Purity vs Dark Brown suppression – The Noise of Time

I somewhat randomly bought The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Barnes is one of the writers on my ‘read anything they write’ list (another one is Haruki Murakami, yet another Douglas Coupland).

So, I did buy the book for its main topic—a fictionalized biography of Dmitri Shostakovich. Actually, as I had not read any review of the book or its cover, it took me a couple of pages to realize this was about Shostakovich—or, probably more precisely, about his moral struggle with the Soviet government.

The beginning breathes the dark brown stifling atmosphere of Kafka’s The Trial. Desperate, helpless, surrendering to the untouchable power of bureaucratics.

Barnes writes how Shostakovich became famous as a composer but could not enjoy his success. He gets to visit the United States as a puppet of the USSR politics. He holds speeches drenched with political statements but includes nothing of his own vision. The composer seems to half realize what he is doing and seems to justify it for his family. So the story turns to Shostakovich’s courage, or lack thereof, his cowardness, betrayal, and moral shame.

Barnes describes wonderfully how the oppression permeates every hole in Shostakovich’s life. It makes me wonder how he could still write such wonderful music.

Who does art belong to? The people? The state? The ‘big goal’?

Music in the USSR is played ‘as meant by the artist’ or ‘ strategic’—that is, in accordance with the norms of socialist art.

But in music, there is a purity. Something that can not be washed away by norms, politics, ethics, or violence. A purity that stands The Noise of Time. Eternal. Context-free. An undebatable truth.

And this purity in music probably explains how Shostakovich was able to continue to make his wonderful music, while being oppressed by this totalitarian regime.

163 Reasons To Love Reading Little BIG Things (ok, a few less)

Of course Tom Peters doesn’t need an introduction. He wrote In Search of Excellence with Bob Waterman, a monumental book from 1982 reporting on the key characteristics of successful companies. I would summarize it as: well-run businesses don’t bullshit around.

In 2010, Tom Peters gathered his thoughts in 163 categorized topics in The Little BIG Things. I recently reread all the Things. It has been a fun read again, and here’s a list of the things I like so much about this book.

  • It could be a set of laws. If you abide by these laws, you will become a good and happy citizen (I am avoiding the word successful here).
  • The typography in the book is lovely and innovative.
  • The book is a set of lists. Items are pretty elaborated, but a list. Love it.
  • Humor is all over the place.
  • Great stories to the topics.
  • Self-mockery.
  • Funny exclamations and subordinate sentences. (Yes, damn it, subordinate clauses!)
  • Interesting twists and great ways of putting things

Talk with your matey about the ….. Commercial Effectiveness of Strategic Apology.

  • Reading ahead or jumping through the book is allowed and recommended. Still a great read.

The book is completely quotable. You can take 10 notes on every page. Peters quotes others as well, so I will only close with Peters’ advice on reading.

Read!

Read Wide!

Surprise Yourself With Your Reading Picks!

Read Deep!

Read Often!

Out-READ the “Competition”!!!!!

Take Notes!

Summarize!

Share with Others What You Read!

(Not to impress them, but selfishly, because there’s no other way to embed what you’ve learned.)

Create/Join a Reading Salon!

Read!

Read!

Read!

(FYI. I am not a fast reader-a suprise to many.)

More than nothing learned from Tim Kreider’s We Learned nothing

I’m not sure where I dug up the reference to Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing, but I am sure it was from a self-help book.

So, when I began with this book, I was quite confused. It was like taking a sip of coffee, expecting the bitterness of a black coffee but testing the sweet, creamy flavor from the choice of your friend opposite you with your cup and a disgusted frown on his forehead after tasting yours.

So, this is not a self-help book. They are essays about the strangeness in Tim Kreider’s life. Just to mention a few:

He is stabbed in the throat and escapes death.

A year-long friend passes away and is found to have lived in a slum and has suffered from severe mental problems. Tim and his friends continue to love him, not even forgivingly, but rather naturally.

A friend has a sex operation and changes into a woman, but very much remains Tim’s old-school friend.

We learn Tim is adopted and how he later in life finds his biological mother and two sisters.

The book’s theme is friendship and love, and the confusing interrelationship and differences between them.

It came as a belated epiphany to me when I learned that the Greeks had several different words for the disparate phenomena that in English we indiscriminately lump together under the label love. Our inability to distinguish between, say, eros (sexual love) and storgé (the love that grows out of friendship) leads to more than semantic confusion. Careening through this world with such a crude taxonomical guide to human passion is as foolhardy as piloting a plane ignorant of the difference between stratus and cumulonimbus, knowing only the word cloud.

 

Also, about the laziness and passive character of de-friending, real-life defriending, not Facebook defriending. I found it very recognizable, and I am sure most of my defriending was due to this laziness. I am equally sure most of these friendships would have continued if the other person had reached out.

Defriending isn’t just unrecognized by some social oversight; it’s protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn’t just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire.

An achievement to write about such topics and dramatic events in an undramatic but sensitive style. Humorous and nicely illustrated (though very difficult to read on Kindle).