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Jack Graham

Jack Graham writes and podcasts about culture and politics from a Gothic Marxist-Humanist perspective. He co-hosts the I Don't Speak German podcast with Daniel Harper. Support Jack on Patreon.

12 Comments

  1. Camestros Felapton
    February 25, 2016 @ 10:17 am

    [weird thing with comment box: Name and email were already pre-filled in with a name and email that aren’t mine and which I don’t recognize. If this was a comment on Borges then bravo.]

    Reply

    • Shannon
      February 29, 2016 @ 4:56 pm

      That happened to me on a different article. So probably not intentional, but perhaps their system’s AI is getting in on the commentary?

      Reply

  2. David Faggiani
    February 25, 2016 @ 12:28 pm

    OR “Your Jewish Princess Is In Another Castle” (sorry)

    Reply

  3. Shannon
    February 25, 2016 @ 5:15 pm

    You’ve made a lot of fascinating connections. I’ve read both Kafka and watched a number of Coen brothers movies and despite the obvious similarities, never made that connection myself.

    I recently finished reading The Trial and was surprised at how modern it felt despite the fact that it was written about 100 years ago. The other thing that struck me was how it dealt with privilege and how much that resonated today. The main character starts off terribly privileged (upper class, very well-respected and connected) and reacts to his accusation in the same way that most privileged people would – a response that “the justice system is fair, they’ll see I haven’t done anything, and we’ll all clear this up quickly.” He even has a level of arrogance that dealing with this annoyance is below him. As the story goes on and he plunges into the absurdist, incomprehensible system that never has an end, his privilege is worn away and his attitude changes to desperation. While most people seem to focus on how his attitude changes, I thought a lot about what if he started as less privileged in the first place and what kind of effects that would have.

    Reply

  4. halcoromosone
    February 25, 2016 @ 9:08 pm

    This a shallow comment to a fascinating essay, but I thought it would be worth pointing out (if you didn’t already know) that Clive Park’s father is played by the same actor as played Mike Yanagita: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0661950/

    Reply

  5. EnigmaVibration
    February 25, 2016 @ 9:32 pm

    Thus was a fascinating read, who wrote it

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    • Jack Graham
      February 25, 2016 @ 10:16 pm

      Pierre Menard.

      Reply

      • EnigmaVibration
        February 26, 2016 @ 8:22 pm

        In a perfect vacuum?

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      • 5tephe
        February 29, 2016 @ 1:21 am

        Perfect.

        Reply

  6. Prankster
    February 28, 2016 @ 8:49 pm

    Great essay on one of my favourite Coen bros. movies (and therefore one of my favourite movies, period).

    Jack, have you seen “Hail, Caesar!” yet? I’m very interested in your thoughts since it’s pretty explicitly about Communism…

    Reply

    • Jack Graham
      February 29, 2016 @ 10:15 am

      Not yet, sorry.

      Reply

      • Prankster
        March 1, 2016 @ 10:20 pm

        Hey, no worries! Just really looking forward to reading what you have to say about it…

        Reply

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