I sadly keep coming up with book ideas instead of actually delving further into anything... thus:
Kierkegaard "The balance between the esthetic and the ethical in the development of the personality" from Either/Or
a taste from just a few pages in: (it's written in the form of a letter.. an older man to a younger man... Kierkegaard using these two created positions without aligning himself with either)
"Life is a masquerade, you explain, and for you this is inexhaustible material for amusement, and as yet no one has succeeded in knowing you, for every disclosure is always a deception. Only in this way can you breathe and prevent people from crowding too close upon you and making it difficult for you to breathe. Your occupation consists in preserving your hiding place, and you are successful, for your mask is the most enigmatical of all; that is, you are a nonentity and are something only in relation to others, and what you are you are only through this relation..."
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
more book ideas... (the top two pulled from the new yorker article; The Secret can be on the table too although I've always had a bit of distaste in my mouth when thinking about it... and the article actually killed some of my excitement too... reading about Barbara Ehrenreich's take on things (she wrote Bright-Sided: How positive thinking is undermining America)):
Emerson Nature (essay published anonymously in 1836)
Wallace D. Watts The Science of Getting Rich 1910
memoirs...
some of Agnes Martin's writings would be great to read in conjunction with something else
First Meeting: (October 2nd)
Machiavelli's The Prince and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People
C.N. towards a metalanguage of evil quote (written 1992):
"There is a meta-game available for use in the United States. The rules of the game, or even that there is a game at all, are hidden to some. The uninitiated are called naive, provincial, liars or suckers...
"Tabloids already make use of many of the game's tactics by foreshortening and cropping celebrities, blowing them up, and, in the case of National Enquirer television commercials, reducing them to photo-objects and then animating these objects. These papers regularly publish little bits of the rules gleaned from popular psychology books about how to manipulate people. These books have their genesis in the old warhorse, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, whose own primogenitor is The Prince by Machiavelli..."
Thus we're given a good starting point for reading both of these... whether you have in mind while reading how to "help" yourself win friends and influence people or are reading with analytic twinges of irony or a more historical perspective... If anyone wishes to focus on Cady Noland's text in particular then please do and I'm thinking I may create a comments-blog once I've started reading... throughout (in broad terms) I will be thinking about what kind of audience each text is directed towards, the specific historical context of this audience, how this audience/ the way in which the books are read or used has changed, and (of course) what kind of guidance I glean from them... I may also research people who site them as particularly influential books in their personal progressions..
A tip from Carnegie to be applied to both....:
"If you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don't imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way."
Possible and random book ideas: (not yet knowing what the trajectory of the group will be.... as some of these seem much more texts from the western canon and the others the more or less serious materializations of 20th and 21st century life; it's a good juxtaposition though)
Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus w/ Samuel Becket's Endgame
Shakespeare's Hamlet w/ Greg Behrendt's He's Just Not That Into You
The Andy Warhol Diaries w/ Joseph Murphy's Think Yourself Rich
Free to be You and Me w/ Sex for One
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
What color is your parachute
Vonegut's mother night
General strange how-to-become-books (how to become an alien, how to become a good dancer) rife with diagrams
the self-help books that make you feel embarrassed in bookstores
Machiavelli's The Prince and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People
C.N. towards a metalanguage of evil quote (written 1992):
"There is a meta-game available for use in the United States. The rules of the game, or even that there is a game at all, are hidden to some. The uninitiated are called naive, provincial, liars or suckers...
"Tabloids already make use of many of the game's tactics by foreshortening and cropping celebrities, blowing them up, and, in the case of National Enquirer television commercials, reducing them to photo-objects and then animating these objects. These papers regularly publish little bits of the rules gleaned from popular psychology books about how to manipulate people. These books have their genesis in the old warhorse, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, whose own primogenitor is The Prince by Machiavelli..."
Thus we're given a good starting point for reading both of these... whether you have in mind while reading how to "help" yourself win friends and influence people or are reading with analytic twinges of irony or a more historical perspective... If anyone wishes to focus on Cady Noland's text in particular then please do and I'm thinking I may create a comments-blog once I've started reading... throughout (in broad terms) I will be thinking about what kind of audience each text is directed towards, the specific historical context of this audience, how this audience/ the way in which the books are read or used has changed, and (of course) what kind of guidance I glean from them... I may also research people who site them as particularly influential books in their personal progressions..
A tip from Carnegie to be applied to both....:
"If you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don't imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way."
Possible and random book ideas: (not yet knowing what the trajectory of the group will be.... as some of these seem much more texts from the western canon and the others the more or less serious materializations of 20th and 21st century life; it's a good juxtaposition though)
Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus w/ Samuel Becket's Endgame
Shakespeare's Hamlet w/ Greg Behrendt's He's Just Not That Into You
The Andy Warhol Diaries w/ Joseph Murphy's Think Yourself Rich
Free to be You and Me w/ Sex for One
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
What color is your parachute
Vonegut's mother night
General strange how-to-become-books (how to become an alien, how to become a good dancer) rife with diagrams
the self-help books that make you feel embarrassed in bookstores
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