Category Archives: blogroll

Introducing Castrovalva

I have just stumbled upon a new blog: Castrovalva by a certain Richard R..

From the introduction:

The fulminations, peregrinations and ruminations on this site are the work of someone who would call himself a pragmatist, distrusting metaphysical concepts in favour of the existential, but I’d also describe myself as a romantic, fascinated by decay, decadence, the skewed and the exotic. I would call myself an outsider, but distrust the very term, since the very idea of rebellion and non-comformity is the basis of modern culture and comes complete with its own brands and uniforms. I am a pessimist and sceptic, though this has only ever stemmed from disappointed idealism. I would call myself a traditionalist, revering the literature, art and architecture of past decades and centuries while remaining contemptuous of the modern. But I also feel nothing but contempt for conservatism and would call myself a liberal. I would call myself an atheist, though not a rationalist. To be strict, I would call myself an agnostic, in that although I consider god’s existence highly unlikely I am concerned less with this than with the social and ethical aspects of religion; I became an atheist after reading the Book of Revelations, and being horrified and revolted by it.

At present this site is comprised of three main sections. The first is a gallery of architectural and historical photographs. The tenets section contains a set of observations and notes, combining a journal and commonplace book as well as including impressions of art galleries, museums and books. As an extension of this, there is now a weblog, called The Thief’s Journal. For links and articles, there is also my del.icio.us pages.

From a July 2006 post concerned with individuality [external links changed/added]:

Of late, I’ve been reading two very different texts that share several themes in common. The first of these, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, a survey of alienation in romantic and existential literature. As a work of criticism it tends to be somewhat reductive, seeing anomie as a byproduct of thwarted mysticism, a somewhat difficult theory to approach the post-christian likes of Camus and Sartre with. Accordingly, Nietzsche in deflated to a religious mystic while the moral questions that so excised Bakhtin in his reading of Dostoevsky are declared an irrelevance.

Notes on my blogroll entries

Below are answers to the question: why I read the blogs I read:

dadanoias
- Since about six months I’ve been reading Dadanoias, a young woman from Barcelona whose interests are sex and music. She has very good tastes in both, but her forte is the first.
Giornale Nuovo
- Been following the work of Misteraitch for about two years now. Misteraitch buys antique art books and then scans plates of them for us to share. Unique content, excellent tastes. Misteraitch is British but resides in Finland. Works in IT (I think).
Girish
- I discovered Girish only two months ago via the Reading Experience literary blog . He is at the center of a group cinema critics who rival the best of offline critics. His blog is immensely popular. Outside of film, he is into music, especially eighties dance but also reggae.
gmtPlus9 (-15)
- One of the earliest blogs I started to follow, maybe four years ago. The author lives in Taiwan. His main interests are the visual arts and old weird americana (bluegrass, rockabilly, etcetera…).
greencine
- Cinema blog, incredibly prolific, I suspect that David Hudson research and posts all day. Greencine is an American video-on-demand service provider. Very knowledgable, and not only about film.
groovy age of horror
- Been reading Curt since two years now. He feeds my interest in ‘low culture’: paperbacks, fumetti, movies and comics of the 1970s horror boom.
K Punk
- A perennial favourite since about 1 year. The author Mark Fisher has a degree in philosophy and literature and resides in the UK. He keeps me abreast of the intellectual core of the blogosphere and all things Otherian, Zizekian, Lacanian and postmodern. What fascinates me in his work is that I don’t understand half of it. Someday I will.
notes from somewhere bizarre
- At the center of the fashionable blogosphere, with an emphasis on eroticism and technology.
PCL linkdump
- Got acquainted with this European outfit through Groovy Age of Horror. Emphasis: fun pop culture. An interesting sideproject is Mr Dante Fontana’s visual guidance who posts the best of Youtube music videos so you don’t have to find them yourself.
phinnweb
- I’ve known Phinn since practically my first steps on the internet around 1996. We share an interest in just about everything. His specialities are electronic music and Finland, where he was born. Last year he ran a very personal blog, recently he just posts about ‘cultural things’, much like I do.
Radio Nova
- Not a blog but the best radio station in the world, met them twice: first when stuck with my brother on the Paris ring, then when Matthieu sent the entire corpus of nova CDs to me in 2002.
rare erotica
- From the people who run disinfo. Erotica is the interest we share.
sauer-thompson
- I have known this Australian duo since the early 2000s. Philosophy is their thing.
spurious
- I found this anonymous writer through the Reading Experience. He is a specialist on French literature (Blanchot, Bataille, …) and writes beautiful prose poetry.
The Pinocchio Theory
- I became familiar with the work (e. g. Doom Patrols) of Steven Shaviro somewhere in the late nineties. He is a specialist on postmodernism based in the United States or Canada and at the center of the – mainly continental philosophy – blogosphere. Friends with K-Punk, writes about music and film and literature too.
The Reading Experience
- I found this blog somewhere in May of this year when I was researching the concept of realism in literature. He keeps me abreast of the online literary criticism world. His blog introduced me to a whole list of other blogs. Much like Girish he is at the center of the literatisphere.
woebot
- I’ve known Woebot’s work since May 2004. He buys a lot of records, some really obscure ones too. Works in the graphic sector. Resides in the UK. At the center of the musiblogosphere. Check his Top 100.

That’s all. Thank you.