Doesn't everything basically fade into next weeks headlines?

I don't expect it to be thought of as much more than a crazy suicide note (see: ryanb's posts) in the media; although it almost certainly is more than that.

Well, there is the chance that after assorted academic and cultural eminences read over his work, some kind of consensus is reached that this man made a significant and profound contribution to the pantheon of 'cultural criticism' and continental-style social theory. Add to that the lurid poignancy of his suicide as a "willed death" or "experiment in nihilism" intended to test his hypotheses, and he might have the makings of a pop intellectual icon.

His first sentence (conveniently found on page 15) is a red flag for paranoia.

Edit: The entire first section shows a lot of paranoid thought.

"It is not unreasonable to think that this work will not be judged on its merits." (last sentence of his intro paragraph)

I am not unfamiliar with litotes, but it is not unstupid to continue reading.

I'm on page 50! Not reading at least this far is criminal.

reads like sokal hoax imo

I think there's a fine line in the world of continental-style academic social theory between dead-end, jargon-laden gibberish and Nietzsche-esque epigrammatic riffing and handwaving that generates thought-provoking nuggets and insights. To me, the 2% of "Suicide Note" I've read so far is closer to the latter than the former.

[QUOTE=smrk;21991710I am not unfamiliar with litotes, but it is not unstupid to continue reading.[/QUOTE]

This was not a bad use of the word "litote" in a sentence.

litotes

It actually isn't that badly written. A little too pseudo-intellectual, but that is forgivable. Unfortunately, it is, as Jeeves would say, "fundamentally unsound," however.

Ye , you have caught me in a pelling error. I ee your point.

Sorry, thought it was another American mistake. spelling dont matter.

I do not think it is a bad reading in general, but ~200 pages i skimmed through did not quite convince me of investing the time needed for the other 1700.

The part about Jesus/early Christianity is provoking, and somewhat amusing but far from being novel/brilliant. Plus a lot of that part is more scandalizing then actually intelectually provoking. (I mean i do not hate this whole Rome's symbolic rape of Judaism interpretation you can read there, but getting into the juicy details 2 times a page does not lead to any big philosophical/historical/"sociobiological" discoveries, just there to make the occasional bigotedly religious reader scream).

The part about Holocaust/Nazi regime i read contained like one or two interesting thoughts but in general i found it a very shallow treatment of the subject.

Anyhow, I really do not think i (or most people actually) will have time/willing for the whole thing, so if anybody finds a part that they think is particularily insightful/discussion worthy, please call our attention to it.

It's not about envying the author, but downplaying the story's significance. The length of a suicide note is impressive only to the extent that it can really be considered a suicide note, much in the same way the length of a book isn't interesting if it consisted of many randomly generated characters.

I haven't read it all so maybe it all comes together, but it seems like a collection of the author's thoughts to me.

What I'm saying is it doesn't seem, imo, "good" to give a paper attention because a guy wrote it and shot himself in the face because the guy who wrote it shot himself in the face. A paper on a particular subject "should" , imo, receive attention based on the merits of the paper, not on the fact that the author shot himself.