What are you currently reading?

[vers la flamme]

One thing I'd be interested to get your thoughts about is whether Odysseus's behaviour at the end, where he kills the suitors, is morally acceptable. Is Odysseus just a baddy?

Re Plato, Symposium's quite fun - especially when Alcibiades comes in and turfs the drunken Socrates out, and everyone enjoys Aristophenes's contribution. The Republic is a serious study, people spend their whole lives trying to make sense of it. I think Aristotle's Nichomachen Ethics is more accessible - and better philosophy too!

This is a good way in to Plato's Republic

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/platos-republic/9780231160162

The Illiad is very much like Blood Meridian - they're always hacking each other to bits. And Achilles is totally mad.

I thought the last two books of Odysseus' revenge were complete overkill  Especially after he kills Antinous, when Eurymachus stands up and says "we'll pay you back with interest and leave you alone forever", and Odysseus basically says no and slaughters them all, some of them not even putting up a fight. I suppose this reflects a kind of morality that is now lost—no one seemed to mind his slayings other than the parents of the victims—but it was kind of jarring. And then at the very end, when Laertes shoots an arrow through the heart of one of the bereaved fathers, that was quite jarring. In fact, the last book kind of made no sense, so I'm not surprised that some seem to agree that it was a later addition. I mean Ithaca is at the brink of what could prove to be a lengthy civil war and Athena steps in and all is peaceful again? Is this one of the early examples of "deus ex machina" to rush the ending?

Can't wait to read the Iliad; I think it was you, or someone here, who brought it up last year when we were discussing Blood Meridian in this thread, and my interest was piqued back then.

Thanks for your thoughts on Plato. I've heard similar thoughts about the Nicomachean Ethics too. I will try and get to that before too long, too.

[Mandryka]

@vers la flamme After making that post I got out my copy of Alain Badiou's version of Plato's Republic again and have been looking over it. It's very good, I recommend it enthusiastically - there seems to be an English translation (which, in all fairness, I've not seen. But it doesn't look hard to translate.)

Badiou is a Marxist, a Maoist, and possibly the last living philosophical mover and shaker in the May 1968 "revolution", he was top philosophy dog at École Normale Supérieure - which is kind of the French analogue of Harvard.

Old books like Homer and the Old Testament are all morally problematic today IMO. I don't know what that really means, what it shows about ethics. The Republic less so. But the Iliad is special because Achilles is so full of contradictions and irrationalities he appears modern, though I guess that must be an anachronistic reading. Book 9 of the Illiad is, I think, one of the great things in literature - but hard to make sense of (like Chapter 5 of Absalom Absalom, which you also need to broach! )

[Florestan]

I couldn't make it past 20 pages into Plato's Politeia (wrongly translated as The Republic). Imho, the Emperor (pun) has no clothes at all... 

[Mandryka]

Plato's Politeia (wrongly translated as The Republic.)

Doesn't Πολιτεία mean Republic?

[Florestan]

Doesn't Πολιτεία mean Republic?

No, it doesn't.

The Greek Republic in Greek is Elleniki Demokratia, not Elleniki Politeia.

[Jo498]

The common German translation is simply "Der Staat" (the state). I don't know if in antiquity "res publica" would have been translated as politeia, maybe, I tend to think that the Greek term is more general. (It can hardly mean a particular form/constitution of the state because the ideal state of the book is an aristocracy while real Athens was some kind of democracy whereas Republic could not be well used as a fully general term for a constution/state still to be determined but would presuppose certain features (at least in the modern sense, not sure about the Roman sense)
In any case I think that while there are many things touched upon in Politeia, it's a misunderstanding to think of it as a real politicial utopia (not only because this would be horrid with eugenic breeding and most poetry and music forbidden), but it's more about the soul, only that the makrosystem is used as big analogy.

[Jo498]

I thought the last two books of Odysseus' revenge were complete overkill  Especially after he kills Antinous, when Eurymachus stands up and says "we'll pay you back with interest and leave you alone forever", and Odysseus basically says no and slaughters them all, some of them not even putting up a fight. I suppose this reflects a kind of morality that is now lost—no one seemed to mind his slayings other than the parents of the victims—but it was kind of jarring. And then at the very end, when Laertes shoots an arrow through the heart of one of the bereaved fathers, that was quite jarring. In fact, the last book kind of made no sense, so I'm not surprised that some seem to agree that it was a later addition. I mean Ithaca is at the brink of what could prove to be a lengthy civil war and Athena steps in and all is peaceful again? Is this one of the early examples of "deus ex machina" to rush the ending?

I had a professor years ago who used the killing of the suitors and the threat of civil war as an example of a society apparently without a real method of deescalation; I don't remember if he commented on the historical plausibility of this for either Homer's time or 400 years earlier, but he contrasted it with some episodes from the old testament that had such deescalation strategies.

[vers la flamme]

@vers la flamme After making that post I got out my copy of Alain Badiou's version of Plato's Republic again and have been looking over it. It's very good, I recommend it enthusiastically - there seems to be an English translation (which, in all fairness, I've not seen. But it doesn't look hard to translate.)

Badiou is a Marxist, a Maoist, and possibly the last living philosophical mover and shaker in the May 1968 "revolution", he was top philosophy dog at École Normale Supérieure - which is kind of the French analogue of Harvard.

