Colonial Tale

Tropic Moon 

by Georges Simenon

“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill’s history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.”  ― Roger Ebert

Tropic Moon, one of Georges Simenon's "Romans durs," or hard novels, is his first book set outside of Europe. The story of Tropic Moon is not only harsh on the protagonist but also on the French colonial system as a whole—that is, it is extremely harsh on the French colonialists who lived in Africa. This was a slightly different experience for me compared to Simenon's detective novels.

Apolline vs. Dionysian

The Birth of Tragedy 

and The Case of Wagner 

by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.”   ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche not only narrates the origin of tragedy, but he also offers a postmortem that identifies its killers. According to Nietzsche, with Euripides' help and encouragement, Socrates destroyed this pinnacle of Greek culture. However, Nietzsche goes on to predict that Wagnerian opera will bring about its revival, at least in Germany. The ideas of Schopenhauer and Kant indicate that the rationalism that was introduced by Socrates and ultimately led to the abolition of tragedy has run its course and reached its limits, which means that the time is right for tragedy to reappear. Pace logic apart, the thing itself demonstrates that it is fundamentally unknown.

Nietzsche's analysis identifies the Apolline and the Dionysian artistic tendencies that are united in Greek tragedy. In contrast to the Dionysian, who offers chaos, intoxication, obscurity, excess, and fusion, the Apolline symbolizes clarity, beauty, order, shape, and individuation. Greek tragedy—at least the works by Aeschylus and Sophocles—exposes its audience to existential horrors like fate's hand, the impotence of even the most admirable people, and the certainty of suffering. It rises above the pit of sorrow and pessimism, however, to affirm life in the end, or at the very least, to affirm aesthetic force and its capacity to redeem pain and suffering, by crafting these brutal facts into a great work of art.

Regrets from Time Past

I Have Some Questions for You 

by Rebecca Makkai

“it was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.”   ― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You

This was a real challenge for me from beginning to end. I can't say that I was thrilled to read this book, even though I managed to slowly proceed through it. I was not inspired to flip the pages, and I wished the story had been more interesting. I persisted because I don't give up easily and was curious to find out what really happened before the murder and if justice would be served in the end. Unfortunately, the second-person narration didn't exactly work for this particular story, and I frequently felt like the prose was wandering.

I can say that, without giving too much away, I was quite impressed by how true to reality the novel was. Even though we always want our books to have poetic justice and perfect endings, this one chose a conclusion that, although not perfect, may be more realistic than what actually happens. That having been said, I cannot recommend this novel, as I felt it had too many flaws.

A Historic Moment

The Magic Lantern:          The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague 

by Timothy Garton Ash

“In this crowded world, we must learn to navigate by speech, as ancient mariners taught themselves to sail across the Aegean Sea.”   ― Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

Written by a brilliant witness who also took part in epochal events, The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that defines a historic moment. Covering events such as the first free parliamentary elections in Poland, where Solidarity was forced to try and limit the extent of its victory, or attending the meetings of an unlikely alliance of Catholic clerics and free-thinking intellectuals planning the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with a great deal of empathy and impact.

This book is a stunningly evocative portrait of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989 and whose aftereffects are still being felt today. From the perspective of more than three decades, Garton Ash writes in a sharp afterword, "Freedom's battle is never fully won. It must be fought anew in every generation.” I would recommend this to all readers who are interested in modern European history.