http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rss/33765 en-US Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:12:00 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 27557814 Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:12:00 -0700 Review24298676 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24298676 History of the Concept of Time (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) by Martin Heidegger
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> 27557797 Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:11:28 -0700 Review24298665 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24298665 The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin Classics) by T.S. Eliot
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> 25711207 Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:55:24 -0700 Review22860523 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22860523 to: Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922 (Letters of T. S. Eliot, 1898-1922) by T.S. Eliot
Reading the letters of T.S. Eliot, or anyone's letters provided they are not an utterly boring person, famous or not, is fascinating. It's rather like being a Peeping Tom. Or should I say a "Peeping T." Sorry. Terrible joke. On to the review.

On the front of this book, there is a blurb by the Boston Globe that reads, "A joy to read...as they reveal the man for good and ill." I was about halfway through when I realized that there is much more of the "for good" than the for "ill," unless "ill" literally refers to illness. In fact, there wasn't really anything about Eliot as a person I didn't like.

In these letters, everyone of them from boyhood to 1922, when The Wasteland was published, Eliot comes off as an eminently sympathetic, eminently likable guy. He is a concerned, caring, sensitive person who is constantly worried about the comfort level and quality of life of everyone surrounding him. I mean, he's not a selfless martyr. He does a fair amount of complaining about his own hardships, and strained emotional states, but none of it is done with even a hint of bitterness. Bitterness for whom, you may ask?

Reading these letters, it's hard to say exactly where the circle of symbiotic neurosis starts and stops vis a vis Eliot and the woman he married after only a few months of courtship, Vivien (but that's the way they did it back then, right?) Whether it was her incessant worrying and "neuralgia" that fed his nervous energy or vice versa is something of a Gordian knot. They both seem to susceptible to excessive strain from the travails of life, though, I do have to say she rubbed me the wrong way more than once during the course of reading these letters. For one, she doesn't have a job but instead stays all day laid up in bed with some version of a head ache, while he worked full-time at a bank during the day and dedicated his nights to writing (both poetry but mostly criticism because it was, seemingly, easier for Eliot to write). She also seems to really relish the gossipy side of the literary quarrels that Eliot found himself in which he didn't have the fortitude to enjoy. Incidentially, one wonders what their love life was like and how this contributed to their respective neuroses.

For me, Eliot's correspondence letters with Ezra Pound are probably the most fascinating of the letters in the book. The contrast in their respective personalties is stark. Where Pound is didactic and aggressive, Eliot is measured. Where Pound never tires of polemics and ranting in American colloquialisms (no doubt ironically, though I'm sure he also felt comfortable in that style), Eliot's thoughts are lucid and his prose elegant. One wonders what their face-to-face conversations were like. While they were both American, born and bred, it's not hard to understand why Pound ended up settling in Italy and Eliot staying in England. Their respective temperaments fit those climes exactly.

If there is anything critical one can say about Eliot, it's that he is perhaps a little too refined, too effete for anything but the most well-educated and well-mannered in society. The sometimes sycophantic devotion he expresses to his mother often crosses the line past being "healthy". The epithet "mama's boy" comes to mind. Taken together, however, I see this more as the downside of being an incredibly intelligent, well-educated and sensitive man, which is something I see no reason to deride. ]]> 25711137 Sat, 24 May 2008 03:32:32 -0700 Review22860481 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22860481 to: Basic Writings: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (1964) by Martin Heidegger
The thing about reading Heidegger is, well, one, he's obtuse. If you can get past that, it's special. I mean, I know I've had profounder thoughts on Heidegger, but it's really amazing to read the thoughts of a man who was consumed with the question, "What does it mean to "be"?" I really can't think of any cooler.

Anyway, it's not really a hopeful philosophy and it might not save your life or answer your questions (even the same ones Heidegger asks himself), but it's a lot less pessimistic than Nietzsche. Anyway, Heidegger is the launch pad for postmodernism, so if you want to get into the latter, you have to read the former. I'm not sure if I want to get into the latter. I'm sure I will at some point. For now, I'm content to read Heidegger at the pace at which he was meant to be read. Slowly.

