What Are You Reading

[Benzadmiral]

The version I have has a bunch of short stories also, but "Sweet Smell of Success" is the first. I've read about half the others so far and have, basically, enjoyed them. Most are pretty short except for "The Comedian" which is similar in length to "SSOS," but so far, the collection I'm reading, hasn't had the prequel you note. I'll come back if it shows up.

Then that's the collection I found in my library. "The Comedian" seemed familiar to me; maybe it was also done as a movie, or an episode of an anthology TV series -- or maybe I read it years ago somewhere else. Lehman is a good storyteller.

 

[Harp]

The current University of Chicago's Maroon student newspaper. Campus freedom of speech notes therein and university president Zimmer
asked to defend his views before the College Council. Bruno before the Inquisition would be a gross exaggeration to characterize such, of course; yet the thought....

 

[Evan Everhart]

I just finished reading a 1960s edition (I think), compilation of Clark Ashton Smith short stories, covering his Averoigne cycle, his Hyperborian cycle, his Atlantean/Lemurian cycle, and some of his other post-apocalyptic stuff. Always fun and "up-lifting" - (dry as old bones chuckle), but seriously, I think I've read through that little collection at least 8 times, and I'm still not tired of it. Before that, I was reading an instructional manual (LOL!) or should I say perusing? Anyway; some Flussomania by way of Dressing the Man intersected by some Roetzelly "Gentleman; a Timeless Fashion".

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Brass Check," by Upton Sinclair. Privately published in 1920 -- because no commercial house dared to print it -- this work does to early 20th century American journalism what "The Jungle" did to the meatpacking industry: it pulls aside the curtain of industry propaganda to reveal the filth, the muck, and the corruption at its heart. Sinclair was the first independent journalist to hold Mr. Hearst up to full critical scrutiny, and he doesn't have any love for Colonel McCormick, either, or for the entire system of American newspaper publication which places the press under the control of advertisers. The later journalistic criticism of Seldes and Stone owe a great deal to this book.

A "brass check," explains Sinclair, is a token that was given to a patron of a house of prostitution, who would then present it to the prostitute of his choice as payment for her services. Sinclair thus refers to "brass check journalism" as that sort of journalism which willingly flatbacks itself upon receiving payment from its commercial masters. "We've come so far."

 

[Tiki Tom]

I just finished reading “At the Existentialist Café” by Sarah Bakewell.

It is an interesting introduction to phenomenology and Existentialism, as well as a primer on the colourful lives of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger, to name but a few. The discussion of the fine distinctions between Husserl and Heidegger was probably the slowest-going chapter.

My short one-paragraph description of Existentialism would be as follows: It is the quest to truly see the world by scraping off the accumulated crust of mental associations and habits and beliefs and ideology that covers everything we see and do. This includes looking at existence and “being” in the same manner. Existentialists are interested in individuals and not abstract concepts. The nature of consciousness (there is no there there) leads us to the inescapable conclusion that, circumstances notwithstanding, we are free to define who we are through our free thoughts and actions. If examined closely, this freedom is a tremendous and frightening truth. Therefore, we should always be making decisions in pursuit of what is most “authentic” in ourselves and shy away from pro forma roles that society, history, etc. want to lay on us. The search for authenticity versus fakeness in ourselves and the world is important, but so is “making personal decisions as if the world depends on it.” 1950s hipsters and beatniks loved existentialism.

In theory this all sounds well and good. In practice, in the lives of the characters in the book, the result included more than a whiff of self-absorption and egoism. On the other hand, everyone was actively and passionately involved in the world around them and working their hearts out for causes they believed in; with good and bad results; multiple love affairs, fiery relationships, arguments, intense political involvement (sometimes misguided), and manic none-stop writing and publishing in offbeat publications. Sartre alone averaged 20 pages of writing per day. Mostly done in left bank Parisian cafés. In line with his existentialist philosophy, he thought editing and rewriting were unauthentic and bourgeois. (in 1964 he turned down the Nobel Prize for literature.)

The book paints a picture of what Europe, and especially Paris, was like from the 1930s through the 1960s. (In WWII Sartre was a POW and Camus supported the resistance. Heidegger was an ambivalent Nazi.) Post-war American influences are discussed in some detail. It was the age of arguing in cafés about politics and philosophy while also trying to keep body and soul together. The ideological battle between Soviet style Communism and Western Capitalism was in full swing and friendships were destroyed over it. The book attempts to explain why Stalinist Communism was so in vogue with certain French intellectuals (in a nutshell, they apparently thought that a sufficiently rosy workers-paradise ending could justify all manner of interim transgressions and crimes.) Sartre himself never saw a communist regime that he didn’t like, although the Russian invasion of Hungary did shake him for a bit. Camus strongly disagreed with Sartre and it ended their close friendship. Ironically , Sartre worried that future generations would one day look back on these battles “with smug condescension.”

