Retiredfeline: January 2025

Having come to the conclusion that I have too many books, many of them acquired with the best intentions of reading them "some day", I've decided that day has come, and I should choose one book every week or fortnight, read it if warranted, and discard it. So here's what I have processed so far. Unless noted the books are paperback.

Esperanto Dictionary (Teach Yourself series)

This one was easy, it's a duplicate as I have a later version.

Romanov's Russian/English dictionary

Acquired many years ago in a book sale just in case. I think I will never need this in my lifetime. 😦

Primal Myths, Creation Myths Around the World, Barbara C Sproul

Very interesting, but it was too daunting to read the texts so I limited myself to the abstracts. I would never remember the details anyway. Some aspects which drew my attention were: All myths struggle to answer the question what was there before the creation event, or how did something come from nothing? In many myths, the god or gods have fled due to the wickedness of humans. A myth helps define a group's self-image, that is to say, it explains who we are with respect to other humans, and the other living things. Colonisation influenced many of the myths, many adopting aspects of the Christian myth.

Mirror to Damascus, Colin Thubron (hardback)

I have other books by Thubron and like his writing. Mirror to Damascus was his first travel book, published in 1967. The book is a staylogue (opposite of a travelogue) in Damascus with a Syrian family. It's a portrait of the city and its inhabitants, interspersed with the long history of the city.

He's one of the great post-war British travel writers. He's still alive as of this blog post. Sadly I don't think I'll ever get to visit Damascus, let alone see it in a decent state. 😦

Off the Rails, Memoirs of a Train Addict, Lisa St Aubin de Terán (hardback)

She got the first of her double-barrelled name from her mother, and the second from her ex-husband, a Venezuelan whom she married at 16, and went to live on his family estate for 7 years. It was a very unusual life and you can note the beginning of the writer in the bookworm child she was. Oddly, it was a trip to Russia with her quarrelling parents by train, to splurge the Russian royalties of her father that could not be withdrawn on the western side of the Iron Curtain, that introduced her to luxury and the glamour of travel.

Barcelona, Robert Hughes (hardback)

It would be difficult to find a more magisterial history of Barcelona than this Robert Hughes tome. I had actually finished this some time ago, but it sat on my shelf. But it wasn't easy going, because you'd have to have a great love of the city to work your way through this scholarly work. I suppose it is a good collection of all the research he did.

Barcelonas, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, tr. Andy Robinson (hardback)

This was a much more accessible work than the previous. I should have realised it earlier, but my favourite fictional detective Il Commissario Montalbano was named in homage to him. Montalbán was a prolific writer, journalist, essayist, poet, and much more. He too created a fictional detective, Pepe Carvalho, who like Montalbano, is a lover of good food. I must get hold of the series.

Chapters 5 and 6 I regard as the best, describing the Franquist night that descended on Barcelona and the rest of Spain after the civil war, then the renaissance in fits and starts after the caudillo's death. It's educational to note how strongman regimes carry the seeds of their future demise. The last chapter could be used as a basis for themed walking tours of Barcelona's rich architectural and neighbourhood treasures.

What are Masterpieces?, Gertrude Stein

This is a slim volume that I picked up in the US because Stein is famous. I consumed the 104 pages in one sitting. Her writing style has been lampooned because of its reduplicative nature, but if you read her words aloud, even if just in your mind, then you get a sense of being carried along by the flow. Her works are not to be analysed, but just experienced. A stream of literary consciousness, delighting in the moment.

Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag (hardback)

This is a volume of Sontag's essays on literature, art and cinema. I found this a bit of a slog. Probably because it would be better for me to read the originals rather than read critiques at one remove. Many of the authors she writes about are European, and she's addressing a US audience. One artist I didn't recognise off-hand was the US film director Jack Smith whose film Flaming Creatures Sontag defended against accusations of obscenity.

Spanish: A Short Course, Zenia Sacks da Silva (hardback)

This is a coursebook for Spanish that I think I picked up in the US, with the intention of teaching myself Spanish, before I took formal lessons in the 90s. It served as useful revision in vocabulary and grammar for me even though I can readily comprehend Spanish now. The author seems to be/have been a teacher of the language at a US university.

A Book of Railway Journeys, compiled by Ludovic Kennedy

This book was published in the wake of Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar which is one of most popular exemplars of railway travel writing.

