Lucretius' De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things)
Emerson's Nature
We were also thinking of examining the two books already read more closely; I have wanted to read Emerson's Nature anyway: which is under 150 pages; the Lucretius looks quite hefty: i would suggest if this is undertaken we should only read book 1 for the first discussion... Machiavelli copied out the poem (which is upwards of 300 pages) in his youth.
We also threw around the idea of reading Susan Sontag's diaries Reborn which I read this summer alongside Agnes Martin because their approaches to self-hood or how to direct ones aspirations are quite different; of course Agnes Martin's writings are meant for an audience and any diary reveals vulnerabilities even if she imagined her lovers occasionally stealing glances at her words.
Part of my interest in this book-club generally was to read books, examine how the reading of them affects me, and look to others to see how they've been affected: how the books have been used. I hated reading How to Win Friends and Influence People (which I did not finish) although I did see myself loosely following some of he prescriptions: but I could only really follow them if I thought about following them every-day or there was a religious consistency to my reaching for the book to glean advice from it. I taped on my mirror, as prescribed:
"I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." I wonder whether Carnegie had this taped up in his mirror actually or whether he just wrote that he did; as Machiavelli writes from XVIII How a Prince should keep his word:
"How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and to live with integrity and not by cunning, everyone knows. Nevertheless, one sees from experience in our times that the princes who have accomplished great deeds are those who have thought little about keeping faith and who have known how cunningly to manipulate men's minds; and in the end they have surpassed
those who laid their foundations upon sincerity." (my translation: p. 60; Becky's would employ more flowery language)
I suppose my taping was not quite sincere... and the mirror I have now is quite gaudy (I haven't had it for very long) and it's gaudiness became distasteful to me because my room isn't incredibly large so I had to take it down... and wasn't really planning on reading the phrase each day anyway: even if it in effect is an effort at sublimating narcissism. My approach to reading Carnegie was double-edged: to what degree am I going to dupe myself into following the poorly written text filled with quite believable and legitimate anecdotes and factual stories from the lives of Lincoln among others and to what degree am I going to separate myself from the purported need for such texts: return to an insular reliance on the musings of my mind? To what degree would it be better to conscientiously follow the 10 Commandments which I suppose in my childhood I never really even digested beyond their being handed down by authority figures and hardly reinforced than to follow Carnegie's prescriptions which while they emphasize sincerity to a degree and some notion of moral-underpinnings combine this confusingly with an equal emphasis on self-gain/capitalist achievement and success.
[to be continued... caught off]