The Drying

Whoa, a sunny day and no rain in the forecast. It looks like today is the first day of The Drying. Maybe in a couple of days, I will be able to take the mower out. As for the cats, they are just going to have to suffer seeing sunny beautiful days without being able to run out and terrorize the neighborhood.

Reading Life

As I was finishing up "Buddenbrooks", I was struggling over what to read next. I felt like it was time for something light, but in hindsight, although "Buddenbrooks" is a lengthy novel, it is not like I was studying organic chemistry or trying to master tax law. Still, I got something light. I even went for something sexy, something supposedly Lolita-ish: John Colapinto's "Undone". Going by the reviews, you would think he had written something scandalous, and I took the bait, the hook stuck firmly in my jaw.

I regretted ordering the book even before I received it. When I finished "Buddenbrooks", feeling my Mann love, I was going through the other Mann books on my Wish List, and I found myself gazing dreamily at "Letters of Thomas Mann". I was thinking that I really need to stay in that literary universe, that it is still feeding my soul better than anything else. I ended up ordering it.

However, "Letters" would take a couple of weeks to get to me, and I had "Undone" on hand. I paid good money for it. When I began to read it, I found it tough-going, not because it was a bad novel, but because I felt like I was wasting what time I have left in my old age. Even if I were 45, only six years ago, I probably would have been able to enjoy it without feeling bad, despite the fact that it is not that sexy and Calapinto is not Nabokov. Since I got the novel, why not at least 'speed read' it. See how fast I can go without missing any key plot points, or mildly hot sex, or possibly keepable quotations. It was as though the books was primarily an extended joke and I was just reading it to get the punchline. It still took me a few days to finish it. Through a good deal of the novel, I was jogging more than running, and perhaps even just power-walking, but I figure I went through it twice as fast as I ordinarily would have done.

While I was reading "Undone", browsing through Amazon, I discovered a promising biography on Arthur Schopenhauer, on both the life and work: "Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy" by Rudiger Safranski. Well, since Schopenhauer is the second of the twin philosophical pillars in the Mann universe, along with Nietzsche, I had to get this one, too, despite the 45-dollar price tag, even though it cleaned me out. And I am loving it, not only as background to Thomas Mann, and not only with respect to the ideas that moved Mann, but also in getting another picture of German bourgeois life in the 19th century, and how can I not feel for homely Adele, Arthur's unloved sister - as I feel as though she is more my sister. I do not understand why I should find my literary home in German literature and philosophy, but this is where I am, and I don't seem able to get enough. I gladly accept it. This life would be unmediated hell if I could not feel this kind of deep interest in anything, and as for German or American or English or French or Italian or Russian, I suppose it's all white to me.