Scott – Page 109 – Scott's Book Review

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

This book is a one volume introduction to Western intellectual history. Richard Tarnas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tarnas) takes us on a journey from the Greeks to postmodernism. The contemporary world of postmodern thought, according to Tarnas, is caught “between the inner craving for a life of meaning and the relentless attrition of existence in a cosmos that our rational […]

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Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

CHOICE CLASSICS - A pick from the enduring classics

Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) is the diary of one Antoine Roquentin whose systematic introspection leads him into a frame of mind in which he senses himself absolutely free in a meaningless world. He is overcome with a dizzying nausea to understand that with the radical contingency of freedom comes responsibility – a responsibility to invest

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The Human Stain by Philip Roth

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best

71 year old Coleman Silk, Dean of Athena College in New England, has been driven from his position by mischievous accusations of racism. After the death of his wife he takes up Faunia Farley, an illiterate milkmaid and cleaner at the college, who is half his age and has suffered a terribly battered life. Approaching the

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Human Instinct by Robert Winston

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

An ocean liner cannot turn round on a sixpence. Neither can human nature spin itself away from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Humans are a bundle of pleistocene instincts dressed by Marks & Spencer with some clever gadgetry to hand. Robert Winston (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston) expertly dissects the deep human motivations that are really in

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Physicalism by Jaegwon Kim

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

The mind-body problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_dichotomy) is as old as philosophy itself. Modern science proceeds with the assumption that the category of subject matter under investigation is physical. How can this accommodate consciouness and mental causation, though? These seem not to be reducible. Qualia (the ‘felt experience’ of the conscious mind, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia) seem particularly resistent. Jaegwon Kim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaegwon_Kim) offers a fresh

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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best

There is not much of a plot to this novel of 1955. Humbert Humbert, European emigree literature professor, develops an obsession with 12 year old Dolores Haze, the daughter of his landlady. They take a road trip together after landlady Charlotte (and briefly Humbert’s wife) is killed by passing traffic. In gorgeous, lyrical and seductive prose (over which

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The House in Paris

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

In this novel of 1935 two children, strangers, wait in a well appointed house in Paris: Leopold for his mother, whom he has never seen, and Henrietta for a train. Upstairs an old woman lies dying and her daughter flutters round her. Little does Henrietta know what fascinations this Fisher house contains. There are secrets that have the potential

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Those Barren Leaves

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

Aldous Huxley spares no one in his ironic, piercing portrayal of a group gathered in an Italian palace by the socially ambitious and self-professed lover of art, Mrs. Aldwinkle. Here, Mrs. Aldwinkle yearns to recapture the glories of the Italian Renaissance, but her guests ultimately fail to fulfill her naive expectations. Among her entourage are:

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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

CHOICE CLASSICS - A pick from the enduring classics

We find the following words in William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence. (1803) ‘To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour’. As a comparable thought, would it be possible to embrace all the themes of human life

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Author name: Scott