Many famous writers and adventurers have excerpts from their works in this compilation. Many names I discovered had an entry in Wikipedia or the writings are well known. The sections are ordered logically: Britain, Europe, USA, USSR, Elsewhere (including India and Australia of course), War, Crashes, and finally, Fiction.

Incidentally Ludovic Kennedy was married to Moira Shearer, who was a famous ballet dancer and actress, and played the principal character in the film The Red Shoes.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Eric Newby

Eric Newby was of the generation of post-war British travel writers. He served in WWII in which he was captured and escaped with the help of his future wife, Wanda. After the war he spent years working in the women's fashion business, a rather sedentary turn of life, but understandable given the need to provide for his family and his parents' trade backgrounds.

The Hindu Kush is a range of mountains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 1956 he made an expedition with his friend Hugh Carless to ascend Mir Samir. In this droll book hardships are whimsically made light of, as if they were bumbling Englishmen having bitten off more than they could chew. (I was a little reminded of Jerome K Jerome's writings.) It contains a good description of the inhabitants of the land who lead bare lives. This is set off by the beauty of the stark landscape. The writing is comic and self-deprecating. It's not a journey I aspire to, even if it were possible to travel there in these times.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter

This (abbreviated to GEB) was somewhat of a cult classic in the mathematical and computer science community. The central topic of the book is Formal Systems. However it is accompanied by a lot of fascinating diversions into wordplay, art and music. DRH loves recursion and self-reference and these themes abound in this book. The serious sections of the text are an attempt to make formal systems more accessible, all leading up to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, which define limits to formal reasoning, as well as musings on the nature of human intelligence. But i admit I found my eyes glazing over going through the "serious" parts of the text towards the end, and skipped large chunks. DRH himself has expressed frustration at the reception to GEB, saying that his main thesis was Strange Loops, but I think he brought this upon himself by packing too much into GEB (you could seriously hurt somebody by throwing this paperback at them). He subsequently produced a book concentrating on just Strange Loops.

The Mind's I, arr. Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett

This is a book of pieces selected by the co-editors from fiction and essays with commentary surrounding the topic of consciousness. The title is a double entendre which can be read as The Mind's Eye, or The Mind is I.

I enjoyed this book much more than GEB because of the multitude of voices and perspectives on consciousness. My favourite piece is Is God a Taoist?, followed closely by An Epistemological Nightmare, both by the mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. If you put those titles into a search, you will find online versions of those pieces. I remember enjoying his book of logic puzzles, probably What is the Name of this Book? which contains variations on the classic truth-teller and liar puzzle

Translating LA, Peter Theroux

If the name sounds familiar, he's the youngest brother of Paul Theroux. Peter became an acclaimed translator in Arabic then in the early 90s decided to settle in LA, furthest away from his family's New England roots. (I believe he's still there.) This was an very entertaining read. With a series of accounts of excursions or incidents from his LA life he illuminates the sometimes contradictory or counterintuitive aspects of this rainbow city, home to a melange of settlers. A city always in the process of becoming, but never arriving. Outsiders like to feel shocked by what seems outré but it's just the normal for Angelinos. I do feel sorry to let go of such an absorbing book but I'm unlikely to pass by there again.

A Journey in Ladakh, Andrew Harvey

At first I thought this would be an adventure tale like A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush reviewed above, but it actually is an account of both a physical and spiritual journey. Ladakh is the eastern portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. It has a significant population of Tibetan origin and Buddhist buildings. Harvey undertook the trip due to disillusionment with academic life in Oxford and travelled to India in search of direct spiritual understanding. In the second half of this, his first book, published in 1983, he encounters two Rimpoches (Buddhist teachers) who encourage him to begin his spiritual quest. I noted with interest that those teachers felt that the future of Buddhism is in the West, as the Western world is the first to experience dissatisfaction with the modern way of life, finding it lacking in heart. The feelings described are if anything more true 40 years on than then.

The prose is clear and this was an easy and satisfying read. Harvey is now a spiritual teacher so he is probably an effective teacher. I wish I had taken this off the shelf to read sooner.

The Greek Islands, Lawrence Durrell (hardback)

Lawrence Durrell is sometimes better known to readers through the books of his youngest brother, naturalist Gerald Durrell. People often think of "Larry" as a literature-mad aspiring young writer through the several screen depictions of the Durrell family during their time in Corfu. In fact he was already married to his first wife Nancy in that period, who does not get mentioned in "Gerry's" accounts. I bought this book because of the Durrell name, and later I discovered his connection with Henry Miller, but Durrell was a novelist in his own right. (I still have to get around to his Alexandria Quartet.) The Greek Islands was published in 1978 when the halcyon Corfu days were well in the past.

