professor montgomery cristo: an adjunct's tale
Accused for an act of plagiarism he did not commit... Condemned to teach as an underpaid adjunct for 14 years... Resolved to right the scales of academic justice...
Adapted from the masterful epic by Dumas, a retelling of the story of Monte Cristo in the shadow of the ivory tower.
Follow Edmond Dantes, a promising doctoral student, as he is sabotaged by his envious cohort and condemned to teach as an adjunct for 14 years before returning on a campaign of vengeance.
Dantes had it all. Close to defending his dissertation, the praise of his mentors, an insider tip about an upcoming tenure-track hire in his department, and a shot at the prestigious Mercedes Chair - all of it lost when he was accused of plagiarizing his recently deceased supervisor, Dantes' career prospects tumble into precipitous ruin as he must suffer in the purgatory of precarious adjunct teaching at another university. But in the decrepit D'If wing where the adjuncts hold their office hours, Dantes meets a long-time adjunct by the name of Faria who tutors him on how to survive as an adjunct, and is told of a scholarly treasure: a hitherto unknown manuscript by Nietzsche buried in Sils Maria.
Dantes comes to discover who was behind the plot to sabotage him, and how it was done. Under an alias and with the treasure in hand, Dantes rebuilds his academic career from scratch - all to achieve his one ultimate goal: revenge.
Now available in print and on Kindle
Adapted from the masterful epic by Dumas, a retelling of the story of Monte Cristo in the shadow of the ivory tower.
Follow Edmond Dantes, a promising doctoral student, as he is sabotaged by his envious cohort and condemned to teach as an adjunct for 14 years before returning on a campaign of vengeance.
Dantes had it all. Close to defending his dissertation, the praise of his mentors, an insider tip about an upcoming tenure-track hire in his department, and a shot at the prestigious Mercedes Chair - all of it lost when he was accused of plagiarizing his recently deceased supervisor, Dantes' career prospects tumble into precipitous ruin as he must suffer in the purgatory of precarious adjunct teaching at another university. But in the decrepit D'If wing where the adjuncts hold their office hours, Dantes meets a long-time adjunct by the name of Faria who tutors him on how to survive as an adjunct, and is told of a scholarly treasure: a hitherto unknown manuscript by Nietzsche buried in Sils Maria.
Dantes comes to discover who was behind the plot to sabotage him, and how it was done. Under an alias and with the treasure in hand, Dantes rebuilds his academic career from scratch - all to achieve his one ultimate goal: revenge.
Now available in print and on Kindle
metastasis and metastability: a deleuzian approach to information
The word “information” carries a number of connotations depending on context, and can be said to be one of the most problematic words to define despite many efforts by statistical theorists, mathematicians, physicists, cyberneticians, communication theorists, computer scientists, and philosophers. Is information physical or non-physical? Is the universe digital, analog, or a “chaosmic” mixture of the two?
This book explores a Deleuzian way of understanding information by retracing Deleuze’s ontology of difference back to Gilbert Simondon’s concepts of transduction, metastability, and perpetual individuation as a source for Deleuze’s concept of the virtual. Although Deleuze did not address information specifically in his oeuvre, this book attempts to construct what a Deleuzian theory of information might look like as a consequence of his philosophical insights.
The reader is presented with a brief survey of information theories, capsule explanations of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze, and a discussion on the roles of metastasis and metastability as a means of addressing the problematic known as information outside of computing regimes, and as a critique of cybernetics, informatics, and memetics. Can information be reconfigured as affirmative difference, transformed into a “nomad science,” or must it remain consigned to the realm of probabilism?
Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 340 pp.
Available in paperback and hardcover.
Download the flyer here for institutional ordering.
This book explores a Deleuzian way of understanding information by retracing Deleuze’s ontology of difference back to Gilbert Simondon’s concepts of transduction, metastability, and perpetual individuation as a source for Deleuze’s concept of the virtual. Although Deleuze did not address information specifically in his oeuvre, this book attempts to construct what a Deleuzian theory of information might look like as a consequence of his philosophical insights.
The reader is presented with a brief survey of information theories, capsule explanations of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze, and a discussion on the roles of metastasis and metastability as a means of addressing the problematic known as information outside of computing regimes, and as a critique of cybernetics, informatics, and memetics. Can information be reconfigured as affirmative difference, transformed into a “nomad science,” or must it remain consigned to the realm of probabilism?
Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 340 pp.
Available in paperback and hardcover.
Download the flyer here for institutional ordering.
The infinite grey
ABOUT: A mysterious grey dust continues to settle everywhere. Grey bureaucratic rulers and reformers dominate politics in a time that has grown weary of flamboyant tyrants. Grey dreams, grey hopes, and a grey future emerges out of the destruction of the Library and a people thoroughly greyed out as "dividual" masses chained to personalized grey machines and even greyer ideals in this final book of the acclaimed trilogy.
Paul Fabulan, subject to an experiment to encode his psyche with the text of an obscure and angry theorist, returns to his former part-time teaching post only to fight against a new reformer named Martin Schulmann who seeks to transform universities into degree mills in line with neoliberal policies. Meanwhile, Gimaldi finds himself teaching a course on codes and ciphers while Castellemare (now just a humble librarian at the university library) and Anton Setzer have misappropriated a grant in Gimaldi's name to create a quantum virus that will carry the encoded imprint of the Library's remaining holdings so that future generations would be entrusted to perform scribal labour in the reproduction of the Library. In the post-Albrecht world, North America is mostly a grey desert save for university campuses that have been repurposed as ecclesiastical towns, under the domination of a new theocracy: the orthodox-conservative and powerful Schulmannites, and the weakening opposition of Calembourists. One lone pilgrim in this neo-feudalist world is misappropriating the Grant to investigate a mysterious place known only by dark rumour: The Grey.
Buy it here
Paul Fabulan, subject to an experiment to encode his psyche with the text of an obscure and angry theorist, returns to his former part-time teaching post only to fight against a new reformer named Martin Schulmann who seeks to transform universities into degree mills in line with neoliberal policies. Meanwhile, Gimaldi finds himself teaching a course on codes and ciphers while Castellemare (now just a humble librarian at the university library) and Anton Setzer have misappropriated a grant in Gimaldi's name to create a quantum virus that will carry the encoded imprint of the Library's remaining holdings so that future generations would be entrusted to perform scribal labour in the reproduction of the Library. In the post-Albrecht world, North America is mostly a grey desert save for university campuses that have been repurposed as ecclesiastical towns, under the domination of a new theocracy: the orthodox-conservative and powerful Schulmannites, and the weakening opposition of Calembourists. One lone pilgrim in this neo-feudalist world is misappropriating the Grant to investigate a mysterious place known only by dark rumour: The Grey.
Buy it here
ZOMG!: A Social Media Novel
Now available, a social media novel. Yes. With all the Twitteractions, Facebook distractions, pop-up interruptus you can handle.
Inspired by Sinclair Lewis’ biting appraisal of contemporary mores, alternative cartoonist Seth’s enchantingly detailed studies of fictional cities, and seasoned with plenty of Jonathan Franzen-esque qualities, ZOMG! takes place in a mid-sized fictitious Ontario city where social media technology touches the lives of ten common people in the run-up to a mayoral election. Media consolidation, midlife crisis, radio piracy, digital addiction, flat-pack furniture, social networking schemes, online narcissism, and vivid visions of hell all feature in this Canadian novel verité masterfully brought to life by Kane X. Faucher.
Read the first few sample chapters downloadable as PDF here
Buy it here.
Inspired by Sinclair Lewis’ biting appraisal of contemporary mores, alternative cartoonist Seth’s enchantingly detailed studies of fictional cities, and seasoned with plenty of Jonathan Franzen-esque qualities, ZOMG! takes place in a mid-sized fictitious Ontario city where social media technology touches the lives of ten common people in the run-up to a mayoral election. Media consolidation, midlife crisis, radio piracy, digital addiction, flat-pack furniture, social networking schemes, online narcissism, and vivid visions of hell all feature in this Canadian novel verité masterfully brought to life by Kane X. Faucher.
Read the first few sample chapters downloadable as PDF here
Buy it here.
