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nschank's review against another edition
i was excited going into this thinking it was gonna be like eve babitz meets wim wenders talking about places in the us but like. this guy was doing tooo much for me. it was so dramatic and jam packed with claims it almost became vapid. not my vibe, but might try again later.
casparb's review against another edition
4.0
People don't talk so much about this one but it's absolutely gorgeous. Baudrillard really shows off as a writer here, and so much talent comes through even in translation that it's a tragedy he's not better known in this regard. This text isn't explicitly philosophical in the mode of his other writings. But I think I prefer it this way - beautiful, reflective, and just enough to glimpse at his ideas articulated elsewhere.
'The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it . . . to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.'
It's not travel writing so much as sensation writing. I don't think I've ever encountered descriptions of the desert quite like this:
'But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. For the mental desert form expands before your very eyes, and this is the purified form of social desertification. Disaffection finds its pure form in the barrenness of speed. All that is cold and dead in desertification or social enucleation rediscovers its contemplative form here in the heat of the desert. Here in the transversality of the desert and the irony of geology, the transpolitical finds its generic, mental space. The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance.'
Would be an excellent introduction to B's work also.
'The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it . . . to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.'
It's not travel writing so much as sensation writing. I don't think I've ever encountered descriptions of the desert quite like this:
'But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. For the mental desert form expands before your very eyes, and this is the purified form of social desertification. Disaffection finds its pure form in the barrenness of speed. All that is cold and dead in desertification or social enucleation rediscovers its contemplative form here in the heat of the desert. Here in the transversality of the desert and the irony of geology, the transpolitical finds its generic, mental space. The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance.'
Would be an excellent introduction to B's work also.
hieronymusbotched's review against another edition
4.0
Had to let this one sit for a bit. Baudrillard writes with extreme imprecision for a philosopher, which makes his ideas always feel just out of reach, but! That said, he's really just planting coordinates, and at an extended distance, you realize it's not random, but a fine mist of constellations.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think what he says has value, even though it isn't always laid out all that well, because every few pages things come together beautifully, and the world is in focus, if only for a few lines of prose.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think what he says has value, even though it isn't always laid out all that well, because every few pages things come together beautifully, and the world is in focus, if only for a few lines of prose.
gingerliss's review against another edition
3.0
Not the easiest book to read, for several reasons. First of all the form of the writing, it seems that this is basically just a journal Baudrillard kept while travelling in the US in which he just jotted down random thoughts and ideas that came to him as he was going along (and then probably edited them later on). He springs from one subject to another and back again, all quite randomly. Secondly, I still haven't, yet, read much philosophy and I haven't read anything written by Baudrillard before, I think I may have understood more of this if I had done more of both. Thirdly, sometimes I had a hard time figuring out whether Baudrillard was being serious, or sarcastic, or cynical.
I did like some of what I was reading though. Some stuff in there is very poetic and quite quotable. I liked some of the ideas that I did understand, and some of the ones that I got the gist of. A lot of it was quite difficult to get my head around though and Mr. Baudrillard did manage to get me to feel not so intelligent at times. I think this is a book I will revisit when I have more philosophical experience.
I did like some of what I was reading though. Some stuff in there is very poetic and quite quotable. I liked some of the ideas that I did understand, and some of the ones that I got the gist of. A lot of it was quite difficult to get my head around though and Mr. Baudrillard did manage to get me to feel not so intelligent at times. I think this is a book I will revisit when I have more philosophical experience.
haileyrobertson's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
god baudrillard would’ve had a field day with the barbie movie and chatgpt
andrewfinkel1's review against another edition
5.0
Im not a philosophy head by any means but this was very accessible and I thought a lot of the ideas he presented still hold water today.
ewoblackback's review against another edition
funny
fast-paced
5.0
Jag vet inte om han försökte vara rolig, men jag hoppas det. Oavsett vad som menades är den skarpt skoj.