As for the essays, if you know a little something about what Heidegger's on about, I'd start with the last, eminently readable, essay first ("The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking") and then go back to the beginning (Intro to Being and Time for which you might need an online Heidegger Dictionary). ]]> 7624140 Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:26:30 -0700 Review8419612 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8419612 to: The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics) by Friedrich Nietzsche
I recently lost this book at a party that--don't ask why I brought it but--I got drunk at and since I read like 85% of it I'm considering it "read". Truth be told, these days I've been boozy a little more than I'd like to admit which is not the best state to be reading philosophy. However, I read (present tense) Nietzsche more to peer into the mind of a tragic figure and someone whom I have some affection for, intellectually, of course. He's indisputably more radical than most of what passes for radical thinking today and I really appreciate that. I really appreciate someone who can take something as good and wholesome as Equal Rights and just disparage the shit out of it, not because I hate equal rights but just because I appreciate people who truly think outside of the box. Man, I have to get into Heidegger soon but that's gonna be such a headache. I seriously need to be in another place in my life both physically and figuratively to start reading Heidegger. Maybe I'll start reading about Heidegger. Anyway, you'll probably see a lot more practical reading out of me for the next several months but who's keeping track?

Read this book and enjoy. The subtitle to the former is "How to Philosophize with a Hammer." Fucking, really. I mean, who can beat that? What intellectual has enough balls to title books like that and still be taken seriously? Anyway, it's like this: I recall this quote from the latter book and it sums up the story pretty well. Something like, "There was only one Christian in the history of the world and he died on the cross." You sort of get to the kernel of the story without delving too much into details which is, I think, what you and I want right now. ]]> 1022348 Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:08:45 -0700 Review3202545 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3202545 to: Skinema (Paperback) by Chris Nieratko
This book is a whole lot of awesome! It's very funny and very fucked up, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Chris Nieratko is an Asshole At Large for Vice Magazine and this book is a collection of his columns, which are ostensibly reviews of porno movies but they rarely are. More often, either Nieratko riffs on the title of the movie-to-be-reviewed and it reminds of him of some depraved situation he himself was once a part of, or he just completely disregards the fact that he's supposedly writing a porn movie review and will write about something completely unrelated. I'll just say that if so-called gonzo journalism has something to do with getting fucked up and making the focal point of the piece you are writing you, then this is gonzo journalism. Actually, I'm not so sure Hunter Thompson would like this, but what do I know?

Anyway, you should read this if you like hilarious sex stories that involve drinking, drugs, being an asshole, tattoos, etc. (I know that description sounds like "been there/done that" but Nieratko is both creative and hilarious.). Actually, the book is much more than sex stories and what not. Fairly often, he retreats into flights of fancy that are, as the rest of the book is, often hilarious. He has a flair for the right phrase, even if the prose itself (and the subject matter) never rises above low brow. I'd like to give you a snippet but I don't have the book with me.

You get the feeling that Nieratko may be fudging anywhere from 2%-98% of the stuff written about in the book, but it really doesn't matter because a)it's not billed as a memoir and; b)it's, again, hilarious.

So, yap: depraved, debauched, degenerate, degraded, licentious, low, twisted, unhealthy (just peruzing the old thesaurus here), and wonderful. I think you can buy this at American Apparel. Or you can get it off the internet (or at Barnes & Noble, I suppose). ]]> 3944827 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:20:06 -0700 Review5598187 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5598187 to: Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Classics) by Friedrich Nietzsche
Reading Nietzsche is fucking fascinating even if you can only grasp 85% of what he's getting at. He's pithy as all get out which makes him difficult to understand at points. He writes assuming the reader already has a certain background in history/philosophy/the history of philosophy and, frankly, it makes perfect sense that he's loathe to dumb it down because he despises the hoi polloi as it is.

