Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!
On Anarchy, Automation, and Acknowledging the Aberrant
|
6 June 2025 A Test of Automation MasteryReader, I'm going to travel in the next several weeks to a few places around Canada and the US in part to research and produce some material in anticipation of Season 7 of Literary Nomads: Literary Tourism & Anne of Green Gables. This will be the first time I've stepped away from the studio with the expectation that my productivity will continue "without me," and I'll be testing my ability to automate everything far out in advance. My hope is that none but you notice, but if you are expecting a particular video or writing to drop these next weeks and it does not, blame my tech incapacity! Even so, I'll be producing a series of videos on the Waywords YouTube channel, so feel free to catch the far far less formal work! Literary Nomads: Into Contentiousness AnarchyLiterature that so openly demands much from its readers, that pokes us directly in our moral wounds, is not merely contentious but catalyzes resistance and response. Le Guin seemed surprises that he little "Omelas" short story produced such powerful discussion, but I suspect she was overmodest. Le Guin was proud to be called a key figure in anarchist literature though she would not describe herself that way. This anarchy carries baggage of popular connotations with it, doesn't it? We picture those who want to tear society away to the roots, mask-clad hooligans with improvised weapons and spray cans. What we don't imagine its historical roots at first, its suggestion that society can perhaps better operate without hierarchy, through voluntary cooperation. Writers like Prudhon, Bakunin, and Malatesta, though, gained less traction that a Hobbes who labeled the term as synonymous with the "chaos" of the natural world, pitting--as so many do--nature and civilization into opposition. Le Guin, though, was what we might understand as a far more subtle anarchist, one committed to peace, but still devoted to the notion of solidarity through cooperation and diversity. We see this in nearly all of her writing which openly or covertly pushes upon these vulnerable spaces we have normalized into acceptability. She's hardly the only one to do so. As I've gathered a slew of writers modern and ancient who speak to and around Omelas, I'll be exposing some of the foundational cultural and cognitive structures we've assembled for ourselves to better understand just what philosophical anarchy is contending with. Will it get contentious? How could it not?
Up ahead:
Listener Survey Still Open!
Arendt Digs Into Not Unique Circumstances & Wonders at Our Lack of Reflection This second chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism at last dives into the details of European history from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, laying the foundations of how Jews used and were used by the aristocracies and later nation-state governments to set up the circumstances for disaster. What strikes me as particularly powerful is the gross absence of reflection about what these frequent "dress rehearsals" for 20th century catastrophe suggest: not merely a self-consoling aphorism that 'hindsight is 20/20 but a stubborn resilience against recognition, a refusal to name aberrant behavior for what it is. Sounds familiar. Join in on the reading! We're doing about 25 pages each week, but you can choose any speed! Find more here:
Reader's Manifesto Draft 2 ReadyRecommendations over the past two months have directed the first major revision and expansion of the Reader's Manifesto. Among the changes:
I'm collecting feedback on all of this now through August 1 so as to create a public living document for September. Have ideas, questions, additions, challenges? Would love your input!
What Did Millay Say of Spring? Are We to the Middle of 2025? Give a nod to James Joyce, mark Juneteenth for others who don't, thank the sun, then make music to celebrate! Some Recommendations Early Recommendation from My Reading: Superman Smashes the Klan (2020) by Gene Luen YangYang's graphic novel is enough to re-invigorate the old DC nostalgia of adult readers (it's an adaptation of a 1940s radio play) and give younger readers a kitschy read into local race politics and history. What happens when the Man of Steel can't punch his way to justice? And how does his own emotions around his origin affect how he assimilates to Earth or does not? "After all, though our yesterdays may be different, we all share the same tomorrow."
"The World is Alive; or, How Robert Macfarlane Came to Trust His Senses" by Daegen MillerSpeaking of nature (weren't we?) and how all is deeply connected to our ethic, our politics, whether we acknowledge it or not. Tremendous writer Robert MacFarlane's new book Is a River Alive? pushes those buttons of quiet anarchy. There has always been a tonic strain of apophatic unknowability running through Macfarlane’s work: though we are in and of the world, there is an unutterable, unbridgeable difference between what we experience and what we can say. . . .
In the mood for some YouTube nonsense? Follow WaywordsStudio there for three weeks of travel videos heading to Anne of Green Gables! Steve What's Still Ahead?
|
Waywords Studio
Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!