Stranger on Earth

Good god, is nothing sacred anymore? I was browsing on Goodreads when I came across the following comments (most probably from a teenager) about Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa (1937), the mother of all memoirs: I have no idea why my mom recommended this book to me. A white British colonist tells the story of her privileged life on her coffee plantation in Kenya. She writes some great imagery about the Kenyan landscape and tells funny stories about animals, except that her idea of the landscape and animals includes all the Black servants and workers and "squatters" on her plantation. She is really stupid and proudly naive. It's awful. For example, when she jokingly threatens to fire all of her servants if they don't find this cute baby antelope she saw while on an outing, she thinks it's out of love for her that they spend all night searching for it. How darling of them! I think you're supposed to find her some sort of feminist heroine because she...

Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer ( Götzendammerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt , 1889), was one of the last two philosophical works (the other being The Anti-Christ ) written by Friedrich Nietzsche at lightning speed (he completed it in a week) before he succumbed to insanity the following year. By this time Nietzsche had already established a name for himself with Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Europe’s literary-philosophical enclaves, though his incorrigible cynicism made him believe that most readers had not adequately grasped the work. In order to rectify the situation, he felt he had to simplify its main ideas and present them in a more digestible format à la Cliff Notes. The result is Twilight of the Idols , a summary of sorts of the philosophical thoughts that had preoccupied him all his life. But the book, furious and acerbic in tone, is also something else: it functions as a metaphorical hammer that seeks to destroy everything that...

Note: This is an entry I wrote as far back as 2010, as a response to the youthful naivete I was witnessing all around me regarding certain political issues. The entry appeared on my old blog, but is new to this one. My views on the subject have only altered very slightly since. Being a high-school teacher means that I get to hang around doe-eyed teenagers and observe their behaviour up close. Over the years I have seen all colours and shades, but the one thing that stands out for me is definitely the teenage brand of idealism. This particular brand is different from yours and mine; it is one that has an unstoppable energy and an inflammatory dose of self-conviction, chiefly derived from a one-dimensional, monochromatic outlook of the world. If this sounds patronising, it is because there is no other way to describe its crookedness. Most young people are in need of conviction, some form of belief, no matter how unreasonable, to lean on during a period in their lives when uncer...