#extremely niche Nietzsche posting

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Top 5 non-fiction books? (top 5 in the last year/top 5 in your favorite non-fiction subject if that's too broad)

A lot of the nonfiction I’ve read in the past few years has been very niche academic writing about queer Renaissance lit. But fortunately I keep a list of everything I’ve read, so I could pick out some other stuff:

1.  Captive Victors: Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems and Sonnets (Heather Dubrow)

This is one of my favourite things I read for my undergrad thesis. It really gets deep into the paradox of English Petrarchism that I love, which is the demonstration of absolute power and mastery on the part of the author, but affect centered on complete abjection and powerlessness. There’s really a paucity of research specifically about Shakespeare’s nondramatic work, which is a shame because that’s where my main interests are. 

2. Epistemology of the Closet (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick)

I made up my mind to only include one Sedgwick monograph here for variety’s sake, and while Tendencies really hit me in a personal place, this is really the more coherent and superior in overall quality work. I think “Axiomatic” should really be read by everyone, because it really digs deep to the root of our assumptions about sexuality and relationships and identity. Sedgwick is so methodologically compassionate and open-ended, and lets contradictions and ambiguities speak for themselves, and there’s an acknowledgment of the sheer breadth and diversity of human experience here that really hits everyone that I show parts of that section to. 

3. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Toni Morrison)

I already got at what I really liked about this work here, but it really is a wonderful, incisive, accessible work that illuminates a about the functions of race and blackness in American literature that white criticism fails to take into account. And I think that in the age of social media, which encourages an approach to media that jumps to condemn “problematic” media, rather than actually do the analytic work to deconstruct it, this book really presents a good portrait of how to more productively approach media criticism. It’s one that takes bigoted and pernicious media seriously, and worth thinking about and examining in detail, while still not letting it off the hook in the slightest. It’s the kind of approach - not, “is this good or bad,” but “what attitudes and assumptions does this expose; what conclusions can we draw from this” that I think we are sorely missing right now.   

4. Arda Reconstructed (Douglas Kane)

This is a very referential (but opinionated!) book that traces the sources of every single passage in the published version of the Silmarillion. I read it last December (almost a year ago, holy shit) and it really soothed the curative fan inside me. It’s always fascinating to be reminded of how patchwork our version of the Silmarillion is, and how much arduous work was put into piecing together Tolkien’s different versions and shifting interpretations of his own work to make one coherent narrative. It really reminded me of my love for the story and was part of what got me back into tentatively creating for the fandom again. 

5.  The Gay Science (Friedrich Nietzsche)

I love Nietzsche. I also read On the Genealogy of Morality in the same school year, and enjoyed that one as well, but it was this work that really spoke to me. I say this all the time, but canon Nietzsche is really much better than fanon Nietzsche - like, you see so many posts on here that are like “I’m so tired of depressing nihilism, we need more positive nihilism!” but that’s! literally Nietzsche! He’s actually extremely disdainful of passivity and apathy, and his work here is so full of passion and so affirming of life. I mean, just look at the title! (He means “gay” as in “happy”.)

(There’s a passage about the idea that painting the devil on the wall will make him appear, and Nietzsche reinterprets it to say he will paint his happiness on the wall. It’s my self-help manual.)

Also, this is one of the most relatable summations of the writing mindset.