Anonymous Kumquat submits:
"A Study in
Floccinaucinihilipilification"
Bob Black
Murray Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism was an
apocalyptic, and apoplectic, polemic against post-leftist forms of
anarchism. So closely did it approach self-parody that it escaped
suspicion on that score only because of the certain fact that Bookchin has
no sense of humor. No such certainty attaches to "Nihilism U.S.A.
McAnarchy in the Playpen" by someone calling himself Timothy Balash.
A shapeless knockoff of SALA, NUSA will find few beginning-to-end readers
except those engaging in an egoscan – fandom jargon for skimming a zine
looking for your own name. No one has ever heard of Balash, which is
probably the pseudonym of someone whose real name, if known, would be a
source of discredit, like Bill Brown or Stewart Home. But if NUSA is a
debut effort, it is indeed a Titanic one: sunk on its maiden voyage.
The Politics of Language
Like George Orwell and Theodor Adorno, I believe there is a
relationship (but not, of course, a one-to-one relationship) between good
writing and true writing. For me to say so is, I admit, self-serving, but
what do you expect from a convicted Stirnerist? If there is any truth to
this proposition, then there is hardly any truth to NUSA. To read it is to
experience genuine suffering. Every known violation of the English
language is well represented, as well as abominations so singular as to
be, as H.P. Lovecraft might say, unnamable. There are nonexistent words:
"abolishment," "exploitive," "rompish,"
"busking," "meritous." Mixed metaphors are the norm.
In the very first sentence, anarchism, "a dizzying banquet,"
"has failed to make itself heard." By not burping? In this
rompish, busking, but not very meritous vision, one might be "crushed
between, on one side, a dress rehearsal" and – well, what
difference does it make what’s on the other side? Then there is the
"collage of mirrors" and the "cable-fed cloisters."
Necessary words are omitted – "comes [ ] a little surprise"
– the reader soon wishes for more of this particular mistake.
Disagreement of subject and verb is nearly normative. "Many a hippy .
. . missed most of their opportunities"; "Lest the reader . . .
suspect they are beginning to detect"; "Fetishization . . . are
as cliched and commonplace as" (whatever); and then there’s
"the runaway phenomena of the single (and usually impoverished
female) parent."
