I personally loved it. I think Masciandaro pulls off the whole theory-fiction thing quite convincingly without sacrificing the flow of the narrative. I'd say it balances the best elements of someone like Negarestani, with Eco and Pynchon.
Has anyone else read picrel? What did you think of it?
>Has anyone else read picrel?
no
I have read it. It was more "straightforward" than Cyclonopedia, which I think was in some ways to its detriment. Cyclonopedia's walls of text and incomprehensible labyrinth were a better "formal" device for theory-fiction in that style. SACER is more accessible and to that extent a "better" story, i.e. better put together in a formal sense, but it does not seem obvious to me that being "better put together" is what theory-fiction should aspire to. All the same it does bring me back to the old days when COLLAPSE journal was still running. A lot of nostalgia. Masciandaro is an interesting guy but he doesn't publish much. Alas
>Cyclonopedia's walls of text and incomprehensible labyrinth were a better "formal" device for theory-fiction in that style
Not saying that I disagree with you, but what is your reasoning here? I've always struggled to pin down in words what exactly these devices accomplish.
My reasoning. Theory-fiction in the modern sense - the sense in which Cyclonopedia is theory-fiction - is a formal innovation atop "theory", or the kind of academic writing that is habitually called "theory". This is, roughly speaking, a certain style of academic writing which can largely be traced back to the importation of "French theory" into Anglo-American academia around the 1970s-1980s. In the 90s - we all remember Sokal's hoax - a lot of fun was made at the expense of this style. It was lampooned, often correctly, as a horridly turgid overproduction of verbiage which inflated intellectual nihility into something with a veneer of respectability, authority, and politically radical credentials. The funniness, or the stupidity, of "theory" in that sense lay in contrasting the vacuity of what was being said with the overblown style in which it was being said.
Theory-fiction's innovation is to take this style and to push it further - to push the contrast between form and content further, to the point where its "funnyness" is no longer funny. Think about it in terms of Kafka's appropriation of the rigid, stilted, bureaucratic German of his clerical-worker milieu. Theory-fiction in the sense in which Cyclonopedia works is a pastiche of "continental theory", but one which has integrated and gone beyond the criticism that it's merely talking nonsense in a highfalutin way. It is a kind of writing which is designd to produce the effect that there is "something" there behind the verbiage - not an intellectual nihility but something more deeply sinister. By taking the po-faced rhetorical tools of academic "theory" and using them for fiction, it turns what were formerly parsed as ridiculous pretensions to seriousness into something that cannot be so parsed. Abstract horror.
Great explanation. Put my instincts into words.
But to disagree with your earlier statement, I think that SACER gets the balance between fiction and theory right, or at least it does better than Cyclonopedia. It still has parts where it overwhelms you with information, leading to that kind of abstract horror, but maintains a general readability. I'd argue that the balance SACER strikes leads to a feeling of deep-diving through the text, chasing and somehow being chased by the horror. With Cyclonopedia I sometimes just ran out of steam. Just my two cents.
Also do you have any recs for what to read given that I loved SACER?
It's a difference in temperament. Cyclonopedia is not a "relaxed" reading experience. You are meant to be slightly feverish. As I was when I read it the first time [during a multi-hour layover at the airport in Dubai - a thoroughly appropriate location on reflection]. Ultimately I had a lot of patience for Cyclonopedia because its interests [petroleum, counter/insurgency, ancient persian religion, the middle east] broadly overlapped with mine [and still do.] Cyclonopedia, in a way which SACER is not, is like one of those old geocities webpages you would encounter in the early 2000s. Like ATP you don't read it linearly; you treat it like a record. Listen to some tracks and skip the others.
I do not have many recommendations beyond things you are likely to have already read. If you haven't read Nick Land's horror novellas (Phyl-Undhu and Chasm) I would thoroughly endorse those. Though they are extremely different. SACER is thoroughly steeped in Bataille so obviously any kind of Bataille-adjacent work will go well. Likewise connections to the Templars, Cathars, medieval Christendom. Plenty of good historical works here.
Try Lawrence Durrell's "Monsieur." A bizarre love triangle in the interwar south of france with a peculiar Egyptian/neo-Gnostic angle. Some of the scenes in the desert may strike you.
Mind you if anyone here has an epub of Cergat's "Earthmare" (published by gnOme books) I would greatly appreciate a link.
I see where you're coming from with Cyclonopedia. Could be worth revisiting when that feverish feeling hits.
I have read Land's horror novellas and quite liked them. I've already read a bit of Bataille too. Monsieur look's sick so I'll probably give that a read soon.
No dice on Earthmare, but it's pretty cheap on kindle. Might pick it up myself.
Have you started it yet anon? Any first impressions?
>Abstract horror.
I don't get it, why are they obsessed with 'le horror' and other '''lovecraftian'''-package feels? To me it seems as a generational imprint, a virus of sorts: le spoopy, le evil, doom trumpeting, yet secretly desiring it, etc. Probably related to a homosexual accentuation, when the reality experience is devoid of the sophianic presence.
You may be interested in some of Aleksandr Dugin's work. Dugin (of all people) is one of the few academics who has read Cyclonopedia and taken it seriously. In his case he more or less takes it as a blueprint drawn up by the Antichrist. He talks about it in a number of his articles and videos - look for one on YT called "On the Threshold of Demonic Reality" or something like that
Horror is such a universal, powerful emotion. Given that, why wouldn't they be interested in it?
They are archon apologists and follow the program that is conditioned to them. Sure, everything in moderation, even the blackpills. Contemplating horrors as your sole purpose -- yeah ok, pretty cool for a boomer-to-gender-dismorpia transitioner but those little ones shall not be seduced to morbidity, gnomesayin?
That's a rare wojak
Just downloaded the pdf
The author along with his other work look interesting
I have not read it but now I know about it, thanks.
not a problem anon
Nicola, porcodio, smettila
ok Nicola you stupid homosexual, i know that all this shitty thread is just a conversation between you and yourself. But i'm still buying your probably shitty meme book. Take my 6€ you poor cuck. I just hope to not waste my time.
Good job anon I hope you like it