What are you currently reading?

[André]

Buddenbrooks is definitely a gem. My only complaints really are the first 20-30 pages or so. I seem to run to this often in Mann's work (the beginning being the weakest part) such as in Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain. Joseph is an interesting case in that the beginning section was more interesting than the real beginning of the story itself so it kind of applies here too but once again, for ex. this second part of Joseph and his brothers has been very, very interesting and enjoyable. Although since I've only read about 1/3 of the entire tetralogy I can't tell if things continue to be as good.

Things get better and better. The 'recognition scene' is thrilling. The short epilogue is the only weak part IMO.

[aligreto]

Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray





This, Wilde's only novel, is always worth another read. One always has to take it slowly so that one does not miss any of the myriad witticisms and aphorisms contained within the text. Still, it is essentially a very dark tale of depravity.

[vers la flamme]

Buddenbrooks is definitely a gem. My only complaints really are the first 20-30 pages or so. I seem to run to this often in Mann's work (the beginning being the weakest part) such as in Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain. Joseph is an interesting case in that the beginning section was more interesting than the real beginning of the story itself so it kind of applies here too but once again, for ex. this second part of Joseph and his brothers has been very, very interesting and enjoyable. Although since I've only read about 1/3 of the entire tetralogy I can't tell if things continue to be as good.

I loved the beginning of Buddenbrooks! I really felt like I was "there" at the big house on Meng Strasse, and I couldn't escape the feeling, "nowhere to go from here but down".

I'm on the last 50 pages or so now. I really burned through it. But it's been one of the most rewarding reading experiences of my life, surely.

[Christo]

The author feels the latter were mostly inconsequential and not much of a lasting force for change.

It simply means he dismisses all of the Enlightenment thinkers accept for the happy few he can mould into his own scheme. The most un-historical history books in years. 

[SimonNZ]

Finished:



Started:

[Brian]

Yesterday I started the project that will take up my July: War and Peace!!!

[SimonNZ]

Yesterday I started the project that will take up my July: War and Peace!!!

Recently I finally got around to Isaiah Berlin's 90-page essay "The Hedgehog And The Fox" which is a study of the philosophy of history sections of War And Peace. It's been so long since I read WP that I can no longer remember the epilogue he refers to often.



read the copy on the lest but gave it away because I discovered it's also in the "Russian Thinkers" collection of Berlin I've got on the right

[Jo498]

I think I read a bunch of articles or interviews around Israel's book a few years ago and as I recall I thought that his distinction between "radical" and "moderate" enligthenment thinkers was interesting and a fair point. He seems to exaggerate or be simply wrong about the influence. Surely, a moderate like Kant was very influential. Or Locke before that. I'd also say that Voltaire and Diderot were more moderate than Rousseau, D'Holbach or LaMettrie and comparably important to Rousseau und more so than the last two. (Just random examples, I am not trying to state a thesis).

[Florestan]

I think I read a bunch of articles or interviews around Israel's book a few years ago and as I recall I thought that his distinction between "radical" and "moderate" enligthenment thinkers was interesting and a fair point. He seems to exaggerate or be simply wrong about the influence. Surely, a moderate like Kant was very influential. Or Locke before that.

Good point.

I'd also say that Voltaire and Diderot were more moderate than Rousseau, D'Holbach or LaMettrie

Rousseau was no moderate, not by any stretch of imagination. How can one be a moderate who prescribes death for atheists*?

(*all right, by atheism he meant disbelief in the civil religion of the state, but still.Anyone who wishes death upon those who disagree with them is no moderate. It's not even a radical. It's a fanatic.)

Beside, we're talking about the man who abandoned his own children to an orphanage and then went on to write extensively about how children should be educated. Disgusting. Nietzsche was right in calling Rousseau "a moral tarantula".

[Christo]

I don't think he dismisses them completely or denies they have had their admirers or adherents but he just doesn't find their ideas or thought to have been radical or daring enough for the kind of change that has occurred in the last several hundred years, principally starting with the French Revolution. 

That's a teleological and, if you wish, also finalist scheme, both deadly sins for historians. Almost any overview of what the Enlightenment was - there are dozens of them around - will be more reliable.

I think I read a bunch of articles or interviews around Israel's book a few years ago and as I recall I thought that his distinction between "radical" and "moderate" enligthenment thinkers was interesting and a fair point. He seems to exaggerate or be simply wrong about the influence. Surely, a moderate like Kant was very influential. Or Locke before that. I'd also say that Voltaire and Diderot were more moderate than Rousseau, D'Holbach or LaMettrie and comparably important to Rousseau und more so than the last two. (Just random examples, I am not trying to state a thesis).

