March 2019

A List: Rousseau--Confessions............................................................................................165/683
B List: Gerhart Hauptmann--Before Dawn..............................................................................62/98
C List: Coughlin/Kuhlman/Davis--Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper              ....................................................................................................................................65/293


I haven't gotten very far in the Confessions, though it is a classic, and engaging reading to boot. The A-List are the books I bring with me to work, and besides having gone on vacation for a decent part of the last month, I have not had, for various reasons, quite as much opportunity of late (in any area of my life, really) to indulge in my books, so it will probably be several months before I finish this one. I am enjoying the book, however, so I am not in any great hurry to finish it off.


As noted in my last post on Hauptmann's Beaver Coat, I was unable to finish my entry on that play before I left for Florida, however as I do like to go away anymore without one of my old B-list books I made an exception to my rule about not beginning the next book on the list before I have completed the blog post on the one just finished and allowed myself to move on to Before Dawn while I was there, which I wholly expected to finish. However with all of the children--most of whom don't even go to bed early anymore either--needing attention and supervision, etc, I wash only able to get in a couple of sessions alone in the warm sun with the play, which enabled me to finish half of it, and then when I got back home I put it aside again to finish the abandoned post on the other play. But I should be back on my schedule now.


With regard to the C-list, I regretfully confess that I gave up on the Will Self book. I did not want to put in the work that would have been required to read it satisfactorily, and I found I was looking for excuses such as having to do laundry to put off taking it up, which defeats the point of the whole exercise. He comes off as belonging to the class of author where the fault is all on you if you don't like his book, and perhaps that is true, in my case anyway, but that said, I didn't find his intelligence to be either of the enlightening or seductive sort, which is probably a necessity for long term earthly immortality.


Shooter was published in 2005, and appears that it is going to have for its setting the initial invasion of Iraq that culminated in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. I've always felt some remorse for not paying more attention to the American government's myriad wars and other foreign meddlings, since many intelligent people, and most foreign persons one encounters of that description, are borderline apoplectic about them, and consider the generally brain dead American citizenry to have a high degree of culpability for their effects even if it is only on account of their stupidity and obliviousness. I have hung in with the book so far, though I am not able to overcome my literary prejudices. When our Marine narrator states upon his departure from his daughters when leaving for Iraq that "I felt like shit", my reaction is that Tolstoy would have made a lot more out of this occasion. The incessant braggadocio and intra-male conflict-seeking I find a little wearying also, though we admittedly find similar attitudes among fighting men in the Iliad and the Bible and the Norse sagas and other comparable ancient literature, and it is doubtless a beneficial attribute for the warrior to have. Even though Sergeant Coughlin is, certainly by his own account, a great fighter, the top sniper in the army, fearless obviously, a leader, a man who holds other men accountable for their actions, including his ostensible superiors, among other superior qualities, I don't quite feel a great admiration for him as yet. There isn't any common ground, whether of mental outlook, or spiritual understanding or yearning, or anything wherein this could from...But I am out of time and have to post this now. No girlie pictures this month.