermore, capitalism seems opposed to community and genuine human relations, a point Graeber communicates very well in *Debt.*

7.) Lastly, my biggest problem with capitalism, at least how it is currently functioning in America now, is that it undermines equality and democracy. Capitalism, being founded on constant growth and ruthless competition, invites monopolies and tyranny.

8.) On working less.
a. if you grant that we are producing too much and that producing less would be beneficial for the planet, then we have to consider the effects of working less.
b. first, it seems inevitable. Much traditional labor will be conducted by robots.
c. second, what is really needed now is a massive investment in educated and training for high tech jobs. Not only because these will become more and more the only kinds of jobs of the future, but also because climate change and population growth demand that we develop the skills to address these challenges, which will include geoengineering and the setting up of human habitations beyond Earth.

9.) On market value v. utility. Baumol's cost disease taught us that the utility of certain kinds of work is not equal to its market value. For example, people in developed countries (especially America) suffer from ill-health due to eating too much processed food. Why? Because it is cheaper to buy a jar of strawberry jam than a cartoon of fresh strawberries. Why? Because the strawberries for jam can be machine harvested, whereas fresh strawberries require manual labor. Nonetheless, fresh fruit has a higher utility than jam and it would be beneficial to make it more readily available than something like processed fruit. This might mean that certain tasks that require human labor receive some kind of funding or support to offset the cost difference.

Books Read:
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour
Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century
Pierson and Hacker, Winner Take All Politics
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt
Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140
Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora
William Flesch, Comeuppance

To Read:
Flannery and Marcus, The Creation of Inequality
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees
Ada Palmer, Terra Ignota v.3
Cixin Liu, Three Body Problem v.2 and 3

Month in Review: March

I have made several key changes in direction and revisions for how I want to tell my story. And, perhaps most importantly, I've hit upon a title (which will remain secret for now). Looking around, I don't feel like I've accomplished much. I've been picking away at a few paintings and drawings, but nothing is finished. I've been sketching a bit as well.

I finished Richard White's history, one of the best books I've read all year. This one was quite a surprise. My initial reaction was very lukewarm, but once I reached the Gilded Age I was riveted. I knew very little of the period and so the book was very useful in filling in many gaps as well as showing me paths forward. Stepping away from the book I was curious about what came after. I realized I knew about as little about the Progressive Age as I did about the Gilded Age. I may get to Daniel Rodgers' Atlantic Crossings later this year.

A book very different than White, but compelling was David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5000 Years." I had been looking for an answer to a question libertarians kept posing, or rather, not a question, but rather a questionable assertion: would life be better without government? Graeber's book is full of surprising and interesting observations, many of them culled from archaeology research that has been known about for years, but never integrated into current understandings of economics.

Lastly, per the suggestion of Philip Nikolayev, I read Plato's Republic. Actually I read it twice and will most definitely read it a few more times. I don't feel like this was at all a diversion from my reading plan, since my topic is Economics and Utopia. There was a lot I found useful in reading the Republic. The cycles of government was particularly important for me. Perhaps, the second most valuable aspect of the book was its beauty. The rhythm of the language expresses a way of thinking and being in the world that I have been adapting to my day to day life.

Books Read:

Richard White, The Republic for Which it Stands
Erik Loomis, A History of America in Ten Strikes
Plato, Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Ion, Gorgias, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, Lesser Hippias, Greater Hippias, The Republic
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life

April Reading:

Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour
Ada Palmer, Terra Ignota v.3
Finish Graeber's Debt
Flannery and Marcus, The Creation of Inequality
Gilbert Ryle, Plato's Progress
William Flesch, Comeuppance

Month in Review: February

I was very busy in January and my exertion took its toll. I scaled things back for February. I didn’t pull any all nighters, nor was I working late into the night or waking up at the crack of dawn to finish daily goals. It was a needed break, but I plan to get back on track for March. 

Books read: 

Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge

Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century

Tony Judt, Postwar

Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: the United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 1865 to 1896

Mark Blyth, Austerity

Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life (started)

Goodstein, Georg Simmel (started)

Buchanan, Frozen Desire (started)

As for drawing and writing: I did begin to redraw my illustration of Orpheus. I mostly wanted to practice lettering. I found a Bauhaus font I liked and used that. I'd like to finish the rest of the drawing in a complementary style. Other than that piece, I mostly did sketching. I did a lot of story boarding and have most of the current book as well some of a possible second book. Of course, getting from storyboards to the finished book is another matter. I've still been following amimetobios course on Money and Literature, including doing the readings for each week (although I'm only up to week 2 for the readings).  Lastly, I sent out 4 of 5 copies of Ron Drummond's The Frequency of Liberation as part of a FB game. The fifth copy I will hand deliver. This project took a bit longer than I expected, but I was happy to do it. Hopefully those I sent the book out to receive and enjoy them.

I'm putting together a long reading list in preparation for my essay on Utopia and Economics. In no way do I plan on getting to all of these in March. In fact, my March reading will probably be mostly composed of selections from amimetobios Imagining Money course. I may begin drafting my essay as well.   

