What are you reading?

[micrologus]

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by micrologus

Attachment 4771

He certainly had a very fine nose.

[micrologus]

Originally Posted by Florestan

He certainly had a very fine nose.

[Balthazar]

I'm in a real British Modernist phase. After reading Lawrence, I'm into Mrs. Dalloway.

[Héctor]

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of thymos, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and return of rage.

By way of reinterpreting the Iliad, Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle.

Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation

[Despina41]

I just read Melville's Pierre: or, the Ambiguities.

I wound up reading it because I couldn't find a coherent plot summary online. Nothing was detailed enough for .... Ok, I can see this requires an explanation--

I wanted to draw a cartoon of Melville tring to explain his "new novel!" to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville simply needs to describe the plot and we get to laugh at the concerned/aghast/disturbed facial expressions of Hawthorne as he figures out the subtext.

WELL! How hard is that? But I couldn't figure out what the book was about from the various online summaries. "Wait - who dies? how exactly does that work out? Wait, but the other summary said..." So I finally had to read it myself.


I was prepared for it to make no sense whatsoever. In addition to Melville's contemporary reviewers declaring, "Herman Melville insane!" there was always the problem of the internet being unable to agree on what the book is about. And yes, it really was quite hysterical. I'm not a fan of the word "hysterical" (makes me think of Freud diagnosing innocent women in fin-de-siècle Vienna), but this book is all over the place and emotionally on high the entire time. And it's from 1852!

There were times when I was reading when I said, "Wow, really?" out loud. At least three times during the first five pages alone-- "Oh, you did not, Melville. Oh, wow, you did..."


So that said,

I liked it better than Moby Dick, and while Billy Budd is great because old man Melville was even less careful than usual with the subtext, Pierre actually has real characters rather than archetypes. It really needs to be made into an opera. An opera from the 19th century.

This book is underrated, probably because the Melville mafia that revived him in the 1920s didn't "get it." It was probably still too crazy back then. Now that we're in the post-post-modern age, it's time to give this book its credit as a truly compelling portrait of psychological crisis.

[sospiro]

Read it too quickly the first time so re-reading & am savouring every word.



Finding it a bit heavy going. Ashamed to say I want something easier to digest.

[Balthazar]

Originally Posted by Despina41

I just read Melville's Pierre: or, the Ambiguities.

When I went through a Melville phase a few years back, I read Pierre. I loved the intentionally crazy prose, and there were quite a few terrific flights of fancy in the book. I decided to overlook a lot of irony and have the "No Cornwall miner ever sunk a shaft so deep..." part from chapter IV read at my wedding. People squirmed.

But overall it's not one of my favorites. Much as I love his wit, I admit Melville knew nothing about conventional plotting, which is why his novels usually took the form of a sea journey. Pierre is just one long, melodramatic slide into disgrace and death.

I much preferred the wild satire of Mardi, or the philosophical slapstick of The Confidence-Man.

[Stlukesguild]

I've long been a huge fan of Italo Calvino and read Cosmicomics (the most magical collection of tales) years ago... but the complete Cosmicomics has never been available in the US to to copyright issues. The US edition contains barely 150 pages while this volume boasts over 450 pages. I finally bit the bullet and shelled out for the complete edition shipped from the UK through Amazon.

[Balthazar]

I find Calvino fascinating as well. Cosmicomics and t zero are great books that play with our knowledge of natural history to create a universe that's as fantastic as it is familiar. I also really enjoyed If on a winter's night a traveler, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar.

I've decided to try to tackle Don Quijote in Spanish.


It's slow going, and luckily the Vintage Español edition has footnotes even for the contemporary hispanophone reader. But I wanted to experience the meaning, humor, and literary beauty of this work in the original and not in translation.