This exhibition... has ushered ecstatic experience back into the world.

October 17, 2014 9:13 AM

Thrown by Kerry Howley chronicles the author's exploits as a philosophy grad student turned devoted follower of a succession of MMA fighters; the connection is less odd than it sounds. The Paris Review has an excerpt from the book (parts one and two), detailing the weigh-in process for fighter Erik Koch before his victory over Cisco Rivera in 2010 in Las Vegas. At Salon, Lydia Kiesling writes that Thrown recalls the best of literary fiction: The nearly hysterical circumlocutory gymnastics of the narrator, and her dual position as a predator and supplicant to her fighters, reminded me of nothing so much as Humbert Humbert, with immense cauliflower-eared men in the startling role of Lolita. More reviews of Thrown at Time (paywalled) and Oxford American.
posted by Cash4Lead (5 comments total)

Probably a better career move than being or trying to be a professor of philosophy.
posted by clockzero at 10:28 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

It doesn't have a kerryhowley tag but she was on metafilter before when the New York Times Sunday Magazine published her report about Mr. and Mrs. Robin Hanson and cryonics.

(Until Cryonics do we part; on the NYTImes; on metafilter.)
posted by bukvich at 10:52 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

The book sounds good - but she must also be either insanely well connected or well represented because the media (or more pertinently - connected people on Twitter) coverage this book is getting is insane.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 11:05 AM on October 17, 2014

Also this is absolutely fucking hilarious

Hope Against Schope
A dialogue between a best-selling prosperity preacher and a world-class pessimist.
posted by bukvich at 11:38 AM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Am i an ass for thinking that a comparison to Lolita as an analogy(and sort of a parable, too) is really pandering and/or lazy?

It's like using inception as an example of subplots, or something.
posted by emptythought at 12:07 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]