Patrick Bateman
I like to Dissect Girls
At the moment I am reading "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. For the unwise it's a 2000 year old book on military strategy. I am also reading "American Psycho" by Brett Easton Ellis.
Now Reading Thread
- Thread starter derbeder
- Start date
JColtrane
Member
Patrick Bateman
I like to Dissect Girls
Brett Easton Ellis - Lunar Park
Michel Houllebecq - The possibility of an island
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
Michel Houllebecq - The possibility of an island
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
Justin S.
Member
I am also in the midst (again) of the Critique of Pure Reason, after going through some of Hume's work. Unfortunately, reading it along with Heidegger's work is not really feasible for me at the moment. I'm interested to hear your general impressions derbeder, if you don't mind further ruining/murdering this board 
.
I'm taking an overload semester so my reading schedule is inflexible- in addition to my more literal "philosophy" fare, I decided to enroll in a 400 Dostoevsky course (in the Russian department) that reads his entire body of work... lacking any familiarity with the language doesn't make it easy!
.I'm taking an overload semester so my reading schedule is inflexible- in addition to my more literal "philosophy" fare, I decided to enroll in a 400 Dostoevsky course (in the Russian department) that reads his entire body of work... lacking any familiarity with the language doesn't make it easy!
Heidegger himself admits in the 1973 preface to the Kantbook that he has overinterpreted Kant's First Critique. As he was thinking about how to actually provide an account of Being in terms of originary temporality (what was supposed to go into Division 3 of Being and Time), Heidegger lectured on the Critique (winter 1927/28) and sought for a solution to his own problems by trying to find clues in Kant's discussion of time, imagination and the role of the schemata of pure concepts of understanding. His interpretation of Kant in the lecture and this book is therefore colored heavily by his own problematic in Being and Time. The projected Division 1 of the "destructive" Part 2 of BT, "Kant's doctrine of the schematism and of time, as the preliminary stage of a problem of Temporality" turned out as this book, but I think there is a lot here that relates to what was to become Division 3 of Part 1.
In the preface he says he was "led to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason from within the horizon of the manner of questioning set forth in Being and Time. In truth, however, Kant's question is foreign to it, even though it would have given another meaning to the presupposed manner of questioning." He adds here on his own copy of the book that he has attempted "to question what has not been said, instead of writing in a fixed way about what Kant said." This is basically what he does with all philosophers from Heraclitus to Nietzsche, of course.
The discussion of the power of imagination and the importance of the chapter on the schematism are very interesting, but are not accurate interpretations of Kant's meaning. The book and the lecture are important guides to how Heidegger conceived of the positive project of Being and Time, however.
In the preface he says he was "led to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason from within the horizon of the manner of questioning set forth in Being and Time. In truth, however, Kant's question is foreign to it, even though it would have given another meaning to the presupposed manner of questioning." He adds here on his own copy of the book that he has attempted "to question what has not been said, instead of writing in a fixed way about what Kant said." This is basically what he does with all philosophers from Heraclitus to Nietzsche, of course.
The discussion of the power of imagination and the importance of the chapter on the schematism are very interesting, but are not accurate interpretations of Kant's meaning. The book and the lecture are important guides to how Heidegger conceived of the positive project of Being and Time, however.
AbbyTritonus
A woman :O
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is a very good book.
I've just finished reading "1984" by George Orwell (again..). I think it's a very interesting theory and well-written book, but the ending was a bit disappointing for me. Also just finished "White Line Fever", which is Lemmy's autobiography. He portrays his views very well, and it never fails to make me laugh.
I'm currently halfway through "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which I spent a long time trying to find, and seems interesting. I'm also reading "The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time" which is just an excellent book, but unfortunatelu near impossible to buy.
I've just finished reading "1984" by George Orwell (again..). I think it's a very interesting theory and well-written book, but the ending was a bit disappointing for me. Also just finished "White Line Fever", which is Lemmy's autobiography. He portrays his views very well, and it never fails to make me laugh.
I'm currently halfway through "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which I spent a long time trying to find, and seems interesting. I'm also reading "The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time" which is just an excellent book, but unfortunatelu near impossible to buy.
I will do one day. Honest.
ATM I'm reading Lattimore's translation of The Iliad, Herodotus' Histories, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Erikson's Midnight Tides, Hamlet over and over, and occasionally some Harold Bloom.
