books are made of words, idiot

you got the wrong book

in other words-- make sure you've apprehended the right witch before you burn her.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to !@#$%! again.

yeah. don't go all LA cop on literature.

Haha, you called Catcher in the Rye literature? NOW I KNOW YOU'RE TROLLING!

eh, i don't have time for this.

KEKES--

i don't know that you're that spoiled-- you have a job, for fuck's sakes. i know you wish you were, but you aren't. you have to work.

one of the notable things about holden is that he's rich and pampered-- rich enough to attend some prep school and never have wanted for any material things in his life. which makes it hard to sympathize with him at some level, but then when you realize he's also rich enough to have a better jacket than the guy who's going to try and fuck the girl holden likes, and he's oh so alone in the world, oh so special and misunderstood, you say, okay, maybe, fine, i pity him, the freak, one of us, one of us (you've seen that movie? freaks?). he talks about some sort of hormonal problem. in a way he's right-- whether the hormone thing is literal or metaphor, he's stuck in some stupid place refusing to grow up. he doesn't have the balls for it-- literally, metaphorically-- the hormones.

now i'd say fine, the world is a fucking rotten place, when you're all goodness it must hurt to make the compromises grownups make-- but then you realize the little fucker looks down on people from classes below him. the taxi driver. the secretary that he dances with, in particular, he's such a dick in the way he thinks about her. holden caulfield thinks he's beyond the evil of the world but in fact he's a classist little shit. he's no better than anybody else in particular. in many ways he's actually worse.

if at some point he actually realized that, he came to realize that his shit also stinks, one could say, hey, fuck, there he is, yet another ape achieving self-knowledge, but no, he wants to be the catcher IN the rye and stop the little kids from going over-- he wishes he could keep everyone stunted as some sort of overgrown children. just like jesus commanded. "be like children." well. fuck.

in a way, you can see why his book is so popular. anybody wounded teenager who is disgusted enough or unequipped enough to cope with the universe will see holden as their little hero. but to me he grows up to be like buster bluth-- from arrested development. there, buster the monstrosity holden caulfield grows up to be. so yes, in the way that the type is getting to be so popular, meaning, there are more and more buster bluths every day, holden is winning-- he's stopping the little children in their tracks.

now the story is pretty great, as a kind of anti-bildungsroman (i hope i spelled that right), there is drama and the style is great, and when the book came out it made quite a sensation with the language. so the stuff is well written, and after all is said and done, yes, any angsty teenager will be able to connect with something in it in spite of differences in social class, language, nationality, whatever. because everybody goes through that in some way and even if you're supposed to overcome not everybody does, and not even those who win in the end always feel like they are winning. growing up is tough for all. and he captures some of that, and for that he is good.

but ultimately i like it better as the film adaptation known as igby goes down. that somehow worked better for me, because in the end… nah, i won't spoil it, if you haven't watched it-- let me know if you have. plus, there's sookie sapperstein.

anyway, beyond catcher in the rye i've read nine stories (nine stories i think it is) but i recall little of them, only the bananafish one, and found it also dismal, a kind of quitter's repetitive twitch, and so i never made it to franny and zooey. maybe i'll borrow it from the library out of curiosity of something.

alright, i'll reply to the nietzsche stuff later because you're right, he's scary-- but the right kind of scary, i'd say. seeya.

yeah, he's heavy-- for one thing, he was attempting to overthrow 2,000 years of christian morality. for another, he was standing up against i don't know how many hundred years of german idealism, and to really understand his attacks and mockery you need to understand that lingo-- i don't really, i've never had patience for that stuff, so i've had to rely on notes & commentary. but the first time i read him, really read him, and understood what he was doing to me, it was a huge earthquake. i put me "in crisis" as they say. holy fuck. it was like neo's red pill. never the same again.

i love beyond good and evil, tremendous book, and i'm not really crazy about his zarathustra but maybe that's more accessible-- i mean, a boy and his magic animals wander the world, it's like atreyu but with hair on his chest, ha ha ha.

eh, im rambling.

Archer Mayor - "Three Can Keep a Secret"

maybe i'll give that one a try then and hope to get into him and try to read the other stuff ayyyyyyyyy. but i think i'll wait with that until my christmas break. cause... time.

i read the introduction to homewrecker today. now i can't wait to read the rest.

re: Philosophy texts in general

Without a background in philosophy--a survey course, at least--I'm not sure how people can jump into a text and expect to get much out of it. With precious few exceptions, these are specialized books loaded with jargon and constant references to other philosophers/movements.

It's like picking up a book on advanced neurology without having a firm grasp of the parts of the brain. Might get something out of it, but a lot more will be missed.

There's no shame whatsoever in starting with secondary sources. If a reader doesn't know what "epistemology" is (and there's no reason why the average person should) and isn't aware of the history of that branch of philosophy, then reading, say, Kant is treading close to pointlessness.

Yes, I know one wants to read what the philosopher himself said (yes, "himself;" 99.99% of the time it will be a male author), and one is suspicious of being tainted by another author's interpretation. Good. But a decent secondary source will highlight common areas of contention. At the very least, a good secondary source will provide a framework for understanding why the philosopher felt the need to write the book in the first place.

Of course, there are plenty of crap secondary sources. But there are a lot of good ones out there which have no other purpose than to make philosophy accessible to the non-initiated.

To get the most out of the time one devotes to a philosophic text, I insist a little homework beforehand will make the experience far richer.

Hahaha.

The Brillat-Savarin was great!

Glad I read it at 40 instead of at 20. It helps to have had many satisfactory and non-satifactory gustatory experiences.

Now I am reading this.



Dick Gregory, for those who do not know, was the first, groundbreaking, harsh-truth telling black american comedian. He laid the groundwork for Pryor, Mooney, etc.

and this one is on the way to my mailbox rn:

Jesus fuck I am about 80 pages into Nigger: an Autobiography of Dick Gregory, and it is the saddest most rough shit I ever read. heavy.

reading this, and I don't know why I bough t it ....

Just went through some notes I took while reading books and thought I'd share some lines I really liked from "I love Dick" by Chris Kraus

"You shrunk and bottled in a glass jar, you're a portable saint. Knowing you is like knowing Jesus. There are billions of us and only one of you so I don't expect much from you personally. There are no answers to my life. But I'm touched by you and fulfilled just by believing."

^

The "funny caption" possibilities are endless.