According to the author, existentialism is still relevant today. Simone de Beauvoir had a tremendous impact on feminist thinking and her books are still influential. More broadly, Bakewell notes that in 1954, German existentialist author Friedrich Heinemann warned that future “ultra-rapid computing machines” and invasive spying on and manipulation of individuals would raise a “truly existential question” about how human beings could remain free.

I enjoyed the book and got through it fairly quickly. I’m not sure that it lived up to the over-the-top rave reviews it received, but I enjoyed it and learned something in the process. Now when people talk about Sartre, Beauvoir , Camus and existentialism, I will at least know who they are talking about and why. I’m also feeling the urge to immediately buy a beret and spend more time in cafés.

 

[Tiki Tom]

"The Brass Check," by Upton Sinclair. Privately published in 1920

I am a big fan of Upton Sinclair. His "Lanny Budd" series should be read by every junior high/high schooler!

 

[Harp]

I just finished reading “At the Existentialist Café” by Sarah Bakewell.

It is an interesting introduction to phenomenology and Existentialism, as well as a primer on the colourful lives of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger, to name but a few. The discussion of the fine distinctions between Husserl and Heidegger was probably the slowest-going chapter.

Loved Bakewell's book, but...

European philosophy ceased relevance after the First World War and lapsed idle aimless speculative muse through the Second World War postwar era;
however couched or romantic the café ambience of the Existential period is portrayed, it pales against the Enlightenment and its towering personalities
seen against epoch revolutions in colonial America and the terror wrought during the French Revolution. Nietzsche's gauntlet lies prostrate amidst
the ruin of WWI & WWII, Nazism, and Communist enslavement of eastern Europe.
Edith Stein, an Auschwitz victim once remarked that Philosophy is the razor of reason that can slice through sanity, heart, and soul.

 

[Fading Fast]

I just recently finished that novelette and the other stories in a collection by Lehman. There's at least one other tale about Hunsecker and the narrator fellow, the character played by Tony Curtis in the film, which is sort of like a prequel to the "Sweet Smell" story. Considering how that one ended, the editor, or Lehman himself, should have put the prequel earlier in the book, and "Sweet Smell" later. There are more stories in the collection, if you liked Lehman's work.

Just read the prequel story to "Sweet Smell of Success" last night. While I thoroughly enjoyed it - it didn't really add that much to my knowledge of the characters.

• Hunsecker is still an evil egomaniac with a creepy Oedipal fixation on his sister who uses Sidney as his dishrag
• Sidney is still willing to be used as a dishrag in return for the money it brings him
• Hunsecker and Sidney's relationship is so bent it is creepy too

All the short stories in the series were good, some really good, but as you said earlier, Lehman can write.

 

[Fading Fast]

I just finished reading “At the Existentialist Café” by Sarah Bakewell.

It is an interesting introduction to phenomenology and Existentialism, as well as a primer on the colourful lives of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger, to name but a few. The discussion of the fine distinctions between Husserl and Heidegger was probably the slowest-going chapter.

My short one-paragraph description of Existentialism would be as follows: It is the quest to truly see the world by scraping off the accumulated crust of mental associations and habits and beliefs and ideology that covers everything we see and do. This includes looking at existence and “being” in the same manner. Existentialists are interested in individuals and not abstract concepts. The nature of consciousness (there is no there there) leads us to the inescapable conclusion that, circumstances notwithstanding, we are free to define who we are through our free thoughts and actions. If examined closely, this freedom is a tremendous and frightening truth. Therefore, we should always be making decisions in pursuit of what is most “authentic” in ourselves and shy away from pro forma roles that society, history, etc. want to lay on us. The search for authenticity versus fakeness in ourselves and the world is important, but so is “making personal decisions as if the world depends on it.” 1950s hipsters and beatniks loved existentialism.

In theory this all sounds well and good. In practice, in the lives of the characters in the book, the result included more than a whiff of self-absorption and egoism. On the other hand, everyone was actively and passionately involved in the world around them and working their hearts out for causes they believed in; with good and bad results; multiple love affairs, fiery relationships, arguments, intense political involvement (sometimes misguided), and manic none-stop writing and publishing in offbeat publications. Sartre alone averaged 20 pages of writing per day. Mostly done in left bank Parisian cafés. In line with his existentialist philosophy, he thought editing and rewriting were unauthentic and bourgeois. (in 1964 he turned down the Nobel Prize for literature.)

