Welcome to Litsy!

#sundayfunday @ozma.of.oz

1. The Man Without Qualities was like nothing I've ever read before.
2. Brian Moore. Both The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and The Luck of Ginger Coffey were excellent.
3. Received a NYRB book of the month subscription for Christmas! 🙂🌲

Mind-bending. I‘m saving volume 2 for my terminal diagnosis.

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1. Between the virus and the subzero temps this weekend, not really, unless you count exchanging clichéd gifts.
2. Some combination of diligence and impatience. I will do what I promised several days ahead of deadline, but maybe only 90% as well as I could have if I'd taken my time.
3. That's tough! This has been a great reading year so far. I'm going to go with the tagged book just because of how singular it is.

I keep seeing this described as a "book of ideas", which may be the understatement of the century. It's nothing but ideas, characters expounding on human nature, politics, art, love, religion, etc. for 700+ pages (and that's just Vol. 1). No contemporary editor would have ever signed off on it, which is why I'm glad it was published when it was, because it's a work of singular genius- witty, profound, and engaging (incredible, given its length).

...this blow came whizzing through the air, in the weird form of a massed shout of indignation made visible by all those wide-open mouths before their roar was heard.

"The maw of the mob," Count Leinsdorf said, just behind Ulrich, as solemnly as if it were some familiar phrase like "our daily bread". "But what is it they're actually yelling? I can't make it out, with all that din."

Ulrich said he thought they were mostly screaming "Boo!"

Ulrich had arrived at the Palais Leinsdorf, though by another route. As he turned into the gate he noticed a double guard at the entrance and a large detachment of police stationed inside the courtyard. His Grace welcomed him with composure, while apparently aware of having become a target of popular disfavor. "I think I once told you that anything favored by a good many people is sure to turn out to be worthwhile. Well, I have to take that back."

The engines were ordered by the Artillery, and the fuel is provided by the War Ministry's Department of Works, according to regulations, which is why the fortifications can't be made operational...the two authorities can't agree on whether the match that has to be used to start the engine should be regarded as fuel and supplied by the Department of Works, or as a mechanical part for which Artillery is responsible.

"How delightful!" Arnheim said.

In practice it comes down to this, that everyone bears his burden with the patience of a donkey, since a donkey whose strength slightly exceeds the demands of his burden is happy enough. And this is, in fact, the soundest available definition of personal happiness, so long as we restrict ourselves to donkeys.

But your father may be a dreamer, in his own way. I admire him, just as I admire compromises, averages, dry facts, dead numbers. I don't believe in the Devil, but if I did I should think of him as the trainer who drives Heaven to break its own records.

So the captain of industry, disinclined to forgo greatness, which serves him as a compass, must resort to the democratic dodge of replacing the immeasurable influence of greatness by the measurable greatness of influence. So now whatever counts as great IS great; but this means that eventually whatever is most loudly hawked as great is also great, and not all of us have the knack of swallowing this innermost truth without gagging a little.

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

1. Tagged and A Perfect Spy, by John le Carre
2. All the Jane Austen love has pushed me to (finally) read Pride and Prejudice
3. Usually none, but if I do have one it's always coffee

Ulrich recalled a similar experience dating from his army days. The squadron rides in double file, and "Passing on orders" is the drill; each man in turn whispers the given order to the next man. So if the order up front is: "Sergeant major move to the head of the column," it comes out the other end as "Eight troopers to be shot at once," or something like that. And this is just how world history is made.

Walter had always been the one whose life had been the richer in experiences. "But having more of a life is one of the earliest and subtlest signs of mediocrity," Ulrich thought.

---I'm going to keep reminding myself of this as I close in on one year as a virtual shut-in ?

Diotima first allowed the assembly to drift, intellectually, at its own sweet will, though she made a point of assuring the poets in particular that all life, even the world of business, rested on an inner poetry if one "regarded it magnanimously."

"To call a man a genius nowadays, with the unspoken gloss that there is really no longer any such thing, smacks of some cult of the dead, something like hysterical love making a great to-do for no other reason than that there is no real feeling present."

As someone for whom the overuse of the word "genius" is a huge pet peeve (though not as bad as "iconic"), I really appreciated this. :)

...the life ahead and the life already lived form a wall, and his path in the end resembles the path of a woodworm: no matter how it corkscrews forward, it always leaves an empty space behind it. And this horrible feeling of a blind, cutoff space behind the fullness of everything, this half that is always missing even when everything is a whole, this is what eventually makes one perceive what one calls the soul.

"Thus their walk came to an end. The result for all of them was wet feet, an irritated brain - as though the thin, bare branches on the trees, sparkling in the winter sun, had turned to splinters stuck in the retina - a vulgar craving for hot coffee, and the feeling of human forlornness."

This is the perfect description of taking a stroll through the woods in Vermont during the January doldrums ?

For if, in the course of time, commonplace and impersonal ideas are reinforced while unusual ideas fade away, so that almost everyone, with a mechanical certainty, is bound to become increasingly mediocre, this explains why, despite the thousandfold possibilities available to everyone, the average human being is in fact average.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

A barometric low hung over the Atlantic.

Diotima had discovered in herself the well-known suffering caused by that familiar malady of contemporary man known as civilization. It is a frustrating condition, full of soap, radio frequencies, the arrogant sign language of mathematical and chemical formulas, economics, experimental research, and the inability of human beings to live together simply but on a high plane...Civilization, then, meant everything that her mind could not control...

He was convinced that "the people" were "good". Since not only his many officials, employees, and servants but countless others depended on him for their economic security, he had never known "the people" in any other respect, except on Sundays and holidays, when they poured out from behind the scenery as a cheerful, colorful throng, like an opera chorus. Anything that did not fit with this image he attributed to "subversive elements"...

"There is just something missing in everything, though you can't put your finger on it, as if there had been a change in the blood or in the air; a mysterious disease has eaten away the previous period's seeds of genius, but everything sparkles with novelty, and finally one has no way of knowing whether the world has really grown worse, or oneself merely older. At this point a new era has definitively arrived."

"Even back when Ulrich first turned to mathematics there were already those who predicted the collapse of European civilization because no human faith, no love, no simplicity, no goodness, dwelt any longer in man. These people had all, typically, been poor mathematicians as young people and at school."

Simultaneously reading this now

#robertmusil author of the incomparable The Man Without Qualities. #germanwriting #modernism

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

...love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet.