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Cavaliero is not without a sense of humor.

. . . Deleuze continues to be haunted by the connection of philosophy to symbolic iterations - artistic, scientific, and esoteric - that would be adequate for the expression of immanence and indispensable for philosophy as an act of creation.

Re: "The Bath" . . . Um . . . Er . . . okay, then. If I were Clarisse and could read Gardar's previous thoughts, I might arrange the same. But . . . well. Three stars? I guess?

Irony alert: tonight my wife does a virtual book group, and I will be reading alone in my room the whole time.

Deleuze, here, seems to be most concerned with symbols as indicating the search for knowledge and wisdom, rather than the categorization of knowledge into discrete containers.

It is rotative thought, in which a group of images turn ever more quickly around a mysterious point, as oppossed to the linear allegorical chain.

I might be starting to "get" Deleuze. Starting . . .

"The Auditors" is the kind of poem I aspire to write: an adamantium chain studded with misshapen black pearls.

The stylistic accents and pacing make Mirbeau's "On a Cure" a very solid story. Existentialism, and the rejection of stark nihilism, is the philosophical current that runs throughout. This is a brooding little tale worth five stars, if you can see them for the height of the black mountains surrounding it.

Cavaliero's poetry is so evocative, it simultaneously wraps my mind up in the grey eeriness of the English countryside and spurns me to find a way back there again. Alas, I don't think I will find my way back there in this lifetime because of finances. Maybe I'll have to go haunt it in the next. It doesn't cost anything to be a ghost. Well, except . . .

"The Lucky Sixpence" is the then-contemporary retelling of an age old tale of deceit, betrayal, and revenge. For some reason, the vengeful deed resonates a but louder than other tales like it (they are everywhere, these old tales) but not enough to elevate the hackneyed plot. Three stars (bordering on four, to be fair).

My hypothesis is that we should continue to see, on the horizon of Deleuze's work, the persistence of his adolescent vision of an ecstatic, erotic, and unfinished project of mathesis universalis as that "prephilosophical" or "nonphilosophical" apprehension of immanence alluded to on the final pages of What is Philosophy?

"The Last Bake" is horrific. Really horrific. Not for the faint of heart. But delicately written, until the utter end. Not subtley, but delicately. Until the end. Four stars.

"The First Lesson" is powerful. This will be quoted. My, what "oomph" right. Out. Of. The. Gate.

If the whole collection rises to this level, that might just be overwhelming.

Words fail.

Boy's "A Dentist, Terribly Punished" is workmanlike; adequate, but without panache. Three stars.

Biography helps. Deleuze was a member of a Salon during the French Resistance where he was exposed to Hermetic ideas, particularly Mathesis at a young age. He wrote the forward to Malfatti's Mathesis: or Studies on the Anarchy and Hierarchy of Knowledge in 1946, when he was 21. He later renounced this work.

Mendes' "What the Shadow Demands" falls, stylistically and thematically, between Nabakov and Kafka's short fiction. The maddest minds are highly logical, and precise logic might evoke the madman. The ending, bubbling under the surface of the story the whole time, comes as little surprise, but it's calm barbarity is still, well, decadent. Four stars.

A bringer of my childhood joy has died: Albert Uderzo dies at age 92. Sad, sad day for those of us who grew up with Asterix and Obelix.

Villier's "Sentimentalism" might as well be a primer for dandies, and not for the veneer of fine clothes and expensive tastes, but for the inner dandy, the emotional landscape and mind of the devotee. It is a strange sort of machismo, feeling deeply, yet not expressing reaction save through poetics. A sad story, both for the antagonist and his lover. Five stars. And I must say, Villier's work is powerful.

Bruno views art as potentially generative of magic if the image is less concerned with verisimilitude and more concerned with what may be. "The artist who wishes to move himself must be moved". Art, then, generates resonance with that which is beyond the art itself, so the art is representative, but more importantly, a sort of portal to access that which is beyond mere form.

Des Lewis posted a great review of my story "Creatures of Breathtaking Beauty" (from the Synth 4on his blog!

"The Desire to be a Man," the second story by Villiers de l'isle-Adam should have been an episode of the Twilight Zone. Thematically, Adams examines the emptiness of a man's soul and how his wish to fill his soul with meaning(?) have exactly the opposite effect. Artificiality is a hell that leads one to hell. An insightful, disturbing story that leads one to a lot of self-examination of person vs persona. Five stars.

Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's "The Presentiment" is fabulous and fabulist. A nicely chilling tale of death and the sacred where the line between occult and the veneration of holy artifacts is blurred like stitched-on patches on an old coat. A very old coat, indeed. Five dark stars!

Never use the word "obvious" in a philosophical text. Just don't. Still, I'm starting to see the tip of the iceberg regarding the relationship between Bruno's conception of nature and matter and Deleuze's immanence. It's like it's on the tip of my brain - I can sense a . . . presence about the intersection of the concepts, but can't articulate it.

*sigh* I am SO over Aristotle. Bruno's not helping.

Ravila of "Don Juan's Crowning Love Affair" is a social-elite dandy with a sense of humor who bedazzles the women who surround him with his tale of the titular love affair - of a sort. Four stars for an exquisitely told tale with a lackluster, bot not uninteresting plot.

Interesting that Pico considers true Magic not a work in itself - it doesn't cause miracles, it reveals miracles already inherent in, but hidden by nature. Goeteia, on the other hand, calls on the "operations and power of demons". Magic, in his estimation, is noble and complimentary with Christianity, while the dark arts are contradictory. I wonder where he drew the line between the two?

My newest published story, "Gemini," appears in Eighteen: Stories of Mischief & Mayhem (Underland Tarot, #2). I have to say that this is my favorite of my stories I've written in the past year or two. If I could write a story this good every time, I might have a shot at being a pro writer. I am very excited for the world to see this one!

"Should I tell you how it [God] tried to help me, in its own way? And yet - how fettered it was, too, by the forces of fate, which seem to transcend all that live, including it as much as ourselves."

Oh, heck yes. I just bought John Howard's The Voice of the Air published by Egaeus Press. Pretty pumped about this one!

Palmer Eldritch is seemingly God in his own realm and everyone on Chew-Z is a part of that realm. How do you fight omnipotence and why does Eldritch keep playing these games? There's a kafkaesque element here that I haven't recognized before in PKD. It might have always been there, but I missed it.