The book paints a picture of what Europe, and especially Paris, was like from the 1930s through the 1960s. (In WWII Sartre was a POW and Camus supported the resistance. Heidegger was an ambivalent Nazi.) Post-war American influences are discussed in some detail. It was the age of arguing in cafés about politics and philosophy while also trying to keep body and soul together. The ideological battle between Soviet style Communism and Western Capitalism was in full swing and friendships were destroyed over it. The book attempts to explain why Stalinist Communism was so in vogue with certain French intellectuals (in a nutshell, they apparently thought that a sufficiently rosy workers-paradise ending could justify all manner of interim transgressions and crimes.) Sartre himself never saw a communist regime that he didn’t like, although the Russian invasion of Hungary did shake him for a bit. Camus strongly disagreed with Sartre and it ended their close friendship. Ironically , Sartre worried that future generations would one day look back on these battles “with smug condescension.”

According to the author, existentialism is still relevant today. Simone de Beauvoir had a tremendous impact on feminist thinking and her books are still influential. More broadly, Bakewell notes that in 1954, German existentialist author Friedrich Heinemann warned that future “ultra-rapid computing machines” and invasive spying on and manipulation of individuals would raise a “truly existential question” about how human beings could remain free.

I enjoyed the book and got through it fairly quickly. I’m not sure that it lived up to the over-the-top rave reviews it received, but I enjoyed it and learned something in the process. Now when people talk about Sartre, Beauvoir , Camus and existentialism, I will at least know who they are talking about and why. I’m also feeling the urge to immediately buy a beret and spend more time in cafés.

Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" was a tough read for me (but so was your paragraph explanation of existentialism - not because it wasn't smart, but because this stuff hurts my brain). Camus' "The Stranger" just outright depressed the heck out of me so much so that I think about it periodically and I probably last read it twenty years or so ago.

The "ends justify the means" is a tough one to swallow for some communists trying to justify the old USSR, but it was a oft-used justification at the time - and for a long time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Although to be perfectly fair and accurate, you do have to admit that the United States stands on very thin moral ground when it chides other nations for justifying actions thusly. American history is little else but case after case of the End being used to Justify The Means. Ask an Indian, a Loyalist, an African-American, a sweatshop worker, or a resident of Hiroshima. And that's all I'll say about that.

 

[Fading Fast]

Although to be perfectly fair and accurate, you do have to admit that the United States stands on very thin moral ground when it chides other nations for justifying actions thusly. American history is little else but case after case of the End being used to Justify The Means. Ask an Indian, a Loyalist, an African-American, a sweatshop worker, or a resident of Hiroshima. And that's all I'll say about that.

Here's what I'll say, judging the US against other countries in concomitant time periods makes me almost always (maybe always) choose the US. Means, ends, ends justifying means, whatever - I'll take my chances in the US in the Depression vs the USSR in the same time period (how many died there in show trials and collectivizations of farms). I'll take my chances in the US Army in WWII versus the USRR's and on and on. And comparing the tens of millions that died in the USSR via intent to kill and willingness to let die from "progress" choices versus the US citizens that were killed in the US in the same manner results in a number so small next to the USSR's that it is silly.

Also, the US has been a study in uneven but still progress toward its goals, toward its ideals - we know where progress led in the USSR. All countries have made brutal mistakes and are still making them, but I still see the US as a country improving, a country that did and does many things wrong, that has tried to correct some of its mistakes. I see it as a country that was a leading part of a coalition that saved the world from fascism and communism in one century. That was wrong on slavery until its own people fought each other to get it right. That was wrong on civil rights until its own people fought (thankfully well shy of a Civil War) to get it better and is still trying and fighting. That was and is wrong on Native American Indians. That was wrong on women's rights until it got it right (with the vote) and is still trying to get it right on full rights. With it all, with every single error, horror, ugliness and mistake acknowledged - I do not see it even close to being on the same moral plane as the USSR.

So maybe the US is fully guilty of using ends to justify the means, but compared to the USSR, both its ends (where it is today) and means (the degree of horror it caused along the way) are incredibly better.

 

[LizzieMaine]

So, in short, there are circumstances where the ends *do* justify the means. All I'm saying is that there is no society, no power, and no system that doesn't actively believe and practice that, right down to the present moment. Even my Loyalist ancestors, stripped of their land by terrorists and forced to flee for their lives to Nova Scotia, would agree with that.

Interestingly, George Washington's family crest bears the Latin motto "Exitus Acta Probat." Or, "The Outcome Justifies The Deed."

(and that really is the last I'll say of that.)

 

[Fading Fast]

So, in short, there are circumstances where the ends *do* justify the means. All I'm saying is that there is no society, no power, and no system that doesn't actively believe and practice that, right down to the present moment.

