Waste Radio

Waste Books Ep. 13 - The Argonauts

Join us this month's book club as we discuss Maggie Nelson's queer memoir The Argonauts!

Overview

Maggie Nelson’s 2015 book The Argonauts combines theory and memoir in a successful attempt to prove that the political is personal. Combining queer theory, feminism, a bit of Marxism, a dollop of psychoanalysis, heaps of gender theory, and a healthy dose of highfaluting post-structuralism, Nelson undertakes an odyssey like the mythic Argonauts not in pursuit of any Golden Fleece but a record of the self’s permutations and the difficulties with understanding others when all of our experiences appear so diverse.

Nelson’s writing comfortably rests between the informality of a blog and the professionalism of a tenured professor. Her writing rests in this golden mean by suffusing her text with quotes as wide-ranging as Ralph Waldo Emerson to Judith Butler, Michel Foucault to her partner Harry. Rather than introduce each zinger of a quote like an academic paper she cites the quote in italics while identifying its author in the margins. The effect works splendidly and renders the reading experience with heady but fluid results. The narrative consists of two stories, Nelson’s pregnancy where she faces her femininity in lurid but intimate detail, and her husband Harry Dodge’s gender reassignment where their body becomes slowly transformed in intense but exciting ways. Positioned between these two are their children, one Nelson slowly becomes more acquainted with, the other a new life force growing inside our author.

The title of the book references Roland Barthes, Nelson quoting “the phrase ‘I love you’ is like ‘the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.’ Just as the Argo’s part may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase ‘I love you,’ its meaning must be renewed by each use…” The Argonauts mission is one that attempts to locate meaning in a world where meaning seems to take away our freedom. Nelson finds that even in alienated modernity “the inexpressible is contained – inexpressibly! In the expressed.” The read is a deeply engaging one for anyone even remotely interested in gender or queer theory, and makes what for many people is deeply unsettling, familiar, funny, but most importantly, unflinchingly honest.

-Jordan Finn

 

Show Notes

Music this show provided by the Big Sky Trio. Check out their album Short Stories on Spotify or wherever you get music!

To see more arty stuff by our funky collective of ne'er-do-wells visit waste-division.org

Also if you're interested in subscribing to our monthly independent art distro visit our Patreon page!

Podcast produced by Phillip Griffin. Graphic by Cooper Malin.

W.B. Appendix 007: Tyler Murphy & Phillip Griffin

For the latest episode of the Waste Books appendices Waste Correspondent Phillip Griffin sat down over coffee with a MT-based painter, gallery owner, and all-around sweetie Tyler Murphy to talk philosophy & other shtuff. Topics include discursivity, Story Night at Montana Gallery, danger & vulnerability in modern life, Paul Tillich's book The Courage to Be, and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. For more of Tyler's work visit montanagallery.net!

Music in this episode features Bust! The track is called "Slip Mat." Check out their bandcamp page!

For more of our work check out www.waste-division.org!

Also if you're interested in subscribing for monthly independent art deliveries visit our Patreon page. This helps us with operating costs so we can continue to supply you with good stuff like this!

Podcast produced by Phillip Griffin. Graphic originally by Tyler for his Lonely Painter Podcast, but "reappropriated" for this one by Phil.

W.B. Appendix 006: Cooper Tells A Story

Cooper Malin tries his hand at being "professional" and a "storyteller." It totally "worked" and wasn't a "weird exploration into ASMR."

For more of our work check out www.waste-division.org!

Also if you're interested in subscribing for monthly independent art deliveries visit our Patreon page. This helps us with operating costs so we can continue to supply you with good stuff like this!

Podcast produced by Cooper Malin. Graphic also by Coop. Check out his new art page on Instagram @rustyfleece!

W.B. Appendix 004 - Chris Tsekouras & Eric Toennis

Waste correspondent Eric Toennis sat down with his friend Chris Tsekouras to talk about their road trip from Eugene, OR to Billings, MT for Julia Louis-Dreyfest last August. They tell of their experience volunteering for the fest, as well as attending concerts and a comedy show there. Dreyfest also inspired these guys to pack a drumset back from MT and start jamming themselves.