Old books like Homer and the Old Testament are all morally problematic today IMO. I don't know what that really means, what it shows about ethics. The Republic less so. But the Iliad is special because Achilles is so full of contradictions and irrationalities he appears modern, though I guess that must be an anachronistic reading. Book 9 of the Illiad is, I think, one of the great things in literature - but hard to make sense of (like Chapter 5 of Absalom Absalom, which you also need to broach! )

Yes, I do—I gave it a shot in the fall and gave up; maybe I just wasn't feeling Faulkner at the time, but I do intend to get back to it. Thanks to your comments I'll have to add it to the list of books I intend to read this year... alongside the Iliad, and Don Quixote. I've got copies of all three just sitting on my bookshelf...

I know nothing of Badiou and don't think I'd heard his name even, so thanks for alerting me to his presence, though I can't say I'm much in sympathy with Maoism or Marxism at present. In any case, I can read French, and maybe I'll give it a look through; though I'd like to read The Republic, Πολιτεία rather, in English translation first.

[AnotherSpin]

Doesn't Πολιτεία mean Republic?

Russian translation of Plato's work is Государство (The State). Wikipedia tells it is translation from greek  Πολιτεία, or latin Res publica.

[AnotherSpin]

Yes, I do—I gave it a shot in the fall and gave up; maybe I just wasn't feeling Faulkner at the time, but I do intend to get back to it. Thanks to your comments I'll have to add it to the list of books I intend to read this year... alongside the Iliad, and Don Quixote. I've got copies of all three just sitting on my bookshelf...

I know nothing of Badiou and don't think I'd heard his name even, so thanks for alerting me to his presence, though I can't say I'm much in sympathy with Maoism or Marxism at present. In any case, I can read French, and maybe I'll give it a look through; though I'd like to read The Republic, Πολιτεία rather, in English translation first.

Tried reading Alain Badiou's Five Lessons on Wagner some time ago. It didn't work for me.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I'm currently in Greece, but reading mundane American stories. 

[AnotherSpin]

I'm currently in Greece, but reading mundane American stories. 

Read this book several decades ago. I like many of the stories there. Tip on a Dead Jockey, etc.

[DavidW]

I don't usually post my reading because it is usually genre fiction which most of you don't enjoy.  But I have a couple of things to share now

I read Descent by Tim Johnston because I actually thought I was buying a thriller about an escape and descent from a mountain! But I stayed for what it was really about.  It is about a family's complete disintegration and loss of purpose and mental health when their daughter/sister is kidnapped.  These things sadly happen all the time in real life without resolution.  I mean as in hundreds of times a year.  Anyway riveting but very dark.  I could also post it in the dark lit thread.



Now I am reading Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry.  I have been a fan of the Lonesome Dove series for a long time, but a couple years back I read and enjoyed The Last Picture Show.  So I thought would try more of his modern fiction.  He writes great characters that feel like real people.  And McMurtry is also effortlessly funny.

[LKB]

I don't usually post my reading because it is usually genre fiction which most of you don't enjoy.  But I have a couple of things to share now

I read Descent by Tim Johnston because I actually thought I was buying a thriller about an escape and descent from a mountain! But I stayed for what it was really about.  It is about a family's complete disintegration and loss of purpose and mental health when their daughter/sister is kidnapped.  These things sadly happen all the time in real life without resolution.  I mean as in hundreds of times a year.  Anyway riveting but very dark.  I could also post it in the dark lit thread.



Now I am reading Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry.  I have been a fan of the Lonesome Dove series for a long time, but a couple years back I read and enjoyed The Last Picture Show.  So I thought would try more of his modern fiction.  He writes great characters that feel like real people.  And McMurtry is also effortlessly funny.

l've been re-reading the Lonesome Dove series in fits and starts and it always brings enjoyment. But your reminders of McMurtry's other worthy titles are very welcome, so thanks for that. 

[vers la flamme]

Just a few stories here and there, but they always blow me away...:



Currently, I'm feeling like maybe I ought to slow my roll with reading; somehow, I've read something like 30 books since New Year's Eve, and those include titans like War & Peace, Moby Dick, and The Count of Monte Cristo. This can't be healthy.

[Bachtoven]

The second novel of a trilogy in this gripping and very dark series.

[San Antone]

Woody Guthrie's Modern World Blues



This book explores how, through multiple artistic forms, Guthrie thought and felt about the scientific method, atomic power, and war technology, as well as the shifting dynamics of gender and race. Drawing on previously unpublished archival sources, Kaufman brings to the fore what Guthrie's insistently folksy popular image obscures: the essays, visual art, letters, verse, fiction, and voluminous notebook entries that reveal his profoundly modern sensibilities.

[AnotherSpin]

Finished the book. Amazing! I don't know what to say about it, and what to compare it to. Maybe Slavoj Zizek's words from the afterword to the first part of the trilogy will give some idea: "This is where I stand, how I would love to be: an ethical monster without empathy, doing what is to be done in a weird coincidence of blind spontaneity and reflexive distance, helping others while avoiding their disgusting proximity. With more people like this, the world would have been a pleasant place in which sentimentality would be replaced by a cold and cruel passion."

[AnotherSpin]

[Brian]

Just a few stories here and there, but they always blow me away...:



Currently, I'm feeling like maybe I ought to slow my roll with reading; somehow, I've read something like 30 books since New Year's Eve, and those include titans like War & Peace, Moby Dick, and The Count of Monte Cristo. This can't be healthy.

Sounds extremely healthy to me! But I am wondering just how much time you spend doing everything else in life