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rantingsandravings's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
dannymason_1's review against another edition
4.0
I've finally finished it! It's gonna feel strange not having Mark Fisher as a companion anymore after reading so much of his work over the last few months. It's been a great experience and it's really changed my thinking on a number of topics in pretty huge ways, as well as giving me a vocabulary to talk about a lot of what was already whirring around in my head.
This collection itself is great, it's obviously uneven due to its length and not all the essays are necessarily worth reading for anyone but the completionists, but the vast majority of the content included is either brilliant in its own right or adds depth to his core ideas. I particularly loved the political essays that came in the wake of the 2008 crash, it feels like Fisher was at his most fired up at this point and was at once more hopeful and more scathing than ever.
The fact that he's no longer with us becomes even more poignant as you get to the later essays in the collection and see how much he had left to give. Not only was he a great writer, but he was truly committed to making real change and was well on his way to formulating a system that brought together all of his ideas into a positive program. Despite being cut short, Fisher's work has laid considerable groundwork for whatever does come next, and I have no doubt that his ideas will be indispensible when dealing with whatever that is.
This collection itself is great, it's obviously uneven due to its length and not all the essays are necessarily worth reading for anyone but the completionists, but the vast majority of the content included is either brilliant in its own right or adds depth to his core ideas. I particularly loved the political essays that came in the wake of the 2008 crash, it feels like Fisher was at his most fired up at this point and was at once more hopeful and more scathing than ever.
The fact that he's no longer with us becomes even more poignant as you get to the later essays in the collection and see how much he had left to give. Not only was he a great writer, but he was truly committed to making real change and was well on his way to formulating a system that brought together all of his ideas into a positive program. Despite being cut short, Fisher's work has laid considerable groundwork for whatever does come next, and I have no doubt that his ideas will be indispensible when dealing with whatever that is.
alexmjjohnson's review against another edition
4.0
While I disagree with Fisher on some key points, the aesthetic stuff is incredible and the political stuff is at the very least perceptive and interesting.
hikemogan's review
3.0
This consists of several hundred pages of essays taken from Mark Fisher's K-punk blog and put into book form, separated by common subject or themes into chapters. You can read the sparks of certain ideas and concepts from one essay-- notions almost just being toyed around with at first-- turn more seasoned and concrete in others. The concept he's probably most well-known for, capitalist realism, is nearly ubiquitous.
Fisher's writing probably requires a specialized set of prerequisites to be enjoyed in its entirety. It would certainly help to be an older Leftist Gen-X man with an advanced degree in one of the social sciences, British, and a veteran of Madchester in the 1980s. By the way, that previous sentence is basically how the chapters break down if you're curious. For the rest of us, it's better to pick and choose the essays to skip over. I gave it a shot but I sunk pretty quickly when it came to the numerous essays on contemporary British politics or academic level philosophy. In total, I gave up on what well could have been about 1/5 of these essays. I chalk this down to the translation through mediums that occurred by taking a set of blog postings (highly topical, current) and freezing them into book form. Though with all that said, I just as often found many of the essays so profound that I stopped in my tracks.
Still, is all Mark Fisher ever contributed to our collective discourse was the capitalist realism, that would be more than enough. The idea is simple: as Margaret Thatcher warned "There is no alternative" [to capitalism]. Starting in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last (theoretically, at least) counterbalance to Western style capitalism, even imagining another economic and political system besides laissez faire is becoming more difficult by the day. Not only is there no realistic alternative in sight, it's hard for even the most strident Leftist to think of what a comprehensive alternative would look like.
Fisher's writing probably requires a specialized set of prerequisites to be enjoyed in its entirety. It would certainly help to be an older Leftist Gen-X man with an advanced degree in one of the social sciences, British, and a veteran of Madchester in the 1980s. By the way, that previous sentence is basically how the chapters break down if you're curious. For the rest of us, it's better to pick and choose the essays to skip over. I gave it a shot but I sunk pretty quickly when it came to the numerous essays on contemporary British politics or academic level philosophy. In total, I gave up on what well could have been about 1/5 of these essays. I chalk this down to the translation through mediums that occurred by taking a set of blog postings (highly topical, current) and freezing them into book form. Though with all that said, I just as often found many of the essays so profound that I stopped in my tracks.
Still, is all Mark Fisher ever contributed to our collective discourse was the capitalist realism, that would be more than enough. The idea is simple: as Margaret Thatcher warned "There is no alternative" [to capitalism]. Starting in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last (theoretically, at least) counterbalance to Western style capitalism, even imagining another economic and political system besides laissez faire is becoming more difficult by the day. Not only is there no realistic alternative in sight, it's hard for even the most strident Leftist to think of what a comprehensive alternative would look like.
trixrabbi's review against another edition
slow-paced
2.5
Some of Fisher's work is brilliant, but much of it displayed here is meandering, repetitive, overly pessimistic and frequently focused on a limited range of recent pop culture. This took me over a year to finish because attempting to pick it up again was a chore.