Re-Reading List
So, I'll be leaving Washington today on a week-long trip to Cairo, where I will cover the convention of the ruling "party," the NDP. Should be fun. Travel, especially the type that involves 10-hour flights and long waits at the airport, allows me to catch up on some reading. A friend has insisted that I'll love David Foster Wallace, and so I'll be reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again" while I wait in Dulles. If I like it, I'll try to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest in Arabic.
But when I'm traveling or on vacation I prefer to reread novels that are sentimental favorites or non-fiction works that are important to me. As I pack up my carry-on (no toothpaste!), I thought I'd force my airplane reading selections on you. First up will be the seventh volume of Frederick Copleston's eminent History of Philosophy, the one covering the Post-Kantian Idealists, to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Next up, the only novel on my list. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I know, you are freaking out. But I actually found the book extremely moving. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I felt that Ellis' last novel, whose main character is Bret Easton Ellis himself actually redeemed Ellis, the writer, from his own ego and his own excesses.
On the way back I'll be reading some Biblical theology: Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant by Ignace de La Potterie, SJ (my second Jesuit). Potteries's exegesis of the Marian passages of Scripture are just astonishing in their level of detail. Especially helpful is his discussion of John 6:41-47, in which the theologian explains and diagrams both the Concentric and Parallel Structures that Biblical authors employed in composing scripture.
Finally, to politics, I'll be toting along my beat up edition of James Burnham's The Machiavellians, probably the most important book in shaping the way I think about politics. I have to thank Kevin Michael Grace for generously sending it to me a little over a year ago. It's a second edition copy from 1943 and is full of pencil marks from its previous owner(s).
Other than that, I'll take a stack of the last month's men's magazines: Men's Vogue, Esquire, Details and GQ. Unfortunately, the TSA will make me check the bag containing my most valuable travel accessory.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics, Religion, Culture
|
1 Comment
Share this: del.icio.us | Digg | Google | Ma.gnolia | Reddit | Stumble Upon | Technorati
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (1)
It's pretty damned good.