houllebecquerie

I guess we should have called our blog "Hegemony." Or just "hegemon." Which sounds like the name of a Transformer.

Anyhoo, thanks to Staci and Jon for keeping us on track. Below is a presentation I did on Houllebecq's Platform for a seminar on Francophone literature. Feel free not to read this until after you read Houellebecq -- in fact, it's probably better that way. You might end up considering the whole piece a waste of time, but not unentertaining. Here's what I'll do -- I'll bury the presentation in a comment to this post, and if you want to read it, you can.

Is anyone interested in reading Niall Ferguson on Empire? (British Harvard historian w/joint appointment in business school.) Although I disagree with what I've read of him, and I find his "longue duree" approach to history annoying, he is one of the big historians of the day and I feel like I should know what he's all about. I'm sure Alex can correct me on this. It might be a nice counterpart to the Said novel Staci suggested. Also, Jon recommended a book on math to me a while ago (for non-mathematicians, more cognitive-y) -- that might be cool as well. This is all heavy-hitting stuff, so I'm also up for a children's book month, mainly to get everyone to read, love, and cry over Philip Pullman.

If anyone is interested, here is what's on current (dissertation) reading list. In fact, I'd love to hear what you all are reading as well.
-- Beckett's Trilogy (now out in a new edition w/intro by Coetzee and Rushdie, among others)
-- Woolf's The Years (and The Pargiters, the accompaniment to The Years), Orlando, Three Guineas; Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf
-- Coetzee's The Lives of Animals
-- and a bunch of lit theory that no one else is probably interested in.