The Quality of Objects
Art and Objects by Graham Harman. Polity, 2019. Hardcover, 240 pages, $70 (Paper, $25). Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp One of the most dreadful afflictions of our time is not being able to tell where things begin or end. Or if they have an autonomous “self” at all. You...
Homesick for Eternity
Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel by Lionel Johnson, edited by Nina Antonia. Strange Attractor Press, 2019. Paperback, 216 pages, $20. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp The German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in The...
Psychedelic Utopia
Outside Looking In: A Novel by T. C. Boyle Ecco, 2019. Hardcover, 400 pages, $28. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp “Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person’s expense!” —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance It isn’t too much of a...
Finding Wisdom at Dusk
The Unnamable Present by Roberto Calasso. Translated by Richard Dixon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 208 pages, $26. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp We’re living in strange times. There’s a pervasive sense of a cultural dusk, in many ways, in which...
More than Regime Change, We Need a New Cosmological Vision