Books Blog: books.elliottback.com

I read today a nice edition of Plato’s Symposium (aff), which tries to describe the true nature of Love. Note that this is Love rather than love, so much time is spent deciding on if Love is a god and if so what kind of deity he is, only to have those notions overturned by Socrates who claims Love is in fact a spirit, something that binds different things together but in and of itself is not a thing:

The first, most startling thing about the book is that love between men and boys was considered not taboo, but the most ideal course of nature, so that what we might call today homosexuality and pederastry were simply mentoring and affection. Probably the lifespan of the Greeks had something to do with it, as they lived at most half of what we do now. Interesting, as well, is the idea that the only form of true love is between two men, for the purpose of attaining virtues and sharing intellectual discourse.

My favorite bit is Aristophanes’ speech about the nature of Love, where mankind originally had two heads, eight limbs, etc, and was sundered in half by the gods. So love is literally us trying to reunite with our missing half:

That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature.

According an MSNBC poll, one in four Americans read no books last year. Here is the horrifying snippet:

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

What are Americans doing instead? Working? Playing video games? Watching TV? How many books did you read last year? I know I read at least three dozen…

There is a killer article by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly called J.K. Rowling’s Ministry of Magic which digs deep into why JK Rowling is an awesome writer, and why the Harry Potter series is more than just a blockbuster of modern fiction. First, Stephen shoots down the hype around the Potter book reviews:

“… the very popularity of the books has often undone even the best intentions of the best critical writers. In their hurry to churn out column inches, and thus remain members of good standing in the Church of What’s Happening Now, very few of the Potter reviewers have said anything worth remembering. […] Most reviewers … bolted everything down, then obligingly puked it back up half-digested on the book pages of their respective newspapers.”

When a Harry Potter book comes up there’s too much pressure to race to the press with a review that all that can come out is a brief plot summary and a bit of gush about the next Harry installment! Second, King points out that Rowling is a talented novelist:

“While some of the blogs and the mainstream media have mentioned that Rowling’s ambition kept pace with the skyrocketing popularity of her books, they have largely overlooked the fact that her talent also grew.”

Coming from Stephen King, “one of the finer stylists in her native country” is high praise indeed. He’s particularly taken with “a sweet but uncompromising view of human nature…and hard reality: NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” that made it into the finale, a mother protecting her daughter from something evil.

Of course, he ends with a cute little jab at the commercialization of the series–not that King is actually jealous–that almost slipped by without notice:

Mostly Rowling is just having fun, knocking herself out, and when a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too. You can take that one to the bank (and, Reader, she did).