Despite the large format of this book, it's not a coffee table book of photos to admire. There are many colour and monochrome plates, but most of the paper is covered by his prose, which it must be said is quite delightful to read. It's really an excellent walk through the histories and delights of the islands, taking an anticlockwise spiral starting at Corfu and ending up in the centre with the Home Group, the islands within hours sailing of Athens. His love of the Greek culture is very apparent.

It won't be any use as a travel guide now, but it's a good memoir of how the islands used to be. It will be interesting to see how the soul of Greece survives the climate crisis.

Treatise on the Steppenwolf, Jaroslav Bradáč and Hermann Hesse

This is a book of 45 paintings, accompanied by text from the Treatise, done by Jaroslav Bradáč for the 1974 film adaptation of Steppenwolf which was popular in in art house cinemas in the late 70s. Jaroslav Bradáč was born in Prague, moved to London in 1969 and from his website, still producing art. Obviously I was sufficiently impressed by the film to pick up this book. The Treatise is actually a story within the main story and a clever novel device to summarise the main character. In the novel Harry Haller is handed this short booklet by a person advertising a Magic Theatre. Hesse's 1927 novel is dense with inner dialogue which reflect the writer's prior struggles.

The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok (sic)

It's Monty Python, what more needs to be written? It was published at least 5 years before I bought it, probably in a used book store.

Alexis Zorbas (German translation)

I've concluded I'll never have enough time to be fluent enough in German to read this version of Zorba the Greek, one of my favourite books. I'll have to content myself with the English translation. One of those good intentioned purchases from the bargain bin. Besides, if I wanted to be authentic and read books in their original language, I should have studied Greek. Now, what I do with my copy of Wendekreis des Krebses, another favourite of mine?

Firebird 1, Writing Today

An anthology published by Penguin paperbacks in 1982. It showcased writing from British and Irish writers. Some are now well-known, like Salman Rushdie and Graham Swift. Some, like Angela Carter, are no longer with us. The writing is good, but not all subject matters appealed to me. Modern magazines, like Granta, still going strong, include writing from the rest of the English speaking world, and even other language spheres, via translation. It seems that this annual series ended with Firebird 4.

German Short Stories 1 and 2, Penguin Parallel Text

I bought volume 2 when I was in university decades ago and taking German classes, with the best intentions of improving my reading abilities. Later I saw volume 1 on sale and decided to plug the gap. The collection was published in 1968 and 1978 and the stories even older so they are witness to German society of past eras. In the years since I can recognise more words in German but I've decided that I never have the time to be fluent enough, so I just read the English translations and gave them away.

Beautiful World Japan, Lonely Planet (hardback)

This is a coffee table book of lovely pictures from the Japanese archipelago from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south. I decided that other people should enjoy it.

Great Painters and Great Paintings, Reader's Digest family treasury (hardback)

My father bought this coffee table book when I was a kid. He was always keen on accumulating knowledge. It covers all the well-known Western painters up to the early 20th century.

Germany in a Nutshell

This is a small book that was published by the German government. The edition I have is from 1964. Reading it before giving it away made me aware that after WWII Germany lost a large swathe of territory in the east which was assigned to Poland. As a result there was a large migration of German speakers to the region which is now Germany.

I think it was given to my brother during his German studies at the Goethe-Institut in Malaysia in the early 60s. The institutes around the world play a part in promoting German language and culture.The British have their British Council, the US have their US Information Centre. I used to borrow from their libraries in my schooldays. It's a form of soft power.

Tolstoy: A Russian Life, Rosamund Bartlett (hardback)

This heavy tome occupied my bedside table for a long time. Fortunately the prose wasn't difficult to read although it got hard going in the end when the large cast of characters made it harder to follow who was who.

I think I bought this in the wake of the 2009 film The Last Station, about the last year of Tolstoy's life, when his wife and chief disciple Vladimir Chertov battled for control over his estate. I probably bought this because it was discounted.

Roadtesting Happiness, Sophie Scott

I think I bought this years ago on the recommendation of the Gleebooks newsletter. Sophie Scott has had a long career as the ABC's medical reporter, in addition to being a public speaker. This book was engendered by Sophie's personal experiences. As expected of a science reporter, it's scrupulously researched and the advice in line with what experts know. It could have done with better editing though, for example it's initially unclear whether the voice in a passage is that of Sophie or of an invited contributor who has life experience to share. I have passed on the book to another so that they can benefit too.

