Hi Mike...it's me, back again reacting to your urge to write. And right you are about writing, and wreading...oops...reading. I've always meant to keep a journal listing each book I read and what I like or do not like about it. There are those who say that once you pick up a book you should at least respect the author and read all the way through. Baloney....I'm sure you know that readers can tell from the first couple of chapters whether it is worth going through any further.

I guess people get a little pompous when writing about what they read. After all, we all want to seem smart. The more I read, the more I realize the less I know. If I only had the ability tor organize facts and/or to imagine the worlds and situations which are the stock in trade of great writers.

My favorite writer is the late Will Durant, who along with his wife Ariel wrote the wonderful series of Western histories, The Story of Civilization and his much smaller, but no less ambitious Story of Philosophy. Critics have come along to take pot shots at some factual errors that show up in some of his volumes. But, Durant was writing for a large educated secular audience of lay people, not other historians. I think he achieved his goals quite well. He certainly gave me a better understanding of Kant and Nietzche, for example, than I have ever been able to glean by going to the source.

My key interests, other than flight simming...:-), include history, especially Europe in the middle ages. I loved Ken Follett's novel, Pillars of the Earth...set in 12th century England as he details the building of a Gothic cathedral. Though noted as a spy novelist, Follett developed a keen interest in the cathedrals of his nation. He has a sequel to what seems to be turning into a great saga. I am waiting for the 2nd book to come out in trade paperback.

I suppose my most ambitious read (and, ths sounds like boasting, but I really recommend this book to all thoughtful people), is Tolstoy's War and Peace. Woody Allen has the best summary..."it's a book about Russia." Well, that it is, and then some. I started reading it several years ago, and gave up about a quarter of the way through. I decided to tackle it again last year...and enjoyed every page. It is of course, a novel about history, but Tolstoy also explores the reasons why men go to war, and the folly of it all.

While I do not keep a literary journal, I do jot down some thoughts abut various topics from time to time, which I keep on a small floppy. Here's what i quoted from War and Peace:

At one point, Tolstoy uses the metaphor of a clock mechanism to describe the growth of a military organization and the inevitability of war.

" The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history."

I added my own reaction to this :"I also interpret this as a theory of historic determinism, though I am not yet sure whether that is part of Tolstoy’s own sense of the inevitability."

Well, Mike, you really pulled me in deep this time. Who needs a shrink when I've got your blog as a place to prattle on. It's kind of like automatic writing, a oujia board of sorts...anyway, I'd keep going, but I have to prepare my August expense report if I want to get reimbursed for all those restaurant reviews...:-)

Sherm

As I reread my post, I noticed some typos...but, see no way to go back and correct. Evidently, there is no edit function on the blogs...maybe a good thing...:-)

It also occured to me as I was rereading my stuff, and Tolstoy's that Herman Melville made a very powerful observation about the writing of novels. The point comes in Moby Dick, and his comment seems apt:

"Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. "

Never have truer words been put to paper...

Sherm

Sherm,

I'll reply in some detail sometime tomorrow, but in the meantime there is in fact a way to edit blog posts. If you look in the lower right corner of the post window you'll see the yellow image of a pencil. Click on it and you'll be able to rexaiiiiiiiiiir alll thss typos.

I'm ba-a-a-a-ck.

I wish I shared your love of good literature, and of philosophy, but I’m unable. In fact, with a very few exceptions I gave up reading fiction forty years ago, and the only branch of philosophy I consider to have any merit is epistemology. But I still want to discuss these things with you because a) you’re so enthusiastic about them, and because b) I might learn something.

I loved the Woody Allen line you quoted. As for War And Peace, as a kid I studied Russian for several years and finally reached the point where I was able to tackle that famous work. Regrettably, by 4-5 pages into it I was bored to tears. I could appreciate the quality of his writing in terms of crafting sentence clauses but, Sherm, Tolstoy’s data rate is so low, and his sentences so long, that it makes me want to scream. J He’s just as turgid in Russian as he is in English.

Your quotation about the gears and wheels is a perfect example of what I’m talking about, and it makes me react the way Woody Allen did – “This passage is about troop mobilization.”

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I agree with you that we are under no obligation to read a book cover to cover just because we started to read it. I also agree that you can judge a book by the first couple of chapters. In fact, in my experience, if a book is well written you will know that from the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first chapter.

My son is the well-known science fiction author Wil McCarthy. (Now turned high tech entrepreneur.) He once asked me to review a draft manuscript, something I never did again because he wouldn’t take editorial advice from me. He had an opening scene that was good but the first paragraph beat around the bush, explaining in detail how the main character was nervous that the police were about and watching him.

I suggested to Wil that he precede that paragraph with the single very short sentence “Doug smelled cop.” He declined my advice which was too bad – the sentence was a grabber, and it would have set the reader up for the rest of the paragraph, which in turn would have set the reader up for the first chapter, and for the rest of the novel.

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A similar thing occurs with pop music. A vital role played by music industry agents is to shield the record companies from the non-stop avalanche of music that would like to come in over their collective transom from would-be new acts.

But the agents themselves are overworked in that capacity, so they do the following: They listen to the first few bars of a recording. If the very beginning grabs them they continue to listen. But if the first few bars are not grabbers - - if the musician doesn’t know enough about the music business to lead with his best work - - the recording will be tossed into the circular file.

What’s the justification? Because radio listeners will react the same way. You have to get the listener’s attention immediately because, as the old saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression.