Better Than Friday - 36 (Patreon)

Hi everyone. 

Are you insane yet? 

I am. 

1. One of the Strangest Books I've Ever Read. 

I read this years ago and I don't have the words to describe just how uniquely violent and disturbing this book is. 

The sentences feel like they could burn your eyes. 

Not for the sensitive, but undoubtedly one of the most intense and grotesque reading experiences of my life. 

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a reasonably priced copy. 

Should anyone come across one please let me know. 

Goodreads Description:

Eden, Eden, Eden - Pierre Guyotat's legendary novel of atrocity and multiple obscenities - finally appears in English. Published in France in 1970 (Gallimard), Eden, Eden, Eden was immediately banned and remained a proscribed text for the next 11 years. The orginal edition featured a preface by Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers.

Set in a polluted and apocalyptic zone of the Algerian desert in a time of civil warfare, this delirious, lacerating novel brings scenes of brutal carnage into intimate collision with relentless acts of prostitutional sex and humiliation.

From Guyotat's Bio on Goodreads:

Eden, Eden, Eden came out in 1970 with a preface by Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers (Michel Foucault's text was received late and therefore didn't appear as a preface). This book was banned from being publicized or sold to under-18s. A petition of international support was signed (notably by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Boulez, Joseph Beuys, Pierre Dac, Jean Genet, Simone de Beauvoir, Joseph Kessel, Maurice Blanchot, Max Ernst, Italo Calvino, Jacques Monod, and Nathalie Sarraute). François Mitterrand, and Georges Pompidou tried to get the ban lifted but failed. Claude Simon (who won the Nobel Prize in 1985) resigned from the jury of the Prix Médicis after the prize wasn't awarded to Eden, Eden, Eden.

2. Magic Chess Set 

A friend of mine was recently given this as a birthday present. 

It's amazing. You can actually play chess with people across the country (or world?) using Cloud technology.

The pieces actually move on the chessboard. You can also play against the AI. 

So rad. 

3. How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free  

With the publication of The Rebel, Camus declared for a peaceful socialism that would not resort to revolutionary violence. He was appalled by the stories emerging from the USSR: it was not a country of hand-in-hand communists, living freely, but a country with no freedom at all. Sartre, meanwhile, would fight for communism, and he was prepared to endorse violence to do so.

The split between the two friends was a media sensation. Les Temps Modernes – the journal edited by Sartre, which published a critical review of The Rebel – sold out three times over. Le Monde and L’Observateur both breathlessly covered the falling out. It’s hard to imagine an intellectual feud capturing that degree of public attention today, but, in this disagreement, many readers saw the political crises of the times reflected back at them. It was a way of seeing politics played out in the world of ideas, and a measure of the worth of ideas. If you are thoroughly committed to an idea, are you compelled to kill for it? What price for justice? What price for freedom?

4. Cuban Sounds 

I really like this Youtube channel...Tons of good stuff to listen to. 

5. Sickboy's Philosophy of Life 

Great scene from Trainspotting.