the book club: January 2006 Archives

I finally read Wittgenstein's Poker, a book that's been on my shelf for far too long. What I most liked about it is how readable it is: one does not need any background in philosophy to enjoy the story, which does a nice job detailing the battle of ideas at the introductory level.

The poker incident is presented as a symbolic enactment of the clash in philosophy between two schools of thought: Karl Popper's embrace of problem-solving rationalism in the form of a principle of falsification - "I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer the truth" (240) vs Ludwig Wittgenstein's linguistically-generated puzzles, "what many in the [Vienna] Circle misunderstood was that Wittgenstein did not believe that the unsayable could be condemned as nonsense. On the contrary, the things we could not talk about were those that really mattered" (158).

These philosophers followed (and to varying extents) diverged from the analytic philosophy of Bertrand Russell.

There's a lot of good (sad/inspirational) stuff in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, especially as "performed" in the audiobook read by Judith Ivey.

Sprinkled with quotes of others' wisdom, such as St. Teresa: Saint Theresa said, "...words lead to deeds...They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness"; and Thomas Merton: ""We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves” (not the one quoted, but I like it anyway). The one referenced had something to do with civil war, and reflections of the character Siddalee on her own internal "civil war" between her "white mother" and the "black one" - something about the fear of being held in want of familiar love vs the fear of running through the fog searching for love...

This advice is given to one of the spouses in Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The book is both hilarious and intense. It captures an eastern European sensibility shaped by globalization and the Holocaust. At one point, I felt I could grasp - albeit momentarily - what the Holocaust did to a generation (or three) of people in Europe in terms of a moral/ethical fallout.

"He was a good man, who lived in a bad time."

"Humorous is the only true way to tell a sad story," explains the Ukrainian interpreter in Everything is Illuminated.

There are some memorable passages about interpreting which I'll need to find a print copy to retrieve verbatim. I recommend the audiotaped version though, because the sound of the English produced by Alex is wonderful. :-)

The first line to really capture my attention was about family. The sense of it is that for members of your family you do things that you hate. A hard truth.

An Amazon editorial review critiques The Light of Other Days for repeating material in other books by each respective author, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. My biggest complaint is how they use the storyline to show off their imagination with Michener-esque detours through future and historical time. That said, however, there are some intriguing elements to this story of the ultimate end of privacy - when everyone is subject to 24/7 survellance at any/every moment by whomever has the mass-produced technology to look.

The title comes from a poem about memory by Thomas More, which becomes the refuge of the old while the young become consciously (cognitively, psychically, intersubjectively) "joined", generating collective intelligence, perhaps a new form of being, and look to the future.

I carried this fortune (from lunch with Hunju and LB the day before I left) with me the entire trip. In fact, the weather was incredibly mild. Between Buffalo and Albany yesterday afternoon there was rain, ranging from drizzle to downpour, with a brief period of actual hail but otherwise, no inclement weather whatsover. I thought it a nice symmetry that I drove through rain in NY both going and coming back.

I got out of Columbus a lot earlier than I'd expected, but I woke up unexpectedly eager to get on the road. Nothing for it, I guess, than to face the future that awaits. I finished listening to Other People's Children, which didn't plunge me into as much purging as I'd anticipated. The characters weren't so recognizable to me (or maybe I resist identification and accusation?), although I painfully recognized the theme of "separateness, and the heartbreak and diligence it takes to mold that into the togetherness of a family."

Hermux is a wise mouse. This children's story is fast-paced and an easy read, with a few moments of genius.

Mirrin, a painter who has recovered miraculously from blindness, generates images that are assumed to be cats, except no one believes in cats. "'There's a misunderstanding here,' answered Mirrin. 'I've never said that these are paintings of cats. I don't know who said that. But what if they were cats? We're taught as children not to think about cats. Never to speak about them. Never even to say the word. But we do think about them. And we talk about them. At least we whisper about them behind closed doors. The fact is that the idea of cats is real. It lurks in every one of us. It slinks about in the shadows. It stalks us on sleepless nights. It pounces when we least expect it. It toys with us when we're anxious. It bats us about when we're feeling helpless. And maybe you think it's obscene even to mention the idea of cats. But I don't agree. Being blind taught me one thing at least. Whatever we can see in the light, no matter how bad, is less frightening than what we can imagine in the dark.'" (p. 32)