Knee-deep in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. He's the ideal archetype of an insane genius. It's uncanny how insanity and genius are typically bundled up together. Maybe it's because it's so hard to draw the line between the two.
Is it possible N's syphilis and brain tumor/cancer made him a little kooky? I'd say yes.
But kooky or not, what an insufferable misogynistic maniac, among some other unsavory descriptors I could easily attribute to him! For instance, there's this lovely tidbit:
When a woman has scholarly intentions, there is usually something wrong with her sexually.
Or there's this: In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man. (Really? How many women in comparison to men are serial killers? Dictators? Rapists? And all of these barbarous acts done by barbarous men in the name of some perverse type of love, or revenge!)
And then THIS: Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre.
All of which left me exasperated and wanting to yell, "GENERALIZE MUCH, asshat!?"
In the interest of being fair-- no matter what the (very good) reasons are for not respecting Nietzsche's ideas, he redeems himself (a little) by being so goddamn entertaining. Within the first 30 pages or so, he has blatantly ridiculed Plato, Voltaire, Locke, Kant, Spinoza and Schopenhauer, basically calling them all out as blathering nonsensical idiots. HAHAHA! Oh, it's too much. Most philosophers are so much less confrontational. N is a motherfucking heat-seeking missile.
There are two lines I liked and found especially noteworthy (in the epigrams section):
--Madness is rare in individuals-- but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule. (How true is this! If a man had to act alone, and stand alone, and be accountable on his own in all of his dealings, there would be so much less wacky shit going on.)
--Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
We'll see if I enjoy more of what N has to say. I still have about 150 pages left. I made a commitment to read more books with ideas that I knew I probably wouldn't agree with for the most part (which is why I'm reading Beyond Good and Evil). If I only read books written by people who espoused my own ideals and beliefs, I'd be too content.
* * *
I flew through You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers. What a bizarre and endearingly demented story. A worthwhile read even though time is in short supply these days.
To sum it up, without giving anything away, the theme is, essentially, the adage "no matter where you go, there you are" (Confucius) or perhaps, simply: "you can't escape from yourself." Trying to liberate himself from money, from memories, from guilt, and the only thing W is able to unburden himself from is one of the three (guess which).
Some favorites:
-- The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken away from us.
--How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated, then found hugely comforting. (Regarding American ignorance, and how(most) Americans speak only one language whereas everybody else speaks at minimum two).
--"We are here giving your people money and you try to stop us! You are the wall! Everywhere there are people like you! People who get in the way! You are a constipation! A constipation!"
--There is no balance, and no retribution, and no rules. The rules and balances you blather about are hopeful creations of a man fearing death.
--You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.
* * *
Here's a sad confession. Instead of using a bookmark like a conscientious good citizen, I (with zero remorse) dog-ear my pages, even the ones from books I've borrowed from the library. I used to have embellished bookmarks with spiffy tassels and ornamental bobbles at the end of them, but they were useless, they would always fall out and I'd be left struggling to find my place.
So, Vonnegut's Slapstick is one of my many dog-eared-page victims. Before I return it into circulation, I'd like to just share these, in the hope that you'll read (or re-read) Slapstick too:
--The Idiot's Delight: Obsessively turning money into power, and then power back into money again, and then money back into power again.
--Fascists are inferior people who believe it when somebody tells them they're superior....Then they want everybody else to die.
--"In case nobody has told you," she said, "this is the United States of America, where nobody has a right to rely on anybody else--where everybody learns to make his or her own way. I'm here to test you, but there's a basic rule for life I'd like to teach you too, and you'll thank me for it in years to come." This was the lesson: "Paddle your own canoe."
--I spoke of American loneliness. It was the only subject I needed for victory, which was lucky. It was the only subject I had....I said that all the damaging excesses of Americans in the past were motivated by loneliness rather than a fondness for sin.
--Perhaps some people are really born unhappy. I really hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: we were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time.
And because what the world really needs is another selfie (or four). I took these 2 nights ago after trimming my hair. I've never once succeeded in giving myself bangs that could be remotely considered even.
I shrunk it down and added all the grey space because I don't want to offend your sensibilities, I mean take up your entire screen.
xo
