Friday - January 12, 2007
reading list
....so I put together a list of things that I
want to read (some for a second time). I've mentioned Tideland in an earlier post,
so I won't go into that one much...except to say that it's next up on the list.
I'll probably start it some time this
weekend.
I re-read Sartre's Nausea. I read it in college, but not since. It was easier not to be in a bad mood after reading it this time. I *was* in a bad mood, but not *as* bad this time...so maybe that's progress? It's interesting to me how much like Zen existentialism is (or can be). The nakedness of existence....the bareness and coldness of stark, simple reality. The older I get, the less that bothers me. In a sense, Sartre's pessimism seems affected. If meaning truly comes from ourselves....if our life's meaning is our own creation....that doesn't have a value one way of another. In other words, if meaning is internal (i.e., it doesn't come from God or Society or Anything Else), then the same is true for value. The emptiness, coldness, and nakedness of reality isn't optimistic of pessimistic one way or another. I wonder if this view of mine (not that I've created any sort of deep philosophical system here, mind you) is because there is more distance between my life and Sartre's time. Nietzsche's bold "God is Dead" statement must have been disconcerting for people, but living over 100 years later makes such a statement not nearly as surprising. I suppose this is especially true given the massive annihilation of humanity throughout the 20th Century. Whatever the case, the idea of being alone in the universe doesn't seem to bother me much. I'm not completely sure that we *are* alone, but the Zen idea of separating God from Reality helps with that, I think. Here I go again getting into things that I don't really understand and can't really explain....
What else...The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales. I have honestly never read any of thsese. Have you? It seems we all have the gist of many of the stories...but I've never actually read them. So that'll be fun (and perhaps a bit gruesome!). I also picked up the Norton Critical Edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land ....the critical edition means that there are 200 pages to explain what the hell is going on in the poem. It actually looks like a very a good edition. Of course, I *could* have just gotten all this info here.
Selected Poetry of Goethe is next, I guess. This edition has the German and English on facing pages so I can relive the excitement of my German proficiency class for my Doctoral program!
I also picked up the Norton Critical Edition of Goethe's Faust . I'm looking forward to this. I tried reading this in grad school, but never really took it seriously & didn't finish it. Again, we tend to know the basic gist of the story, but we perhaps haven't read it completely. True for me, at least.
Cervantes' Don Quixote is next. I've also gotten Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Complete Poetry & Prose of Edgar Allen Poe, and The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard, Camus ' The Stranger, and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. With the exception of the Kierkegaard, all of these books are in the "I-should-have-read-these-books-by-now-but-just-never-got-around-to-it" category. Just a little light reading for the next few months!
I re-read Sartre's Nausea. I read it in college, but not since. It was easier not to be in a bad mood after reading it this time. I *was* in a bad mood, but not *as* bad this time...so maybe that's progress? It's interesting to me how much like Zen existentialism is (or can be). The nakedness of existence....the bareness and coldness of stark, simple reality. The older I get, the less that bothers me. In a sense, Sartre's pessimism seems affected. If meaning truly comes from ourselves....if our life's meaning is our own creation....that doesn't have a value one way of another. In other words, if meaning is internal (i.e., it doesn't come from God or Society or Anything Else), then the same is true for value. The emptiness, coldness, and nakedness of reality isn't optimistic of pessimistic one way or another. I wonder if this view of mine (not that I've created any sort of deep philosophical system here, mind you) is because there is more distance between my life and Sartre's time. Nietzsche's bold "God is Dead" statement must have been disconcerting for people, but living over 100 years later makes such a statement not nearly as surprising. I suppose this is especially true given the massive annihilation of humanity throughout the 20th Century. Whatever the case, the idea of being alone in the universe doesn't seem to bother me much. I'm not completely sure that we *are* alone, but the Zen idea of separating God from Reality helps with that, I think. Here I go again getting into things that I don't really understand and can't really explain....
What else...The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales. I have honestly never read any of thsese. Have you? It seems we all have the gist of many of the stories...but I've never actually read them. So that'll be fun (and perhaps a bit gruesome!). I also picked up the Norton Critical Edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land ....the critical edition means that there are 200 pages to explain what the hell is going on in the poem. It actually looks like a very a good edition. Of course, I *could* have just gotten all this info here.
Selected Poetry of Goethe is next, I guess. This edition has the German and English on facing pages so I can relive the excitement of my German proficiency class for my Doctoral program!
I also picked up the Norton Critical Edition of Goethe's Faust . I'm looking forward to this. I tried reading this in grad school, but never really took it seriously & didn't finish it. Again, we tend to know the basic gist of the story, but we perhaps haven't read it completely. True for me, at least.
Cervantes' Don Quixote is next. I've also gotten Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Complete Poetry & Prose of Edgar Allen Poe, and The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard, Camus ' The Stranger, and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. With the exception of the Kierkegaard, all of these books are in the "I-should-have-read-these-books-by-now-but-just-never-got-around-to-it" category. Just a little light reading for the next few months!