Rec me some novels about consumerism, lonley masses, alienation and sexuality in these contexts

Rec me some novels about consumerism, lonley masses, alienation and sexuality in these contexts.
Set in relatively modern time.
I was re watching the second episode of Black Mirror and wanted to find a book with similar commentary on spectacle and commodification.
>inb4 Brave New World
Read it too many times

White noise

Thanks for the rec definitely gonna read it

All of Houellebecq's works. It's his core theme. Note that he was a Marxist in his youth and it shows in his first books.

I always wanted to read his stuff but his bad reputation kind of threw me off. It was just liberals complaining or there is really a reactionary spirit behind the pulp facade?

Also do you guys have books that deal with commodification of sexualization as it central focus?

Can anyone source me that Nick Land passage about the tranny who "wastes" several cops?

>a reactionary spirit is bad

I'm not that guy but

> there is really a reactionary spirit behind the pulp facade?

Of course there is a reactionary spirit underlying the tone of speaking about mass alienation induced by consumerism and commodity fetishism. The only other option (until you provide me another) seems to be something akin to what Land thinks about it (quoting from Thirst for Annihilation):

"That the root of love is a thirst for disaster is exhibited throughout its erratic course. At its most elementary love is driven by a longing to be cruelly unrequited; fostering every kind of repellent self-abasement, awkwardness, and idiocy. Sometimes this provokes the contempt that is so obviously appropriate, and the tormented one can then luxuriate in the utter burning loss that each gesture becomes. One wastes away; expending health and finance in orgies of narcosis, breaking down one’s labour-power to the point of destitution, pouring one’s every thought into an abyss of consuming indifference. At the end of such a trajectory lies the final breakage of health, ruinous poverty, madness, and suicide. A love that does not lead such a blasted career is always at some basic level disappointed (...)"

We are already seeing the results of humans being left to consume rampant the technology they have developed. This is already the "freedom" option, there's no treachery or "elites manipulating us" facade (there are many facades, but not the one of consumption - we are engaging into this spectacle ourselves). How to 'deal' with this if not by a reactionary spirit? Not a rhetoric question at all, I'd really like to know

>Of course there is a reactionary spirit underlying the tone of speaking about mass alienation induced by consumerism and commodity fetishism. The only other option (until you provide me another)...

the obvious alternative is a marxist or old-style leftist spirit. alienation is a central concept in marx's philosophy and his work is full of critiques of consumerism/commodity fetishism

He is reactionary insofar as he doesn't consider that liberal capitalism has brought real progress. He isn't reactionary insofar as he doesn't advocate for a return to the past.

Hmm. The Nietzschean spirit partially exhibited in fascism sort of tackled this. Action for the sake of action, war for the sake of war. It matters not who wins only that there's a struggle, anything else is useless because we're all dead anyway. It's sort of a compromise with modernity. Perhaps that's what your Land quote is trying to say, I don't really know I have a hard time understanding his prose.

i'm not meme-ing when I suggest Infinite Jest.

Marxism / old style leftism is reactionary in the strict meaning of the term by 2018 standards.

>Marxism / old style leftism is reactionary
This so much. People on both sides need to realize that classical Marxism and Fascism are 19th/20th century ideologies. They're dead beyond revival.

that's why we have the joy of sharing this world with neo-Marxists and neo-Reactionaries. sometimes they're even the same person

That's not necessarily wrong but that's not why they are re-action-ary.

Reactionary in the fetishization of the past I mean.
To a certain degree everything that isn't corporate droning, liberalism, techno popism and positivism, consumerism ecc.
I mean I hate all this stuff myself, but there is a big gap between this type of reactionaries and anti communists who fetishize the past just to justify their masturbatory fantasies

Then I'd say he is certainly not reactionary in that sense and very much worth getting into

This current ideological strain of neo-marxism won't last, and I don't think we've really seen anywhere close to the full evolution of the alt-right/NRx/etc tangent yet. We're more on the cusp of new "postmodern" ideologies coming into the light, but we're not there yet.

They're dead because they're reactionary. They're modernist ideologies and we're living in a postmodern world. They could only possibly exist, let along succeed, in a modernist world and we're already past that.

Perfect.
Anything else besides Houellebecq and DeLillo?

The Fortunate Fall - Rapheal Carter

>Rec me some novels about consumerism, lonley masses, alienation and sexuality in these contexts.

You're literally asking for the 'reactionary spirit' distilled in literary form, though

I've already read Submission and The Elementary Particles, where should I go next with Houllebecq?

Read Less than Zero by BEE if you're under 25

Uncomfortably relatable book

True in a certain sense. I shouldn't have used reactionary. "Don't give me some /pol/ shit where it's all the pinko joos and illuminati's fault" fits better

guy debord spectacle
neil postman "amusing ourselves to death"
most of the frankfurt school stuff I guess

Already did them. That's why I asked for novels