Exactly.

[aligreto]

Wells: Love and Mr. Lewisham





This story traces the path of a young idealistic man over a few short years where, through circumstances, he is gradually worn down and transformed into a realist who must surrender his ideals. The tale is made more interesting, nay determined, by the two very different women who enter his life and the effect that they have or could have had on him. It is a good read.

[Brian]

Beside, we're talking about the man who abandoned his own children to an orphanage and then went on to write extensively about how children should be educated. Disgusting. Nietzsche was right in calling Rousseau "a moral tarantula".

By coincidence, a few weeks ago I read Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women" and she sees Rousseau as her primary enemy on the subject of how to educate women, to the point of mocking much of the rest of his belief system too.

[Florestan]

He reminds me of Thomas Jefferson, private life rather sordid and contradictory but a fascinating thinker and person in general.

Agreed about Jefferson, but I can't stand Rousseau, neither as a thinker (a proto-totalitarian) nor as a person in general (a "moral tarantula" in the apt words of Nietzsche).

Voltaire, on the other hand, despite his numerous flaws, was a great and noble soul, keenly aware of, and opposed to, injustice and fanaticism. A proto-liberal. It's no wonder he and Rousseau never got along well.

[Jo498]

But both I and presumeably Israel counted Rousseau among the "radicals". Surely, he was influential but overall more than the more moderate French or the Germans? I am not sure, but are there well known "radicals" not French? One might count Hume among the radicals but hardly the other Scots like Reid and Smith. And who of the Germans would count as radical? Kant and Fichte were considered dangerous, but this was Prussia, after all, so one did not have to be very radical for this. If one looks at the "radical strain" with the socialists in the early/mid 19th etc. one will of course find the older radicals more influential. But one reason for this is that a lot of the moderate enlightenment thought had become mainstream by then, I'd say.

[T. D.]

 

[aligreto]

The Rusty Knight and Other Tales from Germany





This is a book very much in the old style of Tales With A Moral. However, the tales are imaginative and interesting and yes, they do deliver the requisite morals on such topics as Idealism, Sarcasm, Redemption, Disillusionment, Deceit etc. There is also a nice element of wit and humour in the translations so that they are not just old folk or fairy tales. I enjoyed the read.

[ritter]

Interrupted my reading of Roger Martin du Gard monumental (and fascinating) posthumous novel Le lieutenant-colonel de Maumort (my post on that vanished in GMG's "time warp"  )  to tackle Mario Vargas-Llosa's recently published anthology of texts about (and interviews with) Jorge Luis Borges—spanning over half a century.

[asin]842043597X[/asin]
I read its 115 pages in one sitting. I'm much more an admirer of Borges than of Vargas-Llosa, but what the latter conveys in this short book is a work of love and admiration, even if his own literature is diametrically opposed to the Argentinian's positions. Also, Vargas-Llosa manages to show Borges the man in a rather sympathetic light, what for me is no mean feat: IMHO, Borges is one if the greatest authors in Spanish ever, but his literature is cold and distant, and his public persona hardly ever came through as "simpático" (to me at least). A most enjoyable diversion.

Back to Maumort today (the lieutenant-colonel to be has turned 19 years of age at around page 320  ).

[vers la flamme]

^Nice. I'm reading Borges's Labyrinths, an anthology of fictions by the late author, for the first time. It's clear to me and anyone who reads this that he was a genius. This is some truly mind boggling stuff. He writes with such an erudite style that it's almost hard to follow at times, but it's maddeningly clever, thought provoking stuff.

Other than that, I've also started Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. Other than McCarthy's incredibly mannered prose (to which I'm not entirely a newcomer, having read The Road & No Country for Old Men back in high school, but now, I'm finding it grating at times), I am rather enjoying it. It's certainly less bleak than some of McCarthy's other work, which I see as a plus.

This scene from one of my favorite films is an impeccable parody of McCarthy's style...:

https://youtu.be/XeKjKWXWZOE

Edit: still don't know how to embed videos, apparently. https://youtu.be/XeKjKWXWZOE

[stingo]

Edit: still don't know how to embed videos, apparently. https://youtu.be/XeKjKWXWZOE

Code Select Expand

[flash=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/v/XeKjKWXWZOE[/flash]

https://www.youtube.com/v/XeKjKWXWZOE

[aligreto]

Short Stories by Russian Authors





This compilation includes works by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Korolenko, Chekov, Chirikov, Andreyev, Kuprin, Gorky and Sologub.