Interestingly, George Washington's family crest bears the Latin motto "Exitus Acta Probat." Or, "The Outcome Justifies The Deed."

It is not a binary notion. Yes, I agree with you, to some degree, every country and I'd say almost every person has engaged in some ends justifying the means actions.

But, degree matters. Killing millions to collectivize a farm system is one means-ends equation that is of a different degree than banning thousands (what is the #) from working and living anything like a normal life (destroying their lives and killing some at least indirectly through suicides) in a horribly aggressive anti-communist witch hunt.

Both are horrible but they aren't in any way, shape or form of the same degree of evil.

 

[Tiki Tom]

You guys sound exactly like Camus and Sartre arguing. And I mean that in the best possible way. The other night I was discussing the book with Mrs Tiki and she started to look uncomfortable. I thought I might have been making her uncomfortable about something political that I'd said. very unlike her; she who Is always the picture of calm and grace. So I asked her about my foible. "Nothing like that," she said, "I'm just wincing because you are pronouncing "Camus" all wrong. It is Kahmoo."
So much for my great intellectual sophistication.

 

[Fading Fast]

You guys sound exactly like Camus and Sartre arguing it out! And I mean that in the best possible way. The other night I was discussing the book with Mrs Tiki and she started to look uncomfortable. I thought I might have been making her uncomfortable about something political that I'd said. very unlike her; she who Is always the picture of calm and grace. So I asked her about my foible. "Nothing like that," she said, "I'm just wincing because you are pronouncing "Camus" all wrong. It is Kahmoo."
So much for my great intellectual sophistication.

I am much more of a reader than a watcher of news, information, history, etc. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had that happen to me with my ridiculously intelligent and articulate girlfriend. I see a word, name, phrase in print and unless it raises a red flag, I subconsciously assume I have the pronunciation right in my head and then blithely go about my way until I say it wrong in public - oh well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You guys sound exactly like Camus and Sartre arguing. And I mean that in the best possible way. The other night I was discussing the book with Mrs Tiki and she started to look uncomfortable. I thought I might have been making her uncomfortable about something political that I'd said. very unlike her; she who Is always the picture of calm and grace. So I asked her about my foible. "Nothing like that," she said, "I'm just wincing because you are pronouncing "Camus" all wrong. It is Kahmoo."
So much for my great intellectual sophistication.

I prefer to engage in my philosophical arguments over pizza, though. Those smelly French cafes with all their Gauloisie smoke aren't my kind of place.

 

[Fading Fast]

I prefer to engage in my philosophical arguments over pizza, though. Those smelly French cafes with all their Gauloisie smoke aren't my kind of place.

I had an econ professor who said all the world's issues should be discussed over pizza and beer.

 

[AmateisGal]

Here's what I'll say, judging the US against other countries in concomitant time periods makes me almost always (maybe always) choose the US. Means, ends, ends justifying means, whatever - I'll take my chances in the US in the Depression vs the USSR in the same time period (how many died there in show trials and collectivizations of farms). I'll take my chances in the US Army in WWII versus the USRR's and on and on. And comparing the tens of millions that died in the USSR via intent to kill and willingness to let die from "progress" choices versus the US citizens that were killed in the US in the same manner results in a number so small next to the USSR's that it is silly.

Also, the US has been a study in uneven but still progress toward its goals, toward its ideals - we know where progress led in the USSR. All countries have made brutal mistakes and are still making them, but I still see the US as a country improving, a country that did and does many things wrong, that has tried to correct some of its mistakes. I see it as a country that was a leading part of a coalition that saved the world from fascism and communism in one century. That was wrong on slavery until its own people fought each other to get it right. That was wrong on civil rights until its own people fought (thankfully well shy of a Civil War) to get it better and is still trying and fighting. That was and is wrong on Native American Indians. That was wrong on women's rights until it got it right (with the vote) and is still trying to get it right on full rights. With it all, with every single error, horror, ugliness and mistake acknowledged - I do not see it even close to being on the same moral plane as the USSR.

So maybe the US is fully guilt of using ends to justify the means, but compared to the USSR, both its ends (where it is today) and means (the degree of horror it caused along the way) are incredibly better.

Incredibly well said, FF.

 

[AmateisGal]

Finished reading Robert Leckie's A Helment for My Pillow. Excellent book. I would say Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed is better, but each have much to commend them. Leckie's writing is superb.

Now reading Battleground Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Combat Odyssey in K/3/5 by Sterling Mace.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had an econ professor who said all the world's issues should be discussed over pizza and beer.

The only question then is thin crust versus deep dish, an argument that tends to bring out the fundamentalist ideologue in anyone.