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-- What Are You Reading? Part Deux.
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What Are You Reading? Part Deux.
Because I couldn't find the other thread and I have a book to recommend.
I don't read very much contemporary American literature, but that could well be because I hadn't found this book until now. The form takes some getting used to, but the interwoven stories and discourses on topics ranging from theology to physics to epistemology are really quite fascinating. Lost in the middle somewhere is a neat little narrative about an author chronicling one man's struggle with faith, meaning, and purpose in life. Doctorow does seem to reach a bit with his artistic flourishes - why, for instance, even include the lyrics used by a jazz ensemble? - but the majority of the novel is enjoyable, instructive, and at times quite beautiful.
The most intriguing part of this novel is the use of multiple narrators - borrowing the perspectives not only of his characters, but also the theological musings of a rabbi and a priest; the scientific wonder of Albert Einstein; the metaphysical reason of Wittgenstein; and the calm acceptance of a young Jewish boy in a Nazi-run ghetto.
An excerpt:
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| Pem's Remarks to the Bishop's Examiners: "The sensation of God in us is a total sensation given to the whole being, revelatory, inspired. That is the usual answer to the questioning intellect, which by itself cannot realize sacred truth. But is the intellect not subsumed? Does the whole being not include the intellect? Why wouldn't the glory of God shine through to the human mind? I take the position that true faith is not a supersessional knowledge. It cannt discard the intellect. It cannot answer the intellect with a patronizing smile. I look for parity here. I will not claim that your access to the numinous is a delusion if you will not tell me my intellect is irrelevant... The biblical stories, the Gospel stories, were the original understandings, they were the science and religion, they were everything, they were all anyone had. But they didn't write themselves. We have to acknowledge the storytellers' work. If not in all stories, certainly in all mystery stories, the writer works backward. The ending is known and the story is designed to arrive at the ending. If you know the people of the world speak many languages, that is the ending: The story of the Tower of Babel gets you there. The known ending of life is death: The story of Adam and Eve arrives at that ending. Why do we suffer, why must we die? Well, you see, there was this Garden... The ending of the story implies that there might have been a different ending. That's the little ten-cent trick. You allow as how since things worked out this way, they could have worked out another way. You create conflict and suspense where there wasn't any. You've turned the human condition into a sequential narrative of how it came to be. Well, the way I read it, God dealt from a stacked deck. Adam and Eve never had a chance. The story of the Fall is a parable of the glory and torment of human consciousness. But that's all it is... Migod, there is no one more dangerous than the storyteller. No, I'll amend that, than the storyteller's editor. Augustine, who edits Genesis 2-4 into original sin. What a nifty little act of deconstruction - passing it on to children, like HIV. As the doctrine of universal damnation, the Fall becomes an instrument of social control. God appoints his agents plenipotentiaries to dispense salvation or withhold it. I don't know about you, dear colleagues, but history has a way of turning a harsh light on my faith. We are bound to a theology hard-pressed to hold the line against incredulous common sense. So for instance newborn babies who die unbaptized as Catholics are condemned to the limboic upper reaches of hell? I mean... but in all its denominations, punitive fantasies of original sin have begotten and still beget generations of terrorized children and haunted adults, and give those Calvinist graveyards in New England a particular poignancy as they call to mind the witch burnings, scourgings, and self-denials of the ordinary joy and wonder of life on earth to which the undoctrinated mind is naturally heir... How, given the mournful history of this nonsense, can we presume to exalt our religious vision over the ordinary pursuits of our rational minds? |
Recently finished Heart of Darkness. It was enjoyable, but I found myself longing for some melville, so now I'm just starting:
I'm re-reading this:
I really need to dig into my to-read list and feed my brain with some new shit.
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| Originally posted by jennypie I really need to dig into my to-read list and feed my brain with some new shit. |
i haven't had the attention span to finish a book since the end of last summer.
This book is awesome and will become a best seller within Australia, but some diary excerpts completely devoid of punctuation and measure have made a large portion of the book almost unreadable. They're not scattered throughout either, they go for about three chapters straight, bang in the middle of the novel.
bluebeard by vonnegut
i dont read that much (at home) any more. i prefer to get high and play computer games 
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN i dont read that much (at home) any more. i prefer to get high and play computer games |
Figured it was about time I learned something about why trance music kicks so much ass.
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| Originally posted by couch-potato Figured it was about time I learned something about why trance music kicks so much ass. |
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| Originally posted by l�cid it's the ecstasy. |
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| Originally posted by denys envy i thought it was the unicorns... |
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| Originally posted by Enjoy bluebeard by vonnegut |
michael veal - Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae
r. murray schaefer - The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World
douglas khan - noise, water meat: a history of sound in the arts
kodwo eshun - more brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction
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| Originally posted by Domesticated I need to read that, simply so I have more ammunition against Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Shintos, Taoists, Daoists, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Protestants, Exclusive Breathren etc... |
One of my favourite Antarctic explorer stories.
Basically Sir Ernest Shackleton tried to lead an expedition to trek from one side of Antractica to the other. While sailing to their landing point the ship got stuck in ice for 8 months. Ship was eventually crushed by ice. They then haul the lifeboats and all their stores, but the snow is too soft on the ice floe so they set up camp for 2 months. The ice floe starts to melt, so they pack up and move to a thicker part of the floe, and camp there for another 3.5 months. The floe eventually startes breaking up, so they row the lifeboats for 5 days over open sea to Elephant Island.
After a while there Shackleton and a couple of other guys row one of the boats another 800 miles over open seas to South Georgia, but land on the wrong side. They then have to cross the mountain range on the island (the first time it had ever been done) to the settlement on the other side.
They then hire a boat to go back to Elephant Island to resuce the others, but the boat can't get through the ice. So they try again, another failure. And again, another failure. They eventually get a suitable boat and go back and rescue the men, who had camped on Elephant Island for 4 months. All in all, from depart to rescue the expedition had taken about 21 months.
Not one man died.
This book was written by Shackleton in 1919 in an attempt to try to recoup some of the money spent on the expedition. It jumps around a bit, not being an author and it basically being a report of the expedition means that it can be a little hard reading sometimes, but the story itself is pretty extraordinary.
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| Originally posted by Alex Hitchens is cool and all, and it is a funny book but it isn't exactly a great insight and the arguments would only really work against dumb religious people... Which is sadly quite a few, bah. |
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| Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov I think you'd really like the book in the original post - the theology isn't terribly strong, but I'm sure you can see by the title that the references to Augustine and other theologians run throughout. |
Similar to 1984 except it's set on a space station that acts as a human colony.
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