Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About matt_thac

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White, man, feminist, Muslim, living in a country that's not where he's from, and constantly having to navigate his way in other languages and cultures. Any one and all of these at anytime and less confused that than appears.

matt_thac's Reviews:

The Architecture of Our New Digital Cage

The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

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  There’s a whole literary field of broken dreams on our addiction to smart phones. The Art of Surveillance Capitalism talks about how our data is harvested, Irresistible looks at how tech companies keep us hooked, while The Shallows shows how our concentration span is reduced. The Twittering Machine sits among these, but offers a different slant. What if we are being enslaved by our devices, what if they’re robbing us of our surplus value?   It’s a very Marxist critique of the rise of […]

Revisiting Persepolis

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

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There’s a point in Persepolis where Marjane says she’s too Western for Iran and too Iranian for the West. Re-reading this graphic novel with an extra decade of life and a deeper understanding of what makes the West the “West” and how we ‘other’ cultures different from our own, brings me to a more challenging conclusion. Satrapi’s tale is ‘More Western’ than Iranian.   That’s not a criticism nor a reduction of the rich cultural heritage that runs through this book. It exists as her […]

Now A Major Motion Picture And Sadly A Common Story on The News

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

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  It has been over 50 years since James Baldwin penned this powerful fiction, yet very little seems to have changed. If Beale Street Could Talk straddles genres: it is a tender love story between Tish and Fonny, a slice-of-life drama of the 1970s New York Black experience, and a tense courtroom procedural. While some cultural references have aged, the catalyst—Fonny’s false arrest by a cop who takes personal offense at his existence—remains as common today as it was then. Baldwin’s prose lifts these characters […]

We’re all just screaming into an algorithmic void

Minority Rule by Ash Sarkar

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  I recently rewatched The Social Network. Fifteen years on, it stands as a digital autopsy for the birth of “Tech Bro” culture and the death of nuanced debate. The subsequent rise of Facebook, Twitter, and their algorithm-driven culture wars has accelerated societal conversation away from material inequality and toward the friction of identity politics. In her first book, Ash Sarkar encourages us to look beneath this noise at the deeper fractures of class. She rightly argues that identity politics has a vital place in […]

One Flew Over A Magdalene Sister’s New Black

Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart

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  Nurse Ratched, George “Pornstache” Mendez, Sister Bridget. Institutional fiction relies on a specific archetype—the tyrannical gatekeeper—that can make or break the latest remix of the genre. In the case of Women of a Promiscuous Nature, Mrs. Maynard simply isn’t strong enough to enter that hall of villains. As a fictionalized account of the mass quarantine carried out against women during WWII, the novel focuses on a smaller ensemble than is typical for the genre. Our way in is through Ruth, who feels slightly anachronistic […]

Allende can still capture the grand narrative of time

The Japanese Lover by Isabele Allende

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  The many tropes of South American literature can be cloying if not done well. Magical realism can move into absurdist fantasy, sweeping epics can become confusing, and political messages more text than subtext. In this book, Allende shows how she’s able to balance these with her usual prowess.   Generations passing along traits and trauma is a common theme in Allende’s work. The Japanese Lover reaches across the tragedy of the Polish Jewish community’s persecution under the Nazi, following the story of Alma’s escape […]



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