[lbo-talk] Salt

[C W Sedley]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:22 AM, James Heartfield
<Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> I haven't read Salt, but I have read his previous, Cod. This is quite a genre. I was round a friends' the other day, and he was reading the history of the Potato. A social history, of course. And I have read a history of Oil which I am sure is but one of many.

I sometimes see these as a post-modern version of the stories told
from the perspective of a boot or a coin, which were a big literary
fad during the 18th century. I think the best one is Joseph Addison's
"Adventures of a Shilling", in which the hero-coin implicitly presents
itself as a Peruvian slave and a wastrel heir becomes an abolitionist.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/fowlerjh/chap4.htm

The genre has been given a really unfortunate name, the
"it-narrative". There's an anthology of essays on the topic I haven't
read.

http://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC

I don't really have the wit to present a proper materialist analysis
of the whole thing, and I bet some genius has already done so in that
anthology, but it's hard not to see Salt, Cod, Potato, and all the
rest as a continuation of the same theme. Commodity as Zelig (or
Forrest Gump).

Cheers

CWS