Various books - January to June 2024

I did not really read much in the first half of the year, with unfortunately many half-read books. The ones I did finish are stapled on a stool awaiting logging, and I need the stool this evening. So here come the notes, in reverse stapling order (smaller books on top).

Lettere da Torino - F. Nietzsche

I was thinking in the last days about the tzsch in the surname and how it should really just be a č, but maybe I can write that later. For this book I do not have much to say, maybe the most memorable quote is the one in the quarta di copertina or maybe there were many but I missed them because they were not highlighted in the quarta di copertina. I found interesting how even the man itself had to try and get in marketing mode for his own books - a bit sad. Was Aristoteles also doing the same? It is in any case a quote worth a chuckle, if not reading all of the book, and the incipit of a letter sent to a university professor in Basel:

Lieber Herr Professor, zuletzt wäre ich sehr viel lieber Basler Professor als Gott; aber ich habe es nicht gewagt, meinen Privat-Egoismus so weit zu treiben, um seinetwegen die Schaffung der Welt zu unterlassen. Sie sehen, man muß Opfer bringen, wie und wo man lebt.

Cristalli sognanti - T. Sturgeon

This is the second of three books I bought so that I could get a very cool tote bag for free (which could not be bought singularly). I would have bought 30 but I felt a bit ashamed of doing so. Anyway, this is an early example of sci-fi, published in 1950 - it has a bit of the awkwardness of A Wrinkle in Time, the language of the genre was not yet codified in a way. In reading the title of the staple of books I realized a mistake I made: the books are for large part in Italian. So whenever I want to quote something I have to translate it somehow, but in case I would need to look for the original, which takes time. Big mistake.

After a short googling session, here is the quote:

Implicit in this was humanity. With it, the base of survival emerged - A magnificent ethic: The highest command is in terms of the species. The next is survival of group. The lowest of three is survival of self. All good and all evil, all morals, all progress, depend on this order of basic commands. To survive for the self at the price of the group is to jeopardize species. For a group to survive at the price of the species is manifest suicide. Here is the essence of good and of greed and a wellspring of justice for all of mankind.

Also this to come up in later notes.

Gli Aghi d’Oro - Michael McDowell

I hope whoever had the GENIALE idea of packaging McDowell’s books in an awesome graphics had all their career wishes fulfilled. My impression is that the rights for these books were not especially expensive - and for good reasons: they are good books, but nothing really amazing. A pleasant read, makes you want to see how it ends, I would not call it literature - and that’s okay. The only thing these books really missed was a reason to buy them rather than something equivalent - and this something is now there, in the for of beautiful cover art. And there are many of these books and of course I want to see all the different covers realised in this style and in the end I like to read them so why not - it is the book equivalent of the Happy Meal or Kinder Surprise and an excellent idea. I do not really have any remarks on the book - it is a story, it holds good company while on a trip or in the living room, it feels a bit like munching fries but without calories or oily fingers.

Erzählungen - Dürrenmatt

This book contains the racconti Der Sturz, Abu Chanifa und Anan ben David, Smithy and Das Sterben der Pythia. I did not re-read Das Sterben der Pythia because after all one time was enough. But I have the tab with the Notizen from last time open and there it says that the last pages are worth rereading, so I guess this goes bag on the stool. I remember I did not like Smithy - or maybe I just did not get it. Abu Chanifa and Anan ben David seems to me in a rather obvious way as having to do with Israel (or rather, the whole hystory leading up to), but I could not find any conferma online and asking chatgpt about it feels like extorting information (“could it be that X?” “well I guess X could be”). I liked it but no particular remarks. Der Sturz was okay but not much remained. I like this observation: “Die Abneigung, die ein Machtbesessener einem anderen Machtbesessenen gegenüber zu empfinden vermag”. This is something that exists but is not often framed explicitly - it is similar but not equal to what leads enemies who fought valliantly to be treated well even when they fall - even if they objectively caused more damage to the enemy army than those who did not fight valliantly. I like the expression: “Angriff aus dem Unvermuteten”. Also interesting: “Revolutionäre sind keine Funktionäre, sie versuchen, solche zu sein, und scheitern daran”. This is also seen oft in startups and compagnia cantante - it is hard to have the ability to disrupt a stable system, to create a new stable system and to maintain it. This is similar to the Trimurti. This is a Sanskrit word. Tri is “three” (okay), murti has the -ti which is like the english -tion in say celebration. So there remains mur, which (exactly as it sounds) has to do with death (murder, morte) as a root, but apparently was more closely related to blood/bleeding, say from a wound. So this apparently shifted to something like coagulate. So the trimurti is in fact three incarnations of the concepts above. I did not know this, just looked it up and wanted to note it down. I’ll forget anyway. I did not mark any other page.

