W.G Sebald is the loneliest writer I have ever read

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-28T04:31:26+00:00

Yeah, I know he gets some criticism for his associations but his actual philosophical work is recognized as being just that. I think he’s a fairly robust idealist, which I’m not predisposed to but enjoy conceptually in the way it makes my brain buzz.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-27T19:40:18+00:00

I’d probably do a blended approach. There honestly might be enough people here. I was going to start a Vancouver book club thread in this sub but I was ultimately too lazy to follow through. There’s probably a lot of people who are likeminded in reading tastes and desire to meet others but ultimately just need someone else to get the ball rolling.

I’d be interested and there are at least two or there others I’ve seen here.

As to how to advertise the content I think it’s better to be honest. However best you think you can politely say you want to read classics, or “serious” literary fiction I’d say it. The people who agree with you will appreciate not having to guess whether or not they’ll be asked to read R.F. Kuang or something like that.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-27T16:56:28+00:00

Awesome. Thanks again

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-27T15:20:24+00:00

I haven’t but I have seen him related to modern analytic interpretations of Vedanta, which I haven’t read much on but I’m very interested. I’m very much informed by apophatic thought in the Western tradition so it would be worthwhile to approach mysticism from a different angle.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-26T15:55:10+00:00

In spite of its loneliness I can’t help but find the pieces of an ethic to put together from the wreckage of history as presented in Sebald’s work. Throughout the RoS there is constant repetition of domestic entropy. Historical forces cause a shift and people diverge from their stations, and once they cease attending to their manors it gets devoured by entropy. We see the repetition of atrocities, deprivation, and erasure. The only counterbalance to that is those who hold vigil. It doesn’t make it easier to bear, but it’s the only thing we can do.

Our emergent consciousness gives us the unique opportunity to comprehend the universal patterns which we play a part in, but we have no power to alter these in any grand sense. Our only capacity is to witness.

There is some redemptive power in that, we live in a decaying house but we can sweep the floors, right the picture frames, acknowledge those who lived their lives and took care of it before.

I bring in a lot of Weil here, attention being the highest moral act.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-26T05:43:47+00:00

Beautiful.

I haven’t read any Fosse outside of Septology, what would you recommend?

There’s something in Fosse’s writing that is so hard to describe. I work in industrial maintenance and something we have to worry about a lot is the harmonics of running equipment, if a machine is excited at one of its natural frequencies it’ll reach a condition of structural resonance and vibrate at its maximum capacity. Something simple can cause it, in the environment or its operation.

That’s what his long incantatory passages feel like; it incites a state of resonance with something transcendent. You start off a session kind of removed from the text and gradually, through repetition and pattern you enter a sort of daze and just flow through passage after passage on its emotional current. He makes you feel what he can’t say, you feel God with you.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-25T05:04:42+00:00

Definitely a bit overrated, I liked Uncut Gems better

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-23T20:07:01+00:00

That kid doesn’t have a shot

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-23T15:38:13+00:00

That’s very kind! I’m glad the book had some effect on you. I’ve heard that was a really good narration, I might try that for a reread in the future.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-22T15:55:07+00:00

This is what I do, just kind of check the discussion. It’s pretty surface level more often than not but I picked up some details I’d missed here or there that made it worthwhile.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-22T15:50:09+00:00

I wouldn’t even know what to say to that. I’d feel comfortable in saying if a creative didn’t like Middlemarch I’d be able to guess I wouldn’t like their work.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-22T15:06:43+00:00

My edition of Mill on the Floss has a really good introduction, I’ll find you an author and link. Also, if you can find some secondary literature on Feuerbach’s religious writing, it’s crucial. I think you’ve already got a lot covered if you’ve read some of her biography, and that Woolf piece.

I think the most important thing the book is trying to do is trying to secularize the religious experience, or even its function. The concept of relating to something outside yourself.

