A Pack of Kobolds posted:

Want to read a memoir from a mafia boss, who in writing the memoir broke omerta and gave away a ton of secrets that the feds used against organized crime? Here is one such book.


Further urban nomad studies.

Jerry Cotton posted:

Never met a book I didn't want to read.

I've read plenty of books I wish I hadn't read.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Actually, I never really regret having read something. The closest to regret is Atlas Shrugged because it is so long and lovely and stupid, but I'm even glad I read that so I can freely talk poo poo to Randroids.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I'm glad I read that so I can freely talk poo poo to Randroids.

A Pack of Kobolds posted:

quote:

Now, before I'm investigated for having taken the un-American stand that sex is a minor department of morality, let me try to show what I think is morally important. Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read. She has just published a book, For the New Intellectual, subtitled The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; it is a collection of pensées and arias from her novels and it must be read to be believed. Herewith, a few excerpts from the Rand collection.

• "It was the morality of altruism that undercut American and is now destroying her."

• "Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom…or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc."

• Then from one of her arias for heldentenor: "I am done with the monster of 'we,' the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.'"

• "The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself."

• "To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men."

• "The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral…."

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the "freedom is slavery" sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her "philosophy," but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the "welfare" state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you're dumb or incompetent that's your lookout.

She is fighting two battles: the first, against the idea of the State being anything more than a police force and a judiciary to restrain people from stealing each other's money openly. She is in legitimate company here. There is a reactionary position which has many valid attractions, among them lean, sinewy, regular-guy Barry Goldwater. But it is Miss Rand's second battle that is the moral one. She has declared war not only on Marx but on Christ. Now, although my own enthusiasm for the various systems evolved in the names of those two figures is limited, I doubt if even the most anti-Christian free-thinker would want to deny the ethical value of Christ in the Gospels. To reject that Christ is to embark on dangerous waters indeed. For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail. That predatory demon "I" is difficult to contain but until now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action. Now the dictionary definition of "moral" is: "concerned with the distinction between right and wrong" as in "moral law, the requirements to which right action must conform." Though Miss Rand's grasp of logic is uncertain, she does realize that to make even a modicum of sense she must change all the terms. Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

Ayn Rand's "philosophy" is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead. But to counter trolls and Caesars, we have such men as Lewis Mumford whose new book, The City in History, inspires. He traces the growth of communities from Neolithic to present times. He is wise. He is moral: that is, he favors right action and he believes it possible for us to make things better for us (not "me"!). He belongs to the currently unfashionable line of makers who believe that if something is wrong it can be made right, whether a faulty water main or a faulty idea. May he flourish!

Groke posted:

Same; I read that when I was an eager and impressionable teenager. And it taught me a valuable lesson, too. The lesson was that I shouldn't feel obliged to finish reading a book simply because I have begun reading it. I did finish Atlas Shrugged but this lesson has saved me a great deal of time in the years since then, so thanks for that, I guess, Ayn Rad.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Yes, it also took me a long time to learn that some books aren't worth finishing. Looking at you, Finnegan's Wake!!

A Pack of Kobolds posted:

Oh my god, you poor bastard.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I have not forgotten about this. The story must be told, but it'll take me some time to write it up. The author is hilariously unbalanced and attacks anyone who even slightly disagrees with him. It is both weird and wonderful!!

hexwren posted:

I just finished The Metamorphoses the other night and it was nowhere near as horny weird as advertised. Also, it kept kicking my rear end because I've read basically no Greek and a bunch of the footnotes are just things like "this happened in chapter blah of the aeneid" or "compare to virgil's version in blah" and it's like thanks for making me feel dumber than I already am, penguin classics.

