The Sartre Being and Nothingness finally made it to my local branch
library. The advice to skip to the introduction and jump into chapter
1 did not work quite as well as I was hoping it was going to. I barely
made it a half-hour in my first go and I haven't picked it up since. I
am going to try my last-second Hail Mary desperation strategy next.
This actually worked with Finnegans Wake. (Note no apostrophe!)
This is my own invention and you will never see this method anywhere
else so pay close attention and never say I never gave you anything.
First you make a cup of your favorite bold tea. Something which is
pleasing to your throat. Then you grasp the forbidding text and you
start reading slowly OUT LOUD. You will presumably be needing the tea
in a few minutes because your throat will be dry from all the excited
speaking you are going to be doing as this forbidding text becomes the
possession of your very own voice.
By the time you tire of reading aloud you may (if lucky) aquire an
affinity for the author's eccentricities and make what was previously
impossible possible if not exactly enjoyable. If this doesn't work on
Sartre, nothing will and I will surrender.
I am now two-thirds of the way back to my youth of 3000 skipropes.
That's right if you do the math I can now do 2000 again. Last year
when my doctor did a full blood analysis my testosterone was at the
top of the normal range. If it goes any higher I'll probably morph
into a date rapist. I still don't look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Ac.kleobisandbiton.jpg
Hopefully my destiny will not be quite as grim as Kleobis and
Biton's.
I finished Solomon's "Joy of Philosophy". It isn't bad even if it is a
lot of existentialism. The best part was a footnote. He was kvetching
about why laymen seem to despise philosophy and he re****ts on a
conversation at Berkeley between Searle and Foucalt. Searle asked
Foucalt why he spoke so magnificently and wrote such impenetrable
rubbish and Foucalt supposedly said that if he wrote clear nobody
would take him seriously.
Unpossible.
Bukvich