Anyway, what Nietzshe's on about is sort of demystifying humans as humans have been/are now perceived thanks to what we've been told about us. If that's not vague enough, Nietzsche himself sometimes gets a bit mystical, so, yeah, at points, it is hard to grasp what he's getting at. At the risk of over-simplifying the shit out of his general train of thought, Nietzsche rejects God and the soul, he doesn't even necessarily believe that there might be an "I" or "you" to speak of. The latter, matter--taken up later in much more detail by such luminary philosohers as Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (esp. Heidegger)--is where it gets pretty confusing, but if you can hang on through it, it's worth it. Nietzsche's scope is none other than the entire intellectual history of Western society since Plato and really Socrates and considering this book is only like 175+ pages, his style is very terse and profound. Again, he doesn't really bother to elaborate a whole lot. You either understand or you don't.

Regardless, Nietzsche is just about the most radical thinker you're going to read. Not only does he dissavow of Christianity and any sort of morality which measures an action based on any sort of scale that measures good or evil (including utilitarianism), he also doesn't like democracy, humanism, equal rights, freedom to not find yourself under the tyrrany of someone and pretty much all of what rational people consider "progress." I think a lot of readers are originally attracted to the Nietzster because he despises Christianity whereas for the reader, it's "organized religion" that he/she is disaffected with. And then they realize Nietzsche doesn't like Christianity itself, and, moreover, pretty much hates everything and I mean Everything about modern society (because Christianity has shaped so much of modern society). And then the reader gets turned off and goes back to reading Locke or whatever. It is what it is. Still, pretty radical for 1886 or whenever this was written. I have more to say but I don't know if the word limit's going to let me. Anyway, read it (or don't). ]]> 3175128 Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:19:52 -0700 Review4964734 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4964734 to: Being and Time: A Translation of Sein and Zeit (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy) by Martin Heidegger
There comes a time in some men's lives when they say to themselves, "I think I'm ready to read Being and Time." But saying you're going to sit down and read Being and Time is like saying you're going to sit down and read Finnegan's Wake or some such other notoriously opaque tome. You might get through the book but there's going to be a fair amount of forehead-slapping and head-pounding, and when you're done you feel like you understood maybe 60% of it, if not like 20% of it. Let you know how it goes . . .

. . . .

The previous paragraph I wrote about 3 months ago. Since then I've broken up with my girlfriend (you'd think this would've given me more time but it's actually given me less), and my boss has suggested, nee commanded that I use 85% of my free time for work-related activities. But, to put the onus completely on the fact that I have been really busy would be misleading. This book requires 100% of your concentration, and more importantly, if you aren't fairly steeped in the jargon of ontology (more specifically, phenomenology), you're pretty much fucked. I'll probably go back to this book in probably another six months when things calm down at work, but for now I'm taking it off the currently-reading shelf and calling it read. I read about 150+ pages which is a little worse than as far as I treaded in Ulysses. Anyway, I'm going back to Herr Nietzsche. ]]> 2237406 Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:55:08 -0700 Review4191192 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4191192 to: At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (Hardcover) by George Tenet
I like George Tenet. He has a tough-guy New York accent and there's a picture of him in the book with a leather jacket on looking like he's really giving it to Andrew Card. Personally, I have no special strong feelings for George Bush, either way. But, when it comes down to finger-pointing (which, yes it has for a while now), Tenet wasn't a Bush Man---Clinton appointed him--and I think, in a lot of ways, that gives him a lot of credibility as far as believing what he has to say in this book. He wasn't totally wet behind the ears when 9/11 rolled around like most of the Bushies, and so in a lot of ways (yeah, again), his CYA (Cover Your Ass, which it's sort of undeniable this book is) has a lot more resonance for me. The fact of the matter is that unless Iraq miraculously turns itself around, there's going to be a lot of CYA coming out of the Bush administration as they, like Tenet, move from policy-making to history-writing. In addition to the fact that Tenet wasn't a Bush Man to begin with, his being the head of the CIA lends him more credibility, as the CIA is more of a technocratic, fact-finding organization than a policy-making organization (though that is debatable). The DOD should be a technocratic fact-finding org. too, but the fact is that during Bush Jr., it was staffed with the finest the American Enterprise Institute had to offer (read: the much maligned 'neo-cons'). And if half of what people, including Tenet, have to say about guys like Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz, along with Cheney and Rummy and their coteries, basically railroading the rest of Bush admin. into the Iraq War, then Tenet's CYA, again, has a lot more traction than whatever will come out of, for example, Rumsfeld's or Wolfowitz's corners (which, to tell you the truth, if they write memoires any time in the next decade, I'll be surprised.).

