Category Archives: books

Notes on The Magic Mountain: “A Soldier, and Brave”

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Lee

“I am glad to see that despite your enthusiasm for freedom and progress, you have some feeling for serious things.” So says Naphta to Settembrini as they stand at the deathbed of the young man. What could be more serious … Continue reading →

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Notes on The Magic Mountain: “Snow”

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Lee

“What he had dreamed was already fading from his mind.” So vivid the dream, so full of meaning, and as he lay there in the snow he had vowed to live for love and virtue, and never to let death … Continue reading →

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Notes on The Magic Mountain: “Operationes Spirituales”

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Lee

There is no chance that Ludovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta, the intellectuals portrayed in The Magic Mountain, will ever agree with each other. If one of them says something, you can guarantee that the other will say the opposite. It … Continue reading →

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How Wrong We Are

Posted on May 16, 2022 by Lee

I’ve been reading Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling. Aspiring writers might want to read the book in full, but here’s some ideas I found interesting: Stories are about change. In other words: something happens. The best stories gradually transform … Continue reading →

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Fools Reproach

Posted on April 6, 2022 by Lee

William Blake’s infernal wisdom: that evil is the energy of the body and acts upon desire. Good bounds this energy, and wants to restrain desire. That if your desire can be restrained, then it was a weak desire. That desire, … Continue reading →

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Art and Life: Notes on some Conversations with Allen Ginsberg

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Lee

It begins with the personal. “Life is full of strange experiences,” he says. Allen Ginsberg finds the extraordinary in the everyday. “Each one has his inner nature that he has to satisfy,” says Louis Ginsberg, attempting to account for the … Continue reading →

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Notes on Gregory Corso’s “Variations on a Generation”

Posted on March 30, 2022 by Lee

The Beat Generation was never supposed to become so big, says Gregory Corso, and that’s why it has such a stupid name. If they’d known they might have spent more time thinking about it. Perhaps not. It doesn’t make sense … Continue reading →

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The Imperfection of Henry Miller

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Lee

Henry Miller has made a vow not to alter a line of what he writes because perfection is no longer his object. He wants to get to know his own mind, with all its faults and weaknesses, and share with … Continue reading →

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A Life for Wandering Through

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Lee

Paris in the 1930s was a place where you could simply be an artist. It didn’t matter if you produced any significant work or not. For example, Henry Miller tells us that an acquaintance of his, called Sylvester, will never … Continue reading →

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Hegel, Reason, and the Unhappy Consciousness

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Lee

As the sun sets in Canto II of Dante’s Inferno, the pilgrim, Dante himself, explains that he is not worthy to undertake the journey, through Hell and Purgatory, to Heaven. I lack the strength and skill, he says. The poet … Continue reading →

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