My Year in Books: 2016

The New Year, whether we are looking at the Gregorian or the Lunar calendar, is well under way. Time, the very attar of the rose, is running out. If I don't write my reflection on last year's reading soon, nay now, then you, my readers will just give up on this blog and find something else to read. Well, probably not since my only reader is me, this solitary self. But, hey, I should try to be consistent  anyways right?

So, every year I have a theme. 2016 was Chinese and Asian literature. I had a sizable list of books I wanted to tackle, but I must admit that I barely scratched the surface. Especially near the end of the year where I all but gave up on my list. Nonetheless, I did start off the year well enough and did read some very memorable and important books. 

I read close to half of the 5 volume Richard Hawkes translation of Hong Luo Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber; the Story of the Stone). As much as I liked it I was happy to leave off where I did. It was enjoyable, but the episodic nature of the book gave little narrative compulsion to see my way through. Likewise, I only made it through 100 pages of Murasaki’s Tale of Genji. I listened to two very good audiobooks on Asian history—The Fall and Rise of China by Richard Baum and Understanding Japan: A Cultural History by Mark Ravina. Richard Baum's audiobook was particularly eye-opening. He had many first hand experiences of the closing years of the cultural revolution and the transition to the opening up of China. I also began a R. Taggart Murphy’s very interesting history Japan and the Shackles of the Past. Taggart's approach to Japan should set a standard for all books of its kind. He is, first of all, passionate about his subject and writes so that one can come to share in his passion. Secondly, he gives a very useful bibliography of great books on Japan. I've been rather discouraged by the meager bibliographies of many of my books on China. I refuse to believe that there are not many great and passionate books on China. I'm simply not finding them. After these I have browsed through a few other books on Chiense history, philosophy, poetry, and religion (mostly Buddhism). I skimmed several of David Hinton's books, including Hunger Mountain and his translation of the Chinese classics. Needless to say I only touched the surface of this vast topic. One of my favorite books on China though was, oddly enough, written by a Westerner—Krasznahorkai’s Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens. The book is a memoir of his travels through China. I read this in conjunction with The Melancholy of Resistance. Both books share a common concern with entropy. In some ways the pathos is even higher in Destruction due to the brilliant way in which Krasznahorkai juxtaposes the longevity of Chinese culture which has maintained its cultural identity for five thousand years, but which is now, with the onslaught of the modern technological and capitalistic world finally coming to an end. This tension between hope in China’s ability to withstand these modern forces of entropy and his relentless questioning with whether his suspicions are true and Chinese culture is dead is what propels the book.

Another element in my reading plan each year has been to reread a few favorite books. The book I was most excited to reread was Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and it did not disappoint. If anything the book actually improved upon rereading. There were many passages that vividly struck me, but perhaps the most memorable was this:

"Two hundred years ago," Settembrini said, "you had a poet in your own country, a fine old confabulator, who set great store by beautiful handwriting, because he said it leads to a beautiful style. He should have taken that one step further and said that beautiful style leads to beautiful actions." Writing beautifully was almost synonymous with thinking beautifully, and from there it was not far to acting beautifully. All moral conduct and all moral perfection emanated from the spirit of literature, from the spirit of human dignity, which simultaneously was also the spirit of humanity and of politics. Yes, they were all one and the same force, one and the same idea, and could be summarized in a single word. And what was that word? Well, it consisted of familiar syllables, but the cousins had probably never truly grasped their meaning and majesty. And that word was--civilization! And as Settembrini released the word from his lips, he thrust his small yellow right hand into the air, as if proposing a toast. 

...Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini. With the best of intentions he tested the man's views on reason, the world republic, and beautiful style--and was prepared to be influenced by them. And each time he found it more permissible afterwards to let his thoughts and dreams run free in another direction, in the opposite direction. To put our suspicions and true understanding of the matter into words--he had probably listened to Herr Settembrini for one purpose only: to be given carte blanche by his conscious, a license it had been unwilling to grant him at first. And what or who stood on the opposing side of patriotism, the dignity of man, and beautiful literature--the side towards which Hans Castorp believed he should direct his thoughts and deeds? There stood... Clavdia Chauchat--listless, worm-eaten, Kirghiz-eyed; and whenever Hans Castorp thought of her (although thought is an all too inhibited word for describing how he inwardly turned toward her), it seemed to him that he was sitting again in that boat on the lake in Holstein and gazing with dazzled and bewildered eyes out of glassy daylight across to the eastern sky and the moonlit night draped in a web of mist.”

The entire book was entirely memorable. Most vivid on rereading were Han's reading of the physiology of the body, a very Blakean chapter, his vision in the snow storm, and of course, the marvelous appearance Mynheer Peeperkorn! I also began rereading Wuthering Heights, which I had to put down. I found the novel too dark, the drama too real, to push my way through. Rossetti’s description of the book seems very apt, “The action takes place in hell, although it seems the people and places have English names there.”