Justin S.
Member
There is... this one guy around here who I know has read it, but good luck getting him to (single) post about it. He's English and quite queer you understand.
Read it in the sense that he went over the words and pronounced them and his head? In the sense that he could tell, at least vaguely, what each sentence is about? In the sense that he made sense of the novel as a whole? Found some themes or ideas expressed in it? In the sense that he could tell a passage from something typed at random? In the sense that he has actually ENJOYED it?
If yes, then he is my personal hero (I can only assume that's Nile557?).
I was always sure this novel was a joke but Ive read Joyce worked really hard on it. So it must be a pretty good joke.
Anyway, what this sentence:
"O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement!"
is about, how does it relate to the rest of the novel or any of the ideas it explores (or to character development, if there's such a thing, or whatever) and what the hell does it mean? Thanks!
If yes, then he is my personal hero (I can only assume that's Nile557?).
I was always sure this novel was a joke but Ive read Joyce worked really hard on it. So it must be a pretty good joke.
Anyway, what this sentence:
"O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement!"
is about, how does it relate to the rest of the novel or any of the ideas it explores (or to character development, if there's such a thing, or whatever) and what the hell does it mean? Thanks!
Nile577
Member
- Jun 26, 2003
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The Wake refers to the entirety of itself in nearly every sentence so, in many ways, the bit you quote is about everything, everywhere all at once. It's also written in nearly every language simultaneously with multiple allusions to all of western literature, a great deal of eastern literature and pretty much every mythological tradition. Any praise of it from me would be entirely superfluous. Nothing like it can ever be written again.
It's probably helpful, then, to try and situate the sentence you quote a bit. The Wake is roughly mapped to the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico's cyclic view of "cultural" history. For example, the last words in the "book," "A way a lone a last a loved a long the," run on to join the first words "rivverun, past Eve and Adam's." The "commodius vicus of recirculation" (from the opening page) is both an allusion to this cyclic form ("Vicus (Vico) of recirculation") and a humorously self-deprecating reference to the Wake's as a "load of shit" (commode) filled with recycled quotes ("recirculation") which one must plough trough.
The passage you quote occurs very early on, when Joyce speaks of The Fall. The "fall" is many things, both miniscule and cosmic. It is Adam & Eve's eating from the tree of knowledge ("When he yeat ye abblokooken" (When he eats the cooking apple (forbidden fruit), with abblokooen reminding also of the German word Apfelkuchen, meaning apple pie - with also a further allusion to the poet Yeats, who, due to his revivalist sensibilities, Joyce regarded as being (to paraphrase) “beyond help” when they met.) "The fall" - "Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnukis" (which depicts the word "thunder" in many different languages) - is also the fall into language, and the fall of Irish political leader ("The Uncrowned King of Ireland") Charles Stuart Parnell, who so nearly achieved Home Rule before being undone by an affair with a woman called Kitty O Shea. It is, therefore, also the fall of Ireland. It is the fall of humpty dumpty ("That humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes). It is the fall into divisions and conflicts. And (as I will try to argue in my Ph.D thesis), it is the Heideggerian "fall" into-being, as dasein. It is also the fall of the main character(s) in the book, H.C.E., both man (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker - chimpden perhaps is an allusion to Darwin) and men (Here Comes Everybody). H.C.E man/men also represents the earth: "Howth Castle and Environs," just as his wife, A.L.P. - Anna Livia Plurabelle - represents the river. H.C.E. is embroiled (“fallen”
in some kind of sexual scandal with his daughter, though the details are never made explicit.To look at the specific passage you quote:
"O here here" should be seen in context with the previous lines, which detail numerous "falls" and conflicts of man from the specific to the grandiose. The passage is a litany of falleness. Our location is revealed in the previous paragraph "Where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green" (The colours of the Irish flag), though it is, of course, everywhere as well as Ireland. "Here here" is a vocal expression given by MPs in parliament to pledge support to a cause (possible connotations to the case of Parnell, who was leader of the Home Rule League). It is also, of course, an invitation to listen.
