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July 11, 2008
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Arsalan
gave  to:
Breakfast of Champions (Paperback)
by
Kurt Vonnegut
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my rating:
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March 26, 2008
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March 25, 2008
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Arsalan
gave to:
Ulysses (Paperback)
by
James Joyce
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my rating:
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Arsalan said:
"Everyone knows that Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written, but as a psychiatrist what I find most valuable and fascinating about it is how Joyce describes the events of the same day from the point of view of a hundred different narrative voices,...more
Everyone knows that Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written, but as a psychiatrist what I find most valuable and fascinating about it is how Joyce describes the events of the same day from the point of view of a hundred different narrative voices, pushing realism to where it collapses upon itself, till you come to the conclusion that there is NO objective reality, there are REALITIES as perceived by different nervous systems, and all of us see the world through our own little keyholes, colored by our imprinting and conditioning.
The importance of this neuro-psychological relativism can only be brought home in a psychiatric clinic or by reading this book. For those who have done either, it seems manifestly evident that all of our reality constructs are models or allegories for what's 'really' going on and we live in a world where we are all continually negotiating on behalf of our stories, yearning to be understood. When we realize that each individual is looking through the point of view of their own 'reality tunnel' it is much easier to understand where other people are coming from and the ones who do not have the same 'reality tunnel' as us do not seem ignorant or deliberately perverse or lying or hypnotized by some mad ideology. They just have a different perception than ours and every perception might tell us something interesting about our world, IF we are willing to listen and be accepting. After reading this book reality as a singular noun makes no sense at all.
Also, Ulysses is a microcosm of human life: Bloom defecates in chapter 4, masturbates in chapter 12, urinates in chapter 17. During the course of the same day he goes to a funeral, he goes to a maternity hospital to visit a woman friend who is in labor, he visits a whorehouse, he visits a church, he visits a newspaper office where they're all quoting outstandingly hilarious examples of pompous political speeches, and he passes through the library where people are discussing Shakespeare. Every aspect of human life is happening simultaneously in this book, and often while reading it you'll experience what Jung calls synchronicities, you'll be reading about something, however innocuous, and it'll happen to you! I'm not kidding, you have to read it to know what I'm talking about.
I'm on my second re-read and don't think I'll ever tire of it.
(less)
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Arsalan
gave to:
Les Misérables (Penguin Classics)
by
Victor Hugo
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my rating:
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Arsalan
gave to:
Why I Am Not a Christian & Other Essays on Religion & Related Subjects (Paperback)
by
Bertrand Russell
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my rating:
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Arsalan
gave to:
Psychobiology of Mind-body Healing (Paperback)
by
E.L. Rossi
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my rating:
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Arsalan
gave to:
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Hardcover)
by
Edgar Allan Poe
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my rating:
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Arsalan
marked as to-read:
Light in August (Paperback)
by
William Faulkner
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my rating:
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Arsalan
marked as to-read:
Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (Paperback)
by
Paul Levinson (Goodreads Author)
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my rating:
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Arsalan
marked as to-read:
The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Hardcover)
by
Anne Harrington
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my rating:
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Shrink Rap (Psychology Books)
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— last activity Feb 05, 2010 11:09AM
