Why we read what we read......

Every now and then we ought to look back and ask ourselves "Why have I been reading what I read?"  Everyone is likely to have a different take on this.  Some read to relax.  It feels good to let go of this world for some other place and time.  Fiction isn't only about fantasy but issues, morals, life, and death -- issues we don't want to face directly and allow fiction to guide our thoughts.  I find it always a bit curious to here people prefer fiction over non-fiction.  To be sure, non-fiction isn't always well written (I don't buy the claim that Joyce's Ulysses is well written), easily digestible (but then neither is Joyce Carol Oates or David Foster Wallace), or providing the idyllic happy ending (but then  think only of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina).  Non-fiction can, however, lay special claim to at least aspiring to peering behind the scenes, offering a point of view based on evidence, and laying claim to very basic truths about what happened -- in the manner of the Greek histor or witness.  So, why have I been reading what I read?  Perusing the list, I rediscover my investigation in John Climacus's Heavenly Ladder, Jeremy Cohen's Christ Killers,  Greenblatt's The Swerve followed by Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, pieces of Aquinas, Gombrich, Wilde, and Nietzsche along with Week's biography of Boehme, Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, and Foucault's 1970-71 lectures.  Yet there is also Jimmy Conner's autobiography and Lanier's You are not a gadget. If this collage of works read in 2013 tells us much, if anything, it tells me at least that I appear to get along better with the dead than the living. 

New Year's Resolutions for an Academic

It's not much of a stretch to suggest 2011 weighed heavily on many fronts. America remained at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy showed limited signs of recovery, and my own institution experienced its own internal challenges. In a curious parallel, I reached the half-century mark and the first signs of serious light to a health problem. As a typical academic, I responded by publishing more than I had over much of my career always waiting for the bad news. But 2012 came anyway and nothing happened. The world didn't end. We still pay taxes. We worry about much the same stuff as all middle class Americans. Therein rests part of the problem. We are accustomed to the idea of a tragic and/or heroic series of events. Our motivations in 2011 fell largely into the camp of hoping the worst was over -- however one viewed the world. In this sense, our political debates would suggest we're still living in 2011. Ernst Bloch devoted three volumes to exploring the principle of hope and Erich Fromm pushed us to rethink love. However we may feel, what we do matters. For all the voices silenced over the ages, we have an obligation to revisit the treasures of our civilization and claim them again for ourselves and the next generation.