Epigonesia - with Tom BradleyNovel
BlazeVOX books (more info here) Buy it here. For review copies, contact the author or the publisher. Review by Lynn Alexander at Full of Crow Excerpts available at 3:AM Magazine, Unlikely Stories 2.0, and Danse Macabre A literary all-star cast of Pound, Celine, Bukowski, Artaud, Hunter Thompson, and Henry Miller, threaded by the mental state known only as "epigonesia." Fans of Faucher and Bradley will delight in this rowdy, raucous collaboration that bring two exquisitely bent irrealists into one book. Faucher has written Ezra Pound back to life. By various alchemical means, the latter performs the same favor for Henry Miller, Hunter Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Antonin Artaud and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. These authors are dumped in the present, and each is caused to suffer symbolic retribution worthy of Dante's Inferno, based on the particular excess that came to define his literary persona. Celine returns with no memory of the French language. Bukowski is cursed with an inability to drink alcohol. Artaud behaves insanely, but no one seems to notice except for teenagers who think it's "awesome." Miller has erectile dysfunction, while Thompson is expected to write legit journalism. The quincunx of notorious and occasionally polemical authors gives the novel a kind of literary star-power. Meanwhile, Tom Bradley has recruited himself to provide commentary in an elaborate substructure of footnotes. Bradley seems to have discovered the manuscript on a rickety old laptop which Faucher left behind upon his tragic suicide. Cover illustration by David Aronson (www.alchemicalwedding.com) The Vicious Circulation of Dr CatastropeNovel Enigmatic Ink Press, 2010: 224pp. CAN/US: $17.50 Available at Amazon.com A bitter doctor unfairly accused and sent to prison, an old and ornery Frenchman in Louisiana who just wants people to leave him and his lawn alone, a paranoid ex-crooner trying to mount a comeback in the age of human jukeboxes, a dis-gruntled academic whose career is being sabotaged, and a Rabelaisian narrator who has united them all in a tavern tale. Delight in the satirical volleys of vitriol and angry, streaming fury from the mouthiest, most opinionated, and disillusioned old men in a book that surreptitiously draws the essence of polemic in the history of literature and expresses the most outlandish statements with a double donkey punch of humour and shock. This is certainly not a book for the delicate. Faucher is without a doubt the greatest literary parodist in existence. His Celine, in particular, is uncanny to the point of making me superstitious at times. -Tom Bradley, author of Vital Fluid In this novel, Kane X Faucher seeks to denounce, through language, everything that anyone, anywhere, has ever held dear. Utilizing a shifting array of narrators (separate pieces of a scatological “anti-self”), he treats bitterness as parallax, exploring the relation of perspective to society—banal, oppressive, destructive, but ultimately inescapable… a magnificent work of art, hilarious and virtuosic. --Kyle Muntz, author of Voices. The shadow of Celine’s genius dominates the book; Celine combined with George Carlin. --Prakash Kona, author of Nunc Stans Kane X. Faucher’s schizographic Dr. Catastrophe is a bizzaro-charged scrabblific shrap-spray of apocalyptic logos and Célinian infospection that leaves you raw and gasping as if you’ve just been donkey-punched from Timbuktu to Duluth. Which is a good thing. The poetics of provocation have never prosed so piercingly. —Mark Spitzer, author of the transgressive novel CHODE! Cover image by the acclaimed David Aronson. (alchemicalwedding.com) [+!]Extending by invention beyond concrete, VisPo, and code poetry, this triple collaboration of experimentation featuring Kane X. Faucher, Matina Stamatakis, and John Moore Williams contains de-code "poems" and textual art under the lysicological rubric that to compose is to de- and re-compose. Studded with multi-linguistic puns, broken and re-stitched prefixes and suffixes to form neologisms, this book is both a linguistic and aesthetic artifact.
Anticipated release by Calliope Nerve Media late summer 2009. Sneak peek of the electronic version here. For a sneak aural peek at one of the works set to music by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, go to Audioo. "[+!] is a post-code-poetry experiment, making de-composition into re-composition. .. art in it's truest sense... a bizarre, compelling, visually stunning, important work. Lysicology may not be a part of your lexicon now but it will be..." --Lucindo Anthony (author A Disease of Poetry) Update: now available in paperback. Read the review by Lynn Alexander at Full of Crow |