Closing time

by Norman O. Brown

First Edition

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Norman Oliver Brown was an American classicist who is known for his translation and commentaries on the works of Hesiod. A student of Carl Schorske and Isaiah Berlin, he taught classics at Wesleyan University, University of Rochester, and UC-Santa Cruz.

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Two books get on top of each other and become sexual."
Like being inside the quick witted mind of Norman Brown as he reads Finnegans Wake and the New Science, after having written Love's Body.
A wonderful, delightful weaving of great minds: Brown in conversation with James Joyce and Giambattista Vico. Makes you want to stand up and shout.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ongoing dialogue between Norman O. Brown, Giambattista Vico and James Joyce. Vico (1668 –1744), an Italian philosopher who wrote The New Science, was the first writer to claim that human affairs were strictly human—God had nothing to do with them. Joyce was influenced by Vico.

Brown relies on passages from The New Science, Finnegans Wake, and his own work to create a creative interplay.

Vico is best known for his "verum factum" principle, which states that truth is verified through creation or invention and not, as per Descartes, through observation: “The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.” (Reference Wikipedia.)

I am not a philosopher, but I never thought Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” was convincing, even though it may have logically followed from preceding propositions. Vico’s reasoning seems much closer to the truth.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this brief but entertaining study, Brown employs the thought of James Joyce and Giambattista Vico (and Sigmund Freud and William Blake and others) to explore the intersection of history and literature.

Acquired 1984
The Word, Montreal, Quebec

[s.]

The structuring of this narrative is reason enough for reading this book. Brown's method of incorporating literature (both in form and reference) and philosophy is intriguing and enlightening.