Brick 2002

This was an annual literary journal from Canada. I probably found it in a bargain bin and was intrigued by it. One piece was a memoir of a demonstration in 1989 recounted 10 years later partly as a tribute to the videographer who filmed the activists and was a friend of the author. It contained a summary of the state of the world in 1989, when the Wall had not yet collapsed, but the Cold War had not long more to live. Now some things are better, some things are worse, and some things stay the same.

Why the World Does Not Exist, Markus Gabriel (hardback)

I bought this at a clearance sale and finished it some time ago, well before this book-discarding campaign. That this book was written by a philosopher should forewarn you that it might be tough going and that you might have to wade into word games. It's has more humour than most in this genre, but for me reading it once was enough.

D. H. Lawrence and Italy, Penguin Travel Library

This is a compendium of three of Lawrence's works on Italy published by Penguin in paperback in 1985. The works are much older of course. I must have picked it up in a used book pile to read what he had to say about Italy. The three works are Twilight in Italy (about the Lago di Garda area), Sea and Sardinia, and Etruscan Places. I read the second work before my trip to Sardinia, but he took an inland route that is off the normal track now, and the Sardinia of a century ago doesn't exist any more.

I'm sorry, he may be a famous writer, but his style doesn't click with me and I found it hard to maintain concentration. Style is a very personal thing. I actually prefer his fictional works like Kangaroo.

The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature Volume II, ed Emir Rodríguez Monegal

I probably picked this up in the US as there are quite a few famous authors in there like Borges, Neruda, Paz, Fuentes, Marquez, Vargas Llosa, and many others. I don't have the first volume; that one deals with works before 1900.

The problem with reading an anthology is that you will not like the style or subjects of the vast majority. I did enjoy some, especially Passion Story: Hollywood, California, a satirical poem by Vinicius de Moraes, who is of course famous as the lyricist for many Antonio Carlos Jobim songs. Also I noted the music oriented piece Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who I had made the acquaintance of in a review published as notes to a Latin American music CD.

Journey to Kars, Philip Glazebrook

This comes from the same Penguin Travel Library series as D. H. Lawrence and Italy. The destination sounds exotic, but in fact Kars is a city on the eastern edge of Turkey about 50 km from Armenia. The journey was taken in the early 80s, from the references to a recent military coup. So most of the book is about travelling in Turkey from Marmaris via Rhodes to Kars, then back to Istanbul via a boat from Trabzon.

The landscapes and people are well-described enough. However there are a lot of quotes from intrepid travellers from the past who have ventured past Ottoman lands into the unknown east. The bibliography is 3 pages long. The book would be ⅔ the length if those quotes from history were excised. So I'm happy to set this book free after reading it once.

Cut Stones and Crossroads, Ronald Wright

Another one from the Penguin Travel Library. Ronald Wright is a Canadian anthropologist who studied archaeology so he writes with authority about the Incan world that was destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors. He even speaks Runasimi which allowed him to research sources and converse with the native people. The journey was done around 1981 from the northern border with Ecuador to the southern border with Bolivia. His use of language is excellent. In a passage he compares the descent of a train on a series of switchbacks to a feather falling to the ground. The book is very detailed and unfortunately I will forget the details but a sense of loss of a quite advanced civilisation will stay with me.

The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley

This is a well-known book about a childhood with her parents Tilly and Robin in Kenya, then called British East Africa, on the cusp of WWI. She got the Huxley surname by marriage later, she was born Elspeth Grant. She went on to be a writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. The book was written as a memoir in 1959. It became popular and dramatised in a television miniseries in 1981 with Hayley Mills, by then an adult actor, in the role of Tilly, her mother.

I enjoyed reading about details of the lives of the early English settlers and Kenya as it was then. Thika is only 42 km from Nairobi, but transport was much slower in that era. I was a bit surprised on checking the climate of Nairobi that because it is at about 1500 m altitude, it is cooler than one would expect of a tropical country. Of course, Nairobi and surrounds are urbanised now and the abundant wildlife are gone or diminished.

