Cody > Recent Status Updates

Excited about this one. Breezy & compelling meditation on memory, history, and time. Was hooked by the sort of biographical sketch of Beyle, followed by the narrator's(?) wandering travelogue from Vienna to Venice. Was literally getting giddy over the annecdote about Casanova's escape from prison in the omenously named Doge Palace--he's like one of those swashbuckling characters straight out of the pages of Dumas.

Folks say they hate Nietzsche when they mean they hate his fans. Agreed. His greatest defect is inspiring the most annoying apes. But his style is provacative and his ideas on morality, enlightenment, and his concept of amor fati seem worthy of consideration. This work seems to crystallize a lot of ideas in his previous works. I like it but not totally sure how I feel about the the narrative format...

First the Mardis Gras party in Wallurgis Night was my favorite chapter. Then it was Operationes Spirituales' philosophical dialogues between bourgeois humanist Setembrini and Naptha his Jesuit-nihilist counterpart. But now it must be Snow, where skiing becomes Castorp's new interest and sends him on more daring adventures until he goes farther than ever before and is forced to return in a blizzard. Great writing!