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A review by noahregained
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
4.0
Special and worthwhile without managing to coast on goodness, or perhaps even excellence, for very long. Like life in that way.
He is most clearly limited when trying to discourse about statehood, violence, power, and Obama. He, evidently, worked with a discourse that was limited in its access to these things, one inflected by American mass media. I was adolescent until 2016, and so I don’t really know if media has improved or just my thought, but Teju Cole seems to have spent a lot of time with thought that isn’t worthy of his attention?
His aesthetics do not plumb very deeply into consciousness, its limits and habits (philosophy is the comparison point here— it should be and is). Some genealogy of photography was nice. Some complication of writing and its place was nice, although he mostly bounces off of vulgarities instead of fitting himself out in the ontic.
I needed “Unnamed Lake,” a writing accompanied by Derrida and dreams; “Natives on the boat,” a writing with Naipaul and Conrad and lives; “Poetry of the Disregarded” and “Always Returning” with Sebald; “The Island” somewhere; “A Piece of the Wall” in Arizona and Mexico.
He is least limited in (re)producing melancholy. He mourns enough, but maybe struggles to find better life.
He is most clearly limited when trying to discourse about statehood, violence, power, and Obama. He, evidently, worked with a discourse that was limited in its access to these things, one inflected by American mass media. I was adolescent until 2016, and so I don’t really know if media has improved or just my thought, but Teju Cole seems to have spent a lot of time with thought that isn’t worthy of his attention?
His aesthetics do not plumb very deeply into consciousness, its limits and habits (philosophy is the comparison point here— it should be and is). Some genealogy of photography was nice. Some complication of writing and its place was nice, although he mostly bounces off of vulgarities instead of fitting himself out in the ontic.
I needed “Unnamed Lake,” a writing accompanied by Derrida and dreams; “Natives on the boat,” a writing with Naipaul and Conrad and lives; “Poetry of the Disregarded” and “Always Returning” with Sebald; “The Island” somewhere; “A Piece of the Wall” in Arizona and Mexico.
He is least limited in (re)producing melancholy. He mourns enough, but maybe struggles to find better life.