Utopia and Economics Reading List

Economics

Marx, Capital (v.1)

Freedman, The Incomplete Projects

Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money

Goodstein, Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary

Blyth, Austerity

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

James Buchanan, Frozen Desire

History

Tim Blanning, Pursuit of Glory

Lichtheim, Europe in the 20C

Michael Howard, The Oxford History of the 20C

Gregory Claeys, The Philosophy of Money

Klosko, The Transformation of American Liberalism

Winkler, The Age of Catastrophe

Politics

Hobbes, Leviathan

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (v. 1-2)

Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics (v. 1-3)

Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests 

Klopenberg, Toward Democracy

Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy

Robert Wiebe, Self-Rule

Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life

For drawing, I hope to finish at least a few pages the book. I want to bring the storyboarding closer to completion as well as have all the pages sketched out fully in draft form. I'm especially interested in finishing what is a kind of book within the book. I'd like to have more of a schedule for how I work. This is a plan I've considered:

Mornings: Read and Write (about 1-2 hours a day)

Evenings: Draw (at least 15 minutes if with Lily, at least 1 hour if not)

Final note: I just started reading Scott McCloud's graphic novel Understanding Comics. Quite good. Worth a mention.  

Imagining Money

I've been casually following the course Imagining Money on the Amimetobios podcast. It consists of 13 themed weeks:

WEEK 1: THE VALUE OF MONEY

WEEK 2: MONEY AS CRYPTO-ALLEGORY

WEEK 3: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING

WEEK 4: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING II

WEEK 5: THE INVISIBLE HAND

WEEK 6: DEFOE, ROXANA

WEEK 7: COMMODITIES, FICTIONAL VALUES AND GAMBLING

WEEK 8: MARKETS, GAMBLING, MONEY AS MAGUFFIN

WEEK 9: COMMODITY FETISHISM

WEEK 10: FINANCE AS LIFE

WEEK 11: MONEY AS MAGUFFIN II: HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING

WEEK 12: THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MONEY 

WEEK 13: NEW MONEY AND OLD CONCEITS 

Since the announcement of the course I planned on following it carefully, reading all of the texts, and making my own observations on my readings. I hope to begin doing that now. Anyone following this blog is more than welcome to follow along and post their own comments. The readings for week 1 are as follows:

Week 1) The Value of Money

Introduction.  Exeter Riddles 9 and 95;

Aristotle, PoliticsI, 8-10

handouts by Philip Larkin, Kay Ryan,  and George Herbert (“Avarice”)

Ambrose Bierce (Devil’s Dictionarydefinitions of money and wealth)

Yasunari Kawabata, “At the Pawnshop” (Latte)

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, 85-145, (Golding Translation)

Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 674-751, VIII, 1-178

There are links to many of these texts on the amimetobios page under the appropriate course week.

https://amimetobios.podbean.com/e/imagining-money-literature-and-economics-1-16-19/

Month in Review: January

I usually don’t write journal entries for each month, but I started this year off on a roll and want to record my progress. The most exciting news of the month is an essay I wrote on Shelley and Orpheus that will be published in the journal Jesus: The Imagination later this year. The essay is accompanied by a drawing also narrowly finished this month. 

I have done a significant amount of reading. I finished Anand Giridharadas’s “Winners Take All,” Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom,” and Jill Lapore’s “These Truth’s.” All three books were revelatory, but These Truths in particular. Lapore writes of the whole of American history with passion and urgency. I need to re-read it.

Originally I had planned to write an essay on Shelley called Thinking in Images, but having unexpectedly been requested to write the Shelley and Orpheus essay, I’ve decided it best to set Shelley aside for a moment and instead focus on my next writing project, an essay on Economics and Utopia. As chance would have it, one of my favorite podcasters, "amimetobios," just started a series of lectures on Money and Literature, titled Imagining Money. (Link: https://amimetobios.podbean.com) I’m following this class as a guide (supplemented with some of my own reading). I'm also following the work of independent on the road scholar, Colin Drumm. Colin has put together a course syllabus on Patreon dealing with economics with an emphasis on literature (Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/monetary-reading-20881558).

For February I plan to read Mark Blyth’s Austerity. I started reading Richard White's history of the Reconstruction and Gilded Age, The Republic for Which it Stands, but am finding it very dry. I may set it aside for Rick Perlstein’s history of Nixon and Regan, “The Invisible Bridge.” I also hope to finish drafting at least 15 more pages of the graphic novel (which will put me up to 30, ie half-way through the first chapter). I think that will keep me more than busy enough for next month. 

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 1.3--Can Xue, The Last Lover

I tend to try and finish every book I've started, even if I'm not into it. I admire those who only read books that they are really into, setting them aside when they are not. I started reading The Last Lover, my first book by the Hunanese author Can Xue this week. I've known about her for over a year and have read scores of interviews with her. In fact, Ive never been so moved by and taken up with a writer I'd not yet read. I've also heard that all translations of her work have been problematic (she's had at least three seperate translators). So, I'm not giving up on her just yet, but why push on when I'm just not connecting with her work? She has several short story collections already translated, so I'll probably try one of those next.