The Hedgehog and the Fox

"The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This fragment from a Greek poet is the starting point for Isaiah Berlin's essay on Tolstoy's view of history, as it is presented in War and Peace. Berlin offers an intriguing interpretation of these characterizations, suggesting that they

mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who who relate everything to a single central vision.......and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.

He further suggests that

The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.

Because it is amusing to classify authors, colleagues or friends according to this rubric, this part of Berlin's essay is fairly well-known. I started reading this (lengthy) essay many years ago, enjoyed the "game" but then found the following discussion of Tolstoy's view of history to be inpenetrable and put it down. But I had not then read War and Peace!

As my review of War and Peace suggests, I found Tolstoy's views of history interesting, but presented at such length and so argumentatively, that they quickly became an annoying distraction from the narrative - but Berlin is another story! He presents Tolstoy's views in an engaging, fascinating light and offers his own analysis of why it is so difficult to classify Tolstoy as either a fox or a hedgehog.

My recommendation: Read the first three pages of the essay for insight into the intriguing "game" - or read all of War and Peace first, and then enjoy the meat of Berlin's essay!

Awaken the Giant Within

LOVED IT. While Tony Robbins DOES do infomercials, he apparently has some good stuff to say. Go figure.

The book is basically a breakdown of Robbins' system for taking control of your life and making your dreams come true. It gives you tons of tools for managing every aspect of your life, such as "transformation vocabulary", "global metaphors", the "Neuro-Assosociative-Conditioning model" (a mouthful) and many more.

I think an even better way of describing this book is this: it's the exact opposite of "The Power of Now", which I reviewed in an earlier post. This book is longer, more complex, and advocates a system polar to "The Power of Now". Instead of eliminating pain, as "The Power of Now" suggests, Robbins tells you to use your pain as a motivator to change your life.

I'd highly recommend the book to anyone who eats up self-improvement texts, no matter the size, shape, or form. For anyone not in love with the genre, if I were you, I don't even know if I could get motivated enough to get to the part of the book where Robbins teaches you how to get properly motivated.

Anthony Bourdain

So I'd never watched Anthony Bourdain and had never read Anthony Bourdain, but this spring ran across an interview he did with the DCist in Washington where he compares Alice Waters to the Khmer Rouge. I thought "well THAT'S a little extreme" but wasn't ready to form an opinion until (a)I had read some Anthony Bourdain, and (b) had learned more about Alice Waters and had eaten at Chez Panisse.

Both A and B have been accomplished. Ironically, I chose the Bourdain book where he attends a dinner party of vegetarians in Berkeley which is a HILARIOUS chapter. From his perspective, the Berkeley-ites come off as virtuous, hypocritic Alice Waters-disciples who tout a lifestyle completely out of reach and disconnected from the average US citizen. I see his point. Then again, I imagine that one of those dinner party attendees would say that 'Tony' is a chain-smoking and offensive vagrant who behaves badly for fame and a paycheck. Neither party is innocent.

But what he really criticizes at that dinner party is the vegetarian cooking. If vegetarian food is cooked poorly, it's not going to taste good. Period. However, Bourdain didn't actually eat at Chez Panisse. If he had, he would have had the best vegetarian meal of his life. Last month in Berkeley, Eric and I made a pilgrimage to the CP Cafe. The ambiance was relaxed, the service was attentive but not intrusive, and my vegetarian meal was divine. And no where did I see signs of communism or other subversive powers at work.

And I picked up Alice's "In the Green Kitchen". It turns out to be a compilation book of techniques by her favorite chefs, but the foreword is passionately written by her and illustrates that her philosophy is not meant to be virtuous, its meant to drive a return to local, homegrown and sustainable food. I see how that might be out of reach for some, but for many communities (including the impoverished SW corner of DC that just received its first Yes! Organic Grocery store) Alice's movement IS coming and it IS going to provide access to pesticide-free, responsibly grown food. How is that bad, Bourdain?

Bourdain backsteps on his Waters-hating by saying that he appreciates what she did for local producers. I found it ironic that he went on from Berkeley to eat a 16 course, 4 hour, over-the-top meal at French Laundry and couldn't find anything to criticize about that. If you want to talk about something completely out of reach for the average American, lets talk about THAT!

Regardless of the philosophies, I enjoyed Bourdain's travels (especially his time in Russia) and found myself laughing out loud at his inner-dialogue. The man is funny, and I don't think anyone can argue with that.

War and Peace

For me, a major delight in reading War and Peace was Tolstoy's extraordinary ability to describe all facets of human interactions in vivid, convincing and engaging terms. The playfulness of children, the passion of love, the vice-like grip of impending doom, the exhilaration of triumph, fill the pages of War and Peace. It's very long and it's not a page turner in the way of some adventure stories or mysteries, but I wanted to pick it up again immediately whenever I had a few free moments. And some scenes are incandescent in their depiction of human joy.

I had been unaware of one unusual feature of War and Peace: The story embodies Tolstoy's views of history and, surprisingly, the narrative is interrupted at intervals by brief essays on history and historians. Some of this is interesting, but some becomes tedious. I have to admit, though, that Tolstoy used this mechanism to solve a common problem with great books: when you near the end of a book that is wonderful, you often wish that the book would never end. By concluding War and Peace with a lengthy disquisition on free will and history, you do indeed feel that the book will never end.

Scott Pilgrim

I've recently gotten interested in the Scott Pilgrim comic book series. Scott, a 23-year-old bassist for his band Sex Bob-omb has a smooth life. He lives with his hilarious gay roommate Wallace Wells, and is dating a 17-year old chinese girl named Knives Chau. That is, until a roller-blading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers shows up. Scott falls for her right away, but the road to her love is not covered in petals. Turns out Scott Pilgrim has to fight her 7 evil ex-boyfriends to earn the right to her love. The series then turns into a laugh-out-loud, retro-game styled, battle for Scott to keep his band in line, his own life under control, and defeat the League of Evil Exes!

Yellow Rose From Amherst

A couple months ago, I heard an engaging NPR interview with Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate, about Emily Dickinson's Poetry. He had very interesting things to say and read a couple of his favorite poems. All I could remember of Dickinson from high school was "Because I could not stop for Death...." and "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died..." so I got The Essential Emily Dickinson, edited and with a very interesting introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. Although some were quite challenging for me, I really enjoyed many of the poems. Here's one:

690

Victory comes late -
And is held low to freezing lips -
Too rapt with frost
To take it -
How sweet it would have tasted -
Just a Drop -
Was God so economical?
His Table's spread too high for Us -
Unless We dine on tiptoe -
Crumbs - fit such little mouths -
Cherries - suit Robins -
The Eagle's Golden Breakfast strangles - Them -
God keep his Oath to Sparrows -
Who of little Love - know how to starve -

Collins related something apparently well-known to those who are more familiar with Dicksinon, but I think that to enjoy her poetry, it's best to forget: "Emily Dickinson seems rather tame because she pretty much uses the same meter every time. It's called 'common meter.' It's a line of four beats that's followed by a line of three beats. So a typical one would be: 'Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me.' And there's actually a kind of pause at the end of the first line, a kind of fifth beat. This is the meter of a lot of ballads. It's the meter of Protestant hymns. It's the rhythm of many nursery rhymes. So you have a very conventional cadence in most of these poems. It's widely known that almost every one of her poems can be sung whether you like it or not to the tune of 'A Yellow Rose From Texas.' "

New Land Speed Record!

Finished the combined 1200+ pages between Thursday night and Saturday night. Bet you can't read just one!