emperor_norton

For the second day in a row, a customer (let's call him T, Mr. T) has invaded our store with an army of cardboard boxes. As buys go, he is the best and worst kind of customer seller: he has an absolute avalanche of books to wade through, but he has enough good stuff threaded throughout the crap that I HAVE to be thorough, lest I miss anything groovy. Some buys I can just look at and KNOW that there is nothing redeemable in them. I just poke around in 'em to confirm my theory, and as of yet, my instincts for seeing a crap buy from a mile away is right 95% of the time (as for those wondering as to what kind of methodology I used to come to that 95% figure, I have but this to say: I'm a student of the Straight-From-My-Ass School Of Methodology). Apparently, Mr. T is moving and he's eager to offload all these books, and the man has some eclectic tastes. Lots of metaphysics and occult books ( a LOT of old witchcraft books and sensationalistic Satanic Mass books), entertainment biographies and Hollywood tell-alls (coolest of all: a mint-condition copy of Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon II", which I stashed away for my own enjoyment), science books, a bit of philosophy (a few Plato and Sartre books here and there), and a whole lot of fiction (which is my area of expertise at the store).

Aside from a mind-boggling number of old sci-fi and fantasy book club editions, there were a few things buried in his towers of fiction that almost made my eyes pop out of their sockets: hardcover William Gibson books. To be more precise, hardcover copies of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, both second editions. Me, I don't give a fuck if its a first edition, signed by the author, dipped in their blood, has their pap smear/sperm hidden within its pages, or whatever; I'm not that kind of collector. I freaked (and continue to freak now) because I've never seen HARDCOVER editions of the older Gibson books before (especially the Molly books). Until recently, my Gibson collection (with the exception of Idoru and Pattern Recognition) is all mass market paperbacks (a format I hate), and I'm eager to replace them with larger, more durable editions. My wishes have come true. Fucking Neuromancer in hardcover... not so much a book as it is a distillation of Badass in bound paper form.

Plus, he also had a copy of Douglas Rushkoff's "Cyberia" buried in his boxes. We don't see much of Rushkoff in our store, aside from the occasional beat-up copy of "Ecstasy Club", so its nice to be able to add to my collection.

Its taken me quite a bit of time and effort, but I finally finished Peter Marshall's excellent history of anarchist thought, "Demanding The Impossible". The book is a little worse for wear: coffee stains from my brief stint as a Pretentious Mocha Sipper on Friday, the back cover's edges are creased, a few of the pages are dog-eared towards the beginning before I got a bookmark (I know, some people consider dog-earring a page to be a mortal sin, but that's just how I occasionally roll), but it still looks to be good in shape, which is good because I plan on using this book as a reference long into the future (plus, its out of print, so I'm being extra-special-careful not to damage it more than I already have). Even if the book sucked up a fair amount of my time, it was a very worthwhile temporal investment. When I started reading the book, I only knew of people like Bakunin and Emma Goldman and Kropotkin and Malatesta and Godwin only as names that were habitually dropped; now I actually know what people are goin' on about and what these thinkers stood for.

As to my thoughts on anarchy as a school of political thought: I must say that I agree with most of its tenets and aspirations, but I don't see it as a system that could function well on a large scale. For small communities and tight-knit groups, I can see anarchy flourishing. I don't see it being effective when one considers the vast scale our modern world currently operates on. I also disagree with a conceit that a lot (but not all) anarchist philosophers based their beliefs on: the idea of the natural order, that if man were left unmolested by the State, we would mirror the behaviour of animals and become autonomous, egalitarian, and mind our own business. Its the idea of Nature as being some perfect ideal to aspire to and imitate that I take issue with. The way I look at it, as evolved sentient beings (sentient in the sense that while dolphins and dogs are highly intelligent, we are so highly intelligent that we can make books AND bombs), we have in most regards transcended Nature. The only valid ruler we can use to measure our own behaviour is by observing another species of a similiar and/or superior development: a human can not learn how to function rationally and coherently with another group of humans by observing the behaviour of dogs. Granted, we share many traits with animals like dogs, but when
one throws in the monkeywrench of consciousness and self-awareness into the mix, it muddies the waters. Unfortunately, since we have yet to uncover another species as aware and intelligent and crazy as we are, we have nothing to judge our actions and society against save our own belief systems and past history. So the idea that if authority were decentralized and man was more or less left to their own devises, we would act in "perfect harmony" to me is total bull. There will always be sociopaths, there will always be those not content with just having enough but want to have the whole thing, there will always be dissenters seeking to undermine the perfect harmony, and so the question remains: how does one deal with those who refuse to get with the program? How does one protect society from a serial killer in a world without prisons, without the police? I know I just read a primer, and its not going to explain every single nuance and position in anarchist philosophy, but the few answers they did give on crime + punishment didn't sit well with me. They feel, like the "perfect harmony" ideal, too utopian, too optimistic, too charitable towards their fellow humans. Not to say utopian aspirations is a bad thing.... I love this quote that surfaced towards the end of the book:

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias."
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

A beautiful sentiment. I agree with it entirely. I've always been see-sawing between pessimism and optimism. I hope that things will improve, that we as a species will start to climb out of the various holes we keep digging ourselves into, and I believe that life, in spite of its various cruelties and inequities, is worth living. A part of me, though, keeps thinking that we'll fumble the ball at the last second and fuck our selves over into extinction. I'm too much of a believer in Murphy's Law to be totally swayed by anarchism, although I will confess that it has its hooks in me, and is tugging me in different directions (and into buying more books... ye gods, I'll be broke, but my book collection will be a glorious and frightening thing to behold). Next up on my pumping-steroids-into-my-brain reading agenda: "The Myths Of Sisphyus" by Albert Camus.

Music I've been downloading and feeling all loosey-goosey about it: The Reverend Horton Heat, a lot of Ted Leo & The Pharmacists' old stuff, a dash of Suicide, Erase Errate (who play their guitars like they're trapped in a perpetual epileptic seizure), Subway Sect ("Ambition"=one of the most underrated old punk songs ever), the Fire Engines, Teenage Fanclub, and the new Grizzly Bear album. Good stuff. But I'm indulging my fondness for the classics right now: I've got the Pixies "Bossanova" record playing on my comp, rocking my socks. "Dig For Fire" fucking owns.