Literature that changed your life?

I think it gave me a new way of looking at things, too. How Om's viewpoint changes when he's a turtle; all of a sudden he's against eagles, wants to pass laws against eating turtles, etc. But why? Because he's suddenly a turtle. He wouldn't have cared if it (the transformation) hadn't happened. The book explains it much better And then both Brutha's and Vorbis' outlook on life and way of looking at things are enlightening too. Then there's the whole satire on organized religion; I feel it is enlightening too. People start believing in the institution instead of the god... I'd never thought of that before, but I can see how it would happened, and indeed how it has.


That's not very clear, I suppose :-/ But read it! That'll clear it up

Thank you!

"Dreams from my Father" by Barack Obama
Believing in humanity again !!! How one person did not ever make any person or any circumstance wrong and (followed a man who had left him in infancy and died drunk)completes his past and finds the love that inspires him to be the great leader that he is. There are lessons for life in that book. He gives my philosophy of life a tangible existence!!

Just opened and reread this, now somewhat old, thread on a whim. What a pleasure it was to read again !

Many thanks dlowan !

You are most welcome!!

Hey! How did I ever miss this thread? From the top of my head:

• My mother's and grandmother's encyclopedias.
  
  As a child, I would endlessly thumb through random articles until I hit into one that was interesting. Then I would follow the cross-references, then the cross-references in the cross-referenced articles, and so forth until I'd read everything about that complex of cross-referenced articles. It was much like websurfing, only paper-based. Encyclopedias changed my life by impressing on me early in life that the world is fascinating beyond all comprehension, and that you can't learn enough about it.
  
  
• Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels.
  
  As a nerd, I easily get irritated by things that should make sense sense but don't. Douglas Adams has taught me to enjoy absurdity and nonsense instead of avoiding it. I've lightened up a lot since I've read him.
  
  
• The Bible.
  
  No practical impact on my life, but actually reading the thing, unfiltered, cover-to-cover, has turned me into an atheist forever.

There's probably more. I'll add them as I can think of them.

Fascinating, Thomas.

Hmmmm...you mader me wonder how much having the King James Bible (which is a magnificently written version) kept the whole thing alive in English speaking countries for longer than it it had not existed...)

Heh heh! You learned to deal with absurdity via Adams?

Kewl.

I likely first learned that from Catch 22, which I read as a kid and loved.

Hermann Hesse changed my general attitude about life. Hesse comes from the same area of Germany as I did; his Suabian accent, and some typically Suabian mentality (which he hated) bleed into the way he writes. That made him the perfect ambassador for the vaguely Zen Buddhist mindset his books are emanating. I can't really name any particular title that impressed me the most, so I'll just go with the standards, Siddharta and Steppenwolf. Two early love novels, written before Hesse became the ambassador of quasi-Zen-Buddhist serenity to Suabia, are also very dear to me: Gertrud and Rosshalde.

Catch 22 has been on my reading list for over a year now. Never got around to reading it.

Probably not that much. Catholic Christianity doesn't encourage Bible-reading by the laity all that much, and it's doing pretty well. (Indeed, domestic-language Bible translations used to be on the Catcholic Church's index of forbidden books for centuries.)

***

On a tangent, I can't get over the fact that you started this thread in 2003, and I didn't catch it until now. Didn't you and I run into each other back then?

Dunno.

I used to start a lot of threads at one point.

Mighta missed it in the haze....

I don't know how well it would stand up, ya know.

The sexism is gross...then again, here we are right in the middle of the same Milo Minderbinder world, only it just collapsed.

Perhaps such satire is evergreen?




You know, detail about in what WAY things changed one was what I really wanted on this thread, and almost never got.

Can you say how and in what way it changed your attitude?

Wow . . . rereading this has been a trip into the past. Six years is not so long ago, but in the world of dancing electrons, it is like generations. Caprice, Pueo, Joanne Dorel, Hazlitt . . . so many people about whom i have not thought in a long time.

Could be, but by a preliminary check I just did, it seems we really didn't run into each other much in 2003. It may seem strange to me today, but we really didn't in the early years.


Well, Hesse's most immediate effect was to reassure me in who I was. "Aha, I'm not the only one who loves the learning part of school and hates the social part of it. Hesse went through the same thing in Unterm Rad." Or, "aha, Harry Haller in Steppenwolf feels the same way I do about music, and around attractive women. I'm not the only one." (These are just two out of many examples.) Being an outsider in my social life, I was very relieved by such assurance.

The most recent specific difference Hesse made in my life was when I lost my job. If I hadn't had read Hesse, I would have been much more predisposed to freak out about it, especially since it happened at the beginning of a severe recession. Instead, all I feel is a sense of fatalist serenity and of moving on to the next thing in my life, the nature of which I will figure out in due time. Hesse's poem Stufen (Steps) perfectly describes my current state of mind about where I am in my life. This translation by Walter Aue isn't perfect, but still captures the essence:

Like ev'ry flower wilts, like youth is fading
and turns to age, so also one's achieving:
Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading
in its own time, and must not last forever.
The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,
prepared to part and start without the tragic,
without the grief - with courage to endeavor
a novel bond, a disparate connection:
for each beginning bears a special magic
that nurtures living and bestows protection.

We'll walk from space to space in glad progression
and should not cling to one as homestead for us.
The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;
it lifts and widens us in ev'ry session:
for hardly set in one of life's expanses
we make it home, and apathy commences.
But only he, who travels and takes chances,
can break the habits' paralyzing stances.

It even may be that the last of hours
will make us once again a youthful lover:
The call of life to us forever flowers...
Anon, my heart! Do part and do recover!

(I took the liberty of correcting one reference.)

Nice poem - and Hesse makes a meaningful point here.

Perhaps you won't remain an atheist forever.

Yes. Moreover it brings to mind some of the qualities of A2K dialogue that don't seem to occur so much anymore.

We mustn't forget Cavfancier; his kindness, wit and cooking skills were number one.

Very interesting Thomas.

Thank you for the link to the German....it is lovely in German.

Lovely cadence.

Here's a short poem my father made me memorize at age seven. I didn't understand its meaning then, but the words stayed with me and the understanding followed. It's by James Russel Lowell, "Aladdin".

When I was a beggarly boy
And lived in a cellar damp
I had not a friend or a toy
But I had Aladdin’s lamp

When I could not sleep for the cold
I had fire enough in my brain
And builded with roofs of gold
My beautiful castles in Spain

Since then I have toiled day and night
I have money and power good store
But I’d give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more

Take fortune whatever you choose
You gave and may snatch again
I have nothing ‘t’would pain me to loose
For I own no more castles in Spain

It definately influenced my boyhood imagination and afterwards helped me to value the life of the mind.

Well, i'll be go to Hell, O'George . . . many, many long years ago, more than fifty, i stumbled across "castles in Spain," but have been ignorant of the source from that day to this . . .