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@jenks - finally got round to Dance Moves by Erskine. She's got a wonderful knack with descriptions. "She had a basic face, as if someone in a hurry had drawn quick features on a pebble." Brilliant

Good call. I did put it one the other day but got distracted. I must give it a chance.

It is a good thing technology and other consumable goods are not pitched in this prism anymore. Because what is sexy, desirable, exciting etc came from a certain set of acute values - values we are all the better for getting away from, and certainly better for moving on from the soft and subtle...

I think that is different to what I was trying to describe. Technology being used for sex and in the sex industry is very different to a certain culture finding technology 'sexy' - pitching certain technologies as being associated, being about sexiness or being the object of desire and fetish...

Equating is probably too strong, too flat. You're right. But I think he poses a certain interplay between the two that is not longer what it was. And there is a clear relationship between sexual 'fetish' in crash and the motorcar, and I think this fetishism of tactile machines is not what it...

I love Ballard. Of course. But this aspect of equating technology with libido, particularly in this way, feels dated now. Doesn't it? We are a long way from the tactility of yesteryear automotive culture... there is not the gothic beastliness of a 'purring' 'throaty' curvy machine we project...

all legal. massive amounts of technology go into this. even using many different IPs, you'd still raise the price as that flight will get more views. Flight booking is the humdrum life admin version of Perseus and Medusa, you mustn't look directly at it.

I'd love to but can't make it. I'm not based in London

Anything in Lyotard does it for me.

like cacti, passively committed to not moving, a crystalline stasis suspicion requires a minimum level of credence

No, I've not. And since life has changed I am less drawn to Lin. I was so looking forward to his new books but by the time they came around I was in a different place. I read Taipei, Bed, and Eeeee during a period of semi-busy metropolitan activity. I was using smartphones, aiming to show a...

@catalog yes, I used to recommend Tao Lin a lot on this forum. Taipei was recommended to my by someone everyone knows, it really left an impression on me, a great book about dissociation, depression, apathy. Prose was really effective, I tried to mimic it for a while. I also enjoyed Eeeee Eee...

Brilliantly subtle implication @catalog

@catalog I haven't got @IdleRich 'bang to rights'. I don't think anyone said Idlerich criticised Lane's work. And Idle was right to emphasise that not enjoying a text is not the same as criticising a text. It's this difference that is interesting, thought provoking. Disliking a book is not...

"Yesterday I was driving into town and car just conked out on the motorway. Luckily the insurance covers a tow and a taxi for me - but I was waiting for very nearly two hours for the tow truck to come and I read almost the entirety of Scar City by Joel Lane. I can't say that I enjoyed it much...

Yes, I think Allan's statement of 'Aickmanites vs Jamesians' is more oppositional in tone. But I was trying to articulate some differences between Aickman's stories and James' that might factor into, provide some possible reasons, for this brief line of Allan's An Aickmanite is not Robert...

Well, of course not. I said these were differences. No one has claimed Aickman and James are in 'total opposition'.

literary event Macabre opacity in this term. Too much Ligotti!

@WebEschatology you're right, any conversation about the differences in writers can lead to being a touch reductive. To be fair, I was speculating, wondering... But to follow up, Allan's comment of Jamesians vs Aickmanites (Aickmanites against the Jamesians) leads one to ignore the context of...

Interesting observation from Nina Allan here https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=2565 "The Swords by Robert Aickman (1975). How to explain Robert Aickman? He’s often grouped together with M. R. James and Arthur Machen as a ‘master of the English weird tale’ and indeed Aickman does belong to – or...