Astral Codex Ten

Books: K

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Books: K

Books, collections, and literary works mentioned in the writing. This section collects the K slice of the category index.

Reference Index

Use the title to open the reference entry. Use the caret to expand a compact inline dossier with source context, issue trail, related pages, and outbound links.

Kora In Hell4 mentions across 4 issues

Kora In Hell is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between August 01, 2022 and September 02, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I’m adding four more: Kora In Hell"; "Kora In Hell follows a Romantic program"; "only 81 entries survive in Kora In Hell from the original 365". It most often appears alongside God Emperor of Dune, 1587, Consciousness and the Brain.

Article page
Kora In Hell
Mention count
4
Issue count
4
First seen
August 01, 2022
Last seen
September 02, 2022
Book title
Kora In Hell
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 235
August 01, 2022 · Original source
1: We’ve made it through the original twelve Book Review finalists. I’m busy the next few weeks and want to keep the free Friday posts, so I’m adding four more: Exhaustion: A History, God Emperor of Dune, 1587, and Kora In Hell. I chose these through a combination of reader preference, my preference, and wanting to showcase some unusual genres of review. I realize this is annoying to other finalists who will have to wait longer for a smaller chance at a prize, so I’ll double the amount of all monetary prizes as compensation.
Your Book Review: Kora In Hell
August 26, 2022 · Original source
William Carlos Williams attributes the title to his friend/rival Ezra Pound, mythological references’ number one fanboy. Kora is a parallel figure to Persephone or Proserpina, the Spring captured and taken to Hades by Hades himself. Persephone as a plant goddess and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a groovy afterlife glimpsed at by psychedelic shrooms. And Kora means maiden. Ancient Greeks called her that either because she was like Voldemort, and you were apotropaically not supposed to say her true name because this is a Mystery Cult, damn it. Keeps some of the mystery. Or because she in a way represents all of the maidens, everywhere. So, in that sense, Kora in Hell alludes to the multitude of suffering young women Williams met while working as a doctor, assisting in 1917 style home labors, and, because WWI was going on at the time and doctors were extremely scarce, as a local police surgeon. Conditions were dire:
Kora In Hell follows a Romantic program in the sense that when one reads WCW one feels that what he is talking about has happened to him. That this is something personal. When he says:
And while dancing as creation is an important metaphor for Williams, that’s not the end of the story. We are not actually seeing WCW improvising on the fly. He takes his method from Kandinsky and the method is “Never go Full Unconscious”. For Kandinsky, improvisation is a way through which an artist reaches a higher form, which is composition. You use your improvisation as material for your final work. That’s why only 81 entries survive in Kora In Hell from the original 365. Williams cut all the nonsense out so you don’t have to suffer it like Frida suffered the surrealist’s air poisoning. Composition is then an act of love and care towards the reader, and is what classicists and romantics share in their method.
Open Thread 239
August 28, 2022 · Original source
Kora In Hell (William Carlos Williams poetry)
Inline links: Kora In Hell
Book Review Contest 2022 Winners
September 02, 2022 · Original source
Kora In Hell, reviewed by Lucas Paletta. Lucas is a writer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He blogs (in Spanish) at www.stackdamage.com.ar.
Inline links: Kora In Hell, www.stackdamage.com.ar
Kora In Hell, reviewed by Lucas Paletta. Lucas is a writer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He blogs (in Spanish) at www.stackdamage.com.ar. I really enjoyed all of these. A few notes of special praise: The Internationalists was probably most fascinating, in the sense of describing a strange historical episode I didn’t know about before. The Outlier was similar and I give it high marks for making Jimmy Carter interesting. Consciousness And The Brain was a whole new neuroscience theory I knew nothing about and I expect to reread it a bunch of times to try to get it to sink in. Sam Altman sent me an email saying he enjoyed the review of The Future Of Fusion Energy. The Making Nature review did a great job talking about and analyzing a trend I’d never thought about before, far beyond even what was in the book. I think about Exhaustion every time I see a CFS patient - specifically, about the claim that 19th century psychiatrists would prescribe a “West cure” of going off and doing cowboy things on a ranch; I haven’t yet recommended that to anyone, but like I said, I think about it often. God Emperor of Dune and Kora In Hell were the token fiction and poetry reviews; I thought they did a spectacular job overcoming the difficulties of reviewing their respective media. I was reading some of the non-finalists and found 1587 in there and was surprised it hadn’t reached finalist status and decided to promote it; based on your votes it seems like that was the right choice. My process for picking finalists was kind of haphazard; I had you rate all reviews on a scale of 1-10, anyone above 8 got in automatically, and then I picked my favorites from the reviews between 7 and 8. This was sort of unfair, and meant there were some reviews that scored better on the voting than finalists but weren’t finalists themselves, and others that I liked better than some finalists but couldn’t pick. All of these are Honorable Mentions. You’ll notice some of them are politically charged, and yes, I did sort of discriminate against these (though not so much that I wouldn’t have picked them if they’d made it above 8). They are: Unsettled, reviewed by Julius S. Julius is a machine learning engineer from San Diego. He blogs at Curious About Ideas.
Inline links: Kora In Hell, www.stackdamage.com.ar, Unsettled, Curious About Ideas
Koran3 mentions across 3 issues

Koran is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between December 08, 2022 and September 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "ban the Koran"; "any Muslim who does something bad is misinterpreting the Koran"; "There are many prophecies about the End Times in the Koran and the hadiths". It most often appears alongside Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine.

