In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books.
Read hardly anything for the week but politics, politics, politics and now I am sick of it. Sick of my laptop and building wifi that seems to have a mind of its own lately too.
Permanent reading list:
The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne- I:7 “That our deeds are judged by the intention” — Love this sentence: “If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.”
Not only is this a great philosophy for life/death situations but in other matters. For example, I don’t particularly care for gossip and gossiping but I would never say that I don’t participate...I do...I do make it an effort, though, not to say anything behind someone’s back that I won’t say to their face. I don’t do that perfectly either...this is the first essay that I’ve run across in the volume where Montaigne talks in a rather profound way about himself (I know that there are many more essays that do that in this volume but I am reading these essays in the way they are ordered in the book).
I am reading:
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace-Roughly at the halfway point now where the philosophy has been ditched and a lot of calculus concepts are being explained...the philosophical implications have also been ditched for now.
Diaries Volume 1: 1939-1960 by Christopher Isherwood
“The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan” by Richard Thomas Oral Tradition, 22/1 (2007): 30-56- Interesting study of Dylan and intertextuality with Virgil and Ovid as focal points but also Huckleberry Finn, Robert Burns, and Thucydides...I’ve read of some of these academic studies of Dylan’s works and his sources but never read one...this paper is quite readable actually, as you can see for yourself.
*****
My basic feeling about Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize is that yes, songwriting at an extraordinarily high level is, indeed, literature and worthy of this specific prize. I am open to and am fascinated by arguments that, yes, songwriting can be classified under “literature” but that the wrong songwriter won this award (usually, Leonard Cohen’s name comes up).
I am sitting here wondering whether another historian will ever win this award. The only one that I’ve ever read that even comes somewhat close would be Robin Lane Fox but he’s nowhere near the giant that Mommsen was...can’t think of an American historian that deserves it either.
Amended 10.19.16 2:34 pm