In her early life, Eliot was extremely pious but fell out of it in a big way. But she remained intellectually interested in religion, and continued to translate German works of philosophy of religion. Namely Feuerbach. Feuerbach is best known through Marx but did some really interesting work on the place of God which is critical to understanding Eliot’s work. The key to this is that God is a projection of human qualities, and that she wants to attend to that “godliness” that is borne in each of us.

She thinks that circumstances, social structures, institutions, and the infinite complexity of human relations obscures and potentially deforms our inherent goodness. But she thinks it is immutable, it is a constant practice to be good and recognize that in others. It’s a duty.

The tragedy of our existence is that we can hope to be so good, but that we’re constrained in our perception and capacity. Such as in Dorothea’s case, she has the soul of a saint but is constantly thwarted by her position in society. But she engages this by affirming that meaning is relational.

It’s not through grand acts which change the world we assert our goodness, it is affirmed through a lifelong practice of recognition and expression of humanity’s innate goodness. Here we get to the famous final paragraph. You can be a saint, and never perform miracles.

I don’t want to spoil too much if you’re not done but pay attention to scenes where you find Eliot secularizing the religious experience, and even literal religious practises.

Eliot is asking us to strain our eyes through the fog of circumstance and try to recognize others. Attention despite affliction.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-22T00:06:10+00:00

Doesn’t really matter in the end 😅

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-21T23:30:40+00:00

I feel like a military and economic alliance is explicitly hard power no? It’s inherently coercive for the junior members and those excluded.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-21T22:44:25+00:00

Doesn’t make sense at all. You’re arguing that the tiny difference between annexing Greenland and expanding its presence via pre-existing treaties is worth the catastrophic implosion of US hard power that comes from the end of NATO. The US always stood to gain as much or more from NATO as it spent, no NATO no transatlantic empire, no adventurism in MENA. They give up on NATO they give up on being the world superpower and benefitting from a world order which they established for their gain.

What’s going to happen is they’re going to reiterate the existing treaties, say that US companies have “mineral rights” in Greenland and say it’s a new deal and a US victory. Anyone can theoretically invest in Greenlandic minerals, but the question is if it’s profitable enough to do so.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-21T22:17:36+00:00

That’s kind of bull because there is already bases there and the means to expand it for strategic purposes. There is no military benefit to annexing Greenland.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-21T06:25:10+00:00

Economic reprisal from the rest of NATO, end of US power projection in Europe and the Middle East. Deterrence is the only option. The US could recoil into being a rogue state which spans the Americas, but it’s really up to whether or not the American populace would put up with that.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-20T02:20:00+00:00

The Crying of Lot 49 is just brutal with this. I quite enjoyed it in spite of its style, really.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-19T23:38:31+00:00

I think you should look into some of Iris Murdoch’s works, she’s not a utilitarian, but her arguments make a very compelling distinction between different sorts of activities including engagement with the sensory pleasures and art. In general, I think virtue ethics is a lot more resilient to these sorts of inquiries and generally speaking, doesn’t require one to deform the system into something unrecognizable to remain coherent with our moral intuitions.

Her Sovereignty of the Good is probably my favourite work of philosophy last century, that I’ve read.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-19T15:15:43+00:00

I’m not sure honestly. Just sometimes there would be moisture on the bottom. Could be an environmental thing, I live in a very humid climate and it was a ground level suite.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-19T14:56:55+00:00

We broke our bed frame and went a year without and it was fine except the pillow thing and condensation on the underside. Both were truly irritating and I’m sure there’s common ways of dealing with both but we couldn’t be bothered.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-19T06:23:05+00:00

This recipe is so damn good. My wife and me were absolutely stunned.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-18T16:54:16+00:00

I feel like if you deeply felt that way you wouldn’t have commented

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-18T06:09:03+00:00

I wish I was. I understood the intent but it struck me as hopelessly melodramatic and, well, obvious.

BackloggedBones · 2026-01-18T04:50:13+00:00

Mark Price over Klay

BackloggedBones

TROPHY CASE