the Modern Tower of Babel

Sometimes it seems to me we are like the generation of the Tower of Babel and that our struggle to communicate is as futile as theirs. Each of us bound by a distinct, individual "tongue," trying desperately to connect through a shared something--a thought, an emotion, an idea. So we try to convey, to relate, to communicate, and meet always with inevitable failure. Because what you thought, what you said, once it has been transmitted to me, it is no longer your own. It. . the something you have sought to convey. . has been reshaped, redefined by my own process of thought, of understanding, and has become mine. But then, you might argue, you've planted the seed and so it is really yours, only somewhat modified. But in that case it is neither yours nor mine because it has certainly come from somewhere else. 'There is nothing new under the sun,' no thought--to speak in abstract terms--is really new. And yet, when it becomes my own it is new to me. So it is at once new and very ancient. Like the human capacity for thought and the ideas that have sprung forth. . . and shaped us from ancient days through the modern era.

Someone asked me what I write. I said 'nothing new.' Of course. There is nothing new to write. So why do I write? I don't know. It's all been said. In so many ways. By so many brighter thinkers and more skillful writers. Is it just the infantile need for self-assertion? But to what end? Keeping in mind that miscommunication is nobody's fault -- that it can't be avoided anymore than the miscommunication between a French-speaker and a Japanese-speaker can --I wonder: perhaps writing is nothing more than the manifestation of a silly romantic notion that allows us to believe. . . to sustain faith in things like communication and the human bond. Not so silly, though. It's what makes the world go round. But that's not what I'm thinking when I write. So what am I thinking? Do I want to give my readers a peek into my own thought processes? Not really, it's hardly that interesting. Maybe it's just about making sense of things for myself, about conducting a kind of inner conversation, except that the conventions of standard communication forces me to actively engage in this inner monologue, as it were, rather than be a mere passive listener. . . .
I don't know. Perhaps as I write I'll discover why I write. And if I discover that it's just how I make sense of my own little world, well then I'll continue to write and my writing will have a new purpose: self-discovery. Now, how's that for a cliche?

Austen vs. Camus?

What book changed your life?

According to one survey of British academics, lit students, writers and publishers, women and men have very different ideas of what makes a 'watershed moment.'

I found the women's choices rather disturbing. Much as I like the Brontes I'm hard put to see how either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights (not to mention Pride & Prejudice?!) could inspire any kind of real change in the reader.

Though I've only read two of the top 5 novels nominated by the males surveyed (Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22), the authors names--Camus (I'd have nominated The Stranger not having read The Outsider, which made it to #1), Vonnegut, Tolkien, Marquez, Heller and Salinger put --I think-- Austen and the Brontes (perhaps even Atwood, though not Eliot) to shame. Though I've read all the authors (not books) except Morrisson, on the women's list, none inspired me as have the likes of Camus, Salinger and other (dead or MIA) male authors. Well, well.

Read the LA Times oped here.

corrections, html, Arendt, Cesarani and Eichmann

some corrections on my poll post:

Bob Dylan scored pretty high--I just added him into my poll two posts below. Also, I added Wuthering Heights to my list of favorite books and found 3 friends agree.

In other exciting news . . or not so exciting news, perhaps. . . school is over. . .grades are coming in (so far so good, though the worst is yet to come). . . and I'm on a job hunt. . .hope to turn up something good soon.

In my quest to become a more well-rounded person I'm teaching myself HTML. So I'm creating my first webpage and finding it to be a lot easier and more fun than I'd imagined. . .

In this week's NYT Book Review, Barry Gwen reviews a new biography of Adolf Eichman: 'Becoming Eichman' by David Cesarani.
Cesarani admits that "anyone writing on the subject [of Eichmann] today works in the shadow of Hannah Arendt." But where "Cesarani believes his details add up to a portrait at odds with Arendt's banal bureaucrat," writes Gwen, "what is striking is how far his research goes to reinforce her fundamental arguments." Both Arendt and Cesarani, according to Gwen, were ultimately concerned with proving that Nazis were ordinary people, not monsters, as we would like to believe, and that in their very ordinariness lies the danger. The capacity for evil is not limited to people on the fringe, but is something that exists within each of us. "Under the right circumstances," writes Gwen, paraphrasing Cesarani's argument, "normal people will commit mass murder. . . and the circumstances of our age — with its racism, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombers and genocidal killings — are ominous."
Where Cesarani takes issue with Arendt, then, is in her disavowal of the Holocaust or anti-Semitism as a unique problem facing the Jewish people. According to Arendt, the Holocaust was a "crime against humanity perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people."
Gwen points to Gershom Scholem who took Arendt to task for her universalistic approach to the Holocaust, accusing her of a lack of Ahavat Yisrael. Arendt's response: "I have never in my life 'loved' any people or collective — neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love 'only' my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons."
Read the full review here

disclaimer

so burnt out from paper writing. . . just noticed the awkward writing in the post below. finals fever.

college kids rate Lolita # 1

i just took a couple of surveys, of sorts.

i checked my facebook list of favorites (books, movies and music) against those of my friends (it's not as tedious as it sounds).
oh, and numbers do not include my vote.

no chicklit:Lolita(7), Catcher in the Rye(3) and Crime & Punishment(3).

oh the runner up was Death of a Salesman (2)

i was dissapointed to find that Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man didn't make it onto anyone's list


films: Annie Hall (2) Gladiator (2)

surprised that none of these made it to anyone's list: The Gradutate, Forrest Gump, and Taxi Driver

music seems pretty much right on: Beatles (7) Bob Dylan (5) Pink Floyd (4) Idan Raichel (2) Fionna Apple (2)
Beethoven (2) Chopin (2) Brahms (2) Bach (2)

The New Republic on Religion and Mourning

cramming papers and finals. . . .

Some excellent reviews here and here in this week's The New Republic. If there's a James Wood fandom club I will join. And Rochelle Gurstein is right on in her critique of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I remember reading the initial excerpt in the NYT magazine last year and feeling the cold, forced distance that Gurstein describes so well. I've never read Donald Hall, but I intend to, now. Gurstein makes some interesting points with Hall too, re art and how artists reveal what should, ostensibly, remain hidden and then call the revelation 'art' when perhaps it is nothing more than the shock value of being shown that which was never meant for our eyes. Art as voyeurism. . . .

Back to work. . .

Consciousness and Dostoevsky

Long hiatus. . . now, if only i had something exciting to share. still in the throes of finals and papers. . . .

I did finish The Brothers Karamazov, a wondreful read. I don't know if this is Dostoevsky at his strongest, but he reaches so high in this novel, exploring every facet of the human experience, leaving no stone unturned in his quest for truth? Perhaps. He examines the human capacity for reason, love, hate, jealousy and compassion--from the vantage point of man's inner pscyhe. This is a story that examines universal truths as they are played out and manifest in the individual--it's a story about the dual forces that compete for sovereignty over man's soul and the mental anguish imposed by human consciousness.

Better thoughts later. .