I also finished Wind, Sand and Stars/Terre des Hommes (in english, I already said I was dumb, keep up), which was fantastic, but I couldn't really hang with it through the final chapter, which I found so tonally inconsistent and difficult to follow, but I also don't know much more about the spanish civil war than 'generalissimo francisco franco is bravely holding on in his fight to remain dead', so...

anyway, now that I've done some quality reading, I need to get back to that hawkwind novel

Pastry of the Year posted:

When old man Grandpa Googlemeyer falls down and bangs his head, he discovers a new-found memory. He calls up his son Jim's reckless childhood and all of the crazy stunts Jim and his brothers pulled off in the neighborhood. The story is very funny and lighthearted until his favorite grandson Barney is involved in a tragic paintball adventure, which makes the old man turn serious. Grandpa Googlemeyer is a classic storyteller and keeps you laughing and crying in his details. Eddie Patowski, the town bully, pounds Barney on the football turf daily, but he is no match for a Googlemeyer in the forest. His foolish ways lead him down a trail of chaos and destruction. Can Barney, Kurt and Jim Googlemeyer save Eddie? Read inside and find out, but the old man will keep you laughing, crying and guessing until the very end.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Not a book, but I've been intrigued by old Mental Hygiene stuff as of late:




Also, I picked up a bunch of weird old industrial/ promotional/ government comics recently, which I'll be posting in the magazine thread, so keep an eye on that if you're interested.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

And this:

Arivia posted:

I feel like this should say Alpha Complex on it, not New York.

Pastry of the Year posted:

One of these is NOT like the others:

skrapp mettle posted:

I have a physical copy of that book! Want to know how to protect yourself from nuclear attack? Red pepper. It makes you immune to radiation.

I'll loan it out if you can't find a copy, apparently it was only sold through the Herter's catalog https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/Collins-t.html

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Pastry of the Year posted:

This thread has done it to me again.

I'm skimming through this book on archive.org:



and it's so peculiar and charmingly written that I know I need a physical copy to settle in with and actually digest. Anyway, here's a passage I had to share: the recipe for TITTY SAUCE YAMS.



This recipe from BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST sounds good, too:



A good peanut butter sandwich is "absolutely impossible to get" unless you follow this recipe:



I am completely smitten with the way he rhapsodizes over hamburgers and hot dogs:



edited to add:

One of these is NOT like the others:

oh dope posted:

I've been meaning to contribute to this thread for a while, so here goes.

For my birthday a couple years ago, my wife bought me a book from a used book store.





Note the handwriting real quick, it's relevant.

I'm not big on egyptology, but I had just acquired a new, bigger bookcase and she thought this would be a good addition, and it is. It's an early edition of "An Ancient Egyptian The Book of Hours", which is R.O Faulkner's translation of an ancient Egyptian scroll of invocations and prayers. R.O. Faulkner was a fairly prominent egyptologist in England back in the day, but that's not the cool part.

Apparently, at the register, right after my wife paid for it and they were bagging it up for her, this fell out from between the pages.

The person at the register, who happened to be the owner, said they could've charged her three times the price if they knew that was in there. See that handwriting? It's an original letter by Faulkner himself to a colleague, explaining that the colleague's submission to his book was cool and good, but he didn't get it in time for publishing. The date on the letter is from January 1958, and I think the book came out in December of that year. It's addressed to what looks like "Miss Van Voss". I don't know who that is, but on the inside cover is this:



It's a sticker that says "Ex Libris (from the library of) MSHG HeermaVanVoss". A little googling brings up a Dutch professor of Egyptology at the University of Amsterdam, whose full name is * deep inhale* Matthieu Sybrand Huibert Gerard Heerma Van Voss. I'm not sure how his copy of the book ended up in a used book store in suburban Minnesota. He passed away only a couple years before I ended up with it. I've wondered if someone over at the University would be interested in this letter for their archives, but for now, I guess I have Matt's book.

Jaguars! posted:

I was reminded of "Found" magazine when this fell out of a book on the Indonesian confrontation.



According to the online Cenotaph, 81018 was one Ernest Anderson of 229 Dominion Rd., Mt. Eden, Auckland, about 1km from where I picked up the book, who enlisted in 1942 and became a driver in the Army tank brigade.

Jerry Cotton posted:

I haven't read this book, don't know if it's any good, have never even heard of it before, but I think we can all agree on the fact that "The Dead Cleans Their Trousers" is the best title for a crime novel ever:

SavageMessiah posted:

Preface by Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle and afterword by Standing Elk. That's quite a book.