Music in this episode features Dreyfest vets, Lung, from Cincinnati, OH. The track is called "All The King's Horses."

Graphic by Cooper Malin.

For more of our work check out www.waste-division.org!

Also if you're interested in subscribing for monthly independent art deliveries visit our Patreon page. This helps us with operating costs so we can continue to supply you with good stuff like this!

Podcast produced by Phillip Griffin.

Waste Books Episode 12: The Dispossessed

Join us this month as we discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's anarchist utopian space novel, The Dispossessed!

Overview

With all this talk about walls, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a timely masterpiece for science fiction. Her novel chronicles the physicist Shevek who travels from the utopian but inhospitable planet of Anarres for the earthly Urras where the landscape is verdant but capitalism and hierarchy dominate society’s mores. Rather than present a fable filled with hyperspace travel, exotic alien species, and intergalactic threats to peace, Le Guin utilizes the freedom of the genre to experiment with societal alternatives rather than provide our society with brash escapism.

Shevek’s home planet of Anarres is an anarchist culture where possessive pronouns are nonexistent, play and work are indistinguishable, and nothing has a monetary value. But even this perfect world starts to reveal its limitations in the exclusionary practices of those who resist the planet’s groupthink. Shevek is seen as a threat to this egalitarian order where individual success is considered egoizing, and Shevek rebelliously heads to the nearby Urras to complete his theory on physics and time hoping that in his search for individual fulfilment he may also be able to save his community from becoming as close-minded as Urras’ propetarians. His odyssey to this vibrant planet finds freedoms never known to his people but at costs that precipitate global wars, amplify class privation, and objectify women with contemptible intensity. Urras’ focus on division rather than unity, possession instead of community forces Shevek to reevaluate his theory, his values, and what it means to communicate when the space inbetween may preclude ever being understood.

Somehow, The Dispossessed manages to stuff Daoism, anarcho-syndicalism, quantum mechanics, vehement feminism, ecological tension, philosophical dualism, memorable characters, and hella good writing without ever sounding pedantic, patronizing, or preachy. It’s an accessible page-turner of a saga that tastefully retains the intrigue of novel ideas, technology, and locales without the need to flip back to the appendix every few pages.  For those that can’t stand science-fiction’s monolithic world-building but want an exploration of societal and political themes in a strange land, look no further!

-Jordan Finn

Show Notes

This episode features the track "Dryspellcaster," from FUULS's EP, its a secret.

Wastoid Cooper Malin did the graphic for this episode!

Podcast produced by Phillip Griffin.

Check out more of our work at waste-division.org, and if you'd like to get on our list to receive monthly art packages please visit our Patreon page!

W.B. Appendix 003 - A Naval Flight Officer & Phil Griffin

Waste correspondent Phillip Griffin sat in a hot tub with an old friend who finds himself training to be a Naval Flight Officer, achieving the dream of flight he's had since he was a kid. They talk about flying, discipline, guns, and music in the latest episode of the Waste Books Appendices! Get the low-down on the up-high from this Grade-A Derelict Wastoid.

Speaking of music, The track at the end of this is a demo called "Dry County" by the pilot himself.

Graphic by Cooper Malin.

For more of our work check out www.waste-division.org!

Also if you're interested in subscribing for monthly independent art deliveries visit our Patreon page. This helps us with operating costs so we can continue to supply you with good stuff like this!

W.B. Appendix 002 - Mary Kate Teske & Phil Griffin

Mary Kate Teske is a woman of many talents. She's a photographer, graphic designer, web designer, videographer, musician, crocheter, talker, classic car maintainer... etc.etc.etc. In a word: she's dope! And she's doing a lot of stuff. To check out her work visit her Instagram or her website.

Aaaaaaand to see her web design and other work check out www.waste-division.org!

