Revolutionary Brain Press Release

Here is the press release for Harold Jaffe's upcoming GDB book, Revolutionary Brain: Essays & Quasi-Essays: 



SACRED ABJECTIONS

Revolutionary Brain by Harold Jaffe
Release Date: December 2012, distributed by Ingram
Trade Paperback: 127 pages, 7.5x9.25, $13.95, ISBN: 978-1-935738-32-9
Publicist: Jennifer Barnes, publicity@rawdogscreaming.com

Guide Dog Books is proud to announce the release of Harold Jaffe’s Revolutionary Brain, a collection of essays and quasi-essays from one or our most brilliantly innovative provocateurs. Known for his unique style of “docufiction” and “literary terrorism,” Jaffe has made a career out of exposing the latent realities embedded in our media-saturated consciousness, not just in the US but globally. In Revolutionary Brain, he takes his cue from theorist Julia Kristeva, as he demonstrates how we revel in—and ultimately worship—our chronic state of cultural abjection, which increasingly spirals out of control as we plunge ever further into the realm of (dis)information and simulation.

Revolutionary Brain harnesses its critical and creative energy from an extraordinary variety of sources and artifacts, including ethnocide, activist art, popular film, ethical sacrifice, legislated porn, enraged elephants, and electronic hubris. It will appeal to a wide readership, theorizing with the broad erudition of Baudrillard, Žižek and Virilio while entertaining with the eclectic comedy of Coover, Roth, and Barthelme.

From the Back of the Book

In this timely collection of essays and "quasi-essays," acclaimed novelist and critic Harold Jaffe explores the maddening chord changes of millennial culture. Gesturing, in a philosophical shorthand, toward a kind of pop Armageddon, Revolutionary Brain is at once thesis, allegory, and surreal comedy, demonstrating just how far we, and the natural world we have debauched, have fallen. Obsessed with technology, we are incapable of reconstructing ourselves. By way of Jaffe’s elegant prose and perfect pitch, our collective disability is laid bare at the 11th hour. Revolutionary Brain is a powerful cry for a brave new aesthetics that turns towards, not away, from our tormented globe.

Advance Praise for Revolutionary Brain

“I was transfixed in this volume by Jaffe’s incisive blows to the hypocrisy of flag waving, nation building, and the lethal intent by our leaders who stride the globe in bloody boots commanding the 99 percent to obey the law and get to work in the marketplace of nightmarish dreams. Jaffe has missed absolutely nothing in delineating our expiring Kultur. Brilliant.” REGINA KRUMMEL, editor of Prison Poetry by Shackled Women: The Gates Clang Shut

“The bravura essays in Harold Jaffe's collection, Revolutionary Brain, challenge the conscience and consciousness of their readers. This witty and explosive book is an indictment of injustice and spurious morality and a call to art and enlightened activism as healing alternatives.” JONATHAN BAUMBACH, author of You: Or the Invention of Memory

“Brainy and groovy, thoughtful and post-literary, these essays on contemporary media madness are Jaffe at his best: poignant, inventive, right between the eyes of corporate culture.” ELOY FERNÁNDEZ PORTA, author of Emocionese asi

About the Author

Harold Jaffe is the author of 20 volumes of fiction, “docufiction,” novels and essays. His writings have been anthologized widely, translated into numerous languages, and the recipient of several awards. Jaffe is editor of Fiction International and Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at San Diego State University.

Lance Olsen: Berlin Prize Fellow

GDB author Lance Olsen recently announced that he will be living and writing at the American Academy in Berlin from late December 2012 through early June 2013 as the Mary Ellen van der Heyden Berlin Prize Fellow, walking the same halls as some of the all-time literary greats, among them Susan Howe, Anne Carson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Arthur Miller, and C. K. Williams. Congratulations to Lance on a much-deserved honor!