Ghosts of My Life

As always, Mark's writing is superb and honest. Reading through Mark's work one thing became very clear. He cared a lot. You can feel it in this work, too. The problem is, I was not invested in any of the topics. I haven't consumed a lot of the media Mark discussed, but I have this lingering feeling that even if I had, there wouldn't have been much for me to enjoy in Mark's analysis. In my opinion, only the first 3 essays are worth a while, and the rest of it is just downhill from there.

K-Punk's inimitable talent in connecting the most crucial junctions of our socio-economic being with the most acute experiences of our cultural creation and consumption is displayed in Ghosts of My Life as vividly as in Capitalist Realism, if from a different angle. It is a reminder of how much we miss his ability of capturing and raising traces of material reality on artistic work, in references to a "failure of the future" in works of music and cinema.