No doubt there were other books I read last year and so I will have to update this list as I remember them. For this year I’ve decided to catch up on some random books that I’ve been meaning to read for awhile. They are mostly Science Fiction, although there are a few others that have creeped in. I’ve already read Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea and am nearly finished with Charles Williams The Greater Trumps. I’ve begun reading Louis Trondheim’s brilliant Donjon books, which are by far the books I’m most in love and obsessed with right now.

So, here is my list:

Winter Quarter (January - March)

Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

Williams, The Greater Trumps

Park, A Princess of Roumania (v.1)

PKD, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich

Elizarov, The Librarian

Middlemarch: Prelude; Books 1-2

Spring Quarter (April - June)

Park, A Princess of Roumania (v.2)

Zelazny, Lord of Light

Abaitua, The Destructives

Disch, The Businessman

Acher, My Mother: Demonology

Middlemarch: Books 3-4

Summer Quarter (July - September)

Park, A Princess of Roumania (v.3)

Garner, Red Shift

Swanwich, Bones of the Earth

Middlemarch: Books 5-6

Autumn Quarter (October - December)

Park, A Princess of Roumania (v.4)

Park, All Those Vanished Engines

Hoban, Riddley Walker

Yourcenar, The Abyss

Middlemarch: Books 7-8; Finale

In addition to the novels above I hope to continue working on my larger projects. I have several intersecting interests: the works of Hans Blumenberg; studies on metaphor (Lakoff, Langer, etc); studies on complexity; studies on unity; and studies on Utopia. I had at first considered dedicating this year to Blumenberg, but I think that is too heavy for me just yet. Rather, I may start working with some books on Utopia and see how they branch out into other areas. Later projects I would like to start on include a renewed study of Romanticism; a deep dive into Finnegans Wake, and a deep dive into Shakespeare

But I’m quite sure I will focus on Utopia this year. Current books on my Utopia reading list include:

·      Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope Vol. 1-3 (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), MIT Press, 1995.

·      Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

·      Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London & New York: Verso. 2005.

·      —. An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army. Ed. Slavoj Žižek. London and New York: Verso. 2016.

·      Marin, Louis. Utopics (Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences),Humanity Books,1984.

·      Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010.

·      Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1991.

·      Young, George. The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Year in Books 2015; "Emerson and The Central Man"

I know that I have been posting on this blog very sporadically (to the point of posting barely at all, the road to hell being paved with what it is) nonetheless, I set out now once again to write regularly and share my thoughts--we'll see how long that lasts. I love coming up with reading lists. Last year I set myself the goal of rereading John Crowley's Aegypt quartet along with reading Samuel Delany's Neveryon quartet. I considered writing on them but felt my reactions still too unformed, perhaps in a few years when I reread them I will have something more definitive to say. This past year I read quite a bit of American literature--beginning with David McCullough's biography of John Adams, then Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Emerson's Journals, David S. Reynold's biography of Whitman, McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Faulkner's Light in August, Conrad's Nostromo (I read Conrad because he seems part of a line of influence from Melville to McCarthy that I was interested in tracing backwards) and Melville's Moby Dick, and finishing the year with David McCullough's biography of Truman. I read and skimmed through quite a few histories and reread quite a bit of David Bromwich. I hope to post again before the year is out giving a full summary of my reading. For now I'd like to share these reflections on Emerson.

Division and Unity

I have spent the year thinking about America’s literary heritage, which for me means I’ve been thinking about Emerson. At the heart of my reading were the journals (in the abridged Library of America edition). Emerson prophesied a figure he called “the central man.” It is easy to reduce this to merely one more iteration of the great man theory. Carlyle, at his worst, succumbs to this, but Emerson is more elusive. One example of Emerson’s elusiveness can be seen in his consideration of Amos Bronson Alcott. After several pages of general praise Emerson concludes:

Alcott sees the law of man truer & farther than any one ever did. Unhappily, his conversation never loses sight of his own personality. He never quotes; he never refers; his only illustration is his own biography. His topic yesterday is Alcott on the 17 October; today, Alcott on the 18 October; tomorrow, on the 19th. So will it be always. The poet rapt into future times or into deeps of nature admired for themselves, lost in their law, cheers us with a lively charm; but this noble genius discredits genius to me. I do not want any more such persons to exist. Part of this egotism in him is a certain comparing eye which seems to sour his view of persons prosperously placed, & to make his conversation often accusing & minatory. He is not selfsufficing & serene.

It is little fault on Alcott if he falls short, no individual met Emerson’s strict criteria. And yet, as Steven Whicher observed in Freedom and Fate, Emerson is not very clear either on the specific qualities that constitute this figure. He often speaks of “the erect position,” but what precisely is that? 