So Far From God…, Patrick Marnham

The title comes from the folk exclamation: Poor Mexico: so far from god, so close to the United States. It's a record of a journey through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras, undertaken in the mid-1980s, as civil war was raging in El Salvador, and Nicaragua was in the thick of a revolution. Like many British authors, he makes light of the dangers that could have overtaken him. Murder, even of foreigners, was rife in Central American countries in that period.

Marnham is a writer and journalist. I enjoyed his prose which while contains ironic observations on the daily life and political situation of the countries he visited. It's written in a similar vein to books by Paul Theroux. The allocation of pages to the countries corresponds roughly to the land area; Mexico gets about a third of the book.

A couple of observations stayed in my mind. One is a quote by D.H. Lawrence: The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indians. The other is the fact that the Central American zone is prone to earthquake and floods and this has shaped history.

Better Than Fiction, ed Don George, Lonely Planet (2017)

This is a collection of 32 stories by travel writers collected by Lonely Planet. You may have read some before in the travel section of your newspaper's weekend magazine. Some I recognise from web pages, like the blog posts that Chris Pavone turned into Arrival in Luxembourg. That's the tone of many of the small adventures recounted here. There are some classics that stand out, like The Way to Hav, by Jan Morris. I also enjoyed A Tango in Buenos Aires, by Alexander McCall Smith, in non-Number One Ladies Detective Agency mode.

Storm Boy, Colin Thiele (with photos from the 1976 film adaptation)

What can I say, it's a children's classic and the Wikipedia entry for it explains everything. A good satisfying read. You'll be glad to know that the pelican who played Mr. Percival lived to the ripe old age of 33 in Adelaide Zoo.

The Flight of Ikaros, Kevin Andrews

In 1947 Kevin Andrews, a 23 year old American who had studied classical Greek, took up a traveling fellowship in Greece. He was awarded it because nobody else had applied. This changed his life and he became a philhelene, eventually taking Greek citizenship in 1975 (but his wife and children would not, because of the junta in power). This book is a recollection of those years. Greece was in the throes of a civil war, but he managed with difficulty to travel in the summers, chiefly to the Peloponnese. His writing style isn't the easiest to read but it gets better as the chapters go by and he describes the people he befriended, many pesants with ferocious or memorable personalities who had had harrowing experiences in the war. He is also easier to read when he describes nature.

His mother, Yvette Borup, also had travelled widely in the Far East as the photographer wife of Roy Chapman, director of the American Museum of Natural History, later described as a real-life Indiana Jones. Both mother and son died in accidents, she in 1959 with a woman friend when the car the friend was driving ran off the road between Burgos and Madrid; and he in 1989 trying to swim to an island off Kythira.

Farewell to the Sea, Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban writer who was homosexual and critical of the Castro regime, thus persecuted. He left Cuba in 1980 by the Mariel boatlift and settled in New York. When I bought this paperback, probably in the 80s in the US, he was still alive, but died in 1990 by his own hand, ill with AIDS.

The book is set over 6 days of a seaside vacation by a young couple. It is divided into two major sections. In the first, the wife speaks of her frustration and disillusionment with the marriage due to the burdens of motherhood and the loss of the initial spark. It is written as a continuous account over 6 days and nights with only markers for the change of date. It is a mix of stream of life and inner imagination.

If that isn't daunting to read, the second part is divided into 6 cantos which are essentially a continuous vehement rant of the writer against the Cuban system in free verse plunging into the phantasmagorical. As mentioned Reinaldo was gay and unmarried so the first part was probably a lead up to the second.

I found this an extremely difficult book to read, and in fact I skimmed through a lot of it. A little understanding of life in Cuba then and to a large extent still, helps with the context. But don't pick up this book to learn about Cuba.

His autobiography Before Night Falls, published posthumously, has been made into a major film with Javier Bardem in the lead role. That's a more digestible introduction to this writer.

The Language of Genes (1993); Y, The Descent of Men (2002), Steve Jones

A pair of books by Steve Jones on genetics. Both are very accessible and provide a wealth of facts, tidbits, and historical anecdotes. The first is an account of the development of field, including the shameful deviation into eugenics. The second (the title a nod to Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, which is actually about civilisation) is a study of the male of our species and others too. A couple of facts still very relevant to the discussion on gender identity. Despite men having taken most of the power in the world, genetically males and in particular the Y chromosome evolved as a means for genes to propagate the female line. Gender isn't as binary as some imagine. Various genetic accidents can place an individual somewhere in the spectrum between female and male. In fact so many genetic accidents occur that it's a wonder so many of us live as long as we do. Throwing the genetic dice is evolution's way to counter entropy, and we are just unwilling subjects.

