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

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… ^..^

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)

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?