Yea or Neigh
I've been wandering about lately which means that I'm popping into the local used book stores more often than may be healthy for my bank account. But they're cheaper than new books and often look like new books, so I'm saving money somewhere in there. Even if they don't look new, I'm still delighted to find the belongings of old students, with their notes intact. It's great to have another mind helping you along the way, mentioning references you may have never noticed.
My last two trips have left me with William Carlos Williams' Imaginations, a collection of his prose works (my previous professor, Dr. Huang, would be pleased), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, as well as The Novels of Hermann Hesse and Henry Miller: Three Decades of Criticism, which are collections of literary analysis on both authors. The more I read about Hermann Hesse, the more I feel one of those strange connections with him, as Walter Benjamin felt with Franz Kafka. In terms of library findings, I am now reading Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human because I live and breath on depressing works about alienation apparently, and Benjamin's -abilities, another book of literary analysis on a writer who wrote mostly about literary analysis. And arcades. My love for Walter Benjamin is possibly the only thing I wear on my sleeve.
I have one chapter left of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it's hard for me to believe how all my life, Nietzsche was presented as the founding father of nihilism when he wasn't. In fact, I have never seen such misinterpretations of a writer's work. Yes, "God is dead" and all, but it's far more complex than "there is no god, life is meaningless." Life is meaningless is perhaps the furthest opposite of Nietzsche's intentions. "God is dead" is about the fact that we need to leave behind the values and morals of those before us, that have been policed upon us as "morality", and create our own values that bring meaning to our lives.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also the most beautifully, playfully written philosophical text you could find (is it a philosophical text? Is it a novel?). Nietzsche plays with words throughout the entire work and it brings a sense of buoyancy. I wonder sometimes if word play is something that is inherent to the German language; whether it is or not, Nietzsche was quite apt at it. I feel as though reading Nietzsche has given me a much better understanding of Hermann Hesse and reading Hesse has given me a much better understanding of Neon Genesis Evangelion (it shares one too many similarities with Demian).
Speaking of Evangelion, guess who has the first Rebuild film being shipped to her address as we speak.
My last two trips have left me with William Carlos Williams' Imaginations, a collection of his prose works (my previous professor, Dr. Huang, would be pleased), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, as well as The Novels of Hermann Hesse and Henry Miller: Three Decades of Criticism, which are collections of literary analysis on both authors. The more I read about Hermann Hesse, the more I feel one of those strange connections with him, as Walter Benjamin felt with Franz Kafka. In terms of library findings, I am now reading Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human because I live and breath on depressing works about alienation apparently, and Benjamin's -abilities, another book of literary analysis on a writer who wrote mostly about literary analysis. And arcades. My love for Walter Benjamin is possibly the only thing I wear on my sleeve.
I have one chapter left of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it's hard for me to believe how all my life, Nietzsche was presented as the founding father of nihilism when he wasn't. In fact, I have never seen such misinterpretations of a writer's work. Yes, "God is dead" and all, but it's far more complex than "there is no god, life is meaningless." Life is meaningless is perhaps the furthest opposite of Nietzsche's intentions. "God is dead" is about the fact that we need to leave behind the values and morals of those before us, that have been policed upon us as "morality", and create our own values that bring meaning to our lives.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also the most beautifully, playfully written philosophical text you could find (is it a philosophical text? Is it a novel?). Nietzsche plays with words throughout the entire work and it brings a sense of buoyancy. I wonder sometimes if word play is something that is inherent to the German language; whether it is or not, Nietzsche was quite apt at it. I feel as though reading Nietzsche has given me a much better understanding of Hermann Hesse and reading Hesse has given me a much better understanding of Neon Genesis Evangelion (it shares one too many similarities with Demian).
Speaking of Evangelion, guess who has the first Rebuild film being shipped to her address as we speak.