L’inconnue de la Seine - Guillaume Musso

I did not like this book. Which is a pity because I remembered a book from the same author who literally made me cry back in my teens, but after some back and forth with chatgpt I discovered it was in fact another author! So I ordered it again in French and I can reread it and maybe cry again? So that at least one positive thing will have come out of this disappointment. This book feels like an afterthought or a deadline that needed to be met.

The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers

I was curious to learn some of the lore about the King in Yellow, but there is in fact not much to be found in the first stories where it appears. Half of the stories of this short collection do not even have anything to do with it - it might be case that some other author took it and expanded it, buuuuut I think I had enough of it.

Memoria del passato della Terra - Liu Cixin

The titles of the second and third book of this series have been butchered without reason. They are not written well, so I suspect the original text suffered similar improvements. Partly, however, I had the impression it was just a different style, interesting in that the book felt ‘alien’, which certainly fits with the overarching theme.

A few remarks:

1. The problem of representation: this is a problem so annoying one would rather try to ignore it away, but can’t. All heroes are Chinese - fair enough, Chinese author -, I felt weirdly excluded. It was always about somebody else. Does it always have to be about me? No. Would I have enjoyed more if all protagonists had not been so ‘different’? I guess yes. The problem with this is that there is no real solution - you cannot experience this as if you were in the target group, so to say. Deal with it;
2. The way it is written, it made me think of the č. The four letters at the beginning of Tschaikowsky - it is clear that something went wrong there - it is a clumsy way of trying to reproduce a sound which does not exist in the given alphabet. Compare with Čajkovskij. This is the feeling I constantly had reading this book - four times as many words as needed and it was not even too clear what was meant - if anything, all those words cluttered the page. It might be that a real translation would have amounted to rewriting the book, and that’s of course something different. But this is how it feels;
3. The three body problem (why not bodies?): I guess there is other than the literal meaning - the planet between three suns - the metaphor: the first two bodies are the humans and the trisolarians, the third body the superpowers in the dark forest. Often also seen in history - instability of course ensues. Take Korea, Japan and the superpowers around them for a three-body problem of the same kind;
4. I liked that the trisolarians are never shown or described. Interesting and very elegant, never forced;
5. Other interesting choice: taking an unlikeable main character (for the latter part of the story). The characters are flat but that is because they are allegories, not real persons. One may then complain that characters are allegories and not real persons, but that is what I meant with different style. This was the norm in medieval literature, it is just a different culture and public. Deal with it;
6. One of the basic point is the same as in the quote from cristalli sognanti. The basic point is: if you do not prioritize survival of the species, as a consequence species might die out. There are three points in the book where the main character sacrifices the species for the group (what was called ‘manifest suicide’ in the quote above), the first two times saved by plot armor. I liked that, while I would say that the point of view of the author quite clearly comes through, this seems more about making a point that expressing a judgement. And a point is (again) just the logical statement that if you do not accept that some might have die for the species to survive, than it becomes more probable for the species not to survive. This is not per se good or bad, but it has to be clear when taking a philosophical stance;
7. I am not sure why the author felt it was necessary to investigate the insurance coverage consequences of somebody falling into a black hole: “And thus the life insurance company refused to pay out, although 高 Way had passed through the event horizon in his frame of reference, and should now be dead. But the insurance contract was made within the frame of reference of our world, and from this perspective, it is impossible to prove that 高 Way is dead. It’s not even possible to begin the settlement process. Insurance claims settlement can only occur after the conclusion of an accident, but as 高 Way is still falling toward the black hole, the accident isn’t over, and will never be over.”

While I conclude this notes I realise that the reason why I procrastinate writing them is that I do not want to update the legenda - looking up links and copypasting tires me out. I will give Libib a try and maybe put a link here if it works? Otherwise I’ll update it… soon.