Anyway, I didn't read this book because I'm "totally interested in knowing what really happened in the weeks in months building up to 9/11," but more because I like political memoires or books by guys who really were at the center of the proverbial storm (check Woodward and Bernstein's book The Final Days for a starting point). Anyway, this book was in many ways, a Real Page Turner for me. I didn't want to put it down. I think the CIA is fascinating. I think that Tenet's book is probably the closest you're going to get to the "real story" behind what went down behind the curtain during Bush. You get a real read on some personalities, etc. Moreover, according to Tenet, a lot of the contretemps and "mistakes" have more to do with the inevitable complications of navigating and maneuvering within huge bureacracies rather than some concerted effort to mislead, which is, for me, totally believable (eg., the whole Niger Delta/Iraq/yellowcake/State of the Union Address gaffe). I'd like to go into to detail but there's really too much to say (though I will say that nothing in here really surprised me.). It is what it is. Check it out for yourself. Until Colin Powell writes his book or (gasp!) maybe Condoleeza Rice or someone else closer to Bush (maybe even Bushy himself!) decides to write their political memoires (or maybe even after), this book is about the best thing you're going to get as far as an insider's account. Morever, as I wrote earlier, I'm more inclined to believe Tenet than I would be Rice, or Rummy or pretty much anyone besides George Tenet. So, this book just might be the best thing you'll get if you want know what went on in the Executive Branch, 2001-2005. ]]> 643462 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:32:05 -0700 Review2854564 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2854564 to: Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Hardcover) by Steven D. Levitt
I guess some people don't like this book because it's not centered around one theme. Instead, it's more about the seemingly diffuse academic work of one of the authors Steven D. Levitt (the other author is a journalist, Stephen J. Dubner). Levitt is something of an economist but more like a social scientist using the tools of Microeconomics applied to other fields that happen to catch his interest (often having something to do with cheating, corruption, crime, etc.). In the back of the book he mentions how he considers himself a student of Thomas Schelling who is kind of like the father of Game Theory (strategy theory?), except much more of a 'man of ideas' than what one might think of when one thinks about game theory today, which is much more mathematical.

Anyway, as for the book itself, I thought it was really great. I really like what Levitt is doing as far as using the tools of Microeconomics in other fields. One of my intellectual heroes (I only have a few) is Kenneth Waltz who did the exact same thing in the field of International Relations in the '70's and wrote the seminal book The Theory of International Politics, which pretty much the single-handedly invented defensive (neo) realism. More generally, I think Economics is probably the most formalized of the social sciences and the one to which others should esteem. A lot of the Political Science field concerned with both voter behavior and how legislatures work is now pretty formalized as well, and, I, for one, think this is a good thing. I don't see how anyone could think it's not (good) unless they a)think the scientific method cannot be used to analyze human behavior; or b)have a visceral aversion to mathematical languages. Actually, I am one of the latter, but I, at least, see the value in having a formalized language to work with.

As for the book itself, there's some maybe-controversial things in there like Levitt did some work that showed that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. (Roe v. Wade) was one of the main reasons that crime in the U.S. dropped in the '90's and continues at the same rates today. He stands behind it pretty hardily though and it doesn't seem like he has a moral agenda at all. Some might argue that the best writers are those who are best able to disguise their moral agenda, but considering he writes about all kinds of not-very-serious things like how sumo wrestling in Japan is probably corrupt as far as matches g,o and there's stuff in there about how real estate agents sell their houses for more than they sell their customers' houses (which, may or may not be surprising), I really don't think he has a hidden pro-life agenda.

Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff in there (the book), hence the 'freak' in Freakonomics. It's well-written. It's not dry. It's written for a lay audience. I recommend it. Read it and feel the power of social science! ;-) ]]>