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| Dramatic clouds |
No, that's not what I've been reading! My usual assumption is that photos never really capture clouds, but that image yesterday was so dramatic I thought I would give it a try. Not bad. Ok, now to the books.
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Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis is one of the funniest books I have ever read, though perhaps you would have to have spent some time on a college campus to fully appreciate it.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are on the list of books that "everyone should read" but my feeling is that while the private thoughts of one of the great Roman Emperors are certainly of historic interest and also interesting to people studying Stoicism, this is not a really important book. Much of it is just mundane stream of consciousness.
The Laurence Sterne however, while not to everyone's taste, is certainly one of the great comic novels. I have to admit, I enjoy a great comic novel more than one of those Russian tragic doorstops. Mind you, you will encounter footnotes in classical Greek, the author's preface on page 172, innumerable digressions along with a chapter that attempts to map out the digressions, an entire exorcism in Latin, chapters on whiskers and noses that are really not about whiskers and noses and a lot of discussion of hobby-horses.
Let's attempt to find a suitable envoi. One of the funniest pieces of Baroque music is "The Kidney Stone Operation" by Marin Marais. Here is a performance with narration:
2 comments:
Having recently read books of the three big-name Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus), I can safely say Aurelius is the least compelling of them. I find Seneca to be more profound and poetic. I will definitely be revisiting the latter two, rather than the emperor. I find it no surprise that Stoicism is a somewhat popular philosophy these days. There is something to be said for applying self-mastery in one's thinking in a world of distraction and overstimulation.
I have to confess that Marcus Aurelius is the first Stoic I have read. As regards the ancients, I have stuck to Plato and bits of Aristotle. But I have a book of Heraclitus on order. For the last couple of years I have been reading through the 17th century rationalists and 18th century empiricists trying to understand the problem of knowledge. However, at some point I am going to take a crack at Seneca and Epictetus.
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