Synopses & Reviews
#FrequentlyAskedQuestions1. Ontology: what the fuck?
2. Causality: why the fuck?
3. Epistemology: how the why the fuck?
4. Phenomenology: the fuck.
Nein. A Manifesto is the brainchild of Eric Jarosinski, the self-described failed intellectual” behind the hugely popular @NeinQuarterly, a Compendium of Utopian Negation” that uses the aphoristic potential of Twitter to plumb the existential abyss of modern lifeand finds it bottomless.
Stridently hopeless and charmingly dour, Nein. A Manifesto is an irreverent philosophical investigation into our most urgent questions. And the least. Inspired by the aphorisms of Nietzsche, Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, Jarosinskis short-form style reinvents philosophy for a world doomed to distraction.
Nein. A Manifesto will be packaged as an attractive small-format hardcover, with a handful of Jarosinskis aphorisms laid out on each page. Critical thinkers, lovers of language, bibliophiles, manics and depressives alike will be drawn to this compelling, witty, and often hilarious translation of digital into print. Theory into praxis. And tragedy into farce.
Review
Praise for Nein. A Manifesto:
I hate Twitter, I think it should be prohibitedbut Jarosinskis Nein. is the only only exception, the only reason that justifies it! He is like a radical Norman Bates from Psycho intervening with his tweets which are like fast cuts with a knife!”Slavoj Zizek, author of The Sublime Object of Ideology and Zizeks Jokes and subject of the documentary Zizek!
A hilarious manifesto of dystopian epigrams. Nein. is the devil on your shoulder, now on your shelf.”Ben Schott, author of Schotts Miscellany and Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition
Nein. celebrates everything that it negates. It is quietly, joyously bleak. Will you enjoy it? Perhaps better to ask: can you be certain that you've ever enjoyed anything?”MC Frontalot
Praise for Eric Jarosinski and @NeinQuarterly:
Crisp, allusive, irreverent.”The New Yorker
The very best piece of writing Ive encountered on Twitter . . . Aphoristic, and yet hinting at a depth of knowledge underneath.”Los Angeles Times (online)
[Jarosinski] distills difficult philosophical concepts into triumphs of pith.”Slate
A high-wire walk between high and low culture that explodes all assumptions about the limitations of the German language and humor.”The Irish Times (Ireland)
Puns and word play are trademarks of Nein Quarterly. His jokes jump from Marxism to pumpkin spice lattesall told from the perspective of a depressed German philosopher pining for another time and place . . . [Goethe University Professor Helmut] Wicht says Jarosinski has found Germanys enigmatic funny bone. He jokes like an insider.”Public Radio International
About the Author
Eric Jarosinski is a self-declared #FailedIntellectual and expert in modern German literature, culture, and critical theory, as well as the founding editor of
Nein. Quarterly. Jarosinskis writing has been featured in numerous publications, including the
New Yorker, the
Paris Review, and the
Wall Street Journal. He is based in New York.