Also if you're interested in subscribing for monthly independent art deliveries visit our Patreon page. This helps us with operating costs so we can continue to supply with good stuff like this!

Illustrations of Mary Kate as your 80s boyfriend (mullet included) were sketched by our own Cooper Malin.

W.B. Appendix 001 - Cooper Malin & Phil Griffin

This is a new addition to our show & feed, a series of mini-episodes that feature one-on-one conversations between the Waste Books doods, orrrrr other cools peeps we manage to sit down with. Cooper and Phil catch up on their non-WB projects, including Coop's new ventures into graphic design commission work and Phil's training as a professional musician. Topics include social media & self promotion, conspiracy theories, our reading practices (or lack thereof), and of course the extracurricular books we've been on, including The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, and More Than Two - A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert.

This is a looser, "over coffee"-type conversation compared to our regular show. And shorter! Let us know what you think.

To see more arty stuff by our funky collective of ne'er-do-wells visit waste-division.org

Also if you're interested in subscribing to our monthly independent art distro visit our Patreon page!

Produced by Cooper Malin & Phillip Griffin. Graphic by the Cooper Malin.

 

Waste Books Ep. 11 - Babel 17

Join Dan, Cooper, Eric, Phil, and Jordan as we discuss Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17!

Music by Grant Jones, with the track "Something for Me." Check out his album Nighttime Friends on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get music.

Check out more of our work at waste-division.org, and if you'd like to get on our list to receive monthly art packages please visit our Patreon page!

Produced by Phillip Griffin. Graphic by Cooper Malin.

Waste Books Ep. 10 - Dune (Part Two)

Join us this this episode as we discuss the second half of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic, Dune!

Overview

Ten years after Lord of the Rings, twelve years before Star Wars, and nineteen years before David Lynch’s godawful adaptation, Dune holds true as perhaps the greatest science fiction epic of all time. Frank Herbert’s masterwork of a novel (and five sequels) realizes through the mythos and mystique of the planet Arrakis (a.k.a. Dune) the fertile intersection of ecological, colonialist, feminist, Marxist, religious, and philosophical debates compacted in this prophetic, addictive, and somehow familiar journey through the most unfamiliar of worlds. Dune is heavy without pretension, enjoyable without ease, and immersive without the escapism that cheap science-fiction promises: fantasy without the reminders of why we choose to look elsewhere for answers.

The journey that readers and the characters themselves take on this hostile planet begins with Herbert’s hero Paul Atreides being initiated into the rites of a secret order as the reader too is sucked into a world full of intrigue, subterfuge, and tightly packed action. Be warned though that the initial chapters demand patience: Herbert projects a Tolkieneque universe of history and language, elaborately detailed in the work’s four-part appendix, planetary map, and the book’s “Terminology of the Imperium” referencing hundreds of words and phrases. But the payoff is certain – it’s the world’s best-selling science fiction novel (so it can’t be that difficult) and winner of science-fiction’s two most important awards: the Hugo and Nebula. But cartography and encyclopedias aside, the minutia isn’t essential to fully experiencing Dune’s full effect. The novel holds up not just in its political ponderings but magnificently as a riveting tale established in the tradition of the adventuring hero we’re all too blissfully drawn to.

Although Herbert stuffs the text with abstruse references to Islam, cybernetics, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the novel is undeniably excellent and thought-provoking. For true fans of science-fiction give it a reread. For those interested in delving into the realm of science-fiction look no farther for your opportune introduction. And for those (Waste included) just wanting a classic page-turner of a story, you’ll get that and so much more: the likes of intergalactic war, taut characterization and suspense, and a grandiose setting that replicates the cinematic visions that made the space-opera possible. Did I mention it has thousand-foot sandworms?

-Jordan Finn

 

 

Music for this episode provided by Hibernator, with their new song "Careless."

To see more of our work, or to find out more about our Patreon mail distro, visit our website at waste-division.org.

Next episode we'll be talking about Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17!

 

Produced by Phillip Griffin.