Reviews and Comments

James Baldwin is a model for me at present.

When i was young, i was a very patient person, perhaps absurdly so. I also believed deeply in the ability of our current social systems to be tweaked some in order to function well for all. That is, i had faith in Reform.

And then my world began to open up. As i learned more about more radical politics, i became combative, stubborn, and impatient. To be quite fair, i think there is a place for these: we are confronted daily by horrors and indignities that should not be and /must/ not continue. Of course some of the people who come into radical politics are angry, impatient, and looking for a fight! We want to change the world! We want to save lives, save souls, save those things that make us human, that make our lives ones worth living; and we want to propagate Life in the world, over the politics of Death and Control that dominate this present world.

But… i dunno. The hate and rage that i hold in my heart are eating me. I have always said that i would rather die than let those who run this world destroy the soft and beautiful things in me; and yet i hold on to so much Bitterness that i worry i'm destroying those things myself.

So… Baldwin was a meaningful read for that part of me seeking its kinder, more patient, more subtle self again.

What has particularly stayed in my mind since reading this book is Baldwin's description of his meeting with Elijah Muhammad: the way that Muhammad was blunt, controlling, surrounded by yes-men, spoke categorically of those he felt to be his enemies, presented himself in effect as an omnipotent prophet (an exaggeration, to be sure; but he had the confidence of those most brutal of self-assured religious zealots) and all those other small cruelties that are part of nationalist organizations, nationalist leaders. Baldwin, in contrast, thought carefully about his peers and enemies, about race; he was subtle, humble, recognized the complexity of the situation, the lack of easy answers; but /also/ the need for /fundamental, systemic change/. Which is to say: he was both. Here, he recognizes the need for a New World to be born; but he also recognizes that this is a project larger than one strongman, one personality, one person's answers. He does /not/ present himself as a prophet, yet his story rings prophetically with what the nation of Islam would become.

I wish to be humble again, even as i wish for a new world. Indeed, the latter likely cannot be achieved in any real sense without the former. A recommended read for those who dream of cooperation and a better world.

I enjoyed this very much. A common criticism of Ursula LeGuin, at least in her early days, was that she wrote very little about women. Indeed, some of her most famous works (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness) are more-or-less about men, or seem to center men, or men's priorities, etc. I have… mixed feelings about some of these critiques, but… anyway, for anyone who might have been wondering whether LeGuin thought explicitly about women etc.: yes. This book… gosh. In reading it, i sense some about the women who came before me, whose quiet and hidden lives i remain ignorant of, in no small part because i dared not ask, they did not tell, and now most of them are gone from my life. LeGuin had such a light touch, wrote so thoughtfully from so many perspectives, and these really shine here. It's clear in reading that she was a woman approaching retirement reflecting back on her own life and on the lives of both those who came before her and those who would follow. I dunno… it's a book about women. If you want to feel connected with other women for a bit, their struggles, their indignities, their resilience, their fires, their hopes, their passions, their needs, their kindnesses and cruelties… give this one a read. As someone who never did get to feel close to the women in its life in its youth, this certainly meant a lot to me.

I don't always connect with queer authors who came before me, in large part because they carry the baggage of previous generations, i.e. of those who raised me. While it's true that we often do not overcome the deficiencies we perceive in our elders, it is also true that those deficiencies we spot in youth often remain glaring to us throughout our lives, even as our own may remain hidden from us; or even as our foolish repetitions of the past elude our notice.

In any case: i /did/ connect with this book. Pratt shares just /so many/ feelings and thoughts that i have had myself: questions about the nature of gender, of sexuality, of the truth of one's identities, the malleability (or not) of these, etc. Questions of Truth or Validity that haunt us all, i expect. It was sincerely comforting to read, because sharing my doubts and fears is often so terribly Difficult to do, especially in a world filled with those who see any Doubt as a fundamental flaw, a reason to deny and/or erase us. Pratt lived an unapologetically queer, unapologetically radical life that pushed overtly for intersectional thinking and the expanding of horizons of sexuality and gender beyond the conventional prisons that confine us all, whether we desire these cages, find them gilded, or not.

The book is poetic, though reads like prose. It is also /quite/ graphically sexual, but—crucially—in an uplifting way. Which is to say… i'm quite ace, and often intense sexual content makes me squirm unpleasantly in, e.g., films, books, stories. But… i think her descriptions of the sex she's having here are significant partly because they document the beauty that can be present in queer sex; partly because they reveal the deep love that can exist in queer relationships; partly because they reveal the deep meaning in our sexual expression; partly because it's not gazey… there are a lot of layers. It is at times passionately erotic, and is always soaked in affection for Pratt's partner (famous queer author Leslie Feinberg). While it didn't arouse me the way i expect it has others, it felt Important, a beautiful and overt document of queer love.

I'd recommend giving it a look! And… for speedy readers (i.e.: not me), it's probably a very quick read.

Making a sincere effort to begin to understand market anarchism (crucially, /not/ american-style "libertarianism"). I'm told this is a good place to start.

This text leaves me with the distinct impression that it was written rapidly in the wake of the election of Trump—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it /is/ a /lot/ of information to take in: names, organizations, ideas, movements. If you're not familiar with many of these things in advance, it can be difficult to distinguish between the "blink and you'll miss them" fascist actors and movements, and the ones that have had a deep and lasting impact. Sincerely, it's something of a 300-page infodump.