Article page
Koran
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
December 08, 2022
Last seen
September 13, 2024
Book title
Koran
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Why I'm Less Than Infinitely Hostile To Cryptocurrency
December 08, 2022 · Original source
If the government hates Islam, it’s hard from a legal and PR perspective to imprison imams or ban the Koran. But it’s easy to subtly convey to banks that it will regulate them out of existence unless they ban transactions to imams, or to any bookstores that carry Korans. And this has pretty much the same effect.
Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023
February 20, 2023 · Original source
Religion will continue to retreat from US public life. As it becomes less important, mainstream society will treat it as less of an outgroup and more of a fargroup. Everyone will assume Christians have some sort of vague spiritual wisdom, much like Buddhists do. Everyone will agree evangelicals or anyone with a real religious opinion is just straight-out misinterpreting the Bible, the same way any Muslim who does something bad is misinterpreting the Koran. Christian mysticism will become more popular among intellectuals. Lots of people will talk about how real Christianity opposes capitalism. There may not literally be a black lesbian Pope, but everyone will agree that there should be, and people will become mildly surprised when you remind them that the Pope is white, male, and sexually inactive.
Your Book Review: Nine Lives
September 13, 2024 · Original source
There are many prophecies about the End Times in the Koran and the hadiths (deeds and words of Muhammad, transmitted through oral tradition, the authenticities of some of which are hotly debated among Islamic scholars). Some of these prophecies are thought to be already fulfilled, others are not. But the glorious coming of the Mahdi can only happen once all the events that are prophesied to happen before him have passed.
The third group is, again, people who take their religion really seriously and literally. Aimen Dean has some of the characteristics of the second group, but mostly falls into this category. He knew the Koran by heart by the time he was twelve. (He has a photographic memory, something that was very useful in his career as a spy.) He spent all his youth learning and thinking about his religion, being taught by some radical clerics who ran the study group in his neighborhood. By the time he volunteered to fight in Bosnia, he truly believed that there is no higher calling than dying in a holy war, and truly believed in his heart that Paradise awaits the martyrs.
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster1 mentions across 1 issues

Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 05, 2026 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Richard Hanania book announced, to be released this summer, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster". It most often appears alongside 4o, 60 Minutes, @MattZeitlin.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 05, 2026
Last seen
February 05, 2026
Book title
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For February 2026
February 05, 2026 · Original source
38: New Bryan Caplan book out, the aggressively-titled You Have No Right To Your Culture. And new Richard Hanania book announced, to be released this summer, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster.
Inline links: You Have No Right To Your Culture, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends In Disaster
Kitchen Confidential1 mentions across 1 issues

Kitchen Confidential is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2021 and June 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "and so begins the Kitchen Confidential section of the book"; "Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential , a book whose very success proves"; "Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential , a book". It most often appears alongside 1984, American, American ‘hobo’ culture.

Reference entry
Kitchen Confidential
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 10, 2021
Last seen
June 10, 2021
Book title
Kitchen Confidential
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Down And Out In Paris And London
June 10, 2021 · Original source
Eventually Orwell does manage to find work, as a scullion in a large, upscale hotel’s underground kitchens, and so begins the Kitchen Confidential section of the book. I love that Orwell feels free to devote such a big section of the story to describing his day-to-day in this horrible, hellish job. There seems to be no doubt in his mind that readers would find it interesting. And his writerly instincts are soon proven out. I first read this book years ago, and whenever it randomly comes to mind, it’s because of these images of Orwell the scullion. Here he is going down into the depths of the hotel for the first time:
Earlier I mentioned that this section is reminescent of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, a book whose very success proves that we cleanliness obsessed moderns get a voyeuristic kick out of stories such as Orwell’s. I think it’s this same voyeuristic kick that makes Down and Out an appealing book in general. Just as we all go to restaraunts and know almost nothing of what goes on behind kitchen doors, all of us see tramps most everyday and know little about how they live and think. And just like in the case of the kitchens, as much as we get a kick of being let in on the secrets of the unknown underworld, we also have very little desire to actively seek out that information for ourselves. Because a lot of the time, that information hurts.
I see Orwell’s dream as having come true in a limited sense. Upscale restaraunts that serve terrible food made by people working for pennies are relatively rare now( except on cruise ships). Their two primary aspects (hellish working conditions and bad food)have split and diverged and now exist in different food industry niches: on the one hand we have the modern fast food restaraunt, where the work is “done with simple efficiency…[scullions] might work six of eight hours a day” and true mid-to-upscale restaraunts, where a higher level of cleanliness and quality in preperation and ingredients is assumed, and I think in most cases, delivered upon. In these sorts of places, which Bourdain describes in Kitchen Confidential, the chefs work in hellish conditions, but are paid relatively well and work more reasonable, if irregular and nocturnal, hours. In fast food places, people are paid less but are subject to a form of basic protection borne out of the sheer size and visibility of corporations like Burger King and McDonalds. No doubt Orwell would find this situation ghastly in it’s own way, but I doubt he’d deny the life of restaraunt and hotel workers has markedly improved since the 1920s. Trouble is, Orwell doesn’t see these horrible working conditions are merely a result of people’s misguided desire to eat overpriced, low-quality food:
Inline links: Kitchen Confidential