A Fascinating Encounter

I am reading snatches of "A History of the Modern World" by the English historian Paul Johnson.

An excellent and well-argued book by a truly excellent historian.

Another excellent book by him is "The Offshore Islanders: A History of the English People." But a discussion of that is for another post.

One thing I can't keep myself from splurting out a post on is this.

Joyce and Proust actually met.

Yes these two archetypal modernist writers actually briefly met.

Yes. These two wordy, long-winded generators of hefty rambling tomes - the two writers that you are supposed to have read but that maybe you haven't really - the foremost French one and the foremost one in English - actually met!

This event is related by Johnson. It took place in Paris on May 18th 1922.

It sounds almost like a fantasy but apparently something like the following happened.

Joyce blandly proclaimed that he hadn't read a single word of Proust's voluminous work and that - to put it mildly - this did not concern him in the slightest.

Proust was very offended by this. He didn't know what to say. So he shot back that neither had he read a single word of Joyce's work.

LOL!!! - as they say.

In another work Joyce dismisses Proust's work - which is supposed to be quite philosophical - with the (German) pun "Prost bitte".

Well I am rejoicing at not having either Joyce or Proust on my reading list.
.........

In the interests of balance the event is recounted somewhat differently here:

http://westrow.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/proust-and-joyce-meet/

What I am Reading

Just a note to say I am reading "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (c.1950) by Hannah Arendt. A very clever lady.

Very readable and lucid prose. Excellent, excellent stuff.
She argues a point at the start that I had never really encountered. That is - systematised and ideological "anti-Semitism" is mainly originated in political nationalism and in the development of the Nation State of the Europe of the 1800s. Before this it did not really exist. I have never really heard that before.

Took a peak at the final chapter where she discusses the idea of loneliness and/or isolation. The point is made that it is possible to be lonely in company - in the sense that people feel lonely when they have the feeling of a lack of relatedness to others, inability to relate to others; and a feeling of superfluousness. The opposite of feeling respected or esteemed by oneself or others to some degree - things that are quite needed for a happy life.

Arendt points out that this loneliness of the individual was fostered under totalitarian regimes - the main ones for her here are Nazism and Bolshevism. Yet she speaks of it at the time that she is writing - 1950.

I can't help thinking it's not always a coincidence that people today feel a lack of rootedness and a superfluousness. The type of totalitarianism we seem to live under today is capitalism. And its ideology is the utter dogshit that is contemporary "economics".

An amazing quote from the beginning of Chapter 8:
"Nazism and Bolshevism owe more to Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism (respectively) than to any other ideology or political movement."
Hannah Arendt.

Just want to say that Hannah Arendt was a wonderful and very clever lady and had some of her origins in Hannover - a wonderful town with a wonderful town hall that looks like a massive birthday cake.