That said, i still think it's very much a text worth reading. I didn't try especially hard to remember every last detail that i was reading; it was more an impressionistic read-through, but even this was really valuable to me. It makes a few things clear: fascists are /everywhere/, trying at all times to find entry points into other movements in order to recruit and swell their own ranks; fascism is not a single, monolithic entity: there are many distinct currents and flavours of fascism, all of which are in at best uneasy alliances with one another, but just as often at war; fascism tries very hard to be "neither left nor right", as is to be expected from a movement whose chief aim is to gain and wield power over all other considerations (including consistency or cohesion); and, perhaps most important for those of us on what could broadly be called "the left": we are not immune. There is no ideology that is safe from fascist entryism. Given a chance, given space to act, fascists will pull from our ranks, will find ways of seducing us. Fascists and fascism must be actively considered and resisted.

Given its title, i thought this text was going to contain more analysis, more discussion of tactics and strategy, and i'm a little disappointed that it didn't. But its length, even as a fairly shallow dive into the complete history of a movement with so much breadth, variation, and nuance, makes clear that this could not really have been possible; it must be left to others.

Goodness, this is the big one.

I have a long and complicated relationship with Dummit & Foote. This is a text that one can get absolutely lost in, and i absolutely have. For example, i think that at one time i had solved (nearly?) all of the problems in Part I. It's full of excellent examples, it's full of wonderful exercises, and… honestly, one could probably spend the rest of one's life reading it if one wished.

That's both good and bad.

On the one hand, it's wonderful about taking its time, about being complete, thorough, approachable to students at just about any level of post-proofwriting-course experience (or maybe with an elementary number theory course under their belts). It's a text that really tries to bring everything it can to the student, and be a comprehensive guide. And… the student is well-rewarded for their efforts. This text has a lot to teach, and spending quality time with it will yield wonderful rewards.

On the other hand, because it's such a vast forest, one can find oneself lost. At the very least, it can take a /very long time/ to get to some topics, or through others. I also don't know that i find all of its explanations and approaches to be the cleanest or the most crystal-clear. For example, i've long found that the presentation of tensor products is wanting in some way that i have trouble specifying; perhaps it's that it is so general that a student can readily miss the point of the exercise, the goal of the tool. I'm not sure; i've not looked at it in some time. Mostly… i've read better presentations elsewhere.

Still… i think one would be hard-pressed to find a better comprehensive algebra text. I think Lang is probably the other major reference (and/or textbook), and… i've never found Lang's writing especially compelling—he was infamous for completing textbooks in a few months, and i think it shows in his presentation; i often find that he says too little in his texts, or tries to be too slick in his presentation in order to make topics appear simpler than they are. In so doing, he will make certain examples appear wonderfully natural and straightforward, while leaving a reader totally adrift on related problems.

I think that this is a text every student with any serious interest in mathematics should own. Even with its drawbacks, well… my copy's spine has been duct-taped back together because it has seen so much happy use, so i think its kind, gentle, and thorough presentation is well worth taking a good look at.

One of the canonical undergraduate texts, this is my first time opening it, and… i must say, i'm impressed. I've read several undergraduate analysis texts, but this is probably the one i've enjoyed most. Of course, it may be that things look different because of the experience i already have, but, still, i think it's a wonderful read. The presentation is clear and efficient, and there are some stylistic choices that feel right to me. For example, Rudin's definition of the "upper limit" of a sequence (or its "lime superieur," or its "limsup") is in terms of the limit points of said sequence thought of as a set, rather than in terms of the limit of the sequence of suprema of tails of the sequence, which is the usual definition (and which i have /always/ found cumbersome to think about). This definition may be less efficient in terms of actually /calculating/ the upper limit of a sequence, but it is amazingly efficient for writing proofs that utilize this tool. There are myriad other examples present that also feel refreshingly clear to me, but… well, perhaps you get the idea.

I've read nearly the first three chapters of this text, and i look forward to reading more.

Thus far, i've found this an engaging read. The presentation of the material is lean, which has its advantages and disadvantages. I'm mostly reading this text as a review, so its complete lack of formal exercises and its brisk (but, crucially, complete) summary of undergraduate topology is perfect for me. But i think even the novice would find this an excellent companion to something like Munkres, the traditional introductory topology text. Indeed, this text presents a number of examples very clearly, with excellent diagrams and accompanying descriptions. Further, Jänich has a real talent for keeping the reader's eyes on the larger picture, on developing ideas and intuition, and not getting overly bogged down in technical details (which they trust the reader will be able to provide—these tend to serve as the text's exercises).

Perhaps the main thing to bear in mind while reading is that some portions of the text assume a knowledge of some background material that i would think would be unfamiliar to many, if not most, undergraduates. But… i've just been skipping things i've not been exposed to, or that i have only vague memories of. Doing so does not seem to disrupt the overall flow of the text; it merely leaves one with fewer examples to draw from, which is perfectly all right. It also gives one material to return to.

The point is: i like it very much, so far, about three chapters in.

Promised myself i'd read a book on category theory this year. Here goes…

Another text I'm interested in reading because I'm not sure how it will resonate. I'm interested in reading a good-faith critique of contemporary psychological practice (i.e. one from, like, not Scientologists) for various reasons; but I'm also wary of the sub-title, which claims that it has a complete solution to the issues it raises—I worry this boldness (verging on arrogance) may be telling of some rot in the foundations of the work. We shall see…

I've been meaning to reread this for a few years now, as it had a dramatic impact on me when I first picked it up four or five years ago. I think it's well worth a read to anyone interested in the inescapable connection between racial hypercarcerality and hypercapitalism in the US. It's approachable for someone with little to no knowledge on the topic, but I think that even people who have some knowledge already will get something from this—even if it's just how well-expressed the ideas are.