ApeRapture

Ugh... well, how to start this. Ever since reading "Days of War, Nights of Love" I have this weird fascination with anarchist literature in the way that I can give some of their ideas lip-service and admire their ideals from a safe, voyeuristic distance - but could possibly never truly be immersed in their propagated life. This is to say, while I don't necessarily fully embrace the Crimethinc life neither philosophically, nor practically - my main grievances with this book are largely its literary craft.

I could give as much credit, that it might not have initially been intended to be a joint, evolving narrative, and the stringing together of random events in an apparent stream-of-consciousness style was deliberate. That, however, doesn't excuse ignoring the obvious drawbacks the original format had for a print edition.

As a result - there's extreme redundancy - the whole book is a merry-go-round of the same vignettes of eating bagels, train-hopping, shop-lifting, dumpster-diving and constant self-congratulatory verbal diarrhea. If this was supposed to persuade of the superiority of the author's lifestyle, it fails on a grand scale, since most if it frankly sounds... dull, and as routine and structured as the lives of the people he looks down upon from his high horse. It's unfocused, there's no sense of what the book is supposed to be about, and I really have a hard time recalling separate events that might not just be muddled memories of some of the other better Crimethinc stuff I read.

I did want to like it and stuck through the bitter end, but even if it occasionally picks up on something interesting or insightful (something that isn't a morbid fascination of bagels or his own unemployment, for instance) that strand of thought is nipped in the bud soon after. If you're distanced from or even not that particularly interested in the subculture beyond a superficial look, this might be an interesting look from the inside - but other books provide a more engaging retelling of that POV.