"how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists"
"How Hoth" is "Howth," is Howth Castle, north of Dublin, is H.C.E. is man, is men. "Sprowled" is sprawled - flung out of Eden, denied home rule, lost in language - and "prowled," like a beast & reminding of Earwicker's sexual scandal. "Met the duskt" is both "dust" and "dusk," with Finnegans Wake being a dream, an other, a "book of the night" to set against Ulysses' day. The snake in Eden was forced to crawl on his belly in the dust. The father of fornicationists is both Adam and Earwicker. The passage is brilliantly suggestive of an "Other" "duskt" of subconscious sexual desire, and also an "Other" of language, which undoes attempts to master it in the writing, with Freudian slips and destabilising deconstructions. Also, language is the house of Being. "Man acts as though he were the master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man" - Martin Heidegger
"but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement!"
"O my shining stars and body!" is a possible allusion to Christ and America, with "stars and stripes (Christ's scars)" reminding of the previous "Laurens County's gorgios doublin their mumper" (referencing there being another Dublin (doubled!) in Laruens County Georgia ("mumper" is Irish slang for "father" - "Topsawyer's rocks" are shamrocks and also an illusion to Tom Sawyer, whose "father" was Mark Twain (twain meaning split in two: doubling!) "My stars" was an Irish vernacular phrase.
"How hath fanespanned most high heaven" is very interesting. How hath is Howth (H.C.E.) castle. "Fanespanned" suggests "fane" (a flag or weathercock). So: "how Howth Castle flew its flag." But also, from the Bible, in Isaish we have "my right hand hath spanned the heavens," which is of course Joyce writing the Wake, and also an allusion to masturbation, with the pun on "weathercock." (The date of Ulysses marked the first time Joyce was given a hand-job without paying for it by his wife-to-be Nora Barnacle!) Creation then is God's hand-job. The Sistine chapel ceiling was also "spanned" by a hand, but Michelangelo was left-handed.
Finally, "the skysign of soft advertisement," refers to the weathervane of man's fall. The weathercock "advertises" the climate of life. The "ontological weather," if you like, of his state: angst. It also might refer to Spinoza's (much beloved of L. Bloom) pantheism, with the sky itself suggesting God by way of advertisement. It also might return to American culture and "soft advertisment" (soft drinks advertisments) to go with the "stars and body (stripes)" of the first part of the line. A flaccid penis is “A soft advertisement” of possible pleasures to come – at the very "beginning" of the Wake we are “before” the fall (into intercourse/sexuality?) (“had passencore rearrived” (pas encore, in French.)
I hope the above is somewhat helpful. I think it's rather crude to try and "translate" the Wake but I fear there is no tasteful way to write about it on an internet message board. There is likely much I've missed. The Wake is important because it moves towards a new way of thinking. Towards, as I will try to argue in my doctoral thesis, a "being-historical" awareness in which all cultures and mythology are disclosed and renewed authentically from within “language,” free from the drift of ideology, “revivalism” or studied "history."
This is absolutely amazing... To think there's a whole mythology in one sentence!
Just out of curiosity: how long did it take for you to read that? Did you type the above completely off memory?
Just out of curiosity: how long did it take for you to read that? Did you type the above completely off memory?
I've actually went through it again. However, I do not understand how this book (or, at least, the above sentence which I guess I at least partly understood) is Heideggerian? Also, are there any other books which are Being-historical and all that?
I'm halfway through Lolita. It has to be one of the most disappointing books I've ever read. The language is beautiful and very musical. The way the pervert masks his insanity with the aesthetics of language and puns is thought provoking and rather interesting (not completely unlike A Clockwork Orange, which I have not read but watched the film). The sudden deaths that occur throughout the novel are also interesting. The fact he does not describe the actual sexual act itself, also. However... it really seems like it ought to be better. The puns are just there and serve no useful purpose other than what I mentioned, and it's all full of trivial details and straight out pron, which do not contribute to the main idea in any meaningful way. The main character is unique but really one dimensional and he does not change. It's all overall very playful, very funny, seems like the best thing ever if you read just a few lines, but really lacking in artistic scope... It's not like I am against puns, or anything, but if they're there just to entertain, and there are allusions which serve no purpose (I guess there are a few) then it's annoying. Maybe it gets better later on...
I read Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse because I think Freanan was talking about it on here and it sounded good. I read it all in one session and it felt like 1 long surreal nightmare. I'll read it again slowly. The themes in it reminded me of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Tonio Kroeger.
Steppenwolf was a very good book, in my opinion, but it felt like the author really rushed through it. It really felt "glued" in some parts.
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