On Tuesday Nicholas Kristof — who wanders the world and is concerned about Africa for The New York Times — wrote as his op-ed contribution Et Tu, George? It’s behind the Times paywall, but he points out how important it is to read the classics to understand the present, in particular Moby Dick and Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War:
Ahab has a reasonable goal, capturing a whale, yet he allows this quest to overwhelm him and erode his sense of perspective and balance. Ignoring warnings, refusing to admit error, Ahab abandons all rules and limits in his quest.
Nicholas Kristof, Et Tu, George?, January 23, 2007, The New York Times
Great Athenian diplomats of the day, like Nicias, warned against military involvement in Sicily, calling it ‘a war that does not concern us,’ according to Thucydides. But smooth-talking neocons of the day, like the brilliant Alcibiades, said in effect that the Sicilians would welcome the Athenians with flowers.
Nicholas Kristof, Et Tu, George?, January 23, 2007, The New York Times
A listener wrote an email to point out that Kristof’s quotes could have come from two of our recent shows, Moby Dick, Cheney et al. and Thucydides: Ur-Historian of the Ur-War. So we’re not the only ones who read the classics, Greek or American. And we’re thinking French, now; in the story meeting yesterday we talked about pulling our copies of The Plague out of the crates we left them in after college and putting together a show. Nick? Want to talk about Camus?
And you out there: what other classics should we be talking about? Virgil? Herodotus? Conrad?
“And you out there: what other classics should we be talking about?”
I certainly think that this would be very helpful to explore. Additionally, I would ask: What works or artifacts have emerged/are emerging/will likely emerge from the current context that the future may find useful. Perhaps it won’t even be an artifact, but something far more intangible that we cannot express within our current thinking?
As for me, I’ve found two non-classic pieces to ruminate upon:
Hermann Hesse’s If the War Goes On
David Gates’:
The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War
This is a bit more classic, but a interesting translation: The Art of War: The Denma Translation
As Elias Canetti (in The Human Province) wisely observed, “This would be the time, Dante, for a precise world judgment.â€
So, how about The Divine Comedy or, at least, the canticle that is most relevant to our times, The Inferno?
Call up John Freccero, at NYU (I think). He would make as superb a guide for us as Virgil was for Dante. And as an added bonus, check out Sandow Birk’s project to update Inferno in a toy theatre movie production, “imagining whom you would meet in Hell today†(The Daily Free Press, November 15, 2006, http://www.dailyfreepress.com).
The Iliad: a proud but facetious pretext (WMD–woman of mass destruction) leads to a long bogging down, with pride being the ultimate obstacle to a shorter way out.
Conrad would fit quite well with two more non-classical thinkers of war and exile: Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno.
As far as OliverCranglesParrot’s suggestion that we think historically about our present–a critical idea–I might suggest (in the very specific and insufficient context of the United States in the Near East) Patrick Cockburn’s “The Occupation: War and Resistance In Iraq” (Verso Books, 2006), Amira Hass’s “Drinking The Sea At Gaza” (Owl Books, 2000) and David Hirst’s relentless “The Gun and the Olive Branch” (Nation Books, many editions since 1979 [I think]?”
Thanks for opening this up.
I’m currently reading Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Earlier this year I read Margaret George’s Helen of Troy. Atwood’s Penelope cuts Helen of Troy no slack what-so-ever. In both cases I appreciate revisiting the story from the female point of view. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand is perhaps a bit cheesy but is a fun revisit of Troy in the voice of Cassandra. But the Greek heroine whose point of view I would find most interesting today is Medea’s. In the 1960 movie Never On Sunday Melina Mercouri attempts to exonerate Media from the bad press she gets from Euripides. I wonder though what today Medea would have to say to the Christian Right-to-Lifers? Also, I think it is interesting that where Medea came from, the far end of the Black Sea from Greece… is today’s Chechnya.
Kristof must listen to ROS to come up with such a piece. Perhaps there is one grand mind that we all check into now and then.
I have been very slowly reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain ( John Woods translation- hardcover and too heavy to carry around). It is like walking through a three foot high snowstorm. I mentioned I was reading this to a friend of mine and she instantly felt sorry for me. Boring she said. Yet as I look back I see dog-earred and post-its on the pages. I am getting nourished along the way, living with it. Like Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” I suspect I won’t know what hit me until I am done and realize how I have internalized the experience. (definition of a great work of art?)
For this kind of reading it takes more than one lifetime — especially if you stop to chew your food well. I am a hopeless reader when it comes to such works. When I hit something profound the book closes for a bit.
I was on my way to your dystopia/utopia thread to mention the Berghof, the spa, the world apart, it’s own little society, death (from tuberculosis) ever-present,
I am not exactly suggesting this book, but whatever, let it be great. French? Flaubert?
Books for our time?
Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ (a second go around?)
Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Cat’s Cradle’ (whistling in the dark?)
Jean Paul Sartre’s ‘No Exit’ (I live in an insane asylum)
Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’ (this is even worse than Baghdad!)
Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ (maybe we should stop traveling and simply start a garden)
On a lighter note, and much more whimsical:
Unamuno’s ‘San Miguel Bueno, Martyr’ (keep em happy, no matter what)
Funny that Brendan mentions Camus in the blurb…the Decider said he was reading The Stranger last summer. Adam Gopnick had a masterful reflection on what that [Bush reading Camus] means in a Talk of the Town.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060828ta_talk_gopnik
While we’re on North Africa, how about Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 The Battle of Algiers? I’m sure many of you about the contraversial 2003 Pentagon screening of the film…if not, it was essentially the equivilant of screening Oliver Stone’s _Wall Street_ as the centerpiece of a day-trader business ethics seminar.
sorry about the controversial spelling…
The only French books on my bookshelf are The Diaries of Anais Nin Vol I & Vol II.
My thanks to silvio.rabioso for the “New Yorker” link above… pretty good read, that.
Now that my life is less hurried, perhaps I’ll revisit Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”… it just didn’t stick when I tried to grok it in the wayBack when… ^..^
Herbert B.
I’ve never read Veblen but I once knew a low-bagger who had a theory about the leisure class existing on either end of the economic spectrum.
hey, nice stuff on the Haiku page