When I came up with the idea for this section back in 1990, the idea was to curate a display space for books of seemingly disparate subjects that still resonated with a sense of similarity; namely, stuff I liked that had an outlaw/counter-culture point of view. It was kind of like attempting to hyperlink a book section even though I’d never heard of the concept at that point. Also, i was personally very influenced at the time by the brilliant (now defunct) Amok Bookstore so browsing this section could lead you to George Bataille, William Burroughs, semiotexte translations of Baudrillard, books about serial killers, or most of the paranoid material that would eventually be used by Dan Brown as sources for his ridiculously famous novel (still kicking myself for not writing that one first). For a little while, way before they were famous outside of evangelical Christian circles, I even stocked some proto-‘rapture fiction’ that was around before the ‘Left Behind’ series because I felt it was bizarre enough to deserve attention.
Over time this section-of-the-unpronounceable-name has grown in size and become more organized and focused in subject as my interests have morphed with age (lots of age…); gone are the Bataille and Burroughs that now have their own place of prominence, gone are apocalyptic christian novels, conspiracy theories and psychedelic substances take up less space yet still go together nicely, and the renaissance of the Anarchists completely dominates now. However, I am still hyperlinking; but I think I’ll leave it to you to figure out why a number of anthropologists keep getting shelved with the books on anarchist theory.
Charles
0 comments:
Post a Comment