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.