Emerson is suggestive in his negative response to Shelley. Is it merely Emerson’s native New England Puritanism that rebels against Shelley’s atheism and sexual liberty? I rather suspect it is the Lucretian and Epicurean element in Shelley that bothered him. Ralph Richardson’s biography of Emerson recounts his anxiety over the theodicy problem he encountered in Hume and Epicurus—that if there is a God he cannot be both all powerful and good otherwise how can we account for evil. Emerson famously expressed this anxiety in his remark, “A believer in Unity, a seer of Unity, I yet behold two.” 

Writing in his journals on November 27, 1839, Emerson considers the sense of division in himself which leads him, in turn, to his attack on Shelley:

Shelley is never a poet. His mind is uniformly imitative; all his poems composite. A fine English scholar he is, with taste, ear, and memory; but imagination, the original authentic fire of the bard, he has not. He is clearly modern, and shares with Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron, and Hemans the feeling of the Infinite, which so labors for expression in their different genius. But all his lines are arbitrary, not necessary,' and therefore, though evidently a devout and brave man, I can never read his verses.

Emerson will mention Shelley a few more times in the journals, but his opinion never changed. He is always circumspect in his praise and ultimately dismissive. This is puzzling for me considering Emerson’s unabashed early enthusiasm for Whitman, himself deeply influenced by Shelley. It is possible that Whitman’s Lucretianism did not block Emerson’s admiration because it was mediated by Whitman’s strong personality. Shelley’s poetry is indeed wracked with division. Whitman accepts everything, multitudes, contradictions, and finds unity in his acceptance.

Utopia

Historians of Utopia usually begin first with Plato before turning to Thomas More as the origin proper. The same historians are usually free to admit the porous nature of their subject, confessing that the idea of a better world has existed since the dawn of history. Auden phrased these conceptions of an ideal world as Edens and Jerusalems. Edens are pastoral paradises whereas Jerusalems are urban perfect societies and so are utopias proper. 

Emerson was interested in utopian thought, particularly Fourier, but seemed uninterested in its real world manifestations, like Brook Farm. Instead, he sought a kind of utopian figure, a person who could hold all things together. Often this interest presented itself as a concern for the unification of the arts and sciences. Many figures were exemplary for Emerson but principle amongst them were Goethe and Swedenborg. Emerson ultimately turned from both. For Goethe: 

I dare not say that Goethe ascended to the highest grounds from which genius has spoken. He has not worshipped the highest unity; he is incapable of a self-surrender to the moral sentiment…He is fragmentary; a writer of occasional poems and of an encyclopaedia of sentences. When he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he collects and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and combines them into the body as fitly as he can. A great deal refuses to incorporate: this he adds loosely as letters of the parties, leaves from their journals, or the like. A great deal still is left that will not find any place. This the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to; and hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his works, we have volumes of detached paragraphs, aphorisms, Xenien,*(33) etc.

One might take issue with Emerson’s assessment of Goethe. The Renaissance scholar, Michael Martin, in his book on Sophiology titled The Submerged Reality, sees Rudolph Steiner as both the fulfillment of Goethe’s promise and the answer to Romanticisms failed quest for unity. Steiner was both a poet, a theologian, and a practical innovator in many spheres of life. 

Regarding Emerson’s ultimate verdict on Swedenborg, Sam McGuire Worely writes in Emerson, Thoreau, and the Role of the Cultural Critic, “In placing a fixed moral identity in the external world Swedenborg betrays the centrality of human will that Emerson had at first hoped to find there. Instead of being a matter of human will and understanding, Swedenborg’s moral universe becomes closed and determinate (40).”

Plato comes closer. Plato is both the scientist and the poet. He is able to focus on particulars as well as view the whole. In his essay on Plato in “Representative Men” Emerson says, “Each student adheres, by temperament and by habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of the mind. By religion, he tends to unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. A too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation.” There is a passage in Shelley's Defense of Poetry that comes to mind, “The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.” The ideal figure, then, should command a mastery over both these faculties of the intellect.

It is likely that Emerson’s focus on the individual over society has excluded him from classification among great utopian thinkers. John Crowley, himself an exceptional author of utopian novels, wrote in an essay titled “The Labyrinth of the World, the Paradise of the Heart” that all utopias are ultimately centered around this dual concern of the individual and society. Crowley concludes his essay with the argument that the value of utopias is not as practical instruction manuals but rather as rich visions of possible worlds. Few would argue this point, the history of applied utopian thought and its utility for totalitarian regimes is all too well known. If Emerson’s utopianism receives a fuller consideration it may prove his evasiveness to be a boon. 

My book list for 2016:

Winter
Dream of the Red Chamber Vol. 1 and 2
Buddhism Naturalized
The Magic Mountain
Tintin

Spring
Dream of the Red Chamber Vol. 3
Everything Flows
I Am China
Three Body Problem
Rome and China

Summer
Dream of the Red Chamber Vol. 4
Tale of the Genji
Japan and the Shackles of the Past
Nagarjuna and the Middle Way
Sound of Two Hands Clapping
Hunger Mountain

Fall
Dream of the Red Chamber Vol. 5
The Sea, the Sea
Wuthering Heights