the non-fiction thread

[lovejuice]

i'm reading Henry Bergson's laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic. i'm always flirting with philosophy. last month i read foucault's first book on sexuality. wonderful as expected. Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas is sitting on my book shelf for quite a while. should i read that before or after i familiarize myself with Woolf? (Mrs. Dalloway is her only novel that I read.)

[jesse]

I'd say A Room of One's Own is about 90% of people's introduction to Woolf, so it's certainly a bad place to turn to early on (but like you, my first experience was Mrs. D.). It's a good distillation of her basic social philosophy and in some ways her aesthetic one as well, and there are some passages that rank among her best writing. I don't think it would make a lot of impact on Mrs. D., but a lot of what she touches on Room shows up in all the novels that followed.

Aside from her first two novels, Three Guineas her only major work I haven't read yet. But from what I understand it's not necessarily essential to understanding her fiction--I'm sure it wouldn't hurt, of course--but it's more of a social document, developing Woolf's views on war, the economy, etc.

Did you have a difficult time with Foucault? I'd love to return and find it's not as difficult as I remember...

As for me, I picked up Joan Didion's The White Album again the other day and read a few essays. Wonderfully insightful stuff on an already fascinating period in history.

[lovejuice]

Did you have a difficult time with Foucault? I'd love to return and find it's not as difficult as I remember...

foucault, i'll say, is the most accessible philosopher out there. even for someone with ESL (english as second language) ability as myself. he approaches his philosophy from historical perspective, and that makes the work very easy to understand.


As for me, I picked up Joan Didion's The White Album again the other day and read a few essays. Wonderfully insightful stuff on an already fascinating period in history.

pray tell, what's it about?

[Melville]

foucault, i'll say, is the most accessible philosopher out there. even for someone with ESL (english as second language) ability as myself. he approaches his philosophy from historical perspective, and that makes the work very easy to understand.
I think he can be somewhat hard to understand because he doesn't really seem to have a thesis or a structured argument (at least in Madness & Civilization, which is the only book I've read by him). After reading one of his essays about history, I've realized that his lack of thesis is actually part of his philosophy of history, which he insists should have no metaphysical "origin" or "end." But that wasn't clear to me when reading his full length book, so I kept wondering if I was missing some grand overarching argument. Other than that, I agree that he's very readable compared to most Continental philosophers.

[SpaceOddity]

Anyone read Paglia's Sexual Personae?

[lovejuice]

gee, how i wished i'd read a room of one's own earlier? this book'll probably save me a course or two on feminism i took during college. kinda feel like, an eastern student of christianity who after finishes a shelf of textbook eventually read the bible for the first time.

nothing too unfamiliar here. that actually makes for a breezy read. i even wish i had read it before Mrs. D so that i could get use to Woolf's style. it's rather funny even in a lecture format, she can still manage to be stream-of-consciousness-ly. what a woman!

[Mysterious Dude]

I'm reading Confessions of an English Opium-Eater right now. Should be interesting.

[jesse]

what a woman! Back off, she's all mine! ;)

I'm glad you liked it though. It seems many go in fearing the worst and come out pleasantly surprised...

[lovejuice]

about to read derrida's the politics of friendship. expect myself to be severely beaten by the text and feel stupid soon.

[lovejuice]

derrida's a tough fuck. thank god, i'm rather familiar with nietchzsche's and schmitt's writings which discussed excessively during the first half.

[Mysterious Dude]

I read some of O.J. Simpson's book at the library the other day. It was really terrible; I'm not convinced that guy has ever read a book before.