Great, thanks a lot. The Glass Bead Game is definitely on my list. I had Voyage on my shelf for ten years and I've been thinking seriously about it reently (as a recommendation to yourself: have you read Céline's correspondance with his publisher, the young Gallimard ? It's hilarious). Hesitated several times to buy Cosmicomics. And finally, just recently I've had the fantasy or reading some old french classics, like Flaubert or something, and Le Rouge et le Noir is certainly a standout book of the period so that'd be perfect. I'm curious about the others too :) thx

I think I'll try to read another Conrad too. But I have Les Racines du Ciel by Gary waiting for me too (also colonial).

I just had another idea about the subject we were tackling the other day: the idea that history is too-broad and too-educated a look, when most individuals only enjoy a small window and are short-sighted. For example, I was born in 87, my parents in 58-60 so close to a generation after baby-boomers, and my origins are in the countryside. These simple facts tend to obscure large parts of history that simply aren't vivid or transmitted to me, WW2 for ex, compared to if I had been born in France, a couple years before, in a family of a different class. I suppose the point is that we're fragmented from the beginning, and that history is often a shadow or blind spot where we never look. So I don't know if that makes history haunting, threatening, treacherous or absent, or even if that makes it exterior at all. I suppose I'm still entertaining a myth of "presentism" but I find all that interesting.
History really is chaotic and unpredictable isn't it (even for specialists). Isn't that itself a source of greed for power, for imposing one's will and ensuring one's interest. Which brings me back to the mighty occidental solution - democracy - which is supposed to stabilize the collective uncertainty and wildness, to stabilize all interests by pressing them against one another, a vertiginous idea come to think of it, and that is quite very difficult to put in effective practice, especially without a state of abundance.
Reminds me of the brave new world again: an uneventful, technological, oblivious, exploitative, (layers-)equal society in exchange for peace/happiness. Civilization in exchange for consciousness. Rule in exchange of art (I'm also reminded of Godard's short and chilling Je vous salue Sarajevo, it's 90 seconds).
What do you think.

a (good) translation of Godard's text is horrible to find. Here is a quick one.
"In a sense, fear is still the daughter of God. She is a poor sight, often mocked and often cursed, rejected by everyone. But make no mistake, she's at the bedside of every agony. She intercedes for man. For there is the rule, and there is the exception. Culture is the rule, Art is the exception. Everyman says the rule: cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody says the exception. It is not said. It is written: Flaubert, Dostoievski. It is composed: Gershwin, Mozart. It is painted: Cézanne, Vermeer. It is recorded: Antonioni, Vigo. Or it is lived, and then it is the art of living: Srbenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. It pertains to the rule to want the death of the exception. And so it pertains to the Rule of European Culture that it shall organize the death of the art of living, which still flourishes at our feet..."
With images from the yugoslavian war (a soldier kicking civilians lying face down on the floor).
https://vimeo.com/46991748
chilling

Oh take your time. Was the UK elections worth more than an hour of analysis ? It's quite funny how the nationalists both offered and stand as a challenge to the victory of Cameron.
I've bought Le Rouge et le Noir and a Dostoievski to fill my thirst for old literature btw (though I have other books to read, first of which should be Gary - Les Racines du Ciel).

Thank you, brother. Always admired your presence here.

it's the beginning of a new era for U-Rex

I learned all that I know from U Rex
Of philosophy, history and sex
The bewildering throughput
Of alts such as Rupert
Did nothing to quell my respect