my official response to Noah's books-off-the-island post
“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.” — W. H. Auden
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“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.” — W. H. Auden
Commenting is closed for this article.
No, no, but the post was right about Ayn Rand. And Auden would seem to be defending Dianetics, no?
— Sanjay · Jul 16, 01:15 PM · #
Ah, but there’s an ambiguity in there, Jacobs – remembered how and what for? To use Sanjay’s examples, Atlas Shrugged and Dianetics have not been forgotten by those who despise them – they live in infamy, and deservedly so.
— Noah Millman · Jul 16, 01:53 PM · #
What I have written, I have written.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 16, 02:17 PM · #
And, if I may quote Nietzsche: That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.
— Noah Millman · Jul 16, 02:20 PM · #
A terser condemnation of blogging cannot be imagined.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 16, 02:27 PM · #
I seem to have become a Twitter feed.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 16, 02:28 PM · #
I think there’s room for all of it.
Also may I just say that A Tale of Two Cities deserves a second look? There’s never been a better book written about totalitarianism, and yes, that includes 1984.
— Freddie · Jul 16, 02:32 PM · #
Also, I’m positively bamboozled by people (such as Alex Massie) saying things along the likes of “I would banish this book if I had read it!” If your vision of the book is so preconceived, what’s the difference between having read it or not?
— Freddie · Jul 16, 02:34 PM · #
You mean, “what W. H. Auden has written, I have written.”
— Sanjay · Jul 16, 02:44 PM · #
Bamboozled?
— SDG · Jul 16, 03:06 PM · #
Bamboozled?
Dumbstruck!
— Freddie · Jul 16, 03:10 PM · #
For a better book on totalitarianism than either Two Cities or 1984 go with Europe Central. It was the first Vollman I’d read. I rectified that oversight damn fast.
— Sanjay · Jul 16, 03:23 PM · #
I’ll check it out!
— Freddie · Jul 16, 03:32 PM · #
My God. I don’t think I’ve read such a horrifying sentence in a long time.
“I seem to have become a Twitter feed.”
Or, Freddie, may I suggest the precursor to 1984, “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Dystopic AND Russian from the 20’s!
— Geoff · Jul 16, 08:15 PM · #
I would respond to that, Geoff, but it would take more than 140 characters.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 16, 08:31 PM · #
re: That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.
I’m a fan of the man’s aphorisms, but that one sucks. ‘Dead in our hearts’ is a subset of ‘adverse possession’, which is merely ‘reification by a human’, which is itself a prime enabler of ‘power over’.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 16, 08:40 PM · #
Someone mentioned the GOP’s “youth problem.”
Please check out The Daily Beast for an excellent series on that very subject, in light of the recent Young Republicans convention and related fiasco involving the election of their chairman.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-10/the-gops-day-of-reckoning
I would weigh in on the subject myself, but am simply too exhausted from watching the Sotomayor hearings.
— Ian Wolcott · Jul 17, 01:45 AM · #