Both books are still very relevant despite their age and the advances in genetics that have happened since 30 years ago.

More Big Questions (1995), Paul Davies amd Philip Adams

This is the book version of 6 made for television interviews of Dr. Paul Davies, physicist, by Philip Adams, broadcaster in 1995. The description: Paul Davies and Phillip Adams tease out more big questions about the cosmos, the beginning and end of life, quantum theory and time travel, is as good as any.

The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-British mathematician and philosopher, although he dipped into other scientific fields such as biology. This is the book version of a 13 part TV series broadcast by the BBC in 1973 dealing with the rise of humans to the apex animals on the planet. Thus the chapters take roughly equal time to read, and deal with one aspect of human history, which made it pleasant bedtime reading over 13 sessions. Sadly Bronowski only lived one more year after this masterpiece of broadcasting.

The Social Contract and Discourses, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Everyman's University Library

Generally Rousseau is associated with The Social Contract. This edition publishes in chronological order previous essays, the Discourses. It's interesting to observe his writing skills sharpening with practice. The earlier discourses were prolix and their main points could be summarised in a few sentences. Also many assertions without proof are made. These days we would want backing from anthropology and social sciences.

In A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, he argues that these are bad and lead to deviation from the happy savage state where humans were "free".

In A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, he argues this came about due to property.

In A Discourse on Political Economy, he describes how societies are organised as a result of civilisation.

All this leads up to The Social Contract. It's like he's accepted that it's best to be a happy savage, but since we cant go back to that now, let's see how societies should be governed. The main thesis is that each individual gives up personal liberty and submits to the general will for the greater good. He goes into details about various roles and structures in a state. In one chapter he even claims that different forms of government suit different countries, for example a monarchy best suits a large country. I don't think the inhabitants of such a country would want to preserve the status quo but would prefer the least bad alternative.

Rousseau is worth reading if you are studying this field as his work is a cornerstone of political thinking but for most of us, you could get by with a summary of his mian points. This book took me a while to finish and I'm glad to tick it off.

The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, Bantam Paperback

This worn paperback was inherited from my father's library. I don't know the circumstances in which he acquired it.

This of course is de Beauvoir's groundbreaking opus that spurred women's rights and feminism. However it's a formidable work at 700 pages in smaller print in paperback. The last 70 years of social history has made us well acquainted with the arguments presented, with the main point that women have been relegated to subordinate place. So I didn't actually read the complete text but was content to read summaries of the arguments chapter by chapter.

I note that the translation from 1953 that I read has been criticised for its translator not doing justice to the French text. Parshley was a biologist, not a philosopher nor was his French up to the nuances of French philosophy terms. Maybe he was assigned the task on account of Part 1 which lays out the facts. New translations restoring some of the omitted material appeared in 2009 and 2010.

The Fraticides, and Buddha, Nikos Kazantzakis

Kazantzakis is the 20th century giant of Greek literature. Most people know of him through his novel, Zorba the Greek, and the film dramatisation, and perhaps film version of The Last Temptation of Christ.

The Fraticides was his last work, published posthumously. In it he expresses his horror and despair at the Greek Civil War which turned Greek against Greek. The protagonist, Father Yannaros, personifies Kazantzakis's love of Greece and profound Christian belief.

Buddha, originally entitled Yangtze, is one his earliest works. Recall that in Zorba the Greek, the narrator struggles between contemplation and activism, the former personified by the Buddha. That work was this play, which he revised several times in his life. The final version is the one here, where Kazantzakis affirms a third way to relate to the world, through art. Towards the end of his life he stated that the path of beauty had been his choice and Buddha was his last word in time.

The play is in three acts but the storyline is simple. The Yangtze river is threatening to drown the inhabitants of a city. In the end the river inundates everything, even the Buddha statue. But the river is Buddha too. Everything will return to the void. The various characters personify various attitudes towards the world. The author's stance is closest to that of Old Chiang. But Kazantzakis uses the framing device of a Magician who relates the story and makes us understand that this too is a tale born of mind, in the face of the great nothingness.

I imagine though that this play will be very difficult to stage, if at all. The characters have very long declamatory passages. But good actors can learn any script, I suppose.

Kazantzakis's epitaph on his tomb on the Martinengo Bastion overlooking Heraklion, Crete, is worth setting down here as it encapsulates his ethos. Translated from the Greek, it reads: I expect nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

Hermit in Paris, Italo Calvino

This is a volume of collected writings of Italo Calvino about himself. The title is taken from one of the short autobiographical pieces which was derived from an interview he gave about his then situation living in Paris. His novels and stories are very inventive and explore many dimensions of thought. A large portion of this volume is taken up by American Diary which is a record of his year there in 1959/60, in letters to his editor, which also is a snapshot of the country as it was then.

This book I'm hanging onto, the exception to the others listed here, as I feel it's worth rereading at a later time.

Watching the Tree, Adeline Yen Mah

This was Mah's third book, after her autobiography of her childhood, Chinese Cinderella, and Falling Leaves, about her later life and career. This book's chapters are discourses into Chinese maxims and sayings. It also explains Chinese culture and relationships. A lot of it will be familiar to Chinese no matter where they live in the world, as they are the core of Chineseness.

Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Toqueville, a French aristocrat, visited the USA in the 1830s to study its political system. He published his findings in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. It's his magisterial work. It took me some time to read it. One is struck by the diligence he has put into this work, comparable in volume to a thesis, complete with appendices.

Bear in mind that the volumes are the observations of a "social scientist" and not certitudes or predictions of what will come to pass, and were made at a certain point in time, in fact before the Civil War.

In the first volume he analyses the political system through its documents (devoting many pages to the Federal Constitution), and the structure of its social bodies. Some themes constantly recur, such as equality and self-determination of the democratic citizen. His main point of comparison is of course France, but he also other European nations, especially Britain, the founder of the original states of the USA.

In the second volume, which is divided into 4 books, which are again divided in tens of chapters each, he propounds various statements, which are then elaborated in the body of the chapter, which can be as short as a couple of pages. The index is in fact a good summary of the propositions, for example, book 2, chapter 1 is entitled Why democratic nations show a more ardent and enduring love of equality than of liberty.

It would be tempting to take de Toqueville's statements as fact or predictions, especially if sentences are taken out of context. Rather they should be used as starting points for analysis. He is a forerunners of political thought about democratic systems. He doesn't think that democracy is inevitable but does show a preference for equality. But it's not my intention to delve into this deep subject here. Whole schools of universities are devoted to political analysis.

The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

De Chadin's background illuminates his philosophy in this work. He was a paleontologist, as well as a Jesuit priest. This book was written between 1939 and 1940. It doesn't conform to our current expectations of a scientific treatise. A lot of concepts are proposed but with only anecdotal justification. Nowadays we would demand harder evidence from the sciences because we are able to examine and study in greater depth due to advances in the physical and biological sciences, in particular genetics.

There are two main concepts which are propounded in this work, the noosphere, and the Omega Point. The former could roughly be described as the world as modified by the existence of humans. There is no doubt that we have changed the planet. These days we could call this the anthropocene. De Chadin attributes this to human intelligence. Indeed it is a bit dizzying to think that we can reflect on our own existence, and ponder over our past and future. Although we now know that animals too have a degree of intelligence.

The latter is however speculation, and is a metaphysical concept that has no basis in science. De Chadin's religious background naturally predisposes him to conceive of a final, almost reilgious, goal for the evolution of humankind.

Unfortunately the way things are currently going on earth, we may end up as an insignificance on the scrap heap of the universe instead of being the ne plus ultra of evolution.

The Theban Plays, Sophocles

The plays in this collection are Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. They are not a trilogy. Although in chronological order in the collection, they were not written in that order, at varying times, and sometimes the details contradict.

I found that Greek plays, even though millenia old, are surprisingly readable and not that dissimlar to modern plays.

Evaristo Carriego, Jorge Luis Borges

This is a lesser work of Borges from his early period in 1930. The subject was a friend of his father and often visited their home. He was a poet who wrote on the Buenos Aires suburb of Palermo, finding beauty in that environment. Although he died of illness at only 29 in 1912, he is credited with informing tango lyrics such that a work is dedicated to him.

Often the introduction by the translator is illuminating, and so it is with this translation. In truth the subject of the book is not so much the eponymous subject but Palermo, when it was a rough and tumble neighbourhood of residents on the margin of Bairean society, before it became gentrified.

The last sentence in an addendum about the card game by Borges reveals his life's vocation, in his own words: And so, from truco’s labyrinths of coloured pasteboard, we approach metaphysics, which is the sole justification and object of any study.

Watch this space, more will be added

Retiredfeline

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

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